Puerile Michigan

Must be it’s an acquired taste: moosetesticles, dried and ground up and mixed with honey and sage, amysterious elixir that turns drunken Upper Peninsula Finnish deerslayers into native American warriors capable of  bagging the biggest buck.

Yes, we are revisiting playwright Jeff Daniels’ classiccampy characterization of the complex customs of the mysteriouslymighty Michigan men of the Yooper deer camps. 

Return with me, if you will, to the legendary “land ofthe red buck,” Escanaba, where the absence of days of sunlight iscelebrated as  – drum roll, please — “Escanaba in da Moonlight.”

Dennis Crawley’s set design lacks only spiders and their webs; it is a truly authentic-looking deer camp cabin. 

It’s hard to say exactly which piece of well-acted stagebehavior makes visitors to Chelsea’s Purple Rose Theatre laugh themost. Is it director Guy Sanville’s  elaboratelystaged Rube Goldberg set up of an extended fart sequence, complete withslow-motion strobe light and explosive sound effects? Or is it thescene in which a particularly potent potpourri of Potawatami  porcupine piss gets poured over Ranger Tom?  

If this were one of those highly effective parodies of  “PureMichigan” seen on YouTube, it might very well be described as PuerileMichigan. Come to think of it, it actually is a highly effective parodyof  the “Pure Michigan” ads. 

Jim Porterfield, the crusty and cantankerous father-figure Albert,  presides over the ritualistic mayhem of the Soady family deer camp, where  male-basedslovenly behavior is celebrated and where crushing empty beer cans overone’s head and throwing the cans all over the place is seen ashilariously funny.

Albert and his two equally nutcake-y sons, Rueben andRemnar, portrayed respectively by Michael Brian Ogden and MatthewDavid, twist and shout through much of Act One, firing shotguns insidethe cabin, followed by with furious rough-and-tumble sibling stagecombat.

Verbal attention is given to stories about  proverbial rutabaga pasties and yesteryears of  family buck-hunting.

The Soadys are eventually joined onstage by Jimmer Negamanee from Menominee, an even more crazed character— played to intense fart-worthy insanity by Wayne David Parker — whoseinarticulate speech provokes yet more raucous laughter from the eruditeaudience.

Exaggerated accents and a lot of screaming and yellingsubstitute effectively for acting in this production, as it appears thelaughing folks in the cheap seats cannot tell the difference. Yuk yuk —yuck. 

There is, eventually, a point to this story: that poorRueben has yet to bag a big-headed multi-antlered buck, despite comingup on his 33rd year. Your heart goes out to him. 

“Escanaba” set attendance records when it was originallyproduced at Purple Rose in 1995. It was a hit all over again when itwas revived in 1997, and it was successfully filmed (with Daniels asRueben) in 2001. There is something inexplicably primal about thisplay, some archetypal visceral thing that otherwise cerebralMichiganders embrace and enjoy. For the life of me, I cannot figure outexactly what it is.

‘Escanaba in da Moonlight’

Purple Rose Theatre

137 Park St., Chelsea Through Dec. 17

3 p.m. and 8 p.m. Wednesdays and Saturdays; 8 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays; 2 p.m. Sundays

$25 Wednesdays and Thursdays; $35 Fridays and Saturday and Sunday matinees; $40 Saturday evenings
(734) 433-7673
www.purplerosetheatre.org