America's Dark History

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

The logo for The Kentucky Cycle features a pioneer woman, jut-jawed and thick-necked, cradling a child in her arms, flanked by a blandly noble plowman and a grimacing boy brandishing a gun. Pay attention to the boy with the gun. While this nine-play, six-hour vision of the making of America hits all the traditional themes of patriotic pageantry, it sees the national character as violent, deceitful and cruel. Firearms or knives are used in seven of the plays. The other two practice violence of the soul -- a bankruptcy "trial" that turns a man into a serf on land he owned, and a coal-mining contract, foisted on an illiterate, that turns his homestead into a moonscape for a fee of a dollar an acre. Although the plays trace the fortunes of seven generations of three intertwined families, there is not one unalloyed hero and only one heroine, the daughter of the coal-mining victim, who becomes a fearless union organizer.

There are likable characters and funny moments, even a ritual redemption in the poetic finale, but the dominant moods are treachery, betrayal, revenge and greed. The most beautiful words spoken are about the few hundred acres of land on which all the action unfolds -- so ablaze in spring that one character equates Moses' burning bush with a scarlet azalea -- yet it ends up despoiled and abandoned, wanted by no one save for the coal that lies beneath, and that can be reached only by scraping away the last remnants of soil, life and growth.

The first five playlets embrace 90 years, from the Revolution to the Civil War, during which the families stave off the larger world and live independent if hardscrabble lives. The second half traces the coming of coal mining and company towns, the rise and decline of unions, the exhaustion of the old industrial base and the rehabilitative efforts of environmentalists -- all outside forces that the locals cannot resist.

This is work of undeniable power. After seeing the playlets on their long way to Broadway, after reading them as well, and even when sharing little of their ardent leftist politics, one can still be reduced to tears by Fire in the Hole, in which the destitute risk death and win their battle to form a union. At previews last week, audiences offered sustained and frequent applause -- most intense, curiously, at the start of the second three hours, as though they belatedly realized that the emotional impact of the first half had muted their show of enthusiasm at its end.

For those who have not yet bought tickets, it may prove hard to imagine finding much pleasure in so prolonged and scathing a portrait of the American past. At nearly $2.5 million, The Kentucky Cycle will be the costliest straight play in Broadway history when it opens this week (although it will probably be edged by Angels in America when its second part opens in late November) and surely the biggest gamble. Industry leaders say its fate will measure the maturity of the Broadway audience -- and hardly anyone gives it much chance.

Fortunately for playwright Robert Schenkkan, the decision is in the hands of playgoers rather than the ever cautious powers that be. An unknown until The Kentucky Cycle won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 based on a production at Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum, he has stubbornly held to his vision and remained loyal to the cast -- many at journeyman level -- who first gave it life. They have finally rewarded him with performances mostly worthy of their roles.

Actors who have been good all along -- Tuck Milligan as a sharecropper who uses the Civil War to settle some personal scores and later as a roving union organizer, Gregory Itzin as two characters who use the law to pervert justice -- are suddenly much better. Actresses who had not made much of an impression now excel: Lillian Garrett-Groag as a Indian captive, part wife and part slave; Katherine Hiler as two hillbilly girls and, especially, Jeanne Paulsen as the woman whose world was destroyed by mining and who finds salvation in spontaneous political courage.

The one star presence is Stacy Keach, who plays four members of the Rowen family, from a ruthless homesteader before the Revolution to an alcoholic official of a withered union in the Nixon era. The first Rowen is the overarching presence, a character of macho force, demonic glee and utmost energy -- so awe-inspiring that his battered son says the only way he could be killed is if a mountain fell on him. The last Rowen is undone by doubt, destroyed by the conscience his forebear so happily lacked. In between Keach plays a sharecropper who plots vengeance on his landlord for more than four decades before finally regaining his homestead, and that man's son, who deals his birthright away to a slick-talking tale spinner for the Rockefeller energy interests.

Many audience members will be tempted to say that The Kentucky Cycle is an unbalanced portrait of America. But historically it is real. More convincing, it is wholly real in Keach's playing. He and Schenkkan have tapped into our darkest and most denied national memories.