The Cold War arms race provides the heady backdrop for the latest Actors Co-op gem, Lee Blessing’s 1988 Pulitzer Prize finalist A Walk In The Woods.

 Taking as his inspiration a promenade made by arms negotiators Yuli A. Kvisinsky and Paul H. Nitze in the Geneva woods circa 1982, Blessing expands that single stroll into four seasons of woodsy walks, excursions during which a fictionalized Andrey Botvinnik (Phil Crowley) and Joan Honeyman (Nan McNamara) start off as adversaries and end up _____. (You fill in the blank.)

The twosome could hardly be more mismatched.

The gregarious Andrey wants to lighten their conversation even as the uptight, all-business Joan finds herself increasingly frustrated by her Soviet counterpart’s seemingly frivolous banter.

 Joan is still new enough at negotiation to be idealistic about the possibilities ahead, while Andrey’s decades of bargaining have made him either a realist or a cynic, depending on your point of view.

In either case, though playwright Blessing would seem to share Andrey’s doubts about whether warring nations can ever reach meaningful political agreements, he’s a good deal more optimistic about the potential for unlike minds to meet, at least where friendship is concerned, and if there’s anyone in the audience harboring doubts that by the end of their final walk, both Andrey and Joan will have been changed for good, that person has apparently managed to miss just about every two-hander ever written.

 Still, it’s the getting there that has made A Walk In The Woods a regional theater favorite since its 1988 Broadway debut and the Best Play Tony nominee continues to work wonders in its Actors Co-op debut, thanks in large part to some 21st-century gender bending that might not even have occurred to the playwright back in the late-‘80s.

Like the real-life Kvisinsky and Nitze, Blessing’s original protagonists were both male. A 2014 off-Broadway revival transformed Andrey into Irina. (I’d love to see how that works.) And now Actors Co-op has cast its premier leading lady as Joan, a sex change that strikes this reviewer as quite possibly the most inspired casting switch of all.

Not only does this add an older-Tracy/younger-Hepburn chemistry to what was originally just a same-sex opposites-repel mix, the male-female dynamic works in other ways as well.

Joan, particularly as played by the luminous McNamara, might prove more persuasive to an older Russian than a man might be, that is if Andrey doesn’t let his male chauvinism get in the way. In addition, moments that might require a more stoic response from John could easily move Joan to tears.

Ken Sawyer directs with his customary flair, attention to character, and some particularly inventive staging, seating the audience on two sides of scenic designer Ellen Lenbergs’s Swiss-forest-evoking set, hanging twists of white cloth standing in for trees. (Particularly inspired are Sawyer’s perspective-changing scene changes.)

Nicholas Acciani’s projections (Cold War newspaper headlines pre-curtain turning into woodsy watercolor mem’ries at lights up) and his and Matt Richter’s subtly beautiful lighting take us from summer to fall to winter to spring as do Wendell C. Carmichael’s spot-on costumes and hair design.

Meanwhile, Adam R. Macias’s sound design evokes babbling brooks and winter winds, musical underscoring subtly upping the drama at appropriate moments.

 In yet another superb star turn, McNamara plays Joan with mix of delicacy and backbone that just might work wonders where negotiations are concerned, looks stunning in business chic, and never once stumbles over even a word of Blessing’s admittedly wordy script.

Though less razor-sharp in his line delivery, Crowley (more teddy bear than grizzly) uses his charm to disarm even as his penchant for subject-changing drives Joan up the wall, and the duo’s John Lythgow-meets-Julianne Moore chemistry is as palpable as the actor’s Russian accent is authentic-sounding (kudos shared with dialect coach E.K. Dagenfield).

A Walk In The Woods is produced by Lauren Thompson. Christian Eckels is stage manager and the precisely choreographed Katie Chen and Carla Vigueras are assistant stage managers.

No longer just a nostalgic look back at a time when terms like “early warning” seemed things of the past, A Walk In The Woods is yet another Actors Co-op winner, and more relevant than ever.

Actors Co-op, 1760 N. Gower St., Hollywood.
www.actorsco-op.org

–Steven Stanley
February 25, 2018
Photos: Matthew Gilmore

Tags: Actors Co-op, Lee Blessing, Los Angeles Theater Review