I won’t pretend that I can neatly dissect and package up “Sparrows Fall” for you.
Both experimental and accessible, Richard Gustin’s drama seems to be about humankind experiencing, forgetting and remembering traumas including the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and, particularly, the Holocaust. Yet it is funnier than that description suggests, with some of that humor generated by lampooning ways people cope with or minimize the impact of those events.
Theatre Gigante and RG Productions opened “Sparrows Fall” April 16 at Norvell Commons at St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church in River Hills. It’s part of World Premiere Wisconsin. Gustin led the theater department at the University of Wisconsin-Fond du Lac for 25 years before retiring from that post. He’s an experienced professional actor and a playwright who has had multiple plays produced.
“Sparrows Fall” is as much a choral word concert as a play. An intergenerational cast of 12 actors – six women and six men – in similar dark shirts and jeans perch behind music stands. Some visual images are projected on a screen behind them. These are mostly visual relief, with one exception I’ll get to later.
The chorus often chants Gustin’s words in unison, sometimes in response to what a single speaker said. So think of it like an ancient Greek play, only the role of protagonist cycles briefly and rapidly through different members. They don’t have names and are not characters per se, though some emerge as types of people. Cassandra Solvik, for example, portrays a speaker who’s willfully and naively optimistic.
What is this chorus? Is it the group mind of humanity? If so, it is a mind frequently in conflict with itself, as different archetypes or personality traits clash. This abstract quality of “Sparrows Fall” brings Thornton Wilder to mind, particularly Wilder’s effort to represent the cycle of human life in “The Skin of Our Teeth.”
Each of the two acts has a long set piece that brings one speaker to the fore. In the first, Flora Coker begins and ends the story of Jacob, a 12-year-old Jewish boy who looks the Gestapo in the eye and is murdered. There was a hush of total attention in the theater when Coker spoke (which is why you get one of Milwaukee’s most distinguished actors to tell this story).
In the second act, Christopher Goode is a demagogue who seems to blend populist politician and TV evangelist, with video of his hortatory gestures projected behind him. He asks for amens and frequently gets them. “’Truth’ has run its course!,” he boldly declares, to acclaim. As his rhetoric gets more outrageous, his resemblance to a certain president gets more obvious.
Gustin directed this production, with music direction by keyboardist Scott Stanley.
If you go
“Sparrows Fall” continues through April 26 at Norvell Commons at St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church, 7845 N. River Road. For ticket and other info, visit theatregigante.org.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: ‘Sparrows Fall’ shows human mind forgetting and remembering
Reporting by Jim Higgins, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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