"WENDALL GREENE" at Steppenwolf Studio Theatre
BY LUCIA MAURO
Audiences attending the world premiere of Jeffrey Mangrum’s Arkansas backwater-set "Wendall Greene" at the Steppenwolf Studio Theatre are instantly faced with cliched polarities. Brian S. Bembridge’s set – while a work of meticulously distressed (perhaps too meticulously distressed) – junk-art-lined shacks and a general store – creates a well-marked battlefield.
Most scenes take place on far opposite ends of the severely rectangular stage bordered by viewers seated directly across from each other. Not only must we physically crane our necks ping-pong-like with every self-conscious scene change, we also get pulled out of the play each time we are forced to stare straight ahead at our fellow patrons.
The decidedly non-fluid arrangement of the stage only exaggerates Mangrum’s contrived contrasts. Later, a more abstract set piece suggestive of pipes and trees lowered from pulleys center stage – as if from a gantry – is certainly more inventive. Yet it also points to the play’s central problem: a bizarre and unwarranted merging of hyper-realism with a loosely abstract infusion of supernatural elements.
"Wendall Greene’s" problems, therefore, extend well beyond an awkward stage configuration. Mangrum has managed to write a clumsy, offensive play – riddled with the ugliest stereotypes of the redneck South – that offers no compelling characters or an understandable, let alone fulfilling, dramatic payoff.
Badly in need of editing (it runs almost two-and-a-half hours), "Wendall Greene" is nowhere near ready for a full-fledged production. Why Steppenwolf took on this troublesome script – and why director Rondi Reed and her top-notch cast of actors found it of value -- is as baffling as this pseudo-drama’s nonsensical ending in which the title character gets zapped by a comet or evaporates in thin air…or God knows what happens to him. He basically "disappears" just as he’s about to get lynched – a notion "prophetically" bandied about by the local village idiot (a character named Seamus who carries a tackle box and spouts religious platitudes).
Apparently set in the present, "Wendall Greene" appears to take place during the Great Depression. The title figure is a strong, silent black man, who speaks in wise old truisms (like "stop in the wind and wash it clean") – making him a racial stereotype as damaging as Stepin Fetchit or, more recently, Bagger Vance. He plants trees on a piece of land that the unscrupulous general store owner (Pritchet) aims to take back from him via violent means. The immovable Wendall Greene – as distressingly one-dimensional as all the screaming rednecks harassing him – becomes something of a sacrificial lamb. The problem is that we are never given any reason for his sacrifice.
At the core of the play, however, is Jimmy – an incredulously astute and clean-cut adolescent boy trying to make sense of the animosity surrounding him. He befriends Greene even though his poverty-stricken mother, Cindy, tries to prevent this mentor-student relationship (whose motivation the playwright never clearly establishes).
Cindy, an ignorant and abused woman forced to sell her body to Pritchet as credit on her groceries, represents some of the play’s most degrading cliches. She is being held hostage, in a sense, by a vague mob-like figure, Cooch, whose luck in Las Vegas recently ran dry. Cindy allegedly sent him a chain letter Cooch believes made his good fortune literally head South. He travels – in alligator shoes and gold chains – to the "Macon County Line"-style hillbilly town of Poinsett County to reclaim his luck. What we don’t ever know is how Cindy came to send Cooch that life-altering chain letter in the first place.
In addition to the aforementioned cardboard cut outs of the rural South, are two crotch-grabbing losers: the more psychologically manipulative Terry and the bushy-haired Meredith in oil-soaked jeans and a T-shirt. Pritchet hires them to "change Wendall Greene’s mind" about selling his land. Meredith even gets to wave around a pair of menacing pliers and ask, "Ever skin a grizz?"
I’m surprised there’s no simple minded-kid playing a banjo. Then again, we do have Seamus, the Bible-thumping Forrest Gump.
Reed’s staging is inarguably packed with muscular performances, and the actors – no doubt drawn to their gritty and eccentric characters rather than the ridiculous paint-by-numbers script – throw themselves fearlessly into their roles. But their commitment runs counter to Mangrum’s shallow writing.
Mariann Mayberry’s Cindy is a ferociously desperate woman – as fragile and dangerous as the chinchillas she raises. Joe Forbrich’s vile Cooch is actually sympathetic at times. Tim Edward Rhoze masters a still and focused demeanor as Greene, yet is stuck in a racially disturbing quagmire. Will Malnati is a confident and polished Jimmy – but within that precision, he loses sight of his character’s vulnerability and is not believable as a deeply troubled youth. Terry Berner’s Seamus simply cannot transcend his character’s glaring unoriginality.
Robert Breuler, while appropriately duplicitous as Pritchet, chews the scenery with the lugubrious force of a cow munching on cud. Too bad such outstanding actors like Darrell W. Cox and Wesley Walker are reduced to denim and buckskin cartoons.
With all the talk of "disappearing" in this collection of thugs and one saintly figure, maybe Mangrum should take a cue from his own work and make this play go away – or at least embark on some heavy-duty revisions that would bring us at least 60 years closer to 2002.•
"Wendall Greene" runs through August 25 at Steppenwolf Studio Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted. Tickets: $18-$27. Call 312-335-1650 or log onto www.steppenwolf.org.
