'I Was a Beautiful Day' proves partially cloudy
The odds are stacked against Buffalo Theatre Ensemble's U.S. premiere of Iain MacLeod's 2005 Scottish drama "I Was a Beautiful Day."
First of all, there are the Scottish dialects, which are some of the hardest for actors to convincingly pull off.
Then there's the audience, which must attune their ears to the billowy cadences of Scottish brogue (unless listeners are already accustomed to the panoply of British regional accents heard on BBC World News).
Then, once you aurally adjust your brain, be prepared to cope with fleeting references to site-specific Scottish locales and British adjectives. (For instance, it may take Americans a few seconds to compute that a Glaswegian is a native of Glasgow.)
With so many pre-existing difficulties in place, one would like to proclaim that Buffalo Theatre Ensemble overcame the odds to make "I Was a Beautiful Day" a success. Yet this modern Scottish drama does stymie the cast and crew, despite all their otherwise valiant efforts.
"I Was a Beautiful Day" concerns Dan, a curmudgeonly Royal Army veteran of the 1991 Gulf War, who has been holed up in a long-term psychiatric unit for 14 years. Dan's solitude is destroyed when a recently transferred patient named Lube (pronounced Lou-bay) barges in and tries to get Dan involved with his school-boyish schemes of escape.
Even more disturbing to Dan is a visit from Anne, a pretty and ambitious cartographer who tries to get him to help with her work in mapping a remote West Scottish island where he once lived. Her appearance unintentionally forces Dan to confront huge regrets stemming from his past military service and abandoned love life.
Robert Jordan Bailey has Dan's irritability down pat, plus he is the most secure with his Scottish brogue. In addition, Bailey is great at conveying Dan's torment as he airs the secrets that have kept him in an emotionally paralyzed state of self-imposed exile.
As the overbearing Lube, Howie Johnson gets plenty of laughs with his big-guy pratfalls and inappropriate (yet funny) language objectifying women. Johnson's dialect may sound more Irish than Glaswegian, but you certainly look forward to him aggravating Dan. He also nearly makes you forget that his character is little more than MacLeod's script device to get Dan out of his shell.
Without her inconsistent Scottish accent, Sarah Augusta's Anne would have been more genuine and entrancing. But now, every American tongue trip Augusta makes takes you out of the authenticity of it all - and highlights how her character, too, is an author's device instead of a fully rounded person.
Director Amelia Barrett's stab at the material could have been more assured, even though the pre-existing difficulties prove to be very trying. I'm sure that if the actors were more secure with the technical demands of their parts, they would have been much more emotionally devastating in their roles.
MacLeod's "I Was a Beautiful Day" has some nice things to say about holding on to old Gaelic traditions and how a sense of place helps to define a person. And though it's a veteran from the first Gulf War that MacLeod focuses on, you can tell how critical he is about the U.S. and Great Britain's current involvement in Iraq.
For audiences willing to stretch out of their American geographical comfort zones, "I Was a Beautiful Day" will be a pleasantly rewarding and intimate drama. But if you're a die-hard fan of all things British, the accent slip-ups will only make you wish you had genuine articles on stage.
'I Was a Beautiful Day'
Rating: 2½ stars
Location: Buffalo Theatre Ensemble at McAninch Arts Center, College of DuPage, 425 Fawell Blvd., Glen Ellyn
Showtimes: 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays; through May 24
Running time: About 90 minutes, no intermission
Tickets: $25-$33
Parking: Free in adjacent lot
Box office: (630) 942-4000 or atthemac.org
Rating: Some crude objectification of women and one disturbing war description