E-Mail This Article to a Friend Bird’s-eye view Cuckooland as a Cape development BY SALLY CRAGIN

Gip Hoppe has history-channeled before. For Jackie: An American Life, his satire built around Mrs. Onassis that eventually went to Broadway, he showed an antic understanding of 20th-century celebrity culture. But his new Cuckooland — which will open this Wednesday at Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater, where he is co–artistic director — takes on more serious topics: overdevelopment and the search for utopia.

Well, maybe not that much more serious. Hoppe has looked deep into the history of Western theater and adapted Aristophanes’s The Birds. He describes the original as being about "two Athenians who become fed up with life in Athens, the complications, the crowding, legal entanglements, rules and regulations. They feel Athens has been ruined by an influx of too many people, so they go to a netherworld to live with the birds." Of course, once they arrive, "they tend to create the place they left with all the problems."

Hoppe read numerous translations and then wrote his own version of the play, which is set in Wellfleet in 2004. "It’s 2600 years later, and we’re still dealing with these issues. Cuckooland is a play that has "huge resonance for the Cape, which is a bit like Cuckooland. It’s where you go to distance yourself from the world in general." And for Hoppe, a Wisconsin native who began visiting the Cape in 1974 and moved there for good in the early ’80s, watching the area’s despoliation has been difficult. "We’re lucky in Wellfleet because over 70 percent is a national seashore, but there’s still a lot of pressure on the land. The houses are bigger, and there are more people driving bigger vehicles. Over time, you start to feel there’s an impatience from people who move here for some of the amenities they left behind." These amenities aren’t just a good cup of coffee and same-day delivery of the New York Times either — big-box stores and sprawling malls just add to the pressure.

Hoppe decided to underscore the theme of rabid development by having long-time WHAT scenic designer Dan Joy on stage painting the sets. "The entire set is painted each evening while the play is happening. Basically, the set is a dune shack and people who up and start performing The Birds — it’s like an artist’s studio." He got the idea when producing his last piece, A New War, a send-up of brainless 24-hour-cable-news war coverage that was produced in Boston and at New Haven’s Long Wharf Theater as well as in Wellfleet. He was watching Joy make shadow puppets in the scene shop. "I walked into his studio and thought, this was the show." Having the set painted every night, Hoppe adds, "allows us to do all kinds of interesting things — they can paint action-style sequences and even paint the actors’ faces while they’re talking." He laughs. "This is an experiment — we’re not even sure it’s going to work."

Other eclectic touches will come from the score by long-time Hoppe collaborator Stephen Russell. His forte is folk music, and he plans to adapt melodies from the British and American traditions, though some pieces will derive from more exotic locales. "We’ve got a country bluegrass number that ends act one that gets turned on its ear in a minor-key variation for act two and wanders into Eastern Europe," Russell says. Among the lyrics: "Today the sun shone down on me/Today the gods won’t frown on me/I’m going to build a new home/Wait and see/We’ll build it in the clouds and then we’ll call the whole place Cuckooland/And everyone will look a lot like me."

Cuckooland is presented May 26 through June 26 at Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater, Town Pier in Wellfleet. Tickets are $23 to $25; call (508) 349-6835 or visit www.what.org