The Rambunctious Joy Of Lenfest Center's 'Wilder Shorts!'

Upper West Side NY

13 September, 2021

1:00 PM

Description

Columbia Daily Spectator BY SOPHIE CRAIG SEPTEMBER 12, 2021 Two staircases, fixed on wheels and shaped like bookends, roll around the stage. They make up the souped-up Chevrolet of a grieving family, before briefly separating into the columns of a house. They then wind up as the steel frame of a Pullman train car. As Playwright Thornton Wilder peels back the walls and dissects the inner lives of its passengers, the two staircases become a ladder to heaven, outlasting the play itself. From Sept. 2 to 5, the Lenfest Center for the Arts presented "Wilder Shorts," a double feature of short plays written by Wilder and directed by Logan Reed, SoA '21. Attendance was limited to Columbia affiliates, and each guest was masked and vaccinated as per the Columbia Community Compact. The intimate black box theater amplified the sounds of laughter and audience members rustling in their seats—all the mundane noises of shared space sacrificed in the switch to virtual performances. For those sitting in a live audience for the first time since March 2020, these noises were anything but mundane: They were surprising, heart-warming reminders of the physical and emotional proximity of the theater. This defamiliarization of space and time stood at the forefront of "Wilder Shorts!"—an extraordinary program in which a car ride from Newark to Camden mirrors a lifetime, and a train carriage from New York to Chicago contains the entire universe. In the first play, "The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden," the Kirby family packs into their Chevrolet for a three-day visit to their eldest daughter, Beulah. The play opens with the youngest son, Arthur, stretched out on the marking tape-splattered floor. His sister, mother, and father bustle around him, dressed in the starched collars and carpet-bag prints of a sitcom family's Sunday best. Much of the comedy of this one-act relies on the audience's fascination with well-executed pantomimes like the father's meticulous hand-washing and delightfully studied mannerisms while operating the stick-shift of the Chevy. There are no props, and the set design—two towering staircases and a wooden bench—is minimal and multipurpose. The staircases spend the majority of the play locked side by side to form the interior of the vehicle. Throughout their journey, the family stares at the slightly awkward, hyper-visible audience—but they are actually watching the sky and the open road. Reed asks the audience to imagine an entire countryside, lifting viewers out of their seats and into the ensemble's imagination. "The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden" is a beautiful demonstration of live theater's power to build an entire world inside a room. While it was first performed in the 1930s, the short play has an uncanny resonance within the context of the pandemic. We meet the Kirby family halfway through that familiar, anxiety-filled ritual of leaving the house, and we leave them in the relief of recovery and reunion. Beulah's unexplained illness and her child's stillbirth texture the performance with volatile, raw emotion. Coursing beneath this apparently boring, or at least benign, road trip, is a flood of pain and grief. In one of the most heart-rending exchanges, Elmer takes Beulah's hands as she asks him: "Are you glad I'm still alive, Pa?" He doesn't know how to respond. So he smiles, pats her folded hands, and changes the topic. It is a tiny, wondrously quiet moment in the program, but it reveals the depth of the play's tragedy. After singing her daughter to sleep—her voice breaking mid-lullaby—Beulah's mother freezes center stage while backlit by a blinding white light. This flash, combined with a shrill train whistle, kicks "Pullman Car Hiawatha" into gear. Set in a train car bound for Chicago, "Pullman Car Hiawatha" showcases just about every tool in the theatrical arsenal, from operatic sock-puppetry to a German geist shouting from the rafters. Swinging back and forth between an existentialist breakdown and a children's variety show, the rambunctious joy of the production was infectious. The actors seemed to be trying on their old tricks like forgotten clothes, with each article springing back to life. In true metatheatrical fashion, the only character who bridges the two plays is the Stage Manager, portrayed by Naomi Honig—a quasi-divine player who choreographs the lives of her actors with both compassion and exasperation. Her tour of the train car takes on grander and grander proportions, for she has promised to consider the position of the train car from a geographical, meteorological, astronomical, and theological perspective. First, she examines the exterior conversations, then she intrudes into their interior monologues, granting each passenger their own miniature portrait. The resulting scene is magical. A crewmember wheels an ancient-looking spotlight centerstage, sharply redirecting the orange beam between the actors' faces. Their voices suddenly echo throughout the theater, immediately expanding the space into an indefinitely tall chamber. Face after face becomes the only light in the room. It is a spectacular moment in the series, admirable for its comedy, its surrealism, and its almost nostalgic theatricality. For a few seconds, each ensemble member performs alone—their mysterious, radiant lives briefly visible to us, as if through a keyhole. In a series of 30-second soap operas, the stoic, cramped passengers chronicle their insomnia, their idealized lovers, and their ill-fated Soviet liaisons. "Wilder Shorts!" is a celebration of the mechanics of the stage in all of their clumsy magic. With each burst of supposedly "backstage" chaos, Reed reminds the audience that drama is a form of play. At first, the actors appear self-conscious, as if nervous to be stared in the face after so long in the dark. But these moments of embarrassment are the most endearing—they blur and even erase the lines between the dream of the performance and our ordinary, waking lives. Upon leaving the theater, everything glows a little bit brighter, as if the crew and their old-fashioned spotlight followed us out the door. Deputy Editor Sophie Craig can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow Spectator on Twitter @ColumbiaSpec. Founded in 1877, the Columbia Daily Spectator is the independent undergraduate newspaper of Columbia University, serving thousands of readers in Morningside Heights, West Harlem, and beyond. Read more at columbiaspectator.com and donate here.