Second Stage Lands a Futuristic Gem of a Play About Salvation with Berryman’s “Walden” – front mezz junkies, Theater News

The Off-Broadway Theatre Review: Second Stage’s Walden

By Ross

“The world is collapsing all around us,” they tell us in the dynamic environmental Walden, and it’s impossible not to take in that sentiment and feel it hit hard and deep into our collective soul. It’s exactly what we all are experiencing these days, especially as we reel against all that is hitting us post-election. The news cycle is continually playing havoc with our hope and belief systems, smashing us left, right, and center with bad news and images of what is about to come, alongside the horrifically upsetting topic of global warming, and the seemingly irreversible damage we are doing to our planet daily. It’s nonstop, and overwhelming to say the least. And in that emphatically stated idea at the heart of Second Stage‘s Walden, the new utterly captivating little gem of a play by Amy Berryman (Alien Girls), the warning, as terrifying as it is, appears to be true, not just in the play, but in everything that surrounds our current newsworthy reality.

Directed with clear intent by Whitney White (MTC’s Jaja’s African Hair Braiding), Walden delivers a sideways punch to the gut that resonates with emotional connection and clarity. The crackling of space communication brings us in, with static destructive energy filling our senses, folding us into the metal underhill space. “It’s totally safe,..you don’t need a mask,” they say to their futuristic newly-arrived guest, and somehow, internally, we don’t feel the same sense of peace settling into our bones. The news cycle we are being fed is one filled with disaster and death. “It’s all going to get worse,” we are told, and we know that feeling intuitively, even if we are trying hard to avoid the real-time news cycle of post-election 2024.

Yet, hidden away in this cleverly envisioned remote cabin in the woods, impeccably designed by Matt Saunders (LCT’s Pipeline), a former NASA architect is working hard to “act happy.” Stella, embodied beautifully by an engaging Emmy Rossum (“Shameless“) is building and growing a newly redesigned life with a climate-conscious Earth Activist by the name of Bryan, passionately and handsomely played by the deliberate Motell Foster (“La Cocina“). Their low-impact habitation, consisting of a stunningly constructed cabin with fold-away walls, a slanted metallic roof growing evergreens, and a well-cared-for vegetable garden that nerd Stella has named “Middle Earth“, lives and breathes just over there beyond our vantage point. Dynamically brought to light by lighting designer Adam Honoré (Broadway’s Ain’t No Mo’), the space takes on the serenity and power of the trees and the sound of crickets, brought to energetic life by sound designer Lee Kinney (Broadway’s Is This A Room), and if there is any peace to be found in this world, future and now, this is the place.

It’s the “The American Wilderness“, in “The Not-So-Distant Future”, but one somewhat without screens, and sort of off the grid. But not entirely. The couple prepares, in their own way, for an arrival and a celebration (“but not a party“), yet, it’s clear that a storm seems to be Bryan-brewing somewhere beyond the trees. But what kind of storm is it that is forming out there on the horizon and in his knees? That remains unclear. Stella, it seems, with great internalized conflict, has invited her estranged twin sister, Cassie, portrayed with clear conviction by Zoë Winters (Public’s White Noise), to their little slice of eco-heaven. And we wonder. Will the world collapse around them, inside this house, or just beyond these safe breathable air borders?

The sister is a NASA botanist, fresh off the ship after a celebrated year-long mission on the Moon. She’s an astronaut, just like their deceased father, bringing into this space a presence that still lives and preaches inside both of these young women’s heads. As the two try to find unity and connection over a glass of vintage wine, tender old wounds start to show their hidden thorns, playing havoc with their reunion and the nervous introduction by Stella of Bryan, her fiance.

Their fragile dynamic is displayed in a strongly constructed conflict, easily unveiled with the stellarly constructed costumes by Qween Jean (PAC NYC’s Cats) that reinforce the tug of war between Stella’s future and their EA-rewired design. Deeply rooted in a sibling rivalry that tore them apart many years ago, both unearth their shared twisted struggle to find a more fulfilled life sprouting forth with meaning and connection. It’s not a smooth root-free pathway to walk, as each navigates the uneasy yet brainy push and pull of historical familial forces that were planted so firmly by a now-deceased father. And they stumble hard, with Cassie more readily reaching out to be steadied, generally by the more open Bryan, in ways that Stella can’t.

Set in the not-so-distant future, the play sets its global ambitions inside a compelling story about sisters dealing with grief, disconnection, jealousy, and an unforgiving and unspoken estrangement. “I want it to be me out there,” she says, as they dig their way through the dark evergreen tangles of discontentment, unearthing themes of climate change, space travel, and a rivalry that has been planted deep in their Moon love for ages. We “really messed this one up,” the play tells us, and even though, at that particular moment in the play, they are talking about our planet, the more intimate concept seems to parallel their fractured attachment and complex sisterly engagement. The central question that follows, in a way, is about both of these circling hemispheres; the personal intimate dilemma and the much larger global crises. Is it “way too late to make a difference?” they wonder? Yet trapped inside that tough question, these three characters take on both realms, hoping to find some sort of balance and mutual understanding in the futuristic predicament that has grown up strong before them.

Berryman’s intuitive and clairvoyant Walden comes forward igniting our already strong, deep anxiety about climate change, setting up the forever conflict between nothingness and connection in a future where the climate catastrophe has intensified to a level we can only imagine (and others predict) when humanity has to decide whether to save the planet or flee it. The same could be said of the two pairs of relationships so wisely seeded in the hard-surfaced construct of Walden, and the serenity of all that grows around this sanctuary. The intensity of the earth’s desperation for salvation encapsulates every twist and turn of this stunningly crafted play. As the sun sets, and darkness encroaches on this trio that wrestles with innovation, adventure, colonization, and habitation, the fight for identity packed within a Mars mission intensifies, tearing at the fabric of their fragile relationships. Will they flee in desperation and claim it out there on another planet? Or will they stay and fight to save all that could grow up strong underneath their earth-bound feet?