Ostrovsky’s ‘Forest’ Casts Bewitching Spell
By Alvin Klein

Madison - The artistic alliance between the director Bonnie J. Monte and the playwright Aleksandr Ostrovsky is becoming more like an affair of the heart. People are talking.

After the triumphs of "Diary of a Scoundrel" (1994) and "Artists and Admirers" (1995), the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival now has the "The Forest." And it is enchanted.

Since Ostrovsky the obscure wrote 50 plays, and Shakespeare, a mere 36, it’s no wonder people are talking. Should Ms. Monte quit while she’s ahead? Or is she artfully weaving a plot for a festival name change?

Not that the artistic director loves Shakespeare less. She only wants to put world theatre into perspective. Shakespeare has plenty of festivals; Ostrovsky, only one, every two years and it’s in Russian.

There is no doubt that Ms. Monte has the power and the persuasiveness to make Ostrovsky sell. She was the force behind the seemingly impossible dream of reconstructing a dying theatre, first artistically, then literally.

"The Forest" is about the victory of art and the humanity over hypocrisy and pomposity. It is about generosity. It is about the joy, the grandeur of acting, two vagabond actors first diverting, then driving a cunningly structured storyline. It is about the wrenching anxiety of holding on, to your money when you’re losing it. And it is about what a women of her time has to do - to hold on to her life.

Because all contemporary relevance arises from specificity of time and place, it is important to consider that 11 characters with unpronounceable names are struggling to survive nine years after freeing of the serfs. They are all so thoroughly infused with paradox, with quicksilver shifts in feeling and behavior, it is hard to believe that they will appear foreign, archaic or at a remove from the life of every person in the audience.

That is also what people were talking about in the post-performance discussion with Ms. Monte and her enormously accomplished cast last Tuesday. A listener to such lively, informed talk, after a nearly three hour performance, was as impressed by the involvement of an audience as by the glory of a play, gloriously realized.

When one audience member wondered if the play could be shorter, Ms. Monte simply said that an hour was cut, and suddenly everyone wondered how it could be longer.

Ms. Monte was praised for graceful segues from scene to scene, encompassing five locations. One audience member marveled at the chemistry between the two actors (Paul Mullins and Malcolm Tulip) who play the two actors, but have never before worked together. Judith Anne Roberts spoke, with eloquence and passion, about the complexity of her character, a truly sacred monster and one of the great to-die-for bravura roles for an actress.

From a busy beginning in a drawing room to a rueful ending among the birch tree, "The Forest" breathes with the magic of probing, enriching theatre. Give thanks for a found play, 130 years old.

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