‘Saturn Return’ @ Undermain Theatre

Photos by Paul Semrad

—Jan Farrington

TORI: I just flew here for what? Have our high school theater teacher be super fucking weird to me, NOT GET ANY OF THE GOOD HOT WINGS BECAUSE EVERYONE ELSE ATE THEM, and then go home to my MOM’S HOUSE? And sleep in THE DEN?

FRANKLIN: You made a colorful eulogy. You caught up with friends.

TORI: MIMI IS NOT MY FRIEND. She ENTRAPPED me.

Gracie Gardner’s Saturn Return at Undermain Theatre might, if one were feeling grumpily generational, be subtitled “The Young Folks Big Chill.”

Both stories are about a group of friends re-uniting at the funeral of one of them, a troubled but charismatic guy who has killed himself in the throes of (pick one or more) drug use, mental health issues, thwarted life, or the neglect of his old friends, who now feel much guilt about that. Essentially, it’s Boomers v. Millennials—and utterly predictable that Boomer me found it harder to like or empathize with the younger cohort, high school Drama Club friends and frenemies coming together a decade later. (The play is set in 2018.)

I wouldn’t have wanted them for my friends.

The question is, is, then, is that sort of reaction at all important to the play’s impact as theatre? I can argue both ends of that question, so bear with me.

Undermain and director Christina Cranshaw have a very fine cast to work with, and Gardner’s script has some crackling, startling dialogue that reveals the long-ago bonds among the characters—not lineally, but in fits, starts, and sudden blurts of information. Drunk and deeply grieved Tori (Nadia DeWolf) comes on first and crawls into the back-of-church dumpster, rather like a Juliet sliding down into Romeo’s tomb. Her actor friend Franklin (Carson Wright) hauls her out as they hash through past and present—interrupted by a quick emergency pee by their old theater teacher, Mr. Littman (Patrick Bynane), muttering but not seeing them (and that will prove to be a metaphor).

Leah Majur’s set design is supremely simple: we’re at the rear of the church, with throwaways, the dumpster, and scattered autumn leaves adding some color to the basic surroundings. Undermain’s thick columns define the playing space well; characters lean, hide, and brace themselves against them, often keeping their distance from one another (and, I’ll note, at times making the dialogue sound a bit distant, too.) It’s a place set apart from the day’s main action, the funeral and gathering.

Franklin’s leading a hardscrabble actor’s life out in L.A., with some success and much failure. He seems to think Tori is in the same couch-surfing straights, and is struck to the gut when she casually tells him her annual earnings. What, what, is he doing in theatre? His doubts show through the charm. Tori (her punky leather outfit is out of place at a funeral, and she likes that) had a long relationship with Jake, the departed, with ups, downs and complicated breakups—but she delivered the eulogy, and clearly is (in her conflicted way) feeling like the widow.

There’s competition from Mimi (Cheyenne Haynes), the annoyingly perky sexual adventuress and advice columnist of the class, who feels sadly possessive about all the guys—but not so mournful as all that, since she and Franklin have a meeting of the whatevers after a raging, get-the-blood-up exchange of barbs. (Their scene has the play’s best prop—if underwear counts.) Again, interruptus major by Mr. Littman, who still doesn’t see them.

The dropping of information keeps skewing our settled view of who each character is. Franklin accuses Mimi of still treating Tori like “your little fat friend” and sidekick. We now consider what this tells us about Tori in the present. Then, too, Over the 90 minutes of the play, we re-evaluate what we know and how we feel about “them” again and again—in part because last character Bucket (Doak Rapp) turns up to skew everyones’s ideas, onstage and off, about Jake’s final days of life. Like everyone else, Bucket is troubled—though in the scant time we encounter him, he seems rather kinder and steadier than most of the others.

Patrick Bynane’s Mr. Littman makes us squirm as he pontificates (wrongly) about why their lives have gone this or thataway. He’s still submitting his “little plays” that go nowhere, and pretends not to be acutely bored with guiding theatre wannabees into the future. He liked Jake, and we learn why in an affecting sidebar; he doesn’t like Tori, and tells her so flatly.

And in the end, we’re left with one actor on the stage…and rather to our surprise, finally a feeling of fellowship and sympathy. “Saturn return” is an astrological term, referring to points in our life span (27-30 years apart) when the alignment of the planet Saturn is exactly where it was when we were born. It’s said to be a time of upheaval and big life changes—and a time to reflect, evaluate, or change course. I’m not sure we see that strength of purpose in any of this handful…but Gardner has drawn her characters vividly.

Paul Semrad’s sound and music choices are apt, definitely “on the wavelength” of the audience’s younger members—as are the play’s pop references and humor, and an amusingly raunchy sexual style that definitely came across as generational…or am I just not remembering? Enjoy it all, you with a couple more wild & wooly “Saturn returns” left in your life.

WHEN: April 30-May 24, 2026
WHERE: Undermain Theatre, 3200 Main St., Dallas (Deep Ellum)
WEB: undermain.org