A Walk In the Woods
by Lee Blessing
Directed by Renee Sevier-Monsey
West End Players Guild
September 30, 2017
Tom Moore, Tim Naegelin
Photo by John Lamb
West End Players Guild
West End Players Guild is starting their 2017-2018 season with Lee Blessing’s 1988 A Walk In The Woods, a celebrated Pulitzer Prize nominee that’s very much of its era when looking at it today. At WEPG, it comes across as an earnest, if subdued, look at a particular time and place in world history.
Probably the most striking thing about this particular production is its set, designed by Jacob Winslow, who also designed the excellent lighting. Here, the basement of Union Avenue Christian Church has been transformed into a wooded area somewhere in Geneva, Switzerland, with real mulch, logs, leaves and branches spread around to achieve an authentic effect. A simple wooden bench is the only furniture, and the audience is seated in sections surrounding the performance area on three sides. It’s an effective staging conceit, basically bringing the audience into the woods with the play’s characters, who are two arms negotiators. The Soviet Andrey Bottnvinnik (Tom Moore) is older, avuncular, personable but wearied by years in this job. The American John Honeyman (Tim Naegelin) is new on the job, and he’s more of the by-the-book kind of guy, but also full of idealism and hope that a real agreement on nuclear arms reduction can be achieved. Over the course of the play, the two talk and develop a relationship, and that is essentially the story. The personalities of the characters, and their back-and-forth discussion on matters as serious as world peace and as seemingly mundane as country music, are the centerpiece to this story which seems to depend a lot on archetypes as much as specific characters, although those archetypes are examined and challenged as well. At first it appears that we’re seeing the “older, wiser vs. the young upstart” but over the course of the show we see that there’s more to these characters than the initial impressions.
Although this play was timely when it was first written, now it plays as a Cold War time capsule of sorts, although it still has its moments of relevance to today’s issues, and the general idea of diplomacy as a difficult but essential pursuit. Blessing’s script is insightful at times, but it’s also deliberate sometimes to the point of being a little too deliberate. This strikes me as the type of play that particularly benefits from strong casting. All plays benefit from good performances, but here that seems most essential. The performances here are strong, although not as dynamic as they possibly could be. Moore is particularly engaging as the charming but deceptively cynical Bottvinnik. His Russian accent is convincing, as well. Naegelin as Honeyman is also convincing, and both actors display convincing chemistry as their relationship builds and grows throughout the play.
For the most part, A Walk In the Woods is a compelling character study and a window into a time in world history that is still in living memory for many in the audience. Its look at the process of diplomacy and the struggle for communication in the midst of cynicism is one that is still relevant today, as well. It’s an intriguing opening for WEPG’s season.
