by Patrick White
Barrington Stage is offering a terrific sci-fi escape from our troubled world with their strange, mesmerizing North American premiere, The Urmetazoan by Alex Rugman, playing through 10/25.
At first glance, the play appears rather commonplace. Two sisters, Abigail (Francesca Carpanini) and Alice (Julia Chan) are packing up boxes in a bungalow in Florida but the playwright and the director, Jack Serio, quickly subvert your expectations and open new vistas in this fleet 90 minute tearjerker.
Alice is a Nobel prize winner in medicine who is preparing for her launch to spend the rest of her life on Mars. Abigail who hasn’t seen her sister in seven years has far less definite plans, envies her sister’s certainty and thinks it’s rather cowardly to ditch one broken planet and start over on another.
The two sisters are intensely close as demonstrated by having their younger selves (Beatrix Flynn-Powell as Young Abigail and Lyla Randall as young Alice) play a game of trading turns at building a sentence a word at a time in a prologue.
Carpanini and Chan are perfectly matched and are great company for the afternoon as they work out how they are alike, different and what they love about each other. The pair are compulsively watchable and Chan especially captivates your attention.
There is a third character of Abigail’s boyfriend, Will, nicely played by Justin Mark who has a beautiful scene with Alice. The character seems to show up just to let Abigail know she won’t be missing much when she travels 140 million miles from home.
The expert set by Marsha Ginsberg appears to be a stereotypical, sterile Florida rental flat but that serves the late transformation to something otherworldly extremely effectively. The set change and closing images could provoke tears. Lighting by Stacey Derosier and sound by Lee Kinney provide solid support throughout and create a couple of test launches as blastoff approaches that will pin you to your seats. Fun, future casual costumes by Ricky Reynoso including space suits, yay!
An urmatazoan Is the original animal which shared its basic traits and dna structure with all animals on earth. The play had its World Premiere at Hampstead Theatre in Hampstead Heath in London last week and is now making its North American premiere in Pittsfield. Pittsfield and London, two powerful theater worlds sharing a play this month.
Our beautiful mountains are changing colors this week with fall foliage in full effect and a trip to Pittsfield to contemplate a journey to Mars might be just the escape you need to look outward and inward.
Barrington Stage Company presents “The Urmetazoan” by Alex Rugman, directed by Jack Serio, from September 30-October 25, 2026 in the St. Germain Theater at 36 Linden Street in Pittsfield, MA. CAST: Julia Chan as Alice, Francesca Carpanini as Abigail, Justin Mark as Will, Beatrix Flynn-Powell as Young Abigail, and Lyla Randall as Young Alice. CREATIVE TEAM:
Scenic design Marsha Ginsberg, Costume Design Ricky Reynoso, Lighting Design Stacey Derosier, Sound Design and Original Music Lee Kinney, Dialect Coach Deborah Hecht, Production Stage Manager Jakob W. Plummer, and Assistant Stage Manager Rebecca L. Johnston.
Tickets start at $49 and are available at barringtonstageco.org or by calling 413.242.6411.