The Wooden Breeks

Set in the fantastical, miserable village of Brood, Glen Berger's ingenious play conjures up a marvelously imaginative world peopled by a large cast of dreamers, schemers and would-be lovers. Tormented by the memory of a beautiful young girl he adored and lost, and saddled with the child she left behind as a painful reminder of their doomed romance, a village tinker turned poet tries to ease his pain by conjuring up a hilarious and extremely moving tale, a story made up for the young boy as they sit in front of the dying embers of their hearth. When the last spark is extinguished, we have gone along with them on a magical journey filled with music, shadow, and light, meeting along the way a town full of comically misguided characters and an enchanting young saleswoman of casket bell devices for the prematurely buried. A rich and delightful fairy tale for everyone who remembers what a great story sounds like.

"Just to get your bearings, you might want to think of THE WOODEN BREEKS - Glen Berger's altogether whimsical and verbally intoxicated play - as a variation on BRIGADOON. But it's a BRIGADOON as might be reimagined by such cross-century literary aces as Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens, James Joyce, Dylan Thomas and Dave Eggers. Sound a bit mind-boggling? Well, it is ... this impossibly brainy, altogether quirky, simultaneously heartfelt and satirical examination of mortality turns out to be perfectly comprehensible and more than a little enchanting." -Chicago Sun-Times

"The success of Berger's play is no riddle: his knack for dialogue and storytelling is irresistible, and the result is full of Dickensian delight in human eccentricity." -The New Yorker

"I enjoyed this play immensely - so much, in fact, that it is somewhat embarrassing. It is, after all, just a ghost story - and a love story (seven, in fact) and a pre-urban legend of mythical proportions, and a fairy tale and a shaggy dog story. THE WOODEN BREEKS is incredibly and indelibly engaging ... a very good play, very well done. Go and enjoy." -Juneau Empire

"Playwright Berger displays rare virtuosity in his richly comic portraits ... This quirky gem never fails to engage." -Los Angeles Times