People's Light presents Loudon Wainwright III's 'Surviving Twin'

Loudon Wainwright III's Surviving Twin is not one of these.

The 70-year-old's solo show, a "posthumous collaboration" with his late father, is more akin to Jonatha Brooke's My Mother Has Four Noses, which People's Light hosted in June 2015. Both performers showcase their songs around a loose narrative about a parent, resulting in a concert-monologue hybrid. Since musicians often tell stories between songs, why do it in a theater? Perhaps they know theater audiences are more willing to listen, or perhaps performers want the ongoing conversation of a residency rather than a series of one-night stands.

Whatever the reason, it’s a gift.

Warm and cozy

Surviving Twin plays on a somewhat generic but very comfortable set by James F. Pyne Jr., which looks like a refurbished brick-walled factory space, with industrial lighting and a warm hardwood floor. It suited The Road: My Life with John Denver, which also performed on it, better than it does Surviving Twin.

Director Daniel Stern keeps Wainwright moving, surrounded by guitars, a banjo, a piano, and even a ukulele. A screen on one wall projects titles and opening sentences of the six essays recited by Wainwright III’s father – he was a popular contributor to LIFE magazine – as well as a video visit to their old boarding school (St. Andrews in Middletown, Delaware), and lots of family photos.

The title refers to Wainwright III himself; the other twin is his late father, Loudon Wainwright II, “my principal ghost.” Wainwright III recites his father’s works with casual familiarity, making his sparkling prose conversational and intimate. In “Disguising the Man” (1965), Wainwright II explains how he bought his first tailored suit in London. Afterward, Wainwright III dons that very suit; it’s a little big for him, emphasizing that it was his father’s.

Some of Wainwright II’s essays examine his complicated relationship with his own father (Wainwright I), who died when II was just 17. Toward the end, III discusses his own children (the best known is Rufus, another accomplished singer/songwriter), further expanding his study of family, just as the song “Man and Dog” does when eulogizing family pet John Henry. We also meet Wainwright III’s mother through his father’s letters about her to his own mother when they met in 1942, during his war service in California. I confess I knew little of Wainwright III beforehand, and what I knew didn’t impress me: just the novelty song “Dead Skunk (in the Middle of the Road).” Fortunately, as personal as the songs, stories, and essays are, their themes are universal and easily accessible.

Heavy themes, light touch

The 90-minute show moves briskly, and Loudon Wainwright III conveys a likeable familiarity with the intimate audience in People’s Light’s Steinbright Stage – although if any show cries out for the audience to be closer, perhaps on three sides, it’s this one. He shares multiple points of view with impressive fairness, insight, and affection -- though his family life was apparently far from bucolic -- and explores heavy subjects with wit and wisdom.

Surviving Twin is a difficult show to categorize, but an easy one to love.