A strange and meaningful thing happened at the April 29 performance of Saviana Stanescus touching drama Bee Trapped Inside the Window at HartBeat Ensembles Carriage House space on Farmington Avenue.

The play ended and nobody moved. Nobody clapped. Nobody did anything for minutes on end. We all just sat there. The mood became tranquil and meditative, befitting a play that refuses to tie things up neatly and purposely leaves a lot of provocative questions open for discussion.

This critic has rarely seen anything like it. Ive been at experimental theater pieces that defied traditional curtain calls or endured moments of stunned silence (good or bad) before a crowd reaction finally kicked in. This was different.

It was a confluence of events.

This is not giving anything away, since most of Bee Trapped Inside the Window is a mix of quiet moments where the three cast members stand apart onstage, but the play ends in a silent tableau. The three actors in it struck calm, reflective poses. Soft music continued to play. There was plenty to ponder. Not only that, but the production begins with one of the characters sitting in full view of the audience at the center of the stage for about half an hour before the play commences. If the audience doesnt know how (or when, or if) to respond, they have a reason.

I saw an earlier version of the play presented virtually in March of 2021, so was aware of how it ended. I guess I could have started the applause, but I tend to observe rather than lead in such cases. Other audience members could have tested the waters by clapping but chose not to. The actors did not return to the stage or otherwise signal finality. Dozens of us sat in the cozy 77-seat auditorium just ruminating for a good five minutes.

Finally, HartBeat Ensembles artistic director Godfrey L. Simmons Jr. poked his head through the door and asked, Everyone OK?

This is where some critics might suggest that a play needs to work on its ending, announce its transitions more clearly, or have the actors ostentatiously bow or smile or make the praying-hands gesture. Yet, I hope that Bee Trapped Inside the Window stays mysterious and serene.

So much of the return of live theatergoing post-pandemic is about hooting and hollering Were back! We mustnt forget the other extreme: Communal contemplation, the sort of shared theater experience thats more spiritual than social.

Bee Trapped Inside the Window casts a spell, thats for sure.

Think of how hard it must be to write and stage a play about domestic slavery, not to mention the mid-life crisis of an overachiever and the coming-of-age struggles of an energetic teenage girl, in a manner thats calm, meditative, psychologically profound and luminous. It is not obvious or overt or grand or pushy, and thats a pretty wonderful thing to experience.

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Everything about this play is thoughtful and reserved. Its characters stay remote from one another on the small stage, and director Vernice Miller furthers that distancing by allotting each of the actors their own section of the stage without any clear dividing lines

The whole show is seen through light netting that surrounds the playing area. Outside the netting, the floor is spray painted green in an abstract approximation of a suburban lawn.

Mia is a bright, idealistic teen. We watch her age from 12 into her college years, several years passing within just a few lines of the script. Erin Lockett plays her with wide-eyed innocence combined with a budding intelligence and compassion.

Mias mother Sasha is Russian, a successful business executive who has raised Mia in Fairfield County. Sasha talks to herself about how shes still attractive, still important, still powerful. Sasha has told Mia almost nothing about her father other than that he was African, leading the teen to create her own stories of her heritage. Jennifer Dorr White allows useful moments of self-doubt to creep into Sashas severe exterior.

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Malaya is a maid in a neighboring house. She is proud of being a hard worker and schedules her day with intense precision, itemizing her chores and when she does them. Mami Kumari gives her an effervescent spark of industriousness and vitality, as well as a sad vulnerability.

Lockett and White have been a part of Bee Trapped Inside the Window since its earliest developmental stages, including last years virtual rendition.

We hear a lot about these women from themselves, through voluminous interior monologues. They eventually interact, in convincingly stilted conversations that show how different, insecure, self-involved or simply socially awkward they each can be.

Besides the realistic relationships and revelations, Bee Trapped Inside the Window also delivers some stirring metaphors and allegories about independence and community.

The HartBeat Ensemble production of this play, which artistic director Simmons has nurtured since he saw Stanescu perform a monologue version of a similar story several years ago at Civic Ensemble in New York, is scored with mood music from Nina Simone and other sensitive soul singers. It has subtle shifts in lighting and tones. It has a wide range of emotions. You feel trapped yourself watching these characters trapped in their own difficult situations, some of their own making and some decidedly not.

Bee Trapped Inside a Window can really get inside your head and wonder what it takes to make positive change in a fractured world. It does so in an economical 90 minutes without intermission, if it ever really ends at all.

Bee Trapped Inside the Window by Saviana Stanescu, directed by Vernice Miller and produced by HartBeat Ensemble runs through May 8 at the Carriage House, 360 Farmington Ave., Hartford. Performances are Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. $25; $20 students, seniors and Lets Go Arts members; no one left behind for lack of funds. hartbeatensemble.org.

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HartBeat Ensemble's 'Bee Trapped Inside the Window' casts a spell as a meditation on isolation and injustice - Hartford Courant