UM ‘Eldritch’ paints portrait of broken town

ORONO – Eldritch is a dying Midwestern town. Most of the inhabitants have been forced to desert it to find jobs and fulfillment. Both are sorely lacking in Eldritch, which derives its name from a Scottish word meaning unnatural, hideous or weird.

Yet, what happens to the inhabitants of this village in Lanford Wilson’s drama “The Rimers of Eldritch” seems awfully ordinary. People love and leave each other, dream together and drift apart, abuse and absolve family and friends and seem unaware that they’re inflicting pain on one another – covering each other with frost or rime.

The University of Maine’s production of Wilson’s 1967 play is so visually stunning, theatergoers leave with pictures rather than words burned into their brains. Director Marcia Douglas and set and lighting designer Greg Mitchell have created such a seamless production that it is almost impossible to deconstruct the play without giving short shrift to one component or another. The performances by student cast members equal and often exceed work done by more experienced actors.

Just as Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” captured the undercurrents pulsing through small-town America in the first half of the 20th century, “The Rimers of Eldritch” illuminates how a similar darkness manifests itself at the end of the 1900s. Wilson, who like Wilder has actors mime much of the action rather than use set pieces and props, turned “Our Town” inside out.

In a strange yet effective way, “The Rimers of Eldritch” is “Our Town” tripped out on acid. Wilson’s plot is non-linear. Scenes move backward and forward in time until the town’s ugliest secret is revealed in the final scene. The story is played out in snatches as if it were extracted from the town’s recaptured memory.

It’s the detail of Mitchell’s set that makes it so arresting. It looks like a town struck by a tornado. A broken stained glass window dangles over the stage. Half of a wrecked and rusted car dominates the right side. At center stage a platform that could be a pulpit or gallows rises above a set strewn with dirty and faded glass bottles, an open cracked leather doctor’s bag, rusted railroad spikes, old tires with threadbare tread and much, much more.

Mitchell’s lighting design does more than illuminate characters. When shined on the cyclorama behind the set, he captures the intense red-orange glow of sunset, the sliver of a moon adrift in a blue-black sky and the swirl of dust that’s always churning over the flat land. The beauty of this endless, ever-changing sky stands in sharp contrast to the tumbledown town in the foreground.

Douglas’ ensemble of 17 student actors, for the most part, give even and equal performances. Shannon Dougherty as the 14-year-old Eva Jackson is a fireball of adolescence. She captures all the flirtatious energy of a girl who neither understands nor can control her blooming sexuality. Dominick Varney is equally powerful as 19-year-old Robert, the boy who befriends her but can’t decide if he’s a brotherly confidant or a potential beau.

Jennifer Boyd and Brianna Geary give rich, layered performances as Patsy, a high school girl who dreams of getting out of Eldritch but is terrified to leave and Cora, the lonely cafe owner men seem to keep loving and leaving. These actresses portray their characters as two sides of the same coin. Boyd’s young woman is the bright shiny surface of a new penny. Geary’s world-weary waitress is the other side, dulled and worn by the touch of many fingers over too many years.

The deranged local hermit Skelly Manor – the man who knows all of the town’s secrets – is played by Christopher G. Franklin. His wild hair and unruly beard, his shuffling gait and gravelly rasp are so real he looks, moves and sounds as if he just stepped out of a homeless shelter. Franklin’s portrayal is so accurate that at times it is difficult to understand the secrets he shares with the audience.

Douglas, Mitchell and the student cast vividly bring to life Wilson’s vision of the nation’s decaying heartland that, sadly, is still relevant nearly 30 years after he wrote “The Rimers of Eldritch.” This production painfully reminds the audience that the inhabitants of Eldritch reside in every small town in Maine, and that “the greed and denial and desire and broken trust and negated promises of rural America” Wilson saw in the Midwest of the 1960s still, like poison, is seeping up through the soil.

The Rimers of Eldritch will run through Sunday, March 2. For information, call 581-1755.