| THEATER TIMES REVIEWS JANUARY 2008 |
As Much As You Can
Celebration Theatre
Kirk Douglas Theatre
The Old Globe
Pasadena Playhouse
Insight America
The Old Globe
Laguna Playhouse
Celebration Theatre
Kirk Douglas Theatre
The Old Globe
Pasadena Playhouse
Insight America
The Old Globe
Laguna Playhouse
Tranced
by Bob Clyman, directed by Jessica Kubzansky World Premiere
Laguna Playhouse • January 1-February 3, 2008 (Opened, rev’d 1/5)
WITH Andrew Borba, Thomas Fiscella, Erica Tazel, Ashley West Leonard • PRODUCTION Narelle
Sissons, set; Julie Keen, costumes; Jeremy Pivnick, lights; David Edwards, sound; Rebecca Michelle
Green/Victoria A. Gathe, stage management
The 2008 theater calendar got off to an encouraging start with the world premiere of
Bob Clyman’s ‘Tranced,’ directed by Jessica Kubzansky, at the Laguna Playhouse
through February 3. Strength of writing and strength of purpose combine to send a
hopeful New Year’s message that playwrights still have the talent and tendencies to
tackle tricky subjects. Clyman’s script pokes around several embattled institutions
on the trail of a twisted cat-and-mouse tale. And it's all played out against the
contemporary backdrop most likely to prompt our grandchildren to say, “Why didn’t
you do something?”
In ‘Tranced’ – which specifically stands for Clyman’s contrived school of hypnotherapy, but more generally
refers to the American public’s preference to sleepwalk over inconvenient truths – psychology, journalism
and diplomacy each get their representative. Philip (Thomas Fiscella), Beth (Ashley West Leonard), and
Logan (Andrew Borba), respectively, are attempting to help and/or use a young woman, Azmera (Erica
Tazel), in whom the eyewitness account of a horrific act of genocide may be a repressed memory, as
retrievable as audiotape in a desk drawer.
While Clyman questions the power and reliability of analysis, the motives and underlying principles of
reporters, and whether diplomats and public servants deserve their reputations as mindless cogs, he
makes duplicity the first-choice MO for all four characters. The playwright manages to make his case and
“eat” it too: decrying the prevalence of deception in our culture, while cleverly employing it to serve up a
mystery dinner complete with red herring.
A virtue of Clyman’s writing is the well-chosen detail. To paraphrase one character, “The bizarre detail is
what leads people to assume something is true.” Clyman peppers conversations with Shitzus, little men
with moustaches at parties, and Eskimo psychiatrists. It helps take us outside the cold abstraction of
Narelle Sissons’ set – a game board floor of squares meeting an upstage window-pattern grid. The details
also indicate Clyman has experienced – or meticulously researched – the worlds his characters inhabit,
lending particular authenticity to Dr. Malaad’s “trancing” and Beth's newspaper demands.
By design, the play plays on perception, insisting that the true drama remain off stage. Bravely, Clyman and
Kubzansky resist supplementing their staging with projections of gritty photography -- something
subsequent productions will no doubt do. A single, recurring square of light comes and goes amid the
upstage grid. Its significance is left to the reader to determine. However, when lighting designer Jeremy
Pivnick streaks the upstage wall with a smear of blood-red sunset, there is no missing the significance.
There is plenty of meat here. The challenge for Clyman and Kubzansky is in tone. All the hiding of agendas
beneath earnest ambitions limits each character to the same close-to-the-vest range within which to work.
Compound that with a structure that requires talking about action rather than experiencing it in the moment
and the static setting, and it becomes especially challenging for the viewer to follow subtle nuances.
Still, in Fiscella, the playwright has a terrific Malaad for his work’s premiere, and a central character who
wins us over immediately and for the duration. Fiscella opens the show in direct address, directly
addressing his international ancestry, which is Syrian, Egyptian and Jordanian. It sets us up for a story
that may involve contemporary troubles in the Middle East, and occasionally misdirects our attention to
anticipate that door may actually lead somewhere. There are several of these. But what the play, Fiscella,
and the audience need is some more grounding, not additional loose ends. There are ultimately too many
questions about too many characters, the confusing FBI report and Fiscella's history as a loner being two
prime examples.
Tazel and Leonard have less success navigating their portrayals in the light of the writer’s undercutting
storyline. They walk a thin line and it does add to the sense of sameness. One wants a little more variety
from Beth. Reporters veer between a story leading to a Pulitzer or to just another day at the office. Where
Beth falls is not quite clear. The task of injecting levity into the piece falls to Borba’s diplomat, and the actor
makes the most of it, giving his character breadth while staying centered so his second act outburst
remains within the range of realism.
Clyman has a delicate and worthwhile project here. It may need more of what film might bring the script.
More tonal variety -- even if it's just visual -- might help focus. Fleshier characters would not only add
interest, but further stack a deck he has already well-shuffled for this promising, entrancing game of four-
card monte.
by Bob Clyman, directed by Jessica Kubzansky World Premiere
Laguna Playhouse • January 1-February 3, 2008 (Opened, rev’d 1/5)
WITH Andrew Borba, Thomas Fiscella, Erica Tazel, Ashley West Leonard • PRODUCTION Narelle
Sissons, set; Julie Keen, costumes; Jeremy Pivnick, lights; David Edwards, sound; Rebecca Michelle
Green/Victoria A. Gathe, stage management
The 2008 theater calendar got off to an encouraging start with the world premiere of
Bob Clyman’s ‘Tranced,’ directed by Jessica Kubzansky, at the Laguna Playhouse
through February 3. Strength of writing and strength of purpose combine to send a
hopeful New Year’s message that playwrights still have the talent and tendencies to
tackle tricky subjects. Clyman’s script pokes around several embattled institutions
on the trail of a twisted cat-and-mouse tale. And it's all played out against the
contemporary backdrop most likely to prompt our grandchildren to say, “Why didn’t
you do something?”
In ‘Tranced’ – which specifically stands for Clyman’s contrived school of hypnotherapy, but more generally
refers to the American public’s preference to sleepwalk over inconvenient truths – psychology, journalism
and diplomacy each get their representative. Philip (Thomas Fiscella), Beth (Ashley West Leonard), and
Logan (Andrew Borba), respectively, are attempting to help and/or use a young woman, Azmera (Erica
Tazel), in whom the eyewitness account of a horrific act of genocide may be a repressed memory, as
retrievable as audiotape in a desk drawer.
While Clyman questions the power and reliability of analysis, the motives and underlying principles of
reporters, and whether diplomats and public servants deserve their reputations as mindless cogs, he
makes duplicity the first-choice MO for all four characters. The playwright manages to make his case and
“eat” it too: decrying the prevalence of deception in our culture, while cleverly employing it to serve up a
mystery dinner complete with red herring.
A virtue of Clyman’s writing is the well-chosen detail. To paraphrase one character, “The bizarre detail is
what leads people to assume something is true.” Clyman peppers conversations with Shitzus, little men
with moustaches at parties, and Eskimo psychiatrists. It helps take us outside the cold abstraction of
Narelle Sissons’ set – a game board floor of squares meeting an upstage window-pattern grid. The details
also indicate Clyman has experienced – or meticulously researched – the worlds his characters inhabit,
lending particular authenticity to Dr. Malaad’s “trancing” and Beth's newspaper demands.
By design, the play plays on perception, insisting that the true drama remain off stage. Bravely, Clyman and
Kubzansky resist supplementing their staging with projections of gritty photography -- something
subsequent productions will no doubt do. A single, recurring square of light comes and goes amid the
upstage grid. Its significance is left to the reader to determine. However, when lighting designer Jeremy
Pivnick streaks the upstage wall with a smear of blood-red sunset, there is no missing the significance.
There is plenty of meat here. The challenge for Clyman and Kubzansky is in tone. All the hiding of agendas
beneath earnest ambitions limits each character to the same close-to-the-vest range within which to work.
Compound that with a structure that requires talking about action rather than experiencing it in the moment
and the static setting, and it becomes especially challenging for the viewer to follow subtle nuances.
Still, in Fiscella, the playwright has a terrific Malaad for his work’s premiere, and a central character who
wins us over immediately and for the duration. Fiscella opens the show in direct address, directly
addressing his international ancestry, which is Syrian, Egyptian and Jordanian. It sets us up for a story
that may involve contemporary troubles in the Middle East, and occasionally misdirects our attention to
anticipate that door may actually lead somewhere. There are several of these. But what the play, Fiscella,
and the audience need is some more grounding, not additional loose ends. There are ultimately too many
questions about too many characters, the confusing FBI report and Fiscella's history as a loner being two
prime examples.
Tazel and Leonard have less success navigating their portrayals in the light of the writer’s undercutting
storyline. They walk a thin line and it does add to the sense of sameness. One wants a little more variety
from Beth. Reporters veer between a story leading to a Pulitzer or to just another day at the office. Where
Beth falls is not quite clear. The task of injecting levity into the piece falls to Borba’s diplomat, and the actor
makes the most of it, giving his character breadth while staying centered so his second act outburst
remains within the range of realism.
Clyman has a delicate and worthwhile project here. It may need more of what film might bring the script.
More tonal variety -- even if it's just visual -- might help focus. Fleshier characters would not only add
interest, but further stack a deck he has already well-shuffled for this promising, entrancing game of four-
card monte.
T H E A T E R T I M E S . O R G
Thomas Fiscella
PHOTO ED KREIGER
PHOTO ED KREIGER
As Much As You Can
by Paul Oakley Stovall, directed by Krissy Vanderwarker West Coast Premiere
Celebration Theatre • January 3-27, 2008 (Opened 1/4, rev’d 1/6m)
WITH Yassmin Alers, J. Nicole Brooks, Andrew Kelsey, Tonya Pinkins, Wes Ramsey, Paul Oakley Stovall,
and J. Karen Thomas in for Pinkins 1/17 and 18 PRODUCTION Heather Graff and Rich Peterson, set/lights;
Krissy Vanderwalker, costumes; Josh Horvath and Andre Pleuss, sound; Amy E. Stoddard, stage
management
Last year, two local productions showed the benefits of writers directing their own
work in Ed Begley Jr.’s ‘Ruben & Cesar’ and Jane Anderson’s ‘The Quality of Life,’
both highlights of the season. In the West Coast premiere of Paul Oakley Stovall’s ‘As
Much as You Can,’ now through January 27 at Celebration Theatre, we see that a
writer’s vision can be equally well-served when the playwright assumes the pivotal
role. Stovall, a talented actor keenly attuned to the rhythm and nuance of his
language, takes his place in a seamless ensemble to play Jesse, a brother who will no
longer apologize to his loved ones for one he’s chosen to love.
Celebration Theatre, celebrating its 25th season of presenting theater of particular relevance to the Gay
and Lesbian community, has in Stovall’s play, as much as one can imagine, a signature production. It is at
once kitchen-sink direct and – for mainstream audiences at least – revolutionary. Its nuclear unit of six
family and friends creates a racial and sexual rainbow with enough diversity to serve as a starter kit for
the world-at-large to learn understanding and acceptance.
Stovall's microcosm has one major conflict: Jesse's strained relationship with his older sister Evy (Tony
Award-winner Tonya Pinkins, except on January 17 and 18, when J. Karen Thomas steps in). Evy is well-
aware that Jesse is gay, but she prays for divine “intervention” to “reorient” him.
Appropriately, the Jesse-Evy head-on is fated to occur during a family reunion required for younger brother
Tony’s (Andrew Kelsey) wedding. Coming to Chicago for the nuptials means a visit to the traditional family
home (maintained by Evy and her husband) and an earful of the traditional family values (mainlined by Evy).
Arriving from Europe is half-sister Ronnie (Yassmin Alers), a bi-cultural, bi-racial, bi-sexual beauty. Driving
in from New York with Jesse is his life-long soul mate Nina (J. Nicole Brooks), a confirmed and constantly
prowling Lesbian. The willing newcomer to the menagerie is Jesse’s Swedish-born lover, Christian (Wes
Ramsey), father of a 12-year-old son he hopes to have live with him and Jesse at some point. It doesn’t
take long for Christian, a professional photographer, to realize that his assignment to video-tape the
wedding is part of a clumsily applied beard to make him appear Jesse's "hire" rather than "husband."
Director Krissy Vanderwarker exhibits a light touch. There are no forced moves, and she does well
battling a stage left post that cuts into anything more than halfway upstage. (Attendees are advised to sit
house left even if it means getting closer to the proscenium.) Her cast fills their roles admirably, not only in
terms of acting, but in terms of physical qualities that support the variety of racial mixing. While the two-
person face-offs sizzle with authenticity the group scenes have a spontaneous feeling, like we're
spending an afternoon with lively friends who have great facility for playful truth-telling. They just happen
to be going through some major family dramas that are instructive for society as a whole.
Vanderwarker and her designers/production people have allowed the show a family-room comfort. A
simple couch sits like found art center stage. It doesn’t budge, regardless of the setting. Scenes are all
played out around the set, with the only alterations being a card table that is unfolded for a couple scenes,
and upstage drapes that are opened for “outdoor” scenes played against the theater back wall. It gives a
nice linkage to the old Chicago home in which this drama might have really taken place.
The deceptively familiar drama wears its sense of importance lightly, but seriously. Repeated references to
James Baldwin’s second novel, 1956’s out-reaching ‘Gionvanni’s Room,’ promote that seminal book to
audience members who may not be familiar with it, and there is much discussion of Bayard Rustin, the out
Civil Rights leader who is credited with introducing M.L. King Jr. to Gandhi’s philosophy and organizing
many of King’s biggest rallies, including the March on Washington.
Of course, in this crowd (on both sides of the apron) the decks of sympathy are stacked against Evy’s
cause. Talk of “reorientation” sounds especially Medieval inside the Celebration. So it is that what lets ‘As
Much as You Can’ get as good as it does is the honesty of the characters. What’s more, the scenes of
openness, and the universe of intra-sexual and intra-familial, and intra-racial stratifications, surprisingly
well represented in just a six-character play, could position the television version Stovall is working on for
landmark status. It would be a smart move for HBO; a slam-dunk for Logo.
by Paul Oakley Stovall, directed by Krissy Vanderwarker West Coast Premiere
Celebration Theatre • January 3-27, 2008 (Opened 1/4, rev’d 1/6m)
WITH Yassmin Alers, J. Nicole Brooks, Andrew Kelsey, Tonya Pinkins, Wes Ramsey, Paul Oakley Stovall,
and J. Karen Thomas in for Pinkins 1/17 and 18 PRODUCTION Heather Graff and Rich Peterson, set/lights;
Krissy Vanderwalker, costumes; Josh Horvath and Andre Pleuss, sound; Amy E. Stoddard, stage
management
Last year, two local productions showed the benefits of writers directing their own
work in Ed Begley Jr.’s ‘Ruben & Cesar’ and Jane Anderson’s ‘The Quality of Life,’
both highlights of the season. In the West Coast premiere of Paul Oakley Stovall’s ‘As
Much as You Can,’ now through January 27 at Celebration Theatre, we see that a
writer’s vision can be equally well-served when the playwright assumes the pivotal
role. Stovall, a talented actor keenly attuned to the rhythm and nuance of his
language, takes his place in a seamless ensemble to play Jesse, a brother who will no
longer apologize to his loved ones for one he’s chosen to love.
Celebration Theatre, celebrating its 25th season of presenting theater of particular relevance to the Gay
and Lesbian community, has in Stovall’s play, as much as one can imagine, a signature production. It is at
once kitchen-sink direct and – for mainstream audiences at least – revolutionary. Its nuclear unit of six
family and friends creates a racial and sexual rainbow with enough diversity to serve as a starter kit for
the world-at-large to learn understanding and acceptance.
Stovall's microcosm has one major conflict: Jesse's strained relationship with his older sister Evy (Tony
Award-winner Tonya Pinkins, except on January 17 and 18, when J. Karen Thomas steps in). Evy is well-
aware that Jesse is gay, but she prays for divine “intervention” to “reorient” him.
Appropriately, the Jesse-Evy head-on is fated to occur during a family reunion required for younger brother
Tony’s (Andrew Kelsey) wedding. Coming to Chicago for the nuptials means a visit to the traditional family
home (maintained by Evy and her husband) and an earful of the traditional family values (mainlined by Evy).
Arriving from Europe is half-sister Ronnie (Yassmin Alers), a bi-cultural, bi-racial, bi-sexual beauty. Driving
in from New York with Jesse is his life-long soul mate Nina (J. Nicole Brooks), a confirmed and constantly
prowling Lesbian. The willing newcomer to the menagerie is Jesse’s Swedish-born lover, Christian (Wes
Ramsey), father of a 12-year-old son he hopes to have live with him and Jesse at some point. It doesn’t
take long for Christian, a professional photographer, to realize that his assignment to video-tape the
wedding is part of a clumsily applied beard to make him appear Jesse's "hire" rather than "husband."
Director Krissy Vanderwarker exhibits a light touch. There are no forced moves, and she does well
battling a stage left post that cuts into anything more than halfway upstage. (Attendees are advised to sit
house left even if it means getting closer to the proscenium.) Her cast fills their roles admirably, not only in
terms of acting, but in terms of physical qualities that support the variety of racial mixing. While the two-
person face-offs sizzle with authenticity the group scenes have a spontaneous feeling, like we're
spending an afternoon with lively friends who have great facility for playful truth-telling. They just happen
to be going through some major family dramas that are instructive for society as a whole.
Vanderwarker and her designers/production people have allowed the show a family-room comfort. A
simple couch sits like found art center stage. It doesn’t budge, regardless of the setting. Scenes are all
played out around the set, with the only alterations being a card table that is unfolded for a couple scenes,
and upstage drapes that are opened for “outdoor” scenes played against the theater back wall. It gives a
nice linkage to the old Chicago home in which this drama might have really taken place.
The deceptively familiar drama wears its sense of importance lightly, but seriously. Repeated references to
James Baldwin’s second novel, 1956’s out-reaching ‘Gionvanni’s Room,’ promote that seminal book to
audience members who may not be familiar with it, and there is much discussion of Bayard Rustin, the out
Civil Rights leader who is credited with introducing M.L. King Jr. to Gandhi’s philosophy and organizing
many of King’s biggest rallies, including the March on Washington.
Of course, in this crowd (on both sides of the apron) the decks of sympathy are stacked against Evy’s
cause. Talk of “reorientation” sounds especially Medieval inside the Celebration. So it is that what lets ‘As
Much as You Can’ get as good as it does is the honesty of the characters. What’s more, the scenes of
openness, and the universe of intra-sexual and intra-familial, and intra-racial stratifications, surprisingly
well represented in just a six-character play, could position the television version Stovall is working on for
landmark status. It would be a smart move for HBO; a slam-dunk for Logo.
T H E A T E R T I M E S . O R G
Tonya Pinkins
J. Nicole Brooks
PHOTO DAVID ELZER
J. Nicole Brooks
PHOTO DAVID ELZER
Post Mortem
by A.R. Gurney, directed by Jered Barclay West Coast Premiere
Insight America / Lyric Hyperion Theatre Café January 9-February 17, 2008 (Opened 1/11,
rev. 1/12)
WITH Anna Nicholas, Alan Bruce Becker, Andrea Syglowski PRODUCTION Jeff G. Rack, set; Thomas
Opitz, costumes/hair; Lara E. Nall/Joe Vain, stage management
Cheever and Updike have been acclaimed for prose focusing on upscale New
Englanders, and Wilson has been canonized for building his century-long play cycle in
an African-American neighborhood of Pittsburgh. A.R. Gurney, on the other hand, is
more or less accused of chronicling WASP society. Fairly or not, he’s worn that label
with increasing unease: the once-tailored sports coat that became a straitjacket.
Perhaps it was to distance himself from that reputation, and such boulevard annuities
as ‘The Dining Room,’ ‘Love Letters,’ and ‘Sylvia,’ that in 2006 he dawned the ill-fitting
‘Post Mortem.’
An ambitious attempt at satire, ‘Post Mortem,’ now receiving its West Coast premiere in an Insight America
Touring Theater production stabled at the nearly finished Lyric Hyperion Theatre Café in Silver Lake, stabs
wildly into the post-contemporary darkness. His futuristic vision, much tamer but more specific than Orwell
or Kafka, is of a post-Bush, post-Cheney, post-Gurney America in which his own post-script is a revival
with the power to reverse the present president’s stifling legacy.
The play is a switch on the plot structure that climaxes with someone pledging to turn the events we just
watched into the play we just watched. In this case, however, with the play revealed at the beginning, it
eventually becomes clear that the ‘Post Mortem’ within ‘Post Mortem’ is not the one we’re watching. That
story had the power to alter history for the better. If only the one we’re watching had a fraction of that
potential. Enough, say, to alter an evening for the better.
The American actors who can make farce enjoyable are few. How they do it would no doubt stymie a
doctoral candidate. Here, the younger, non-Equity Andrea Syglowski exhibits a gift for it (even though
required to go over the top in what is perhaps Gurney’s most egregious and irritating bit of non-relevance)
while the elders seem to be in uneasy territory. Veterans Anna Nicholas (whose credits include
respectable productions of Pinter and Ayckbourn) and Alan Bruce Becker, seem to be working too hard.
Meanwhile Syglowski, who is directed to really push the envelop, manages to keep it fun and stay within
the extremes, ending up with the most real character on stage.
Under Jered Barclay’s direction, an unreal world becomes an unnatural one. Paranoia and deviousness
are telegraphed by facial muscle and eye-widening. Rather than helping tie together the play’s themes,
which now seem to jostle about like broken blocks of floe, they seem to be poking them apart.
Nevertheless, while more successful performances might have made the evening more palatable, it’s hard
to see them making the play work. Gurney sets the two scenes of this 90-minute one-act in 2017 and
2025. In the earlier era, the world has become oppressively conservative. Alice (Nicholas) is a flickering
remnant of the great liberal arts tradition, a former actress now teaching theater at a faith-based university,
which we infer has become the standard make-up of higher education in America. Naturally this means
that faculty offices are bugged, dramatic performance is drawn from Biblical texts, and Broadway theaters
are now casinos to cover debt from the Iraq War. (The incongruity of gambling dens as part of a religous
order is just one of the lazy story creation.)
Gurney has some fun elbowing sacred cows, with his favorite target being the glowering Mr. Cheney.
Dexter, a smitten student of Alice’s whose only real motivation is bedding her, is woefully ignorant of his
chosen field. He doesn’t know who Tennessee Williams is, for instance, though in pursuit of the
unimpressionable Alice he has gained an encyclopaedic knowledge of Gurney. Dexter has become the
guardian of Gurney’s powerful final play, ‘Post Mortem.’ After seducing Alice with a dream scenario that
includes first mounting the two-hander with him, then mounting him, the stage is set for Scene 2. Here,
eight years later, the two Gurney-riders have, by somehow staging the play despite totalitarian repression,
single-handedly changed the course of history, re-instating true freedom. They are now on a lecture tour
at the same campus where they met.
The problem here is a script that might be called “impressionistic farce.” It’s not real farce – which is
prickly enough to mount – but something even more vague. Nothing seems to add up. Unless the viewer is
on political auto-pilot, and the mere utterance of Bush or Cheney can justify polishing up the wing-tips and
leaving the embrace of the wingback for the night, this play is likely to have the entertainment value of an
autopsy.
At one point, Gurney parallels himself with the Almighty (paraphrasing: “He set it up but he didn’t tell us how
to behave in it.”). As a creator, he has attempted farce without foundation. And, as any Master of Time
and Space will tell you, one can’t create a universe without gravity and expect things to have weight
by A.R. Gurney, directed by Jered Barclay West Coast Premiere
Insight America / Lyric Hyperion Theatre Café January 9-February 17, 2008 (Opened 1/11,
rev. 1/12)
WITH Anna Nicholas, Alan Bruce Becker, Andrea Syglowski PRODUCTION Jeff G. Rack, set; Thomas
Opitz, costumes/hair; Lara E. Nall/Joe Vain, stage management
Cheever and Updike have been acclaimed for prose focusing on upscale New
Englanders, and Wilson has been canonized for building his century-long play cycle in
an African-American neighborhood of Pittsburgh. A.R. Gurney, on the other hand, is
more or less accused of chronicling WASP society. Fairly or not, he’s worn that label
with increasing unease: the once-tailored sports coat that became a straitjacket.
Perhaps it was to distance himself from that reputation, and such boulevard annuities
as ‘The Dining Room,’ ‘Love Letters,’ and ‘Sylvia,’ that in 2006 he dawned the ill-fitting
‘Post Mortem.’
An ambitious attempt at satire, ‘Post Mortem,’ now receiving its West Coast premiere in an Insight America
Touring Theater production stabled at the nearly finished Lyric Hyperion Theatre Café in Silver Lake, stabs
wildly into the post-contemporary darkness. His futuristic vision, much tamer but more specific than Orwell
or Kafka, is of a post-Bush, post-Cheney, post-Gurney America in which his own post-script is a revival
with the power to reverse the present president’s stifling legacy.
The play is a switch on the plot structure that climaxes with someone pledging to turn the events we just
watched into the play we just watched. In this case, however, with the play revealed at the beginning, it
eventually becomes clear that the ‘Post Mortem’ within ‘Post Mortem’ is not the one we’re watching. That
story had the power to alter history for the better. If only the one we’re watching had a fraction of that
potential. Enough, say, to alter an evening for the better.
The American actors who can make farce enjoyable are few. How they do it would no doubt stymie a
doctoral candidate. Here, the younger, non-Equity Andrea Syglowski exhibits a gift for it (even though
required to go over the top in what is perhaps Gurney’s most egregious and irritating bit of non-relevance)
while the elders seem to be in uneasy territory. Veterans Anna Nicholas (whose credits include
respectable productions of Pinter and Ayckbourn) and Alan Bruce Becker, seem to be working too hard.
Meanwhile Syglowski, who is directed to really push the envelop, manages to keep it fun and stay within
the extremes, ending up with the most real character on stage.
Under Jered Barclay’s direction, an unreal world becomes an unnatural one. Paranoia and deviousness
are telegraphed by facial muscle and eye-widening. Rather than helping tie together the play’s themes,
which now seem to jostle about like broken blocks of floe, they seem to be poking them apart.
Nevertheless, while more successful performances might have made the evening more palatable, it’s hard
to see them making the play work. Gurney sets the two scenes of this 90-minute one-act in 2017 and
2025. In the earlier era, the world has become oppressively conservative. Alice (Nicholas) is a flickering
remnant of the great liberal arts tradition, a former actress now teaching theater at a faith-based university,
which we infer has become the standard make-up of higher education in America. Naturally this means
that faculty offices are bugged, dramatic performance is drawn from Biblical texts, and Broadway theaters
are now casinos to cover debt from the Iraq War. (The incongruity of gambling dens as part of a religous
order is just one of the lazy story creation.)
Gurney has some fun elbowing sacred cows, with his favorite target being the glowering Mr. Cheney.
Dexter, a smitten student of Alice’s whose only real motivation is bedding her, is woefully ignorant of his
chosen field. He doesn’t know who Tennessee Williams is, for instance, though in pursuit of the
unimpressionable Alice he has gained an encyclopaedic knowledge of Gurney. Dexter has become the
guardian of Gurney’s powerful final play, ‘Post Mortem.’ After seducing Alice with a dream scenario that
includes first mounting the two-hander with him, then mounting him, the stage is set for Scene 2. Here,
eight years later, the two Gurney-riders have, by somehow staging the play despite totalitarian repression,
single-handedly changed the course of history, re-instating true freedom. They are now on a lecture tour
at the same campus where they met.
The problem here is a script that might be called “impressionistic farce.” It’s not real farce – which is
prickly enough to mount – but something even more vague. Nothing seems to add up. Unless the viewer is
on political auto-pilot, and the mere utterance of Bush or Cheney can justify polishing up the wing-tips and
leaving the embrace of the wingback for the night, this play is likely to have the entertainment value of an
autopsy.
At one point, Gurney parallels himself with the Almighty (paraphrasing: “He set it up but he didn’t tell us how
to behave in it.”). As a creator, he has attempted farce without foundation. And, as any Master of Time
and Space will tell you, one can’t create a universe without gravity and expect things to have weight
T H E A T E R T I M E S . O R G
Andrea Syglowski
PHOTO DAVID ELZER
PHOTO DAVID ELZER
In This Corner
by Stephen Drukman, directed by Ethan McSweeny World Premiere
The Old Globe / Cassius Carter • January 5-February 10, 2008 (Opened 1/10, rev'd 1/13m)
WITH Katie Barrett, Rufus Collins, David Deblinger, Dion Graham, John Keabler, T. Ryder Smith, Al White
PRODUCTION Lee Savage, set; Tracy Christensen, costumes; Tyler Micoleau, lights; Lindsay Jones,
sound; Steve Rankin, fights; Jan Gist, voice/dialects; Diana Moser, stage management
Stephen Drukman’s “In This Corner,” in a superb world premiere on The Old Globe’s
ring-size Cassius Carter stage (through February 10), lets two legendary heavyweight
boxers from the 1930s battle for personal dignity against the profit-and-propaganda
process that turns people into products. In director Ethan McSweeny’s gritty staging,
‘Corner’ drapes its message loosely over these real-life champs, allowing us to learn
about the men beneath the mantles as we gain empathy for 'products' then and now, in
sports and beyond, whose extended “entourages” aren’t so much in their corners as in
their pockets.
Central characters Joe Louis (Dion Graham) and Max Schmeling (Rufus Collins) reflect what, in hindsight,
most ennobled their respective countries. African-American Louis validated our Algerian myth that all can
succeed. Schmeling was a gentle man of humanity and an internationalist in an era of German empire-
building and ethnic cleansing.
Several themes arc through the story like crosscutting trails off a shadow boxer’s gloves. There is the
biographical material, told in an energized mix of flashback and forward motion. We learn much about them
as individuals, their world championship fights in 1935 and ’38, and the mutual respect that served as
friendship.
A second theme, what Joni Mitchell called “the star-maker machinery,” concerns the anonymous pack of
jackals Drukman uses to set up the play: ‘the reporter’ (David Deblinger), ‘the photographer’ (Katie Barrett),
‘the trainer’ (Al White) and ‘the announcer,’ played by T. Ryder Scott, who rises to the role oracle at one
point. They shape a play about machinating media and commercial interests into which the fighters will
step. That the champs wrestle the narrative away by play’s end suggests Drukman believes the individual
is ultimately supreme. It certainly provides us a "feel good" play to take home, following a standing ovation
at this performance and likely at most others.
A third theme emerges as the voice of this machinery. In the 1930s, radio added play-by-play sports
coverage to its media arsenal. The world was still dominated by print media, but the electronic and
broadcast segment had begun its move towards dominance. Families across the country now listened in
unison to events like presidential addresses and heavyweight fights. And, in respect of that powerful
presence, McSweeny stops the action to stage the 1938 fight merely through the power of words spoken
first from the original broadcast, then picked up by Smith’s oracular ringside voice. The heightened
language of the announcer, the sportscaster and the newspaper columnist give the show its bitter flavor,
like a rum-soaked stogy. Drukman makes his point and dulls it with enough alliteration to give Howard Cosell
salad-mouth. But it helps us see the parallels between the hypnotic power of speech in capitalist society
and fascist society.
The specter of Hitler (Scott) shows the “machine” at its most diabolical. While he and his ministers used
athletes to promote their propaganda, America was using them to promote its counter-balancing
righteousness. In a country where African-Americans had 30 more years of humiliating segregation before
them, men like Louis (and later runner Jesse Owens), were asked to disprove the Reich’s fundamentalist
Aryanism. In their first match, Schmelling prevails. In the second, Louis triumphs. Then, in one of their
meetings before Louis' death at 56, Drukman creates a decisive "rubber" round, as the two meet in street
clothes, and, quickly winded, wind up clasped in a wheezing tie.
As he did in 2006’s ‘Body of Water,’ McSweeny has assembled a fine cast. Graham is winning as Louis,
keeping him somewhat vague as he may have been to himself. (Though, more clarity from Drukman on
exactly what happened to him in terms of drugs and mental illness would be appreciated as long as we’re
presenting those aspects.) Smith is a stand-out, as is the great Al White, and Katie Barrett assumes the
position from hard-boiled photographer to chanteuse to gum-soled nurse to high-heeled ringside attraction.
And, a special commendation to Collins for a memorable Schmeling as well as (with assist credit to coach
Jan Gist) a fine, understated German accent.
Ironically, the last time we felt a set integrated this well with its theater space was last year, next door in
the Globe’s main stage with Ralph Funicello’s design for ‘Restoration Comedy.’ Here, McSweeny and
designers Lee Savage and Tracy Christensen go for the total realism of a boxing ring, turning the audience
into spectators, with “off-stage” actors “ringside” as much as possible. The “you are there” sensation
begins during pre-show with John Keabler’s sweaty workout as “the boxer.” This detail accentuates the
underlying metaphor of life in the ring, as when Louis bemoans: “We ain’t really nothing outside the ring
Max,” or Max consoles his friend regarding public tastes: “Who are they? They aren’t even in the ring?”
But the theme that Drukman floats like a butterfly is the flipside of language as instrument of propaganda.
Drukman works the seeking of autographs into the story as an indicator of fame. However, after all the
alliteration has faded, and the hype has moved on to other more potent “products,” the fighters are left
alone with a final friend and the simple words that are their names. Today, the traditions of Midway
journalism are as strong as ever. After experiencing ‘In This Corner,’ one may see our current celebrities
with more empathy, as we are pummelled by their most-embarrassing pictures on tabloids that hang around
check out lines like so much bologna in a deli.
by Stephen Drukman, directed by Ethan McSweeny World Premiere
The Old Globe / Cassius Carter • January 5-February 10, 2008 (Opened 1/10, rev'd 1/13m)
WITH Katie Barrett, Rufus Collins, David Deblinger, Dion Graham, John Keabler, T. Ryder Smith, Al White
PRODUCTION Lee Savage, set; Tracy Christensen, costumes; Tyler Micoleau, lights; Lindsay Jones,
sound; Steve Rankin, fights; Jan Gist, voice/dialects; Diana Moser, stage management
Stephen Drukman’s “In This Corner,” in a superb world premiere on The Old Globe’s
ring-size Cassius Carter stage (through February 10), lets two legendary heavyweight
boxers from the 1930s battle for personal dignity against the profit-and-propaganda
process that turns people into products. In director Ethan McSweeny’s gritty staging,
‘Corner’ drapes its message loosely over these real-life champs, allowing us to learn
about the men beneath the mantles as we gain empathy for 'products' then and now, in
sports and beyond, whose extended “entourages” aren’t so much in their corners as in
their pockets.
Central characters Joe Louis (Dion Graham) and Max Schmeling (Rufus Collins) reflect what, in hindsight,
most ennobled their respective countries. African-American Louis validated our Algerian myth that all can
succeed. Schmeling was a gentle man of humanity and an internationalist in an era of German empire-
building and ethnic cleansing.
Several themes arc through the story like crosscutting trails off a shadow boxer’s gloves. There is the
biographical material, told in an energized mix of flashback and forward motion. We learn much about them
as individuals, their world championship fights in 1935 and ’38, and the mutual respect that served as
friendship.
A second theme, what Joni Mitchell called “the star-maker machinery,” concerns the anonymous pack of
jackals Drukman uses to set up the play: ‘the reporter’ (David Deblinger), ‘the photographer’ (Katie Barrett),
‘the trainer’ (Al White) and ‘the announcer,’ played by T. Ryder Scott, who rises to the role oracle at one
point. They shape a play about machinating media and commercial interests into which the fighters will
step. That the champs wrestle the narrative away by play’s end suggests Drukman believes the individual
is ultimately supreme. It certainly provides us a "feel good" play to take home, following a standing ovation
at this performance and likely at most others.
A third theme emerges as the voice of this machinery. In the 1930s, radio added play-by-play sports
coverage to its media arsenal. The world was still dominated by print media, but the electronic and
broadcast segment had begun its move towards dominance. Families across the country now listened in
unison to events like presidential addresses and heavyweight fights. And, in respect of that powerful
presence, McSweeny stops the action to stage the 1938 fight merely through the power of words spoken
first from the original broadcast, then picked up by Smith’s oracular ringside voice. The heightened
language of the announcer, the sportscaster and the newspaper columnist give the show its bitter flavor,
like a rum-soaked stogy. Drukman makes his point and dulls it with enough alliteration to give Howard Cosell
salad-mouth. But it helps us see the parallels between the hypnotic power of speech in capitalist society
and fascist society.
The specter of Hitler (Scott) shows the “machine” at its most diabolical. While he and his ministers used
athletes to promote their propaganda, America was using them to promote its counter-balancing
righteousness. In a country where African-Americans had 30 more years of humiliating segregation before
them, men like Louis (and later runner Jesse Owens), were asked to disprove the Reich’s fundamentalist
Aryanism. In their first match, Schmelling prevails. In the second, Louis triumphs. Then, in one of their
meetings before Louis' death at 56, Drukman creates a decisive "rubber" round, as the two meet in street
clothes, and, quickly winded, wind up clasped in a wheezing tie.
As he did in 2006’s ‘Body of Water,’ McSweeny has assembled a fine cast. Graham is winning as Louis,
keeping him somewhat vague as he may have been to himself. (Though, more clarity from Drukman on
exactly what happened to him in terms of drugs and mental illness would be appreciated as long as we’re
presenting those aspects.) Smith is a stand-out, as is the great Al White, and Katie Barrett assumes the
position from hard-boiled photographer to chanteuse to gum-soled nurse to high-heeled ringside attraction.
And, a special commendation to Collins for a memorable Schmeling as well as (with assist credit to coach
Jan Gist) a fine, understated German accent.
Ironically, the last time we felt a set integrated this well with its theater space was last year, next door in
the Globe’s main stage with Ralph Funicello’s design for ‘Restoration Comedy.’ Here, McSweeny and
designers Lee Savage and Tracy Christensen go for the total realism of a boxing ring, turning the audience
into spectators, with “off-stage” actors “ringside” as much as possible. The “you are there” sensation
begins during pre-show with John Keabler’s sweaty workout as “the boxer.” This detail accentuates the
underlying metaphor of life in the ring, as when Louis bemoans: “We ain’t really nothing outside the ring
Max,” or Max consoles his friend regarding public tastes: “Who are they? They aren’t even in the ring?”
But the theme that Drukman floats like a butterfly is the flipside of language as instrument of propaganda.
Drukman works the seeking of autographs into the story as an indicator of fame. However, after all the
alliteration has faded, and the hype has moved on to other more potent “products,” the fighters are left
alone with a final friend and the simple words that are their names. Today, the traditions of Midway
journalism are as strong as ever. After experiencing ‘In This Corner,’ one may see our current celebrities
with more empathy, as we are pummelled by their most-embarrassing pictures on tabloids that hang around
check out lines like so much bologna in a deli.
T H E A T E R T I M E S . O R G
Dion Graham
PHOTO CRAIG SCHWARTZ
PHOTO CRAIG SCHWARTZ
Orson's Shadow
by Austin Pendleton, directed by Dámaso Rodriguez
Pasadena Playhouse • January 11-February 17, 2008 (Opened 1/18, rev’d 1/19m)
WITH Nick Cernoch, Sharon Lawrence, Scott Lowell, Bruce McGill, Charles Shaughnessy, Libby West
PRODUCTION Gary Wissman, set; Mary Vogt, costumes; Dan Jenkins, lights; Cricket Myers, sound; Joel
Goldes, dialect; Lea Chazin/Hethyr Verhoef, stage management (premiered by Steppenwolf Theatre
Company)
There are numerous conflicts at play within Austin Pendleton’s ‘Orson’s Shadow,’ the
“inside baseball” theater piece in elegant revival under Dámaso Rodriguez’ direction
on the Pasadena Playhouse main stage through February 17. There are battles
between out-sized egos, between sanity and madness, between theater and film
culture and even over acting choices. However, in this production, due in part to
Bruce McGill’s oddly one-dimensional Orson Welles, these never provide any real
tension or rise above detached discourse. What should be a spirited session with
fascinating characters feels like a fly-on-the-wall look through the wrong end of the
telescope: making the titanic tiny and tedious.
When famous people populate a play, we’re watching to learn about them, to learn about life through them,
or both. There is a good deal to learn about these characters and, in theater-creature Pendleton’s take, the
way they approached their primary professions: director Welles (Bruce McGill), actors Laurence Olivier
(Charles Shaughnessy), Vivien Leigh (Sharon Lawrence) and Joan Plowright (Libby West), and theater
writer/critic Kenneth Tynan (Scott Lowell). We get a mix of details about their pasts and present conditions
during rehearsals for Olivier’s and Plowright’s appearance in Eugene Ionesco’s ‘Rhinoceros’ in 1960.
According to Anne Edwards’ biography on Ms. Leigh, who was separated from Olivier and involved with
Jack Merivale at the time the play is set, the actress received a letter from her husband requesting a
divorce around the time of the show’s opening. She responded by immediately releasing a letter to the
press stating she would “naturally do whatever he wishes.” In the process, she identified Olivier’s desire
to marry Ms. Plowright as his motivation. That, according to Edwards, put Plowright in a tight spot as she
was still married. Plowright bolted out of town to hide with her parents for a day.
We chronicle this not to contest anything Pendleton has included, or to challenge his focus on the
relationships between the play’s three men. However, assuming Edwards’ account is true, the events not
only seem more dramatic than what we’re watching, but more climactic. This play, has one of the weakest
endings in memory, with the narrative petering out before the show would open, and Plowright, in another
strong effort from West, announcing that she is the only character still alive, she’ll fill us in on what
happened to each. (In what might be a cute twist in other a better production, Welles and Olivier are just as
curious as we are to hear what happened to them. Here, however, it that just adds to the general lack of
finality.) What we’re left with is a play that gets bogged down in what feels like a technical rehearsal of a
technical rehearsal.
Lawrence, an actress any production is lucky to have, has only minimal time onstage and her impact on the
narrative is negligible. We are really in the hands of Tynan, Welles and Olivier. Tynan has managed to sell
the nearly unemployable Welles to Olivier as director for ‘Rhinoceros.’ Whether Welles will whip the show
into shape before the others tire of him, whether the chain-smoking Tynan will keel over before some
injured artist pummels him for a past notice, and whether Leigh will arrive stark raving mad to destroy the
rehersal process are three primary areas for tension. (Welles’ assistant Sean, played by Nick Cernoch, is
a handy foil for all plotlines.)
What happens during the two-and-a-quarter hour, two-act play, is that great histrionics are invoked for all
these storylines, but it all gets bogged down in what feels like a technical rehearsal of a technical
rehearsal.
The title suggests that all film-makers since Welles’ list-topping ‘Citizen Kane’ work in the shadow of the
Wunderkind. But there is also Tynan’s personal application. (And, within the tension triangle of Tynan,
Welles and Olivier, the heart of the play is the fondness Tynan and Welles have for each other. This, too, is
stunted by McGill’s portrait of a genius of bombast more than playfulness and subtlety.) Tynan offers an
image of himself as a yapping dog, chasing beneath Orson as he floats across Europe like a bouncing hot
air balloon.
Another area of interest is Pendleton’s placement of Tynan as a kind of fulcrum for the tottering giants
Larry and Orson. Tynan represents a time when theater critics saw themselves more as part of the
theater-creation establishment rather than drive-by snipers. At one point he chastises Olivier for
beeing too defensive when he says, “Theater reviews need to be read with more intelligence.”
If ‘TIME Magazine’ hailed this as one of the year’s 10 best in 2005, one suspects a substantially more
engaging production got it there.
by Austin Pendleton, directed by Dámaso Rodriguez
Pasadena Playhouse • January 11-February 17, 2008 (Opened 1/18, rev’d 1/19m)
WITH Nick Cernoch, Sharon Lawrence, Scott Lowell, Bruce McGill, Charles Shaughnessy, Libby West
PRODUCTION Gary Wissman, set; Mary Vogt, costumes; Dan Jenkins, lights; Cricket Myers, sound; Joel
Goldes, dialect; Lea Chazin/Hethyr Verhoef, stage management (premiered by Steppenwolf Theatre
Company)
There are numerous conflicts at play within Austin Pendleton’s ‘Orson’s Shadow,’ the
“inside baseball” theater piece in elegant revival under Dámaso Rodriguez’ direction
on the Pasadena Playhouse main stage through February 17. There are battles
between out-sized egos, between sanity and madness, between theater and film
culture and even over acting choices. However, in this production, due in part to
Bruce McGill’s oddly one-dimensional Orson Welles, these never provide any real
tension or rise above detached discourse. What should be a spirited session with
fascinating characters feels like a fly-on-the-wall look through the wrong end of the
telescope: making the titanic tiny and tedious.
When famous people populate a play, we’re watching to learn about them, to learn about life through them,
or both. There is a good deal to learn about these characters and, in theater-creature Pendleton’s take, the
way they approached their primary professions: director Welles (Bruce McGill), actors Laurence Olivier
(Charles Shaughnessy), Vivien Leigh (Sharon Lawrence) and Joan Plowright (Libby West), and theater
writer/critic Kenneth Tynan (Scott Lowell). We get a mix of details about their pasts and present conditions
during rehearsals for Olivier’s and Plowright’s appearance in Eugene Ionesco’s ‘Rhinoceros’ in 1960.
According to Anne Edwards’ biography on Ms. Leigh, who was separated from Olivier and involved with
Jack Merivale at the time the play is set, the actress received a letter from her husband requesting a
divorce around the time of the show’s opening. She responded by immediately releasing a letter to the
press stating she would “naturally do whatever he wishes.” In the process, she identified Olivier’s desire
to marry Ms. Plowright as his motivation. That, according to Edwards, put Plowright in a tight spot as she
was still married. Plowright bolted out of town to hide with her parents for a day.
We chronicle this not to contest anything Pendleton has included, or to challenge his focus on the
relationships between the play’s three men. However, assuming Edwards’ account is true, the events not
only seem more dramatic than what we’re watching, but more climactic. This play, has one of the weakest
endings in memory, with the narrative petering out before the show would open, and Plowright, in another
strong effort from West, announcing that she is the only character still alive, she’ll fill us in on what
happened to each. (In what might be a cute twist in other a better production, Welles and Olivier are just as
curious as we are to hear what happened to them. Here, however, it that just adds to the general lack of
finality.) What we’re left with is a play that gets bogged down in what feels like a technical rehearsal of a
technical rehearsal.
Lawrence, an actress any production is lucky to have, has only minimal time onstage and her impact on the
narrative is negligible. We are really in the hands of Tynan, Welles and Olivier. Tynan has managed to sell
the nearly unemployable Welles to Olivier as director for ‘Rhinoceros.’ Whether Welles will whip the show
into shape before the others tire of him, whether the chain-smoking Tynan will keel over before some
injured artist pummels him for a past notice, and whether Leigh will arrive stark raving mad to destroy the
rehersal process are three primary areas for tension. (Welles’ assistant Sean, played by Nick Cernoch, is
a handy foil for all plotlines.)
What happens during the two-and-a-quarter hour, two-act play, is that great histrionics are invoked for all
these storylines, but it all gets bogged down in what feels like a technical rehearsal of a technical
rehearsal.
The title suggests that all film-makers since Welles’ list-topping ‘Citizen Kane’ work in the shadow of the
Wunderkind. But there is also Tynan’s personal application. (And, within the tension triangle of Tynan,
Welles and Olivier, the heart of the play is the fondness Tynan and Welles have for each other. This, too, is
stunted by McGill’s portrait of a genius of bombast more than playfulness and subtlety.) Tynan offers an
image of himself as a yapping dog, chasing beneath Orson as he floats across Europe like a bouncing hot
air balloon.
Another area of interest is Pendleton’s placement of Tynan as a kind of fulcrum for the tottering giants
Larry and Orson. Tynan represents a time when theater critics saw themselves more as part of the
theater-creation establishment rather than drive-by snipers. At one point he chastises Olivier for
beeing too defensive when he says, “Theater reviews need to be read with more intelligence.”
If ‘TIME Magazine’ hailed this as one of the year’s 10 best in 2005, one suspects a substantially more
engaging production got it there.
T H E A T E R T I M E S . O R G
Bruce McGill
Charles Shaughnessy
PHOTO CRAIG SCHWARTZ
Charles Shaughnessy
PHOTO CRAIG SCHWARTZ
The End of the Tour
by Joel Drake Johnson, directed by Heather Dara Williams
The Road Theatre • January 18-March 8, 2008 (Opened, rev'd 1/18)
WITH Rhonda Aldrich, Scot Burklin, Albie Selznick, Michael Dempsey, Tom Knickerbocker, Gwen Van
Dam, Sylvia Little PRODUCTION Theodore Michael Dolas, set/lights; Jenny Green, costumes; Ken Sawyer,
sound; John Boswell, music; Maurie Gonzalez, stage management (original production/development at
Victory Gardens, Chicago)
There is much to like about Josh Drake Johnson’s ‘The End of the Tour,’ directed by
Heather Dara Williams for Road Theatre Company through March 8. A sharp writer
who can shape comic situations worthy of syndication, Johnson also has the
playwright’s instinct for the drama beyond the jokes. In ‘End,’ where the beast behind
the blinds is both memory loss and memories that won’t leave us alone, he nearly
creates an unforgettable play for the current caretaker generation dealing with
Alzheimer’s and dementia. Unfortunately, he’s unable to assign his three-prong story
proper balance, and like the parent who lets his triplets clammor for attention,
deprives us of properly getting to know any of them.
Nevertheless, a visit to Road Theatre’s Lankershim space offers entertainment and insights, especially with
Ms. Williams’ solid cast, led by Rhonda Aldrich as Jan with great work out on the fringes of this conflicted
story from Michael Dempsey as Tommy.
Theodore Michael Dolas’ tidy three-section design, with hanging upstage panels ominously reminiscent of
an old talk show set from the television genre that inform Johnson’s dialogue, serve as virtual isolation
booths for the three pairs of characters. Stage right is Jan and Chuck’s (Tom Knickerbocker) kitchen.
Center is the room in a nursing home where Jan’s mother Mae (Gwen Van Dam) is recovering from a
broken ankle. And stage left is the nursing home’s waiting room where Mae’s son Andrew (Scot Burklin)
and his lover David (Albie Selznick) spend the play in limbo while Andrew decides whether or not to go in
for a visit.
Johnson sets his play in Dixon, Illinois, where Ronald Reagan was born and is now memorialized. For
Johnson, it’s Reagan’s medical rather than political legacy that is of interest. Set in “the early 1990s,” we
assume the play precedes Reagan’s 1994 announcement that he had Alzheimer’s Disease.
The story mechanics, which occasionally get parked for extended stretches while Johnson revs his
comedy chops, center around Jan’s mid-life decision to stop nurturing and start living. She has long lived in
Dixon, caring for her dull but loving husband and interesting but self-obsessed mother, a flamboyant former
singer who once traveled with big bands and is angry that her touring days should end amid the nursing
home’s mindless wanderers. Jan’s plan to end her tour of duty serving man and mother indicates she will
now lean on her daughter for support by moving to the city where she lives.
Andrew’s arrival is not about mom’s troubles or Jan’s mid-life decision. He’s brought his own baggage,
which seems to spring open upon arrival back in his birthplace. His story and Jan’s are so disconnected
that after a first-scene phone call they never speak again. His role may be to show we (Jan) can’t run
away from our past. Unfortunately, he ultimately does just that and gets away with it. Despite being a
hallway away from distressed sister and distressing mom, Andrew never speaks to either again.
Meanwhile, the writing is on the kitchen wall for Chuck, the extended family’s other spineless male
member. While his old pal Tommy offers hilarious homespun counsel, he fixates on a non-responsive old
cat who, like his marriage, apparently needs to be put to sleep. The fraying of focus from these go-
nowhere scenes would be more lamentable were it not for Dempsey, whose ear for Johnson’s comedy
gives this third of the 90-minute one-act enough punch to withstand commercial breaks and still be worth
the ticket price. His delivery of a line describing an alcoholic couple’s child-rearing style as “raising a family
like two drunks on a pogo stick” is right on time.
But it wants to be Jan’s play. And, appropriately, she is too passive to wrestle it back from her self-
absorbed brother. One might argue that the title refers as much to Mae’s touring days as a singer (or even
Andrew’s “tour” of the closet) as it does to Jan’s tour of duty as family ennabler. However, with all roads
leading to Jan, and her eyes turned to the open road, giving her more of a chance to express herself would
be helpful. The missing scene, like in so many families, is the Jan-Andrew showdown in the waiting room.
Unfortunately, those scenes seldom have resolution. But, ultimately, neither does this ‘Tour.’
Near the end, when it becomes clear that the stories aren’t going to come together – Andrew won’t be
confronting his mother, Jan may be off to inflict herself on her child, and Chuck may never get it – Williams
indulges in a section of overlapping dialogue that symbolizes the cross-cancelling scene structure. If the
indiscernible dialogue is dispensible, more’s the pity that when we want a real climax we get dismissible
diddling.
But, that said, there is beauty in Johnson’s vision. There are occasional references to a lifeline, or memory
thread, that is like the painted path hardware and other stores use to take customers from the information
desk to the aisle they need. Losing our path and regaining it is the underlying metaphor, and it gets nicely
book-ended by the late Johnny Cash, first appearing as defiant in Petty’s ‘Won’t Back Down’ and then with
his ‘I Walk the Line’ closing the show. These, and Counting Crows’ ‘Sullivan Street’ are fine choices by
Johnson, Williams and/or designer Ken Sawyer, and give depth to the play fighting for its path within ‘The
End of the Tour.’
For now that line is like the centerline on a foggy mountain road, and audiences may feel like another patient
at Mae’s nursing home (Sylvia Little), trying to tell where she’s going or just what she’s seen.
by Joel Drake Johnson, directed by Heather Dara Williams
The Road Theatre • January 18-March 8, 2008 (Opened, rev'd 1/18)
WITH Rhonda Aldrich, Scot Burklin, Albie Selznick, Michael Dempsey, Tom Knickerbocker, Gwen Van
Dam, Sylvia Little PRODUCTION Theodore Michael Dolas, set/lights; Jenny Green, costumes; Ken Sawyer,
sound; John Boswell, music; Maurie Gonzalez, stage management (original production/development at
Victory Gardens, Chicago)
There is much to like about Josh Drake Johnson’s ‘The End of the Tour,’ directed by
Heather Dara Williams for Road Theatre Company through March 8. A sharp writer
who can shape comic situations worthy of syndication, Johnson also has the
playwright’s instinct for the drama beyond the jokes. In ‘End,’ where the beast behind
the blinds is both memory loss and memories that won’t leave us alone, he nearly
creates an unforgettable play for the current caretaker generation dealing with
Alzheimer’s and dementia. Unfortunately, he’s unable to assign his three-prong story
proper balance, and like the parent who lets his triplets clammor for attention,
deprives us of properly getting to know any of them.
Nevertheless, a visit to Road Theatre’s Lankershim space offers entertainment and insights, especially with
Ms. Williams’ solid cast, led by Rhonda Aldrich as Jan with great work out on the fringes of this conflicted
story from Michael Dempsey as Tommy.
Theodore Michael Dolas’ tidy three-section design, with hanging upstage panels ominously reminiscent of
an old talk show set from the television genre that inform Johnson’s dialogue, serve as virtual isolation
booths for the three pairs of characters. Stage right is Jan and Chuck’s (Tom Knickerbocker) kitchen.
Center is the room in a nursing home where Jan’s mother Mae (Gwen Van Dam) is recovering from a
broken ankle. And stage left is the nursing home’s waiting room where Mae’s son Andrew (Scot Burklin)
and his lover David (Albie Selznick) spend the play in limbo while Andrew decides whether or not to go in
for a visit.
Johnson sets his play in Dixon, Illinois, where Ronald Reagan was born and is now memorialized. For
Johnson, it’s Reagan’s medical rather than political legacy that is of interest. Set in “the early 1990s,” we
assume the play precedes Reagan’s 1994 announcement that he had Alzheimer’s Disease.
The story mechanics, which occasionally get parked for extended stretches while Johnson revs his
comedy chops, center around Jan’s mid-life decision to stop nurturing and start living. She has long lived in
Dixon, caring for her dull but loving husband and interesting but self-obsessed mother, a flamboyant former
singer who once traveled with big bands and is angry that her touring days should end amid the nursing
home’s mindless wanderers. Jan’s plan to end her tour of duty serving man and mother indicates she will
now lean on her daughter for support by moving to the city where she lives.
Andrew’s arrival is not about mom’s troubles or Jan’s mid-life decision. He’s brought his own baggage,
which seems to spring open upon arrival back in his birthplace. His story and Jan’s are so disconnected
that after a first-scene phone call they never speak again. His role may be to show we (Jan) can’t run
away from our past. Unfortunately, he ultimately does just that and gets away with it. Despite being a
hallway away from distressed sister and distressing mom, Andrew never speaks to either again.
Meanwhile, the writing is on the kitchen wall for Chuck, the extended family’s other spineless male
member. While his old pal Tommy offers hilarious homespun counsel, he fixates on a non-responsive old
cat who, like his marriage, apparently needs to be put to sleep. The fraying of focus from these go-
nowhere scenes would be more lamentable were it not for Dempsey, whose ear for Johnson’s comedy
gives this third of the 90-minute one-act enough punch to withstand commercial breaks and still be worth
the ticket price. His delivery of a line describing an alcoholic couple’s child-rearing style as “raising a family
like two drunks on a pogo stick” is right on time.
But it wants to be Jan’s play. And, appropriately, she is too passive to wrestle it back from her self-
absorbed brother. One might argue that the title refers as much to Mae’s touring days as a singer (or even
Andrew’s “tour” of the closet) as it does to Jan’s tour of duty as family ennabler. However, with all roads
leading to Jan, and her eyes turned to the open road, giving her more of a chance to express herself would
be helpful. The missing scene, like in so many families, is the Jan-Andrew showdown in the waiting room.
Unfortunately, those scenes seldom have resolution. But, ultimately, neither does this ‘Tour.’
Near the end, when it becomes clear that the stories aren’t going to come together – Andrew won’t be
confronting his mother, Jan may be off to inflict herself on her child, and Chuck may never get it – Williams
indulges in a section of overlapping dialogue that symbolizes the cross-cancelling scene structure. If the
indiscernible dialogue is dispensible, more’s the pity that when we want a real climax we get dismissible
diddling.
But, that said, there is beauty in Johnson’s vision. There are occasional references to a lifeline, or memory
thread, that is like the painted path hardware and other stores use to take customers from the information
desk to the aisle they need. Losing our path and regaining it is the underlying metaphor, and it gets nicely
book-ended by the late Johnny Cash, first appearing as defiant in Petty’s ‘Won’t Back Down’ and then with
his ‘I Walk the Line’ closing the show. These, and Counting Crows’ ‘Sullivan Street’ are fine choices by
Johnson, Williams and/or designer Ken Sawyer, and give depth to the play fighting for its path within ‘The
End of the Tour.’
For now that line is like the centerline on a foggy mountain road, and audiences may feel like another patient
at Mae’s nursing home (Sylvia Little), trying to tell where she’s going or just what she’s seen.
T H E A T E R T I M E S . O R G
Rhonda Aldrich
Sylvia Little
(from top)
PHOTO MATT KAISER
Sylvia Little
(from top)
PHOTO MATT KAISER
Sea of Tranquility
by Howard Korder, directed by Michael Bloom
The Old Globe January 12-February 17, 2008 (Opened, rev'd 1/17)
WITH Ted Koch, Rosina Reynolds, Nike Doukas, Sloan Grenz, Erika Rolfsrud, Jeffrey Kuhn, Carlos Acuña,
Joy Farmer-Clary, Ashley Clements, Tony von Halle, Ned Schmidtke PRODUCTION Scott Bradley, set;
David Kay Mickelsen, costumes; Robert Wierzel, lights; Paul Peterson, sound; Elizabeth Lohr/Moira
Gleason, stage management
If the typewriting monkeys at TV Guide ever need to encapsulate a film version of
Howard Korder’s ‘Sea of Tranquility,’ they may dub it ‘a therapist, heal thyself saga.’
However, such condensation isn’t in the forecast for Korder, whose plays burst with
expansiveness, taking the long way home at a novelist’s pace so as not to miss the
quirkier characters who have broken down along the way. As Michael Bloom’s staging
at The Old Globe (through February 17) shows, Korder remains one of the most
rewarding if underappreciated major writers in American theater.
Of his previous plays – ‘Boys’ Life,’ (1986), ‘Search and Destroy’ (1990), ‘The Lights’ (1993) and the epic
‘The Hollow Lands’ (2000) – his central characters were, in one way or another, out to lasso the moon. In
both ‘Search’ and ‘Hollow Lands,’ there was enough blind ambition to propel those protagonists and their
plot from one end of America to the other. In ‘Tranquility,’ which premiered at New York’s Atlantic Theater
Company in 2004, the cross-country journeys have already been made. All but one in a parade of
characters have arrived in Santa Fe from elsewhere in the hope of finding settlement.
Two main constructions preoccupy ‘Sea of Tranquility.’ There is the general issue of intrusion by
foreigners on native land. This isn’t bumper-sticker clichés about mindless manifest destiny, but a broader
swipe at those who lack a sense of the sacred, and invariably displace people who have it. Americans
may not have invented expansionism or conquest, but we did give it a smug aura of self-righteousness, in
denial that our actions have consequences. Korder’s plays balance on an internal beam across which a
causal continuum slices: from awareness to responsibility and finally retribution or reward. How we
pursue and accept the first two, respectively, determines which of the last two will befall us. (And from
what height.)
To embody our national smugness, Korder has created Ben (Ted Koch), a transplanted New Englander
whose surface calm is meant to project inner peace. But any appearance of tranquility within a Korder
landscape is a mirage. Over the two-act, two-hour-plus play, Ben’s practice of doling out avuncular advice
to his unsettled therapy patients will sound increasingly hollow, and his insistence that each person has the
ability to change will backfire. Finally, his world of self-satisfaction will threaten collapse.
In Koch, Bloom has an actor who rightly maintains his calm, but cannot hint at the turmoil inside. The
surface tension is there, but there needs to be glints of what’s underneath. It’s played as if being a
sounding board for the other characters is sufficient to drive the story when it’s Ben who drives the story.
Even when he doesn’t know where he’s going. This is a tricky assignment, given the overall sense that he
has achieved his desired state of stasis. As his brother-in-law Randy, a man designed to be utterly
without depth, Jeffrey Kuhn errs in the other direction. His performance is irritating enough to sandblast
away any audience empathy the other characters have won.
Credit the Globe with casting a full stage of veterans and for the training program that has filled several
meaty non-Equity roles with little drop off in quality. Among the vets, Erika Rolfsrud shines as Ben’s wife
Nessa. She has the tough job of embodying the stuff of myth, and she does it with great (and appreciated)
naturalness. Other stand outs are Nike Doukas, making one wish her small role had more stage time, the
wonderful Ned Schmidtke (continuing his impressive string of performances from the Globe’s ‘Body of
Water’ and Antaeus’ ‘Tonight at 8:30’), double-cast at unrecognizable extremes, and an appropriately
grounded Carlos Acuña, also double cast.
Among the younger artists, Joy Farmer-Clary, in the pivotal role of Astarte, is excellent, and Sloan Grenz is
good as a self-loathing genius teen. Tony van Halle, however, suffers the same blandness that permeates
Koch’s performance. Whether one can justify these characterizations isn’t the point. They’re missed
opportunities for something more interesting and engaging.
And, though it’s becoming repetitive to say so, this is another beautiful Old Globe production. Scott Bradley’
s sprawling living room set creates a great playing area for the large cast, although it doesn’t seem in
keeping with the economics of its owners, nor with the structure’s history of being built upon another
home. Getting a sense of how Ben and Nessa really live comes instead from the writing, which includes a
faulty spa that shorts out the home’s power. (A tip of the hat to the production department for an overflow
scene that plays beautifully.) Credit Bradley with upstage wall textures that suggest cave-dwellers, and
with that tie into the theme of the world that exists beneath – and before – our feet.
Korder has created a diverse world of characters and ideas in ‘Sea of Tranquility.’ The downside of such
variety is the inability to spend more time with them. Still, one comes away with a sense of richness and
plenty of questions over which to mull. And, as always, there are the little Korder gems tucked in along the
way. Scenes or images that sear into the mind. Suddenly, in the middle of someone’s idle prattling, there
will come the description of something so dark and haunting. One such incident in ‘Sea of Tranquility,’ like a
moment iin ‘Sophie’s Choice,’ had that strange power in which a narrator innocently relates another person’
s comments, unaware that they have just spoken what describes a deeper despair than most people ever
grasp. When Astarte describes Donald, a lost soul seeking shelter in drug abuse, it recalls how Stingo
quoted Nathan’s ‘We’re dying’ outbursts during lovemaking. Astarte tells how one night, an erect yet
impotent Donald, stood naked in the foggy glow of an open refrigerator crammed with drugs repeating ‘I
can’t believe I can’t believe.”
As an off-stage building contractor assesses about Ben and Nessa’s home, “When the footer is rotted, you
need to dig down and see what’s underneath.” ‘Sea of Tranquility’ may appear a beautiful, almost glib
sitcom of a play. But Korder has once more built his world on fetid footers. The studs and soleplates are
the stuff of marital miscommunication; the limitations of pop psychology; our legacy of abusing land and
each other. Audience members will be glad they spent the evening with this collection of reflective
characters. Hopefully, they will be willing to dig down in search of awareness and responsibility. That’s
where the real rewards are.
by Howard Korder, directed by Michael Bloom
The Old Globe January 12-February 17, 2008 (Opened, rev'd 1/17)
WITH Ted Koch, Rosina Reynolds, Nike Doukas, Sloan Grenz, Erika Rolfsrud, Jeffrey Kuhn, Carlos Acuña,
Joy Farmer-Clary, Ashley Clements, Tony von Halle, Ned Schmidtke PRODUCTION Scott Bradley, set;
David Kay Mickelsen, costumes; Robert Wierzel, lights; Paul Peterson, sound; Elizabeth Lohr/Moira
Gleason, stage management
If the typewriting monkeys at TV Guide ever need to encapsulate a film version of
Howard Korder’s ‘Sea of Tranquility,’ they may dub it ‘a therapist, heal thyself saga.’
However, such condensation isn’t in the forecast for Korder, whose plays burst with
expansiveness, taking the long way home at a novelist’s pace so as not to miss the
quirkier characters who have broken down along the way. As Michael Bloom’s staging
at The Old Globe (through February 17) shows, Korder remains one of the most
rewarding if underappreciated major writers in American theater.
Of his previous plays – ‘Boys’ Life,’ (1986), ‘Search and Destroy’ (1990), ‘The Lights’ (1993) and the epic
‘The Hollow Lands’ (2000) – his central characters were, in one way or another, out to lasso the moon. In
both ‘Search’ and ‘Hollow Lands,’ there was enough blind ambition to propel those protagonists and their
plot from one end of America to the other. In ‘Tranquility,’ which premiered at New York’s Atlantic Theater
Company in 2004, the cross-country journeys have already been made. All but one in a parade of
characters have arrived in Santa Fe from elsewhere in the hope of finding settlement.
Two main constructions preoccupy ‘Sea of Tranquility.’ There is the general issue of intrusion by
foreigners on native land. This isn’t bumper-sticker clichés about mindless manifest destiny, but a broader
swipe at those who lack a sense of the sacred, and invariably displace people who have it. Americans
may not have invented expansionism or conquest, but we did give it a smug aura of self-righteousness, in
denial that our actions have consequences. Korder’s plays balance on an internal beam across which a
causal continuum slices: from awareness to responsibility and finally retribution or reward. How we
pursue and accept the first two, respectively, determines which of the last two will befall us. (And from
what height.)
To embody our national smugness, Korder has created Ben (Ted Koch), a transplanted New Englander
whose surface calm is meant to project inner peace. But any appearance of tranquility within a Korder
landscape is a mirage. Over the two-act, two-hour-plus play, Ben’s practice of doling out avuncular advice
to his unsettled therapy patients will sound increasingly hollow, and his insistence that each person has the
ability to change will backfire. Finally, his world of self-satisfaction will threaten collapse.
In Koch, Bloom has an actor who rightly maintains his calm, but cannot hint at the turmoil inside. The
surface tension is there, but there needs to be glints of what’s underneath. It’s played as if being a
sounding board for the other characters is sufficient to drive the story when it’s Ben who drives the story.
Even when he doesn’t know where he’s going. This is a tricky assignment, given the overall sense that he
has achieved his desired state of stasis. As his brother-in-law Randy, a man designed to be utterly
without depth, Jeffrey Kuhn errs in the other direction. His performance is irritating enough to sandblast
away any audience empathy the other characters have won.
Credit the Globe with casting a full stage of veterans and for the training program that has filled several
meaty non-Equity roles with little drop off in quality. Among the vets, Erika Rolfsrud shines as Ben’s wife
Nessa. She has the tough job of embodying the stuff of myth, and she does it with great (and appreciated)
naturalness. Other stand outs are Nike Doukas, making one wish her small role had more stage time, the
wonderful Ned Schmidtke (continuing his impressive string of performances from the Globe’s ‘Body of
Water’ and Antaeus’ ‘Tonight at 8:30’), double-cast at unrecognizable extremes, and an appropriately
grounded Carlos Acuña, also double cast.
Among the younger artists, Joy Farmer-Clary, in the pivotal role of Astarte, is excellent, and Sloan Grenz is
good as a self-loathing genius teen. Tony van Halle, however, suffers the same blandness that permeates
Koch’s performance. Whether one can justify these characterizations isn’t the point. They’re missed
opportunities for something more interesting and engaging.
And, though it’s becoming repetitive to say so, this is another beautiful Old Globe production. Scott Bradley’
s sprawling living room set creates a great playing area for the large cast, although it doesn’t seem in
keeping with the economics of its owners, nor with the structure’s history of being built upon another
home. Getting a sense of how Ben and Nessa really live comes instead from the writing, which includes a
faulty spa that shorts out the home’s power. (A tip of the hat to the production department for an overflow
scene that plays beautifully.) Credit Bradley with upstage wall textures that suggest cave-dwellers, and
with that tie into the theme of the world that exists beneath – and before – our feet.
Korder has created a diverse world of characters and ideas in ‘Sea of Tranquility.’ The downside of such
variety is the inability to spend more time with them. Still, one comes away with a sense of richness and
plenty of questions over which to mull. And, as always, there are the little Korder gems tucked in along the
way. Scenes or images that sear into the mind. Suddenly, in the middle of someone’s idle prattling, there
will come the description of something so dark and haunting. One such incident in ‘Sea of Tranquility,’ like a
moment iin ‘Sophie’s Choice,’ had that strange power in which a narrator innocently relates another person’
s comments, unaware that they have just spoken what describes a deeper despair than most people ever
grasp. When Astarte describes Donald, a lost soul seeking shelter in drug abuse, it recalls how Stingo
quoted Nathan’s ‘We’re dying’ outbursts during lovemaking. Astarte tells how one night, an erect yet
impotent Donald, stood naked in the foggy glow of an open refrigerator crammed with drugs repeating ‘I
can’t believe I can’t believe.”
As an off-stage building contractor assesses about Ben and Nessa’s home, “When the footer is rotted, you
need to dig down and see what’s underneath.” ‘Sea of Tranquility’ may appear a beautiful, almost glib
sitcom of a play. But Korder has once more built his world on fetid footers. The studs and soleplates are
the stuff of marital miscommunication; the limitations of pop psychology; our legacy of abusing land and
each other. Audience members will be glad they spent the evening with this collection of reflective
characters. Hopefully, they will be willing to dig down in search of awareness and responsibility. That’s
where the real rewards are.
T H E A T E R T I M E S . O R G
Ted Koch
PHOTO CRAIG SCHWARTZ
PHOTO CRAIG SCHWARTZ
Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson
written and directed by Alex Timbers, music and lyrics by Michael Friedman,
choreography by Kelly Devine World Premiere
Kirk Douglas Theatre • January 13-February 17, 2008 (Opened 1/20, rev’d 1/27)
WITH Anjali Bhimani, Will Collyer, Diane Davis, Zack DeZon, Erin Felgar, Kristin Findley, Jimmy Fowlie,
Patrick Gomez, Sebastian Gonzalez, Will Greenberg, Greg Hildreth, Brian Hostenske, Adam O’Byrne,
Matthew Rocheleau, Ben Steinfeld, Ian Unterman, Benjamin Walker, Taylor Wilcox BAND Gabriel Kahane,
guitar, piano, Banjo; Charlie Rosen, bass; Mike Schadel, drums PRODUCTION Robert Brill, set; Emily
Rebholz, costumes; Jeff Croiter, lights; Bart Fasbender, sound; Gabriel Kahane, music
direction/orchestrations; Jake Pinholster, projections; Mike Sablone, dramaturg; David S. Franklin/Elizabeth
Atkinson, Michelle Blair, stage management
It’s easy to get caught up in the youthful exuberance of ‘Bloody Bloody Andrew
Jackson,’ a deconstructionist stage dive into the mosh pit of 19th Century history,
aimed at rattling the pedestal of America’s 7th President. Written and directed by
Alex Timbers, with music and lyrics by Michael Friedman, ‘BAJ’ mixes the raw energy
of garage rock and the loopy madness of an improv troupe with a graduate student-
obsession for righting U.S. history. However, its Kirk Douglas Theatre world
premiere, through February 17 in a co-production with New York’s Public Theater,
shows signs our graduate students were cramming as deadline neared. A long stretch
of Act II has more information than inspiration, and (especially at an hour 50 without a
break), it wears a little.
That isn’t enough to earn ‘BAJ’ many demerits, though. And, given the ingenuity of the creators, and the
zest of the performers, it seems certain that New Yorkers will see a tighter show, with its storytelling and
inventiveness more evenly spread across the whole piece.
The story roughly follows Jackson’s life, (Benjamin Walker) sketching in personal details from childhood,
marriage and political ascent along with reasons for his early hatred of the British and the Indians to his
military triumphs and the emergence of his political philosophy of populism. It’s a Technicolor tangle of style
and substance, engaging music that crosses genres from Americana to contemporary rock, and uniformly
strong performance spiced with tight comic timing and solid singing. This is held together by Robert Brill’s
enchanting set, a fantasy environment of a 19th Century saloon dominated by a Natural History Museum
Hall of Mammals diorama. The glass-enclosed taxidermy is a self-aware dare to anyone who thinks history
theater need be of a museum piece.
The challenge, of course, is to be stylistically all over the map and end up with a clear perspective on
Jackson. He is cavalier and conscientious, caring and dismissive, and all the time propelled by a disregard
for the welfare of those in opposition – from the Natives to our British cousins. While it’s fair to present a
man in all his complexities, the sincerity of the effort is compromised by the anarchy of the storytelling.
Timbers and Friedman want to have it both ways and that they succeed as well as they do is testament to
their considerable talents. It’s also likely they’ll do more than just smooth out the dry stretch in Act II, where
Jackson’s troubles seeking consensus and popular engagement prove futile. That section can certainly be
accomplished in less time. And, certainly the interaction of the rock star president and the citizens he
meets across the country, is another opportunity for a musical number.
Still, the overriding tone is one of assurance. This group has grabbed their history by the neck, shaken the
dust off it, and thrown its squirrelly ass against the barroom wall to see if it will stick. The facts are faithful,
though the characterizations are a mix of everything from Grand Guignol to Vaudeville to Three Stooges.
Of course, characterization is secondary to attitude, musical chops, and ability to switch from buffoonery
to menace at the twist of a blade. And, speaking of blades, the 'blood' metaphor that flows through the
narrative is dark and fluid, but may not clarify enough. Nevertheless, it's a bloody good day in the theater.
written and directed by Alex Timbers, music and lyrics by Michael Friedman,
choreography by Kelly Devine World Premiere
Kirk Douglas Theatre • January 13-February 17, 2008 (Opened 1/20, rev’d 1/27)
WITH Anjali Bhimani, Will Collyer, Diane Davis, Zack DeZon, Erin Felgar, Kristin Findley, Jimmy Fowlie,
Patrick Gomez, Sebastian Gonzalez, Will Greenberg, Greg Hildreth, Brian Hostenske, Adam O’Byrne,
Matthew Rocheleau, Ben Steinfeld, Ian Unterman, Benjamin Walker, Taylor Wilcox BAND Gabriel Kahane,
guitar, piano, Banjo; Charlie Rosen, bass; Mike Schadel, drums PRODUCTION Robert Brill, set; Emily
Rebholz, costumes; Jeff Croiter, lights; Bart Fasbender, sound; Gabriel Kahane, music
direction/orchestrations; Jake Pinholster, projections; Mike Sablone, dramaturg; David S. Franklin/Elizabeth
Atkinson, Michelle Blair, stage management
It’s easy to get caught up in the youthful exuberance of ‘Bloody Bloody Andrew
Jackson,’ a deconstructionist stage dive into the mosh pit of 19th Century history,
aimed at rattling the pedestal of America’s 7th President. Written and directed by
Alex Timbers, with music and lyrics by Michael Friedman, ‘BAJ’ mixes the raw energy
of garage rock and the loopy madness of an improv troupe with a graduate student-
obsession for righting U.S. history. However, its Kirk Douglas Theatre world
premiere, through February 17 in a co-production with New York’s Public Theater,
shows signs our graduate students were cramming as deadline neared. A long stretch
of Act II has more information than inspiration, and (especially at an hour 50 without a
break), it wears a little.
That isn’t enough to earn ‘BAJ’ many demerits, though. And, given the ingenuity of the creators, and the
zest of the performers, it seems certain that New Yorkers will see a tighter show, with its storytelling and
inventiveness more evenly spread across the whole piece.
The story roughly follows Jackson’s life, (Benjamin Walker) sketching in personal details from childhood,
marriage and political ascent along with reasons for his early hatred of the British and the Indians to his
military triumphs and the emergence of his political philosophy of populism. It’s a Technicolor tangle of style
and substance, engaging music that crosses genres from Americana to contemporary rock, and uniformly
strong performance spiced with tight comic timing and solid singing. This is held together by Robert Brill’s
enchanting set, a fantasy environment of a 19th Century saloon dominated by a Natural History Museum
Hall of Mammals diorama. The glass-enclosed taxidermy is a self-aware dare to anyone who thinks history
theater need be of a museum piece.
The challenge, of course, is to be stylistically all over the map and end up with a clear perspective on
Jackson. He is cavalier and conscientious, caring and dismissive, and all the time propelled by a disregard
for the welfare of those in opposition – from the Natives to our British cousins. While it’s fair to present a
man in all his complexities, the sincerity of the effort is compromised by the anarchy of the storytelling.
Timbers and Friedman want to have it both ways and that they succeed as well as they do is testament to
their considerable talents. It’s also likely they’ll do more than just smooth out the dry stretch in Act II, where
Jackson’s troubles seeking consensus and popular engagement prove futile. That section can certainly be
accomplished in less time. And, certainly the interaction of the rock star president and the citizens he
meets across the country, is another opportunity for a musical number.
Still, the overriding tone is one of assurance. This group has grabbed their history by the neck, shaken the
dust off it, and thrown its squirrelly ass against the barroom wall to see if it will stick. The facts are faithful,
though the characterizations are a mix of everything from Grand Guignol to Vaudeville to Three Stooges.
Of course, characterization is secondary to attitude, musical chops, and ability to switch from buffoonery
to menace at the twist of a blade. And, speaking of blades, the 'blood' metaphor that flows through the
narrative is dark and fluid, but may not clarify enough. Nevertheless, it's a bloody good day in the theater.
T H E A T E R T I M E S . O R G
Benjamin Walker
PHOTO CRAIG SCHWARTZ
PHOTO CRAIG SCHWARTZ
