Stoneham Theatre rises to the challenge of 'Meany'
STONEHAM -- You could never accuse Stoneham Theatre of suburban slackerhood. Offsetting the occasional ''easy viewing" offerings over the past five seasons are ambitious undertakings such as the current ''A Prayer for Owen Meany" by British playwright Simon Bent -- a New England premiere, and only the third production to date of Bent's 2002 adaptation of John Irving's sprawling novel.
In cutting the 637-page opus down to stageable size, the script calls for a cast of 16 (several actors still must shoulder multiple roles) and, like the book, grapples with weighty issues of faith vs. determinism. It's a potent condensation, but its strengths are also liabilities. So fleeting are certain presences -- for example, Ann Marie Shea as a crusty New England grandmother (she nails the patrician accent) and Bobbie Steinbach as her even more corrosive wheelchair-bound companion Lydia -- that we never get to savor them fully.
Still, the roles that do get a through line -- most notably Ken Schatz as the title character -- are amply filled. Playing the diminutive boy with a ''wrecked voice," Schatz maintains, for the better part of 2 1/2 hours, a loud low-register squawk reminiscent of Froggy from ''Our Gang." Impressive as it is, this physical feat would soon wear if Schatz didn't also endow the part with a child's innate, irrepressible mania -- in this case enhanced and prolonged into adulthood with a sense of religious mission.
The plot is sprinkled with Irving's trademark cosmic coincidences: deus ex machina developments that suggest a Prime Writer at work, if not necessarily a ''first mover" as posited by St. Thomas Aquinas and seconded by Owen Meany. Though the wind occasionally slips out of the dialogue's sails, especially during recurrent debates about the role of faith, director Weylin Symes keeps the action sprightly in this intelligently designed production (Audra Avery's adaptable, minimalist set eases the way).
The adult actors who play, among other parts, squirmy schoolchildren -- Christine Hamel, Cristi Miles, Cory Scott, Gerard Slattery, and Timothy Smith as the point-of-view character ''John" (this is perhaps the most openly autobiographical of Irving's works) -- all deserve praise for not over-shticking the tics of childhood. Richard Arum is touching (fleetingly) as an empathetic dream of a stepdad, and if Caitlin Lowans seems a bit young for the part of John's mother, she exudes a nostalgic sexy/maternal glow that fits perfectly with this fond look back to the relatively innocent '50s.
As the Vietnam conflict heats up, John evades it (ultimately fleeing to Canada), while weak, tiny Owen leaps into the breach. Irving could not have anticipated, while writing the novel in the '80s, how apropos his critique of greed-based governmental warmongering might prove nearly two decades later. It's widely known that he withdrew his imprimatur from a movie based on ''Owen Meany": The maudlin ''Simon Birch" ended the tale in childhood, depriving Meany of the opportunity to embrace and pursue, as an adult, what he felt to be his destiny. Irving evidently had enough faith in Bent's take to OK the premiere production, at the National Theatre in London, and Stoneham Theatre's version -- on a smaller but no less inspired scale -- likewise does him proud.
