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Lanford Wilson
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Cincinnatians will soon get a lot more familiar with the theatrical contributions of Lanford Wilson. Considered by many to be one of America's greatest contemporary playwrights, Wilson's characters will gain new voices this year in productions by no less than four local theatres -- ranging from student and community performances to professional productions.
The Village Players kicked off this coincidental Wilson celebration with their production of Talley & Son, which opened last week and continues through Saturday. Picking up the saga of the Talley family more than 30 years later, Fifth of July gets its turn as a workshop production at CCM later this month.
Theatergoers must wait almost a full year, but they'll then have the opportunity to complete the Talley trilogy when the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park commemorates the 20th anniversary of Talley's Folly, reuniting Wilson with longtime collaborator Marshall Mason, who directed the show's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1980 Broadway version. Also next May, Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati will present Wilson's most recent work, the regional premiere of A Sense of Place. Wilson will visit Cincinnati in conjunction with these latter productions.
So what's the explanation for the sudden Wilson celebration? For local audiences, it may be that, perhaps more than any other writer of his generation, Wilson has used his plays to examine the common Midwestern values he learned in a youth in small town Lebanon, Mo., which later served as the setting for some of his most enduring works.
Wilson rose to attention as part of the 1960s off-off Broadway theatre movement. In smaller venues, like Caff Cino and La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, Wilson carved out what, according to theatrical scholar Christopher Bigsby, would become his distinctive style.
"Without appearing to do so, [Wilson] offers a critique of a culture in crisis," says Bigsby. "His plays celebrate those who are victims equally of their own sensibilities and of a society which sees them as irrelevant to its own myths of progress, to normative values that have little to do with human necessities."
Wilson's characters -- in plays such as Balm in Gilead, Hot l Baltimore and Burn This -- are wounded. Nearly all are experiencing a turning point, coming to terms with a hidden truth or secret insecurity. They're struggling with the past, with the present they've allowed to decay and with a need for family connection.
Far from the bleak view such an examination might suggest, Wilson's appeal may best be attributed to the fact his plays maintain a feeling of hopefulness despite the chaos. He also uses theatricality to full effect, with characters who connect to the audience through natural dialogue and, sometimes, an ability to break the fourth wall to talk directly with us.
These themes play out in Wilson's Talley trilogy. In these plays, we meet the Talley family at very different, but equally significant, Indepen-dence Days. In Talley & Son, it's July 4, 1944. Two Talley sons are off to war, and the remaining household members find themselves facing their own crises of illness, business and family scandals. (Talley's Folly follows a different perspective of this same evening, this time through the romance of kindred souls, Sally Talley and Matt Freid-mann.) Fifth of July tracks the state of the family just after the end of a very different (and not so "great") war. This time, the Talley descendants examine the legacy of the 1960s and struggle with the consequences, not only of Vietnam, but also of the world they tried to create but didn't quite succeed.
Wilson's place in history would be assured merely by his numerous awards or his role as a founding member of New York's Circle Repertory Company, from which emerged great actors including Judd Hirsch and William Hurt. But his legacy is in the ability to find the universal needs in even the most outcast members of society.
Director Marshall Mason's insight is perhaps the best summary. "The pulse of dramatic life flows through these plays, pounding with the rhythm of the American experience," says Mason.
"Lanford Wilson's writing leaves an indelible fingerprint of humanity for the reader to detect with gasps of delight," Mason adds. "This is how life was in our century, and future generations will savor the song."
TALLEY & SON, produced by The Village Players, continues through Saturday. FIFTH OF JULY will be staged at CCM's Studio Theater May 18-20.
