Before the action begins in "The Courtship of Zack and Ada," a pair of interlocutors played by Lindsay Lamar and Dakota Younger come out and argue about whether what we're about to see is an historical play or a romance.
It's the latter, a very light romantic comedy filling 60 minutes or less, into which a bunch of history has been inserted to make the play last almost two and a half hours.
Perhaps that's inevitable, given the infinite layers of detail, people, relationships and incidents that make up history. Playwright P. Shane Mitchell acknowledges as much in program notes, where he admits he was cool to the proposal to write a play about statehood. He only decided to try it after he recalled a personal anecdote from the late Jerry Harper, whose mother, Ada, married millionaire Zachary Loussac, the mayor of Anchorage, in 1949.
David Haynes is well- suited to the role of cheerful, chummy, level-headed Zack, as good-hearted a mensch as ever graced Anchorage. Ada is played by Heather Sawyer with convincing depth. They are likable and credible, with lively hopes but no illusions. It's their story that we care about here, a story of woo, doubt and, ultimately, finding the courage to love despite differences of station, age and a possibly cloudy past.
Blaze Bell and Frank Delaney play a range of actual personalities who intersected with the Loussacs, publisher Bob and Evangeline Atwood, politician Bill and Neva Egan among them. They present these varied parts adequately but with an unfortunate sameness. (The exception is the way Delaney eerily, and maybe unconsciously, reflects a bit of Ernest Gruening's prim shuffle.) Still, these subordinate performers are able to make their theatrical point when called on, as when Evangeline gives some practical dating advice to Zack.
Lamar and Younger's parts are intentionally over-the-top, interacting with the audience, giving out stars to those who correctly answer history questions, getting progressively drunk, sniping at each other, laughing at their own jokes and stepping in to flesh out scenes with assorted unnamed characters. They amuse, but the dates and details recounting this timeline of Alaska from purchase to statehood distracts from the core tale of boy-meets-girl.
Though lighthearted in delivery, these didactic episodes plod, which seems endemic to the form. Even Shakespeare's historical dramas drag like a long chain on a lost dog in the back-story monologues.
Mitchell notes that the play "is a work of fiction BASED on historical fact. In certain cases some artistic license has been taken." So there are incidental anachronisms and made-up stuff. Welcome to theater.
The really interesting parts come from previously unrecorded personal tales that Mitchell has been able to ferret out. The inclusion of such intimate details helps us care about Zack and Ada. So do some of Mitchell's lines.
Toward the end, Ada asks the aging Zack why he loves her. He talks about how much he loves the ice cream and red wine they always enjoy at the end of a day. "It's sweet and it mellows me."
"So you love me because I have ice cream and red wine with you?" says Ada.
"No," he says. "I love you because you ARE ice cream and red wine."
The corny line made every eye in the house a little damp. After the Saturday show one man in the audience abruptly proposed to his girlfriend, and I'd bet that bit of dialogue was the reason. (She said "yes," we're told.)
I would have liked to see more of this, exploring the loneliness of two single people and the illumination that follows their discovery of each other.
Maybe real history isn't about politics at all. Maybe it's about how a boy can meet a girl and sometimes it all turns out.
Find Mike Dunham online at adn.com/contact/mdunham or call 257-4332.
By MIKE DUNHAM
mdunham@adn.com