Through March 1, 2009
Reviewed by Andrea Braun
What do a grieving pig farmer, his wife, a 19-year-old who had to leave college based on failing a philosophy exam, a paralyzed girl, and a guilt-ridden mine inspector have in common? It would appear nothing, and that is accurate. But when you see Canadian novelist/playwright Sean Dixon's Aerwacol in its U.S. premiere, you find this disparate group struggle hard to invent something profound. In the beginning, they are stuck in the middle of the Manitoba prairie (represented by the vast Upstream Theatre playing space) together doing some fairly outrageous, but no doubt highly symbolic stuff, as they go about creating connections.
A good cast does its best in this muddle: John (Christopher Harris) is a simple guy who, when the play opens, is mourning his dead child and tending his ill wife who suddenly snaps out of it, runs away and into the arms of the above-mentioned student she picks up when he steps off a bus to stretch his legs. Her name is Kimpy (Donna M. Parrone) and his is Dillard (Nicholas Tamarkin) and she uses him to have sex with a man other than her husband, apparently to assuage the grief she doesn't yet feel for her dead child.
Kimpy has insisted, over John's protests, on leaving the farm and traveling "west" on a jigger (a railroad hand car). It goes back and forth before the audience as the couple and their eventual passengers are on a journey to nowhere. Along the way, John and Kimpy also find Aubade Ebert (Emily Piro) a Quebecoise who has become paralyzed due to food poisoning, but she is a happy, happy girl anyway. She's got spunk! The final member of the group is Mr. Harper (Peter Mayer) a former mine inspector who is digging a mine in the company of 34 miners who died in an accident he didn't foresee. It shall be a mine from which no one will ever profit. A sort of hole for a soul's sake.
People don't all come together in the order I've indicated, but they all end up at the mine helping Harper. John is obsessed with pieces of paper that swirl around in the air and land on the prairie. He's lost God, so he looks for the answers that are blowing in the wind. He is particularly taken by one that relates the story of "Mayor Callyhoo" and spends the rest of the play trying to write a song about it. Harper disdains his efforts saying a song should have "a beginning, a middle, and an end." I think that's a self-referential joke on the structure of the play. Maybe.
I looked up the production history and the theatre company for which the piece was written called SKAM. One of its specialties is site-specific work. When Aerwacol was first produced, it was done outside on a real railroad track, surrounded by prairie and starlight. In that context, it might have made more sense. I get that it is magical realism, a technique we might expect more from our neighbors to the south rather than the north. Here, though, the fantastic is grounded in naturalism, making for a strange brew. I hesitate to say the work derivative, but there are recognizable bits from other writers' work, among them Carousel, Purlie, A Handful of Dust, Samuel Beckett, the prairie novels of Margaret Laurence, and the oddities of Robertson Davies without the biting wit or intellectual rigor. Even the philosophy exam is a riff on an urban folktale.
In all of this is a search for God ("You won't find God in Canada, Kimpy," John says, and "You won't find God on the railroad tracks.") Aubade sees an angel on John's shoulder at one point though, and she says she might "fly away" though she (most of the time) cannot move. She seems to represent a burden for Kimpy, as she literally bears Aubade on her back as a substitute child and for Dillard because he loves her (or maybe he doesn't). Her name aptly refers to a kind of poem dealing with lovers separating at dawn (or, more generally, a "morning song," also appropriate). Here also is a sort of parallel to the play's title, an Anglo-Saxon word for "early awake."
The set is dominated by the jigger which is pumped along a gray carpet runner. Upstage right is a box that represents the farmhouse, to the center back left is the structure surrounding the adit and the hole being dug for the mine, and a ramp to the far left has many uses. It's a clever job by Mark Mendelson, scenic and lighting designer. Michele Siler's costumes are character appropriate. Lights are evocative, but there seem to be a few pale spots to audience right. Perhaps that is intentional on Mendelson's part.
Philip Boehm has taken on a real directorial challenge here. There are elements of the Anglo-Saxon quest myths and the Bardic tradition. Harper is a Don Quixote of sorts and wind is given primacy as a controlling metaphor, as are birds and the idea of flight. And on top of all that, it is a kind of comedy, some of which is actually funny. There are other positive elements: The language is lovely and lyrical, the relationships among the characters seem genuine, and once in a while, there are even moments of transcendence, especially between John and Kimpy. Aerwacol is a clever exercise in upending some dramatic conventions, but overall, the play does not work for me.
Aerwacol runs though Mar. 1. For tickets, call 314-863-4999 or visit http://www.upstreamtheater.org/
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