Leave it to Sam Shepard to remind us that the theater can be a place not just of fourth-wall realism but of evocative, impressionistic poetry with mythic overtones. The consistently surprising writer, whose career began almost 50 years ago, has never been satisfied with conventional dramatic form. His first plays were expectation-defeating one-acts like The Rock Garden, and his longer dramas, from La Turista to The Tooth of Crime and Buried Child, have been exercises in the surreal with more than an occasional nod to the principles of jazz improvisation. Now American Stage — showing admirable courage — is presenting Shepard and Joseph Chaikin’s play When the World Was Green (A Chef’s Fable), and the experience is tantalizing, troubling and sublime.
Deftly acted by Michael Edwards and Amanda Collins, World asks us to participate not just as spectators but as detectives, to see through its surface encounters to a deeper message about longing, revenge, politics and forgiveness. This is not just entertainment; this is art of a rare kind. If you don’t mind your epiphany coming quietly, without fanfare, you might just find these 70 minutes unforgettable.
There are only two characters: Old Man, a murderer about to be executed, and The Interviewer, a journalist who wants him to tell his story. In the opening moments, we learn that Old Man is the inheritor of a 200-year-old vendetta that began when an ancestor’s mule was poisoned by one of his relatives. Since childhood, Old Man has been aware that one day he would be asked to continue the cycle of killing by assassinating his cousin Carl, a descendant of the offending poisoner. In pursuit of that offense, Old Man became a chef and managed to poison the potatoes of a diner whom he assumed to be Carl. But that was a mistake: The man he murdered was a stranger, uninvolved in the vendetta, and the real Carl escaped intact. Which is where the Interviewer comes in. She tells Old Man that “you remind me of myself,” because she too has been on a quest all her life. That quest is for her father, who deserted her mother and herself when she was very young, and who may have been spotted once in New Orleans. Against Old Man’s wishes, she insists on hearing the details of his life, and especially the precise steps leading to the murder. As Old Man’s tale progresses, there are intimations of a larger, even more horrific canvas, on which whole populations are being turned into corpses by their governments, and having a train ticket may be the only protection against state-sponsored terror. And there’s another theme as well: the possibility that the Interviewer is lying about her motives, that she may be more involved in Old Man’s story than she’s quite ready to admit. By the end of the evening, some of these mysteries are solved, while others continue to taunt us with their ambiguities.
American Stage producing artistic director Todd Olson directs the play with a stylized minimalism that both alienates and intrigues. Greg Bierce’s prison-cell set is deliberately bland, and Saidah Ben Judah’s costumes — a bluish prison uniform for Old Man, brown coat and sober yellow dress for the Interviewer — contribute to a coldness that’s always in tension with the messy, dangerous world we hear described. Michael Edwards’ Old Man is fully a part of this contradictory universe: He seems formal, strangely calm, as if, having committed the murder he was brought up to perpetrate, he’s lost all further reason for emoting. As the Interviewer, Amanda Collins is also a question mark, puzzlingly cool as she tries to help Old Man sleep or cook, persistent in her questions even when Old Man makes it clear that he’d much prefer her absence. The play consists not only of dialogues, punctuated by blackouts, between the two characters, but also of direct addresses to the audience by Old Man or the Interviewer. The final effect is both abstract and recognizably human. I can’t think of another play like it except for, perhaps, Caryl Churchill’s deeply distressing Far Away.
But When The World Was Green is not, finally, distressing. Written for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, it eventually chooses hope over despair, love over violence. Which is another reason to see it: to be reminded that high art can affirm as well as deny, and that sometimes peace depends on those who act rather than react. Which is another way of saying, if you’ll stay with it for an hour and 10 minutes, you’ll find a real reward at the end. That’s precisely what I found, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.
This article appears in Mar 28 – Apr 3, 2013.