Review: Coyote | Nouveau 47 Theatre | Magnolia Lounge - Dallas

Dallas — A "coyote" can refer to someone who smuggles people across the border. Sometimes the border is a line like a river or a fence. Sometimes that border is broader like what we will or won't do that decides if we are a part or apart. 

That's the subject of the new play, Coyote, by Kevin Kautzman. Featured as part of their New Works/New Voices festival last spring, Nouveau 47 Theatre is now giving this winner of the International Student Playscript Competition a full production. 

Designer William Anderson's set depicts a lone pickup sitting on a gritty piece of desert somewhere near the border in Arizona. Two men are watching the desert. Vince (Art Peden), the old timer, passes the time with booze and bombast. He subjects Luke (Stephen Witkowicz) to a barrage of increasingly vulgar rants. Luke is looking to join the "Minutemen" in their fight to secure the border. It's clear that Vince is testing him. Trying to find Luke's border, as it were.

Art Peden plays Vince without reservation. He's all hatred and bigotry. But he owns it with such self-assured intensity that he comes off as the more charismatic of the two characters. Stephen Witkowicz plays Luke as a weak yes-man. Agreeing with whatever Vince throws at him. Director Donny Covington allows the power to swing so far out of balance it makes a long game of cat and mouse look like a tango between a tank and a Toyota. 

The second act introduces a third character, Anna (Marti Etheridge) who is Luke's girlfriend and coyote co-conspirator. As surprising as her arrival, it's no surprise that Luke wasn't what he appeared to be. That's a problem for the two of them as well as the production. It's better to have the audience wondering where the play will end than just wondering when. 

Though this is the first full production of Kautzman's play, it won't be the last. There's a compelling combination of the sort of male soul-searching found in Sam Shepard's works and the gritty noir tension of early Coen Brother's films like Blood Simple. The former is all about what you stand for and the latter is all about where you stand. Kautzman is looking for the line between the two. 

With Coyote, he just might get there.