RVA Magazine: ‘SMOKE’ at Firehouse, Fire in my Belly

Photo by Michael Thibodeau

Originally published by RVA Magazine
by Christian Detres
May 27, 2025

Once again, a trip to the Firehouse Theatre has found a way to send me home with a boiling pit of emotions churning in my gut and fiery rants on the tips of my fingers. Art is made to provoke, not to placate, and this is what I signed up for. SMOKE, the current exhibition taunting audiences at the corner of Lombardy and Broad, was produced by Cadence Theatre and executed by some of the brightest talents Richmond has to offer. 

The scene. A family gathers for a wedding. The bride, her fiancé, mother of the bride, father of the groom, best man/maid of honor (also a couple), and, lastly, the avatars that the audience lives the experience through – the capital P Progressive, urbane intellectual Aunt and Uncle arriving from NYC. Like any family ever, opinions, values, and senses of humor run the gamut. Like any family in 2025, the very nature of reality is also up for debate. 

Enid Graham, a NYC-based Writer and Actor, penned SMOKE in 2022 as she watched the world descend into a cacophony of lies, misdirections, manipulations and cruelties. She, along with the rest of us, did the blinking man meme at what had to be a global joke. How did we let this happen? So many of our loved ones and peers chose lunatic fringe and hateful ideas above reason, kindness, empathy, their own stated religious values, their own cultural legacies. The transitions were so neat, so seamlessly orchestrated, as to suggest a divine hand at the Conductor’s podium. “I had not thought death had undone so many” as T.S. Eliot (or Dante Alighieri) would have put it. 

Before I run off in a dozen different directions with my takes on the themes of SMOKE – a brilliantly mundane allegory describing the rot in our social cosmology – let me choose my lanes of discussion. There are too many ineffective ways to fire from the hip. One has to organize their thoughts. Let’s explore stammering disbelief and pure malice. 

Stammering disbelief, as applied to the experience of having a full-grown adult express existential theories not suitable for a Kindergarten, is a trauma response. Lower-case t trauma, but technically correct. The stammering part is analogous to my conundrum writing this review. It’s gonna go a little long and I don’t know how to stop myself from letting it. There’s so much to say. Words lose coherence and one can’t remember how a retort can be crafted because there’s too much stupid to respond to in one breath. So the breath gets wasted. We try to combat the stupid with disorganized wind because we can’t get off our heels long enough to understand how the stupid gained such traction in the first place. It’s like trying to hitchhike from the middle of a NASCAR racetrack. ‘Trying to dip your head at the base of Niagara Falls for a sip of cold water. Without ruining the play, and yes, we are still talking about a play, keep this thought in your back pocket when you go see it. 

Pure malice. The character I referenced above as the “best man” of the wedding party, played by Adam Turck, puts into words the point that we, the capital P Progressives, cannot seem to wrap our frilly brains around. It’s so true it hurts, and it’s so hurtful it knocks our best intentions in the dirt. 

I’m going to be coy about the details of the monologue this character delivers because you should feel the horror of its words directly. Here’s what I got out of it. Peace, love, and understanding are not the natural states of things. They are protected, fought for, bled for. Bled for. Nature, at every scale, is gory and unforgiving. Civilization is a supernatural state. Empathy is a deviation from Darwinian logic. It is difficult to maintain across entire societies, but is entirely, and wholeheartedly, worth it. What we decide to do in protection of it is the moral dilemma. I’m trying to remember the exact quote, but it goes something like this:

“A peaceful man without the will to fight to protect that peace is harmless. A harmless man is not a peaceful man. He is an insignificant obstacle for the malicious to trample.”

SMOKE takes a short and richly layered text to reflect the current state of nihilism, masculinity, gullibility, condescension, and existential dread. It drives you to the promontory with the best view of its’ devastation, and kicks you over the edge. 

Cadence Theatre, led by one of the pillars of Richmond theatre, Anna Senechal Johnson (who also Directed this performance), spent several weeks with the playwright in Richmond for this production. Within this intimate creative space, they delivered a naturalistic, conversational mood on an artfully designed stage at Firehouse. The actors played to the ensemble, leaving each other room to be in their skins – eating ice cream together, making flavorful lattes, existing in pajamas with family. The odd people out? The very two that we, the audience, are primed to understand. 

Laine Satterfield and Brian K. Landis, towering creatives and educators in our local theatre/film scene, play the protagonist couple. The chemistry between the two is alchemic, giving such a understated believability to their bond that exacerbates the extent of their stammering disbelief at the people around them. You can easily imagine the many years of familiarity between them. The ‘bubble’ they share is a success of good nature, mutual respect, love, and withering condescension. Their need to be right, right now, despite any hope of solving an issue, is relatable and deftly explored in their performances. 

Debra Wagoner’s Mindy is the heartbreak for me as a critic. Ms. Wagoner poured a heroic amount of empathy (that word again!) into her portrayal of a late middle-aged mom trying not to lose her damn mind, while, incidentally, losing her damn mind. There’s so much meat on this role, and it was a pleasure to see her take on it. There’s so much to explore here, but it would place unnecessary stress on your expectations going into the theater. She’s a revelation. 

Adam Turck plays Chase, the epitome of an unsolicited dick pic. Convinced of its own majesty and completely unnecessary, he’s a performative flex eagerly deleted. Except that somehow, it won’t go to “trash” and is now your phone backdrop. The invasive species he embodies resides on every social media platform and competitive space with dark corners. Adam’s amazing at this.

Kendall Walker plays his girlfriend Joleen, the kind that cries when she’s alone but revels in an imperfect cage a methodically nasty person like Chase can offer. He can and will be nasty on her behalf. It’s not for others to understand or condone, only hers to pass the time in. As long as there are distractions of money, status, and baubles, what good is dignity? Kendall gives the blithe oblivion this character needs to feel rounded without making her two-dimensional. 

John Mincks and Maggie Horan as the couple-to-be don’t do much to move the story forward. This is their weekend. Nearly everything going on around them is in spite of that fact. They are the joy that happens in the center of the storm, when life is lived without curiosity or laden with consequence. This is a position occupied only by the privileged in our world, and these two actors carry the point over the threshold well. 

Gordon Bass’ Dave exists as a quiet mystery for most of the play, so I won’t reveal his trump card (pun non-intended) for what he represents. Suffice to say, he speaks and the ‘fat lady sings’. Or screams. 

Cadence Theatre, I’m going to need some therapy. 

Be challenged. Go see difficult shows. Lay bare the soul. Thanks again to everyone that does the hard work. Go see SMOKE.