Personal and cosmic themes mesh uneasily in Amy Berryman’s play receiving its New York City premiere from Second Stage. Walden has some very big things on its mind, including climate change, the refugee crisis, geo-political upheaval, the fate of the Earth, and cosmic exploration. But those important issues tend to become lost in an otherwise familiar-feeling drama of sibling rivalry and the complicated relationship between twin sisters whose lives have taken very different paths.
The play set in the “not-so-distant future” takes place in a remote cabin in the wilderness, one that could well have been inhabited by the author of the classic book that provides its title. Residing there are Stella (Emmy Rossum, the cable series Shameless) and her boyfriend Bryan (Motell Foster), living very much off the grid after climate change has ravaged the planet. So ravaged, in fact, that scientists are looking to establish colonies on the Moon and Mars in order to keep humanity alive. (Fortunately, the playwright leaves out any mention of Elon Musk.)
Stella used to work as a NASA architect after having failed a fitness test necessary to become an astronaut. As the play begins, her astronaut/botanist sister Cassie (Zoë Winters, Heroes of the Fourth Turning) has just returned after a lengthy stint on the Moon, where she managed the impressive feat of making things grow in its barren soil. She shows up at the cabin for a long-belated reunion with Stella and to meet Bryan, a dedicated “Earth Advocate” who thinks societal resources should be devoted to making the planet once again inhabitable instead of looking toward the cosmos as a savior. He’s also very much determined to live off natural resources. “We don’t eat printed food,” he informs Cassie at one point, not long before skinning a rabbit in front of her.
[Read Melissa Rose Bernardo’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
Needless to say, tensions flare between the two women, the daughters of a famous astronaut, over their opposing viewpoints. Cassie is planning to join a mission to Mars, where she and her fellow scientists will reside in a space station named “Walden” that Stella has designed. She tells her sister that NASA very much wants her to return and be a part of the ground team. Stella wants nothing more than to continue living the simple life with Bryan and to, as she puts it, “raise a human with him,” although she also feels jealousy about her sister’s success.
Unfortunately, the play’s vaguely sci-fi aspects feel woefully underdeveloped, mainly serving as a flimsy springboard for the generic interpersonal dynamics among the trio, including the hint of an attraction between Cassie and Bryan and a revelation about a tragedy in Bryan’s recent past. Despite the occasionally trenchant dialogue and welcome doses of humor, neither the characterizations nor situations are developed sufficiently to hold our interest. Running a mere 90 minutes, Walden lacks the seismic punch to gets its points across quickly and would have benefited from a greater fleshing out.
Director Whitney White (Jaja’s African Hair Braiding) has elicited fine performances from the cast, with the always reliable Winters making the strongest impression with her acerbic line readings and Foster displaying a warm, winning presence and sharp comic timing. (Rossum’s relative lack of stage experience is evident, but not damagingly so.) And the staging features impressive sound and lighting effects, designed by Lee Kinney and Adam Honore respectively, that effectively convey the planet’s existential turmoil. If only the writing were as vivid.
