The usually sage advice of baseball legend Yogi Berra — “if you come to a fork in the road, take it” — is impossible. When a fork appears along the road of life, a choice must be made, one way or the other. Time and events move mercilessly forward in only one direction. The “what if” exercise of reviewing the road not taken, always with the perfect vision of hindsight, can be agonizing.
Craig Wright’s “The Pavilion,” which opened at the Malibu Playhouse last Saturday evening, explores the remorse and recrimination that can result from looking back.
The play’s setting is banal: a 20-year high school reunion in Pine Hill, a small town in Minnesota. The Class of 1985 has come together at the Pavilion — a lakeside, century-old dance hall. Immediately following the evening’s festivities, it is to be burned to the ground to by the fire department to make way for a new structure. The fire truck and hoses are already in place. This perhaps serves as a metaphor for the defeated dreams of some of the classmates we meet at the reunion.
This three-person play is reminiscent of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.” It also deals with life in a small town, and one of its characters is the Narrator, vaguely comparable to the Stage Manager in the Wilder play.
The Narrator (Jason Lott) is a philosophical commentator. The play opens with him alone on stage, a black-suited figure musing on the evolutionary past and the effects of the passage of time. His musings, together with background commentary, continue throughout the play.
The play is populated with members of the Class of 1985, but whose presence is represented through the voice of the Narrator. It takes a moment to realize this, and then, the effect is excellent. Through him we meet the adulterous pregnant wife of the chief of police — the Chief — and the lover who the Chief is bent on killing. Other classmates range from poignant to whimsical. However, two members of the class are the core of the play.
Peter (Chris Payne Gilbert) and Kari (Leslie Murphy), who were voted by their classmates as the cutest senior couple, have not seen each other since graduation. It was their abrupt breakup, triggered by her pregnancy by Peter, that was the fork in their road. He left town for college after she told him of the pregnancy.
Kari terminated the pregnancy and now works at the bank. She is unhappily married to the local golf pro. Their house, which she refers to as “a split-level pro shop,” adjoins the golf course, and she hates golf. Her husband has pleaded with her to have a baby but she refuses.
Peter is breaking up with a much younger woman, the latest of many failed relationships. He is consumed with guilt and remorse. He has come to the reunion to beg Kari’s forgiveness and to persuade her to come with him back to the fork in the road he now realizes they should have taken 20 years earlier. The love she had for him in high school has long curdled. She rejects his attempts to win her over.
Their dialogue is fast, crisp, occasionally jocular, but essentially bitter. Kari cannot shed the searing memory of the past, and Peter is saturated with guilt.
The three performances are uniformly excellent. Lott is outstanding as the Narrator. He demonstrates quiet omniscience when ruminating philosophically, and his animated impersonations of the various classmates are dazzling. Murphy makes her first appearance on Malibu Playhouse’s stage as Kari. She projects her character’s bitterness and anger with full force, while also showing the haunting sadness that Kari cannot escape. Gilbert is convincingly remorseful as Peter. His pleas for forgiveness are rendered with passion and intensity.
The playwright, Craig Wright, a former Malibu resident, has an impressive record of theater, film and television credits. His current projects include “Greenleaf,” and Malibu Playhouse’s production of “The Pavilion” adds luster to his career.
The director and producer is Jeremy Skidmore, who is also the Malibu Playhouse’s guest artistic director. He has directed and taught throughout this country and abroad. The fast-paced dialogue of “The Pavilion” and the interactions of the Narrator, Peter and Kari posed a directorial challenge, which Skidmore has ably met.
For show times or to purchase tickets, visit the Malibu Playhouse website.