Review by James Wilkinson
Native Gardens – Written by Karen Zacarias. Directed by Kelly Galvin. Scenic Design: Lindsay Genevieve Fuori. Lighting Design: Marcella Barbeau. Costume Design: Chelsea Kerl. Sound Design: Alexis Rappaport. Props Design: Emme Shaw. Produced by Gloucester Stage Company, 267 E. Main St., Gloucester through October 20.
It was idle curiosity, more than any other factor, that brought me to Gloucester Stage Company’s production of Native Gardens. The play by Karen Zacarias made Theatre Communication Group’s list of the most produced plays for the 2018/2019 season (tying for placement with Paula Vogel’s Indecent), and I think that the achievement means something about where we (and that’s the collective “we”) are right now. In an age where more plays than ever are being written and with the canon of producible plays being so vast, something about this play managed to capture the attention of audiences across the country (or maybe it’s more appropriate to say that it managed to captured the attention of the regional theater Artistic Directors). All art is reflective of the artist, but popular art is reflective of the culture. I missed the Merrimack Repertory Theatre production last year, but now the play has come to Gloucester Stage and I wasn’t going to miss the chance to partake and see just who it is we all are.
So, who are we? Well, that’s kind of a complicated question to answer because I think Zacarias’ play ends up working as a kind of Rorschach test. It’s going to depend on the viewer. I think that Gloucester Stage, under the direction of Kelly Galvin, gives the play a very fine production, full of comic pop and energy. There’s a good deal of fun to be had here in ecosystem that Zacarias sets up and Gloucester Stage’s production seems to delight in a kind of winking charm. But there is another aspect to the appeal of the play that goes down like Xanax and which gives me pause. As chance would have it, this isn’t the only Karen Zacarias play on in the Greater Boston area. Her newest work, The Book Club Play, is currently running at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre. I caught that production two days before seeing Native Gardens and wasn’t wild about it. I thought there was something false in how Zacarias was setting up her characters. Native Gardens is a much better play, (I think so, anyway), though I do also think it suffers from some of the same flaws.
We know that Native Gardens is a play about America when we learn that takes place in Washington D.C. (something about that location just turns everything mythic). Tania and Pablo Del Valle (Alaina Fragoso and Eduardo Ruiz) are a young couple that have just moved into their first house, a fixer-upper in an affluent D.C. suburb. Their new backyard shares a border with older residents, Virginia and Frank Butley (Leigh Strimbeck and Patrick Shea). When Pablo accidentally invites his law firm over to his house for a party, the young couple has to go into overdrive to get their wreck of a backyard ready for the weekend and that means replacing the decrepit chain link fence that separates their yard from the Butleys’. That’s when the problems start. Turns out that years ago the fence was placed about two feet away from the correct property line, giving the Butleys a lot more space than they should have. When the Del Valle’s want to put the new fence on the correct line (taking back the space their neighbors have been tending), the Butleys see the move as an attack and fight for their right to keep what they see as theirs. What should have been an awkward conversation between neighbors soon descends into a battle of wills between immovable forces, to increasing comic chaos.
Until it isn’t, that is, when the action stops dead in its tracks during the final moments of the play. I’ve never so badly wanted to poll an audience after seeing a performance because I think what characters you sympathize with is going to depend on who you are when going into the play. The opening plot device of the boss coming over for dinner and needing to make a good impression is a flimsy one that comes straight out of the classic sitcom handbook (The Simpsons even did a parody of it). There are hints that the production knows this and is going to push past it. Some of the early scene transition music (sound design by Alexis Rappaport) feels like it could have been ripped from the background of an old Bewitched episode, while the later music favors a more hip-hop vibe. It’s not a bad thing for a play to indulge in cliché if it’s going to use them to push us in new directions. Zacarias seems to be on this track when she gets her characters together and lets their parallels and contrasts bounce off each other. As the problem at the heart of the play gets more and more ethically messy, she manages to give each of the characters their day in court (so to speak). You understand why the characters are letting what should be a simple and fixable misunderstanding rise to such outrageous proportions.
But is that a good thing? I usually find myself arguing for more empathy when seeing theater, but in this instance it almost feels like the play is deliberately avoiding making a decision. There’s so much going for Gloucester Stage’s production. The four main actors are turning in charming performances. I think that director Galvin gives the play a smart and zippy staging. The crown jewel of the show might be Lindsay Genevieve Fuori’s set design which is exquisitely intricate and beautiful (that it’ll be torn down in a few weeks is mildly depressing, but so it goes with theater). But what is it about the play that forces us to go beyond our own experiences and (as it were) venture into other gardens?
Zacarias’ play kicks up a lot of issues about race, class, privilege, age and many of the other isms of contemporary life. When I was watching the play, (as a younger, liberally-minded individual), I originally thought that Zacarias was stacking the deck against the Butleys, making them a bit too cartoonish in their outrage at losing part of their yard. Then I realized that I was surrounded by an older audience that, if anything, seemed to be cheering the Butleys on as they fought against the younger couple’s designs on their property. Sections of the audience identifying with different characters isn’t necessarily a bad thing if the play is able to pull the strands together in a meaningful way, but that’s where I think Zacarias goes wrong. The arguments between the couples continue to get worse and worse until the final moments of the play when a certain event happens (spoilers!), one that has nothing to do with anything occurring, and instantly all disagreements are forgotten. The rug is pulled out from us and we land in a tacked-on all-smiles ending.
It’s a shame because the play seemed poised to embrace a kind of messiness. Instead, all disagreements are shown to be distractions that can be wiped away if only people would just choose to wipe them away. No one has to do the work of examining their own biases and world views. Even one character’s briefly referenced homophobia is waived away as though by a magic wand. It didn’t happen. It was never there. You don’t need to think about it. The consequence is that we stay locked into our one view of the characters. I get to walk out of the theater thinking that the Butleys are the show’s thwarted antagonist. An older audience member gets to walk out thinking the same couple has been gracious towards the Del Valles out of the goodness of their heart. Never do those two views ever have to cross because we’re never given any reason to think otherwise.
Perhaps I’m expecting too much. After all, can you really expect a single play to solve all of the borders that we put around ourselves in this modern age? I think that Native Gardens wants to be a conversation starter, a play that brings neighbors together to have the tough conversations. But its methods prevent that from happening. There’s a lot of shine on Gloucester Stage’s production, but the play keeps us fenced in. For tickets and more information, visit their website: www.gloucesterstage.com
