[NEohioPAL] Review of "A Great Wilderness" at the Beck Center for the Arts

[Bob Abelman via NEohioPAL]

Navigating Beck’s ‘A Great Wilderness’ requires a moral compass



Bob Abelman

Cleveland Jewish News, The News Herald, The Morning Journal

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics



 Two hours of angst, with intermission.  



That’s pretty much the take away from Samuel D. Hunter’s 2014 drama “A Great Wilderness,” a play that promises more than it delivers in its regional premiere production at the Beck Center for the Arts.



There’s the angst of well-intended Walt (a convincingly addled and endearing Tim Tavcar), as he wonders whether he has done more harm than good during his 30 years of running a Christian-based summer camp in the Idaho mountains devoted to turning gay boys straight.  



There’s the angst of his hypercritical business partner and ex-wife Abby (an impassioned Lenne Snively), whose gay son Isaac – an obvious biblical allusion to the sacrificial son of the prophet Abraham – took his own life years ago.  

  

There’s the angst of new client Daniel (a sweet, insecure Christian John Thomas), a teenager whose father condemns the boy’s homosexuality and sends him to the camp as a last resort.  Daniel disappears into the woods shortly after his arrival, where he remains for most of the play.



And there’s the angst of Daniel’s mother, Eunice (a perpetually distraught Heidi Harris), who fears that her missing son has died in the woods and then decides that this might be for the best.



While emotional and occasionally gripping, none of this is sustainably theatrical.  Not for two hours.  



For more of this review, go to www.clevelandjewishnews.com/columnists/.
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