WATERSHED
The crime of Watershed is that it has very little to say, and manages to say even that poorly. Kenneth (Jim MacDowell) and his wife Kay (Maria Michaels Hughes) both in their mid-thirties, run a summer stock theater company on a southern college campus. Kenneth is the brilliant director at the college, while Kay, apparently, can act. Joining them is Damon (Charles Herbst), an impossibly cynical playwright who once studied under Kenneth.
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The show was also weighed down by director Hetty Mayer-MacDowell’s frequent use of blackouts. She used them during scenes in which characters are spread around the stage in small groups carrying on simultaneous conversations. While one group has the light the others remain silent. The light then goes black and another group is illuminated. This constant dimming and lightening inhibited any rhythm the play might have developed, and was even used inconsistently: sometimes, when a couple was not in the spotlight, they would assume frozen postures; yet other times they would continue to silently mouth their words as if the conversations truly were simultaneous.
