Broadway Welcomes ‘A Walk in the Woods’

Most of the Broadway critics have welcomed Lee Blessing’s “A Walk in the Woods,” seen last summer at the La Jolla Playhouse. It opened Sunday at the Booth.

The exception was the New York Times’ Frank Rich. He didn’t hate the play but he found its characters and message a bit plastic.

The characters are an American and a Soviet disarmament negotiator struggling to make some actual progress towards an agreement. For Rich, the real-world antagonisms of the United States and the Soviet Union were too complicated to be telescoped into “a sentimental relationship between two likable envoys.”

Clive Barnes of the Post found Blessing’s play apt and unexpectedly funny, considering its rather bleak conclusion.

“A play of ideas, then. I must admit that ‘A Walk in the Woods’ confirms ideas rather than suggests them, but it is good to have on Broadway a play that suggests intelligence as well as emotion, and puts a questioning echo where its laugh is.”

Howard Kissell of the Daily News thought that actor Sam Waterston had done exceptionally well as the American negotiator, the less juicy role of the two. “Waterston has a ‘little boy’ quality that helps us get past his self-righteousness to the deeply concerned man within.”

Michael Kuchwara of the Associated Press liked Robert Prosky’s jovial, cynical Russian. “Best known as Sgt. Jablonski on ‘Hill Street Blues,’ Prosky’s a big, beefy actor who inhabits the very soul of the Soviet diplomat.”

Des MacAnuff’s staging and Bill Clarke’s leafy setting were also praised, except by Rich, who found the former too busy and the latter “pretentious.”

Rich’s review won’t help business, but “A Walk in the Woods” is timely enough to have a run at the Booth. There’s also been talk of a London production with Alec Guinness as the Russian. The next question is, will it go to Russia?

“We’d very much like official permission from the Soviet Ministry of Culture,” MacAnuff told Aly Sujo of Reuters. “But there are hurdles. They have a hard time humanizing their officials.”

A Soviet U.N. official disagrees. Igor Volkov, who saw the play when it was first done at Yale last year, said: “I think it would be accepted in the Soviet Union. The Soviets have a great political hunger.”

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: The Soviet negotiator in “A Walk in the Woods”: “Look at us, Americans and Russians. The world’s great powers, the world’s great fools. If the world was not so terrified of us, it would laugh.”