"Notion" a vigorous Northwest drama

Theater Review

PORTLAND — In a time of homogenized, assembly-line pop culture geared for international consumption, many regional theaters are on the lookout for something different: literature expressing the specific geographic and cultural identity of their own communities.

Last year, for instance, Seattle's Book-It Repertory Theatre staged a satisfying adaptation of Bainbridge Island writer David Guterson's "Snow Falling on Cedars," a best-selling novel about love, racism and the rural Northwest set on an island off the coast of Washington in the 1940s. Book-It is currently readying a show set in Olympia and based on the Jim Lynch novel "The Highest Tide."

Now Portland Center Stage is debuting "Sometimes a Great Notion," Adam Posner's new dramatization of a 1964 novel by famed Oregon native Ken Kesey. The script and production for this vigorous drama about a rugged, ruthless clan in coastal Oregon are flawed. But the piece certainly has a Northwest flavor.

Kesey, who died in 2001, pointed to "Sometimes a Great Notion" as his best novel — a surprise to some fans of his better-known "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

Both an homage to and a critique of a rural American subculture, "Notion" is certainly a more ambitious work. And it's about a place Kesey knew and identified with, perhaps more than his wild-and-crazy, psychedelic adventures with the Merry Pranksters hippie gang in the late 1960s. Staged and written by Posner (another Oregon native), and initially commissioned by Seattle Repertory Theatre, the production works hard to bring us into the reality of the Stamper family, a clan steeped in macho American individualism. On a tiered, imposing set of rough wooden slabs, designed by Tony Cisek, a crew of two-fisted guys in flannel shirts and heavy boots declaim Kesey's potent descriptions of life in coastal Oregon and mime the dangerous business of felling tall trees.

They also criticize, Greek chorus-style, the Stampers — who've enraged their neighbors by stepping up their own work for local mill owners during a heated strike by loggers.

That's one betrayal in the plot. Another concerns the Hamlet-esque young Leland Stamper (Karl Miller), who drops out of his Ivy League college to return to the family homestead. In an act of fraternal revenge, Leland seduces Vivian (Sarah Grace Wilson), the pretty wife of his overbearing half-brother, Hank (P.J. Sosko).

Miller's turn as the caustic but vulnerable Leland — who at heart isn't really so different from Hank, or from their raving father Henry (Tobias Andersen) — is a strong point here. But the romantic chemistry between Miller and Wilson's Vivian is minimal. And the brawny mannerisms — and high-pitched, melodramatic tone of much of the other acting — wear on you. (Eventually, you half expect these rough-tough loggers to launch into the Monty Python parody tune, "I'm a Lumberjack").

The choral device does allow Posner to include good-size chunks of Kesey's prose. Hearing it is a reminder of Kesey's powers of perception, and his gifts as a first-rate nature writer.

He paints wonderful word pictures of the "hysterical crashing of tributaries" into the mouth of a river. He conjures stands of "bearberry and salmonberry, blueberry and blackberry," and the "green and blue mosaic of Douglas fir." This country is so clearly evoked, you feel like you're hiking it with him.

But the ensemble members acting as the chorus, including Tim True, Jim Wisniewski and Scott Coopwood, don't have fleshed-out characters to play and merge into a bellowing blur at times.

And only female role, of Vivian, needs beefing up. We need to know earlier, and more convincingly, why she's with Sosko's flinty Hank and his isolated, reviled clan.

To be fair, with its shifting perspectives and stream-of-consciousness riffs, "Sometimes a Great Notion" is a rough beast of a novel to tame for the stage. Posner's skill as an adapter was evident in his widely produced adaptation of Chaim Potok's "The Chosen" (presented by Seattle Rep in 2005). If "Sometimes a Notion" isn't as enthralling, it's still an Oregon tale, through and through.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com