New Zeitgeist Stage Production Embraces a Child's Viewpoint

Young children tell it like it is.

Vivid imaginations aside, kids are blessed with a blank slate that allows them to perceive (and speak) the truth, unadorned by the social posturing and filters adults use to censor themselves. It’s a brutally honest, wide-eyed take on the world, and it’s the very same reason some of us are perpetually ill-at-ease around children… it’s as if they look right through us.

Alan Ayckbourn’s “My Wonderful Day,” which the Zeitgeist Stage Company is performing this week as part of its tenth anniversary season, touches upon this phenomenon of childhood wisdom. The play, in some ways a hilarious comedy of errors, is focused on the perceptions of Winnie Barnstairs—a nine-year-old British black girl whose family hails from Martinique.

“The play finds Winnie spending the day at the home of a minor TV celebrity where her pregnant mother cleans house,” Producer/Director and South End resident David Miller explained to me last week. In the show, Winnie is home sick for the day, but she needs to write an essay (hence the production’s title).

“When her mother's water breaks, she's left alone in the house, and that's when things get really crazy. In addition, her mother has her practicing French because they want to return to Martinique, so the adults in the house don't think she understands English.”

Winnie is left alone to witness the goings on between the celebrity, his mistress and his wife, plus his best friend. She uses their antics to write her essay.

“The separation of race and class come into play as Winnie--ever the silent observer--experiences the chaos that marital infidelity often inspires,” Miller said.

“My Wonderful Day” premiered in October 2009 at the Stephen Joseph Theater in Scarborough, England, before making its stateside debut in New York's 2009 Brits Off-Broadway Festival. After producing Aychbourn’s “Private Fears in Public Places” last season, the folks at Zeitgeist Stage received overwhelming requests to present more of his work, which spans some 73 plays. Ten of them have made it to the Broadway stage.

Considering feedback Miller has received from the cast, it seems the role of Winnie is a tricky one for a young actress.

“Both Alanna Logan and Hyacinth Tauriac, who alternate as Winnie, have told me that the hardest part of the role was learning the French – first just learning how to speak it and then memorizing the lines,” Miller said.

“The use of French also heightens the value of Winnie’s non-verbal reactions, which are the most telling: a look, a shake of the head, or a vigorous scribble in her notebook.  Audiences just imagine how the unseemly behavior of the adults around her is being perceived by an innocent child.  Only at the end, when she starts to read the essay she has written about ‘My Wonderful Day’ to her mother, is the full scale and scope of her observations finally realized."

Zeitgeist Stage’s production of “My Wonderful Day” is in its final week at the BCA Plaza Black Box Theater, 539 Tremont Street. Performances are Wednesday & Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 4 and 8 p.m. and Sunday at 4 p.m. Tickets are $25 in advance or $30 at the door. Wednesday night is pay-what-you-can with a $7 minimum. Call (617) 933-8600 for more information or visit www.bostontheaterscene.com.