Theatre in Review: The Mound Builders (Pershing Square Signature Theatre Center)Theatregoers are getting a crash course in Lanford Wilson this season. Roundabout Theatre Company is offering Talley's Folly, his masterpiece in miniature and one of the two or three plays by which he will take his place in theatre history. The Mound Builders, at Signature Theatre, is a far more problematic work, but also a more typical one. A play about archeologists, it is also something of an artifact itself, a relic of the days when a playwright might be so closely bonded to a theatre company that he could build a play around its resident actors. The Mound Builders is one of a number of plays -- among them The Hot l Baltimore, Fifth of July, Talley's Folly, and Angels Fall -- in which Wilson took advantage of the actors of the late, great Circle Repertory. These ensemble works, which feature plenty of his trademarked naturalistic dialogue, are booby-trapped with buried conflicts that often don't erupt until the eleventh hour. At their best, they leave you nodding in admiration at how carefully the author has misdirected your attention, surprising you with the force of a conflict that feels surprising, yet thoroughly earned. Sometimes, however, the conversation is aimless, and audiences are likely to feel blindsided by climaxes that erupt out of left field. The Mound Builders assembles a typically Wilsonian cadre of chatterboxes and lets them hold forth at length. The action focuses on an archeological dig in southern Illinois in 1975. The team is headed by August Howe, aided by his none-too-faithful wife, Cynthia, a photographer who is documenting the dig. August's assistant, Dan, is accompanied by his wife, Jean, a gynecology intern, who is taking time off to have a baby. Hovering on the edges of this little group are Chad, scion of the Jasker family on whose land the dig is based, and D.K., aka Delia, August's stupendously dissipated sister and a blocked novelist, who has come to dry out. ("My sister is dying again," says a grim August, who has seen it all before.) Wilson wastes no time in making clear that August and Cynthia's marriage is headed off a cliff; as one apparently trivial conversation follows another, it becomes clear that the author is planting several explosive devices, all of them with long fuses: Chad, a feckless soul who stands to profit mightily from plans to turn the area into a resort, is sleeping with Cynthia but is also obsessed with Jean, who, in turn, wants nothing to do with him. (Wilson teasingly suggests in one scene that Chad has feelings for Dan, as well, although the latter is too drunk to notice.) There is considerable tension between bitter, cynical Cynthia and Jean, who has plenty to live for. Most crucially, August has not been entirely honest with Chad, whose dreams of prosperity may be more illusory than they seem. All of this unfolds slowly and notably without tension, despite portentous music and narration by August, a year after the events of the play, that suggest an unspecified disaster is imminent. There's also a fair amount of shop talk, which is Wilson's way of advising us that in the long view, all of the characters' passions and aspirations don't even amount to a speck in time. Much of the talk centers on Delia, who seems to exist only to hand out painful home truths to the others. (She also gets the best lines, as when she decries the farmhouse occupied by the team as "this godforsaken Grant Wood mausoleum.") Wilson repeatedly makes sure that we take note of every possible dramatic flash point, but in other respects, he proves rather stingy with details. August and Cynthia have so little to do with each other that the end of their marriage sparks little interest; similarly, it's hard to believe that he and Delia have any kind of a shared past. Delia is little more than a cliché of the hell-raising writer, reminiscing fondly about all the bars from which she has been ejected. You could call her Mama Hemingway, and most of the time her relevance to the rest of The Mound Builders is slight, at best. When it is discovered that the dig is of enormous importance ("Never before had the grave of a god king been discovered," somebody says, using words right out of a movie trailer), Wilson tugs on his hidden dramatic line, and suddenly everything snaps into a state of tension, setting the stage for a terrible series of events. The last 20 minutes of The Mound Builders are surprisingly gripping -- but whether you are willing to wait for this late-in-the-day eruption of drama will surely be a matter of taste. In my view, The Mound Builders is a climax looking for a play. This is so despite Jo Bonney's meticulous production and the efforts of a solid cast. Zachary Booth captures Dan's fun-loving spirit -- especially his fondness for pot and booze, which only exaggerates his gift of gab. He also has a nicely chilling moment when he dons an ancient death mask, and, just for a second, can't get it off. Janie Brookshire has all the right attitudes as Cynthia -- she positively bristles with boredom and resentment -- but the script gives her little help. Will Rogers makes Chad into an equally foolish and pathetic creature, basking in a vision of himself as a wealthy landowner and consumed with resentment when thwarted. Lisa Joyce quietly signals Jean's growing panic at Chad's unwanted attentions. As Delia, Danielle Skraastad never quite convinces, but this is surely not her fault; the character is a construct, not a recognizable human being. The same is true of David Conrad as August, who has surprisingly little to do. Young Rachel Resheff makes a couple of nice appearances as August and Cynthia's smart-mouthed daughter ("If I were you, I'd send me to camp."). Bonney has also supplied The Mound Builders with a fine production design. Neil Patel's aging farmhouse set, loaded with mismatched furniture, is a carefully conceived ramshackle structure that allows Rui Rita to blast light through the crevices in its walls; Rita uses the entire set as a gobo, creating some notably haunted looks. Theresa Squire's costumes are spot-on depictions of mid-'70s leisure wear and work clothes; the hair designs are equally accurate. Shawn Sagady's projections -- of the site of the dig, and of the locals -- give a strong sense of the life unfolding just offstage. Darron L West's exemplary sound design includes such effects as birdsongs, thunder, rain, and barking dogs. This kind of first-class revival is exactly the kind of work that Signature should be doing, even if in this case the results are less than optimal. There's no avoiding the fact, however, that this mid-level Wilson piece will be a long and difficult sit for many. Some of Wilson's plays thrill; others leave you all talked out.--David Barbour 
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