An Epic Too Far

With the opening of Part 2 of “The Cider House Rules,” great expectations are focused on Seattle this month. The Intiman Theatre here first produced “The Kentucky Cycle,” that multigenerational, two-part, very long work that in 1992 became the first play ever to win a Pulitzer Prize without having been produced in New York--an event that seemed once and for all to prove the centrality of regional theater to developing new American plays.

Now, just in time for Pulitzer consideration, the Seattle Repertory Theatre is sending another epic-length drama out into the world, this one based on John Irving’s 1985 novel “The Cider House Rules.” Unfortunately, the play does not have an epic-sized heart.

It comes, though, at an opportune moment in the Rep’s illustrious history: Longtime artistic director Daniel Sullivan leaves this year, to be replaced by Sharon Ott from the Berkeley Rep. Sullivan has brought glory to the theater since his tenure began in 1981. He developed and/or premiered works by Bill Irwin, Wendy Wasserstein, Herb Gardner and Neil Simon while also presenting the classics. And--as if to prove that distinctions are blurring forever--Sullivan became one of the country’s most prominent directors of commercial theater during that time as well.

“Cider House” clearly follows in the footsteps of plays developed at nonprofit theaters that are able to raise money because of future commercial potential. Developed over three years, the two-part, eight-hour adaptation also initiates the Rep’s new second stage, the Leo Kreielsheimer Theatre, more appropriately known as the Jewel Box. This intimate, elegant and inviting space would provide an advantage to any play trying itself out on an audience.

And so “Cider House” is uniquely poised to become the next “Nicholas Nickleby,” a comparison some reviewers were hasty to make last year when Part 1 debuted. Irving’s novel is in fact a modern homage to Charles Dickens, favorite writer of Homer Wells, the “Cider House” hero. Homer (a quietly appealing Neal Huff) is an orphan with Dickensian integrity, who must go on a journey to discover “whether I will be the hero of my own life,” just as David Copperfield does. He reads “Copperfield” over and over to the younger boys at Saint Cloud’s orphanage, and he repeats the hero line to himself as if it were a mantra.

But more than a story of a boy finding his way in the world, “Cider House” is a barely disguised tract on the subject of abortion and a woman’s right to have it, a belief passionately held by Homer’s unofficial adoptive father, Dr. Wilbur Larch. Larch (played with beautiful modulation by Michael Winters, who also was in “The Kentucky Cycle”) is a man who delivers babies and who “delivers mothers.” By that, Larch means he ends unwanted pregnancies, although abortion is illegal in the years when the play takes place (1880s to 1950s), and he is shunned by a hypocritical society that calls it the devil’s work.

In adapting this story, Peter Parnell (“The Rise and Rise of Daniel Rocket,” “Romance Language”) obviously has resisted much abridgment. (A viewer can see the show on one eight-hour day or on two four-hour days.) He has retained much of the original narration in the third person, with 50-some characters narrating their own stories (including the “he saids”) as they act the emotions they are experiencing while the action is taking place.

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This technique works surprisingly well, usually comedically, allowing characters to express thoughts and tensions normally subtextual. The result is that of an elaborate reading, cleanly staged with 21 actors on an almost bare set by Tom Hulce (the actor) and Jane Jones (who started Seattle’s Book-It Company, dedicated to dramatizing books).

Parnell’s faith in the book is clear: Obviously, he sees the characters and their travails as separate from and enriched by the debate on abortion that is at the center of the loving struggle between Larch, who teaches medicine to Homer, and the boy, who comes to feel that abortion is wrong.

Part 1 keeps both balls in the air with considerable aplomb, as Larch struggles with feelings of fatherly tenderness and tries hard not to force onto Homer his own belief in the necessity of performing abortions. But by Part 2, “Cider House” clearly is a story stretched too far--and with too little character development--to fill out its length. By the end, Irving’s shortcomings are as apparent as the fact that Parnell won’t see them.

Like the book, the play believes in the transforming power of facing things squarely--it features several onstage deliveries and abortions, and medical descriptions not meant for the squeamish. This is a story in which, when the boy falls for the girl, he steals some of her pubic hair, shaved off just before her abortion.

But beneath the story’s surface toughness, the play doesn’t really tackle the moral issue of abortion. It states and restates the positions of the major characters, while keeping it always clear that Homer simply needs to experience enough of the world’s evil before his inevitable recognition of Larch’s unpleasant truth.

Once you start an epic in motion, it is easy to lose sight of it, and “Cider House” rolls like a gigantic ball over a cliff in Part 2. Very little happens to Homer in the entire final four hours, except that he is stuck in an unhappy situation and gets much less interesting. Larch keeps repeating himself, gets older and even further addicted to ether. Homer’s hulking childhood sweetheart Melony (the hilarious Jillian Armenante) keeps up a single-minded obsession with him through her life. A tragic racial interlude is told clumsily, confusing attempts to figure out just what the title means. And Homer’s redemption, when it finally comes, is expected and anti-climactic, ending with more patriarchal fantasy and not as much heart as one would find in Dickens.

We ask a lot of epic theater, and we should. It’s a big commitment. Its pleasures are enormous; they take hold of you slowly, until their grip is beyond denial. Not every story can fill out that suit, no matter how much obvious care and tenderness have gone into the making. Perhaps one lesson to be learned this month in Seattle is that the best way to respect a book is not necessarily to resist condensing it.

* “The Cider House Rules,” Seattle Repertory Theatre, Seattle Center, 155 Mercer St., through Feb. 15. (206) 443-2222.