It seems that Jordan Harrison is a regular at the Humana Festival and has a loyal following. In his fantasy/ersatz fairy tale, The Grown Up, a magical doorknob salvaged from a sunken pirate’s ship opens to a series of Magic Theater fast forwards to the future. Through a series of vignettes and adventures, the key character starts as a child and ends as an old man.
Some of my colleagues – one of whom was moved to tears –thought this the best play of the festival. Frankly, I did not share those opinions. It was all just too much of a stretch. Also, to be fair, you have to be in the mood for fantasy – and I wasn’t. But my experience may have been more about malaise and fatigue than the play itself, part of the collateral damage of festival syndrome.
