Wendall Greene
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Wendall Greene takes place in Archetype–sorry, Arkansas, where single mom Cindy is so desperate to change her life she’s prepared to believe that cardsharp Cooch will sweep her off to Vegas just as soon as his luck changes. Her son Jimmy expresses his own desperation by seeking out the company of the title character, a mostly silent black man reputed to have done something unspecified to young boys. Whirling around these twin star systems are various local-color satellites, including kindly storekeeper Mr. Pritchet and the overgrown adolescents who hang out on his porch: Terry (the brains of the outfit), Meredith (its gonads), and retarded Seamus (the butt of its jokes). Worlds collide when Cooch’s determination to regain his winning streak coincides with Pritchet’s scheme to grab Wendall’s land.
The first act is Sam Shepard redux: noisy men, a victimized woman, family secrets, and bizarre belief systems, all wrapped up in lots of hootin’ and hollerin’ and seriocomic patter. People spit in one another’s faces and hands, conveying desolation so exuberant and picturesque it’s hard to remember that poverty is actually unpleasant. There’s so much of the old Steppenwolf on view–unanticipated bloodshed, uninhibited groping, and unidentified yellow liquid being drunk out of a mason jar–that you check your day planner at intermission to see if it’s 1987.
Darrell W. Cox and Wesley Walker comfortably fill shoes broken in by Gary Sinise and Jeff Perry as crotch-grabbing oafs about whom the question is not if they’re trouble but when (though their Dukes of Hazzard accents slander the entire south). Tim Edward Rhoze does as well as he can with the thankless role of Wendall: there’s not much to be said for playing a saint, especially one with his hat pulled down over his face and fewer than ten lines before intermission. The second-act speech when Wendall is lashed to a tree and still offering gentle words of wisdom (“Everyone’s got his row to hoe”) strains credulity, but that’s the fault of the playwright, not Rhoze. Joe Forbrich is duly snaky as Cooch, while Robert Breuler is equal parts charming and creepy as Pritchet. As Seamus, Terry Berner does best of all, keeping his character grounded in the moment–focused on the box he carries, the fishing lures he’s lost–notwithstanding his allegorical role as seer and sayer. Brian S. Bembridge’s clever scenery drops down or opens out as needed and can withstand any amount of chewing.
