MIKE PETERS
From left, Allison Altman, Erin Germaine Mahoney and Anthony Vaughn Merchant co-star in Premiere Stages’ production of “Walden” at The Bauer Boucher Theatre Center at Kean University in Union.
In the opening scene of “Walden” — Amy Berryman’s 2021 play, which is currently having its New Jersey premiere at The Bauer Boucher Theatre Center at Kean University in Union — a radio newscast is heard. Approximately one million people have died in a tsunami that has decimated Sri Lanka.
And it’s not even the broadcast’s lead story.
Though set, alarmingly, in the not-so-distant future, “Walden” — directed here by Charlotte Cohn — depicts a world in which “climate crisis” is not just a phrase that people throw around. It’s a real crisis, in which the future of the human race is truly in doubt. Things are bad and getting worse, quickly.
MIKE PETERS
Erin Germaine Mahoney, left, and Allison Altman in “Walden.”
But despite this arresting premise, “Walden” is, essentially, a family drama, in which estranged twin sisters Stella (Allison Altman) and Cassie (Erin Germaine Mahoney) deal with their messy past as Cassie meets Stella’s fiancé Bryan (Anthony Vaughn Merchant) for the first time, in the rustic house in which Stella and Bryan live. The rift between the sisters echoes the rift that the entire human race is experiencing, at this moment in our imagined future history.
This is an intense and, ultimately, hopeful play, despite the dire circumstances that these characters find themselves in. Berryman pulls off a difficult juggling act, creating a world that — while it may be coming, sooner than anyone wants — is very different from the world as it is now, but also making her characters very relatable. “Walden” is a play of an exotic ideas, but there is also a big emotional payoff at the end, making it quite a rare accomplishment.
To go back to that radio broadcast … what relegated the tsunami to the second slot was a story about a NASA mission to the moon that has just ended, successfully. Cassie was on that mission. Stella, we eventually learn — Berryman reveals key biographical details slowly, so that there is a lot of mystery early on — was an astronaut in the past, too, and a habitation she designed, and gave the name of Walden, may play a big part in allowing the human race to survive after Earth is uninhabitable.
Those living in this time have split into two factions. Some firmly believe a environmental point of no return has been reached, and that space offers the only chance for survival. Others, radical environmentalists called Earth Advocates, think there is still time to reverse things, if humans make major changes in how they live.
MIKE PETERS
Erin Germaine Mahoney, left, and Anthony Vaughn Merchant in “Walden.”
Cassie is firmly committed to the space program, even though it demands great personal sacrifices. Bryan is an Earth Advocate, and Stella is going along with that spartan lifestyle, too, though she is finding it hard to get the NASA ideology out of her system.
Not surprisingly, Cassie — though she genuinely wants to reconnect with her sister — also has an ulterior motive in this visit, that complicates things.
Though it never becomes a full-blown love triangle, there is also a flirtation between Cassie and the earnest Bryan that, I thought, seemed a bit unbelievable (they have just met, after all, and are future in-laws) and added an unnecessary complication. This does turn “Walden” into a soap opera, but just for a moment. Berryman backs away from this storyline quickly, and two heart-to-heart closing discussions — between Stella and Bryan, and then Stella and Cassie — bring “Walden” back down to earth in a powerful, poignant way.
The play’s title, by the way, is indeed a reference to Henry David Thoreau’s classic 1854 book about living in a cabin, close to nature, in a way that is somewhat akin to the way that Stella and Bryan are living now. It was the favorite book of the twins’ father, who was also an astronaut, and they quote one of its famous passages in unison: the one that ends with “Why should I feel lonely? Is not our planet in the Milky Way?”
“The point being, we are never alone,” one of the sisters adds.
Easier said than done, in Thoreau’s time, or ours, or — I would bet — in times to come.
Premiere Stages will present “Walden” at The Bauer Boucher Theatre Center at Kean University in Union, through Sept. 21. Visit premierestagesatkean.com.
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