InterAct Theatre Company presents Amy Berryman’s Walden

Seth Rozin’s skillful production unsettles as much as it disarms. Walking into the Proscenium Theatre at the Drake, Chris Haig’s woodland cottage set suggests a bucolic weekend getaway house, with little to telegraph a roiling conflict beneath the inviting atmosphere. Stella (Alice Yorke) and her partner Bryan (Newton Buchanan) initially appear like any typical young couple, having drinks on their patio and anticipating a visit from Stella’s twin sister Cassie (Campbell O’Hare).

Signs of a darker story begin to emerge quickly. Checking her phone, Stella learns of a “super tsunami” that’s killed close to a million people on the East Coast. She urges Bryan not to tell Cassie that he’s an “EA.” And while the pair seem happily nestled deep in the woods, they reference colonies where climate refugees are starting to migrate.

Fraught, layered, and warm

Walden manages a near-impossible feat: it treats a hot-button topic with a refreshing lack of didacticism. Berryman’s taut script focuses on the human relationships that underpin the central issue, and in doing so, she shows how fraught subjects infuse every aspect of our lives.

It matters that Cassie, an astronaut with NASA, has been instrumental in establishing those colonies—settlements on other planets that offer, to her at least, humanity’s last hope. It matters too that Stella left NASA before going into space herself, and that EA stands for Earth Advocate, a movement that protects the planet we have rather than seeking a new atmosphere.

These dystopian echoes introduce a fresh tension to what could have easily been a rehash of well-trod ground. Yorke and O’Hare communicate layers of profound love and long-held resentment, their increasingly divergent responses to the climate crisis masking volatile personal battles. Although Bryan is a slightly underwritten character compared to the sisters, Buchanan’s warm performance ensures that he never comes across as merely a mouthpiece for political speeches.

In the play’s last half-hour, Berryman introduces a major conflict that ends in a punt. It’s the play’s one major misstep. Yet O’Hare, Buchanan, and especially Yorke overcome these slightly false notes, and the production moves toward a deeply affecting conclusion. I was not alone in fighting back tears.

Can we leave the world behind?

Katherine Fritz’s costumes balance a fine line between the contemporary and the futuristic, landing on the right unsettling quality. Lindsay Stevens’s lighting adds ghostly echoes to the proceedings—particularly in a nervy late-night scene where Cassie and Bryan expound upon their disparate ideologies. Natali Merrill’s sound design volleys between pastoral nature and foreboding anxiety, becoming almost an expression of the characters’ inner turmoil.

Literally and figuratively, the play’s title evokes Henry David Thoreau, the transcendentalist ascetic who retreated to the woods of Walden Pond. Like Stella, Thoreau found that separating himself from society caused as many issues as it cured, and in the end, he couldn’t fully leave the world behind. Walden deftly shows that whether you escape to a Massachusetts wilderness or a Martian colony, those long, tight ties still bind.