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The Trials of Humanity in Theater and Life Take the Stage In Westwind's Bittersweet "A Company of Wayward Saints"

Donald Gilpin

A Company of Wayward Saints, this fall's offering from the Westwind Repertory Company, takes on the daunting task of portraying no less than the history of humanity, on stage at the Hun School theater. In stylized commedia dell'arte attire and characterizations for the first act, then with masks off in the second act, the nine-member Westwind ensemble portrays a company of struggling, squabbling actors. This is humanity: self-centered, putting up a false front, constantly forced to improvise with dwindling resources, wanting to find its way back home.

Director Kathy Garofano has assembled a strong, focused, energetic group that handles this potentially clichéd material with understanding and professional skill. They create substantial three-dimensional characters and bring to life, without excess of sentiment, the humor and poignancy of the human situations depicted here. A Company of Wayward Saints, written in 1963 by George Herman, is about actors and play-making. It is also about the stages and vicissitudes of life, the follies of human nature, and the importance of overcoming self-centeredness to unite in a meaningful common endeavor – nothing too profound here, but a generous supply of entertaining comedy and a worthy message.

Ms. Garofano – with expertly detailed costuming by Melissa Updegraff Wyatt and Molly Stults, effectively minimal set by M.A.Young and lighting by Bill Wyatt – enhances the audience's engagement here in bringing the audience seats onto the stage, on three sides of the playing area. This proximity to the action makes the audience an integral part of this acting company's attempts to depict "The History of Man." It also allows extensive interaction between actors and spectators, as individual performers from time to time address audience members, sit in the audience and involve the viewers in their conflicts.

The actors include the stock figures of the 15th and 16th century Italian commedia, who are introduced early in the first act. Asked to "please single out no one player for your praise," I'll note that this Westwind company is an excellent ensemble – perfectly cast, convincingly in character, intelligently rehearsed, and deftly coordinated.

There's M.A. Young's Harlequin, the beleaguered theater manager and master of ceremonies – reasonable, philosophical, trying so hard to keep his actors on task and out of their usual quarrels; his proud, jealous wife Columbine (Janet Quartarone), whose sharp tongue and lively imagination make her a worthy match for her husband; Joel McGlynn's athletic, musical Scapino, "spiritual son of Harlequin," dancing, head-standing, cart wheeling, high-spirited, narcissistic and vastly talented; Tom Orr's hilariously pompous Dottore with doctor's bag, black academic robes, and a supply of mostly incomprehensible Latin phrases for every occasion; the ailing, deluded old Pantalone (Jeff Davis), outfitted with appropriately wheezing voice, sharp-nosed and mustachioed mask, codpiece, and falling-off, wire-rimmed glasses; the blustering Capitano (Curtis Kaine), big-voiced, sword-brandishing windbag of the group; the flirtatious tart Ruffiana – "my goal is simple, anything I can get"; and the two young lovers, discontented ingénue Isabella (Jennifer Jacob) and the earnest Tristano (Dan Reiss).

Commissioned by a local duke to present "The History of Man," the company, in the first act, decides to stage the stories of Adam and Eve, Odysseus' return from the Trojan War and the assassination of Julius Caesar, but, despite Harlequin's best efforts at peace-making, all three scenes end in chaos. In their presentation of the Garden of Eden, Scapino is a sinuously hissing and acrobatic snake atop his ladder representing the tree of knowledge, but Capitano and Dottore battle over who will play God, the young lovers are unable to feel any guilt or shame for their misdeeds and insults from the onlookers start to fly. "With artists," Harlequin observes, "temperament is our gift as well as our curse."

Also unable to achieve any semblance of harmony, Capitano as Odysseus and Columbine as Penelope, each determined to dominate the scene, present an amusing and feisty new twist on the old tale of Penelope's fidelity and happy reunion with her husband.

Pantalone as Caesar, Ruffiano as his wife, and Dottore as Soothsayer make the final attempt to pull the show together in the first act, but the results are even more disastrous, as the whole group storms off stage, leaving Harlequin to apologize to the audience. "We are no longer a company. We have lost the art," declares Pantalone, but Harlequin promises to re-assemble the group and proceed with their "History" after intermission.

The second act brings an entirely different, more serious tone, as the actors quietly re-gather and decide their mission must be to present the history of a single man, from birth to adolescence to marriage to death. The masks come off, the performers lose their commedia characters but find themselves, and they successfully complete their four scenes depicting the cycle of life.

In the first scene Tristano is an expectant father, with a wise and humble doctor (Dottore), learning about the miracles of birth, parenthood and the depths of his true love for Isabelle. Scapino and Ruffiano play adolescents in the second scene to enact a clever and touching courtship ritual that culminates in a bold kiss and the first stirrings of romance.

The third scene, "marriage," depicts a more mature courtship dance between the aging father (Pantalone) and a marriage broker (Columbine) who has arrived to arrange a marriage for Pantalone's daughter. "Are the ways of love strange?" he asks. "No more strange than people," she replies. Finally, Harlequin and Capitano confront the realities of death, and, by the end of this last scene, the actors have displayed their ability to put aside their egocentrism and overcome creative and personal differences. "We have recaptured more than we have lost," Harlequin philosophizes. The duke has promised to give them the money they need to go home, and they have become a company again.

"Wayward"? Indeed. "Saints"? Perhaps, but also sinners – from the Garden of Eden to the present, and, as Harlequin exclaims in struggling to re-assemble the shattered company at the start of act two, "The miracle is, with so much pride and self-centeredness, that any of us ever work together." Westwind Repertory Company's finely tuned rendering of A Company of Wayward Saints provides compelling evidence of the rewards of working together and the truism that "We need one another."

A Company of Wayward Saints plays this weekend, December 3 and 4, at the theater of The Hun School on Edgerstoune Road in Princeton. Call (609) 397-7331 for reservations and further information.