A famous American composer proves an unlikely mediator between a violinist dad and his basketball- loving daughter in “Charles Ives Take Me Home.” Jessica Dickey’s three-character fantasia has an audacious imagination, but its flights of fancy never take hold.
Set in 1987, it begins with a welcome by the composer, engagingly played by Henry Stram. He introduces us to Laura (Kate Nowlin), the fiercely proud leader of her high school basketball team.
Her father, John (Drew McVety), is equally devoted to his passion, the violin. He has scant appreciation of sports, and is dismayed to find Laura judging prospective colleges by their athletic programs.
Filled with weird digressions — John has a monologue about his obsession with women’s breasts and the strangeness of having a daughter who’s developed them — the play is less interesting for domestic drama than its depiction of Ives, who’s seen in flashbacks briefly teaching and becoming a father figure to John.
Laura advises her father to try something other than music. She points out Ives made his living selling insurance, to avoid, as Thoreau put it, having to make people “buy his baskets.”
The drama includes several excerpts from Ives’ compositions, credibly performed by Stram on piano and McVety on violin. But the play’s banal conflict never fully engages, and the conceit of using Ives as a sort of spectral referee doesn’t really work. As whimsically staged by the playwright, it feels like a music appreciation class held in the Twilight Zone.