With ‘Walden,’ Playwright Amy Berryman Pushes Ideals Embraced by Thoreau Into the Future and Out of This World

Some of the tensions that develop can seem a bit contrived, as if Berryman is underlining parallels between existential dilemmas and conflicts within relationships, but the writing is clever and compassionate.

Joan Marcus
Emmy Rossum and Zoë Winters in 'Walden.' Joan Marcus

The script for Amy Berryman’s “Walden” lists the play’s setting as the “American wilderness” in “the not-too-distant future.” For the New York premiere, scenic designer Matt Saunders has furnished a handsome cabin with corrugated metal. Adorned with evergreens and with a solar-paneled roof, it could be a cozy vacation home for an environmentally conscious urbanite — except its residents aren’t vacationing, and their environmental consciousness has been piqued by events even more staggering than the flood of natural disasters that have made headlines in recent years.

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