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In his 2015 four-person musical “Soon,” Bethesda native Nick Blaemire gave us Charlie, a young woman who during what is the hottest summer in human history, decides to take to her couch and turn on CNN.
She’s going to sit the whole thing out. There she soothes herself with Wolf Blitzer, a fish named Herschel and peanut butter. Outside, in the apocalyptic doom of what might be the end of the world, life goes on, and those who love her most try to convince her to leave her comfy nest and do something, anything.
“Soon” returns home April 12-29, where it will be performed at the Highwood Theatre in Silver Spring. The current production features adult and high school student casts performing in repertory. Blaemire’s own struggle with the meaning of life in the face of death animates his character Charlie as she wrestles with her desire to sit out the apocalypse.
Blaemire has set up a struggle between Charlie and her boyfriend, who believes that even if the world is ending, he still has much to do. It’s the existential struggle, the why question, in a sense, played out with song, music and drama that Blaemire hopes is very accessible to his generation of 20- and 30-somethings.
“I feel this show is a constant reminder of how powerless I feel about what’s happening both to society and to the planet,” he said in 2015. “This is the best way I know to create awareness of that and also raise the human questions of what we do.”
For tickets and information, go to thehighwoodtheatre.org/tickets.html.
