Theophilus North takes up an adventure by the titular 30-year-old New England Yale graduate and prep school teacher who quits his job and sets out to travel the world. He wants to discover himself and a new life. Though he gets only as far as affluent Newport, his unexpected sojourn there absorbs him in much the same way he influences certain local inhabitants. Laura Braza attunes her direction of the play to her admiration for Thornton Wilder’s imagination and autobiographical elements that author Matthew Burnett has embellished. The production moves apace into the darker as well as illuminating elements of all the characters’ attitudes and actions. They’re not, however, completely stuck in Wilder’s 1926, leaving us to judge them in our time while understanding theirs. Steven Kemp evokes typically simple Wilder staging with two risers, a central miniature lighthouse, and a blue background. The technical designers allow for changes of place, time, temperature, mood, while basic period clothing and accessories characterize their wearers. A bicycle and books are major props, symbolic of the hero’s quest and knowledge to be spread, discovered, enjoyed, absorbed. Except for Brett Mack, who confidently stars as Theophilus solely, six actors play all the human characters and such speaking but inanimate objects as a lighthouse and a ferry boat. Don Walker is matchless as Theophilus’s disappointed father, a mechanic, and an old very rich man and lover of literature who’s been thought too ill not to be confined to his home. Ally Farzetta beguiles as teenaged Eloise who’s learning to play tennis and doesn’t care for her riches. She also makes a believable if unpleasant older heiress running off to what she thinks is freedom by eloping. Roxanne Fay runs a range of emotions as the hero’s mother, an Irish nurse, and a loyal and wise servant-companion, looking somewhat similar but making each distinct. Alex Pelletier goes smoothly from socialite mother to a rich-through-marriage, very vocal pregnant gal from Wisconsin forced to read Shakespearian plays. Finally Alex portrays a bossy divorcee. Dylan Crow, popular Conservatory alumnus, extends his achievements with roles of Casino owner, uppity teenager, student of French, and a husband who lacks surety of his place in life and cheats on his wife. Andrew Bosworth plays two different servants without much difference, for one of which he adopts a low-range, strange English-type accent that makes him hard to understand. He does much better as a smitten man trying to elope. While all elements in this production make for good, if a bit lengthy, Dog Days of Summer entertainment, I must admit I was glad when it ended. My problem is with Theophilus the person (not Brett Mack’s rendering of him), who to me shows himself self-centered, conceited, not as learned as he thinks (since he rarely shows great knowledge), and smug in his dealings with common people. What really got me (from personal experience for decades, not newly embraced with the Me Too Movement) was Theophilus’s interaction with the 14 year old Eloise, whom he would prefer to join him in having sundaes over teaching her tennis. He pursues her throughout. Also, he speaks French worse than his student Charles and sometimes displays ageism. Biographical accounts of Thornton Wilder given in connection with Matthew Burnett’s play may be interesting but if one doesn’t know about Wilder’s life or even his novel, shouldn’t the drama be judged by what it is and not what inspired it? Who is the Theophilus experienced onstage? What kind of guy? In 1926? Today?
