In Swing Pronounce, Bleak Politics in the Mammoth Grass

Mary Beth Fisher and Bubba Weiler in Swing Pronounce. Photo: Liz Lauren

Rebecca Gilman sees tons of metaphors in the prairie, an ecosystem that will perchance perchance just seem unruly and unproductive at the beginning glance however follows its absorb aloof authorized guidelines and maintains a community of life-sustaining biological relationships. In her play Swing PronouncePeg (Mary Beth Fisher), a widow in her 60s, has devoted herself to caring for 40 acres of pure prairie around her farmhouse in rural Wisconsin, encroached on from every facet by cultivated farmland, elephantine of chemical substances that seep into the soil and choke Peg’s naturally occurring grasses, assassinate the insects that thrive there, and in turn, starve out the birds and other animals. The prairie’s the pure inform of things; the farmland, human intervention. Or the prairie’s the uncommon communal procure 22 situation, and the farmland is capitalism. Or, in case you defend shut a glance at the political perspective of that title, the prairie is regardless of bit of civic solidarity there’s left in The US, and the farmland is the division and hatred encroaching from every facet.

Another thing that you can are looking to be esteem a prairie is a play itself, though Swing Pronounce doesn’t reasonably produce that. In her play, Gilman lets the thematic interpretations multiply esteem those wild grasses whereas limiting the acreage of her procure 22 situation. Coming to Contemporary York after an acclaimed dart in Chicago with its forged from the Goodman Theatre intact, Swing Pronounce provides an efficient, narrate, though little and realist, defend shut on our moment. It’s correct: acted successfully, competently directed by Robert Falls, building over the course of a stressful and ominous single act and exploding in a climax, however never conjuring the odd wildness that would produce it huge. You should perchance perchance uncover the assign everything modified into planted here.

We’re in the early topple of 2021, and Peg, a dilapidated teacher and steering counselor, is carrying on as finest she will be able to in her farmhouse after the present dying of her husband. Her simplest regular customer is Ryan (Bubba Weiler), an ex-convict in his 20s in recovery whom she looks to be to be like out for by giving odd jobs around her residence. Early on, Peg publicizes her plans to deed the prairie to a natural world conservation community and home to Ryan after her dying, however then a few farm tools and an broken-down rifle are stolen from her shed. The unforgiving fire-and-brimstone native sheriff, Kris (Kirsten Fitzgerald), who also occurs to be a relative of the farmers surrounding Peg, suspects Ryan and leads an investigation, aided by her more conciliatory protégée, Dani (Anne E. Thompson), also a dilapidated student of Peg’s. These individuals, esteem the animals in the ecosystem around them, are stuck in a antagonistic atmosphere, and they inaugurate lashing out at every other to live to voice the tale.

Peg is a role that Gilman wrote with Fisher in mind, and Fisher approaches it with a chilled certainty. In her first scene, she’s alone making zucchini bread onstage in the middle of a tchotchke-filled orange-and-brown 1970ish kitchen and living room, designed by Todd Rosenthal, that projects a certain fussy, liberal-bleeding-heart-on-the-plains vibe (“NO TV!” Gilman notes in her script). Peg has whole ecological cave in on the mind and delivers monologues about the relate of the land around her—which insects contain died, which birds and reptiles could perchance perchance notice—in speeches that Fisher delivers in a correct-the-facts manner that produce their outlook seem all the more apocalyptic. She’s heat, especially across from Weiler’s tight-wound Ryan and Thompson’s sweetly anxious Dani, however also firm and bleak. Her conception to give the land to the belief involves making definite it’s sincere in perpetuity, “or till the world ends. So esteem, another fifteen years.”

Peg’s a fascinating character, especially for this moment: Any individual who believes in and has devoted herself to community perfect till she’s stopped believing it could perchance perchance perchance peaceful exist—exactly the kind of one who could perchance perchance very successfully be most wounded by having social connections severed by a virulent disease. The distress is, Gilman affords us an excessive amount of of her despair too snappy: The play builds to the other characters’ realizing the extent of Peg’s depression, however we gaze it in the first scene, correct in the diagram Fisher holds a knife as she’s chopping walnuts. That retains Swing Pronounce in structural stasis, holding Peg in one emotional put till all people else catches as much as her. An excessive amount of of the play is fascinated by catching us up, on the whole in gratuitous asides in which the characters circle again to histories they both know—much like Peg’s relationship alongside with her needless husband, or the minute print of Ryan’s incarceration—correct for the sake of the audience.

The production, as a result, presses against its guardrails. Falls on the whole directs the actors to sit down down at a kitchen desk for long conversations, which makes the performances pinched and exaggerated, as if trying to make amends for their little physical vary. In most cases, the characters explain they’ve without warning remembered they prefer to point to something to 1 other. Weiler tends to overemphasize Ryan’s nerves and overplay his breakdowns, whereas Thompson portrays Dani nearly about shrinking into the background. The miniature bits of business, much like when we gaze Fisher fastidiously extracting seeds from a wildflower, spin a good diagram in the direction of breaking up the talky monotony. Gilman will also be laughable, too, in a suitably midwestern sunless trend—there’s an correct, grim thread about Dani’s using Peg’s lessons about being a steering counselor whereas acting as a police interrogator—however she’s let an excessive amount of humor rep leached out of this soil. More texture, whether of humor or any other kind of human strangeness, would again complicate the relatively easy political analogy going on. With the play’s title in mind, Peg and Kris develop into  stand-ins for pink and blue views, fighting for the souls of the pink subsequent generation of Ryan and Dani. Gilman finally ends up aiming for a left-centrist middle ground—I struggled with a scene that means that Dani could perchance perchance remain a cop, however change the system by being correct—which would possibly perchance perchance spin down more without instruct if we would gaze the characters as individuals rather than archetypes.

Once that stolen rifle reappears, Gilman arrives at a climax that is brutal however also clearly forecast and little, and it lands esteem a success with a rubber mallet. I felt the tragedy and kicked reflexively, however I didn’t absorb it emotionally. There’s a meta-tragedy, perchance, in the incontrovertible fact that the same divisiveness and defensiveness that Peg decries within the play has made Gilman’s writing schematic and careful. Swing Pronounce anticipates its interpretations and makes definite to underline its points, however all that careful hedging is to its detriment. If simplest something much less cultivated could perchance perchance develop here.

Swing Pronounce is at the Minetta Lane Theatre.