for/word's Little Book: Still Literary Waters Run Deep
Simple plays are deceptive, especially when the individual parts are put together well; the simplicity often does too good a job of masking the amount of work that goes into it. The for/word company, a theatrical concern from Chicago making its Seattle debut, has produced a rather deceptive diminutive gem with Little Book, a one-act playing for this weekend only at WET's Little Theater.
The deft way the company has moved into the confines of the Little Theater leads one to believe that they are no strangers to crafting delicate entertainments from diverse source material. Their approach is a modified version of the Book-It Repertory's usual style: Instead of crafting theater out of established fiction, for/word create their works from multiple sources, essays, biographies and articles which are given as much weight as the fictional works that they choose.
Little Book is a play about E.B. White (author of children's classics like Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little; played by Christopher M. Roche), his wife Katharine (the show is set during the time she was the fictional editor for the New Yorker; played by Christina Ritter), and Anne Carroll Moore (an influential librarian who led the way toward creating a children's section to the modern library; played by Peach Pittenger). The spoken text is culled not just from the works and essays these three personages have created, but also from the words that various other writers have written about them.
Which is an extremely effective tool for not just creating motivation and depth, but does wonders in the service of giving us humorous moments based in character. These are three people who care deeply about the impact and import of words, and what better way to illustrate that than by having Carroll express the dismay she felt at a lynching and sharing her belief that a solid, dependable children's library could have helped to avoid such crimes?
There are several such revealing moments for each character in the show: Everything we need to know about Katharine White is explicitly stated in a monologue about how much she misses the hustle and bustle of New York City, the importance of her position at the New Yorker or her ruminations on the importance of style in writing, the difference between a colon and a dash. E.B. White, whose struggle with finishing Stuart Little provides the narrative thrust of the piece, guides us through that exercise in semi-impotent futility piece by piece, as in the moment where he explains to Katharine that in order for him to continue working, he will need to not be reliable in any marital sense; that he'll be living in the moment, he doesn't plan to be absent, but he doesn't plan to be present either.
Through it all, Pittenger, Ritter and Roche's rich, detailed and grounded performances provide the momentum that the quiet little play requires as it builds to a truly unexpected denouement. Because we know that, ultimately, E.B. White's creation becomes a success, the fact that the meeting between these three minds did not end up being everything any of them expected it to be comes as something of a surprise, one that amplifies the melancholy that had been a subtle element of the production up to that point.
Schlueter is to be congratulated for her work in this production; it is an intelligent script that continues to yield rewards long after it ends. One hopes it is not the last we see of her, or of the for/word company in this region.
Thursday through Saturday at 7:30p.m., Saturday and Sunday at 2:00p.m. // WET's Little Theater, 619 19th Avenue East // $12 - $18, available through Brown Paper Tickets
