Photo by Roland FInger

Fallen Preachers, Water Witches and Spiritual Vacuums: See It All in ‘The Diviners’

By Roland Finger
Staff Writer

David Wheeler directs the latest powerhouse play at MSUM, “The Diviners.” It’s a complex tragedy, compelling to watch and gripping to the end. A stark set drops us into a mythical town, Zion, Indiana, during the Great Depression. Matt Englund plays the frantic, spastic, young, mentally handicapped man, Buddy Layman. Forrest Gump step aside; Buddy is ready to steal your box of chocolates and clothes, along with the show. Because Englund becomes Buddy so well, you cannot help but wonder a little about the real Englund. Buddy is the village idiot who almost drowned as child and now has severe aqua-phobia, allowing him to be an infallible water witch and predictor of the weather. He’s better than any geologist or meteorologist could ever be. It must be divine inspiration.

Zion is an eerie Midwestern town that is all too familiar. The job market is bad and echoes our own times. People are trapped in limited views. The town’s church burned down years ago, leaving a spiritual vacuum that no tater-tot hotdishes can fill. Is modern America quite similar, despite its glut of useless spiritual charlatans? We never find out what happened to Zion’s former preacher. Spiritual questions hang over the world like a storm, but no one has come up with the right answers yet. We’re waiting, and maybe C.C. Showers, the former minister who arrives in town, will help.

Buddy immediately takes to C.C., who is different. He’s well spoken and sensitive; he is in tune with Buddy, divining that this boy needs some help, perhaps a surrogate parent. Buddy is a little gross because he refuses to bathe. He’s like a flea-bitten hound with psoriasis and ringworm to boot. It seems as if this young man may have never had a bath since he almost drowned as a child—not even a sponge bath. During the play, we suspend disbelief and wonder if Buddy ever even drinks water. He has a paranoid reaction if he sees water in a bucket, but he drinks root beer and sees other people drink coffee.

C.C. had a crisis of faith in Kentucky. He represents the rootless and uncertain people of Depression America, as well as contemporary America. C.C. doesn’t know what he’s meant to do, but he needs a job and becomes a mechanic’s apprentice, working for Buddy’s father, a 1930s version of today’s Nascar fanatic.

The women of Zion want a preacher, and C.C is the talk of the town. Several women flirt with him, but in particular, he has a special relationship with Buddy’s sister, Jennie May, played with charisma by Sarah Hysjulien. Sixteen-year-old Jennie has some questions about a few racy passages in Genesis, and she would like a tutorial from C.C. People in the town believe that C.C.’s arrival is providential, and their urge for a preacher brings the play to its climactic tragedy. What does it mean that pushy religious people cause the final trouble?

The farmer sage, Basil, is the play’s other deep character, one of its other diviners, because he recognizes that automation and shifts in production will eliminate jobs for people. He predicts hardships that so-called progress will cause. Farmer Basil will transform the audience into diviners. Take the plunge.

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IF YOU GO:
What: “The Diviners”
Where: MSUM, Gaede Stage
When: February 23-26 at 7:30 p.m.
Info: 218-477-2271