‘Walk’ is a timely excursion
Special to the Journal Sentinel
Sturgeon Bay — Who could have imagined that showcasing the thaw between two Cold War diplomats — in an old play filled with dated references to detente, StarWars and the1980s proxy wars in Central America — would resonate so strongly in 2016?
Then again, who could imagine that we’d be living through that nuclear winter of toxic recrimination known as the 2016 election season?
Just days before the Wisconsin primary, a strong, well-acted Third Avenue Playhouse production of Lee Blessing’s “A Walk in the Woods” connects the dots between then and now, asking how and whether we might get along and even become friends, notwithstanding all that divides us. It opened Thursday night under Robert Boles’ direction.
“Woods” begins with American negotiator John Honeyman (Alan Kopischke) wanting to be just about anyplace except where he actually finds himself: In the Swiss woods, where he’s been invited by Soviet counterpart Irina Botvinnik (Carrie Hitchcock) for a stroll.
When Irina also invites John to take a seat beside her on a park bench, he agrees with all the reluctance of the American innocent he is — sure that corrupt Europe is up to its old tricks, and as determined as any of Henry James’s American men that he won’t be had. Even the way Kopischke sits — rigidly upright, clenched hands planted firmly on tensed legs, clothes buttoned up — conveys how wary he is.
Conversely, Hitchcock — latest of several women Blessing has allowed to appear in productions of a
IF YOU GO
“A Walk in the Woods” continues through April 17 at Third Avenue Playhouse, 239 N. 3rd Ave., Sturgeon Bay. For tickets, visit thirdavenueplayhouse .com. Read more about this production at TapMilwaukee.com.
play originally written for two men — gives us an Irina who is lithe and flexible, from her crossed legs and habit of leaning into John to the drollery baked into her impeccable, lightly accented English.
In the first of the play’s four scenes— one for each season— Irina is wryly amused by and even condescending toward the doggedly earnest John, priggishly unwilling to bend or relax because he’s filled with a sense of all that must be accomplished (and, Kopischke suggests, also quite full of himself).
But for all her playfully cynical insistence that these arms talks mean nothing, Irina clearly wishes they might mean something; her much younger self had endured the siege of Leningrad, after all. John talks about how war is hell; she’s actually lived it. His idealism may be naive, but Hitchcock — again magnificent, here — suggests a woman who badly wants to believe he’s right.
Seasoned pros that they are, neither Hitchcock nor Kopischke oversells their growing affinity; “Woods” isn’t a feel-good exercise culminating in universal and eternal peace.
What we get instead is even better: A recognition that even ostensible enemies might actually become friends if they’d occasionally retreat from history, stepping back in time for a walk in the woods.