New book and play "Wigfield"

ANCHORS: SCOTT SIMON
REPORTERS: JACKI LYDEN
National Public Radio (NPR)
May 31, 2003 Saturday


SCOTT SIMON, host:A new road show is traipsing around the nation. "Wigfield" is a slightly demented world featuring characters who might appear in the National Enquirer. The play's the creation of three satirists, Stephen Colbert, Amy Sedaris and Paul Dinello, all alumni of Chicago's Second City. Together they've created a book and a play of small-town life in which three actors portray some 20 different characters. NPR's Jacki Lyden reports.

(Soundbite of song)

Unidentified Man: (Singing) ...to heal a tickle toe with too bad, a too bad.

JACKI LYDEN reporting: Before we get to "Wigfield," let me say that this play about a fictitious backwoods crossroad mines the same territory as "Our Town," or "Spoon River Anthology," or as--Dare we say it?--Lake Wobegon always does.

Stephen Colbert is a correspondent for "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" in New York City, and he too has been inspired by the hamlets of the open road.

Mr. STEPHEN COLBERT ("Wigfield"): I went to a small town in West Virginia for "The Daily Show" called Jefferson, which had only been incorporated for three years as tax dodge for strip clubs and used auto parts stores.

LYDEN: And Jefferson, West Virginia, is reborn here as "Wigfield," a small town with big problems. One of them is that a federal dam is about to be wrecked and wash away the town. Colbert narrates the whole play as Russell Hokes, one of those ubiquitous, self-important journalists who's written the book on "Wigfield." He compensates for a distinct lack of talent with pomposity. His challenge is to write 50,000 words on the town.

(Soundbite of "Wigfield")

Mr. COLBERT: (As Russell Hokes) I must get back to my art, my writing, but how can I? I'm sucked dry by the parasites who cling to my every preposition. Suddenly, it's not fun anymore. I've been blocked for days, weeks, months. I stare at my stack of books, my past works--conquests that now mock me like ungrateful children. 'Shut up. Shut your mouths. I created you.' I grab my head in torment. I gulp down the bourbon desperately trying to anesthetize the demons. It does not bestow the forgetful darkness. It merely amplifies the voices, the voices, the voices.

LYDEN: And we hear a lot of those voices in "Wigfield." The mayors--there are three; the strippers; the old people; the young. Everyone knows that characters exist in small towns so that city people can come along and write about them and put them into books and movie packages. Take, for example, the Grimmets(ph), the first people we meet in "Wigfield."

(Soundbite of "Wigfield")

"Mr. GRIMMET": We've been married for 18 years and we met right here in Wigfield.

Ms. AMY SEDARIS: (As Mrs. Grimmet) I used to work at the counter at the drugstore.

"Mr. GRIMMET": And I was mighty fond of pie.

Ms. SEDARIS: (As Mrs. Grimmet) He sure was. Every day he'd come into the drugstore and he'd sit at the same seat at the same counter.

"Mr. GRIMMET": I love a good counter.

Ms. SEDARIS: (As Mrs. Grimmet) He'd order the pie and tell me jokes. He was so funny and handsome. Anyway, one day he came in, like he always does, and he called me over and said he couldn't eat the pie because something was in it.

"Mr. GRIMMET": She fell for it.

Ms. SEDARIS: (As Mrs. Grimmet) I got worried because this wouldn't be the first time we had found something unpleasant in one of our pies, so I started picking through the dessert with his fork, and lo and behold, I found this ring.

LYDEN: Amy Sedaris is Mrs. Grimmet. She's also Cinnamon, a stripper, and a teen-ager, Carla Port Hollinger, who pours her heart out in poetry, especially since her heart is just a bitty, broken thing about as vulnerable as a towel and about to be washed away. Her odes are published in the local newspaper, The Wigfield Sporadic.

(Soundbite of "Wigfield")

Ms. SEDARIS: (As Carla Port Hollinger) Water, hear my pleas. Don't wash away my family. I could not bear to be the object of sympathy, to have Dillard Rankin say, 'She's the one who lost her family. I feel so bad for her. I want to hold her. I want to comfort her.' I couldn't stomach the jealous stares of Regina Cox(ph) as her boyfriend, Dillard, the one she stole from me, has his arms wrapped tightly around my waist, planting gentle kisses on my neck, comforting me, comforting me. Oh, Lord, watch out for the wave, Regina. Please don't die horribly with the last thing you ever see is me being kissed by Dillard Rankin. Please, water, hear my pleas.

LYDEN: Amy Sedaris, a lightning-quick actor, is never one to shy away from the dark and drastic. She's made her name wearing a fat suit and a rubber face--having a rubber face, that is, not wearing one.

Ms. SEDARIS: Paul and Steve say I'm an idiot savant and my savant is making faces.

LYDEN: In fact, the three of them built an earlier television show around Sedaris called "Strangers with Candy," in which her character, Jerri Blank, wears a perpetual grimace. Her willingness to sacrifice her vanity--she's a pretty blonde imp of a woman--is crucial. In "Wigfield," Amy Sedaris is photographed wearing red leather and a Pucci tummy, and also as a balding older woman of 48.

Ms. SEDARIS: I mean, there's pretty people like the--who's the girl in "Friends"? Jennifer Aniston, whatever. She's funny in that pretty-girl funny way or like that sitcom way, which is fine. You're like wow. But I mean, I could never does what she does. But to me I think--I like girls who are willing to look hideous.

LYDEN: In fact, "Wigfield," as stage play and book, is made more vivid by the photographs of designer Todd Oldham,, who had the actors dress up for three days in atmospheric Milford, Pennsylvania. The truth is the photographs are so demented they sometimes get more laughs than the characters.

Ms. SEDARIS: No, I just wanted a picture book, you know?

Mr. COLBERT: No...

Mr. PAUL DINELLO: Yeah, well, we originally pitched it, we thought it would be, you know, a bunch of pictures of us in character then some wacky captions.

Ms. SEDARIS: Maybe some recipes.

Mr. COLBERT: We'd all written 2,500 words of the book and we thought we were pretty close to being done, and I said, 'Paul, look-see how many words it says we have to write.' And he said 50,000, and I thought he was joking.

LYDEN: Paul Dinello plays Lenare Degroat, the town's taxidermist.

(Soundbite of "Wigfield")

Mr. DINELLO: (As Lenare Degrout) Folks around here all joke about me. They say, 'Don't cross Lenare or he'll slice you open, scoop out your innards, fill you with sawdust and then mount you.' I guess it's more of a warning than a joke. I don't think to be crossed. I guess that's why I ended up doing what I do.

LYDEN: Perhaps Dinello's coming to terms with his colleagues, who he met in Second City in Chicago over a decade ago. He and Amy Sedaris were for some years a couple; now they're colleagues.

Mr. DINELLO: It just so happened we all auditioned at the same time and we got hired with, like, four other people for a touring company.

Mr. COLBERT: And at first, Paul and I didn't like each other. You know, I thought he was a Neanderthal and he thought I was a...

Mr. DINELLO: Cold as ice.

Mr. COLBERT: Cold as ice, pseudointellectual.

Ms. SEDARIS: And they're both right.

LYDEN: We can't tell you how "Wigfield" turns out, but we can give you a hint: Adversity has its way with the citizens of Wigfield.

(Soundbite of music)

LYDEN: Got it? Just one more thing: We forgot to tell you the moral of the story of Wigfield, the can-do town that just may not. In the words of its narrator, Russell Hokes, aka Steven Colbert...

Mr. COLBERT: Russell Hokes' lesson of all this is that if you need to really pad out a book, use synonyms a lot and don't forget: Don't be afraid to let a metaphor just spin completely out of control. You can fill up a half a page that way.

LYDEN: And that's the end. Jacki Lyden, NPR News.SIMON: "Wigfield" plays tonight in Atlanta, then moves on to Washington, DC, and Boston.