Head straight to ‘Crooked’

New production at the Vanguard in Fort Lauderdale is magical.

Theatrical magic, intricate and never easy to pull off, can happen when a playwright’s rich text is interpreted by a director with deep insight and by actors who bring their characters to vibrant life.

Thinking Cap Theatre’s new production of Catherine Trieschmann’s “Crooked” achieves exactly that kind of absorbing magic. Staged by artistic director Nicole Stodard in the company’s space at the Vanguard in Fort Lauderdale, “Crooked” features exquisite performances by Elizabeth Price as Elise, a mother who has been to hell and back; Krystal Millie Valdes as Laney, her creatively gifted 14-year-old daughter; and Daryl Patrice as Maribel, a 16-year-old classmate whose adolescent agonies are quieted in her father’s church.

Produced at London’s Bush Theatre in 2004 and off-Broadway by the Women’s Project in 2008, “Crooked” takes a resonant dive into the motherdaughter relationship as well as illuminating the confusion, longing and insecurities in a teen girl’s journey toward womanhood.

Having abandoned liberal Madison, Wisc., to return to Oxford, Miss. — the hometown she shares with Nobel Laureate William Faulkner — Elise is beginning life as a single mother after divorcing Laney’s father, Peter, whose troubling history isn’t fully revealed until late in the play.

Emotionally, Elise is at loose ends. She doesn’t want to find a new job as a social worker, but knows she has to put food on the table. Smart and witty, she’s a compulsive maker of lists, to Laney’s amusement and/or chagrin. She parents her bright, lonely daughter with obvious affection, but clashes between their two strong personalities are inevitable.

Aspiring writer Laney suffers from dystonia in the muscles of her upper back, making it seem as though she has a hump there and increasing her adolescent self-consciousness. Her vivid imagination sometimes leads to factual improvisation, as when she tells her new (and so far only) friend Maribel that she once kissed a boy named Quentin Compson, who is, of course, a tragic character in Faulkner’s “The Sound and the Fury” and “Absalom, Absalom!.”

Maribel, whose dad sells used cars when he isn’t preaching from the pulpit at the Church of the Redeemer, doesn’t get the reference despite having grown up in Oxford. She’s behind in school and obviously not Laney’s intellectual equal, but the girls click. Secure in her faith though troubled by what she describes as “invisible stigmata,” Maribel “saves” Laney in the empty church. When the two share a kiss, Laney excitedly declares herself a “holiness lesbian.”

Trieschmann’s bright, grounded-in-truth dialogue is something to savor.

Stodard and the actors deliver a beautifully performed exploration of myriad emotions — fears for the future, the rush of first love, the pain caused by wounding remarks. Price is extraordinarily compelling as a woman committed to encouraging and protecting her daughter at all costs, while Valdes brings an explosive intensity and Patrice a calm centeredness to their roles as evolving adolescents.

In her simple set design, Alyiece Moretto-Watkins references several definitions of the word “crooked” as well as Elise’s penchant for listmaking and Laney’s multiple tries at finding the perfect sentence. Lighting designer Joel De Sousa illuminates the women and those words, Stodard supplies the expressive and comfortable costumes, and Bree-Anna Obst provides live accompaniment with snippets of such gospel songs as “I Saw the Light,” “This Little Light of Mine” and more.

Although the play’s ending shocks, it, too, is grounded in the truth of adolescent pain. “Crooked” is Thinking Cap at its best: thought-provoking, engrossing and moving.

“Crooked” is a Thinking Cap Theatre production running through Sept. 30 at the Vanguard, 1501 S. Andrews Ave., in Fort Lauderdale. Showtimes are 8 p.m. Friday, 3 and 8 p.m. Saturday and 5 p.m. Sunday. Tickets cost $40. To order, call 954-610-7263 or go to VanguardArts.org.