Jonathan J Miner
Strollers Theatre’s current production, Men on Boats, is an old fashioned adventure featuring “great men” exploring uncharted lands in the West and taming the American frontier. At once comfortingly familiar and completely disorienting, it is the story of the 19th century rough-and-tumble Renaissance man John Wesley Powell and his perilous journey canoeing down the Green River to the Colorado River and through the Grand Canyon. With a crew of nine other men — including a cook, an English tourist, and a mapmaker — the one-armed, Union Army hero Powell leads the expedition, outfitted with four boats and supplies to last 10 months. Although he did ultimately succeed in his glorious mission, only two boats and six members of the original crew completed the trip — the first government-sanctioned exploration of the area by white men.
And if this play, by Jaclyn Backhaus, read like Powell’s published memoirs, it would resemble every other manifest destiny adventure narrative — an epic struggle of man against nature, where our heroes encounter “primitive” Native American tribes, accomplish death-defying feats, and name every river and mountain after themselves, since they are the first white people to “discover” them. While the play does follow actual events of Powell and his band of explorers, it is told in a delightfully subversive style. Directed with precision, energy and rule-breaking creativity by Sean Langenecker, the immersive production invites audiences to see this moment in history through an entirely new lens.
The first shift is apparent when the audience enters the Drury Theatre at the Bartell — instead of taking their regular seats in the large auditorium, the audience is limited to 70 viewers per evening, and patrons are invited to climb up a “dock side” ramp covered with ropes and lanterns and take their seats onstage, where they will literally feel as if they are “in the same boat” with the rugged crew. Up close and intensely theatrical, it is as if the rushing rivers, rapids and waterfalls are only inches away.
The show opens with a battle cry from Powell (a tough and stubborn Liz Angle) urging the boats ever forward down a wild river despite the obvious danger. Though she issues her enthusiastic order from atop a table in the back of the house, and the actors following her lead are simply running down the stairs toward the stage, we quickly understand that the commander is perched on a rocky outcropping and the canoes are sailing through a particularly tricky bend in the river. Coming to a resting place on shore, the boats check in onstage with all members accounted for. So begins the travelogue enacted by a tight and committed ensemble of women dressed in men’s clothing of the period.
Gradually personalities of the ragtag group emerge. Sumner (Liz Stattelman-Scanlan) is a mountain man dressed in a fringed leather tunic, hoping to conquer the Yukon after this escapade. Hawkins (a fierce Clarice Lafayette) is the gruff cook, who takes her biscuits and bacon very seriously. The naive, 19-year-old Bradley (a wide-eyed Leigha Vilen) is the youngster of the group, in awe of the entire undertaking. As Powell’s brother Old Shady, Cynthia Klawitter doesn’t say much, but she does sing a few contemplative songs to no one in particular. Seneca (Maria Cina) and OG (Shauntel Burzynski) are brothers, Civil War vets, and more loyal to each other than they are to their captain. Hall (Bridget Doxtater) is the trusty navigator and mapmaker for the voyage. Dunn (an unflinching Carrie Sweet), who is second in command, begins to privately doubt Powell’s leadership, then openly challenges his decisions, which frequently put the lives of the crew at great risk.
The fantastic juxtaposition of women playing these men’s roles is that their bluster, ambition and worldviews can be seen so clearly as a product of their time. Instead of reinforcing old stereotypes about “how the West was won” Men on Boats exposes the Eurocentric drive to “discover” and “conquer” for what it was: limitless ego. There is a particularly amusing vignette about how Powell and Dunn decide to name various mountains, admitting that the sites already have names, bestowed either by Indigenous people, or other Europeans who have made this journey previously.
As dynamic as the individuals are, the real achievement in this production is how expertly the ensemble works together. Each actor has specific activities in every beat, from trying to light a campfire to rolling cigarettes to journaling and whittling to pass the time. Choreography to create the feeling of boats dodging rapids, rescues of crew members who are thrown overboard, long portages, and dangerous whirlpools, is precise and executed with such complete commitment that it’s impossible not to be swept along with the story, even though each “boat” is merely a hinged wooden plank, held by the actor in the bow.
Men on Boats also has genius technical moments. Langenecker’s set is arranged to make the interactions with the crew feel intimate, but through inspired reveals and lighting effects (designed by Tom Littrell), the first glimpses of the Grand Canyon feel profound. Costumes, designed by Marie Schulte, are impressively recreated from the era, including suspenders, hats, long johns, vests and bits of Civil War uniforms. Since so much of the setting must be suggested by the text and filled in by the audience’s imagination, attention to detail in the costumes that we do see clearly lends real authenticity to the piece.
Appropriately, the ending is a stark reckoning of myth with reality. It jolts us back from the exciting fairy tale of westward expansion and the blinding faith that these men had that they were doing something extraordinary and important. We realize that while some of these rugged individualists prospered from their quests, many did not. When you look Powell up on Wikipedia, you’ll note that he has many, many things named after him, but his crew is virtually forgotten.
Running through Nov. 23, Strollers Theatre’s Men on Boats is one of the most exciting plays you will see this year, thanks to equally inspired acting, directing and design and a script that turns history on its ear.
