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| Photo By Sandy Underwood |
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Ana (Kate Wilford) and Dylan (Bruce Cromer) warm their feet in Wayfarer#180;s Rest at ETC.
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Ana (Kate Wilford), the crotchety woman who's one of three characters in Joseph McDonough's new play,
Wayfarer's Rest, recently opened at Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati (ETC), arrests your attention from the moment the lights come up on her. She and Dylan (Bruce Cromer) inhabit a ramshackle cottage, perhaps a descendant of places where the Brothers Grimm fairytales once happened.
She's barefoot and demanding attention from her son, who arrives with a steaming pot of water to soak her feet. But there's something odd about them. She describes visiting a nearby village (topical references make it quickly evident that it's the early 1940s in England) where she has insights into the local residents.
"What's it like for you when they look straight back?" Dylan asks her. "When they can see you're looking?"
She's more focused on her footbath and her newspaper, never acknowledging his questions. But as the play moves on, we are regularly alerted that these two have mysterious secrets. "Living forever and living well," Ana observes, "are two different things."
Their amusing back-and-forth -- perhaps one of those eternal sparring matches so typical of fairytales and myths -- is disrupted by the arrival of Elizabeth (Annie Fitzpatrick), an American whose British husband has installed her in a nearby manor house while spiriting their children off to a boarding school. She's lonely and wandering when she discovers Ana and Dylan's magical cottage; she's fascinated with their timeless ways and doesn't allow Ana's rudeness to prevent her from returning for subsequent visits. As they become more acquainted, however, she extracts information from Dylan about the future, an augury that sends her into a tailspin.
As with McDonough's work elsewhere (including his Stone My Heart, currently on view at the Cincinnati Playhouse), extended speeches and monologues prove to be the best-written components of his plays. Wayfarer's Rest, ultimately a meditation on entropy and the disappearance of magic from the world, is an intriguing allegory about facing overwhelming tragedy, but it suffers from static characters who are presented as givens.
Ana and Dylan seem to be slowly becoming more human (her aching feet, his scratches), but they resist change -- and in fact flee from it. She is an old crone; he is an innocent. Elizabeth is oblivious of and protected from harsher reality until it comes crashing down upon her, almost literally. In the blink of an eye, she moves from chipper spunk to overwhelming, incapacitating grief.
Director D. Lynn Meyers does admirable work to keep this material engaging, thanks to the excellent cast she has assembled. Cromer fully conveys Dylan's innocence and yearning to know more about the world, although it seems a quest he's been on for eons; Wilford captures Ana's curmudgeonly exterior and fearful heart. (The fact that she's supposed to be Dylan's mother while they appear to be close in age is never explained or resolved.)
Fitzpatrick is a masterful actress who convincingly conveys each of Elizabeth's emotions. I wish McDonough had provided her with more back-story so we could fully appreciate and travel with her on her journey: That might have given the play's concluding moment a more satisfying (and logical) feeling.
Nonetheless, there's much to appreciate about this production, not the least of which is Brian c. Mehring's breathtaking scenic design, one of the most fully realized I've seen on ETC's stage (where Mehring's work is routinely admirable). This time he's created a total environment: stripped limbs overhang the impressionistic cottage, from which a spindly stovepipe extends with smoke gently seeping upwards. The roughhewn floor has space between the boards that allows light to seep through -- sometimes it's blue, a sign that magic is afoot, while at other moments it's red, signaling encroaching danger. Each detail is perfectly realized, providing a setting that completely captures the mood McDonough's play requires.
Would that the characters of Wayfarer's Rest could leaven their one-note personas with more of this convincing, delightful texture and detail. Grade: B
WAYFARER'S REST, presented by Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, continues through May 7.
