By John Quinn
Review: 'The Kentucky Cycle, Parts I and II'
An American Portrait : Hilberry revives epic historical drama
The Hilberry menu has a new addition, a hefty chunk of meat and spice, bloody as a rare burger and full of rich flavors. The catch? "The Kentucky Cycle" is a veritable miniseries of a production; nine one act plays performed over two nights (or one day with dinner break) for a total running time of six and a half hours.
And you thought that "super sizing" was a thing of the past!
Plays that run six hours-plus generally don't fare well on Broadway. "The Kentucky Cycle" won playwright Robert Schenkkan the Pulitzer Prize, but only managed 34 performances on Broadway. And if that feels like a miniseries, catch Schenkkan's newest script, the miniseries "Spartacus," next week on the on USA Network.
The time is a two-century passage, 1775 to 1975. The place is the Cumberland in eastern Kentucky. The action revolves around the fate of three families: the redneck Rowans, the more patrician Talberts and the African -American Biggses. The play serves as a snapshot in miniature of American history. The perversion of the American spirit, the rape of the land, the inhumanity of man to his fellow man and woman are all part and parcel to the theme, but oddly, the resolution of this "cycle" is rather uplifting.
It begins with Michael Rowan, who founds his fortune with murder – and his family by rape. Are his misfortunes, and those of his descendants, the result of appropriating land the Cherokee consider cursed? Or, like Shakespeare, is the playwright's point, "the fault lies not in our stars, but in ourselves?"
It's satisfying to savor Schenkkan's approach to character; it hearkens back to the very roots of Greek tragedy in which a man is destroyed by "hubris" – frequently translated as overwhelming pride.
Where Schenkkan sometimes trips is in the uneven quality of the nine parts. When he is good he is very, very good, but when he is bad he is boring. May we attribute this roughness to the number of years that the playwright devoted to the creation of the work?
The show's two directors, Patricia Ansuini and Lavinia Hart, who direct alternate parts, have done an excellent job of patching up some of the potholes Schenkkan gives them. Savor the rich texture they bring to the narrative in "God's Great Supper," the Civil War section, and "Which Side Are You On?" a fine rendition of loss and betrayal in the United Mine Workers, circa 1954.
This show boasts 19 actors playing a hundred roles; extra credit must be given for how effortlessly they shift character.
Let us note especially Josh Eikenberry, who creates the amoral patriarch Michael Rowan, as fascinating a man as his descendant Joshua -Eikenberry again – whose strength of will breaks the cycle of sorrow.
Nor will we soon forget Jennifer Tuttle's nuanced turn as Mary Anne Rowen Jackson, the gutsy miner's wife who drove a union organization.
