Playwright: Anthony Clarvoe
At: Thunder And Lightning Ensemble
at Edgewater Presbyterian Church,
1020 W. Bryn Mawr
Phone: 773-332-9939; $15
Runs through: June 24
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
The notion of the earth being not flat but round is introduced early in our story, along with the homily warning those smitten with wanderlust that if they keep traveling in the same direction, they will wind up where they started. This principle is illustrated, both scientifically and socially, by the destinies of three generations in Anthony Clarvoe's 1997 drama.
We begin in a remote Croatian village whose cultural awareness in 1910 has not changed significantly over two centuries. Against the wishes of his parents, young Stipan learns to read from the local priest, his new-found literacy awakening in him a desire to seek his fortune in America. By 1940, now living in Wyoming with a wife and child, he has become a leader for the United Mine Workers. His daughter, Alma, is eager to marry her high- school sweetheart, but her father insists that she attend college in California. We finish in Japan during the 1980s, where divorced mom Alma negotiates international trade for American capitalists, a job that will soon send her to—who'd have guessed?—Zagreb, leaving her son to pursue his vocation in a Buddhist monastery.
One cannot underestimate the expertise necessary for Clarvoe to retain a grasp on his sprawling narrative with its recurring motifs: a love of books ( wayfaring lore especially—Huckleberry Finn, the myth of Jason and the good ship Argo, et al. ) . Technology—from wireless radios to palm pilots—as a means of expanding personal horizons. The many uses of a zippo cigarette-lighter. Nor can one discount the discipline required of its players if WE are to be kept likewise geographically and chronologically oriented.
Under the direction of D. B. Schroeder, invaluably assisted by Matthew Schroeder's dramaturgy and Clare Hane's dialect instruction ( even to distinguishing between first- and second-generation foreign accents ) , the actors of the Thunder and Lightning Ensemble conjure vivid, immediately identifiable characterizations, declaiming with passionate intensity while never wavering in focus. Their combined efforts make for uniformly excellent performances—superlative, in the case of Amy Gorelow's forthright matrons and Ian Forrester's restless adolescents—commanding emotional investment to hold us spellbound right up to a resolution so logically satisfying that we never see it coming.