Tag Archives: John Langs

Arts & Entertainment, Theatre

Heartbreak and Hilarity at ACT’s Middletown

The cast of Middletown. Photo by LaRae Lobdell 

Do you remember that strange play you did in high school, the one that seemed oddly simple? It had almost no set and some of the characters seemed to know they were in a play. Maybe it felt kind of hokey. A boy and a girl met, fell in love, got married and then she died, and there was this stage manager who kept talking to the audience. That play was Thornton Wilder’s Our Town and it’s worth recalling before heading off to ACT’s production of Middletown by Will Eno (through September 29).

This is not to say that familiarity with Our Town is necessary. One can go to Middletown without having seen any play before. As with Wilder’s, this town is simple and straightforward, and a couple of the characters do speak directly to the audience. Likewise, this Middletown is about the wonder and beauty of simply being alive, but in the post-Beckett world of Will Eno, language unravels and human connection is as uncertain as it is precious.

 

Photo by Chris Bennion

Fate and time ultimately undo Wilder’s happy world of Grover’s Corners, but even before death enters the play, darkness lurks in the presence of the alcoholic choir director, Simon Stimson. This character looms large in Middletown not only in the person of a mechanic (Ray Tagavilla) with addiction problems, but even in the lovers who keep us hopeful and engaged with the story. Middletown is a hollow place where despair and brutality lie just beneath the surface. Nonetheless, most of its residents seem as happy as those of Grover’s Corners. This disconnection is integral to the dry humor that keeps the audience laughing when it isn’t on the verge of tears.

Eno updates Wilder’s stage manager with an opening monologue by a public speaker (R. Hamilton Wright). Where many plays begin with a plea for donations before the show, this public speaker gathers our attention to no end; he just goes on gathering. Every time he approaches a conclusion, he subverts it. This is par for the course in the land of Will Eno.

The story of Middletown is one of life: birth, death and the struggle in between. The actions, the language and even voices seem to lead nowhere, constantly circling back on themselves or coming up short in a dead end. Jennifer Zeyl’s set also suggests a cul-de-sac as created by a preschooler, in spare lines and primary colors. A vent on each of the two houses stands out as a remarkable detail that keeps the set in the real world, but everything else has the feel of plastic. It’s a world in which Gumby would feel at home.

Nonetheless, we get swept up in this world and a central romance between a man and a woman who combine the shy innocence of Wilder’s lovers with Simon Stimson’s pain and loneliness. John (Eric Riedmann) is in between jobs he hates. His new next-door neighbor, Mary (Alexandra Tavares), is pregnant, after more than a year of trying, and largely alone while her husband travels for work.

Photo by Chris Bennion

Their story gets broken up by interludes between the townsfolk. Most prominent among these are the Mechanic, The Cop (Matthew Floyd Miller), and The Librarian (Marianne Owen). More fleeting figures comment on the play and the themes of the beauty and futility of life. Some of these monologues drag, but they give way in the second half to the heightened circumstances of the hospital.

85 years after Our Town, the hospital is where we conduct our essential dramas of birth and death. Mary goes there to give birth alone, and John is taken there after an attempted suicide. In between the acts is a pre-intermission meta-theatrical scene in which an audience of Middletowners attending the play responds to it during intermission.

ACT’s production is excellent. The acting sometimes gets mired in the thicket of Eno’s language, losing the audience’s attention, but this show does more in its first five minutes than most do in two hours. The cast is flawless, often making surprising verbal choices and strong physical ones. Riedmann conveys John’s insecurity with elbows  invariably tucked into his stomach. Renata Friedman brings a thrusting angularity to characters at either end of the autism spectrum. Aaron Blakely’s astronaut goofily tells us he’s in outer space rather than being in outer space.

Design is excellent, from the innocuous pop guitar (a la Grey’s Anatomy) that would grate in any other circumstances to the cop’s mustache. Even the timing of the initial house light fade helped tie together an evening that is as heartbreaking as it is hilarious.

Arts & Entertainment, Theatre

See the World Through K.’s Eyes at New Century’s Creepy, Erotic “Trial”

Darragh Kennan and Alexandra Tavares in NCTC’s The Trial (Photo: Chris Bennion)

Once in a while Seattle theatre surprises my jaded, fed-up sensibilities with a production so wonderful and necessary that I can hardly find any fault in it. Unsurprisingly, the newest production to make the list comes from New Century Theatre Company, a theatre company I take as seriously as my southern brethren take communion. The Trial (at INScape through April 28; tickets) is an immersive, magical production with a slew of talented artists on stage and pulling strings; a production that everyone will be talking about come next week, if they’re not already.

In a new adaptation from Kenneth Albers, Kafka’s play technically opens with Joseph K. (Darragh Kennan) seemingly under arrest with no knowledge of what crime he’s committed, who’s accused him, or why he’s being interrogated in his own home. However, the production starts well before that with cast seating audience members in small groups, asking them to line up in boxes, and leading them to seats via a circuitous path, all the while repeating “Don’t touch the red curtain” (that is impossible not to touch because it’s lining the narrow alley way).

There are many other touches to this pre-show ritual including an overhead speaker that talks to you in a pseudo calming voice about what you can and can’t do. But even in that there are contradictions, purposeful and precise, to affirm that you are about to see something very different. Take note: You are being watched. Blow your nose before the curtain pulls back.

Kennan’s Joseph K. is a desperate everyman, without agency or wisdom, striving to learn something he can’t quite grasp. Amy Thone as the ball-breaking, aging attorney Sophie Kleist simultaneously aggravates and delights — especially as she figure-eights around K. in her motorized wheel chair.  And Alexandra Tavares’ Titorelli is so funny, wry, and a little dirty that I long to hear her say “jyes” one more time.

These performances are standouts, but there was no weak link in the cast, or the design. Robertson Witmer’s sound is haunting and terrifying (full disclosure: we chat on Twitter). Witmer’s sound is accompanied by an incredibly creative lighting design by Geoff Korf who utilized flashlights and practicals for ghostly and eerie atmosphere.

Under the direction of John Langs (and thanks to that impeccable adaptation by Albers), The Trial delivers a play of contradictions, metaphor, hyper-realism, and cleavage — lots and lots of cleavage. Unlike other shows where the cleavage would just be an added, “sex sells,” and hardly a plot point worth note, the choice in this production actually works. In Joseph K.’s head we can only view women two ways: 1.) sexy creatures he’d (we’d) like to bone but likely won’t even talk to outside of work, and 2.) matronly women who take charge of his (our) situation for him so he doesn’t have to take responsibility for himself.

The story can be interpreted in a number of ways and while I could invoke several historical figures and moments I thought of during the production (Rasputin is on the list), the joy of The Trial is in seeking your own meaning. There are countless metaphors, allusions, and of course contradictions. Many of these make no sense. Many of them make perfect sense. All of them are a tad pretentious. And all are a little bit brilliant. So make of them what you will.

Let me put it another way. Imagine The Trial is a door. No one is stopping you from going through that door except little nagging feelings of doubt because you’ve been been burnt before going through other doors, bad doors, waste-of-time doors. Ignore those sonsofbitches and open this damn door.

Arts & Entertainment, Theatre

Antony And Cleopatra And An Asp Too Late at Seattle Shakespeare Co.

Amy Thone in Seattle Shakespeare Company’s 2012 production of “Antony and Cleopatra” (Photo: John Ulman)

The center does not hold in the Seattle Shakespeare Company production of Antony and Cleopatra (through November 18th; tickets) at The Playhouse at Seattle Center (the Intiman space). That center, in this case, is the husband-and-wife novelty act of Hans Altwies and Amy Thone, playing the ill-fated title roles of this tragedy. We spend most of the play wishing their characters would hurry up and die.

The production is admirably consistent yet woefully misconceived. Director John Langs has added confusion to poor character choices with some half-hearted stabs at socio-political commentary in costuming and choreography.

An opening dance sequence needlessly establishes the decadence of the Egyptian court with movement that layers the mysticism of Dervish whirling with orgiastic writhing. This makes for a discomfiting association between current spiritual practice and the hedonism of the ancient court. To the production’s credit, other design elements suggest that this conflation is accidental and Langs is pursuing something more simplistic.

Pete Rush’s costumes imply an Egyptian/Roman conflict as surrogate for our current East/West confrontation. At one end of the scale is the soothsayer’s caftan, emblematic of the East as organic and emotional. At the other end the West is all control and intellect as suggested by the 19th-century officers’ garb and 21st-century riot-cop battle gear of the Roman army.

Between them lies the Hollywood-slick rebel-chic of Pompey’s troops. Evidently they have escaped The Matrix films in order to rule the Mediterranean waves, though there isn’t a swatch of the nautical about them. As a whole it feels silly and more ambitious than smart.

As for the acting, the company delivers the verse with an ease that sometimes loses its pulse in the naturalism of their delivery. They are less successful with their characterization. Thone does nothing to mitigate Cleopatra’s cloying capriciousness with any sort of humanity or regal qualities that suggest she is anything more than physically attractive. Altwies’s Antony feels less like a charismatic military leader than an inept politician driven by nothing more than an inflated sense of self-worth.

With lead performances like these, the supporting cast gets a great opportunity to shine, which they do to varying degrees. Charles Leggett’s Enobarbus is serviceable but his death scene achieves no catharsis given Antony’s failure to deserve it.

Darragh Kennan makes for a clownish yet unsympathetic Octavius Caesar. He appears profoundly uncomfortable in his own skin and uncompromising with all. While Kennan is amusing as ever, his Octavius is insufficiently complex to provide an enlightening foil for Antony.

Dan Kremer’s Lepidus and Sydney Andrews’s Octavia are among the few to wholeheartedly win our sympathy. In the midst of the bluster and bravado of the drunk scene on Pompey’s galley (the show’s artistic high point), Lepidus’s vulnerability and honesty shine convincingly.

Andrews inspires both sympathy and pity in the bit role of Octavia. We feel sympathy for her grounded characterization of this political pawn and pity for the attempts to play her pregnancy for laughs. Meanwhile Kennan’s menacing Caesar is all deceitful subtext in welcoming Octavia back to Rome when Antony abandons her, missing another opportunity to give truthful complexity to his character.

Costuming suggest that these questionable choices are director-driven as individual pieces exacerbate the actors’ inclinations. Kennan wears his 19th-century military garb buttoned up and pressed. Leggett does Che Guevera in drab fatigues and a red beret. Antony and Cleopatra’s battle gear exposes the sham of their characterizations. Cleopatra goes to war in an intrusively ludicrous outfit while Antony looks childlike in coveralls and gilded life jacket armor.

The positive side of the design is mostly in the set, and the talented designer, Jennifer Zeyl, produces some clever and effective ideas here. A central sandbox keeps Egypt present in all the locations of the sprawling narrative just as Egypt and Cleopatra are (nearly) ever present in Antony’s heart and mind. In many scenes, the ways this pit divides or draws together characters provides the production’s only nuance.

The floating platform of the final scenes is creative and interesting—if challenging for some sightlines—but the noise that accompanies its entrance and adjustments is distracting. The simple set dressing of the galley scene is far more effective.

In the battle scenes, the choreography mostly takes up time and space. It tells us that a battle is happening without furthering the plot or our understanding of the characters, or conveying the emotional experience of the bloodshed. The single moment that stands apart from this is a stillness in which an individual soldier is shot multiple times in a spotlight. Clearly Langs and choreographer Mollye Maxner recognize their success here as they repeat the moment. Now if only Langs had recognized and excised the weak parts of the production, we’ve have much more fulfilling evening.

Arts & Entertainment, Theatre

ACT’s Pinter Festival Arouses Our Pinterest

ACT has kicked off its festival celebrating the work of the late Nobel laureate, Harold Pinter (through August 26th; tickets: $30), with a pairing of classic and late short works that offer striking contrasts. Add fine casts and polished sets and there’s little to hold back these shows from being at least pleasant if not revelatory.

The evening begins with The Dumb Waiter, a popular play for survey seminars and scene study for the strength of its form and for its brevity; it is also one of Pinter’s earliest works. ACT has entrusted this two-hander to Darragh Kennan, as Gus, and Charles Leggett, as Ben, a pair of British hit men staking out a job in a vacant restaurant kitchen. These frequent players from Seattle theatre’s upper echelons add polish to their reputations in this production. Though Kennan felt a bit wobbly at times on Thursday night, they held the show together through several technical glitches and kept the audience laughing.

This being Pinter, the comedy isn’t unadulterated. Watching Pinter is a bit like being asked to take cartoons seriously; they’re still funny, but those very human characters—whether cat and mouse or roadrunner and coyote—are doing truly horrible things to one another. This production delivers those goods and for those unfamiliar with Pinter, The Dumb Waiter makes a fine introduction. For the rest of us it can feel a bit hackneyed. The piece is so iconic, despite a paucity of Pinter’s characteristic pauses, that the shock is gone from the final moments.

While Robert Dahlstrom’s set is wonderfully detailed and feels largely accurate the dumbwaiter itself is problematic and not only for its technical glitches. In this production the dumbwaiter appears to be constructed of HVAC ducting. This creates an opportunity for some wonderfully terrifying (if rather canned-feeling) sounds but looks ersatz at best. With another week of performances under their belts the acting and technical support will no doubt be as tight as the second half of the evening.

Celebration cast pictured (Left to Right, Back Row First): Peter Crook, Benjamin Harris, Darragh Kennan, Charles Leggett, Cheyenne Casebier, (Front Row) Frank Corrado, Randy Moore, Mariel Neto, Jeffrey Fracé, Anne Allgood, and Julie Briskman (Photo: LaRae Lobdell)

Where The Dumb Waiter, which debuted in 1957, creaks a bit with age, the 2000 play Celebration is impressive in its contemporary vulgarity. The haute cuisine setting and fixation with image, material gain, and power feel timeless yet specific to this moment in which the culinary has become the highest art. (The integral role of a cell phone interruption also sets the piece in our recent history though this will limit the piece in the long run. Already the lack of texting and the cell phone’s prominent, if fleeting, place make the play feel out of date.)

The script has the feeling of a sunset piece, reflective and valedictorian, shot through with intimations of emotional violence. Brothers (Frank Corrado and Randy Moore) who married sisters (Julie Briskman and Anne Allgood) occupy one restaurant table in celebration of an anniversary while a banker and his wife (Jeffrey Fracé and Mariel Neto) occupy another table nearby. Everyone smiles and is most polite in their affect while one after another makes blithely horrifying revelations and declarations.

Director John Langs manages the challenging staging with ingenuity as restaurant staff fill the stage in a tangled choreography, and just prevents Darragh Kennan from stealing the show. Here Kennan plays a waiter who repeatedly interjects with increasingly improbable and inane stories that almost make sense and bring to mind Woody Allen’s “Lost Generation” sketch.

Despite this competition Frank Corrado’s Lambert holds the center of the show like a mild version of the character played by Michael Gambon (who played Lambert in a TV version of Celebration) in The Thief, The Cook, His Wife, Her Lover. It’s almost as if Pinter has divided himself, with Lambert leading the elites in their portrait of casually destructive power while the waiter plays the not-quite-wise fool who doesn’t quite get the last word.

All told there isn’t a weak spot in this cast including Mariel Neto who has come a long way from her recent seamier appearance on the Seattle stage. She more than holds her own here among the otherwise all Equity cast.

We will see more of these actors before the festival is over on August 26th. Old Times opens August 15th, followed on the 17th by No Man’s Land, and a brief run of Pinter’s sketches. The Dumb Waiter and Celebration are an auspicious start.