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Whats in a name?
In Lloyd SuhsThe Far Country, hell calculate the exact value for you in dollars and cents.
The Far Countryhas an epic sweep, but the play breaks down into a series of long negotiations.
Eventually hell earn far more than he could as a farmer, but not without years of indentured work.
Moon Gyet, listening in on their conversation, seizes upon Gees offer.
The writing glows from the walls of Clint Ramoss set, which also surrounds the stage with water.
In buying and selling their names, these characters are really buying and selling their pasts and their futures.
The disjunction seems to be the point.
Yet it resists sometimes intriguingly, sometimes maddeningly the conventional rhythms of a staged conversation.
The play begins with Marta (Johanna Day) and Dan (Arliss Howard) making conversation over dinner.
He refused to change it and died a few years later.
This staging sticks with that unclarified script, seeming to incorporate Johnsons death into its many vagaries.
A better play would be more direct, but it would also be less potent.
The emptiness ofDes Moinesfeels as vast and unsettling as its Great Plains setting.
