Fertile Ground Diaries: The Past is Calling

Initially set in 2014, the musical follows Bill (Leo Daedalus), a 1920s fanatic right down to his musical tastes and affinity for starched shirts and three-piece suits. As a deliveryman leaves a giant 1920s wooden phone booth in his apartment, Bill’s neighbor Jane (Meghan Sinnott) teases him about his obsession with the decade, and he reflects on how he feels so out-of-step with the rest of the modern world—including the people in it.

Then, before we know it, Bill is caught in a mystical conversation with his “past self” in the phone booth, gets locked in and is transported back in time to a casino/night club in Hudson Lake, Indiana (insert your Doctor Who joke/fangirl moment here). After adjusting startlingly quickly to the whole time-travel situation, Bill meets a lineup of club guests and employees, including club owner Red, sassy flapper girl Dora, cocky playboy Rollo, thuggish gangster Nick, and Nick’s girlfriend Mabel, who Bill promptly falls in love with. Loud and spirited 1920s jazz music weaves its way throughout the love story, with simple, romantic lyrics written by Buck Evans, a jazz singer out of Alaska.

For all its lively music however, the show starts to feel a little hollow, with many of the lines coming off as if being read for the first time (which, in fairness, they might have been). As a result, little rapport or chemistry believably develops between the characters. Lindsay DiAnn as Mabel is an exception: She easily pulls off the role as the gangster’s girlfriend, bored, sassy and annoyed one second and sweet and lovesick the next. 

The real centerpiece of the show, though, is the band, led by cornet player Max Ribner, who brings liveliness and bright action with his frequent solos and his interplay with the actors and other band members.

GO: The Past is Calling is at Pacific Northwest College of Art, 1241 NW Johnson St. 8 pm Sunday, Jan. 26. $25. More info here.

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