Wilson's folly Wilson's folly (January 24, 2003)

'Book of Days' weakened by one-dimensional characters

by Leonard Schwarz

I n 1998, the Purple Rose Theatre in Chelsea, Mich. commissioned Lanford Wilson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Talley's Folly," to write a new play about the Midwest -- a play to be given its world premiere at the theatre. I do not know what the Purple Rose Theatre was expecting, but "Book of Days" -- the play the Missouri-born Wilson delivered -- is nothing less than an ad hominem attack on middle-American small towns in general, and on fundamentalist Christians in particular.

Using the form of "Our Town" to lend legitimacy to his polemic and the theme of Shaw's "St. Joan" to provide some gravitas, Wilson creates a small town in which decent people quite literally find it impossible to live.

The fictional town is Dublin, Mo., where all most people care about is money and/or the veneer of respectability conferred by attending and nominally following the strictures of the local fundamentalist Christian church. In this world, moral and dramatic ambiguities do not exist. The person at the local cheese factory who cares about profits is bad; the person who cares about the taste of the cheese is good. The lawyer who aspires to hold political office and attends church regularly is evil. And the promiscuous, dope-smoking middle-aged woman who keeps secret her behavior and her beliefs in order to keep her job at the Christian junior college (where she sleeps with her students) is the model of virtue.

Not that "Book of Days" is all bad. Wilson artfully interweaves three imaginative story lines: one about the cheese factory, one about a mysterious death and one about the community theatre putting on "St. Joan." For the play's funny first half hour, the playwright's talent for story-telling and wry comic dialogue masks the shallowness of the work. But there is no disguising the ugliness of Wilson's attack on fundamentalist Christians.

While there is no shortage of topics on which one might disagree with the Christian right -- their views on creation, abortion, homosexuality and the role of women come quickly to mind -- Wilson never explores and barely pays lip service to any of these issues. Instead, he paints every fundamentalist Christian as lying, hypocritical and greedy, as if these traits and not their religious beliefs were the defining characteristics of the sect.

The result is a work that is not only offensive, but dramatically uninteresting as well. How entertaining can it be, after all, to watch one-dimensional characters act out hypocrisy and greed while other, equally one-dimensional characters register their disapproval?

To be sure, director Robert Kelley and scenic designer Andrea Bennett bring Dublin, Mo. vividly to life. And appealing performances by Sheila O'Neill Ellis as the dope-smoking Christian college dean, Mark Phillips as the cheese lover and Stacy Ross as his St. Joan-like wife all help the medicine go down. But those in the cast who play the "bad guys" give performances that are as one-dimensional as their characters: the men act like weasels and the women act like morons.

Were a play to portray Muslims or Jews with this sort of contempt, anti-defamation leagues would be up in arms. Were Lanford Wilson to portray African Americans with comparable narrow-mindedness, no one would produce this play or, for that matter, any of his others.

The question is: Why is "Book of Days" being produced here?

What: "Book of Days," presented by TheatreWorks

Where: Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro St. (corner of Mercy Street).

When: Through Feb. 9. Show times are Tuesdays at 7:30 p.m. (no show on Feb. 4); Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Saturday matinees at 2 p.m. on Feb. 1 and 8; Sunday matinees at 2 p.m.; Sunday evenings at 7 p.m. on Jan. 26 and Feb. 2.

Cost: Tickets are $20-$43; discounts are available for youth, students, seniors and members.

Info: Call (650) 903-6000 or visit www.theatreworks.org