Missed opportunities in the script offset an otherwise solid production at Benchmark
Samuel D. Hunter’s play A Great Wilderness confronts what it means to devote decades doing what you think is important work only to find near the end that you’ve no clear idea who you actually helped.
In this Benchmark Theatre production, Chris Kendall plays Walt — a man who’s spent 30 years to hosting troubled teen boys (i.e., they might be gay) at a remote cabin in the Idaho woods. And while the idea of conversion therapy might set off immediate alarm bells, Walt’s approach is less fire-and-brimstone and more “let’s talk and pray a bit.” At the top of the show, he’s greeting Daniel (Danté J. Finley), who will be his final challenge since Walt is getting ready to check into an old folk’s home and turn the enterprise over to a new generation.
Skittish as a deer at the watering hole, Daniel was told little about what to expect and wonders if he will be subjected to shock therapy. After Walt reassures him that won’t be the case and makes him a sandwich, the awkward first scene ends with Daniel looking marginally less freaked out.
Chris Kendall and Danté J. Finley in ‘A Great Wilderness’
But then he’s gone. Hours have passed since Daniel went out for a walk, and now Walt’s successors are here wondering why he took on a last-minute case in the first place and how in hell he let the kid wander off into the wilderness. Abby (Christine Kahane) is Walt’s ex-wife now married to therapist Tim (Mark Collins), and they’re here to pack off the old man to the home and have no interest in one more crisis case. And, it turns out, their plan for taking over the conversion cabin isn’t what Walt thought — they’d just as soon have him sell the place to fund the over-priced retirement home he’s headed to.
Also in the mix is Daniel’s mother Eunice (Latifah Johnson), who’s shown up to wring her hands over her son’s MIA status, and Janet, the local forest ranger played by Corey Exline. And it’s not long before the potentially interesting topic of gay conversion therapy is supplanted by a workaday search-and-rescue operation as the hunt for Daniel expands and gains urgency in the face of a growing wildfire in the area.
On stage, that translates mostly into a fair amount of fretting and bitching about the situation between Walt, Tim, Abby and Eunice with occasional entrances by Janet to update on the search. And while some of the backstory about Walt and Abby’s marriage and their own tragic history as parents is revealed, the script seems to wander as much as Daniel in the forest. There are so many different threads to the story that the focus is just entirely too fuzzy, and the audience finds itself wondering where to fix its interest.
One clue offered by Walt regarding Daniel’s disappearance is that the young man said “something” on his way out the door that Walt cannot remember. But it was enough to prompt a good deal of soul searching as he contemplates not just the current situation but all the boys who came before. Tim has a few bits of news about some of them, but it’s not enough for Walt to think the overall mission was a success. And as we learn, much of his efforts were prompted by guilt over his own son’s fate than a firm conviction that he was doing right by all of these other teens.
Director Marc Stith manages the messy script with a strong cast that makes the most of some of the play’s impactful moments. Kahane is quite convincing as Abby, the highly frustrated ex who’s torn between her needs and those of her past and present spouses. Collins is great as the practical problem solver who still believes in the mission, and Finley does nice work as the highly confused young man whose eventual revelation seems more worrisome than triumphant to the befuddled Walt.
Even as she’s often delivering grim assessments of the Daniel situation, Exline has fun as Janet — the straight-talking ranger who gets the lion’s share of the few laugh lines in the show. Johnson manages the fretful mom just fine, but Hunter doesn’t give the character of Eunice a whole lot to do.
Kendall is always a treat to see on stage, and he doesn’t disappoint with his depiction of the deeply conflicted Walt. One nice touch in Hunter’s script is the addition of a curious prop in the otherwise woodsy cabin: a micro version of the Oxford English Dictionary that Walt pores over with a magnifying glass to find the right word. It’s an apt metaphor for the man’s confused search for meaning in his own life and those of his young “patients” over the years — and telling in that he never seems to find that word.
In the end, A Great Wilderness leaves too much on the table, forgoing some of the more potentially interesting conversations around conversion therapy or even the worth of one man’s life path in favor of the “where’s Daniel?” plot line. It’s a frustrating experience, lent even more so by the fact that the potential source of a lot of drama, Daniel, is offstage for most of the show — only appearing again late in Act Two. As such, the play ends just as it’s starting to get interesting.
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