FIFTH OF JULY
Still, Chekhov is unquestionably the finer and more durable playwright, and Wilson’s emulation of the Russian writer’s quirky mixture of pathos and humor can seem a little obvious unless it’s played by a fine company. Similarly, the collection of eccentric yet easily labeled personalities Wilson has assembled for this portrait of Carter-era “national malaise” can come across as cliched without multidimensional individual performances. Such is the case with Kelly Loudon’s staging of the work for Argyle Gargoyle Productions.
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The setting is a down-at-heel family farm in Lebanon, Missouri. There Ken Talley, a bitter Vietnam veteran who lost his legs in the war, lives with his sister June, a disillusioned former bomb-throwing radical; June’s illegitimate 13-year-old daughter Shirley, at once a legacy of June’s careless sex life and a symbol of the spirit of youthful idealism her elders have lost; Ken’s lover Jed, a back-to-the-land longhair apparently modeled on Allen Ginsberg’s boyfriend Peter Orlovsky; and Ken and June’s aunt Sally, a slightly batty widow who can’t bring herself to dispose of the ashes of her husband Matt. (Matt’s World War II-era courtship of Sally was the topic of Wilson’s later Talley’s Folly.) Ken and June’s friends from college (the University of California at Berkeley, that onetime all-purpose symbol of loose living and leftie politics), Gwen and John Landis, are visiting the Talleys. Gwen, a copper heiress with a mouth and attitude that make Janis Joplin look demure, wants to be a rock singer; hubby John, who in younger days was sexually involved with both June and Ken, is an incipient yuppie wheeler-dealer who promotes Gwen’s career even though he doesn’t believe in her talent. (Eerily, John–the play’s destructive outsider, who wants to buy the Talley farm and turn it into a recording studio–now seems the most contemporary character of the bunch.) For extra measure there’s Weston Hurley, Gwen’s perpetually stoned-out, wise but childlike guitarist.
The problem of projection is exacerbated by director Loudon’s inept use of stage space. The uncredited set, which seeks to depict the living room and front porch of a sprawling farmhouse (but entirely misses the necessary atmosphere of a warm summer evening in the country), requires most of the action to be played upstage, which undermines the actors’ already limited capabilities for the subtleties needed to turn Wilson’s characters from types into full-blooded people. Based on Chicago’s southeast side (most of its shows are produced at Richard J. Daley College), Argyle Gargoyle promotes itself as a professional company; but its presentation of Fifth of July at Blue Rider, a well-known space for serious theater, sets up expectations that this community-level production doesn’t begin to match.
