A Great Wilderness @ The Beck Center, March 3--April 9, 2017

Review by Laura Kennelly

Photo by Andy Dudik

Daniel ( Christian John Thomas) and Walt (Tim Tavcar)

Can two weeks at a mountain cabin and an understanding adult “turn” a gay teen straight? That’s not the only question the ambitious A Great Wilderness poses at this latest Beck Center’s production. Author Samuel D. Hunter has provided director Scott Spence and the six-member cast a play that toys with the “what ifs” of life, but provides no pat answers.

All action takes place in the cozy cabin great room created by scenic designer Aaron Benson (with a hand from carpenters Gabriel Jimenez and Ryan Gajdos). There’s a wooden table and chair set, a comfy sofa covered in warm plaids, several round braided rugs, a kitchen, and a window with a terrific view of evergreens outside. There are even timbered ceiling beams.

It’s a retreat center created to convert Christian gay teens to the hetero-normative model for sexual expression espoused by their (or their parents’) religious beliefs. Mom and Dad pay to send the boys away for two weeks. They believe being gay can be cured by therapy. Walt’s “cure with kindness” retreat was set up some thirty years ago by Walt, Abby, and Tim. When the play opens, Walt (Tim Tavcar, the model of a friendly, avuncular fellow) is the only one left still working there. He’s busy packing up in anticipation of his retirement.

When a young boy appears at the door, we learn that Walt has accepted one last client: Daniel (Christian John Thomas, a talented fifteen-year-old actor who very persuasively reveals his character’s awkwardness and discomfort). Daniel’s there under protest, as he soon makes clear, but he’s a polite young man and Walt is able to convince him his stay won’t be a harsh “brainwashing.” Relieved, Daniel goes outside to take a short hike. Hours later, he still has not returned and it’s assumed that he’s lost in the Idaho wilderness.

Although the pace is slow and the action predictable in the first act (setting up how nice both Walt and Daniel are), the second act immediately time-jumps and leads us to doubt our previous assumptions. It’s a clever technique and brings in an element of mystery and, perhaps, crime. Abby (Lenne Snively as the bossy ex-wife of Walt) and her current husband, Tim (a helpful Brian Byers), Eunice (Heidi Harris plays Christopher’s semi-hysterical mother), and Janet (Kelly Strand, the business-like Park Ranger) join Walt in the cabin while everyone worries about what happened to Daniel.

Alternate pairs of conversations gradually reveal an array of personal traumas and insecurities. Questions include: Why didn’t Walt retire before now (he seems semi-incompetent, mostly because he keeps forgetting things). Why is it called a “Christian” camp? Why do the characters feel passionately that gay teens should conform to the traditional social models espoused by some churches? Did Walt’s love of young boys make Abby feel neglected in their marriage? Has Walt compensated for and subsumed his own homosexual desires so that he can stay Christian and still remain engaged with young gays as a friend? (Maybe.)

Bottom Line:  A Great Wilderness holds a mirror up to difficulties encountered when society tries to contain and regulate sexual attraction. In this play, the real wilderness seems lodged in the heart, mind, and motivation of Walt. Like the speaker in the famous poem that follows, he’s a man who has enjoyed his own version of Paradise:

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,

A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou

Beside me singing in the Wilderness—

Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow.

[Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám, Edward FitzGerald translation from the Persian]

The Great Wilderness continues through April 9, 2017 at the Beck Center in Lakewood.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time @ Playhouse Square, March 3--April 9, 2017

Review by Laura Kennelly

Gross: As we enter the Connor Palace theatre and look to the stage what greets our eyes? A dead dog impaled on a pitchfork. And that dog and its discovery triggers all subsequent action in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, turned into a play by Simon Stephens, is based on an excellent and engrossing novel of the same name by Mark Haddon. (I recommend the novel without reservation. It’s a fine hypothetical exploration of what it might be like to see the world through the eyes of a boy with autism.)

Director Marianne Elliott’s recreation of the world of Christopher Boone, our 15-year-old hero with an autism-related disorder, relies effectively on powerful scenic design and quietly expressive costumes (both created by Bunny Christie), stage-framing and defining lighting (by Paule Constable), and dramatic sound effects (by Ian Dickinson). [There’s a strobe light warning.] While not a typical Playhouse Square Broadway Series musical, in fact, not a musical at all, “Curious” delights in sound, light, and special effects (including a model train set, track lighting all over the sides, top, and bottom of the stage, live animals, post-curtain surprises, and near-sonic booms). There’s no attempt made to construct a realistic set, but rather to create one that reflects the world Christopher sees. It’s confusingly full of unexpected doors and storage cubicles. (The minimal furnishings are carried onstage by the actors as needed.)

Adam Langdon’s Christopher seems to represent a perfect innocent, but he’s also a strangely aggressive one who feels empowered when he believes his truth is “true” truth. He states matter of factly that he never lies (unlike everyone else he knows, as we come to see) and his tender heart is touched when he discovers the body of his neighbor’s dog. When the play opens, we see him kneeling beside its body; he’s sad, yet growing in determination to find out who could have done such a thing. Langdon adeptly portrays the lad’s righteous passion while also showing that the teen’s  growing physical powers, coupled with his ignorance concerning unspoken social contracts (be polite, don’t hit people) can make him hard to live with.

He lives with his father, Ed (Gene Gillette). Gillette’s tough-guy-with-a-heart portrayal of a single father who has tried to shelter his son from some unpleasant truths makes him an appealing character. Christopher’s teacher/therapist Siobhan (a nurturing Maria Elena Ramirez) offers the lad understanding and helps him deal with everyday realities. Of course Siobhan makes Christopher’s family look inept in comparison, but then, she has the freedom to refuse to live with him (as she does when he asks to come home with her). Unlike those responsible for his care, she gets a break at the end of the day.

As Christopher’s investigation continues he runs into other delightful characters, especially Charlotte Maier’s ultimately hilarious Mrs. Gascoyne, a woman who always says what you think she will.

The talented and versatile ensemble cast rotates around Christopher’s adventures. They switch persuasively, if dizzyingly, through roles as the quirky people our hero runs into as the story continues. The ensemble’s choreographed movements serve, at times, to help Christopher violate ordinary rules of gravity as well as create key elements in his eventual trip to London.

Ensemble members include the previously mentioned Maier, Ramirez, and Gillette, as well as Brian Robert Burns, John Hemphill, Geoffrey Wade, Francesca Choy-Kee, Amelia White, Felicity Jones Latta, Robyn Kerr, and J. Paul Nicholas. Dance and Fight Captain, Tim Wright should also be singled out for directing some necessary roughness.

Although I was lucky enough to see the play several years ago in London (where it was first produced), the changes made in the New York production have, while not changing the central impression, smoothed out and clarified elements important to the story lines. Still, while the relentless struggle of being a person with autism and living with a person with autism is sketched out dramatically, things seem a little too cute at times. It’s asking too much to really even begin to share the experience, which is likely why I highly recommend Haddon’s more immersive novel.

Bottom Line: A well-acted, splendidly assembled production that conveys a little of what it must be like to lack the ability to sort out and shut out all that daily living that dances before our eyes and ears.

Gene Gillette as Ed and Adam Langdon as Christopher Boone in the touring production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Photo: Joan Marcus

For tickets or more information about this Playhouse Square production to to playhousesquare.org or call 216-241-6000.

How I Learned to Drive @ The Cleveland Play House, March 4-26

Photo:

From left to right: Michael Brusasco (Peck), Madeleine Lambert (Li'l Bit), Karis Danish (Female Greek Chorus), Nick LaMedica (Male Greek Chorus), and Remy Zaken (Teenage Greek Chorus). Photo Credit: Roger Mastroianni.

It’s a great ride through risky territory. Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive looks honestly at family, sexual desire, puberty, pedophilia, and yet--magically--avoids being a mere lecture about the evils thereof. This Pulitzer Prize-winning play at the Allen Theatre, directed by Laura Kepley, runs through March 26 at the Cleveland Play House at Playhouse Square.

Under director Kepley’s sensitive guidance the five-person cast persuasively portrays people who (in their own minds) are all “doing the right thing.” The origins and consequences of their actions shown in back and forward time-jump sequence tell a nuanced and exquisitely-plotted story about what is often dismissed out-of-hand as merely a “dysfunctional” family.

As Vogel points out, it’s not quite that simple. The rural family is indeed dysfunctional, but it’s messed up in its own unique way. The story (set in the 1960s) begins with main character Li’l Bit (a very engaging Madeleine Lambert) sitting on a long winding road that, thanks to the clever set design by Collette Pollard, stretches upward to infinity (also known as the top of the stage). She begins to fill us in about how she learned to drive, thanks to instructions by her Uncle Peck (a handsome, conflicted Michael Brusasco). It becomes clear that she learned about a lot more than driving as she spends time with the only one in her family who doesn’t make fun of her body (though he appreciates her beauty and her Herbal Essence shampoo) or try to keep her trapped in her small town.

Li’l Bit’s name, like the others, holds an important meaning for the story. Her family, yearning for a girl baby, checked out her diapered self to happily discover she had only “little bits.” Her Uncle Peck’s name, of course, implies “pecker,” but that’s not explained. (We get to figure that one out for ourselves.) Other family members and friends are brilliantly (and often hilariously) sketched out by members of the Greek Chorus (Karis Danish, Nick LaMedica, and Remy Zaken).

Vogel’s play is neither a simple well-meant diatribe against sexual abuse nor a damning of adults who abuse children. It is, of course, against harming children and sexual abuse, but it also recognizes that in Li’l Bit’s case at least she’s not immune to sensing the power she has over her besotted uncle even though she’s not always sure what to do with it. Peck, a basically kindly man, is also a damaged person--his wife mentions wartime trauma when he was in the service--a factor which does not excuse his actions or compulsions, but makes him human. The interplay between the two leaves neither one unaffected, but the victory is clearly Li’l Bit’s.

Played without intermission, How I Learned to Drive gives plenty of grist for after-play conversation.

Bottom Line: Maybe someday being able to drive will be less important than it was in the 1960s, but for Vogel’s fascinating and highly recommended drama they provide a perfect metaphor for escaping boundaries.