Playwright: Eric Schmiedl from Kent Haruf's novel. At: Signal Ensemble Theatre, 1802 W. Berenice Ave. Tickets: 1-773-698-7389; www.signalensemble.com; $20. Runs through: March 8
Playwright Eric Schmiedl has adapted two best-selling sequential novels by Kent Haruf, Plainsong and Eventide, for the Denver Center Theatre Company, both set in Holt, a fictional Colorado small town east of the Rockies. The stage versions were hailed by critics and audiences, and I saw the world premiere of Eventide in 2010 and was moved and impressed. I wanted to be moved and impressed seeing Plainsong for the first time, in its regional premiere at Signal Ensemble, but something is lacking in the production. Indeed, the script itself seemed lacking, especially compared to the power I'd felt in Eventide.
How to explain? Holt, CO is supposed to be a windswept one-doctor town where solitude and isolation are par for the course amidst the spread-out ranches and farms. The local folks, some from a nearby reservation, are stolid to the max, reticent by nature, not given to effusiveor even clearexpressions of feelings. If they run into emotional problems, there's little sympathy and less recourse in a community where everyone knows everyone's business.
As stage adapter, Schmiedl can't make up dialog not found in Haruf's novels. He must rely instead on third-person narration and one helluva' lot of subtext, those unspoken feelings and motives which people telegraph by body language, tone, intention and, sometimes, actions. Actors and directors have to find ways to communicate subtext to an audience to weave an emotional tapestry. If the subtext is not fully delved, the play may seem flat and inert or at least not deeply involving, and this is the problem with Signal Ensemble's Plainsong. I sense a young director, or at least a relatively inexperienced one, who may not have tackled such an introspective work before. Also, Signal's ensemble rehearsal process may lead them to feel they are conveying more to the audience than they are.
The key figures are 17-and-pregnant Victoria Roubideaux ( Elizabeth Stenholt ), reclusive middle-aged bachelor ranchers Harold and Raymond McPherson ( Vincent Lonergan, Jon Steinhagen ) who take her in, high school history teacher Tom Guthrie ( Joseph Stearns ) and his deeply depressed wife, Ella ( Erin Myers ), who is leaving him and their two young sons. Basically, a conventional nuclear family is melting down and an unconventional onenot based on bloodis forming. Much is seen through the eyes of Victoria and the instinctively compassionate Guthrie boys, all three tormented by the high school bully ( Randy Galvan ). Repeatedly, unspoken heroism is in conflict with ignorance and selfishness as the kids acquire tools for self-preservation.
It's a good, universal story and the Signal Ensemble production may deepen as it continues. Still, little things get in the way. The McPherson brothers, for example, sound like New England farmers rather than Colorado ranchers.