*Underneath the Lintel* at Interplayers

Underneath the Lintel by Glen Berger
Directed by Damon Abdallah
Starring Reed McColm as the Dutch Librarian
at Interplayers, Nov. 25-Dec. 12
Underneath the Lintel premiered in L.A. and New York in 2001
Berger is presently co-writing Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark with Julie Taymor — a musical with music by Bono and the Edge that may or may not open on Broadway in February, or April, or ...
[Tammy Marshall photos for The Inlander]

Free Theater Night

An NPR report indicates that a program that has grown from three to 120 cities in just three years suggests that half the gratis attendees return at some point to pay full price. (If you're not filling 100 percent of your seats every night, it's a wasted opportunity, points out a TCG spokeswoman.) So why isn't Spokane one of those 120 cities?

Sage Players present *Our Town,* Nov. 14-23

A staged reading of Thornton Wilder's play.
Fridays, Nov. 14 and Nov. 21, at 7 pm at Corbin Senior Activity Center, 827 W. Cleveland Ave.
Sundays, Nov. 16 and Nov. 23, at 2 pm at Manito United Methodist Church, 3220 S. Grand Blvd.
$10 donation
Call 327-1584, 263-0434, or 326-4517.

The Sage Players formed in summer 2008 with the purpose of performing plays with senior citizens as the cast, and grew out of
the Institute of Extended Learning’s (IEL’S) Senior Program Readers’ Theatre class.

upcoming in Spokane-area theater

OCTOBER
Phantom of the Opera, INB Center, through Oct. 25
Oklahoma! through Oct. 26 at Spokane Civic Theatre, Main Stage
Dressed To Kill (murder-mystery dinner theater), Cutter Theater, Metaline Falls, through Oct. 25
Alice: The Musical, SCT, through Oct. 26
Exits and Entrances, Interplayers, through Nov. 1
The Uninvited, Stage West Community Theater, Cheney, through Nov. 2
Moira's Crossing (sequel to Tim Rarick's This Child), NIC, Oct. 23-Nov. 1
Hedda Gabler, WSU, Oct. 23-Nov. 1
Curse of the Starving Class, Gonzaga, Oct. 24-Nov. 2
War of the Worlds: The Radio Play, Pullman Civic Theater, Oct. 29-Nov. 1
Tartuffe, U of Idaho, Oct. 30-Nov. 9
A Few Good Men, Lake City Playhouse, Oct. 31-Nov. 14
Graceland and Never Swim Alone, Civic Studio, Oct. 31- Nov. 23
Sweeney Todd, in concert, Civic, Oct. 31-Nov. 1

NOVEMBER
The Government Inspector, SFCC, Nov. 6-16
No Sex, Please, We're British, Ignite! Community Theater, Nov. 7-9
Peter Pan, Christian Youth Theater at the Bing, Nov. 7-16
Godspell, Sixth Street Melodrama, Wallace, Nov. 7-23
Chicago, Lewis and Clark High School, Nov. 13-22 (354-7053)
Our Town (readers theater), Sage Players, Corbin Senior Center and Manito United Methodist Church, Nov. 14-23
The Foreigner, EWU, Nov. 19-23
Together Again for the First Time, Interplayers, Nov. 20-Dec. 7
A Christmas Carol: The Musical, Civic, Nov. 21-Dec. 20
Madeline's Christmas, Spokane Children's Theatre, Nov. 28-Dec. 13
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, INB Center, Nov. 29-30

DECEMBER
Annie, Lake City Playhouse, Dec. 4-21
I Remember Mama, Regional Theatre of the Palouse, Dec. 4-13
A Christmas Story, Christian Youth Theater at Bing, Dec. 5-14
The Nutcracker, INB Center, Dec. 5-7
The Color Purple, INB Center, Dec. 10-14
Miracle on 34th Street, Pullman Civic Theater, Dec. 12-21
Sweeney Todd, the Fox, Dec. 14-15
A Reduced Christmas Carol, Interplayers, Dec. 17-21
White Christmas, in concert, NIC, Dec. 19-21

JANUARY 2009
12 Angry Jurors, Ignite! Community Theater, Jan. 9-11
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Civic, Jan. 9-21
Fences (readers theater), Interplayers, Jan. 15-19
Little Shop of Horrors, Lake City Playhouse, Jan. 16-31
The Winter's Tale, Gonzaga, Jan. 23-Feb. 1
Cowgirls, Interplayers, Jan. 29-Feb. 14
Raised in Captivity, WSU, Jan. 29-Feb. 7
The Women of Lockerbie, Civic Studio, Jan. 30-Feb. 22
Annie, INB Center, Jan. 31
Alexander, Who's Not ... Not Going To Move! -- SCT, Jan. 31-Feb. 15

FEBRUARY
Kennedy Center, American College Theater Festival (Region 7), U of Idaho, Feb. 16-19
The Doctor in Spite of Himself, NIC, Feb. 19-28
Frankenstein, SCC Lair, Feb. 20-March 1
The Sunshine Boys, Lake City Playhouse, Feb. 20-March 7
No, No, Nanette — Spokane Civic Theatre, Main Stage, Feb. 20-March 15
Cinderella, Christian Youth Theater Spokane at the Bing, Feb. 20-March 14
The Belle of Amherst, Interplayers, Feb. 26-March 14

MARCH
Othello, SFCC, March 5-15
Museum (by Tina Howe), Whitworth, March 6-14
Bridge to Terabithia, Spokane Children’s Theater at SCC, March 7-22
Much Ado About Nothing, Ignite! Community Theater, March 13-15
Ain’t Misbehavin’, INB Center, March 19-22
Defending the Caveman, the Bing, March 20-21
Godspell, Civic’s Studio Theater, March 20-April 11
Festival of New Works I and II, Kiva Theater, U of Idaho, March 25-April 4
Urinetown, Gonzaga, March 26-April 4
James and the Giant Peach, Lake City Playhouse, March 26-April 5
Waiting for Godot, Interplayers, March 26-April 11

APRIL
Shakespeare in Hollywood, Civic’s Main Stage, April 3-19
Die Fledermaus, Hartung Theater, U of Idaho, April 16-26
The Graduate (adapted by Terry Johnson), Interplayers, April 23-May 9

MAY
One-acts, Gonzaga, May 1-2
Spamalot, INB Center, May 5-10
Sherlock's Last Case, Ignite! Community Theater, May 8-10
Big River, Lake City Playhouse, May 8-23
The Affections of May, Civic’s Studio Theater, May 8-31
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Civic’s Main Stage, May 15-June 14
Heidi, Spokane Children’s Theater at SCC, May 16-31
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Christian Youth Theater Spokane at the Bing, May 22-31
Hole in the Sky, SFCC, May 28-June 7

That’s being Community-Minded

Local theaters, start your self-promotion engines.
CMTV (channel 14) is offering local nonprofits an opportunity to film a three-minute commercial for free. Just write jillj@community-minded.org or call 209-2652 to set up an appointment on the fourth floor of 25 W. Main Ave. for Oct. 29-31 or Dec. 3-5. You just know you can create something way more interesting than those middle-of-the-night infomercials.
Read more here.

still in the cage

Lessons from doing The Zoo Story
Bobo and Brian Russo were asked by Tom Davis of the Peaceful Valley community to perform the play one last time (we did four performances at Empyrean in late April) -- only this time, in an actual outdoor city park:
Saturday, June 21, at 7:30 pm, at Glover Field, outside where the marmots roam just east of the Peaceful Valley Community Center (which is itself below and just east of the Maple St. Bridge) Five bucks; cash only. Outdoors. We're apparently going to be miked, because of the rushing-river noise. We'll literally have to sweep up all the marmot shit out of the playing area in order to be able to perform. The setting does have a Central Park in NYC vibe, which is suited to where Albee placed his 1959 play.

Bobo doesn't think he was very good in the role. (Way to keep that confidence up, going into one last performance!) I mean, I don't think I completely embarrassed myself, but I think I overreacted while listening to Brian's Jerry rant on and on. I was OK. The knifing scene and tragic ending came off better than I feared -- I really thought it was going to be just laughable and awful, and I _think_ we avoided that. (Not entirely sure.)
I learned how much effort it takes just to publicize a play. Making all the arragnements, putting up all the posters, hoping against hope that somebody, anybody will show up. (We were hoping for 4 x 25 = 100 paid playgoers; we got something like 26 + 20 + 32 + 63 on the four nights. Expecting to LOSE money on this venture, Bobo actually made some money on this gig. Does that make him a professional actor? Ha. Far from it.
I was reminded of all the work that goes into memorizing and blocking and re-blocking a show. Best of all, every time I felt like giving half-effort ("But my job is so demanding!"), I'd remind myself: People who act and volunteer at the Civic (and lots of other theaters in this region) have other jobs, too. They're tired. They still give it their all. Stop whining.
I discovered that varying reactions while listening onstage is really difficult. Jerry is the star; Peter (my part) is just the straight man. Since Brian was the director and the Gonzaga student who was supposed to videotape our performance blew it, we've never really seen ourselves. I'm not saying I was badly directed, or didn't get any direction. I'm just not very good.
But it's good for a critic occasionally (was Guys and Dolls at the Civic really six years ago?) to get out there and take a whack at doing what he so presumptuously criticizes all the time.
The need to practice with props, over and over, paying attention to every little detail even in the awareness that you are not in an earthshaking Broadway show, and does it really matter even a little bit in the grand scheme of things? Just another tiny pebble in the grand edifice of theater history.
The need to bring it every night, never knowing who's going to be out there: The "green room" at Empyrean was their food storage area, a concrete cell. Russo spent the half-hour before curtain every night pacing around, smacking himself, muttering his lines. Opening night, he comes out intense as hell, blew me off the stage. Second night, not quite as sweaty or with it, he goes up entirely at one point (remember, he's got a 15-minute "dog" speech, and that's only one of his long speeches), has to backtrack obviously, I can't figure out how to help him -- and that's the night Michael Weaver was there.
So much for getting a job at ARt.
I really have no idea who showed up. Some friends from work. My wife and daughter. Patrick and Heather McHenry-Kroetch and Abbey Crawford on closing night.
The constant self-berating: could have done this better, should have done that better. Ho-hum -- actors go through that all the time.
The anticlimactic let-down at the end: We put all that effort into it, and now it's not going to be duplicated, ever again, quite the same way (or at all). Welcome to the transience of theater: all the more to be treasured, because we are all wisps, going going gone.

Did going through all these difficulties make me a kinder and gentler critic? Not according to the adherents of Man of La Mancha. More on that in a moment. But Bobo is very much aware that there are dozens, hundreds of people in this town far more talented that he is at singing, dancing, acting, you name it. I'm in awe of the dedication and resolve on view on stages all around here. I often come out of plays thinking, How did she do that? I could never do that.
Disagree with me if you want, but don't think that I'm not a supporter of the Spokane theater scene.

Actors Rep auditions on May 18

Audition for next season at Actors' Repertory Theater of the Inland Northwest
Sunday, May 18, from 1-5 pm
by appointment only
at SFCC's Spartan Theater, Bldg. 5, 3410 W. Fort George Wright Dr., Spokane
Write mweaver@actorsreptheatre.com
Call (509) 570-2745
Prepare two two-minute monologues, classical and contemporary; bring a photo and resume.

ARt will also hold season auditions in Seattle on Friday, May 9, as well as in San Francisco on Monday-Tuesday, June 2-3.
Five productions a year, 15 performances each.
Productions rehearse for three and a half weeks followed by two and a half weeks of performances. Visit www.actorsreptheatre.com.

ARt’s 2008-09 season will include The Importance of Being Earnest, Doubt, Relatively Speaking, Swansong, and Steel Magnolias, Rehearsals for the first production, The Importance of Being Earnest, begin July 28 for an Aug. 22 opening.

opening-night review of *Crimes of the Heart*

at the Civic’s Studio Theater, through March 30

BLACK Comedy

*Crimes of the Heart* as exaggerated Southern Gothic: For too long, Beth Henley’s 1979 play (and 1981 Pulitzer winner) has been performed as a gathering of Mississippi freaks to gawk at. Lordy, those three Magrath sisters — they play the fool around the men folk, then wonder why their lives are so ridiculous and end up by sticking their heads in ovens. Somebody ought to whomp them upside the head, knock some sense into them. Laughable little ladies, is what they are.
In his director’s notes in this production’s program, George Green talks about “avoiding stereotypes” and about his desire to bring out the “sincere” emotions of the “real people” whom Henley has created. Green evidently wants to prevent audiences from dismissing the good-hearted if wacky residents of Hazlehurst, Mississippi, as little more than oddballs. And his intentions are good: The Magrath women, and their beaux, and their pursed-lips society girl of a mean-spirited cousin are more than just cartoons.
But the attempt to restore gravitas to a play that’s been seen as mostly comic creates a serious imbalance in the Studio Theater production at the Civic (through March 30): It’s an overreaction, resulting in a show that’s too heavy on the depressing details and too light on the comedy of bizarre contrasts that Henley wrote in.

Early on, a sheepish ex-lover (Doug Dawson) of one of the sisters shows up briefly to scope out if Meg (Nancy Gasper) — the one who’s gone off to L.A. to pursue a singing career — might still be available. His interview with the responsible, borderline-spinster eldest of the three Magraths, Lenny (Chasity Kohlman) is played at a somber pace, with heads bowed and movements slow. Without any guidance from the actors in the early going that *Crimes* is going to be a black comedy or tragicomedy, the scene translates as overly gloomy.
Lenny, meanwhile, is sad because she’s turning 30 and she’s alone. There’s a little running joke about how her pathetic attempts to celebrate her own birthday by herself keep getting interrupted — but by not highlighting the scene’s comic potential, the audience’s main impression is one of loneliness.
A woman singing “Happy Birthday” to herself while staring at a single candle stuck in a cookie could be funny, could be sad. The early minutes of any play, after all, need to set its tone. If Kohlman displayed more frantic gestures — more exaggerated sadness — about Lenny’s turning 30, then the audience would have a guide: Tonight we’re going to see both moods, both seriousness and comedy. But there’s no guidance given here — with the uncomfortable result that for long stretches of Act One, it felt like a funeral inside the Studio Theatre. The audience was quiet; they weren’t sure whether they could laugh or when; it was all so depressing.
The Magrath women confront Big Problems: murder, addiction, abuse, suicide, adultery, divorce, disappointment, loneliness, depression. Henley’s achievement was to give those their weight, but in an absurd and amusing way. Again and again, Green’s directing choices override the comic potential to emphasize the pathos and the seriousness instead — making a black comedy mostly all black and without much comedy.
If, instead, Green’s cast confronted death and disappointment with more frantic mannerisms, audience members would feel as if they’d been permitted to laugh at sobering material. It’s sort of like this: Confront death, but with comic mannerisms. That way, we’ll feel reassured that Henley’s characters, who are likeable, after all, aren’t going to be overwhelmed by their grief.

The description of the exact circumstances of the mother’s suicide (16 years ago), for example, should arrive as an absurdist jolt. The report of her death needs to seem faintly ridiculous; instead, here it’s just depressing. And there are too many lost comic opportunities as the evening wears on. The accumulation of depressing details — instead of leavening the sadness along with a few jokes — makes this version of *Crimes* feel, often, like something to be endured and not savored.
It’s almost as if somebody forgot to account for the presence of the audience, as if somebody proposed doing *Crimes of the Heart* all serious without recalling that viewers need some signals about how some portions are meant to be funny.
Baby sister Babe (Ashley Cooper), we learn, has shot the most powerful man in town. And she has her reasons, we’ll discover. But when she shares the news with one of her sisters and they both seem awestruck instead of excited. “Awestruck” impresses listeners with the gravity of the offense: This must be serious stuff indeed. On the other hand, frantic “excitement” would expose a gap between an attempted murder and somebody being rather proud of herself that she had the gumption to pull off such an outrageous act. (And gaps like that lead to comedy.)
Later on, Babe starts pasting the local newspaper’s coverage of one of her misdeeds into her scrapbook, as if it were an accomplishment to be proud of. The gap in attitudes is there again — but the sequence, at least on opening night, wasn’t played for laughs at all.

It’s a very tricky balance, laughing at depressing behaviors, and while this show mostly drags and misses too many opportunities, there are scattered moments of success as well.
Kohlman has a couple of them, demonstrating how humor derives from a clash of perspectives. When Meg confesses that she’s merely had a clerical job out in LA., Lenny naively advises her sister that not having a show-business job is not going to do her any good at all. And in Act Two, Kohlman pulls off a nice comic surprise when her characters is angry at Meg for eating some of her food and for wandering off with another man again. Just when she’s about to yell at Meg for the adultery, she suddenly displaces her anger onto a nearby box of chocolates. The exaggerated arm-waving and refusal to face up to the more serious “crime” made Kohlman’s contribution here all the funnier.
This production needs more moments like that — and like Cooper’s coy encouragement of that cute lawyer (Luke Barats) who’s defending her and who is pursuing a “lifelong vendetta” against their legal opponent. She offers reassurance, he’s after vengeance, and the contrast is funny.
Some of the acting moments reach a high level. In the evening’s first example of exaggeration in the face of a serious threat, Cooper snaps her fingers disdainfully, dismissing her unseen, abusive husband just like that. (He bores her so much, she falls asleep, just like that.) Cooper’s account of how close Babe has come to suicide was persuasive: She really does understand the depths of despair in which her mother was trapped.
In the second act, when Meg and her ex-lover meet again, Dawson glares over the top of a bourbon glass with a look that’s a mixture of resentment and desire. Gasper and Cooper are effective in Meg and Babe’s final bucking-up scene, holding out hope even though lately they’ve gone through a string of really bad days. Barats seems too restrained in the early going, but he’s effective with his nervous tics and standing around at oblique angles whenever he’s around the Magrath sister he’s grown “fond” of.
And in general, the second act did a better job of mixing humor and pathos: With all the running around trying to commit suicide, and with all the sudden hilarity about characters (whom we never see) lapsing into a coma, it’s just a regular laugh-riot there for awhile.
As it should be. Oh, sure, Henley’s play is showing its age a bit: There’s too much exposition, for one thing — and that's deadly if, as in a production like this, we're overly concerned for the characters' happiness and not reminded enough of just what silly and absurd things they've made of their own lives. Also, too much is made of the lack-of-nourishment motif: What seemed, a quarter-century ago, like shorthand for Lenny's emotional starvation (she doesn't get to eat her cake, much less enjoy it too) now feels familiar from many plays since.
But the Henley's tale of the Magrath sisters — with their adulterous, violent, self-destructive, wandering ways — still combines serious commentary with laughable hijinks. The current Civic show emphasizes the serious side too much, shortchanging the comedy, and the result is that the sisters' recitations of their woes, minus the comedy, start to feel after awhile like a collection of soap opera scenes. While there are some scattered successful moments, the Civic's production of *Crimes* doesn't come near the difficult-to-attain peak of Henley's tragicomic outlook.

opening-weekend review of *The Clean House*

at Spokane Interplayers Ensemble through March 15

Sarah Ruhl's *The Clean House* is about messiness (both literal and emotional) and about living fully and living in denial. Full of jokes about death and sad ruminations about human foolishness, it's a play stocked with dreamy/quirky/absurd situations. It's a play that lurches from silliness to the sublime and back again, and it often requires exaggeration, hysteria and surrealism in its performers.

It's too bad, then, that the cleanup crew of director Karen Kalensky's cast in the current Interplayers production (through March 15) misses quite a few spots. While the actors frequently aren't up to Ruhl's subtle tonal changes, however, they do manage to accumulate several polished sequences along the way.

At one juncture in Act Two, for example, Kalensky's actors collectively create the kind of absurdist, funny/sad hysteria that Ruhl's script expects. Charles (Gary Pierce) strips down to his bathing trunks, chasing after the happiness that his mistress represents. Selena Schopfer (as Charles' proper physician-wife, Lane, forever weariug a white lab coat in her gleaming white-on-white home) crumples onto a sofa, sobbing over her straying husband. A Portuguese woman in black (Silvia Lazo as Matilde, Lane's non-cleaning cleaning woman) paces around, trying to coin the perfect joke. And Lane's sister Virginia (Anne Selcoe) charges around the living room, wielding a vacuum cleaner aimed at the heart of all the dirt and grime that has accumulated in her sister's living room and in both their personalities. Sequences like this -- full of frantic movement, both funny and sad, with characters reacting seriously to others' absurdities and while some make fun of others' misfortunes -- live up to the script's promise.

Too bad the energy/absurdity meter is running so low for so much of this show. In a serio-comic show with surreal sequences (Matilde walks into Lane's dreams, Matilde's dead parents somehow merge with Lane's husband and his mistress), actors need to plunge into the freakiness with heads held high. As the mistress, Jackie Davis shows the way with head held high during a couple of key moments. Lying down like a patient etherized upon a table -- and with Pierce methodically, lovingly "sewing up" the woman he loves after an operation -- Davis rises in mid-operation to recount the course of true love. It's a bizarre episode, but played with dignity and for the high stakes that it demands. Similarly, the entire cast endows the evening's concluding death with signs that are both dignified and absurd.

Yet for too much of the evening, there's the sense that Ruhl's delicate poem is being recited haltingly, unevenly. Often I found myself silently urging actresses just to go for it -- play the scene to the fullest, not by treating extreme situations with calm seriousness, but with the kind of ranting hysteria they demand. Lane confronting the absurdity of a cleaning woman who won't clean; Virginia extolling Charles's charisma even as she finds herself fondling his dirty underwear; Matilde portraying her parents' goofiness in the context of their deaths -- episodes as exaggerated as these could do with more in way of exaggerated acting.

In Tony Kushner's *Angels in America,* the dead speak to the living and prophets explode through the ceiling -- and two brief but comic Alaska episodes in Ruhl's play feel almost like homages. I bring up the parallel because in *Angels,* characters are playing for high stakes, laughing and crying simultaneously over the dual plagues of AIDS and homophobia. Ruhl's characters confront adultery, emotional repression, disease and mortality, agoraphobia, regret. And they cast off the shackles and learn how to laugh -- and then willingly put on the shackles again, if only because we're all chained to our mortality. The difference between the accomplished TV and stage performances of *Angels* that I've seen and the performances in the Interplayers *Clean House* is the difference between playing hysterically because the circumstances are themselves hysterical and playing a scene in a restrained manner so as to point out the distinction between the restrained acting and the highly charged emotions. The first is event-centered; the second is actor-centered. Sometimes you've just gotta scream, you know?
The people in our dreams act in histrionic, high-stakes ways, and Ruhl's play is like a dream. Or should be.

Gesticulating with her gangly arms and wiggling her butt while needlessly dusting an already-been-dusted lamp, Lazo occasionally catches Matilda's free spirit. An opening joke fell flat, probably because it's told in Portuguese (though other, later jokes, because they were told more demonstratively, did manage to cross the language barrier and bounce right into the land of humor). Lazo overdoes the quizzical, scrunched-face bit when confronted with others' strange behaviors, but she excels at floppy-limbed intrusions into others' emotional crises, butting in with "Do you wanna hear a joke?" just when people are taking themselves most seriously.

Kalensky directs effectively, moving Selcoe around the stage's perimeter as Schopfer tails after her in a sisterly squabble, and allowing Selcoe's clean-freak Virginia to revel by letting go of her cleanliness obsession in a brief outburst.

"If I don't laugh for a week, I feel dirty," says Matilde. We all have a lot of crap encrusted around our souls. We should clean them out. We should ignore the voice mail's blinking light, ignore the looming specter of our mortality. What we should do is, we should tell more jokes. The Interplayers version of *The Clean House* doesn't deliver all of Ruhl's humor and pathos, but it gets some of the punch lines right.

Drinking out of a firehose

Drinking out of a firehose: Bobo's first three days at the NEA Arts Journalism Institute in L.A.
Getting exposed to a lot of new ideas here, and, hate to say it, but I'm doing it while it's 65 degrees and sunny. My hotel room has a view of the Disney concert hall by Frank Gehry, the Mark Taper (being refurbished) and the Ahmanson and Dorothy Chandler. From the 24th floor, I can all the way to the Griffith Park Observatory thru the L.A. smog.
Day 3 of the Institute. Saw The Color Purple musical, as produced by Oprah herself. Maybe I'll append the (short) review we did as a first writing-group exercise. Visually interesting, esp. in the Celie goes back to Africa dream sequences, but mostly unmemoralbe score, some good perofrmances, but matters of life and death (incest, rape, abuse, separation, cruelty oddly downplayed). Audiences in the big city just want to be happy too.
Orson's Shadow at the Pasadena Playhouse for a Wed. matinee. They're getting a new Gehry building too. I'd seen the Artists Rep produciton in Portland in May. This was in a larger house, less intimate. The Orson Welles, a recognizable TV face (as were two others in the cast), not as good as the impersonation or threat and intimidation in the Portlnad actor's renditon. Wonderful Olivier. Felt, on second viewing, like a good play with a limited shelf life: too insidery (though I LOVE the script,a nd 5e0 years from now, they'll forgotten. Sharon Lawrence from NYPD Blue as Vivien Leigh -- incredible job of shwoing how VL bcame subtly like Blanche Dubois lateer in life; good insanity bipolar scene.
This is a place where you get into film vs. theater criticism chats with the likes of Michael Phillips, film critic for the Chi Tribune, one of the inssdtructors here; I worked with him at hte O'Neill back in July '04.
Great talk with one of hte instructors here, arts reporter at the Missoulian, about music criticism, being an advocate for the arts, etc.
They keep us going here. I snuck in a swim yest. morning, but every wwakin moment takne up.
Took mamy notes during Carey Perloff's keynote address -- she's AD at ACT in SF, wanted to ask about her working with Stoppard but no chance. Boring formal dinner at Cal Tech's fancy faculty club last night, but talked to some theater marketing types and LA Arts Commission's exec director; hilariious story about the Christma Eve perf. of the "Dulcimer Ladies."
ACting classes-- lots of movement work, felt a bit silly; about to enact other people's first memories, or first memories; they wrote it, we have to memorize it and enact it.
Today on digitial media, lots of good ideas, newspapers working on an outdated biz model, n time to type up all my notes just now.
Tonight: 3 hrs of Wooster Group's Hamlet; write about it all Fri. morning. Seeing Athol Fugard's latest, Victory the next night. I dont even have time to look ahead on the sked. Some great folks int he group-- invigorating to see so many worried about the same things,

February 07, 2008 1:39 PM

review of *The Last Five Years*

at Spokane Civic Theatre, downstairs, through Feb. 17

What if you went through a passionate love affair and the subsequent breakup, only backwards? Your disillusioned self would laugh at the puppy in love; your young lover’s yearnings would scoff at the idea that passion like this could ever die.
Jason Robert Brown’s *The Last Five Years* (at the Civic’s Studio Theatre through Feb. 17) bends time like that to evoke wonder and disenchantment with love. Cathy, traveling backward in time, falls out of and into love; Jamie, progressing in regular chronological fashion, falls into love and then out of it.
The cross-plotting may sound like a gimmick, but the result embodies a bittersweet mood. Even in the midst of a love affair, we know it’s fleeting; even when we’re scalded by a bad breakup, at least we have some fond memories. Brown’s contrivance is incisive: For all the people who dismiss musical plays as hopelessly artificial, here’s a contemporary musical that’s honest and intimate and true.
The Civic’s production is perceptively directed by Yvonne A.K. Johnson and passionately sung and performed by Andrea Dawson and Robby French. As Jamie, the New York novelist whose career is taking off just as he meets this nice shiksa girl, a struggling actress from Ohio, Robby French has the easier job: His version of the story is the one told in chronological order. But French responds with the best work he has turned in locally: exuberant in love, rationalizing and defensive when he strays, he’s enacting the songs instead of merely presenting their emotions. French seems a bit overwhelmed by the rapid-fire demands of a tune called “Moving Too Fast,” but Brown may simply have written an overly demanding song. Besides, Brown springs surprises on us: What’s moving too fast isn’t Jamie and Cathy’s romance, but Jamie’s career. This is a guy who fixates on his job, using emotions to further his career, and French embodies Jamie’s contrasts well.
As Cathy, the small-town girl willing to pay her dues to make it as an actress in New York, Dawson is particularly good at depicting wonder and happiness. That serves her well (by contrast) in her audition scene, “Climbing Uphill,” when suddenly all he comic self-doubt comes pouring out — and in the show’s opening sequence, when she’s the one looking back with regret and sadness.
Brown’s five-year saga — passion gets turned on, then off — is so intently autobiographical that all its neuroses and emotional exhibitionism are fully on display. But he has written, composed and gotten himself all caught up in the details of his own journey that some scenes will resonate more for him than for audience members. (That time on the lake in Ohio? I guess you had to be there.)
But Johnson directs so as to maximize the tragicomic mood. She stages the last scene so as to echo the wedding (a scene in the show’s middle that offers its only duet). You know that kind of affectionate goodbye you say to someone you’ve just fallen in love with, and you keep coming back because you can’t wait to see your special someone tomorrow and the next day and the next? That’s the kind of goodbye we witness from the woman’s perspective in the play’s final scene. But in Brown’s time-twisted musical, the other character — the man who has made this journey in the usual order, from start to finish — is simply saying, forever, goodbye.
There are subtle parallels throughout that reveal a sure-handed director’s touch: At different junctures, both lovers teeter along a ledge, evoking the giddiness of being in love. Brown and Johnson will have Jamie puttering around his apartment while Cathy sings about him in hers (or the reverse). The effect is to keep separate these two flawed but likeable characters who, we’re hoping, will eventually work things out. Except that they don’t.

From her keyboard, musical director Carolyn Jess leads violin, cello and bass in some delightful musical mimicry. When Cathy gets depressed about her acting career, the music winds down too; when Jamie’s excited about his writing, the piano throbs with energy.
Brown’s tunes emulate Stephen Sondheim’s: lyrical in the moment, unmemorable after the fact, clever and witty and sometimes too much so. But their talkiness characterizes Cathy and Jamie well. The autobiographical particulars may clutter and confuse this show, but there’s no denying that we make an emotional journey with these two young lovers and emerge at the end with view of romance that’s wiser, jaded and refreshed all at once.
Between two living areas, set designer David Baker slashes a ramp rising to a versatile, neutral space; his projected slides nicely suggest the action of 14 shifting scenes. And when we see French’s and Dawson’s baby pictures, and then photos of their characters in love, we tend to go Aww, isn’t that nice? even though we’ve just witnessed their breakup. We all want to fall into — or stay — in love. Even when we know better, even when we know it won’t last.