Entertaining Fact or Fiction: “Shipwrecked” Is a Tall Tale

By Roland Finger
Contributing Writer

If you like sea shanties, fake indigenous people, and a protagonist who has big dreams, this is the play for you. Matthew Burkholder directs Theatre B’s latest production: Shipwrecked! An Entertainment—The Amazing Adventures of Louis De Rougemont (As told by himself). The cast is comprised of aspiring high school thespians from Trollwood’s Second Stage.

The Pulitzer-prize winning playwright Donald Margulies based Shipwrecked on the autobiography of the nineteenth-century historical figure Louis De Rougemont, who wrote a sensationalized, controversial yarn about his adventures while lost in the Australasian region. The play fits into the tradition of tall tales and has a National Enquirer flavor.

In Margulie’s original text, only one actor plays the character Louis, but Matthew Burkholder heads into unmapped theater territory by having four different actors play the role. This is the first production, to my knowledge, that has experimented with Margulies’ text in this way. The original play only had three actors. But Burkholder’s version has a big cast: fourteen players in all. It’s not just because Trollwood has lots of hungry young actors, nor is it just that it’s visually more interesting to have lots of variety on the stage. Burkholder’s interpretation foregrounds the layers of Louis; frequently one Louis will narrate while another Louis acts within a dramatic scene. The device provides a self-reflective voice-over quality.

Paige Vance cross-dresses to play the first Louis, who starts off as a somewhat bed-ridden youngster with an over-protective mother who keeps him indoors. Might she have a small case of Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy, tempered with a desire to fill her child with raisin scones? But the mother does awaken her son’s imagination by reading to him. Louis needs to break away and seek adventures that can rival the ones he has heard about in books.

Connor Linnerooth plays the next version of Louis, the adventurer who makes his way to London and then ships out on a pearl hunting expedition. Krystyne Hass, our next cross-dressing actor, plays Captain Jensen, the drunken sea captain who weaves and bobs and goes mad with greed, leading to a shipwreck and mass death. Captain Jensen represents the power of mega-greed to damage life. The BP Gulf fiasco was not unlike Captain Jensen’s misguided pearl quest; neither BP nor Captain Jensen operated with a strong sense of caution or morality. Forrest Steinhoff pulls off the performance of Bruno, the Captain’s dog, wonderfully, licking nudging and wagging.

The center of the play is Louis’ time spent living with Aborigines, who conform to an “Unga-Bunga” stereotype, because they are called cannibals, and their weapons look as if they came from a toyshop in Disney’s Adventure Land. The portrayal of indigenous people is a bit of a problem, reminiscent of the depiction of Natives in Peter Pan. In fact, much of the play has a Peter Pan quality, minus the Pixie Dust and Captain Hook. But the play also reveals something about European and American cultural attitudes toward tribal people. The Aborigines are represented as child-like, falling for tricks that fill them with delight or fear.

One big Aboriginal festivity scene leaps out from the middle of the play. Even though Margulies wanted the play to avoid modern references and music, Burkholder incorporated a strong modern music and dance number, providing a lively music video scenario.

The portrayals of race in the play are meant to be both innocent fun and a reflection of some retrograde nineteenth-century attitudes that still linger today. The character Aldous Snow in “Get Him To the Greek” reveals a similar kind of racial condescension. In Shipwrecked, Louis gets “to go Native” because he marries Yamba, played by Roxy Karami, who substitutes Farsi for the gibberish that the other actors pretend is an Aboriginal dialect. After raising two children with Yamba, Louis decides that it’s time to return to civilization, and he doesn’t give much consideration to the problem of abandoning his wife and family. Louis is a troubling figure.

Mack Suits Baer plays the tale-teller Louis who returns to London and capitalizes on his stories of adventure. The Wide World Press prints and publicizes Louis’ supposed adventures, and Louis rides a wave of fame, becoming the talk of London, an idol for children, all in all a superstar. Louis even meets the Queen, who is played by yet another cross-dressing actor.

A major moral issue arises because Louis De Rougemont in real life and in the play, claimed that his story was factual, although slightly embellished. Because audiences like to know the genre that they consume, Louis faces major heat when some of his claims are called into question. Where does imagination end and reality begin? Louis is an imaginative performer at heart who became carried away.

The most emotionally intense part of the play is when several skeptics challenge Louis’ story. We want to believe in the off-kilter hero who can survive a shipwreck, charm Natives, and make it big as a writer in England. But Louis tried to defy categories, passing fiction off as fact. He was the James Frey of his time, embroiled in memoir controversy. Andrew Montgomery plays the down-and-out Louis who is rejected by the public. He conveys pathos, showing what happens to washed-up celebrities.

The play’s special effects are carried out directly before our eyes and have an organic homegrown quality, beckoning us to enter Louis’ fantasy world. The set is intriguing, weather-beaten, and antiqued.

The play wants us to recognize that we all have a little Louis in us—capable of wild dreams and deception. When Louis gets discredited, the play shifts from farce and comedy toward tragedy. One could imagine Louis committing suicide, but the play returns with some vindication and hope, combining a silly romp with provocative material.

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If You Go
What: “Shipwrecked”
Where: Theatre B
When: July 8-10, 14-17, 7:30pm
Info: 701.729.8880