Kid's play

There's little left to the imagination in Kindergarten

by Steve Vineberg

ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN Conceived and adapted by Ernest Zulia, from the writings of Robert Fulghum. Original music and lyrics by David Caldwell. Directed by Michael G. Dell'Orto. Musical direction by Thomas Hojnacki. Set and lighting designed by Sarah Sullivan. Costumes by Ted Giammona. WIth Marina Re, Eve Johnson, Chip Phillips, James Bodge, and Bill Mootos. At Worcester Foothills Theatre, through October 25.

I never got around to reading Robert Fulghum's All I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten because the title made me wince; I don't have much patience with people who idealize childhood, and since I stubbornly continue to associate learning with reading, the thought that your education might be tapering off just around the time you start making contact with books strikes me as idiotic. So I have no idea how faithful, in word or in spirit, Ernest Zulia's obnoxious little revue, the opening show of Foothills's 1998-'99 season, is to Fulghum. In the stage version of Kindergarten, five actors deliver sermons on life's eternal truths while a tinkling piano bridges their pre-packaged slices of wisdom. David Caldwell's music is reminiscent of the carbonated tunes you used to hear in the Charlie Brown cartoons -- an aural equivalent to Hallmark greeting cards. Perfect, in other words, for Zulia's play.

For example, in "Hide and Seek" we're told of a man who kept his terminal cancer diagnosis to himself, preferring to suffer quietly rather than ask for the help of his friends and family. He made the mistake of hiding so that no one could find him, you see, when what he really needed was to be sought. In "Are There Any Questions?," a professor who has dedicated himself to creating a monument to peace between historically irreconcilable nations is asked the meaning of his life, and, using a hand mirror as a prop, he illustrates how you reflect light into dark places. We hear about Charles Boyer, who loved his wife of 44 years so dearly that he killed himself two days after her death, and about deaf Beethoven creating his glorious ninth symphony. In "Problems and Inconveniences," a young man recently out of college rails against the conditions at his workplace until his coworker, an Auschwitz survivor, sets him straight on what a real problem is. The combination of finger-wagging sanctimoniousness and treacly sentimentality in these little lessons is nauseating.

The production, which Michael G. Dell'Orto directed, is visually flat and utterly without invention, as if Dell'Orto believed that having the cast actually do something might distract the audience from Fulghum's and Zulia's life-guiding insights. The actors make all the appropriate facial responses to the material, which is to say that they seem more like well- wishers at weddings and funerals and Bar Mitzvahs than like actual actors -- especially Eve Johnson, who has a soft, compassionate look for tender stories of marital devotion and a stricken look for words like "cancer." I've never seen so much straining from a group of performers; they all seem to be wearing corsets except for James Bodge, who somehow manages to convey a natural emotional range and look as comfy on stage as a man relaxing in his own back yard. I admit I got a perverse fascination out of watching Chip Phillips, who was superb in last season's Berlin to Broadway with Kurt Weill at Foothills but whose whole face glazes over when he has to utter Zulia's homilies. Phillips keeps smiling and trying to appear pleasant and ends up looking phony and smug. He's so far out of his element that his monologues have an unintended effect -- they reveal what seems like an underlayer of revulsion at the material he's committed himself to.

The play bullies the audience into applauding its infernal right-mindedness; if you resist, then there's nothing else for you to do but sit in silent agony or numb out. I found it a paralyzing experience. Zulia doesn't want to entertain us or to probe any genuine depths; he wants to tell us little stories that are so simple-minded you can't possibly miss their meaning and then he insists we pay close attention while he explicates them for us. His notions about art clearly haven't progressed past what he learned in kindergarten.