NY Review: 'Revisiting Wildfire'

Kari Floren’s “Revisiting Wildfire” opens with Lynne Wintersteller alone onstage singing, and what could be better than that? Those of us who love Wintersteller from “Closer Than Ever” and other musicals can’t get enough of her clear, expressive vocals, and the thought of her in a nonmusical feels like a possible waste of resources. As it turns out, she also has considerable acting chops, and to watch her as Theresa, a burned-out and possibly deranged former executive and fashion designer, is a revelation. Also she gets to lift her burnished voice a bit, though it’s exclusively in a cheesy 1970s pop song that Theresa is clinging to as if it were a life raft. She sees Michael Martin Murphey and Larry Cansler’s “Wildfire” as her salvation and the key to her future, for reasons I never did quite get.

Theresa’s conviction about that silly song is about to be severely challenged with the visit of Pam (Nancy Johnston), her oldest and best pal, who arrives unannounced from Cleveland bearing life-altering circumstances of her own. I know, I know: another two-hander and another study of baby-boom chick bonding—there seem to be a lot of them lately. Floren’s, at least, brings up issues with which you don’t have to be a 52-year-old white lady with a middle-class background to identify: the solace of the past, the difficulty of change, the limitations our culture places on gender. It feels universal, and rather than preaching only to those in the audience who are like the people onstage, it draws all of us in.

Floren’s writing has its problems: bald exposition (“The talks we’ve had every Sunday for 25 years”), clichés (“That’s enough to choke a horse”), and shorthand declarations (“I want my life to mean more”). The characters’ motivations aren’t always clear: Just how crazy is Theresa, and why would lines such as “By the dark of the moon, I planted” speak so strongly to her? Would Pam really leave her husband, who sounds like a pretty decent sort, just because he reneged on a long-ago promise to get them out of Ohio? Why do these two engage in rapid argue-reconcile-argue-reconcile banter, meant to distill long-term friendship but smacking of stage convention?

At the early preview I attended, Johnston kept calling Theresa “Pam,” but she did strongly convey the desperation of a woman of a certain age, struggling not only with health issues but a need to break out of the narrow role into which society has pressed her. Director Eve Brandstein maintains a crisp pace, and Jason Sherwood’s set neatly gets most of a two-bedroom West Village apartment onto the ArcLight Theatre’s small stage. Applause, too, for Daniel Heffernan’s projections, which comment ethereally on how tough—and messy—life transitions can be.

Presented by Right Down Broadway Productions at the ArcLight Theatre, 152 W. 71st St., NYC. June 6–24. Tue.–Thu., 7 p.m.; Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2 and 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m. (No performance Sat., June 16, 2 p.m.; additional performance Sun., June 17, 7 p.m.) (212) 352-3101, (866) 811-4111, www.theatermania.com, or www.revisitingwildfire.com. Casting by Jamibeth Margolis.