(Above: Left to right, Clare McDonald, Cody Mendonca, Marla Norton play lead roles in The Very Little Theatre’s production of “Wonder of the World,” onstage through March 31.)
By Randi Bjornstad
The Very Little Theatre continues its 89th season with a play, “Wonder of the World,” that is somewhat of a departure from the VLT’s usual fare.
It could be viewed as comedy, as when a young woman named Cass Harris finds out that her husband, Kip, has a fetish for Barbie doll heads, a shock that sends her fleeing to Niagara Falls in search of … whatever one might search for in that circumstance.
Or maybe it’s a tragedy, because promising relationships so often can be fractured beyond repair by duelling expectations and abilities to forgive and, if not forget, nonetheless to move around an obstacle to a different kind of understanding.
In this case, director Michael Walker says as he describes the play, “The difference between what makes us laugh and what makes us cry often balances on the edge of a razor.”
In “Wonder of the World,” Walker concludes, playwright David Lindsay-Abaire “bundles up a hot mess of tragedy and delightfully shoves it over onto the sharp side of comedy.“
At the same time that comedy finds laughter in unusual situations, Walker said, this time around the humor also offers the viewer a chance to take a deeper look — and empathize with — the fragility of human relationships and how they often hover on a tightrope between destruction and recovery.
He warns that the script includes mature themes and language, as Cass Harris in her quest for enlightenment encounters a suicidal alcoholic, a lovelorn tour boat captain and an unusual therapist.
The original New York cast of “Wonder of the World” included Sarah Jessica Parker and Amy Sedaris, and the show received descriptions that included “exceedingly whimsical and playfully wicked” from the New York Times, “a revved-up, joyously zany play” from the Washington Post, and “a hilarious confection” from the Hollywood Reporter.
That’s not to say that Lindsay-Abaire sailed through the writing and production of the production, which followed his first triumph, “Fuddy Meers.” His final version of “Wonder of the World” opened off-Broadway in New York in late 2001, after a drastic rewrite he undertook based on his dissatisfactions with the original script that had appeared onstage in Washington, D.C.
The revamped play received two Drama Desk nominations for Parker, who played Cass Harris, and set designer David Gallo.
