Book-It Rep's Border Songs: Pacific Northwest Reflected
Living in Bellingham for several years, I grew accustomed to reading about tensions, struggles, law and lawlessness at the U.S.-Canadian border. From drug busts to people-smuggling to ongoing disputes between Border Patrol and the communities they orbit, the area is ripe for narrative rendering. Enter regional writer Jim Lynch, whose debut novel The Highest Tide was set at the south end of the Puget Sound. In his sophomore effort, Border Songs, Lynch turns northward to the borderline, where ongoing issues are as complicated and dynamic as the lives they affect. Book-It Repertory Theatre kicks off its 2011-2012 season with a dramatization of the work, adapted by regional playwright Bryan Willis in the Book-It Style™.
An "oddball outcast," as described by Lynch, Brandon Vanderkool has never fit in. It isn't only his imposing stature, a formidable 6'8", that sets Brandon apart. It isn't just his unwavering sincerity, which supplements his good, kind heart. It isn't the apparent streak of luck he's on, or the attention recent successes have garnered him. It isn't the dyslexia that muddles his language. These qualities combine with something maybe-spiritual to form a man who perceives, thinks, decides, and creates unlike other men. Brandon is as special as he is ostracized.
Like The Highest Tide, Border Songs marvels at the beauties and mysteries of nature. Brandon's obsession with birds, bird-watching, and bird calls is not merely an idiosyncratic preoccupation, but an expression of an admiration for a freedom birds represent, flying from one side of the border to another without concern for the border itself.
And so Brandon, a Border Patrolman, becomes a law-enforcing contradiction, a living oxymoron, harnessing his unique methods of thought and moralization, his connection to the natural world, to make a very, very good (if bumbling) agent. This places the oppressive burden of too much responsibility on Brandon's conflicted shoulders, pinning his wings.
Border Songs portrays a detailed cross-section of border denizens, from law enforcement officials to criminals, professors to farmers, the healthy to the addled, Americans and Canadians. Set in our own special corner of the world, imagined by a Washingtonian novelist, adapted by a Washingtonian playwright, up on the stage of a reputable Seattle theatre, Border Songs is a production we can consider, by any measure, our own.
Wednesday through Sunday, matinees at 2:00 p.m., evening shows at 7:30 p.m., through October 9 // Book-It Repertory Theatre, Center House Theatre, 305 Harrison Street // Tickets available here
