Martin and Jaime Gutfeldt recently formed a theater company, Magnetic North Theater Co., and their first production, Lost in the Pines, will have its debut performance, in San Diego, the final weekend in February 2016 (roughly one month from now). The Gutfeldts graciously provided me with an advance copy of the script for this Spooky Spotlight.
The theme for the production is “Path 3” by Max Richter from the album Sleep. The music is as haunting as the play, and I’d suggest turning it on before you continue reading.
Here is the description of the play:
When Ben and Elise move into a remote mountain home after a traumatic event they don’t expect to get mixed up with a thirty-year-old mystery. They struggle to keep their marriage alive as they uncover the town’s troubled past, while a supernatural force works to drive them apart.
I know the Gutfeldts well (I should; Mrs. Gutfedlt is my sister), and I was at least slightly involved in the research phase of the play. Mrs. Gutfeldt asked me for a list of “the Spookiest stories I knew” because they were trying to find inspiration for a play. I eventually provided the list, but they ended up going with “In the Pines,” by Karl Edward Wagner. It’s just as well that I didn’t get them my list of recommendations in time, because “In the Pines” turned out to be far Spookier than anything I’d suggested. Jaime read me a page or two over the phone one night last fall while I was walking home by myself, and I got shivers, for real.
Wagner’s story proved worthy inspiration for Martin’s script, which is itself quite worthy of the material–as I shall get to in a moment–and also the Spookiest script I’ve read so far this year. It’s looking like this is going to be one Spooky play.
To start with, this play is fully deserving of consideration as a modern Gothic. It hits all the right notes, stokes just the right fears, but bears the clothing of 2016. Needless to say, I approve.
This sense of Gothicness is established early on. The house is owned by a relation of Ben’s, a mysterious uncle whom he doesn’t know. The arrangements were of course made through a third party. By the second scene, Ben and Elise–the protagonists and struggling young couple–have moved into their new home and found the evidence of a once celebrated use for their dwelling that has now been hidden, buried under the detritus of time spent undoing such happy memories.
The gradual unearthing of layers of the past lends the proceedings an air of mystery that sparks the curiosity and elicits some vague sense of unspecified dread; if the story were headed toward themes of happiness and light one wouldn’t find the lost and forgotten articles of “The Gem of the Pines” in a run-down resort bungalow whose past tenants keep ending up dead. Instead, this serves as the first clue to a troubled past whose existence dovetails nicely with a play entitled “Lost in the Pines.” After all, the mere existence of a distant past invokes the looming shadow of an impending present.
As I write this, I sit in the upstairs room of a creaky wooden house that has stood for nearly a century, and my pencil scratches over the surface of my paper to a backdrop of an honest-to-God blizzard. As the wind howls around me and the white obscuring flakes adhere to my window panes it is not hard to empathize with the dreary isolation and dilapidation that Ben and Elise inhabit. Despite the overpowering bright bleakness I see on all sides, as I read the script the images formed behind my eyes are dark–the mood established by the play from the very first scene is both morose and grim, with a color pallet tending toward the dark and earthen. I have not yet seen the set design–though my suspicion is that it will be deliberately minimalistic–but I would be very surprised if anything onstage will be describable by the adjectives “warm” or “well-lit.” Shadows are the substance, here.
Early on the isolation and dislocation of the protagonists is hinted at by the subtle unfamiliarity on the part of Susan, the property manager, with the word “Filipino” despite the fact that she is conversing with one (Ben). Wherever it is that Ben and Elise have come from, it is clear that they are far from their natural surroundings. This “unnatural” environment, smack dab in the middle of one of the most natural environments imaginable, is both ironic and contemporary: Ben and Elise come from a millennial generation that is unfamiliar with the outdoors; they are so far removed from a familiarity with nature that the natural itself has become uncanny.
Ben and Elise are a newlywed couple, who have come to Silver Pines to get away. From what, we aren’t quite sure, but from when we view the scene from askance we can be sure that it cannot be good, but it’s obvious that the two of them are as far from familiar territory as a couple as they are geographically and socially. We get the sense that there is something else present between the two of them that takes up the space that shouldn’t be present between them: little things, like not thinking about how a boisterous piggyback ride might aggravate an injury; or waiting too long to say words that need said, or stepping off stage–and away from each other–too quickly to listen to what is being expressed in the space between them. I cannot wait to see how the actors portray the body language between Ben and Elise. There is something dreadfully wrong in this relationship, and that’s before the ghosts start causing trouble.
And let me tell you, the ghost in this one is real. Lost in the Pines subscribes to the older philosophy of Gothic, in which there really are things going bump in the night, and in the end everything cannot in fact be chalked up to psychological delusion. This runs contrary to current fashion, and I think the Gutfeldts are ahead of the curve on this one–the supernatural is coming back, and that’s a good thing. We have swung back too far toward rationality, and works such as this one serve as an uncomfortable reminder that we do not have as complete a control and understanding of our circumstances as we would like to believe.
What makes this play work is the carefulness with which Mr. Gutfeldt’s script doles out the information and facts necessary to the audience to understand what is going on–reveal too many superfluous details and the audience loses track of what’s going on–or worse, gets bored; reveal only the details that are important and the plot becomes too predictable and heavy-handed. Mr. Gutfeldt strikes the correct balance between these two extremes, and reveals only details that are important, but reveals them early enough and in a natural enough manner that nothing seems contrived or too convenient. I am not normally a fan of Chekov’s views on gun control, but Lost in the Pines benefits from Mr. Gutfeldt’s control and selectivity. This allows the careful reader–or the perceptive viewer–to focus on what is revealed, in order to enjoy the type of mounting dread that comes only from having a sickening–and increasing–certainty of how badly things are about to go at the next turn.
Magnetic North Theater Co. was a good choice of names for the Gutfeldt’s new theater company, and this was the perfect play to debut under the new company. As those who are familiar with the wilderness know, Magnetic North is not actually north, but it will attempt to fool you into thinking it is. If you fall for this deception and follow the compass needle blindly, you won’t end up where you think you will. Magnetic North differs slightly from True North, and this difference varies with your geographic location. Paradoxically, unless you already know where you are, you cannot find your way. And yet, unless you choose to sit on the ground and wait—for rescue, for nightfall, for death—you must follow it, because you have to follow something. The agent of your salvation is thus the agent of your ruin, and the only difference between the two outcomes is preparation and choice.
Those interested in seeing the play should visit the website at https://www.facebook.com/MagneticNorthTheaterCo/. Magnetic North Theater Co. can be reached by email at MagNoTheaterCo@gmail.com.
