D.K. (Angela Atwood, left) and Jean (Kelsey Claire) wait nervously in the background, while Kirsten (Stella Marcus) comforts her mother Cynthia (Tamra Paselk) in the foreground, in Open Circle Play Factory’s revival of Lanford Wilson’s The Mound Builders.
Lanford Wilson’s 1975 play The Mound Builders centers on an archaeological excavation in Illinois of a pre-Columbian civilization, a conceit rich in metaphor and suggestion, and expressed in often-lyrical language. (The mounds in question refer to the earthworks constructed by the early inhabitants of the area.) The historical reach and resonance of the concept is combined with the claustrophobia of domestic dysfunction: the play was described in the New York Times review of the original Circle Repertory Company production as “an epic in the guise of a family drama.”
Mitch Lerner plays astronomer Ian “Andy” Anderson in Wilson’s Sympathetic Magic.
There’s also a healthy dose of irony at work: How can people so intent on reconstructing the long-buried past be so blind to the present and so unconcerned for the future beyond their immediate needs? Yet amid all these ideas, the relationships among the characters can seem opaque, which leaves plenty for a director and actors to tease out. The Open Circle Play Factory’s revival, part 1 of their Lanford Wilson Project under the direction of Mac McCarty, is a sturdy, stripped-down production that doesn’t fully illuminate the characters or the play’s existential questions but serves as a solid, literal introduction for someone who hasn’t seen the play before.
The Mound Builders is a series of flashbacks: an archaeologist, Professor August Howe (Jeffrey C. Wolf), dictates into a tape recorder while sorting through photographs from a past excavation. The action then pivots back to a house in Illinois, adjacent to the excavation; the changes in time are indicated by Joe D’Emilio’s lighting design. Prof. Howe’s housemates include his exasperated wife Cynthia (Tamra Paselk), their daughter Kirsten (Stella Marcus), his enthusiastic assistant Dr. Dan Loggins (Carson Alexander) and Dan’s pregnant wife Dr. Jean Loggins (a gynecologist, not an archaeologist), and, finally, Prof. Howe’s embittered recovering-addict novelist sister, D.K. Eriksen (Angela Atwood), who rarely leaves the couch and dispenses gnomic commentary.
Chad Jasker (Steve Carlsen) is a frequent visitor: he’s hoping to get rich off the land that contains the mounds, and he also happens to be in love with Jean and possibly with Dan, and is having an affair with Cynthia. While Chad is clearly intended to be the outsider, the decision to have Carlsen portray him as unhinged from the outset makes the other characters’ attraction to him confusing and lessens the impact of the eventual turn toward tragedy.
Dan (Carson Alexander, left) and August (Jeffrey C. Wolf) share a laugh in The Mound Builders.
Overall, the production is solid but antiseptic and can feel more like a reading than a full-fledged staging. The pacing is very brisk, which is a strength, though none of the characters emerge with the necessary complexity. Volume of voice is sometimes confused with intensity. If a production of this scale can’t pursue the epic scope of the work, it should then try to shed light on the psychological aspect, but this one remains content to skim the surface.
Part 2 features a less well-regarded Wilson play, Sympathetic Magic, from 1997. McCarty’s bare-bones version, which, like part 1, has the most minimal of sets (no one is credited with scenic design), does succeed in making the case that the play deserves more consideration. However, this production is too uneven to grab onto and develop the potential it showcases.
Sympathetic Magic is a play of ideas—the subject is the universe because “What else is there?”, as one of the characters sardonically remarks—that takes place during the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco. Ian “Andy” Anderson (Mitch Lerner) is a brash college professor and astronomer, whose significant other, Barbara (Taylor Lynn Carter), an ahead-of-her-time sculptor, is nonplussed to find herself pregnant. Barbara’s half-brother Don (Matthew Bechtold) is a gay Episcopal priest who is contemplating celibacy, much to the chagrin of his former partner, Pauly (Pethio Dav), who runs a church choir of gay men with AIDS. Don and Barbara’s cantankerous dying mother, Liz, is an anthropologist who spent many years in Zaire and is now studying gangs in Oakland.
Liz (Katherine King, foreground) and Andy hold up plates that represent galaxies, as Andy’s boss Carl (W. Philip Rafferty, background) looks on, in Sympathetic Magic. Photographs by Maria Baranova.
Andy and his lovelorn colleague, Mickey (Alexander Spears), make a mysterious discovery while monitoring the galaxy from a mountaintop observatory, but the work is co-opted by their domineering head of department, Carl (W. Philip Rafferty). Andy, who claims to be the quintessential man of science, has an outburst of barbaric violence after learning that Barbara has terminated her pregnancy.
That the characters can seem more mouthpieces for certain ideas than actual people isn’t helped by some of the performances, in which the—admittedly challenging—dialogue feels recited rather than incorporated into the character. One exception is Bechtold’s subtle and moving portrayal of Don, a priest who seems largely unconcerned with theology but wants to do something in the here and now. But the production rushes by in a torrent of words, with neither the big, galaxy-concerning ideas nor the small, intimate moments fully landing intellectually and emotionally.
Highlighting some of Wilson’s lesser-known works is a noble pursuit, as his cerebral, entertaining plays force you to walk away with a new perspective, even if that means reckoning with our almost incomprehensible insignificance in the face of history and the cosmos.
The Lanford Wilson Project productions of Sympathetic Magic and The Mound Builders run in repertory through Dec. 18 at Theatre Five at Theatre Row (410 W 42nd St.). For tickets, schedule, and information, visit opencircleplayfactory.com.
