Review: 'Lost in the Meadow' at Longwood

Lost in the Meadow, a new site-specific work performed in Longwood Gardens' outdoor, wired-for-sound Meadow Garden, can't be regarded as a typical theatrical destination. You won't want to pop in just for this 75-minute play of sorts - produced by People's Light through Saturday - but take it in as part of a larger Longwood experience. Reasons start with logistics.

In an effort to take the meadow on its own terms, the creators of Lost in the Meadow opted for natural light, placing the curtain time at 6 p.m. In the thick of rush hour, the 38-mile drive from Philadelphia becomes a 90-minute traffic gauntlet. Arriving early is prudent; staying late for a current installation titled Nightscape could be fun.

And the play?

Created by playwright Lisa D'Amour, director Katie Pearl, and designer Mimi Lien, it's an unlikely fusion of John Steinbeck and Samuel Beckett (think Grapes of Wrath on the road to nowhere), with everyday refugees in a postapocalyptic society converging in the same place for something termed the Great Listening. Characters are scattered throughout the meadow, their prerecorded dialogue piped into the audience's ears via headphones. It feels like a radio play, sound effects and all. A babysitter looks after children whose parents never came home. A sousaphonist has lost her marching band. An Internet bride is making the best of less than she was promised. Some complain of not having seen another person in days. They're rationing their water.

But character development of these everyday people is slow and circular, in broad-strokes writing that generally lacks texture and sophistication. The play seemed to be talking down to you. Characters are so far away that they're specks in the meadow, offering little visual connection. Sometimes, the play feels like a beginners class in Existential Loneliness - though you would have to be alert to see how it subverts the validity of such loneliness in its final moments.

Rather stymied by the distance from the audience, the 15-member cast assembled by People's Light did what it could with admirable naturalness. The incidental music by Brendan Connelly - the Great Listening was like an earthquake that turned into a nurturing drone - did much to focus the energy of the overall presentation, whose novelty did have its allure, but whose main appeal was sitting in Longwood's meadow in a late-summer sunset.

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Lost in the Meadow

Through Saturday in the Meadow Garden at Longwood Gardens, U.S. Route 1 at Longwood Road, Kennett Square.

Tickets: $45. Information: 610-388-1000 or www.longwoodgardens.org.EndText