The Wooden Breeks

When it premiered in New York last year, Glen Berger’s The Wooden Breeks was greeted like a redheaded stepchild. A boggy, broguey tale of low-dose science fantasy, Berger’s storybook narrative about a village haunted by the disappearance of a comely young maiden was spanked by some for its whimsy and wordiness, by others for its aimlessness and artlessness. You can’t really argue that naysayers missed the point, as for all its layers of metastorytelling and iron-armored metaphors, there doesn’t seem to be one. But it’s entirely possible that they missed the fun, which under Stillman’s direction gets teased out of Berger’s loam and blossoms like vibrant (if shrinking) flowers.

To recount the labyrinthine plot points wouldn’t spoil anything, but it might confuse the hell out of both of us. Suffice it to say, though, that Berger’s story is narrated by a bitter, widowed tinker (dashingly unsentimental Smith) to his estranged son (in the trouser-tyke role, Abigail Droeger nearly pickpockets the show from her very capable adult costars), and that all the wily peasants bobble about worrying whether or not their fellow villagers are being buried alive. There’s plucky romance in all its most popular forms: aging fussbudgets (Eva Barr and Raymond Fox are crisply funny), randy moppets (tasty Marika Mashburn and Brendan Donaldson are a hay-bale ride of hormones) and pining widower Smith. While the woolly codification of Berger’s world commands less respect than it should—most actions and consequences within it are oddly empty—Stillman’s production somehow gives it wit, order and mossy soul.