First, respect: It takes balls to adapt a book like Ted Kooser’s Local Wonders for the stage—especially as a musical, like Virginia Smith and Paul Amandes have done in this show receiving its local premiere at Chicago Dramatists.
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Raising the bar higher for any would-be adapters, Kooser refrains from the bold gestures that give his predecessors their compensatory punch. The first chapter of Walden is packed with sweeping social critique and tart contrarian zingers, bringing to mind Karl Marx and Oscar Wilde. Dillard supplies chiaroscuro melodrama—her first paragraph gives us blood, piss, and a bare-chested woman.
Kooser, on the other hand, highlights the quiet comedy of midwestern reticence and modesty. For better and worse, he’s got as much in common with Garrison Keillor as he does with Thoreau. “Contrary to what out-of-state tourists might tell you,” he writes, “Nebraska isn’t flat but slightly tilted, like a long church-basement table with the legs on one end not perfectly snapped in place, not quite enough of a slant for the tuna-and-potato-chip casseroles to slide off into the Missouri River.”
Most of the songs are adapted from Kooser’s poetry, pulled from collections stretching back to 1994, and the music is folksy and spare. Hills and Amandes pick up acoustic guitars whenever the score requires, with Hills doubling on banjo and harmonica and pianist James Robinson-Parran sitting just offstage. The storytelling is similarly unadorned: Amandes and Hills deliver their lines in direct address to the audience.
The show hits its emotional climax, such as it is, with Kooser melting down at the sight of those turkey vultures awaiting his return from surgery. But instead of dealing with Kooser’s confrontation with death, the show focuses on his wife’s annoyance at him for being such a petulant crybaby. I’m split on this moment: It works fine, and the wife is overdue for a display of self-respect. Yet it also epitomizes the low emotional stakes Local Wonders has been playing for the whole evening.
