Ever been to Lebanon, Mo.? Well, now you can spend 97 minutes among ""the trees, the berries, the breeze, the sounds, frogs, dogs, the light, the bees"" of Lebanon simply by walking up the street to the Playhouse of the Overture Center. This is the setting for the Madison Repertory Theatre's most recent production, Lanford Wilson's 1980 Pulitzer Prize winning play, ""Talley's Folly.""
This production was another home run (or at least stand-up triple) for the Madison Rep, which during the month of February staged a superlative version of ""Anna Christie."" ""Talley's Folly"" is a play that was written roughly 60 years after ""Anna Christie,"" but takes place about 25 years later on a July evening in 1944. The entire play consists of one scene in a boathouse, which, true to the script, ""isn't bare, it isn't bombed out, it's run-down.""
This boathouse was designed by Joe Varga who, along with lighting designer Ann M. Archbold and sound designer Joe Cerqua, really brings the audience into a sweltering summer night in the Ozarks. There are even a number of scenes down by the lily ponds, which an usher referred to as ""water seats,"" and you can almost feel the itch of mosquito bites as you sit in your seat near the end of this Wisconsin winter.
The typical play is written with the idea of a ""fourth wall,"" but the play's protagonist, Matt Friedman—played sharply if not a little stiffly by James Ridge—sees no such a wall. He starts the play by laying out for the audience his ""valentine scenario,"" explaining its ""frou-frou"" and even going so far as to pick up some of the stage's grass in an effort to acknowledge that this is all an illusion.
What is not illusory is the up-shots and pratfalls of two lovers jousting their wits and emotions on stage. This is a two-person play about love, and Friedman, a middle-aged, Jewish, European-born accountant, has his lover's scope set on Sally Talley. Sally is a 31-year-old Southern belle-Emma Goldman hybrid, who is the daughter of a wealthy and staunchly conservative textile owner who likes Friedman about as much as the Irish love Cromwell. She is played by Colleen Madden, who does a great job of playing the straight woman to James Ridge's funny man.
What becomes apparent early on is that the characters are both desperate to escape. Sally wants to escape from the oppressiveness of Lebanon and Matt wants to separate from the painful memories of his nomadic past. It just takes the two of them 97 minutes to realize that not only do they want the same thing, but that they also want each other.
Thankfully, director Richard Corley has managed to fully grasp the humor in the script, as Lanford Wilson's writing is truly of the first-order, richly packed with social and historical commentary and eight-year-aged cheddar-sharp wit.
When the play ends, the audience quickly rises from their seats to applaud the lovers who managed to find each other on a muggy July night in Lebanon, Mo., grateful that they had been able to escape from the cold snow and salt covered terrain outside with little more than a potential mosquito bite or two.
