Walden

Tweet

Amy Berryman’s first play to reach New York, Walden, is a timely and intriguing view of a bleak near future: the Earth is dying, there are too many people, no water, poor air quality and the crops are failing. The number of Climate Refugees is climbing. A recent mega tsunami that hit the coast three days ago has killed one million people so far. NASA is desperately trying to build a “habitation” on the moon, “colony” being a now politically charged word.

However, a populist political movement called Earth Advocates is attempting to make the American wilderness livable again. High up in the mountains which still have clean air, they plant gardens, live off the land, avoid using electricity, drive in solar cars, and attempt to lower their carbon footprint. They are also a political action group attempting to convince the government to invest in our planet rather put all their resources in space settlement.

The pllay takes place in the American Wilderness after an apocalypse. When we meet Stella (Emmy Rossum), a former NASA colony architect, and her fiancé Bryan (Motell Foster), an Earth Advocate, they are awaiting a visit from her twin sister Cassie (Zoë Winters), a NASA botanist and astronaut, just back from a controversial nine months stay on the moon, where miraculously she had been able to make something grow in the ground. Bryan is also unaware that Stella in her work at NASA was the designer of the Walden Mission to Mars which is only now being put into effect.

The air is heavy with antagonism between sisters Stella and Cassie with both the jealousies of youth over their father, a former astronaut who died suddenly, and the divergent paths their careers have taken since joining NASA. Cassie is shocked to meet an E.A. as she has not met one before, although skeptical Bryan is impressed that she was able to grow something on the moon. However, she does not understand the change in Stella being willing to work in a local bar after being one of NASA’s most brilliant scientists, wanting marriage and a child after previously rejecting domesticity, as well as taking up this new pastoral life. Eventually we discover that there is an agenda behind her visit, and not just that she begins training for a lifetime mission that Monday morning that will separate the two sisters.

Under Whitney White’s fast-paced direction, the play moves along quickly although it only takes place over one weekend, and possibly one night. However, she has not helped the author solve problems of early playwrights. The characters cover the same topics obsessively, though in real life one doesn’t only talk about one thing all the time. While the sisters are twins who have competed in the same arena, at times their dialogue about their childhood and father is interchangeable. In fact, they are little differentiated, often sounding  exactly the same in their dialogue. Bryan remains an enigma so little defined that we never know what he does or did previously for a living.

Nevertheless, the play is one of several interesting takes on climate change in the theater recently like Deep History. As the play evolves we are more and more immersed in the problems of climate change that are now only distant possibilities. The actors are compelling but do not entirely inhabit their roles. Making her Off Broadway debut, Rossum, best known for her work in the Netflix’s series Shameless and film version of The Phantom of the Opera, is suitably conflicted as one who has given up her chosen career and taken the opposite path. Winters, known for her breakout role in the HBO series Succession as well as many major Off Broadway roles, is more controlled as the current astronaut who is confused by her sister’s current choices. However, both sisters are a little too similar to make them dramatic opposites. In the underwritten role of Bryan, Foster is quite appealing though he can’t fill in the gaps that are missing.

Matt Saunders’ corrugated cabin in the woods surrounded by trees is initially attractive, but as it fails to change much gets a bit tiresome in its intentional bland simplicity. Qween Jean has solved the problem of distinguish the twin sisters by putting one in a white top and one in a nearly identical black one, but it will not be your fault if you can’t recall which is which as Tommy Kurzman’s hair and wig design is so similar. The lighting by Adam Honoré is more successful as is depicts the sudden weather changes in the mountains as does Lee Kinney’s sound design.

Amy Berryman’s Walden, named after the iconic nature book by Henry David Thoreau, is a fascinating study in future climate change which should be seen by all our politicians and influencers. The play’s defects in characterization notwithstanding, the cast of three are engrossing as they navigate their thorny choices under Whitney White’s astute direction.

Walden (through November 24, 2024)

The Second Stage

Tony Kiser Theater, 305 W. 43^rd Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, call 212-541-4516 or visit http://www.2ST.com

Running time: 90 minutes without an intermission