Farmyard

Life on the farm isn't what you'd expect in the hands of controversial German playwright Franz Xaver Kroetz. Farmyard explores the bizarre, shocking, and ultimately tender relationship between a hired farmhand (Garth Petal) and a retarded underage girl starved for attention (Heidi Wolff). Last Planet Theatre Company, helmed by John Wilkins, is the kind of organization that's not afraid of pushing boundaries. It collages one part of the innovative set with hundreds of naked Playboy pinups and another with growing moss, allows actors to drink real beer onstage, and casts a very talented political science major (Hilde Susan Jaegtnes) as a beguilingly lethargic dog loping around the stage, then dying in the audience. All this is a passionate embrace of a strikingly original play that explores very challenging material: porn, abortion, masturbation, and outcast love. The dialogue is sparse and punctuated with long, drawn-out silences that feel like contests of will, while tableau images reminiscent of those 1950s faded 3-D postcards are underscored with jazz great Shirley Horn's sensitive vocals. Emma Victoria Glauthier delivers a razor-sharp performance of suppressed emotion as the stern mother trying to balance her daughter's well-being with her desire to be seen as more than her disability. LPT should change its tag line from "Difficult Plays for Difficult People" to "Difficult Material Done Well."