The Cider House Rules: Performance Notes

“The Cider House Rules"

Book by John Irving

Adapted by Peter Parnell

Directed by Quin Gordon

 

It doesn’t get any grander than this: John Irving’s sprawling, best-selling 1985 novel, “The Cider House Rules,” adapted and transformed by Peter Parnell into this epic, award-winning, two-part, five-hour stage play with 17 actors performing more than 60 roles, plus a pianist and a violinist! UNCSA School of Drama Director of Recruitment and Assistant Professor Quin Gordon directs this multiple-decades-encompassing, pre- and post-World War II tale set in rural New England. In this metamorphosis from page to stage, not only is there too much story to be contained in just one play, but the brilliant structure delivers a kind of one-two punch. (Shades of “Nicholas Nickleby” or a Dickens novel.)

“The Cider House Rules” had its world premiere in 1996 at the Seattle Rep and was later performed in New York by Atlantic Theater and at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. It is noteworthy that the original productions were directed by esteemed UNCSA alum  Tom Hulce (You’ll remember him for his Academy Award-nominated portrayal of Mozart in the film, “Amadeus.”). In 1998, “The Cider House Rules” won the American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award, and a year later Irving’s novel was made into a two-hour film, starring Michael Caine and Tobey Maguire.

The labyrinthine—and thoroughly engaging—plot revolves around two men: Dr. Wilbur Larch, the ether-addicted physician at St. Cloud’s Orphanage and Hospital who delivers unwanted babies and secretly performs illegal abortions, and Homer Wells, a perpetual orphan whose attempted adoptions never “stick.” He becomes Larch’s surrogate son, assistant, apprentice and, eventually, a doctor—after detours of falling in love and working in an apple orchard where he encounters migrants at the cider house of the title. 

The drama centers around reproductive rights. While the book and play were written post-1973’s Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling, the story is set pre-Roe v. Wade.  

“Part One: Here in St. Cloud’s” sets up the many points of view about abortion (such as the health of the mother, rape, incest, unwanted children who are not aborted but then become orphans, women in late-term pregnancy). In “Part Two: In Other Parts of the World,” Irving’s central thesis comes into full view. We enter the cider house of an apple orchard and realize that the “cider house rules” become a metaphor for rules imposed on others by people outside of their community. And we follow the gradual evolution of Homer’s thinking. (No further spoilers!)

The play is written in a form called “story theater,” invented by Paul Sills (who happens to have been Director Gordon’s teacher), and its aesthetic was born out of improv theater. With the exception of the actors playing Homer and Dr. Larch, all performers play multiple parts and narrate the story while acting it out (theater history buffs take note: German playwright Bertold Brecht used a similar technique in some of his plays). Casting is gender fluid; the music and the minimal costume and set changes and the creation of nonexisting objects through just movement (Gordon calls it “space work”)—are all in plain sight. “We don’t hide the stagecraft,” says Gordon, continuing, “The idea of story theater is ‘to make something from nothing’ and leave a lot to the imagination of the audience … letting the viewer fill in any blanks. The exciting result: By being as much a part of the play as the performers, you can’t remain passive and, in effect, are ‘complicit’ in the creation of the play.”

The unfolding of this still-timely saga is at once whimsical and funny, sad and shocking, but guaranteed to entertain and be thought-provoking. Gordon says, “As often as not, the company and the theatergoers will be left with more questions at the end than what they started with.”

Recommended for mature audiences.