Craig Wright is notable for his ability to give a credible voice to traditional, strict morality. In his new play, Melissa Arctic, he gives a strong speech to Paul in the second act. Paul Alexander is frustrated by his son Ferris's refusal to attend college and to join the family business, and he argues convincingly, "being a parent is the only real relationship." He goes on to conclude that one loves one's spouse because one loves one's child.
The play is a masterful transposition of William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale to the 1970s and 80s and Wright's patch of ground, rural Pine City, Minnesota.
It draws on some of the people and places that we've met in his Molly's Delicious and The Pavilion.
Wright has a gift for the effective use of low-tech theatricality.
The touching arrival of Melissa (the Perdita character) in the life of farmer Alec is physicalized as a silk butterfly on a wire (more about the butterflies below). The hilarious demise of Lindy recapitulates Shakespeare's most famous stage direction (Exit pursued by a bear) with a pantomime polar bear that is just this side of cheesy.
There is a simple score for piano and guitar, and if the cast's voices are not equally strong, well, that's part of the package.
The higher tech in this production is subtle. Tony Cisek (set) and Dan Covey (lights) have collaborated on a set dominated by empty picture frames, into which spaces suggestive colors, patterns, and silhouettes are front- and rear-projected. (The frames become paintings in Cindy's gallery, portraying bits of Pine City history, in the piece's closing scenes.)
Among the cast are Kyle Thomas as the instrumental Carl Kuchenmeister and Ian Merrill Peakes as Leonard (the Leontes analogue). In Act 2, Peakes has a wounded hitch in his vocal gait that twists the sinews of your heart.
Craig Wright is writing the wisest, smartest, most musical new theater in town.
PS about the butterflies: Melissa Arctic (Oeneis melissa) is a nondescript resident of the tundra that strays to the New England mountains, the U.S. Rockies, and (by poetic license) the Great Plains. Its close relative, Polixenes Arctic (O. polixenes) shares its species name with the Shakespearean analogue to Wright's Paul Alexander.
