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Written by Jody Hirsh
May 5, 2011
Scene from “Two to Go,” a pair of one act plays currently playing at Boulevard Theatre in Milwaukee’s Bay View area. – Photo: Boulevard Theatre / Troy Freund Photography
Scene from “Two to Go,” a pair of one act plays currently playing at Boulevard Theatre in Milwaukee’s Bay View area. – Photo: Boulevard Theatre / Troy Freund Photography
The quirkiness of Bay View’s Boulevard Theatre is immediately clear from the (long) recorded message on its answering machine. The caller is reprimanded in advance for coming late, since no latecomers can possibly be seated, because the house manager also performs in the play.
That house manager is Mark Bucher, who also is the theater’s producer, director, stage manager, publicist and the voice on the answering machine.
Under Bucher’s inventive direction, “Two 2 Go,” the theater’s current production, provides a study in 1930s contrasts along with a critique of contemporary Wisconsin politics. Bucher creates a theatrical framework – a remedial literature class for adults at the fictional “Walker Community College” – to connect two one-act plays, “A Village Wooing” by George Bernard Shaw and “Pullman Car Hiawatha” by Thornton Wilder.
Beset with budget cuts, an overfilled classroom and closed libraries, a beleaguered instructor (Jaime Jastrab) attempts to introduce the class to the beauty of classic theater. His blasé, cellphone-addicted students are miraculously transformed into living characters in the two plays.
Shaw’s “A Village Wooing,” first produced in 1933, is a short Shavian gem – a finely constructed play that Shaw referred to as “A Comediettina for Two Voices.” It is typical Shaw, in many ways foreshadowing his more famous “Pygmalion,” which is better known as the basis for the musical “My Fair Lady.”
A working-class shop girl, energetically played by Liv Mueller, sets her sights for an aristocratic writer, played with aloofness by Michael Keiley. “Village” presents Shaw’s favorite themes – a lampoon of class differences and the battle of the sexes.
“My father used to say that men and women are always driving one another mad,” the girl says.
“That sounds literary. Was your father a man of letters?” the man responds.
“Yes, I should think he was. A postman,” she replies.
The ambiguous sexuality that follows is also typical of Shaw, who distrusted women and, when he finally married at age 40, bragged that his marriage was never consummated.
The two characters of “Village” (like the characters of “My Fair Lady”) could be Shaw himself and any woman who’d dare to pursue him. The aristocrat eventually considers marrying the shop girl, not as a result of sexual attraction, but only because she convinces him that it is logical.
Wilder’s 1931 play “Pullman Car Hiawatha” couldn’t be more different than Shaw’s, yet it too embodies the era. Although only one act long, it contains a staggering 17 speaking roles and 16 non-speaking roles. The action occurs in a Pullman car journeying between New York and Chicago, and in addition to playing travelers, actors represent towns along the way, a field, the planets, hours, supernatural beings and a stage manager who sets the scene.
The show is cleverly staged, with six actors playing all 33 parts. A foreshadowing of Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Our Town,” this work is essentially about the beauty and simplicity of life. (Wilder, who was openly gay among his friends and associates, never discussed or wrote about gay life.)
Wilder’s work is a stark contrast to Shaw’s cynical, class-conscious play. It’s essentially about the universality of the human experience. Regardless of gender or class or educational level, all of Wilder’s characters are equal in their capacity to live life to the fullest, even amid tragedy.
Harriet, engagingly played by Rebecca Segal, reminds us of the wonder of the world. Michael Weber, Brooke Wagner and Bucher give freshness to the multiple characters they create onstage. In a flash of inspired craziness, lighting and sound engineer Donald Madden rushes between the light/sound board and the stage, sometimes delivering his lines from the sound board.
The journey to Chicago ends, as do all journeys in life. The stage directions call for “the complete cast to appear at the edges of the stage” as the stage manager claps his hands. Of course the cumulative effect of the mass of characters appearing all at once is impossible with this pared-down production.
Nevertheless, it perfectly captures the essence of this classic short American play.
