Theatre in Review: Abundance (The Actors Company Theatre/Theatre Row)Beth Henley wastes no time in disillusioning the two heroines of Abundance, her feel-bad epic about pioneer women. Bess and Macon are introduced sitting at a stagecoach stop somewhere in the Wyoming Territory in the late 1860s; they are mail-order brides, waiting for the men they have contracted to marry without ever having met. Bess is a shy little thing, but Macon is exuberance personified. "I savor the boundlessness of it all," she cries. Bess has more modest expectations: "I hope our husbands don't turn out to be too ugly to stand." As it happens, both women have to stand for plenty. Macon's husband, Will, is an unsightly widower of uncertain years who lives in squalor. ("Some women get squeamish over fleas and ticks and lice, not me," Macon assures him.) He is also missing an eye: "Man knocked it out with a mining pick," he says. "It was an honest mistake." He gives Macon a ring, which, it turns out, belonged to his late wife: "She lost three fingers in a sheep-shearing accident," he adds. "One of 'em was her ring finger." Bess is set to marry Mike Flan, but instead his brother, Jack, shows up with grim news: Mike is dead. "I'm gonna marry you," Jack declares. This is not a fair trade: Mike wrote Bess three letters, carefully outlining their life together. Jack is selfish, taciturn, and hits women when they cry. If you think things can only get better then you're unfamiliar with the plays of Beth Henley, one of the American theatre's principal pessimists. Abundance, I think, marks the moment when Henley dropped the wacky, winsome comedy layered over a foundation of melancholy that was her trademark in the 1980s, opting instead to ram home the ugly truth without any sugarcoating. But the steady drumbeat of bad news is so constant in Abundance that, at times, it's not clear whether or not the author is kidding. Abundance has a number of episodes that detail the sufferings of Bess and Macon with scalding frankness, but they alternate with scenes that threaten to push the entire enterprise over into self-parody. Is there no tiny trace of felicity in this Darwinian universe? It is true that Will and Macon prosper for a while, thanks to Macon's canny management and the coming of the railroad, allowing them to add to their acreage and increase their creature comforts. This is not happiness, however: Will's idea of a Christmas present for Macon is a glass eye for himself, which, he hopes, will encourage more than the occasional invitation into her bed. It's not enough that Bess miscarries; the buried child is dug up and devoured by wolves. She keeps a prairie dog as a substitute child, until a stranger brains it with a rock. Soon after, Jack and Bess' farm burns down. As Bess says, "Early disappointments are embittering my life." At which point, I wanted to say, Honey, you said a mouthful. Much more happens in Abundance, none of it good: The ladies plan to run away until Macon, feeling prosperous, refuses to leave. Bess is kidnapped by Indians and presumed dead. She returns in a semi-savage, semi-comatose state, tattooed and possessed of a woeful story of being traded for trinkets by her Indian husband. A slick writer from the East shows up and helps her turn her experiences into a lucrative memoir, and she hits the lecture circuit, becoming a spokeswoman for Manifest Destiny, urging the extinction of Native Americans. By now, Macon is routinely cheating on Will with Jack. And let's not forget the crop failure, the bum gold mine, bankruptcy, desertion, and syphilis. You've got to admire Henley's willingness to take an axe to one of the most cherished American myths -- certainly, more than a few of the pioneers were attracted to wide open spaces because of their inability to function in civilized society -- but the playwright has constructed a universe so relentlessly bleak that what is meant to be black comedy is often risible for all the wrong reasons. Despite their very different temperaments, Macon and Bess are little more than vessels of suffering, and the men in their lives are brutes, oafs, or con men. More than one scene provoked scoffing laughter at the performance I attended. Nevertheless, Abundance looks stronger than it did in its 1990 production at Manhattan Theatre Club, largely because Jenn Thompson manages to emphasize the script's strengths and play down its excesses. Kelly McAndrew's Macon is surprisingly touching in the defiant way she clings to optimism in the face of disaster, until she meets an end not to be described. Given the task of assembling a character who begins as a submissive wife and morphs first into an animal in chains and then a grasping, loveless businesswoman, Tracy Middendorf darn near manages to pull all these identities into a coherent character. Todd Lawson's Jack is an utterly convincing bully, ultimately undone by his dependence on his wife's wealth. Ted Koch's Will is well-meaning but clueless, a barely civilized creature who yearns for his wife's touch. Jeff Talbott is effective as the "professor" who spins Bess' tale into a lurid, racist best-seller. Proving especially helpful is the starkly beautiful production design. Wilson Chin's set places the action on a slight raked wooden deck surrounded by clouds made out of carved wood and canvas. Philip Rosenberg's lighting paints the clouds with muted bursts of color and creates alluring night sky effects. Tracy Christensen's costumes have a solid period feel; they do much to help chart the many and jarring changes in Bess' life. Toby Algya's original music and sound are evocative. There's no question that the final tableau of Abundance -- with Bess and Macon, many years after their first meeting, now virtual strangers occupying vastly different positions -- has a certain power. But the disaster-filled journey to that moment is extremely bumpy. All I can say is, If all the pioneers had to put up with everything that plagues Bess and Macon, they would have never gotten past Ohio. -- David Barbour 
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