SALT LAKE CITY — Seize the Initiative is playing at the Fringe Festival located at Trolley Square, and I saw it on Friday, July 26th. Seize the Initiative was directed by Josh Patterson, and written by Yoram Bauman. The play is fundamentally a quaint piece of propaganda designed to educate the audience about clean air, democracy and the boundless enthusiasm for attempting to create change in Utah. There just so happens to be a lukewarm romance sandwiched between all the politics.
The actual content of the play – gathering signatures to support a carbon tax campaign that would fund clean air initiatives in Utah – seems to overshadow a love story that feels like an after thought. In the opening of the play, Katherine (played by Meg Chamberlain) is explaining how to go about gathering signatures and the various scenarios of talking with pedestrians, while Saul (played by Guillermo Oviedo) helps to demonstrate. Toward the end of this scene, Saul explains that he only volunteers to meet girls, and when he doesn’t vibe with a girl, he simply recruits her to the cause. This seems pragmatic, but for some reason the play treats this as egregious; how dare a guy flirt with me and volunteer with me but might not actually like me! The play doesn’t explain why this is a problem; Saul immediately recruits Grace (played by Addie Bowler) on the spot, and it’s shown that she actually enjoys gathering signatures. In fact, she seems to love it way more than Saul does! But when her friend Nikki (played by Anne Louise Brings) suggests that Saul only approached her to recruit her, and she learns that there were other women before her, this is somehow beyond the pale.
Fringe runs through August 4. | PC: Yoram Bauman
The play doubles down on this by the couple parting ways, and Saul leaving Grace a sandwich on her doorstep for weeks. Why? They were only working together for a short amount of time, why would he do something like this? He gathers signatures everyday; why hasn’t he met other girls? What is it about Grace that he likes so much, when they don’t seem to have much in common except this one thing? The script doesn’t answer these questions, choosing instead to make sandwich puns.
Despite being billed as a romantic comedy, the funniest moments come from Saul himself, Lance (played by JayC Stoddard) and when the actors play random pedestrians on the street.
There was some lovely use of lighting – such as the spotlight on Grace during her stand-up performance, and the use of signs to indicate the setting (such as Training In Session) and the passage of time. The play is well paced, and there was never a dull moment with quite a few laughs. The play is very topical, literally starting on July 11th 2024 and is singularly focused on a well-known issue in Utah. Seize the Initiative is a great play to watch for both the laughs and educational content, but may need more time in development.
These reviews are made possible by a grant from the Salt Lake County Zoo, Arts, and Parks program.
