Dreams deferred and roads not taken infuse Echo Theater Company’s production of “American Falls” at the Atwater Village Theatre.
A first play for actor-turned-playwright Miki Johnson, “Falls” has been likened to a modern-day “Our Town.” Indeed, the play, which is set in a tiny Idaho town “a few years back,” has an elegiac quality evocative of Thornton Wilder’s classic.
There, similarities end. Distinctly postmodern, Johnson’s characters survive amid the wreckage of the American Dream. Linked by unfulfilled yearning, these have-littles either accommodate life’s disappointments -- or are destroyed by them.
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Johnson has a tendency to overstate, starting with that blatantly symbolic title and extending to overworked character traits.