Unbound Productions are the producers of the popular producers spooky season tradition Wicked Lit. The formula for which — three classic short stories adapted into site-specific theatre pieces — is also the framework for their production History Lit: A Festival of Timeless Stories, which is now playing in Pasadena.
The selling point to Wicked Lit is obvious: who wouldn’t want to walk through a dramatic reenactment of an HP Lovecraft or Edgar Allan Poe piece in a cemetery? Form follows contest and vice versa. Wicked Lit always sells out.
History pieces, however, are a different story altogether. For this iteration of History Lit — the last of which was in 2012 — the company has turned to two authors at the heart at The American Canon (Harriet Beecher Stowe and L. Frank Baum) and the New Zealand-born British author Katherine Mansfield.
The theme of the night is that of timeless stories, but the pieces are not driven by thematic ties: instead it is the stunning, surprising grounds of the Pasadena Museum of History which drives the creative explorations of The company. In this Unbound puts itself firmly in the ranks of site-responsive companies like Chalk Rep who make a point of taking traditional stagecraft out of black boxes and proscenium theatres and into settings that have distinct charms of their own.
Unbound is also drawn by a desire to adapt works of literature into living, breathing performances.
Of the three works adapted in History Lit the stand out is Beecher Stowe’s Two Pictures In One. The structure of the story is refreshingly modern: two Massachusetts families separated by time, one white and living through the American Revolution, the other black and living under the shadow of slavery’s foul reach in the years before the Civil War. Both are tied together by a shared loss and the dream of liberty.
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From an Open Frame standpoint, this episode is the least experimental. This is pure site-responsive work that uses the gorgeous space inside Museum’s Curtin House as a period set. What little plasticity there is with the fourth wall exists entirely in the persons of the two-story guides who act as both ushers and actors. Caleb Slavens and Eric Keitel are excellent in both capacities, but the piece really belongs to the stellar multi-generational cast playing the two families.
However, the work would be as comfortable on a three-quarter thrust stage as it is here. It’s the terse adaptation and solid acting of the material that is still all too close to home which is effective, not any conceit of immersion.
From a site-specific standpoint, the winner is the adaptation of Mansfield’s The Garden Party, which starts slow as a profile of privilege before engaging the audience in a full processional around the grounds of the museum. This kind of point-to-point scene shifts are what Unbound is known for, and here the framing device is the groundskeeper, played by Sam Silverstein. He does a damn fine job of setting and keeping the tone from scene to scene but, sadly, has no real role in the drama at hand.
Director Aurora Culver lets the pot boil slowly in this piece, but once the procession begins The Garden Party moves deftly through the most dynamic settings on the grounds without ever feeling forced. I do wish that the adaptation gave something more for the guide to do, in part because Silverstein was so capable, but also because the need for a guide opens up possibilities that a narrator-less procession does not have.
Baum’s story, The Girl Who Owned A Bear, is the least concerned with realism of the night. This should come as no surprise from the writer of the Oz tales, and the script adaptation by producer-writer Jonathan Josephson is appropriately lively. So too is the selection of the museum’s current carousel exhibit as the backdrop for the fantastical elements of the short… or is it the exhibit led to the choosing of the story? In either case, the pairing is perfect.
Tonally the cast is on point, with the role of the ne’er-do-well writer Peter Smith being played with vaudevillian charm by actor Chairman Barnes. Actress Morgan Zenith gets her best Veruca Salt on as Jane Gladys, the titular girl who owned a bear.
This episode involved a smaller set of processional transitions, but even with their limited number I found the shifts lacking. There’s a lot of value to be derived from moving the audience from scene to scene, but the “jump cut” alone isn’t enough to satisfy jaded eyes such as our own. I want to see the same wisdom and inventiveness that goes into Unbound’s script and location selection, and the craft that clearly goes into working with their casts, into the spaces between the scenes.
Perhaps I’ll find that magic this fall, when Wicked Lit returns.
History Lit: A Festival Of Timeless Stories runs through July 31st at the Pasadena Museum of History 470 W. Walnut St., Pasadena.
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