Forks of Ivy
I was truly touched by all of the people who couldn't make it to my reading last week who came up to me at Roundtable last night and seemed genuinely sorry to have missed it and interested in knowing how it had gone. I love these people.
Up for debate tonight, Forks of Ivy, by Cass Erickson.
Ah, Appalachia, one of the last truly isolated places in America. But with an influx of burned-out hippies, Ponder Cove has at last been dragged into the Internet era. For women like Wanda Lou, long held captive here by men and tobacco, the new ideas bring new hope for a better life somewhere else. For the men - especially Wanda Lou's husband, Duane, and her father, Booth, the idea of women's emancipation means the end of their ordered lives. Booth complains loudly and often about Duane and the hold he has over Wanda Lou, never seeming to realize that his own hold over her is much stronger - and perhaps even more psychologically damaging.
Duane is by far the greater physical danger - first to Wanda Lou, and then to Liz and Martin, the New Yorkers renting Wanda Lou's house while she goes to New York to 'find herself' as an actress. Martin and Liz are on the run from themselves - from Martin's gambling problem, from Liz's dissatisfaction with life in general. But there's no peace to be found in Ponder Cove: the natives are suspicious of and inhospitable to the Yankee newcomers. The only people in the area with any money are the 'imports,' and, as Liz says, "I didn't come all the way down here to hang out with the people I ran away from." The problem now is that they now lack the money to move out of Ponder Cove, so they have to pin their hopes on their plan to turn Wanda Lou's house into a bed and breakfast. But Duane blames Liz and Martin for his current problems with Wanda Lou, and he's determined that if he can't have her, and the house they shared for almost a decade, no one can.
Meanwhile, Booth - a Baptist preacher no longer sure he believes in God - has been coming slowly unglued since the death of his son, Roy, six months ago, and the sudden appearance of Roy's ghost, which should have provided him with reassurance, only agitates him further as the ghost accuses him of never loving his son as he should have. "I don't know why it's so hard to love your own," Booth says.
Erickson has a lovely way with the phrases that make audiences say, "Oh, wow." Of his slow mental decline, Booth says, "My whole life has led up to this empty moment, and there's no explanation for it. And now I'm dimming out like the TV." He calls the Promise Keepers a 'Christian frat house' and says, "They can't know the beauty in this world 'til they give up their addiction to suffering." Liz complains to Wanda Lou, "The problem with marriage is that it's too daily." The whole play is full of beautiful lines like that.
Still, the overall tone of the play is depression - both personal and economic. The people of Appalachia have long been 'land poor,' and now even the land seems to be turning on them. After having been stuck here her whole life, Wanda Lou makes a break from Ponder Cove, only to come running back at the first sign of trouble. Duane swears to Wanda Lou that he's going to change, but he can no more do it than a tree can change the shape of its leaves. Booth is eaten with guilt over Roy's death, but even his eventual absolution by Roy's ghost only ties him more firmly to the memory of that terrible night. Even Liz and Martin, the only people who really seem like they're progressing, are just making the same mistakes in a new place.
What traps you? What patterns and mistakes are you repeating; what places and ideas hold you in place?