Theatre Reviews—

Entertaining Wilson Work Stands Tall In Brookfield

By Julie Stern

BROOKFIELD — The Fifth of July is the culminating work in Lanford Wilson’s trilogy about the Talley family of Lebanon, Mo. It is also a fine play that can stand alone in its own right. Country Players of Brookfield is presenting the solo Wilson work at its Brookfield Center theater until May 12.

The Independence Day gathering at the Talley Place in 1977 is shadowed by the Vietnam War and haunted by ghosts of the past. Fifteen years earlier Kenneth Talley, his sister June, his best pal John Landis and a hippie heiress named Gwen shared life, love, drugs and idealistic causes in a Berkeley, California pad.

To escape the draft, John ran off to Europe with Gwen, leaving the others in the lurch; June was pregnant with a child whose father she never named, and whom she gave to her aunt, Sally Friedman to raise; and Talley went off to war, where he lost both legs to a landmine.

When the play opens, Ken Talley has come home from years of physical and mental rehab in a series of hospitals, to live with his lover Jed, a caring, cheerful botanist who wants to turn the old Talley place into a recreated English Garden. Aunt Sally has called the group together to attend the scattering of her husband’s ashes, before joining Talley’s parents in an Arizona retirement community.

June is there to supervise the transition and take charge of her teenage daughter Shirley, who is a difficult kid to say the least, and John and Gwen Landis breeze in, on the way to Nashville where Gwen is now contemplating a career as a country singer. Since Sally is moving west and Talley is too depressed by his crippled condition to deal with life, he is open to an offer from John to buy the place and use it as a studio for Gwen. Talley decides they can use the money to take Jed someplace like Spain or Greece where they can live on the beach in the sunshine.

Obviously this is a character play, tied together by the old homestead and the symbolic image of Jed’s garden, which is only three years old and will take at least twenty years to reach its fruition, requiring the kind of faith in the future that solid relationships need.

Wilson’s lines are good ones, by turns funny, sarcastic, and powerful, but the play stands or falls on the strength of the acting. In this case Brookfield benefits from the infusion of three new personalities into its cast.

Joe Koproski is terrific as the sexy, fast-talking, coked-up John Landis. Danette Riso is hyper and shrill as his wife, but she grows in the course of the play to be able to deliver hard-earned insight and wisdom in a way that is compelling and believable. And in a purely comic turn, Canadian native Vaughan MacDonald plays Weston Hurley, the gullible guitarist brought along as Gwen’s accompanist.

Additionally, Elie Finklestein is an actress of vast experience who handles the part of Sally deftly, milking it for both laughs and pathos by turns. Jonathan Murray is competent as the down-to-earth Jed, and Erica Villodas is whiny and affected as the whiny and affected Shirley.

The disappointments in the cast were with Mark Jividen’s portrayal of Talley, which was almost wooden. Maybe that is how depressed people really look and sound, but it took away from his best lines. Wisecracks and bitter rejoinders need more fire to resonate properly, and Wilson’s dialogue is too good to be delivered that way.

Still it is definitely a worthwhile play to see. Audiences can bear with the uneven performances and the rough language (which is common enough on schoolbuses) and get plenty out of it. They definitely won’t be bored.

(Curtain is Friday and Saturday at 8 pm through May 12, and all seats are $12. Contact the theatre by calling 775-0023.)