Theater: Wheelborne

SPOKESONG by Stewart Parker

It sometimes seems as if Arvin Brown, artistic director of New Haven’s Long Wharf Theater, visits the London stage with a shopping list. And he never settles for shoddy goods. Among his finds have been The Changing Room by David Sto rey and The National Health by Peter Nichols. The link continues with Spokesong, a play of tipsy irony and fantastical humor set against the cruel fratricide of Northern Ireland.

The hero, Frank (John Lithgow), runs a bicycle shop in Belfast. He is zany about bikes and a bit zany all around. He can dismantle a bike and apostrophize its beauty as if he were disrobing a woman and seducing her. It runs in his blood.

His grandfather Francis (Josef Sommer), who founded the shop 80 years before, was a bicycle nut. One surrealistically fun ny sequence has the grandfather (in flash back) learning the manual of arms for bicycle troops from a World War I sergeant.

The symbolism with which Irish Protestant Playwright Parker moves and sometimes mires his play is that the bicycle stands for sweet-souled individual freedom and the automobile for arrogant mass tyranny. Frank says at one point: “Christ on a bicycle—you can see that. You can’t see Him driving a Jaguar.”

Much of the abiding charm of the evening rests in two sentimental yet spirited courtships. Doing a bike repair job for Daisy (Virginia Vestoff), Frank falls in love with her. Daisy is a teacher who poignantly wonders how the quiet lessons of the classroom can ever erase from little children’s minds the terrorist traumas of the streets. In flashback, Frank’s grand father woos Kitty (Maria Tucci), an ardent prototypical feminist.

The evening is presided over by a kind of M.C. (Joseph Maher), who makes his opening entrance on a unicycle. The circusy music-hall atmosphere is further enhanced by snatches of nostalgic ditties, sometimes caustic, reminiscent of Oh What a Lovely War. This is not a show for all theaters and all seasons. It has its soft spots in the head as well as the heart, but it is another example of the range and skill of our resident theaters.