~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Better Days

by Gillian Chadsey
review by Karen McKevitt in SF Weekly (July 25, 2001)

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An imaginative, intelligent account of the lives
of two families broken by the Great Depression

The Train Station Theater Lab's
debut production is a remarkably
imaginative and intelligent telling of
the lives of two families broken by
the Great Depression. The Tillers
send their oldest daughter, Harvest
(Gillian Chadsey), off to find work in
the fields and send money home.
Concurrently, Chase Butler (David
Tenenbaum) runs away from the big
city on a romantic whim to see America's vast, open spaces
before going to college. Harvest and Chase meet up in the
Pullman cars, while the Tillers lose their farm and the Butlers
become victims of the stock market. Though Harvest and Chase
are the central characters, the play (written by Chadsey, using
transcripts collected by the Federal Writers' Project) doesn't have
a stable narrative structure, which would have ruined it anyway.
Instead, it's a series of scenes comprised of both interwoven
monologues and straight dialogue, connected by movement and
traditional folk music (arranged by Clive Worsley). The result is
stunning: Rather than forming a story arc in which characters
proceed from Point A to Point B, the characters' fractured lives
emerge from an equally fractured internal scene structure. For
example, Mrs. Butler (Michelle Talgarow) swallows her pride to
ask for assistance, her lines overlapping with those of Harvest's
younger sister (Meridith Crosley) as she spells "malnutrition."
Other beautifully rendered scenes cover the expanse of the
Midwest. Mrs. Tiller fights through a dust storm (Talgarow uses
the Suzuki method, creating slow-motion movement); Harvest
and Chase jump in and out of trains (Chadsey and Tenenbaum
are detailed physical actors); and lunch-room customers form an
orchestra, make music with their utensils, and ask, "How much for
coffee?" and "Can I order?" Sometimes the play errs on the side
of excess, with perhaps too many scenes, some of which (like an
amusing, Chaplin-esque silent movie about pecan pickers) don't
seem to fit. But the outstanding ensemble, lightly and magically
orchestrated by director Kent Nicholson, creates an innovative
and entertaining evening of theater.

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