After Happy
Patricia Milton
Central Works
A last-minute, desperate search for a Pirate Queen for the annual Pirate Festival in a community where most residents live under blue-tarp tents after a destructive hurricane named Happy. A bribery deal in process in Liberia for a Louisiana, family oil company to buy a forest where indigenous people live in order to give the false impression the company is helping save the planet. An estranged niece arriving unannounced at her aunt’s house on a mystery mission to somehow blow up the deal in Liberia and maybe blow up the oil company they are both part owners.
Such are the interlinked pieces of an intriguing puzzle whose complete picture does not become clear until the end of Patricia Milton’s After Happy — Central Works’ 79th world premiere play that sizzles like a whodunit except the ‘it’ has yet to happen and the mystery is to figure out what the ‘it’ actually is.
It’s 5:05 a.m. in Lake Charles, Louisiana; and Brenda Barrow shuffles over to the front door in her rabbit-eared slippers and flowery, silk robe where someone is knocking. At the door is her long-lost niece, Katherine Freeport, whom Brenda last heard from when she sent $20K to bail Kat out of jail for allegedly batting a policeman on the head with a flashlight during a climate change, anti-pipeline protest. They look uneasily at each other with some doubt before finally exchanging an aunt/niece, genuine hug.
What really brings Kat to her aunt’s home at dawn becomes for Brenda like peeling an onion to get to the core reason as the two dance around issues that make it uneasy to be in the same room together. Brenda is the controlling stock holder in the oil company her father (Kat’s grandfather) founded in the nineteenth century; her husband, Max, is CEO; and Kat is a former employee (and still part-owner) who is now anti-big-oil and a Climate Commando with a goal of righting present and past wrongs of companies like her family’s — no matter what lies and subterfuge it takes to do so.
Jan Zvaifler is a hoot and a half as Brenda Barrow, a Noble Oil owner and exec who describes her company role as a rower who keeps her paddle in the water but never actually paddles. Speaking as her niece describes with a “bayou belle accent,” she slowly drawls out phrases like “plain as a beetle bug in a sugar bowl,” “obnoxious as a fart in an elevator,” or “butter my butt and sell me as a biscuit.”
With her husband off fishing and bribing in Liberia, she is left alone to oversee Lake Charles’ queen-less Pirate Festival but now must also suddenly host her niece who seems to be on a cock-eyed mission from hell to cause some unknown havoc against her and the family’s company. With facial expressions that constantly morph into countless, momentary poses suitable for framing and arms/hands that seems never to pause in their flailing, swinging, jabbing, and pointing, Jan Zvaifler’s Brenda is worth the price of a ticket just to hear and observe her no matter the play itself.
But Lauren Dunagan’s Kat is also her own work of art. Jumpy, edgy, and nervous to the max, she alternates between appearing as a pseudo-eco-terrorist and a sweet, little girl trying to either force or cojole her aunt to help her save the planet in some, yet-to-be-revealed way. At issue for Brenda is trying to discern when Kat is telling the truth or lying — something Kat seems to be expert in doing, only she tends to give herself away by playing with her hair each time she is mid-lie (a trait, as it turns out, her aunt shares). As Kat leads up to some big ask (or is it a demand?) of Brenda, we see things she is doing unbeknownst to her aunt that may help explain how her methods got herself arrested in the recent past.
And just as the two continue to joist in words and accusations about Noble Oil’s possible sins, whether Kat’s cleavage or attitude is suitable enough for her to sub as the needed Queen, and just how evil or not was Lafitte as a pirate of old, another knock on the door opens for a sweaty, young woman to arrive, declaring in pissed-off manner, “My underwear is stuck clear up my ass crack.” It turns out she is Kat’s friend, Steph, who has been sweltering in the car, waiting for the sign to come in. Arriving with an ominous green bag, Steph is member of the Climate Avengers, who recently of bombed her own car near the Hoover Dam in an eco protest for the rights of the Navajos.
Rezan Asfaw is the oft-stone-faced Steph who seems wound up as tight as a spring about to pop at any moment. Even as she is pressing Kat to get on with it in terms of whatever the ‘it’ is in relation to Aunt Brenda and Noble Oil, Kat is now trying to convince Steph and Aunt Brenda that Steph would be the perfect Pirate Queen. Maybe a tit for a later tat?
The tensions build as the mystery mission of the two visitors becomes ever more intense in its progression to an yet-unknown goal. Patricia Milton’s script gives a few hints but also perhaps purposively leads us down a couple of dead-ends, especially given the astute direction by stage manager Nikki Eggett and a well-placed prop, some quick phone calls to an unseen boyfriend, and a dog whose barks we no longer hear. In between chuckling at another Brenda-ism (“it’s as hot as a firefly humping a Zippo lighter”) or rolling our eyes in amusement when she offers her ‘guests’ a tray of bananas decked out in pirate capes and hats, we increasingly are on the edge of our seats wondering what force is going to be used on Aunt Brenda to do whatever this uninvited twosome want of her.
With a clever mix of light-hearted humor and serious intrigue, Patricia Milton’s After Happy is a timely world premiere about the role of oil companies and climate change, given the present administration’s goal to drill, drill, drill and to toss out the past administration’s efforts for oil-alternative means for energy generation. Central Works once again strikes it rich with a dynamite cast in a captivating new play that packs a powerful message.
Rating: 4 E
After Happy continues through March 29, 2026, in a seventy-minute (no intermission) world premiere performance at Central Works, at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, Berkeley, CA. Tickets are available online at https://centralworks.org.
Photos Credit: Robbie Sweeney
