D.B. Milliken and Mia Sinclair Jenness Photo by Nina Goodheart

And for much of her (primarily) two-person tale, you can sense how the pair from Winnebago County are covering up confrontation by keeping up a friendly façade. It's not until they, shall we say, start communicating like New Yorkers when the dramatic sparks of honesty take over.

This is the third Sophie McIntosh play I've reviewed in the past few years and, aside from escaping the stress of unending deadlines and having more free time to socialize, I'd say being introduced to her work has been the best thing to come out of my post-pandemic decision to semi-retire from reviewing to focus on giving coverage to more affordably priced theatre created by members of underrepresented groups.

She has a great talent for leading with attention-grabbing situations and using them to propel deeper observations. Her macbitches begins with the upperclasswomen of a college school of drama being infuriated that a first year student has been cast as Lady Macbeth, and gradually exposes the audience to ways the students don't seem aware that the patriarchal culture of the drama department has been controlling them by pitting them against each other. (I'm stunned that a Broadway producer hasn't picked up this play yet, especially after the success of Kimberly Belflower's John Procter Is the Villain.)

In cunnicularii, a woman gives birth to a plush toy rabbit, but the subtext of the symbolic fable reminds us of the substandard effort the health industry seems to be putting into understanding women's bodies.

Director Nina Goodheart's whimsical theatricality contributed greatly to the success of the latter, but as director of Road Kills, her excellent work is grounded in subtle naturalism.

To say that the audience is on top of the action in this production is putting it mildly. Those seated in the first of Paradise Factory Theater's three rows are just behind the double yellow lines of set designer Junran "Charlotte" Shi's realistic two-lane highway, and while entering, all should be mindful not to step on the dead baby doe in the middle of the road, the first of prop designer Sean Frank's unsettling creations. The theatre is intentionally kept a little chilly to replicate the feel of autumn in Wisconsin.

Now in his late 20s, the soft-spoken and introspective Owen (D. B. Milliken) has been running the family business of removing and disposing of roadside animal carcasses since he was 16. Living with his mother and having no social life, his only fresh human contact comes when the government pays him to take on the assistance of offenders convicted to community service. He seems the sort of person who will find contentment in doing the same unremarkable thing every day of his life and it's hard to decide whether to pity him or envy him.

Owen's latest court-appointed assistant is Jaki (Mia Sinclair Jenness), a 20-year-old college student who'll be with him for the next six Saturdays. Her "let's get this over with" attitude and her physical revulsion at being so close to dead animals contrasts with Owen's somewhat spiritual approach to his work, treating each victim with respect and giving proper burials to the more intact remains.

Despite her hard partying and sexually free lifestyle, Jaki is known to local motorists as the wholesome, smiling model on a billboard advertising her family's farm. It's not the type of farm that might immediately come to mind, but it's the largest of its kind in the country and the methods by which they supply their product provides a bit of symbolism for issues that will come up as the play progresses.

I don't mean to be cryptic, but this is the kind of drama that very effectively reveals information about its characters in bits and pieces, primarily dealing with issues of abuse, addiction and isolation. To the credit of the playwright, the director and the exceedingly skillful cast (including Michael Lepore in two small functional roles), the story of the effects Owen and Jaki have on each other during their brief time together is a fluid blend of tragedy and humor, leading to an unexpectedly optimistic conclusion.

As each scene begins with a new carcass to be removed from the road, lighting designer Paige Seber, sound designer Max Van, and an assortment of voice artists collaborate on brief interludes, mostly in darkness, that put audience members in a passenger seat as the circumstances leading up to the animal's death are dramatized. While the drivers and passengers may initially react with shock or sadness, there is inevitably the decision to just drive on and continue with life.

And perhaps that's a theme that makes Road Kills so compelling: that it deals with our responses to the damage done to others, whether it's by our own actions or someone else's. When do we try and help and when do we just drive on and continue with life?

Goodheart and McIntosh are the co-leaders of the play's producing company, Good Apples Collective, which "empowers emerging artists to create work with trusted creative peers and revolt against oppressive hierarchies that undercut and isolate new voices." Thus far, their New York productions have been limited run Equity showcases, but if talent, originality, and the ability to tell evocative stories count for anything, I'll expect this company to eventually become a major influence in this city's theatre scene.