Counterfactual, an emerging theatre company, march into the New Diorama Theatre with their multimedia The Mosinee Project, taking us back to 1950 when the ‘Red Menace’ was a source of fear for patriotic, flag-waving Americans.
It’s the fear of Communism and Joseph McCarthy’s list of unnamed sympathisers within the government that gives John Decker, who worked in the small Midwest town of Mosinee, the idea to give the community a scare.
It sounds bizarre. Created and led by Artistic Director Nikhil Vyas, The Mosinee Project takes three actors who try to reconstruct just how a small town where everyone knew everyone and did the same thing every single day woke up to hammer & sickle flags on 1 May, 1950.
We know from recent events that the USA often operates in a climate of national pride, misinformation, and a dogged grasp of the Constitution. The actors (Camilla Anvar, Jonathan Oldfield, and Martha Watson Allpress) muse on what defines America: baseball, apple pie, guns?
In a set (by Grace Venning) of display boxes, map table, and screen, a world of fear and invention is created. Although there has been some research about what led up to a day that could have been educational and instructive, Counterfact play fast and loose with accuracy.
The Mosinee Project is as slippery as the Communist threat proved to be. I was pulled out of the rising tension by the stop-start nature of the writing, with actors stepping out of character. The main characters of Decker, Joseph Zack Kornfeder, and Ben Gitlow are tantalisingly left unfilled, so we have to fill in the gaps.
The video aspect is very good, with live capture, model work, and projection of plans and photographs. The sound was less successful, with McCarthy’s speech hard to decipher, although the use of microphones offered a sense of immediacy and authenticity.
Although my attention didn’t wander during The Mosinee Project, I felt some moments didn’t really click. A ‘honey I’m home’ scene offering a breakdown of the norms of a 1950s marriage felt hollow, while a Soviet-set final scene offered a sense of levity sitting uneasily against the previous hour’s drama.
There were issues and ideas I wanted to see more of, like how women and segregated Black people would respond to such an exercise. Less of the play-acting and more about how this simulation changed anything in the town would give us a way in. Moments of aggression were few, but potent.
This is an inventive piece of theatre that does hold currency as we watch an increasingly authoritarian America court Russia, but it didn’t leave me engaged or enthused by its story.
3.5 stars.
The Mosinee Project continues at the New Diorama Theatre until 22 Mar 2025 with tickets here.
Image credit: David Monteith-Hodge