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"What goes around comes around." -- Lenny Kravitz song.
"All souls must keep reincarnating until they reach true wisdom." -- Buddhist and Hindu concept of karma and rebirth.
"I really don't want to come back. I just find too much of it all too upsetting." -- Veronica Witherspoon.
Lenny Kravitz, Buddhism and Hinduism you've probably heard of. As for that Veronica person, she's the protagonist of "Miss Witherspoon," a new work by Christopher Durang -- master of playful anguish and comic neurosis.
"Miss Witherspoon" was one of the finalists in the 2005 Pulitzer Prize drama competition (a prize that was not awarded owing to a hung jury). Since its premiere last fall, Durang's latest has been snapped up by regional theaters. One of the snappers was Seattle's ACT Theatre.
"In some ways, 'Miss Witherspoon' has everything that we expect from Durang," says M. Burke Walker, who is directing the ACT production. "You have the playful, brittle quality, like skating on thin ice over very murky waters. But there's a new element. 'Miss Witherspoon' doesn't end with insouciant flippancy. There's some serious understanding of personal and global issues."
Walker is a founder and former artistic director of the Empty Space Theatre. Seattle audiences have seen his productions of three of Durang's dark comedies of spiritual and/or psychological writhing: "Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All to You," "The Actor's Nightmare" and "Laughing Wild."
After resigning his Empty Space post in 1990, Walker taught at the University of Washington. Then he moved to New York: "It was the life trifecta," he says, "work, romance and family." Walker has been working back East as a freelance director. His partner, Carol Skyrm, is the development director of a New York peace and justice foundation. And Walker's 94-year-old mother lives in Virginia Beach.
Starting this fall, however, Walker will be a coast-to-coast commuter. He will be teaching drama at Whitman College in Walla Walla.
Previews of "Miss Witherspoon" begin tonight. The play opens on Thursday and runs through May 28. Tickets prices range from $10 (for students and people 25 and under) to $54; 206-292-7676 or www.acttheatre.org.
Fun Fact (or factoid or factito): Thornton Wilder, Durang's forebear in the field of wildly imaginative playwriting, has been reincarnated as Arianna Huffington. (Having trouble with that one? Look it up. It's right there in Scene 3 of "Miss Winterspoon.")
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