Shotgun's 'The Great Divide':
social drama punches hard and leaves you thinking
Why do we go to see plays?
Leaving aside the grand musical spectacles (Les Miserables, etcetera)
which are so popular, isn’t it true that, as entertainment,
most people find most plays are a poor substitute for a good film,
a rock concert, or a sporting event? What do we find in the theatre
that we don’t find elsewhere presented with more fun and
accessibility and cheaper to boot? Why do we bother with this
dinosaur?
As a reviewer who typically
goes to several plays a week, this is a question that constantly
engages me. I haven’t found a glib answer.
But often enough, I’m
glad to say, I attend a play and feel, to a greater or lesser
degree, as if I have figuratively stuck my finger into an electric
socket, and leave the theatre feeling as if something powerful
has passed into me. This is hard to describe but the sensation
is unmistakable and I don’t encounter it elsewhere. Fellow
theatre lovers will know the feeling of which I write, although
they may find themselves equally flummoxed trying to put it into
words.
Sometimes, it arises from
an encounter with archetypal forces and images, powerfully communicated
by actors who push themselves to physical and emotional extremes.
Sometimes (often with well-produced Shakespeare) the poetry of
language beautifully spoken by live actors will do the trick.
Occasionally, the thrill
is intellectual, arising from a drama written to seriously examine
a social issue from a variety of human perspectives. That sort
of drama was pioneered by Norwegian expatriate playwright Henrik
Ibsen in the late 19th century. Ibsen perfected the genre of drama
as societal commentary.
In The Great Divide,
inspired by and loosely based upon Ibsen’s An Enemy
of the People, playwright Adam Chanzit and director Mina
Morita have given us a strong drama about a societal issue. In
Ibsen’s original play, Dr. Stockman is an admired citizen
of a small resort town where his brother is mayor. The town is
on the verge of a financial boom, having opened public baths which
are thought to have healing properties, and which are attracting
large numbers of wealthy tourists. When Dr. Stockman finds that
the water has been poisoned by local tanneries, making many people
sick, he calls for the baths to be closed. He finds himself hated
and despised by the townspeople and even his own brother, as they
are unwilling to believe this inconvenient truth.
In Chanzit’s contemporary
take, the setting is a small town in rural Colorado, where oil
companies have been using fracking technology (a means of using
chemicals to create fissures in rock layers, allowing access to
natural gas). This technology has created a boom for the local
economy, bringing jobs and profits to many.
As in Ibsen’s play,
Dr. Stockman (a woman this time, played with persuasive passion
by Heather Robison) discovers that the technology is contaminating
the water supply and making people sick. When she speaks up about
this, all hell breaks loose.
Playwright Chanzit does
not shy away from exploring the many contradictory ways of viewing
this complex situation. There are laborers, townspeople, landowners,
family members, company spokespeople—a full complement of
stakeholders. The script does an excellent job of showing the
many large economic forces and smaller interpersonal pressures
that effect the action.
The large cast is thoroughly
convincing and works well as an ensemble. Director Mina Morita
keeps things moving rapidly, balancing the larger social drama
with smaller dramas of personal relationships, carefully played.
Audiences will leave the
theatre emotionally excited and intellectually stimulated, having
felt a lot and wanting to talk about it. That’s what it’s
all about, right?
