GREENLAND
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Unfortunately British playwright Howard Brenton’s 1988 Greenland exemplifies political theater. In the first act he presents a caricaturelike cross section of British society on the day of a parliamentary general election: the disillusioned Labour Party candidate Joan (Consuelo Allen) and her long-suffering assistant Bill (Scott Kennedy), the fundamentalist zealot and “moral campaigner” Betty Blaze (Lee Roy Rodgers) and her lesbian feminist activist daughter Judy (Holly Cardone), and the morally bankrupt aristocrat Paul (Benjamin Werling) and his utterly despondent wife Milly (Kirsten Sahs). Through it all wanders Brian (Rick Peeples), a drunken unemployment statistic who enigmatically boasts over and over about his “secret life.”
The characters simply embody opposing forces: conservative versus liberal, reactionary versus radical, rich versus poor. Brenton presents them in a series of satirical vignettes, giving Greenland a darkly farcical tone during the first half of the opening act. But then he puts these rather sketchy characters through moments of enormous emotional crisis. Judy and Betty, for example, despite their professed hatred of each other’s worldviews, collapse sobbing into each other’s arms as the painful intensity of their mother-daughter relationship overwhelms them. Paul fears nothing less than complete financial ruin if the Socialists win the election, and his turmoil leads him to beat his wife nearly senseless. Milly responds with a wish for utter oblivion: “I don’t want anything . . . I just don’t want to be who I am.” She remains slumped in a pile onstage for nearly half the first act. Brian–who’s little more than a stock character–ends up on the brink of suicide.
Famous Door’s eight cast members struggle admirably to give Greenland a human scope. The performances are generally quite solid, with some strong comic work from Kennedy, Werling, and Robert Caisley as Severan-Severan, the last reactionary in utopia. But too often director Calvin MacLean has his actors collapsing to the floor in anguish, exaggerating the play’s already overwrought emotions when a bit of restraint would have greatly increased the drama and tension.
