‘Maple and Vine’ a ticket to the 1950s
by Eric Marchese
In films, novels, television shows and plays, the 1950s have been idealized more than any other 20th-century decade. We’re fascinated with the Eisenhower era and the dramatic or comedic potential inherent in it.
From “Pleasantville” to “Happy Days” to “Ozzie and Harriet,” we may be convinced that no new wrinkles exist that exploit this potential. That’s where Jordan Harrison’s dramedy “Maple and Vine” proves us wrong.
In delivering the 2011 play’s greater Los Angeles-area premiere, Anaheim’s Chance Theater shows that Harrison has a few surprises in store while provoking serious thought in the telling of a couple who finds a way to return to the 1950s and experience American life during that seemingly halcyon time.
Katha and Ryu Nakata (Jennifer Ruckman and Robert M. Lee) are professionals who’ve begun to feel burnout in their hectic and never-restful New York City lives.
Discontented with the urban jungle and disconsolate following a miscarriage, Katha meets Dean Messner (Daniel Fagan), a charismatic young man who offers her a possible ticket to happiness.
That ticket involves a six-month trial residency at a self-contained community in the Midwest created by the Society of Dynamic Obsolescence. Wishing to avoid the complexities of 21st-century life and revert to the 1950s, the S.D.O.’s founders and members have built a world devoid of anything that smacks of the digital age.
The big question, of course, is whether ditching our electronic tethers and scrubbing our memories of everything from the past six decades is an automatic road to contentment. The eventual path achieved by the Nakatas is one of “Maple’s” rewards.
In some ways, the S.D.O.’s concept of living in the past is by its nature less stress-inducing. As Harrison shows, though, the trade-offs aren’t necessarily welcome ones: Social enlightenment we take for granted today is in its nascent stages, including any sort of equality for women and ethnic – or other – minorities.
More alarming is the expectation that Katha and Ryu will follow the crowd. The couple’s first dinner party in their new home reveals the staggering dearth of intellectual curiosity in force within the Society.
Parallel to this is the discrimination Ryu faces at his new workplace based on his racial background. Unclear is whether this is the Society’s attempt to re-create prejudices common in the ’50s or if they reflect only the attitudes of Ryu’s new boss Roger (James McHale).
Many of Harrison’s concepts tend toward the abstract, which means they don’t necessarily translate into the stuff of sound, satisfying dramatic theater. Even a revelation about Dean’s sexual orientation has a pro forma feel to it.
Mark Ramont’s perceptive staging reflects the text’s dry, understated tone, lightly satirical humor and the claustrophobia of coerced conformity, a quality induced by Harrison’s script. And while nothing of major dramatic value occurs, “Maple and Vine” supplies intriguing food for thought.
Without flashy flourishes, Ruckman shows Katha’s neuroses and misery as part of her general makeup.
Lee reflects Ryu’s inherent caution, his suspicion of everything about the S.D.O. and his resistance to buying into the program. Like Katha, Ryu’s adjustments to the couple’s new life are gradual, and wholly plausible.
Fagan and Kelly Ehlert depict the primary traits – artifice and plasticity – as extensions of the true natures of Dean and his wife, Ellen. Only in private do we see they’re affecting these odd-duck personas only to be accepted by the Society.
Fagan shows Dean’s emerging panic as he struggles to suppress traits at odds with 1950s prevailing mores. Ehlert gives the slender Ellen credible heft to bolster her assertion that while ’50s women seem submissive, they know how to get what they want. McHale is solid as 2010’s openly gay Omar and 1955’s closeted Roger.
In Joe Holbrook’s ingenious scene design, everything before the move to the S.D.O. is in black, white and gray, while everything after it is in the soothing pastels of the 1950s. Just as ingenious is the reveal of Katha and Ryu’s new home at the corner of Maple and Vine.
Perhaps the play’s most intriguing theme is a hypothetical: If you pretend it’s the ’50s for any length of time, and those around you do the same, do your thoughts, ideas and beliefs actually change? Does play-acting morph into actuality?
Whether you buy into the scenarios spun here, these are the kinds of questions and issues Chance Theater’s production sparks days – and perhaps weeks – after seeing it.
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