Into the Woods : HALLMARK ADAPTATION OF ‘REDWOOD’ TAKES CAST AND CREW TO THE FOREST WHERE PLAY WAS SET

SANTA CRUZ — Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lanford Wilson, newly arrived on the set of “Redwood Curtain,” watches a scene unfold for a few minutes, then looks toward director John Korty with mock surprise.

“Not one line, not one single line was mine,” Wilson says with a laugh about the “Hallmark Hall of Fame” adaptation of his play. “Not even the semicolon.”

“No, I saw you write the semicolon,” someone remarks.

It’s Wilson’s first opportunity to see how his work about a young Asian-American woman’s search for her GI father in the redwood forests of northern California is being transformed into a production for the small screen.

“They’re doing a good job,” Wilson says graciously of the efforts of producers Rick Rosenberg and Bob Christiansen. The crisp early-morning smell of the forest waking up has everyone feeling a bit giddy. The sky is a soft cornflower blue, the morning chill slow to creep from the tops of the great trees.

In some ways, it feels like a reunion. Reprising their Broadway roles are Tony Award winner Debra Monk and Jeff Daniels, both members of New York’s Circle Repertory Co. Joining the TV production are co-stars John Lithgow and Lea Salonga, who gained fame in the Broadway production of “Miss Saigon.”

“It’s great to do it here in the real trees, to be right here,” Monk says.

The set in the state park is so deep in the forest that from 100 feet away, it’s hard to tell that a movie is being shot.

Wilson discovered the “real” Redwood Curtain near Humboldt State University in Arcata, north of Eureka, where he was teaching a five-week course a few years ago.

“I saw these men standing around the edge of the woods, and I asked one of my students who they were,” Wilson recalls. “He told me that they were Vietnam veterans. He said, ‘They live there. They call it the “Redwood Curtain.’ ” I thought, ‘If nothing else, this is a good title.’ ”

Thousands of Vietnam veterans actually live near the forests of Arcata, hidden by the dense redwoods. They come to town for handouts and supplies before retreating back into their wooded solitude.

“There was this one man,” Wilson remembers. “I was trying to watch him a lot from a long distance, and I started wondering who on Earth could draw him out. There was this really small girl. I thought maybe if she was lost way out in the woods, maybe she could draw him out. And there was the play. The entire story was right there.”

Daniels plays the misanthropic Lyman Fellars, a Vietnam veteran who is pulled from his redwood sanctuary by Geri, a 17-year-old Vietnamese war baby, played by Salonga.

Geri is obsessed with uncovering the truth about her “real” parents, and when her wealthy adoptive father, played by Lithgow, cannot give her the answers, she heads to the northern California cabin of her Aunt Geneva, played by Monk.

“I didn’t expect to get to do it, even though I did the role in New York,” Monk says. “I don’t do much TV. I thought they’d go with a name. But really they’ve retained the story line. And the basic dynamic of Geneva is the same. It’s a great story.”

Wilson had written the part of Geneva for Monk when “Redwood Curtain” was first produced in early 1992 in Seattle. Casting Daniels, the quintessential boy-next-door, took a bit more imagination.

In “Redwood Curtain,” which also played at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, Daniels loses his Midwestern charm and boyish good looks, replacing them with the mad look of a man yanked from his own reality.

Daniels, clothed in tattered fatigues, has a hard time putting away Lyman, and spits over his right shoulder as if to prove the point. His unwashed, blond hair spills in oily ringlets from beneath the wide brim of a dusty Army hat. He picks at his heavy beard with grimy fingers, the dirt caked underneath his nails.

“Lyman is like someone who’s driving down the 101 and it’s raining and the windshield wipers are going back and forth and it freaks him out because it takes him back to ‘Nam,” Daniels says.

“There’s a speech in there. In the play Lyman says, ‘Who are you to say that I’m not that guy in Vietnam, that guy who could have owned his own gas station.’ This is what happens when you put that guy through the shredder.”

Wilson expects “Redwood Curtain” to open people’s eyes.

“When people saw the play, I don’t think they had any idea about what they were seeing,” he says.

“People thought, ‘Oh, a Vietnam story. I don’t want to see that. Oh, an orphan story. I don’t want to see that.’ But when you watch this movie, ‘You’ll think, ‘Oh my God, what is this place?’ It’s very political. This time it’s really quite clear.”

The “Hallmark Hall of Fame” production of “Redwood Curtain” airs Sunday at 9 p.m. on ABC.