'buzzer' at the guthrie

Photo by Michal Daniel for the Guthrie Theater.

The mark of a effective play is that you find yourself still thinking about it and relating to it two days later.

Buzzer, a play written by Tracey Scott Wilson, had its world premiere here in Minneapolis by the Pillsbury House Theater company in 2012 and this past Saturday night began a run, again staged by Pillsbury House, in the Dowling Studio at the Guthrie Theater.

The story deals with race, love, addiction, friendship.  The trio of actors are outstanding, especially Hugh Kennedy as the addict, Don, just out of rehab and needing a place to live.  He moves in with his very successful best friend, Jackson, an African-American who lives with his white girlfriend in a "hood" that is being gentrified.  They all have a past with each other that they deal with along with the neighborhood race issues that they try so hard to ignore -- until they can't.

This play may still be a work-in-progress -- I'm not sure the ending is quite right yet -- but it's an entertaining evening of theater that challenges.