Review: 7 Homeless Mammoths Wander New England

I think I know where playwright Madeleine George is trying to go in her dramedy 7 Homeless Mammoths Wander New England, now on stage at Big Idea Theatre, but I don’t think she’s there yet.

The plot involves a college dean (Linda Carbone) involved in a town-and-gown controversy over the imminent closing of a neglected natural history museum while simultaneously trying to reconcile within herself the professional and personal compromises she has made. When she invites a former lover with terminal cancer (Beth Edwards, channeling a dying woman perhaps too well) to move back into the home they shared—which she now shares with a younger lover (the impossibly talented Elyse Sharp)—there come questions of commitment, relevance, respect for the past and … death.

Watching over this and commenting on proceedings like a geeky Greek chorus are two representatives of early man—Zachary Scovel and Elizabeth Frederick. They add a lot of cogent humor but it’s unclear if they are live representations of cavemen in the diorama or whether they are inanimate replicas—like the mammoths—who happen to talk. The cast also includes Phillip Ryder as the museum caretaker.

Director Ruby Sketchley emphasizes the comedy in the dramedy, mining the talent of Sharp to the nth degree.