Robert Returns

ROBERT RETURNS, the long-awaited (actually totally unexpected) sequel to The Songs of Robert, the verse play with music that launched The Magnetic Theatre in 2008, won a Judges’ Award for Best Solo Performance at the New York International Fringe Festival in 2009, and inaugurated the artistic collaboration between John Crutchfield and Steve Samuels that continues today as The Sublime Theater & Press.

After a two-year hiatus due to the Covid pandemic, The Sublime Theater re-emerged in September 2022 with the world premier of Robert Returns. Like its predecessor, the show is a verse play with original music, performed by a single actor embodying over a dozen characters. This time, however, “Robert” is no longer a teenager on the brink of setting out into the world, but a grown man returning to his hometown in Southern Appalachia after the death of his friend and mentor, “Ol’ Preacha’”. There, he reconnects with old acquaintances, takes stock of how his hometown has changed, and discovers a family secret that alters his entire view of himself and his place in the world.

By turns humorous, gripping, and just plain weird, the play was extremely well received in its first run at the BeBe Theatre in downtown Asheville, and went on to additional performances in 2023 at Story Parlor in West Asheville, at All Souls Cathedral in Biltmore, and at Neighborhood Yoga in Boone, North Carolina.

In the words of one audience member, “John is a flawless performer, and the material was solid, engaging, impassioned, enthralling, the performance (a one-man show) totally without a glitch. The tiny black-box in the midst of a teeming metropolis reminded me of all the best nights of theater I’ve had in Dublin, London, wherever, when some miraculous thing unfolded before me somehow hidden from the scrutiny of the many.”

Directed by Steve Samuels and starring John Crutchfield, with design, technical assistance, and stage management by Olivia Stuller.