Show reviewed:  A Separate Peace
Playwright:  Nancy Gilsenan; adapted from the novel by John Knowles
Date saw the show:  March 19, 2008
Place saw the show:  Kansas City, Missouri
Company: Coterie Theatre www.coterietheatre.org
Principal Leads: Matthew Weiss; Brian Berens; Dan Hillaker; Doogin Brown; Michael Linsley Rapport
Producing Artistic Director:  Jeff Church

4 ½ Stars

Reviewed by:  Deborah Ground Buckner

The Coterie Theatre in Kansas City, Missouri, has been named by Time Magazine as "one of the five best theaters for young audiences in the U.S."  Founded in 1979, the Coterie has a long history of presenting plays adapted from history and literature.  The presentations are distilled to about an hour in length, making the Coterie a favorite destination for school field trips, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, and other young organizations.  It is also a treat for families, and anyone visiting or passing through Kansas City should plan a stop.  The theatre is located on the first level of the shops adjacent to the Crown Center Hotel.

The current production, A Separate Peace, has special significance for me.  Under the tutelage of my sophomore high school English teacher, Mr. Russ Scholta, I was introduced to John Knowles' story of boys coming of age during World War II, a story of friendship, trust, betrayal, and forgiveness.  My daughter just read the book last fall as a freshman, so this offering by the Coterie was on our "must see" list. 

Gene (Brian Berens) is one of the all-boy student body at Devon, a private boarding school.  There, he encounters his roommate, Phineas (Matthew Weiss), a superb athlete with larger-than-life charisma, the most self-assured individual Gene has ever known.  Finny quickly becomes the leader of the boys of the summer session, with Gene, "Leper" (Dan Hillaker), Brinker (Doogin Brown) and the rest following along.  On the grounds of Devon, there is a large tree with a branch over the river.  Finny climbs the tree, dares out onto the branch and jumps, then urges the rest of the boys to do the same.  Only Gene, reluctantly, follows.  Thus begins the "Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session," the meetings all beginning with a tree jump.

The boys closely follow the news of the war.  In honor of a bombing of the Germans, Finny dresses for dinner in a pink shirt, obviously in non-compliance with the uniform blue, and wears his tie as a belt.  This is his "emblem," he says, in honor of the American strike.  As always, the headmaster Mr. Prud'homme (Michael Linsley Rapport) is thoroughly charmed by Finny.

Finny, ever the athlete, leads the boys in the creation of a new game, Blitz Ball, making up the rules as he goes along.  Again, everyone follows his lead, in part because of the gregarious way he incorporates the mistakes or suggestions of the others into the rules as though he had it all planned.  I'm reminded again of just why I had such a crush on Finny reading my sophomore year.

But Gene, who is not an athlete, finds a bit to resent in Finny's non-serious approach to life.  Needing to study for an exam, he objects to Finny's insistence that they share a tree jump, but, as always, is cajoled into giving up the books and going with Finny to the river.  What happens there becomes a pivotal moment in the story.  Together on the branch, Gene makes a move that jounces the limb, and Finny falls, suffering a badly fractured leg.  Was Gene's movement deliberate, an accident, an impulse?          

The result is Finny's loss of sports for the rest of his life, although his doctors do hope he will walk again.  His absence from the beginning of the fall term leads Brinker, a budding law student, to launch a comic investigation of Gene's plan to eliminate his roommate.  The other boys join in, and Gene plays along, but his tension as he wrestles with his own thoughts is apparent.  Finny returns to school late in the term, still the leader, urging everyone to take part in a winter carnival, and the others, as always, happily fulfill whatever Finny assigns them.   

Yet, it is a time of growth and change for all the boys.  Brinker becomes more and more suspicious and argumentative.  Leper, seeing his eighteenth birthday on the horizon and fearing the draft, enlists in the army.  Meanwhile, Finny becomes a personal trainer to Gene, telling him he will compete and excel in the sports Finny can no longer play. Gene, never an athlete, takes on this responsibility.

Leper's return from the army, fleeing before receiving a Section 8 discharge, leads to a moment of revelation and serious introspection, bringing the world to a crashing halt when Finny suffers a fall and breaks his healing leg again.  Before his surgery, he and Gene share a talk unlike any they have previously known, and the maturity these boys have achieved is apparent.   

The burden of this production rests substantially on the actor of Phineas, and Matthew Weiss excels.  It is a fine line to present a character with such self-assuredness without venturing over to cockiness-the boys all like Finny, and so he has to come across as likable.  He does.  His delivery fills the stage with energy and excitement, making the audience eager to see the next adventure he will initiate.  Brian Berrens makes the perfect Gene alongside Finny, more quiet in nature, but able to assert himself when necessary, one capable of walking beside rather than behind such a leader.  Doogin Brown's Brinker is haughty and cocky, the snobbish rich kid one would expect to find at such a school.  As the timid Leper, Dan Hillaker takes a role that could have been overly done and plays it just right.  When Leper returns, there is a new, manic forcefulness about him, and it comes out as it should.  As the headmaster, Michael Linsley Rapport, doesn't have a lot to do, but he does project a guiding force as one who understands these boys and can supervise and educate them, doing so with ample amounts of humor and compassion.

Bringing Knowles' story to the stage has some obvious limitations, since a tall tree and a river cannot be planted in the small setting.  The effect is achieved with ropes and platforms, a rather ineffective splashing sound effect and a bucket of water that the boys use to douse their heads after the "jumps."  It doesn't matter.  After the first jump, the energy and excitement of the cast is such that disbelief is easily suspended.  There is a tree and there is a river, and there is a real group of boys finding their own "separate peace" beyond the threat of war and the turmoils of life.