Familiarity need not breed contempt. At the core of ”A Farm Under a Lake,” Martha Bergland`s 1989 novel, lies a reassuring and reliable formula: Freeing herself of some old, hard feelings, a strong woman manages to find her way back to her roots.
For Janet Hawn, who grew up on an Illinois farm during the 1960s, the roots are literal. Now it`s 1980, and Janet fears she`s mislaid her heartland happiness. She`s mired in a stagnant marriage to Jack (the next-farm neighbor whom she`s known from childhood).
Far from tending the land, she works as a private nurse in Green Bay, while Jack, as stubbornly self-reliant as he is unemployed, has dwindled into a bitter memory of the man she respected.
Janet rethinks her life as she drives May, the mysterious 81-year-old woman she cares for, to her daughter`s home in Quincy, Ill.
Like ”A Trip to Bountiful,” the journey becomes a personal odyssey, triggering flashbacks to 20 years before as Janet contrasts her enduring and frustrated love for Jack`s married brother Carl with the emotional compromise of her marriage with Jack.
When Janet learns May`s secret from her sympathetic daughter-that life punishes those who refuse to take love`s risks-she knows her future is back on the farm with Jack and Carl. She will help these ”damaged men” to ”do what they want.”
Though the novel`s female bonding hints at Janet`s dawning feminism,
”Farm” is too detailed to pass for a tract.
Drenched in the smells of the prairie and of the farm folks themselves, Bergland`s sensuous descriptions invigorate nostalgia. And, though Janet`s emancipation is no newer than Nora`s in ”A Doll`s House,” it bears a Midwestern authenticity.
Adapted and directed by Mark Richard and Kelly Thompson, this nearly three-hour presentation by the Women`s Project of City Lit Theater is as exhaustive as it is enlightening, preserving much of Janet`s first-person narrative at the cost of leaving that much less to the imagination.
Rambling with the easy leisure of a cinematic novel, City Lit`s ”Farm”
often repeats more than we need to know about Janet`s attempts to ”sort out what to keep.”
But, the overkill aside, much of ”Farm” offers generous and supple storytelling, staged with real affection for the material.
Tackling a huge role, Kelly Nespor makes Janet`s familiar discoveries feel fresh and personal.
The other women are variations of the life force: Kristie Berger, Corinne Lyon, Sally Paulis and Laurie Larson seem indomitable even when depressed, and Natalie Stein plays the near-silent May with inscrutable charm. (May is the one character who is not over-explained.)
Bergland`s ”damaged men” won`t be confused with dynamos. As Carl, David Ward gives us a stoic survivor who is only a bit less dour than Kevin Kelly`s glum, taciturn Jack.
Page Hearn plays Janet`s father, another failed farmer, with bedrock grumpiness. You can`t miss seeing the damage.
`A FARM UNDER A LAKE`
Adapted and directed by Mark Richard and Kelly Thompson, with a set by David Csicsko, lighting by Thomas Hase and costumes by Ron Laxamana. A City Lit Theater production at Live Bait Theater, 3914 N. Clark St., Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 5 and 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m. through May 17. Running time:
2.42. Tickets are $12.50-$15. Phone 312-271-1100.
