Playwright Craig Wright is a dark guy. He’d have to be to write for HBO’s “Six Feet Under” and to give birth to ABC’s one-season wonder “Dirty, Sexy Money.” Yet, he also earned a Master of Divinity degree from United Theological Seminary in Minneapolis.
That experience could be what led him to question what happens when free will bumps up against predestination, not to mention some big guy in the sky who just might be in charge of it all. That is sort of the theme of “The Pavilion,” a two-act play Wright developed in workshop in 1999 at Portland Stage’s Little Festival of the Unexpected and is now running at Acadia Repertory Theatre.
Acadia’s production is well-acted and directed by C. Andrew Mayer, but on Saturday night the cast never overcame the flaws inherent in Wright’s script. The audience never caught on to the playwright’s dark, cynically optimistic view of life. Only a few theatergoers got the jokes. In addition, the script is so talky that the characters’ near stationary positions made it look static.
The play is about Kari and Peter, ex-high school sweethearts — their romance began in the audiovisual room — who see each other again at their 20-year high school reunion in the fictional town of Pine City, Minn. He regrets their breakup; she has moved on. A third actor plays the narrator and all the other characters at the reunion, most of whom still live in the small community.
Wright’s narrator is meant to be the modern equivalent of the one in Thornton Wilder’s classic “Our Town.” But he’s so overwritten and his commentary is so disconnected from the action of the play that he ends up sounding like Carl Sagan, the astronomer famous for his public television show about the “billions and billions of stars in the cosmos.”
Jeff Broitman did the best he could in the part, but he was most delightful in his portrayal as all the folks at the reunion. Standouts were the guy who came to class stoned every day and, amazingly, still is stoned, the local minister and the DEA agent who everyone else agrees still hasn’t dealt with her sexual identity issues. Without costumes or props, Broitman transformed himself into those certain types who populated every high school hall and are familiar to all who have ever attended a high school reunion.
Julie Ann Nevill and David Blais portrayed Kari and Peter. Nevill’s Kari was so bitter and angry it was hard to see what Peter ever saw in her. The woman has every reason to be unforgiving but the actress never displayed a hint of the girl Kari used to be. Nevill never softened enough to show the audience that Kari even briefly considered her former beau’s offer to run off with him. Every woman in the audience surely was thinking about it.
Blais, on the other hand, was the perfect brooding guy who blossomed from geek to gorgeous. His portrayal of a man willing to do just about anything to get Kari back — even sing a love song in front of his former classmates — sucked all the sympathy out of the audience Saturday night. Although the two worked at it mightily, there was no spark let alone fire between Nevill and Blais.
The biggest problem with Acadia’s version of “The Pavilion,” however, was neither in the production nor the stars. There’s no way Mayer could have known when he picked the play this winter that June and July would bring record rain and delay the enjoyment of summer.
After all those cold, cloudy days, the last thing theatergoers want to do is question their place in the universe or how the decisions of two or three or four decades ago sent their lives careening down a course they’d like to correct. Audiences don’t want to think; they want to laugh in the sun, even if it’s only a theatrical one. A happy ending would be a bonus.
A better play about second chances would have been Noel Coward’s “Private Lives.” It shows what happens to lovers who get them. That play performed by the actors in Acadia’s company on this particular summer would have brought laughter and light to theatergoers starved for both.
Judy Harrison’s son Padraic Harrison is an intern at Acadia Repertory Theatre. He was on the technical crew for “The Pavilion.”
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IF YOU GO
What: “The Pavilion,” by Craig Wright
Who: Acadia Repertory Theatre
Where: Route 102, Somesville
When: Through Aug. 16
How long: 1 hour, 45 minutes with a 15-minute intermission
How much: $10-$23
What else: 244-7260, www.acadiarep.com