Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Strong women at the helm: Amy Berryman’s WALDEN and Jenny Lyn Bader’s MRS. STERN WANDERS THE PRUSSIAN STATE LIBRARY

• By drediman
• November 8, 2024
• No Comments

This week, I encountered a pair of Off-Broadway plays by women playwrights that feature strong women characters at the helm. Read on for my thoughts.

WALDEN
Second Stage Theater
Through November 24

Last night, Second Stage’s Off-Broadway production of Walden (SOMEWHAT RECOMMENDED) by Amy Berryman opened at the Tony Kiser Theatre — the company’s bittersweet final production at the distinctive venue (a former bank building, complete with a vault that’s been repurposed into a box office) before relocating a few blocks away to the Pershing Square Signature Center. Set in the near future, the play unfolds in a remote, self-sustaining cabin and farm where a couple — Stella and Bryan — has retreated to make a quiet and secluded life for themselves, as far away as possible from the world’s increasingly severe political and climate-related troubles. Enter Cassie, Stella’s ambitious, philosophically-opposed, and equally brilliant twin sister, and drama ensue — particularly as it relates to the central debate over the importance of one’s duty to society versus prioritizing self-love and mental health, which is only magnified by the state of emergency that the human race has found itself in. I first came across Berryman’s play three years back, when I streamed TheaterWorks Hartford’s separately produced outdoor staging during the dark days of the pandemic. What a difference a few years makes. Then, its concerns about climate change and political unrest — in short, a planet descending into its demise — seemed urgently topical. Now, however, the play seems pedestrian in comparison to other recent apocalyptic, similarly-minded plays like Sarah Mantell’s far more interesting In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot (currently running at Playwrights Horizons), both in terms of theatrical imagination and character-building. While the game trio of Emily Rossum, Motell Foster, and Zoë Winters try their best to animate the play via emphatic if obvious performances, Whitney White’s oddly limp production ultimately makes an unconvincing case for Walden.

MRS. STERN WANDERS THE PRUSSIAN STATE LIBRARY
59E59 Theaters
Through November 10

Then there’s the Luna Stage production of Jenny Lyn Bader’s curiously titled play Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED), which I managed to catch Off-Broadway last night at 59E59 Theaters before its largely sold out run concludes this weekend. Set in 1933 Berlin — the beginning of the end, really — the play chronicles an episode of young Hannah Arndt’s life during which she is taken under custody under suspicion of activist activity. Although it’s based on true events, the play is largely the fictitious fabrication of the playwright. In a series of incisive and meticulously-written scenes, we get inside the mind of one of the great philosophical thinkers of the twentieth century as she navigates precarious passing moments and her fraught predicament at large. In short, Bader does Arndt justice — particularly with respect to her sharp instincts and ability to judge (and react to) character and human behavior — which is no small feat. Thankfully, the piece doesn’t hit audiences over the head with histrionic shouting matches, instead asking us to lean forward to observe subtle shifts in relationships, namely between Arndt and the conflicted young Gestapo officer put in her charge (there’s also a fascinating exchange with an attorney, played astutely by Drew Hirshfield, that could have altered the trajectory of Arndt’s fate had things played out differently). Intellectually and dramatically stimulating in equal measure, the play — directed by Ari Laura Kreith in clear-eyed fashion — is a quietly thrilling display of a woman literally willing herself out of harms way in a society that has begun to obstruct rights for some of its citizens (the play begins with Berlin newly under martial law). As Arendt, Ella Dershowitz gives a beautifully calibrated performance that straddles internalized desperation and keen intelligence. As her captor, Brett Temple gives a searching performance that stealthily grows increasingly sympathetic as the play unfolds. In summary, Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library is a finely-crafted play that I hope will find a future life.