'Wonderful' heals the soul

By Christopher DaCosta

In an emotional pilgrimage of healing, "Wonderful Tennessee" unites an experienced and talented cast to examine the meaningful nuances of spirituality, relationships, and interaction between six friends.

"Wonderful Tennessee is a play about real people dealing with the reality of life," said sophomore Carole Kennelly who portrays the boisterous Angela. "The play is about how each character attempts to come to peace with his or her misgivings."

Kennelly, a psychology and theater major, noticed that playwright Brian Friel deftly weaves subtext into each of the characters' personalities, creating a richly symbolic play.

"Angela is the flamboyant and seductive one who shields her unhappiness by attempting to seem overly happy," Kennelly said of her character.

Each of the other five characters is battling his or her own demons and questions. Take senior Morgan Cox's character, Berna - an attorney who has lived her life by reason and logic, who struggles to comprehend that some things can occur completely devoid of any rationale. "Berna suffers from severe depression and has spent time in a nursing home," Cox said. "She is forced to grapple with the fact that reason does not have all the answers."

Directed by Fred Tollini, S.J., the play itself begins with unanswerable questions. Six friends, also former band-mates, arrive at Ballybeg pier, located in Friel's fictional Irish town of Donegal waiting to be taken to the mysterious island called Oilean Draiochta, ancient Gaelic for "Island of Otherness or Mystery," for a birthday celebration.

However, the group is inexplicably left stranded by the absent boatman, leaving them to embark upon a journey, not on the high seas but on a therapeutic road to understanding themselves and each other.

"Wonderful" is chiefly centered on personal issues that most people face. "The play is very touching, and conversational; the fact that we are performing it in the Fess Parker Theater makes things much more intimate, it is almost as if the audience is participating in the action," Cox said. "The characters are extremely real and dynamic. More specifically, anyone who has ever battled with spirituality, or the idea of "mystery" should definitely see the show, we address those issues, as well as several other relationship and familial dilemmas."

Set in the early 60's, "Wonderful" is a "character-driven piece, in the tradition of Chekov, and, if one were to categorize it in terms of dramatic literature, would most appropriately be categorized as realism," said senior Elissa Beth Stebbins, who portrays the maternal Trish, a woman dealing with emotions relating to her husband, Terry's (Ryan Auffenberg) fight with throat cancer.

Trish faces the internal struggle of keeping a strong façade in front of the others.

"While trying to come to terms with the looming death of her husband she is also constantly attempting to comfort and ease the emotional stress of those around her," Stebbins said of her character.

Tollini analyzes "Wonderful" to be a vehicle through which Friel exposes the need for uncertainty and ambiguity in the human life. "The play is about the need for mystery in our lives; mystery in the sense of encounter with the wonderful, the awesome, the ineffable," said Tollini, an associate professor of theater.

"Ultimately it means our encounter with God. It is the encounter with mystery - where nature and science stretch the envelope of reason that we sometimes are brought face to face with mystery."

Tollini explains that his motivations for bringing this play to Santa Clara were to encourage students to realize that healing is necessary and important to combat personal struggles. "Mystery heals the sorrows of daily life," Tollini explained. "Without it, we can't go on.  Also, it is not just Christian mystery, but a confrontation of the Pagan, Celtic and Classical myths that shape us."

This intertwining of religion and internal spirituality originates from Brian Friel's self-classification as a pagan-Catholic. According to Tollini, he searches for the confrontation with God and Mystery in many of the different religious traditions.

Tollini also clears up the origins of Friel's title: "'Wonderful Tennessee' is the name of an American folk song that describes a beautiful land where a couple once made love."

For the cast of three men and three women, the intimacy of the play's subject matter was reflected in their experiences of being part of the "Wonderful" production.

"Wonderful Tennessee was a great learning experience for me," Kennelly said. "I enjoyed the opportunity to work with such an intimate cast where we get the opportunity to receive personal coaching from the director."

Stebbins echoed Kennelly's opinion. "This is very much an ensemble piece, each character getting their own time, but generally working together to create a cohesive whole," Stebbins said.

Perhaps the most difficult part of working on "Wonderful" was the fact that the cast had to master the Irish dialect in a period of six weeks.

"This play posed a few special challenges in that there is a dialect to be learned, and, though not technically a musical, there is a lot of music woven into the dialogue, both of which are time consuming and rather complex," explained Stebbins.

Tollini found that learning the "naturalistic ebb-and-flow of language" and extracting meaning from the slightest, most "natural things" were among the most difficult tasks associated with "Wonderful."

With a set consisting of an authentic-looking replica of a stone pier on the northern Irish coast designed by Jerald Enos and period costumes by Joanne Martin, "Wonderful" is a deeply engaging production.

"From the outset he [Tollini] has been excited about this show, eager to work and discover with us aspects of character that neither of us had thought about," Stebbins said. "He comes to the theatre with so much experience, but is so humble and perfectly willing to try something new or different."