Posted on: Thursday, November 22, 2001

Stage Review
Final scene a standout in undistinguished 'Redwood'

By Joseph T. Rozmiarek
Advertiser Theater Critic

"Redwood Curtain" is not one of Lanford Wilson's better plays. Construction is awkward — rotating two-character scenes among a cast of three and leaping locations from forest glade to coffee house to the front seat of a car. Plot development is a puzzle because the central character is a habitual liar and a self-proclaimed seer and sorceress. Dialogue is cryptic.

We might be inclined to give the script the brush-off at intermission, but that would ignore Wilson's ability to untangle a plot line and eventually touch some real emotion.

The show is centered on Geri, played in this reader's theater production by Jayme Shirrell. She's a 17-year-old piano prodigy and adopted mixed-race orphan — a product of the war in Vietnam. With sketchy clues and information, she has spent the last four summers searching for her biological father in the Pacific Northwest. At last, she thinks she's found him.

Lyman Fellers (read by Dion Donahue) is a shell-shocked homeless veteran, living with his dogs deep in the forest and subsisting on game and occasional handouts. Confronted by the girl, he neither admits nor denies parenthood, but displays an unexplained interest in her.

The third character is Geri's aunt Geneva (Stefanie Anderson), the last of a rich and powerful logging family, now distraught at the prospect of an even richer conglomerate's plan to capture company stock and level the redwoods.

Adapted for readers and directed by Vanita Rae Smith, this production differs substantively from her earlier shows — which often had a small cast doubling and tripling in character parts. This three-character play is read by a cast of four.

Richard Pellett reads the narration, and — for the first time in the ACT Sunday series — comments on the dialogue. Most commentary is in the form of grunts and sighs, whistles and guffaws — as if director Smith decided to send clues to the audience that all the characters claim to be true is subject to doubt.

The central message is the search for self-knowledge. Geri is filled with the self-designated right of adopted children to identify their biological parents, heedless of the cost or consequences. She spurns her musical gift and threatens to give it up in favor of cooking school. Lyman leads a fringe existence as a casualty of war, claiming to eat right and keep clean and being OK because he knows who he is. Geneva hasn't entered the woods since news broke about the intended logging, chafes at her acclaimed title as "Shepherdess of the Trees" and cautions against marriage as "it leads to a lifetime of compromise."

Ultimately, "Redwood Curtain" definitely isn't one of Lanford Wilson's better plays, but his final scene carries enough of his storytelling skill to almost make it worth the wait.