A famous saying about golf went through my mind while watching "Walden," a play set in the future that purports to be about an astronaut, twin sisters and a futuristic world scarred by Global Warming. It’s the phrase, once said by someone who clearly isn’t a golf fan, that a game of golf is a good walk wasted. Something similar could be said about "Walden," being presented at Second Stage’s Tony Kiser Theater. It is a good theater, or maybe a good set or cast, largely wasted.
While the set, light and sound effects are truly impressive, and the show has true star power and talent, once things start, it’s pretty much a downhill slog. Plays are best written about things that the playwright knows well, researches, and/or cares about. If Amy Berryman researched this science fiction world, it's superficial at best. The play seems to focus more on the two sisters' interest in the same man, with science fiction as ornament to make the play seem less maudlin and mundane. None of the science fiction setting seems true here or true to character. Whether you’re writing about drug addiction or World War II, a play has to be written from the inside and with heart. It must bring the story to life, so we see characters, relationships and events come “alive,” and not just be a play “about.” In "Walden," we get a space age soap opera with two sisters interested in one man who, naturally, exists nearly exclusively as an object of their affection, a fond tribute to the days when men easily wrote plays about women who rather than existing in themselves, existed only in relation to men. And then there's the sit-dram situation where one sister would go off to live in space forever, although she struggles with the idea of leaving earth and human beings (except for the millions dead due to Global Warming) behind.
The people in this play have no past, present or future and exist almost entirely unmoored from even a futuristic reality. They compliment each other (and do not "complement" teach other), calling each other “brilliant.” We see wonderful women, young but great scientists, who seem to know little about science. It’s not clear how, why or even whether Cassie (Zoe Winters), introduced to us as an astronaut who has accomplished great things, has accomplished these things that we are told only she can do. She is a superhero that all the world must envy, but her sister refuses to compliment. In case the audience forgets that she is an astronaut, she repeatedly reminds us with lines along the lines of, “I’m an astronaut.” It’s really not clear that the playwright has the slightest idea what an astronaut is or does or has researched the subject much. Thoreau's "Walden" itself is really just a set piece here, a book (the show is set in the future, but books still exist among the EAs, Earth Advocates), rather than a philosophy, as well as the name of a project by Stella (Emmy Rossum). There is little sense that Walden is anything but a symbol here, but then nothing in this play is real or even fiction or fantasy.
The two sisters (Zoe Winters and Emmy Rossum) talk about almost nobody other than their father and discuss very little experience, other than cliches, such as one swimming faster than the other. They both like Bryan, played by Motell Foster. We know this because characters in this play tell us things like “I’m in pain” and “I love you.” This play is so devoid of life, present and past, that it can be said to truly never get off the ground. Instead, we are marooned in a world where the earth is falling apart, although it’s not clear exactly how, and a stellar cast is stranded in a rocket that never quite launches. When Cassie the astronaut shows up wearing a gas mask, she is summarily told one isn’t needed. Being an astronaut, rather than being in tune with nature and science, she is completely ignorant of it. She sounds more like Elton John’s Rocketman, talking about missing earth, than someone who bonded with fellow astronauts and experienced the wonder of space flight. The dialogue is so stilted, with conversations that couldn't be cruder if they were cut out of cardboard, that there is little drama or reality. And one, really, is difficult to have without the other.
When we hear that one "brilliant" sister grew plants on the ground of the moon -and could do it on Mars – it is as if hydroponic and other technology don’t exist. Only she, through magic, grew and can grow plants there on “the ground.” By the way, it’s not the lunar surface. It’s “the ground.” How did she do it? Who knows? Who cares? It might as well have been the magic beans that Jack used to grow his beanstalk. But then this world is more fairly tale than science fiction. Cassie has a green thumb, but then this play has about as much science as the song "She Blinded me with Science" does. Sure, it’s there, a little, but who cares? And only our gifted astronaut, who we know is brilliant because her sister calls her "brilliant,” can grow food on other planets, as if nobody else could use her method. This play is supremely self-indulgent, sophomoric and, really, not science fiction or fiction.
From the moment we hear about a tsunami that has killed a million (that’s a nice, round, lazy number), we watch the characters’ total indifference to a million deaths. And we know we are dealing with a poorly thought out script with solipsistic characters who almost never refer to the million lives lost. But of course it’s a play. Nobody died. That’s just a metaphor for global warming’s massive risk. It would be interesting to see what the playwright does with a play that actually, really does deal with relationships exclusively, grounded in reality rather than as disconnected from others as a space walk, rather than dressing them up in a supposed science fiction story. It would be nice to see a story and script without the self-importance of outer space, the silly accoutrements of supposed astronauts and a lack of reality that could only be rivaled within the realm of Disneyland. Rather than using the crutch of a futuristic world, it would be interesting to see how a script about real people and relationships plays out, although all of that is woefully absent in this play.
All good theater makes us wonder. And I did find myself wondering as I watched "Walden." But I wondered why they presented this play. That is the wrong kind of wonder. And I wondered why a good cast did it, although my guess is someone saw this as a play about empowering women, when it's really about a soap opera in which two women fall for one man. The reality is the emotion in this play is not earned, but vacillates between bad soap opera (good soap operas exist) and operatic teeth gnashing. Truth be told, the only reason I know this is a good cast is I have seen some of these actors in good shows and I know what they can do with real characters and good scripts. The dialogue here is so dull, forced and designed, I can only say that it also made me think of what I was told is the Chinese method of making pottery. Throw away the first pot. Maybe the second pot looks better. This play has gratuitous physical contact that is not engendered by emotion, blatant statements and about as much subtlety as Mohammed Ali had in his trash talking. Almost nothing is believable, although a well-acted and moving scene toward the end when the two sisters talk (on phone or some other technology) showed what the play could be. Of course, the people weren't in the same room, but it was moving and well written. Unfortunately, it is adrift in the empty space of the rest of the story. I was much more interested in the sisters than space, but felt the relationship remained so superficial. Put them back in reality and on earth and see what develops and really write a play about sisters, not one suspended in the great outdoors of outer space.
The newscasts that punctuate the play don’t so much create a world as show us the absence of one, even a science fiction universe. The lights go out, but that leads to nothing. It's as if the idea was that the characters, in the dark, might become more involved, but instead they go off and on. The rain falls, but it hardly matters. Someone goes to the lake and comes back. Nothing happens. Dialogue doesn’t even happen. This is politically correct claptrap about a world where Global Warming kills us like warriors in a terrible war, designed to pull our heartstrings, touching on the tragedy of destroying the planet, while the plot itself seesaws between the silly and the saccharine. It’s a soap opera that seeks now and then to present itself as something serious. Real relationships and real emotion are the ingredients of real theater. This is not dramatic enough to be a drama and certainly not deliberately funny.
Emily Rossum was great in “Shameless,” where she created a real, engaging character in real situations with heartfelt relationships and well written dialogue. She’s a wonderful actress and someone who can be fascinating to watch and it's likely many people are going to this show to see her. And it's great that she is doing theater and she certainly can turn in a great performance as can Zoe Winters and Motell Foster. But to weave a new world, you need threads and those just aren't here. This threadbare script doesn't give the cast text as a tool, showing us emoting rather than emotion. Rossum is a talented actress and it should be exciting to watch her. This play is not a vehicle for actors, but as remote from real theater as a rocket is from earth.
I’m sure the actors, director and theater view this as a play about sisters and an important subject matter, a glimpse of a doomed future if we don't do something now, except the relationships here are so superficial as to be nowhere near skin deep. These characters are stranded in a script that is truly lost in space, about make-believe astronauts in a world where a million people die, vanishing in an instant, and we all move on. Any credibility was shot in the first ten seconds of this show. Group think is dangerous, but must have been at work here. The real "Walden" is about Henry David Thoreau retreating to the woods to think. It is a thoughtful, self-reflective book, but here is it a pretentious trope. Thoreau incidentally went back to his mother’s, to get her to do his laundry. After seeing "Walden," the name of Stella's great experiment that NASA eventually loves, finally recognizing the undeniable brilliance of a genius who is more interested in a relationship than science. They recognize her worth, only after denying it, because of the undeniable brilliance of her project. After an hour and a half, wisely excluding an intermission, I left wanting to spend some time in the woods. This is a script that, I think, if it were written on paper, would be a good tree wasted. After seeing this show, I wanted to do something gratifying, like do my laundry.
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