When the World Was Green (A Chef's Fable)

A hauntingly lyrical memory play, When the World Was Green is steeped in the elliptical, poetic style for which Shepard is justly celebrated. Sketched out in just a handful of scenes is a world of sensual delight, of great journeys to distant lands, and exotic food “piled as high as a mountain, glistening in the sun.” But as always, the beauty of Shepard’s landscape is only skin-deep. Under the surface lies a family vendetta that has lasted for seven generations. The play has only two characters, and old man who was once a superb chef, and a young reporter who comes to interview him in the prison where he as been locked up for many years after poisoning a man he mistook for his cousin. Their eight conversations are interspersed with a sequence of monologues in which both characters recall incidents from their childhood. These link together to form a tender narrative of regret and loss through which they transcend their memories and reach mutual forgiveness and love.

This production premiered at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Arts Festival and was presented together with Shepard’s Chicago by the Signature Theatre in New York prior to the Cambridge performances.

SYNOPSIS

An old man, once an excellent chef, is in jail for poisoning a man he mistook for his cousin. A young woman comes to visit him, apparently a local journalist with an interest in his case. As their conversations progress, both learn more about each others lives than they could possibly have imagined, or wanted to know.