Mad Forest

By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

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Mad Forest (Matrix Theatre; 99 seats; $ 22 top)
 
Cast: George Murdock (Bogdan, Toma, Securitate Officer), Claudette Nevins (Irina, Flower Seller), Lynnda Ferguson (Lucia, Student), Julia Campbell (Florina, Housepainter), Scott Allan Campbell (Gabriel, Painter), Nancy Linehan Charles (Rodica, Flavia), Dave Higgins (Wayne, Mihai, Dog), Robin Gammell (Grandfather, Vampire), Raphael Sbarge (Radu), Don McManus (Ianos), Joel Swetow (Doctor, Angel); alternating cast: Kurt Deutsch, Gregg Henry, Kaitlin Hopkins, Matt McKenzie, Marilyn McIntyre, Marian Mercer, Lawrence Pressman, Cotter Smith, Sarah Zinsser, Lisa Akey, Tony Amendola, Raye Birk, William Dennis Hunt, Christian Svensson, John Walcutt, Time Winters. The ambition of Caryl Churchill's "Mad Forest" is extraordinary: to explore the ramifications of the fall of the Romanian dictator Ceausescu on the people who sufferedunder his rule. Churchill focuses most closely on a pair of families eventually united in marriage, but her play's aim is much larger -- she wants to weave the experience of an entire country's populace into the fabric of the play, and she is more or less successful in doing so, despite the sometimes inevitable diffuseness such large aims entail.
 

Eleven actors play 40 characters in the course of the play (and, as always at the Matrix Theater Co., each part is double-cast). The sisters Lucia (Lynnda Ferguson) and Florina (Julia Campbell) Vladu are at the heart of the primary story. Lucia's impending marriage to an American has brought the iron fist of Communist disapproval down on the whole family. Mother Irina (Claudette Nevins), a bus driver, is transferred to a less desirable route; father Bodgan (George Murdock) is approached by an apparatchik who suggests that he turn informant to redeem the family. And Florina's marriage to Radu (Raphael Sbarge) is forbidden by his parents.

TX:The Matrix Theatre Co. presents a play in two acts by Caryl Churchill. Directed by Stephanie Shroyer. In short scenes unfolding in several playing areas before and around the audience, which sits on benches in intimate proximity to the actors, life under the stifling shadow of communism is tellingly etched. On the mud-brown cobblestone and brick set by Deborah Raymond and Doran Vernacchio, enclosing both audience and performers, a priest wrestles grimly with his shame at subsuming the dictates of his religion to the politics of the day; people in comically mismatched winter clothing huddle while waiting for meat rations; jokes against the regime are told with one eye on the door.

And then, with a suddenness beautifully evoked in the first act's climax, everything changes. A chorus of characters -- a hospital nurse, a secret police member, abulldozer driver, a flower seller -- breathlessly relate the events of Dec. 21, 1989, when the unthinkable act that all had been thinking of for years came to pass: The people rose up against Ceausescu and brought down the regime.

When the jubilance of that upheaval is over, the Romanians are faced with a world where the hard certainties of communism leave a void too easily filled with pessimism and regret. In a lovely scene, the Vladu family lounges at a picnic, looking up at the sky and voicing their hopes for the future. Under the old regime, they wouldn't have dared such dreams; now that they can, they have to contend with the deeper sadness of seeing them unfulfilled.

With a play constructed of dozens of short vignettes, it's easy to lose focus , and the play's complexities sometimes strain audience interest.

And the few fantastic scenes, as when an angel colloquies with a priest, and a vampire and dog chat about their lonely existences, aren't sufficiently illuminating to justify their inclusion in an otherwise very worldly play.

There isn't a false note in any of the performances, but it's the ensemble work that stands out here more than any individual performers. The final scene, Florina's wedding, shows off Stephanie Shroyer's vivid directorial hand at its best: In an increasingly unruly dance of recrimination and reunion, with several heated conversations going on at once, we watch as the Vladu and Antonescu families are united in marriage amid a confusion of angry confrontations about the past, present and future. It's a comic, appropriately cacophonous end to a play that reverberates with the profound messiness of human history.

Set, Deborah Raymond, Doran Vernacchio; costumes, Cara Varnell; lighting, J. Kent Inasy; sound, Ruth Judkowitz; production stage manager, Deena Mullen; props , Chuck Olsen, casting, Marilyn Mandel; fights, Steve Rankin; stage manager, Susan Diamond. Opened, reviewed June 29, 1996; runs through Sept. 1. Running time: 2 hours, 30 min.