Stage Review: "The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail

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Stage Review: "The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail

Thoreau, NM, perfect medium for 'Thoreau'

Thursday, November 05, 1998

By Christopher Rawson, Post-Gazette Drama Critic

Sometimes the most important question about a show precedes it - like, just what is the connection between eccentric American hero Henry David Thoreau and the production company eccentrically named "Thoreau, NM - A Production Company"? I ask because the company is now staging Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee's 1970 docu-fiction, "The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail."

Stage Review
"The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail"
WHERE: Thoreau, NM at Charles Gray Auditorium, CLO Academy (old Horne's/Lazarus), Downtown.
WHEN: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, through Nov. 15.
TICKETS: $10; 412-431-8289.

The main connection must be psychological, since Thoreau's radical anti-consumerism matches the "small-by-choice" philosophy with which Wendy Rea and the orthographically eccentric lance-eric skapura started Thoreau, NM in 1993. On the other hand, "NM" stands for New Mexico, where there's a town, Thoreau, where I imagine lance-eric and/or Wendy once had a vision.

So it's fitting that they produce this play, once a staple of college and community theaters in the spiritual aftermath of the '60s, when Thoreau was must-reading on T-shirts and bumper stickers.

Set on the single night the pre-"Walden" Thoreau spent in the Cambridge, Mass., jail for refusing to pay his poll tax in protest of the Mexican War, it uses flashbacks to broaden into a sketch of the great iconoclast's intellectual biography.

The play is charmingly artless but also clunky, mixing family comedy (Mom kvetches and Henry talks girls with his brother) with homespun philosophy and high-minded debate with Henry's mentor, the great moral sage, Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The acting is as uneven and sometimes downright poor as the Gray space stage is broad, and director Laura McCarthy's staging is minimal (doubtless by choice).

But Rajesh Bose brings dry comedy and his gorgeous voice to Emerson, and John Dunmire puts his pure Norman Rockwell demeanor to good use as Henry's jail mate. Matthew Lucia is more of a gargoyle than the despicable Deacon needs to be, and Shelby Wyzykowski is a placid presence as the hapless Mrs. Emerson. Rytch Barber's Thoreau has the bumptious freshness we want in our great American non-conformist.

It doesn't feel like drama so much as show-and-tell. Lawrence and Lee are justifiably better-known for "Inherit the Wind." But it never hurt anyone to get in touch with Thoreau, whether in New Mexico or Pittsburgh.