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review The promise of America has always been tightly intertwined with the promise of individual freedom and choice. The freedom of the individual to control his or her own destiny through old fashioned hard work and newfangled ingenuity is as time-honored an American tradition as, well, racism, xenophobia, and the insatiable drive to conquer, pillage and possess. "The Hollow Lands", Howard Korder's ambitious new play, stretches a broad canvas across the first half of 19th Century America in a grand attempt to capture these conflicting forces in a picaresque portrait of a young nation just coming to grips with its seemingly infinite potential. And while this is a play of extraordinary scope and intelligence, "The Hollow Lands" ultimately wanders about its own vast landscape much like its doomed Every(white)man, James Newman, wanders the American West. Korder is a world-class playwright whose supple command of language often resonates with a tart and stinging brilliance. The first third of "Hollow Lands" is focused and engaging, fluidly tracing Irish immigrant Newman's arrival in 1815 New York, his Dickensian position in a Lower Manhattan shop, his attraction to the shopkeeper's young wife, Mercy, and their subsequent marriage after the boss gets whacked in an after-hours robbery. Their politely tentative relationship blossoms into affectionate sparring as the more assimilated Mercy alternately cajoles and badgers James into losing his low-class brogue and gaining some social skills. It's an appealing nucleus on which to build Newman's pursuit of the freedom "to live as we choose", his oft-repeated "New Eden" mantra. But Korder has set up a huge canvas, and the increasingly broad strokes he needs to fill it first obscure and finally all but obliterate these early finely-drawn lines of detail. One of the broadest strokes comes in the form of Samuel Hayes (a deliriously over-the-top Mark Harelik). Hayes is a kind of guru of greener pastures, and his fevered pep rally of self-realization lures Newman away from earnest domesticity into an ill-fated journey that becomes both his and the play's undoing. Wife Mercy, meanwhile, abandoned by husband and playwright, is banished to a pair of brief, awkward cameos -- first as a stridently bitter cult member, then a twinkly old schoolmarm -- over a period spanning nearly 40 years and more than half the play. Newman spends his time drifting Zelig-like through a series of Big Moment dioramas in American history that both underscore and mock the failure of his once eager promise and, by proxy, America's. It's all undeniably visually spectacular, but dazzling setpieces cannot fully compensate for a discarded emotional core. In his long reach to capture a country's soul, Korder loses his grasp on the play's heart. "The Hollow
Lands" an edited version of this
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