UWM's 'Book of Days': A Spare, Effective Polemic on Small-Town Corruption

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Photo Credit: Maria Pretzl

Part of the UW-Milwaukee Theatre Department’s Lab/Works Series, last weekend’s Book of Days was lucidly performed and consistently engaging. Lanford Wilson’s 1999 script concerns the dynamics of small-town life in Dublin, Mo., as the protagonist Ruth steps into the role of Joan of Arc in a community theater production of George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan. Surrounding the production, a real-life murder mystery unfolds.

Although the story often feels like a slightly comedic whodunit, the play is perhaps most fruitfully viewed through a feminist lens. While Ruth strongly identifies with the character she plays onstage as she attempts to untangle a web of deceit and corruption in her town, the message isn’t that she has over-identified and lost touch with reality, but rather that Dublin really does resemble the heavily politicized Catholic Church that tried and executed Joan of Arc. This is not a play about “female hysteria,” but about the concept’s propagation by those who seek to silence women who see and tell the truth about corrupt men in positions of power.

Book of Days is also revelatory of the various ways women survive and contend within a patriarchy. While Ruth insists on integrity and advancement through her own agency, Louann—wife of the town’s young “feudal lord”—exercises power through her husband, accepting his unrelenting infidelity for as long as she is not publically humiliated by it.

In UWM’s production, there were several standout performances and relational dynamics. Elisabeth Markman as Ruth and Izaiah Ramirez as her husband (and local cheese plant manager), Len, are believable and sincere as a married couple whose love is augmented by their polar opposite personalities. While the town tears itself apart with recrimination and lies, it’s the subtle disagreements between this truly loving couple that pack the biggest emotional punch. Ramirez also lends the show a great deal of humor through his impassioned monologues on artisanal cheddar-making. Similarly compelling is Emily Amborn as Ruth’s mother-in-law Martha, whose excellent comedic timing shines in her many sage and sharp-tongued interjections. Sarah Caveney as Louann and Scott Pasbrig as one of Ruth’s murder suspects, likewise bring a commendable realism to their roles.

Working with a script that reads like a gritty modern update to Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, the UWM ensemble delivered an insightful exploration of modern storytelling as a window on modern social mores.