Speak, forgive, forget. It’s one of the guiding principles of the Pennsylvania Amish community depicted in Chelsea Marcantel’s Pulitzer-nominated Everything Is Wonderful, staged in a stirring if stilted production at Keegan Theatre.
As with many such moral doctrines, the phrase rolls off the tongue easily, but it’s not always so easy to stick to those principles when being sorely tested. The family at the heart of the play is tested to painful extremes, and speak-forgive-forget, and even their deep-rooted faith, might not be enough to keep their bonds intact.
Tragedy has intruded on the peaceful, pious lives of farmer Jacob (Michael McGovern), wife Esther (Susan Marie Rhea), and their daughters Ruth (Sasha Rosenbaum) and Miri (Leah Packer), all grieving a devastating loss. Worse, their mourning is complicated by emotional fallout caused by a separate, also devastating event.
The family’s full story — also involving community neighbor Abram (Ben Clark), and an outsider, Eric (Max Johnson), living in the family’s barn — emerges in layers peeled back slowly, in a non-linear fashion.
Director Josh Sticklin also designed the expressive set, which, like the patchwork of plots and subplots, assembles a complete picture from detailed, though jagged fragments. The family kitchen, their barn, and farmland fill the stage, backed by a screen for projections of gorgeous sunrises and clouded vistas by lighting designer Hailey LaRoe. The tableau of lighting and scenery, dressed to a T — and despite the clunky farm-noises sound design — make vivid the isolated beauty of their surroundings.
The fragmented narrative doesn’t fit together with such satisfying sureness. Sticklin and his cast don’t give us enough to stay oriented in the constant shifts between past and present, employing hints too faint for us to discern how much each respective character knows or doesn’t know based on the chronology of when secrets are revealed. More confounding than intriguing, the play loses traction.
Credit where it’s due, Clark, as neighbor farm boy Abram, registers a clear through-line for his character in accordance with the time-hopping narrative. Dutiful Abram also reveals a streak of entitlement that Clark makes appropriately off-putting, while also really compelling, especially opposite Packer’s proud Miri.
Packer’s portrayal generally tends towards mannered highs and lows, but captures the gravity of what weighs on the character’s heart and conscience. Miri and Ruth have grown up with Abram, who now claims the former as his betrothed, and his insistence on marriage arises as another trial in the family’s sorrow-stricken lives.
Johnson’s too-jittery visitor Eric arrives as one more trouble on their doorstep, in the play’s most contrived development of many in the compounding conflicts on the family’s table.
The strain of it all builds towards several explosive exchanges, with Rhea’s stern-faced Esther and Clark’s forceful Abram dealing out particularly fervent tongue-lashings on separate occasions. By contrast, a warmly credible McGovern portrays family leader Jacob as the soul of serenity.
A devoted man of God, Jacob counsels Miri on the value of submission and surrender as a path to healing. As it happens, submission can ease the way forward in some situations, but not every time, as Miri learns with heartrending certainty through this bumpy exploration of forgiveness, community, and true generosity of spirit.
Everything Is Wonderful (★★☆☆☆)runs through Oct. 5, at The Keegan Theatre, 1742 Church St. NW. Tickets are $55, with discounts available for students, seniors 62+, and patrons under 25. Visit www.keegantheatre.com.
A cute, warm-hearted adaptation, Jocelyn Bioh's Merry Wives grabs Shakespeare by the breeches and bum-rushes him into the 21st century and the boisterous mix of Harlem's West African community. Although the Bard's play is certainly here (the program notes tell us Bioh has kept more than 90 percent of the language), there is such a strong sense of the African performance tradition that it feels quite a bit more like the lively telling of a traditional fable. There is a certain charm to this concept and execution, but it also brings a few challenges.
Right out of the box, one of the biggest is the accents. There is no question that this apparently American-born-and-bred cast does a stellar job with them, but there is also no question that it's often hard to catch some of the language Bioh has so painstakingly preserved. It may bring a pleasing authenticity, but it was up to director Taylor Reynolds to test-drive it for clarity. It isn't bad enough to get in the way of the conversational gist per se, but for those hoping to be transported on flights of aural precision, this blurring of the edges may cause some heartburn.
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