Lanford Wilson’s “Angels Fall” doesn’t get staged very often.
And after seeing Winding Road Theater Ensemble’s production of the play, it’s easy to see why.
It’s didactic, too tidy and often feels forced.
The setting is a chapel in rural New Mexico — one of the strokes of genius in this production is that Winding Road stages it in the Josias Joesler-designed St. Francis Chapel at St. Luke’s Home. It is austere and intimate and it quickly transports the audience to the play’s setting.
A nuclear accident has forced six people to huddle there until the roads are clear: Niles (Glen Coffman), an art professor who had a breakdown mid-lecture, now damns education, and is headed to a sanitarium in Phoenix; his younger wife, Vita (Shanna Brock), a former student who is trying to keep Niles together until they reach their destination; Marion (Susan Cookie Baker), a wealthy widow whose late husband was a well-known artist; Zappy (Cole Potwardowski), Marion’s much younger lover and a pro tennis player; Don (Luke Salcido), who long dreamed of becoming a doctor and caring for others in his Indian tribe; and Fr. Doherty (David Alexander Johnston), who says mass at this and other places across the reservation. The priest has long supported Don’s ambitions, and is taken aback when the young man wants to take a job in a research lab rather than providing medical services in New Mexico. Not surprisingly, Fr. Doherty heaps guilt on Don for his decision.
The circumstances that keep them there — the nuclear accident — and the contemplative setting are contrivances that force them all to consider “What manner of persons are we to be,” as the priest asks.
Each has an epiphany that answers that question. See? Just too tidy.
There are solid actors in this production who oddly weren’t able to breath life into their characters.
With the exception of Marion and Vita, anger and anxiety boils over, but it is rarely modulated and so loses its impact.
And while Wilson is wonderful with dialogue, he seems just too intent on lecturing to make an impact.
Molly Lyons directs “Angels Fall” with the same austerity that the chapel carries.
That, combined with a script that even Wilson himself wasn’t too crazy about, makes “Angels Fall” a not very satisfying evening of theater.
