Women and Wallace
HART’s current production,
Women and Wallace by Jonathan Marc Sherman, marks a step up in quality and content for HART Theatre. (I’m not saying past HART shows were crap; on the contrary, HART is possibly the best community theater in the greater Portland area, thanks in no small part to artistic director Paul Roder. This play simply sets a new standard.) It only runs for one more weekend, so hurry and get your tickets.
Sherman’s play deals with a 6-year-old boy (Wallace) losing his mother to suicide, and documents the next 12 years of the boy’s life as he struggles to make sense of the tragedy, and a particular microscope is aimed at how this affects his relationships with the oppose sex. First-time director Eric Lonergan makes the bold choice of casting four different boys for different periods in Wallace’s life. The 6- and 13-year-old Wallace are played by real-life brothers Cameron and Carson Bell. Having worked with these kids in
White Christmas, I was surprised that they were cast, because of their shyness and lack of experience. The greatest testament to Lonergan’s abilities as director is the way he was able to draw powerful performances from the boys, the older of which is actually only 10 in real life. Now if they just learn to slow down their speech a little and enunciate, they’ll be well on their way.
The 16-year-old Wallace is played by Spencer Putnam, who does a great job capturing “the awkward years” with the funny haircut, clothing, and James Taylor fixation. A minor problem is that he doesn’t look anything like the other 3 Wallaces. But the performance is strong enough to overlook that.
The oldest Wallace, at 18, is played by Hillsboro newcomer Carter Howard, and he carries most of the show, not only acting out that time period’s scenes, but also cutting in between earlier scenes and threading together all the pieces with poignant storytelling, which captures him remembering all different ages as well as some very strange dreams and altered mental states. Howard is a real find, and an actor to keep an eye on.
Also exceptional is Nina Skeele as…well, Nina, the girl Wallace ultimately develops feelings for, and for whom he makes the difficult work of confronting his demons. She has the perfect blend of beauty, tenderness, and vulnerability that make us understand why she’s the girl that could really help Wallace out of his long rut.
One of the only hiccups in terms of the actors and their performances was the fact that there were so many family members playing opposite each other. 13-year-old Wallace’s first kiss scene doesn’t work at all because it’s the actor’s sister he’s in the scene with, and an audience can tell that everyone involved was very reluctant and tentative about making it real. I was also initially concerned about the casting of young Cameron as the kid who finds his dead mother…and she is played by Cameron’s actual mother! But, to my relief, it was done in a way that seemed responsible.
There are many moments in this play that are very thoughtful and moving. One has the sense that playwright Sherman could have gone even further exploring the darkness that inhabits Wallace’s childhood and adolescence. The most effective scene in the play deals with a vivid description of a depraved and sadistic dream, and in a way it doesn’t quite fit with the rest of the play, because it’s so much darker in tone. Perhaps Sherman could have further delved into this territory, but chose not to for fear of the play becoming less marketable. I think it’s kind of a shame.
Director Lonergan is experienced as a set designer and builder, but in this case, he should have handed that duty—as well as sound design—to someone else. The double-layered textured mauve backdrop is both an eyesore and a distraction. There doesn’t seem any purpose to have one back wall in front of a bigger back wall, other than to move furniture more economically. (It doesn’t add to the actual set.) And that’s another problem. In between all those touching moments are long, clunky scene changes. The drama and momentum of the story would have been much better served by a simpler, more streamlined approach to a minimal set. Making every scene look different is not as important as keeping the action going. And every time there is one of those long set changes, the audience is brought out of the story, and reminded they’re in a dark theater, watching a stage crew. And as far as the portable sets, they weren’t worth the trouble of making them. Wallace’s bedroom never looks like a boy’s room. He may have Mother issues, but why would he have a wedding ring quilt on his bed? The set doesn’t lend anything to the personalities of any of the characters.
Another technical problem was the music. The play is set between 1975 and 1987. But the music was like a radio station, covering hits from the last three decades. And because there were so many set changes, there were a LOT of tunes. The anachronism also served to say, “This is a play, you’re not really in this person’s life”. It would have been better to use music from each time period. And how about some of that James Taylor that Wallace loved so much?
Credit is due to Karen Roder for her top notch costume design, as always, as well as stellar lobby and window displays which really add to the experience for the audience.
In spite of the flaws,
Women and Wallace is worth seeing for the dramatic content, and the performances. This is a show that has the potential of redefining audience’s perceptions of HART Theatre, and, in a greater context, the possibilities of community theatre in general.
A View From the Bridge
In his essay, “Tragedy and the Common Man”, Arthur Miller described the characteristics of the modern tragic hero. He is someone to whom a sense of inner pride is very important. His name, his reputation, and his place in the world are the things he values above all else, and when those things are challenged, he will go to any lengths to defend his honor and dignity, even if it means he must die to do so.
That concept is evident in Miller’s most famous play,
Death of a Salesman, and it is also at work in
A View From the Bridge, now playing at Wilsonville STAGE. Wilsonville’s 20-year-old community theater company is in a period of flux, with a new name, a hot new logo, and new blood. Among the new blood is
View’s director, Terry Kester, who is sometimes listed with seven letters after his name, lauding his apparent accomplishments in an attempt to lend the company some gravitas. This is not really necessary because if the work doesn’t speak for itself, the program bio will speak for him.
Fortunately, the work does speak for itself, and what it is says is both timely and compelling. A fine ensemble of actors has been assembled to portray an Italian American family, led by Kevin Martin as longshoreman Eddie Carbone. Eddie is a solid, hard-working family man who has a devoted wife, Beatrice (Zoe Niklas) with whom he has raised his orphaned niece Catherine (Eve Bradford) from childhood. But there are problems. As Catherine has gotten older, Eddie’s affection for her has possibly taken a mildly inappropriate turn, just as her over-dependence on him has stunted her own emotional growth. Seeing all this, Beatrice has grown weary, and is ready for Catherine to be on her own. Adding to the mix are two illegal immigrants, just arrived by boat, who they agree to house temporarily with unintended consequences. When Catherine falls under the spell of the charming Rodolpho (played with surprising confidence and vulnerability by relative theatre newbie Rayman Kirby) Eddie reacts badly.
The cast is mostly very solid here, especially Martin and Niklas as husband and wife, both loving and devoted people, both tired and frustrated at the same time, often with each other. As director Kester says in his program notes, it is hard not to care for and empathize with these people, for we do share many of their characteristics, or know and love people who do. I appreciated Peter Armetta as the lawyer who narrates this tale to us, the audience, as if we are old friends he is confiding to, this heavy burden he needs to get off his chest. And Matthew Sunderland has improved since I last saw him on stage. While he falls somewhat short of the passionate loyalty towards his brother Rodolpho and the menace with which he puts Eddie in his place, he puts in a good effort.
These performances could have benefited from some time with a dialect coach. Not only were the accents uneven among the different cast members, but in some cases (mostly Kirby), it was a little too thick, making the words hard to decipher. This was not helped by “in the round” staging, where half the time, an actor who’s speaking has his or her back to you, or is by some other means blocked from view.
On the other hand, it’s worth noting that the intimacy of the arena-type staging made the whole experience feel very up close and personal (sometimes, perhaps, too much so, as not everyone likes to get shot with sprays of saliva from brawling actors). In the moments of conflict, the tension was palpable, and you really feel the fear and desperation that is happening in that room, in that moment. Still, if it were me, I would have used the raised stage, if only for better sightlines. I love good sightlines.
Another choice I may have differed with Kester on is playing it safe when it came to some of the more provocative moments, particularly when Eddie was drunk and confronted the young couple after being together. If you know the play, you know that Eddie actually forces a kiss on both his niece and her intended husband. Here there was no kiss, but rather a watered-down attempt from Eddie to accuse Rodolpho of homosexuality by doing a little dance with him. Strange and awkward, this scene only made me scratch my head, somewhat puzzled (the play was new to me when I saw it; I only read the scene later to clear up my confusion). It frustrates me that in 2016, someone thought it was necessary to censor this scene for the audience.
Although this play was set in the 50’s, there were some inconsistencies with costumes. Catherine’s outfits looked modern to my eye (though I freely admit to knowing nothing about fashion and may be completely off base), and I swear, Marco had black athletic shoes that looked recently purchased from Payless. While the minimal set didn’t bother me a whole lot, I was bothered by the lack of effort in showing any passage of time. The only characters who had any costume change at all were Catherine and Rodolpho. And what about the home accents that Catherine was going to purchase with her job money? I would have appreciated the addition of a rug and a tablecloth in between scenes. That would not have taken much time or effort, nor would it have stolen momentum from the pacing. I also would have appreciated an intermission, but that’s just me. It didn’t seem like a one-act play to me, although I’ve read in my research that it was indeed just that originally, but was later changed to a two-act structure.
The light and sound design were purely functional and did not seem to add much to the production, in the way of content. The sound sometimes blared out over the actor’s lines. This was especially noticeable for the soft-spoken Armetta.
There was very little marketing for this production, so I was surprised to see as many people there as I saw. But seriously—almost nothing on Facebook, nothing on PDX Backstage, maybe a single listing on the
Oregonian, but I’m not even sure about that. I had mixed feelings about going to this show, but was extremely glad that I did. Therefore, I wish more people were going to know about it.
I wonder if Arthur Miller knew when he wrote this play that so many years later, we would still have such angst and divisiveness surrounding matters of immigration and prejudice. I also wonder why Miller named this play
A View From the Bridge. Of course, we know the Brooklyn Bridge is close by, but I suspect something deeper. It could be a bridge that connects one lonely human being to another, or one person to his or her dream (like Rodolpho’s Broadway dream)…Whatever the case may be, whatever promised land is waiting on the other side, there are those who, for one reason or another, are not able to cross.
