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Playwright Rick Garman knows
this part of the country well. Although the four MacArthur children are
exceptional people - one of them, heaven help us, is even a rock star -
each in his or her own way reflects the simple, decent values of the place
they come from. There is goodness, a sweetness to these people which Every one of Garman’s characters is easy to like, and it has been a long time since playwrights bothered to put pleasant human beings on stage. Angels in America gives us Roy Cohn, the devil incarnate; The Kentucky Cycle suggests that many of our pioneering forefathers were killers. Garman returns us to the notion that most people are good-natured and honorable, and that if we only stop to think about our behavior, we can amend it. His expatriate Iowans refer to their home as "the Bolivian corn jungle." All of us, to some degree, are estranged from our home town values. Garman is particularly adept at displaying what is right, and what is wrong with them. He both satirizes and celebrates the dominance of television in popular culture. The playwright is fortunate to have secured the services of Robert O’Reilly as director. This play deals with a vary delicate topic, how Americans cope with a family member dying of AIDS; in lesser hands 17 Days could easily have become a tear-jerking treatise on positive behavior. Instead, O’Reilly has faithfully captured the bitterness of family conflict, and the stubborn willfulness that constantly provokes the intrinsic harmony of people who have spent their childhood together. Very high standards of acting are demonstrated by his cast: Erin J. Dean is exceptional as the 12 year-old Lucy Baker; Debra Jean Rogers is a bit too mature for her 16 year-old sister, Breeann, but generally comports herself well; Laura Wernette is charming as the devoted mother, Mary Ann; Sandra Kinder is brilliant as Edith Anderson, the loving but eccentric neighbor; Bonita Friedericy is excellent as Jenny MacArthur, the prosperous divorcee; Lisa Gates commands a businesslike authority as congresswoman Elizabeth MacArthur-Jennings; and Nick DeGruccio as Jeff MacArthur, the rock star afflicted with AIDS, is profoundly sympathetic. Equally impressive is Richard D. Bluhm’s scenic design. Hard to believe this beautiful house is selling for under $90,000 - but that is the way things are in Iowa, where the real estate market is not nearly as inflated as it is out here. Gary Christensen’s lighting design is also very good, and he persuades us that the sunsets and storms of 17 Days are really passing before our eyes. Paul-Anthony Navarro’s sound design is a model of tasteful persuasion - the volume levels of the piano score and arriving vehicles are both set at exactly the right mark. Ted C. Giammona’s costume design never calls attention to itself, except when it should. The shirt Jeff MacArthur wears tells us that this is a man with political sensitivity who, of course, will one day muster the courage to take a public stand on AIDS, as he has on other serious issues of his generation. Rick Garman’s original music,
like his play, is poignant and haunting. He understands these people very
well, but he also write with a reverence for the mystery of their lives.
Copyright Drama-Logue
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Theatre
Reviews by Bruce Field, Drama-Logue, Sept. 2-8, 1993
may
cause the urban cynics among us to recoil in outrage; the rest of us, who
may have had the benefit of living in the midwest, will recognize these
characters as representative of the majority of the citizens of our country.