Theater review
“A Walk in the Woods”
Grade: B+
Through July 14. 8:30 p.m. Thursdays-Sundays. $20-$25. The Farmer’s Market Clearing at Serenbe, 9110 Selborne Lane in Chattahoochee Hills. 770-463-1110. www.serenbeplayhouse.com.
Bottom line: A good play, but a great production.
No doubt there are a lot of plays that are better or more famous than Lee Blessing’s “A Walk in the Woods,” but it’s hard to think of many that are so ideally suited to being performed outdoors, which is how Serenbe Playhouse has been doing its shows for four summers now.
Set in the mid-1980s at the height of nuclear disarmament talks between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, Blessing’s fictional drama depicts a series of private encounters between two men representing the opposing sides in the debate. The American, named John Honeyman, is “stiff and stuffy”; the Russian, Andrei Botvinnik, is “sly and cynical”; and, at first, they can’t even agree on whether they’re “diplomats” or “negotiators.”
Ordinarily, the only real set piece on stage would be a park bench, and then some sort of theatrically stylized backdrop to indicate that all four scenes of the play happen to take place in a secluded patch of woods outside Geneva, Switzerland. For the ingenious purposes of director Harrison Long’s “site-specific” Serenbe production, credit scenic designer Jamie Bullins with the park bench, but the rest of the show’s remarkable atmosphere is largely thanks to Mother Nature.
Working under the guidance of founder and executive artistic director Brian Clowdus, the company performs in various locations on the grounds of Serenbe, a rustic community in Chattahoochee Hills (roughly 35 miles south of Atlanta). According to a pre-recorded curtain speech before the show, this is the first time “A Walk in the Woods” has ever been staged quite so literally.
While in lesser hands the outdoor setting could have simply felt like a gimmick, in Long’s Serenbe version it has the effect of breathing fresh dramatic life into a play that’s generally smart and eloquent, if also occasionally sedentary and pedantic. The spread of the natural environment provides a powerful and symbolic contrast to this otherwise intimate personal story about a pair of basic Everymen and the global issues surrounding them.
It takes two strong and accomplished actors not to seem dwarfed or overwhelmed by such a fascinating concept, and Long has found them in Allan Edwards (as the gregarious Botvinnik) and Robin Bloodworth (as the stoic Honeyman). It’s inevitable that the characters will come to look past their political and cultural differences to discover some common human ground and “trust,” but Edwards and Bloodworth make the transition utterly convincing.
In more ways than one, as Botvinnik ultimately puts it, “It’s so good to be here among the trees.”
About the Author
