In light of recent decisions made by the Administration, it seems the Wesleyan University mission statement suggests that anything bringing joy to students must be destroyed, preferably without apparent reason. Those who attended “The Long Christmas Dinner” in the ’92 Theater before Thanksgiving break might have found out that some authority figures here still work to enrich the students’ lives.
The figure in question is assistant professor of theater Yuriy Kordonskiy, whose production of Thornton Wilder’s “The Long Christmas Dinner” went up in the ’92 before break. The well-named play takes place at the home of the Bayard family over the course of 90 Christmas dinners, though script is only 30 pages long. The play depicts life as it must look to God, years changing seamlessly in mid-thought and generations passing just as we get to know them. In effect, the play is only one dinner, with many entrances and exits, and we only know that time has passed by the landmarks of birth and death.
Adjunct assistant professor of theater Marcela Oteiza’s stark white set extended from one end of the theater to the other and had three points of entrance. Characters entered the dining room, as though simply from outdoors, by a ramp that came through the center of the audience. The other two were not literal in this way. The set disappears at either end of the theater; from the stage right ramp came every infant born into the story, and out the stage left ramp exited every person at death.
In the beginning of the play the elderly Mother Bayard, played by Emmalee Riegler ’08, is wheeled off into death in her wheelchair while her concerned daughter-in-law Lucia (Hallie-Cooper Novack ’07) tells her perhaps she should lie down. Once Mother Bayard is gone, it is already the following year and Lucia is telling her husband Roderick (Ari Brand ’06) and his cousin Brandon (Will Pinson-Rose ’05) that she wishes Mother Bayard could have been there to learn of the baby to come. The baby comes two minutes later, and is soon a young man named Charles (Eric Wdowiak ’06).
Four generations pass before our eyes this way, the characters aging visibly onstage without the use of any make-up or stage effect. We see cousin Brandon go deaf, Charles go from playful youth to pompous patriarch and his sister Genevieve (Emily Dreyfuss ’06) go from sparkplug to ironic spinster. Brand and Cooper-Novack return as their own grandchildren, whose brother Sam (Mike James ’07) goes off to die in World War I. Charles’ wife Leonora (Julie Mathis ’06) is absorbed into the family, going from outsider to being referred to herself as Mother Bayard.
Kordonskiy has a history of trusting student actors with weighty roles—his spring ’04 “Crime and Punishment” is a prime example of this, and of his apparent predilection for completely white sets. Under his direction the students deliver. The entire cast rose to the challenge this difficult play set, filling any single line with a character’s entire life. Their performances were not only stirring, but also rich down to the last detail, practically pulsating with the life in their characters.
Dreyfuss and Wdowiak in particular went through significant onstage character change, growing up before our eyes, as the actors shifted from wide-eyed and carefree to fixed in adult roles as though they had always been that way. The two shared what was perhaps the best moment of the play: Shortly after Lucia’s death the bereft Genevieve tries to take her own life, rushing towards the ramp to death as though to catch up with her mother. It is Charles who physically pulls her from it; who will not let her leave. The brief wild moment between them brought tears.
Rogers (Diego Ortiz ’06), the family servant, is one of Kordonskiy’s own innovations. The script references various invisible servants as the years go by, but in this production Rogers remains throughout, going from juvenile to ancient and hitting all the stops in between. Ortiz’s performance was entirely physical, his silent character compelling as the first and last person we see onstage.
Meanwhile, Mike James ’07 was onstage for no more than a minute but was an intriguing presence with a voice that commanded attention. If he does not perform again soon, it will infuriate many of us who want to know more.
The play nimbly tackled the paradox of time. Brand, who onstage never fails to capture one’s attention, had one of the most clever lines in the script: Roderick I—oderick’s grandso—ays rebelliously that time in their town doesn’t move. Despite what the audience has seen up to that point, this doesn’t feel false. Time does both; it races and crawls in a way that is difficult to describe. And instead of describing it, Kordonskiy shows it. Rogers, as the only living witness to four generations, and an implied fifth, helps do this. And perhaps it was the very fact that time moved so quickly from Christmas to Christmas; the audience was forced to imagine everything that must have happened in between. The entire cast worked with the text to complete the picture.
Kordonskiy reliably seems to trust his student actors, treating them like professionals without forgetting that we are all here to learn. His shows provide challenges for both his cast and his audience, and in the context of Wesleyan life this production was miraculous: It treated the students acting and the students watching as people worthy of the joy that good art brings. So ,for future reference, if you’d like a reminder of what’s good about Wesleyan be sure to go to the theater. Just don’t tell the board of trustees.
THE LONG CHRISTMAS DINNER by Thornton Wilder; directed by Yuriy Kordonskiy; scenic design by Marcela Oteiza; costume design by Leslie Weinberg; lighting design by John Carr; stage manager Zaheed Essack ’05; assistant director Rebecca Josue ’06.
WITH Ari Brand ’06 (RODERICK, RODERICK II), Hallie Cooper-Novack ’07 (LUCIA, LUCIA II), Megan Diamondstein ’06 (ERMENGARDE), Emily Dreyfuss ’06 (GENEVIEVE), Mike James ’07 (SAM), Julie Mathis ’06 (LEONORA), Diego Ortiz ’06 (ROGERS), Will Pinson-Rose ’05 (COUSIN BRANDON), Emmalee Riegler ’08 (MOTHER BAYARD), Eric Wdowiak ’06 (CHARLES).
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