by Joshua Rollins
Azeotrope / ACT Theatre, Seattle, WA

Scenic: Catherine Cornell | Costumes: Christine Tschirgi | Lighting: Andrew D. Smith | Sound: Evan Mosher | Properties: Paul Cliffton Barrois

PRESS

“25 Saints is grim and brutal and it packs a mean whack to the gut… Azeotrope, in what it chooses to produce, wants to prod all of us towards humanity’s underbelly. With 25 Saints, it shoves us into the desperation of meth makers in Appalachia and their thirst for a life that isn’t ‘mountains and gravel roads. Wal-Marts and trailers.'”
— Florangela Davila, crosscut.com

“25 Saints, a brisk no-intermission 90 minutes set in a West Virginia hovel, opens with blood and fury and movement, and rarely lets up, pausing only to shift into bouts of emotional carnage instead. Meth cooks Charlie (Tim Gouran) and Tuck (Richard Nguyen Sloniker) are on the verge of fulfilling a debt to the town’s crooked sheriff (James Lapan) and escaping to Virginia Beach with Sammy (Libby Barnard), but a dead deputy throws a wrench into the proceedings… 25 Saints avoids deadweight for the most part; we get glimpses of the town’s rampant, systemic sickness courtesy of the sheriff’s heavy Duffy (Mary Murfin Bayley) and pizza delivery driver/meth-head Sasha (Mariel Neto), but the play’s core is Charlie and Sammy, a relationship borne out of desperation that just might be able to withstand the coming horror. The whole thing proceeds down an inevitable, familiar American Gothic path, but with Desdemona Chiang’s focused direction, the play’s unrelenting fatalism is gripping.”
— Dusty Somers, Blog Critics

“Since arriving on the theater scene in 2010, Azeotrope has established itself as one of the most provocative, relevant, fearless and accomplished theater companies in Seattle. Director Desdemona Chiang, a co-founder of the group, has made it equally clear that in any production of hers you will never find a moment, a gesture, a breath, a word or a glance that is artificial or distracting from the impact of the production as a whole… 25 Saints is set in a run-down cabin on the outskirts of a no-name town in Southern West Virginia. The play opens with jarring brutality and over the course of the next 90 minutes never lets up on the tension, desperation, violence and despair of these ruined, endangered people… It is about the fact that all of these people are in situations where they have no idea where they are in their lives, how they got there or how they could possibly get out. It is quite likely that you may not know anyone in your own life who is involved in this particular kind of drama, but the genius of this play and these perfect performances is that we can see elements of ourselves, elements of our own struggles with ambition and morality and corruption, in each and every one of them. In the intimacy of this tiny room filled with people whose problems are bigger than their lives, we have half a dozen mirrors daring us to look deeply into them… This is one of those shows where, following the climactic action, which could be nothing other than what it is, I think you’ll find yourself saying “Holy crap! Now that’s what they mean by drama!”. And while you’ll certainly be able to turn your back on that tiny, tawdry set, I doubt that you’ll be able to walk away from that place or those people. A playwright can only dream of having a script this beautifully realized.”
— Jerry Kraft, seattleactor.com