Culture Writer
The Difficulty of Crossing a Field at the Terrace Theater through Sunday, June 29 is a multi-layered mystery based on a short story by a man who was himself a mystery.
Produced by the Long Beach Opera, The Difficulty of Crossing a Field is inspired by Ambrose Bierce’s 1893 short story by the same name. The 752-word piece concerns pre-Civil War plantation owner Mr. Williamson (Mark Bringelson), who, in full view of a dozen or so people, including his wife, rises from his chair on the porch of his house, walks down the garden path, briefly talks with a neighbor passing by in a carriage, proceeds across an open field and disappears.
Oddly enough, at the age of 71, Bierce slipped away to Mexico and was not seen again after 1914. Odder still are the stories of a mid-step disappearance of David Lang of Gallatin, Tennessee, in 1880 and the coincidental (or maybe not) fashioning of this opera by composer David Lang and playwright Mac Wellman in 2002. These historical tidbits simply add layers of eerie wonder to this ethereal production during which the audience sits on the stage and the actors perform in a dry ice-shrouded theater, complete with illuminated runway.
Bierce’s short story is told from two perspectives— that of the narrator and the court testimony of Armour Wren (Robin Buck), a neighboring plantation owner. In this opera-musical-play, the points of view of Williamson’s wife (Suzan Hanson), daughter (Valerie Vinzant) and overseer Andrew (Robin Buck), considered to be his brother in the opera but not in the story, as well as Boy Sam (Eric B. Anthony) and a half dozen field slaves, are added to the mix.
Though almost all the characters at some point sing almost all the same words, their meanings are radically different. For example, when Armour Wren testifies, “I have never heard of Mr. Williamson since, nor of Mrs. Williamson,” it is taken as a simple matter of fact, but when Mrs. Williamson says the same, the audience realizes that she departed, at least in spirit, when her husband disappeared. Of course, she did, since a woman without a husband during that time might be turned out to fend for herself or survive off the crumbs of her relatives. That’s why the interpretation that is sometimes floated that Mr. Williamson was “disappeared” as punishment for his sins against his family and his slaves rings hollow. Disappearing with the chance of going somewhere better is a pale punishment compared to what awaits his wife and daughter— and particularly his slaves, who, no doubt would be auctioned off, splitting up families and friends in a wholesale disappearance of the relationships they knew.
Though Mrs. Williamson, who, in Bierce’s story was deemed mad and thereby incompetent to testify, is the main character in the opera, the Williamsons’ daughter seems the best voice for its haunting nature. An unbalanced mystic, she has some of the most enigmatic lines: “a perfect day to fall into the hole of not talking” and “What if there is something special we don’t see?” There are symbolic suggestions that her father may have molested her: the phallic cigar that he tosses casually away and how he carelessly plucks a flower or tops it with his walking stick.
Perhaps most perplexing is not Mr. Williamson’s disappearance but his daughter’s admonishments that he has not “talked to the horses” about “the history of the horses and the mysteries of Selma, Alabama.” There is a lot of talk about horses, both in the short story and the opera: Mr. Williamson rises from his chair on the porch to tell Andrew, the overseer, about the horses, and the neighboring plantation owner, Armour Wren, has Sam Boy turn the carriage around so he can tell Mr. Williamson about the delivery of some horses. Perhaps “horses” is a stand-in for “slaves,” as they are traded and treated in much the same manner. Most curious of all, the carriage’s horse stumbles just as Mr. Williamson vanishes. There is a split moment when the near-fall of the horse distracts Wren, his young son and Sam Boy, and during that time whatever took place, took place.
The 13-year-old son insistently repeats, “Father, what has become of Mr. Williamson?” In this seemingly simple line, he asks what is wondered whenever a human being departs this world, a question that will be asked, aloud or in silence, when each one of us disappears.
The Difficulty of Crossing a Field continues at the Terrace Theater through June 29. Performances are Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 2pm. Admission is $29 to $160. For information and reservations, call (562) 432-5934 or purchase online at longbeachopera.org. The Terrace Theater is located at 300 E. Ocean Blvd.
