Sometimes, in the dark of the theater, all the elements merge seamlessly: story, language, scenery, music, drama, comedy, acting, physicality, even the laughter, sighs and gasps of the audience.
Word for Word, San Francisco’s long-running literary theater company, has the power to create that alternate reality, and often does. But I can’t remember when it last chose a work so perfectly suited to its special talents. “Hard Times: Appalachian Stories by Ron Rash,” with eight actors playing several roles apiece, seems written specifically for the talents of this company.
Three of Rash’s unlinked stories, all set in the small-town and rural South (Rash grew up in South and North Carolina), form an evening that begins, hilariously, with a bungled effort to stage a crucifixion as an Easter celebration; continues with a gentle and unexpected encounter between a newly released prisoner and a helicopter pilot; and ends with a Depression-era tale of poverty and conflict.
Rash, in his unerring literary voice, creates fully fleshed-out characters—tragic, absurd, ultimately completely human—and Word for Word brings the characters to life in its patented style, every word intact, including the “he saids” and “she saids.”
In the first story, “The Night the New Jesus Fell to Earth,” directed by Jim Cave, Larry (John Flanagan), the self-important town hustler/car salesman with “Brillo-pad hair” and faux-gold jewelry, manages to convince the new, eager-to-please minister of the Baptist church (Ryan Tasker) to allow him to portray Jesus and mount a dangerously unsteady pole for a crucifixion scene. You may never see anything funnier than the two reluctant townsmen, in loincloths that look exactly like diapers, coerced into service as Jesus’ companions on the rigged-up cross. Narrated by Larry’s no-nonsense ex-wife (played by Molly Rebekka Benson), Rash pokes gentle fun at the varied villagers all trying to get along.
The middle story, “Sad Man in the Sky,” directed by Amy Kussow, is a two-hander in which Paul Finocchiaro plays a helicopter pilot and Joel Mullennix is his sad and hopeful passenger with an odd mission.
And in “Hard Times,” also directed by Kussow with her customary sensitivity, a married couple (Delia MacDougall as the tough, bitter wife and Tasker as her husband), struggling to survive in Appalachia in the ninth year of the Depression, discover that eggs are mysteriously disappearing from their hen house at night. That worrisome problem leads to a completely unexpected encounter with a neighboring family. This portrait of perhaps the hardest of hard times in America is taut and powerful.
To bring Rash’s stories to life, Word for Word requires only the essentials of a set (a few chairs, a stool, a bench, the suggestion of a small wood-framed house, all designed by Jacqueline Scott); Callie Floor’s period costumes in the last story; a consistent set of Appalachian accents; plus live music by Finocchiaro on guitar and banjo, some original. All that, and actors who seem to feel their characters deep in their bones.
This live, sensorial experience of Rash’s beautifully written fictional world is a rare treat.
Word for Word’s “Hard Times: Appalachian Stories by Ron Rash” continues through Nov. 2 at Z Below, 470 Florida St., San Francisco. Tickets are $45-$70 at zspace.org/hardtimes.