All Hail Hurricane Gordo

Carly Mensch's featherweight All Hail Hurricane Gordo, the fifth of six full-length plays in this year's 32nd annual Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theater of Louisville, nevertheless has serious things to say about family ties, abandonment, and responsibility. First, however, you must believe that a mother and father could drive away forever after leaving their two young sons in a parking lot and that the boys would then fend for themselves in the family home without any authorities intervening. All very hard to swallow. But the young playwright also has older brother Chaz (Matthew Dellapina) serving as caretaker for excitable, mentally unstable Gordo (Patrick James Lynch), who is indeed a hurricane onstage as he bounces around the house banging against doors and walls. Then Chaz decides to rent a room to India (Tracee Chimo), a kooky girl who has run away from home and is almost as hyper as Gordo. The dynamics suddenly intensify and take a dramatic turn after India's worried father (William McNulty) trails her there and begs her to come home.

Smartly directed by Sean Daniels, the four actors so convincingly inhabit their roles, you finally just go along with the unlikely situations. Will India decide to go back home? Will she persuade serious-minded Chaz to flee with her to California and desert hard-to-tolerate Gordo, who did an unforgivable thing to him? What will become of the mysterious, uncredited Bob who suddenly materializes? The playwright keeps us guessing but lets us down by leaving too many loose ends.