There’s an oft-recycled quotation, so often recycled that it’s become almost a cliche, attributed to the author Elizabeth Stone, that goes, “Making the decision to have a child - it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” On one of my regular visits out to see my goddaughter and her family, her mother mentioned to me casually in conversation that one of the simplest strategies for keeping your kids from being sexually trafficked is just to make sure that they don’t take their phone, or computer with access to the internet, to bed with them. And sure enough, when it was time for bed, the phones and other screens were turned in for the night. Being a parent is terrifying. It’s also wonderful. But nonetheless terrifying.
“I’ve always been able to trust my gut.”After all, at first a child is completely defenseless, dependent on you for literally everything. Then when they’re walking around on their own, they can get hurt in any number of ways, both physically and emotionally. And when children are younger, they’re so trusting, of everyone, perhaps even people they shouldn’t trust. Then as they get older, they talk to you less and less. So it can be hard to know what’s really going on, and how you can help - if you can help. Things like climate change become more real for me when I think that my goddaughter is going to be stuck living in whatever banged up planet we leave her, long after I’m gone. This terror, of your child being vulnerable to the whims of an increasingly hostile world, is the unsettling premise at the heart of the Scottish playwright Frances Poet’s play
“Gut.” The script is getting its American premiere right here in Minneapolis thanks to Krivski Productions, led by Danielle Krivinchuk (lead actress in the production, for whom this has been a dream project for a number of years), Elizabeth Desotelle (another key actor in the four person ensemble), Julie K. Phillips (director on the production), and co-producer Andrew Troth.
“Sometimes you need to live, not knowing.”It’s easy to see this is a labor of love by just looking at the setting before the performance even begins. Greg Vanselow’s set design maximizes every inch of space in The Hive Collaborative’s blackbox space. The set is so brightly painted in primary colors and outlines of shapes that it could be mistaken for a childcare facility out of context. In context, it’s a great many locations, both real and unreal. Maddy and Rory’s home kitchen area is the one unmoving locale, but rolling set pieces (conjuring the feel of an enormous set of child’s blocks), a clothesline, directional signs that pop out and then just as quickly retract again, a door in the wall of many uses, all keep the boundaries fluid and the story moving along. In addition, Vanselow’s prop work populates the set with many child’s toys and games, along with items better suited to the adults in the play. All of this is augmented, for both reality and surreality, by the lighting and sound design of Shannon Elliott. The lights take us from regular illumination to unsettling saturated dark colors as each scene requires, and the sound of children’s laughter and playful screams get distorted to eery effect. Bronson Talcott’s costumes ground the characters in the real world, even as one of the characters descends, both emotionally and visually through what they’re wearing and how they’re wearing it, into a spiral of escalating fear and anxiety. Stage Manager Jennifer Long keeps the whole complex rollercoaster of a tale on the tracks for its full uninterrupted 100 minute run time.
“It’s true the corpses aren’t saying much.” Maddy (Krivinchuk) and Rory (Nick Wolf), a young couple with a three-year-old (unseen) son named Joshua, leave the boy in the care of his grandmother (Rory’s mom) Morven (Desotelle) when they go on a much needed weekend getaway (new parents rarely getting much alone time as a couple). They return in the opening scene of the play refreshed and happy, but the mood gets tense when Morven recounts a tale of being out with Joshua, and him having a sudden need to go to the restroom just as she was reaching the cash register to pay for their meal. A man behind them in line offered to take Joshua to the men’s room while Morven wrangled their meals on trays and the payment for them. Seeing no harm in it, Morven took the man up on his offer. Everything seemed to pass without incident and it might be just an awkward funny story, but Maddy and Rory are instead alarmed that Joshua’s grandmother let a strange man take the boy to the restroom. And that’s the point from which everything starts to unravel.
“He’s probably fine but what if he isn’t?”Krivinchuk and Wolf are great as the concerned parents, at first both in a kind of anxiety spiral together, and then diverging as Rory forces himself to find a way to move on, while Maddy becomes more fearful of all the people out in the world who could harm her son if she’s not there to protect him. This leads to multiple seismic shifts in the family unit as Maddy decides to take a leave of absence from work to stay home with Joshua, and finds her relationship with Morven fraying as the young mother loses trust in their go-to caregiver. Desotelle is heartbreaking as Morven, a woman desperately trying to repair the relationship with the young woman she’d come to think of as her own daughter.
“They’ve got to get bumped and bruised. That’s how they learn.”And discussion of the ensemble would be incomplete without mention of Sean Dillon, who plays multiple roles, from several different parents in the neighborhood and at Joshua’s school, to a policeman, to the leader of a support group, to one of Rory’s co-workers, and of course all the nightmare visions who Maddy conjures in her waking hallucinations of adults popping up in unexpected places who mean her child harm. Dillon is quite the chameleon, sometimes going from benevolent to menacing in the blink of an eye.
“I don’t trust you yet.”Director Julie K. Phillips skillfully guides the talented cast through the shifting tone of the play and its different levels of reality. The audience gets to see the world as both benign, and then also in the threatening way it can sometimes be perceived, rightly or wrongly, by an anxious parent. It’s a tricky balance to pull off but everyone involved does it well. Just for an extra layer of difficulty though, don’t forget that
“Gut” is by a Scottish playwright, which means all the actors involved have to pull off a convincing accent for the entirety of the play as well - hats off to dialect coach Gillian C. Rosewell for putting them through their paces so it all sounds natural. It’s easy to forget they’re all Minnesotans until the curtain call arrives and the masks finally drop.
“Do not fail your son. You *teach* him.”Fair warning, we’re dealing with a tale of parental anxiety, and it includes the recounting after the fact of an act of child abuse (though it is not depicted onstage in front of the audience).
“Gut” goes to some dark places before it ends in an unexpected but welcome place of (nervous) hope. Also, in the final moments there’s an uncredited cameo I won’t spoil that puts the stakes of the story in sharp relief. But it also provides a bit of childlike wonder, which was a great note on which to end.
“It’s like I’ve opened a door in my mind and I don’t know how to shut it again.”Because people have to find ways of dealing with the world, parents especially. So much is beyond our control, but shutting down and trying to block it all out isn’t a viable solution. Three cheers for therapy as a helpful coping mechanism, alongside support of family and friends. It’s hard to know who you can trust, but you have to find a way to trust someone. Find a solid foundation, and build out your network from there.
“If I say yes, can I come home?”“Gut” is a stellar piece of theater, well-executed from start to finish. It’s intense but also cathartic, and very much worth your time and money to go see. Based on the size of the audience the night I was there, reservations are a good idea - the place was pretty packed. There’s four more chances this weekend to catch “Gut” at the
Hive Collaborative (677 Hamline Avenue North, Saint Paul, MN 55104) - Thursday, Friday, and Saturday May 28 to 30, 2026 all at 7:30pm, closing on Sunday May 31st with a 2:30pm matinee. Tickets available online
here.
5 stars - Very Highly Recommended
(Photo, left to right, Morven (Elizabeth Desotelle) looks on as Maddy (Danielle Krivinchuk) tries to calm Rory (Nick Wolf) in “Gut” - photography by Molly Jay)
