'The Pilgrim Papers' Need Recycling

The Pilgrim Papers by Stephen Temperley

Directed by Vivian Matalon

Scenic Designer, R. Michael Miller; Costume Designer, Tracy Christensen; Lighting Designer, Ann G. Wrightson; Sound Designer, Craig Kaufman    

CAST   

Martin Askin as Jones/Billington

Joshua Davis as Standish

Austin Durant as Narrator/Squanto/Little Mary

Brent Michael Eroy as Robinson/Winslow

Phil Sletteland as Bradford

Arnica Skulstad-Brown as Dorothy

Justin Stoney as Peter/Ned/Jenkins

Performances through August 26 at Berkshire Theatre Festival, Unicorn Theatre

Box Office 413-298-5576    www.berkshiretheatre.org

In The Pilgrim Papers, now in its world premiere at Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge, Stephen Temperley's political satire skewers the Pilgrims, Native Americans, the Bush Administration, religious fundamentalists, and homophobes.  To say this is a play with an agenda would be an understatement.  To say this is a play which makes sense would be misleading.

If you read the news, watch television, listen to radio, or at least do not live under a rock, you are aware of the discussion and discord in our country vis-à-vis the war on terror and the war in Iraq.  With that as background, you have enough knowledge to recognize many of the themes and references in The Pilgrim Papers.  As a matter of fact, some of the lines have been culled from the remarks of George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, but they are too scary to laugh at.  I question the point of trying to ridicule what is so blatantly ridiculous in the first place.

My two main problems with the play are that Temperley takes on way too much (see lead paragraph) and is too obvious in doing so.  Every point is hammered home with the same ferocity until it feels like a game of whack-a-mole is being played out on stage.  There is no nuance or subtlety here.  Despite being in agreement with the politics of the playwright, I felt beaten into submission by the heavy-handedness of his messages.  Surely there were moments of mirth, but not enough over the course of two hours.

While those flaws might be fixed by rewriting and editing, a more difficult structural problem exists within the play.  Much of the responsibility for telling the story is handled by a narrator.  When he steps out at the beginning to present the premise that "history is an artifact of now," he lays the groundwork for the show to overturn our preconceptions about the Pilgrims and what they stood for or against.  However, he continues to narrate every scene before we see the scene, so by the time we see the scene, we feel like its all been seen before.  Therein lays the danger of using the tool of the narrator:  too much telling, not enough showing.  It occurs to me that it may have worked on the page, but did not transfer well to live action.  Playwright and director really need to put their heads together to find a remedy.

The earnest and talented young cast is uniformly strong in their performances.  All but three of the actors are required to play two or three characters and they make their transformations seem effortless.  Austin Durant is commanding as the Narrator, impressively fey as Squanto, and adorable as Little Mary, all without benefit of any costume changes.  Brent Michael Eroy is funny and scary as the voice of religious fundamentalism.  Phil Sletteland's Bradford and Arnica Skulstad-Brown as Dorothy are both solid and give performances with more nuance than the script provides.  Joshua Davis played Standish with just the right amount of paranoia and bravado.  Martin Askin and Justin Strong bring life to their five characters, as well as to a stuffed dog.  As an ensemble, they work well together and deliver more than what they've been given to work with.

Many plays, movies, and television shows cast the obligatory gay character these days, but the added dimension of same sex marriage is fairly recent and certainly resonates in Massachusetts.  Temperley and Matalon are married to each other and have been together for 34 years, so their first-hand knowledge and experience informs their ability to speak to this subject.  It may be picky, but I wish they had been more clever than to include the time-worn line, "It's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve," in one of the reactionary complaints voiced against a gay couple.

I applaud Temperley's ambitious attempt to convey that, as E.L.Doctorow wrote, "History is the present.  That's why every generation writes it anew.  But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth."  What cannot be changed or rewritten is the past.  Let's hope that this play can be. 

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