Civic's one-acts: Buy your tickets now

You have until Nov. 23 to catch some of Spokane's best recent stage performances in the double bill playing in the Studio Theater.
Infrequent theater-goers especially should go.
{See previous posts here on Oct. 28.]
Whichever your gender, you'll profit from the entertaining study of male one-upmanship that is Daniel MacIvor's "Never Swim Alone." Even better, it achieves most of its effects in ways that are particular to live performance. If you want to see what theater can do and movies can't, get into the "Swim."
In the opener, "Graceland" by Ellen Byron, two distinct women face off three days before the opening of Elvis' Graceland mansion. They bicker, they reconcile, they reveal secrets. Kathie Doyle-Lipe discards her comic mannerisms to turn in a serious performance that's convincing about her character's devotion to the memory of Elvis in the face of a less-than-ideal marriage. But the revelation here is Ashley Cooper's affecting, Southern-drawl eccentricities as Rootie, the too-young Bayou wife who has put up with too much from her husband and who's now determined to put everything she has into Elvis-worship. Director George Green wisely chooses to keep Cooper remote, isolated and motionless during Rootie's big self-revelation monologue near the end. Nothing innovative here, but both actors are good enough to make us feel the joy they feel over sharing a Mallomar or three. The rockin'-out-Elvis-medley dancin' was infectious, too.
Bobo's just gotta rave about "Never Swim Alone": Sure, this show's exaggerated to make a point, but if you want to know the silly/destructive kind of alpha-dog thoughts that go through straight men's minds all the time (without necessarily acting on them), this is your show.
In a show that requires lots of split-second timing, there was very little that was mistimed. As the eye-candy referee in the red one-piece bathing suit, Lauren Waterbury was fetching and mischievous; the stylized swimming sequence brought stature to her character, but she was also flirty and fun in the way she judged all the rounds of competition between the two men.
It can be off-putting, how much MacIvor uses repetition and doubled, simultaneous lines -- in performance, as opposed to on the page, it seemed over the line, excessive. But bear with him, because it's stylization that pays off later.
Yvonne A.K. Johnson took over directing this macho-dog production from a man who had to step out because of other commitments, but the show retains a cutthroat masculine tone. Much praise to her for varying the rounds, shifting the tone from comic to shocking, and for the show's haunting final image.
George Green and Luke Barats make a great, funny, fuck-you-too pair. Their performances, always angling for the upper hand, are full of insincere "compliments," one-liner put-downs, and grasping at any advantage (whether physical or intellectual, sexual or imagined, refashioned from shared memories or just made up). They've choreographed a fight sequence that drew audible gasps from playgoers (and not just the guy getting pummeled onstage).
There's so much going on in MacIvor's scripts, and so many insightful moments created by Barats and Green, that this show easily would reward a second viewing. But at least, make a point of at least seeing it once.
These two shows have been playing to two-thirds-full houses in the Civic's black box. Spokane should bust down the doors between now and next Sunday.

George Green on acting in "Never Swim Alone" and directing "Graceland"

Spokane Civic Theatre
Originally uploaded by Sir Andrew Aguecheek

What follows are outtakes from a recent conversation with George Green, who plays Bill in "Never Swim Alone" at the Civic — in other words, this is some of the stuff that Bobo had to cut out of Thursday's preview in *The Inlander.*

‘SWIM” USES MORE SPACE
"We're always working the X and trying to get angles" in "Graceland" (which he's directing), says Green. "But 'Graceland,' set at a temporary campsite just outside Elvis’ mansion, feels more constrained in movement. But ‘Never Swim Alone’ is, boom, much more open and all over the place. We use every inch of space in that theater," he says, right from the moment that they burst in and greet the audience.

RESOLUTION VS. IRRESOLUTION
"‘Graceland’ offers resolution: By the end, these are two changed women. A decision has been made. But at the end of 'Never Swim Alone,' you’re left wondering: What will these two guys do?"
Green links the two plays in this way: While "Swim" will be the more thought-provoking script, viewers may, while discussing the shows afterward, come around to the idea that aggression and accommodation may be linked. The two very different women in "Graceland" are suspicious of each other at first, then tussle, then reconcile, then squabble again. There's a clearer kind of resolution at the end of Byron's play than there is in the genuine ambiguity of MacIvor's ending. But in both plays, compassion and antipathy are linked.

KATHIE’S ACTING
“Kathie [Doyle-Lipe] has a wonderful knack for timing. She knows when the beat is, when the play needs energy and then when it needs to slow down. She’s working to make it funny but not over-the-top funny, to try to avoid stereotypes," Green says. "There’s a lot of work between the lines” in "Graceland."

DANCING IN GRACELAND
There’s a short dance-of-joy sequence in "Graceland," but Green hasn’t been worried about how to choreograph it.
With Doyle-Lipe and Ashley Cooper, he says, he has "two of the best dancers in this market. I just had to make sure that somebody didn’t start doing five backflips.”

HATRED/BOYISHNESS IN ‘SWIM’
Green’s eagerness to get going as an actor in 'Never Swim Alone is obvious. At one moment, he says, the two alpha males trade insults — “And oh, the look we share — the hatred, the resentment. But then, when we become boys again [in a flashback], all that stuff is gone, and it’s just ‘Let’s race!’”

REFEREE NOT JUST A SMALL PART
As the woman in the bathing suit who acts as referee in a dozen rounds of psychological fisticuffs, Lauren Waterbury doesn’t simply have a small part. As Green says, "She runs the show. She has to know all our lines.”

WHAT FRANK DOESN’T KNOW HURTS HIM
“There’s a point in the play when Frank seems to have it all, and he’s very arrogant. but bill has something on him.” Bill, in other words, has some crucial bits of knowledge that Frank doesn’t know.
And in the eternal faceoff between alpha dogs, knowledge is power.

"Never Swim Alone" at the Civic

"Never Swim Alone" at the Civic
Originally uploaded by Sir Andrew Aguecheek

Daniel MacIvor's play about competition between alpha males
Oct. 31-Nov. 23, 2008
at the Civic's Studio Theatre
Spokane, Wash.
directed by Yvonne A.K. Johnson
with Lauren Waterbury as the Referee, George Green as Bill and crazy-faced Luke Barats as A. Francis DeLorenzo