One River Gives the St. Louis its Due
Sheryl Jensen
Duluth News Tribune
September 29, 2016
Lake Superior gets all the attention — splashy showoff that “she” is.
In their premiere performance of One River, playwright and UMD professor Tom Isbell and his strong 11-member ensemble celebrate that other body of water in our backyard by telling stories about the less glamorous, but also breathtakingly beautiful St. Louis River.
Isbell was inspired by the “One River, Many Stories” project, which challenged area journalists, writers, poets, historians and anyone else with a point of view to collect, write and present stories about life on the 192-mile St. Louis River.
An evening of vignettes, quotes and history, UMD Theatre’s original production includes shining moments of purposeful acting and impactful storytelling. Music is also used effectively throughout, both as underscore and to present some of the show’s themes.
The events kick into gear with the comic “One River Rap” relating the evolution of the project. The song ends with an homage to the musical “Hamilton,” complete with period costuming and iconic posing.
As a pair of amorous beavers on the banks of the river, Erica VonBank and Ryan Haff have a hilarious scene showing the semi-aquatic rodents’ awkward mating ritual. Their Canadian accents, the stuffed animal beavers perched atop their heads and their understated discussion about a “passionate” proposal make this a comic highlight.
Another comically effective scene relates, with silly props and purposefully overly dramatic action, the myths and legends surrounding the 1871 digging of the Duluth ship canal. This satirical take on the “war” with Superior over which city would have the most accessible port portrays how some of the animosity between the two halves of the Twin Ports “equation” originated.
In one of the show’s strongest character portrayals, Rebekah Meyer, as area ornithologist Laura Erickson, is both funny in her breathless amazement at the world of river birds and sweetly touching in her simple close encounter with a chickadee and in her sadness at the plight of the endangered piping plovers.
Sara Thomsen’s folk song, “Precious Water,” sung hauntingly by VonBank, relates one side of the agonizing conflict over copper-nickel mining and its potential for damage to both the river and the lake. Helping it from becoming too preachy, the scene shows the equally strongly held beliefs on the other side, including the positive economic impact of the mines and America’s ever-increasing need for copper.
As a new, never before produced work, not all of the pieces succeed as well as others, nor do some of the segues flow quite smoothly enough. The pieces about the geological history of the river, the history of Clough Island, and the recounting of the 2012 flood go on a bit too long, losing some of their impact.
This moving theater presentation, however, accomplishes what Isbell set out to do, blend a mosaic of many voices into one lyrical artistic whole, leaving the audience with the desire to go down to the oft-ignored river to see for themselves why it is such a glorious Northland treasure.
