Abundance: Wheels Grinding Down Life's Jarring Trail

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Abundance:

Zachary Scott Theatre Center,

through July 2

Running time: 2 hrs, 25 min

The Wheel of Fortune may be better noted as a dramatic device in Elizabethan theatre, but in Beth Henley's disturbing play Abundance, produced by Zachary Scott Theatre Center, Fortune's Wheel is like those iron-rimmed wooden giants attached to wagons pulled by oxen of the American West. As the wheels grind along their jarring trail, they describe the fates of two women with painful precision, who make their journeys over life's rutted tracks and across a searing, almost inhuman wasteland that was the frontier. Henley's play disturbs with its raw, unromanticized take on the life and characters of the high plains of Wyoming in the 1860s. Life wasn't just hard, it was messy, ignorant, foolhardy, and dangerous. Henley's script capitalizes on language and characters that seem pulled out of the darkest parts of frontier life, creating an uncomfortable world with few sparkles.

This is not to say that this production doesn't have its lustre. It does. This is one of the most challenging dramas staged this year, and it is the acting that gives this dark play its shine. Barbara Chisholm and Janelle Buchanan play Macon Hill and Bess Johnson, two women drawn to the West by the promise of marriage to men they've never met. Chisholm's Macon bubbles with optimism about the West: She's boisterous and practical, looking forward to her adventure. Buchanan's Bess is mousy and plain, unsure and terribly, terribly dull-witted. The bubbly Macon and the simple Bess soon discover that their prospective futures are not what they'd expected. The men they marry -- for Macon the one-eyed William Curtis, congenially played by Scotty Roberts; for Bess the brother of her late betrothed, the misanthropic and quite frightening Jack Flan, played like a coiled spring by Joe York -- both possess a childlike simplicity mixed with a frontiersman's cunning. But the mixes are radically different: Roberts is more childlike; York is chilling, even cruel. His is a mesmerizing performance, full of brooding and ignorance and temper, but not without moments of innocence, too: In many ways Jack Flan is a prototypical Stanley Kowalski (a role York tackles at Zach next season).

As the wheels roll on and the story continues, so the fortunes shift for both couples. It comes as no surprise, then, that opportunity arises for Jack Flan to commandeer Macon's affections, even in full view of the others; that Bess has a complete character makeover, wizened at the hands of Native Americans; that all the characters, eventually, see through to the core of the others, and a revolting sight it can be. For this acting quartet, however, such shifting provides wonderful opportunities to explore different aspects of these characters and each actor is quite deft in his or her exploration.

Rich Upton appears as a balladeer, strumming a lone guitar and singing snatches of (mostly) traditional frontier-era songs, gently linking intense scenes with an assured twang. For director (and Chronicle Arts editor) Robert Faires, this is an apt description of how he's mastered the rhythms of this play: There are no jolts in the production, despite the twang of the text. York's set includes an off-center wooden platform stage that floats in a moat of reddish gravel, creating the crunchy atmosphere of that dusty trail, but it also creates some sightline problems on the round Whisenhunt Arena Stage.

Henley, perhaps worn out from so much dark tension, provides a low-stakes winding down to her play. The wheels come to a slow, rather peaceful halt, with a final scene between the two women offering some degree of lightness and humor, reminiscent of the play's long-lost, hopeful opening. The good folk at Zach Scott have completely missed the stagecoach in describing this play as "rambunctious" and "tongue-in-cheek," as if there is some sort of lightweight laugh-fest here. There are laughs, but mostly of the uncomfortable variety as the characters are bounced along that rutted western road.