Scripts a departure from morality tales

Eric Samuelsen is a faculty playwright at Brigham Young University.The Plan-B Theatre Company is a Salt Lake troupe with a penchant for mounting plays that would make a lumberjack blush.Given that gene pool, the union of the two was bound to produce

something bizarre — something like Samuelsen's play, "Inversion."On its face, "Inversion" is about seven young people trapped in a

mountain rescue station after an "inversion" smothers the area in fog.

When a couple of them try to leave, they come back beaten and bloody.

When the kids look in the mirror, they go haywire. They've entered some

Twilight Zone. The plot is sketchy, the conclusion inconclusive and —

in classic avant garde style — Samuelsen doesn't present the final

scene until after the actors have taken their curtain call.I suspect the attitudes of the seven kids — the bully, the child,

the do-gooder — are probably meant to be facets of one personality. In

other words, we're watching a single human personality warring with

itself.But I can't be sure.What I am sure about is "Inversion" is not the kind of fare Mormons will flock to.Mormons, for the most part, like their theater tidier. They like a story that has a message.The late Eugene England once said the natural art form for Mormon

writers isn't poetry, fiction or even drama. It's the essay.I think the natural Mormon art form is the morality tale — a

story, fact or fiction, that keeps our interest, has some lessons to

share and leaves us with a feeling that in the grand battle between

good and evil, good is holding its own.The Bible, The Book of Mormon and LDS history are laced with such

stories — the golden calf, the brass plates of Laban, the 30 pieces of

silver of Judas and the widow's mite.Morality tales are the stock-in-trade of the most successful LDS

writers today: Stephenie Meyer, Orson Scott Card, Anita Stansfield, Lee

Nelson, Gerald Lund, Dean Hughes. They don't delve into the dark