“Dinner and threshing”: The Bohemian at the Harbor Stage Company

Willa Cather is said to have written to a friend, in apparent surprise, “I have actually sold The Bohemian Girl. Isn’t that a jolt?” Yet many scholars see the story as the piece that honed her skills, the voice that would later develop My Antonia.

What Brenda Withers saw in it was a play, and you can see her adaptation, The Bohemian, at the Harbor Stage Company now through July 5^th. For Withers, the story is not so much centered on Clara herself, but on the decisions, mindset, dreams, and interactions of a whole community of Nebraska farmers in the late 19th century.

Withers—along with Harbor Stage co-founder Jonathan Fielding—creates not one but multiple stage presences, as the two take on the voices and affectations of the neighbors in their community. Fielding is principally Nils Eriksson, one of the few to have left the farming community to try his luck at sea, and has returned mostly, it appears, to see how the others have managed without him.

The truth is, though, that he’s there chiefly to see Clara (Withers), his former girlfriend, now married to his older and far stodgier brother Olaf (a “big, heavy Norwegian”), and to present her with a proposition: to leave with him, to recover the joys and freedom of their youth, to simply… go.

Between Nils’ arrival and his proposition, there is a lot of twitter about in the community, as old hopes and resentments surface, as whispered stories of suicide and local politics intertwine, and all these voices, as well as quite clever and snappy narration, are carried by Withers and Fielding. Whether it’s making caustic observations about family and neighbors (“she sat as only the Erikssons—and mountains—can sit”), offering a cheeky disconnect between words and actions (Withers speaks of knitting but is actually making jam), or just underlining the unsmiling stoicism of many in the community, Withers and Fielding are brilliant together, remarks snapping off each other, moving about the stage in a sort of controlled (and on one occasion, actual) dance.

There are some surprises for those who haven’t read the novella, surprises I’ll keep that way for readers of this review (in other words: go and see it!), but it doesn’t do to relax too much, as these characters aren’t going to stay true to the stereotypes one expects for the whole of the play.

A definite shout-out to the scenic designer, Justin Lahue, who has created one room that can contain multitudes. It looks like a kitchen with wheat fields in the background, keeping the audience rooted in time and place and the dominance of the land (“nothing other than dinner and threshing”); but that kitchen transforms in remarkable ways and surprises in more mundane ones.

Harbor Stage has once again breathed new vibrant life into a story usually relegated to college reading lists, and both Withers and Fielding are—as always—spectacularly good at pulling audience members out of their own lives and into quirky, interesting, and sometimes baffling characters. Another absolute delight.

review by Jeannette de Beauvoir

photos by Edward Boches and Justin Lahue