WILD BLESSINGS: A CELEBRATION OF WENDELL BERRY

I caught Wild Blessings at Actors Theater last night. It is a tribute to Wendell Berry, Kentucky philosopher, poet, farmer, novelist and so much more. I have to admit that I don’t follow poetry very well but my ignorance had little impact on my opinion of the pieces. The different poems flowed together very nicely and the music fit incredibly well. Malcolm Dalglish is one of the 5 performers that make up the collective conscious of Barry. He spoke parts but primarily played a hammer dulcimer off to the side most of the time. His mastery of that cumbersome and seemingly difficult instrument made the production brilliant for me. Helen-Jean Arthur also uses a couple of wonderful instruments including the violin that she plays for several orchestras. I don’t think it’s my imagination that Actor’s has raised the bar for music in their productions over the past couple of years. Think: Rock and Roll the Reunion Tour and Hedwig and the Angry Inch for starters. It wouldn’t be fair to ignore the contributions of Tracey Conyer Lee, who has a beautiful voice and stage presence, Larry John Meyers, and his classical delivery of the mature every-man thinking-man character, and Phil Pickens, as he plays his guitar and expresses the younger visions and dreams of Berry.

The writings chronicle a life that many who have grown up in Kentucky can relate to. He grew up in Henry county and acquired a writing degree from the University of Kentucky. Assuming that he needed to move to a larger city to excel, he found little comfort teaching in New York and returned home to write about the environment he was intimate with and express an affection for our Kentucky values and way of life. Many topics touched on hard work and distaste for big cities and big money. A NPR article called Berry, ” ... our era’s heir to Emerson and Thoreau” and I couldn’t have said it better.

The play runs from Mar 26 to Apr 26, 2009 so you have about 3 days if you want to catch it.