THEATER

You can tell when a new season is about to get underway. Tempers flare like distress signals at sea. Months of preparation and planning are put on the line along with egos, ulcers and season subscriptions. October theater is an if-we-blow-it-here-we-might-blow-it-for-the-year event where directors divorce wives, actors become a subspecies and PR people keep one hand on the typewriter, another on the phone and yet a third on the favorite bottle. Technical crews get sick of the whole mess and threaten to blow up the place if another soul asks them for more light on the lilies and could we please get this toilet a shade darker chartreuse. October is the cultural D-Day for Dallas theaters.

SMU bowed with John Millington Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World. Director Charles Ney “spent two and a half weeks researching in the west of Ireland…” and it’s a pity he didn’t stay longer. Since he didn’t, we have some suggestions.

First, Playboy is neither mime nor dance. It is a play. Synge was a master of words and we needed to hear them. We couldn’t. The lilting brogue was so heavy and unintelligible it was fully fifteen minutes before we could even begin to fathom what was happening.

Second, cartoon characters are not necessary to achieve comedy. For example, Shawn Keogh jumped about like Daffy Duck in green; Widow Quin scratched her left buttock continually; Christopher Mahon gaped at the walls and stared at his toes; Nelly, Honor and Tansey pointed, grabbed and giggled. Now, if they simply must scratch, gape and grab, must they do so constantly? Why not add a tick or even a stomach cramp? We know it’s difficult to tell one Irishman from another, but Ney could have used a touch of subtlety and given us credit for being good guessers.

Third, a brisk pace does not depend on a frantic tempo. Action must lead to some end, else there is no overall movement to a scene or play. Mr. Ney seemed compelled, for example, to have his actors explode through the door to the cottage/pub every time they used it. A simple entrance from time to time would have been a nice change. In the crowd scenes, actors bustled about in meaningless wooden choreography. The effect was one of a fruit jar full of minute penguins (not to be confused with the Minute Penguins of 1776).

We could go on, but the exercise palls.

On the credit side, Ara Hov-hannessian (especially), Maureen Kilmurry and Clifford Gabriel had a nice sincerity and general vocal clarity about them. Lights, costumes and set were better than passable.

It is sad that Synge’s script was so treated. A poet at heart, his Playboy is a bittersweet entanglement of love, bravado, hypocrisy and truth. What we got was a lackluster leprechaun with a speech defect, and the responsible parties should be taken to task.

We know this was a student production. But that is no excuse. SMU prides itself in being one of a dozen outstanding theater departments in the country. Technically, this may be so, but what counts is the direction and the acting, the nitty-gritty of commendable theater.

The rest of SMU’s season indicates more high caliber plays. All we ask is a certain level of basic competence to accompany the quality of the selections.



The Dallas Theater Center opened its 15th season with Georges Feydeau’s Chemin de Fer.

First nighters had a ball, even though Chemin lacked some of the elegance and sophistication of earlier Center Feydeau’s. We have a feeling this is largely the script’s fault. It simply isn’t up to, say, A Bug in Her Ear or A Gown for His Mistress.

David Pursley was an ideal choice for director. He has a good feeling for controlled pandemonium and zani-ness, and a wry, campy sense of humor, all well suited for both Feydeau and farce.

Theater Center acting has come a long, long way in the last few years. Mona Pursley and Randy Moore are as sophisticated pair of actors as you’ll find anywhere. Ken Latimer gets better everytime he goes on stage. John Henson was an arch and perfectly pompous ass of a police inspector, and Gary Moore as a barking bricklayer left us howling.

Our only quibble would be a certain reluctance on the part of almost everyone to let a line go, and a certain penchant for time-taking when not necessary. The result was a slowed pace from time to time and an assignment of meaning to lines that were meant to be, or could well have been, thrown away. What weak acting we saw was easily overpowered by the strong.

The Center seems to be using a number of Peter Wolf sets these days. Not that this set wasn’t pretty. It was. But it would be nice to see the Center’s own creative personnel at work a little more often. Half the excitement of theater comes from watching artists experiment and grow. We all benefit from the exercise.

The Center was obviously looking for a bright, bouncy springboard for the new year. And though we’d hate to see a whole season of fluff like this, Lord knows we can all use an evening of laughs from time to time.



George Furth’s Twigs debuted at Theatre Three under the capable, if uneven direction of Jac Alder. Furth, a writer of many faces, tried to fool us into thinking he’d written a full length play by stringing together four one acts under the pretense of a relationship that existed in name only. It is the play’s major failing that the four scenes never do connect, never make a single, cohesive statement.

Scene one was a mild Simon-esque menage a du smoothly executed by Mary Lee York and Hugh Feagin.

In scene two, Furth showed us his Chayefsky side in a dramatic study of a middle-aged couple whose lives are as frustrated and empty as the inane prop beer cans. Again, Mary Lee York was superb, leaving Clay Newton and Timothy Miller – her husband and his friend – plodding along behind. The most powerful and provocative of the scenes, the playlet was hampered by an early climax that severely diluted the effectiveness of the brutal destruction of the woman. Tricked into sympathizing with an early anguish, we were prevented from plugging into the final agony.

The third scene was a Noel Coward number handled with great delicacy and aplomb by the unsinkable Ms. York and an irascible, fussy Mr. Alder, ably assisted by Pat Glass. Though some of the laughs creaked with antiquity, York and Alder handled the material with such style and finesse it was easily the high point of the evening, if not the whole month.

Scene four was a dreary December bride disguised as an early edition of Al’s Jokes. The scene was supposed to tie together the first three characters. It didn’t. Ms. York used a brogue borrowed from SMU, and Dick Hoo-sier, usually a fine actor, combined the accents of an ancient German, New York Jew and Italian organ grinder to wind up sounding like an imitation Balkan Jonathan Winters. Perhaps it was cold, or maybe they were nervous, but their portrayals of two 80-year-olds seemed more a shaking, creaking contest that never reached beyond the superficial.

Whatever the problems of the evening, it was time well spent. Ms. York’s three good performances far outweighed the one poor one, and we were given the rare treat of watching a talented, strong and sensitive actress cover a wide range of characters. She is an actress to see whenever the chance arises.

Sparkling but flawed, Theatre Three’s Twigs gave us something different for an opener -an evening in theater that left us arguing and reflecting long after the lights were up and the stage put away.

Well, D-Day is over. Call it D for Depth. SMU gave us depth in concept; Theatre Three depth in emotional content and the Theater Center gave us depth in craftsmanship. Not a bad beginning.

Discounting the dinner theaters, which never have a formal season and seem to be geared to laughs alone, and the community theaters, which deserve support for other reasons, the Theater Center, Theatre Three and SMU are the theaters of Dallas. We look to them for provocative, stimulating, challenging works of artistic merit. May their seasons be bright.



LATE NOTES

Of Mice and Men, with James Earl Jones, previewed in the Bob Hope Theater on a windy November 13th night. It is a work that will undoubtedly leave much of the Dallas audiences and critics oohing and aahing for months. The facts are, the show missed, which is to say it was a good production, but nowhere near a great one.

Though it isn’t his show in toto – and to his great credit he doesn’t try to make it so -James Earl Jones’ Lennie is certainly one of the more believable and compassionate interpretations we are ever likely to see. Kevin Conway as George was more than fine, but his tortured relationship to the huge, slow moving and dependent Lennie never jelled. Performances of the rest of the cast ranged from brilliant to suprisingly unevocative. Sets, we thought, were excellent, as was the lighting. The sound work was disruptive, seemingly due to an inferior system.

What was lacking was any consistent directorial statement, leaving one with the impression the play had been staged, not directed. As a prime example, we were little more than tense and upset when George killed Lennie. We should have been basket cases.

And although the audience leapt to its feet as one, we can only believe they were applauding themselves, and possibly the presence of a name. The sad fact is, most of the audience crowded their way out of the building unchanged, unmoved, bright and cheery, untouched by the death of a retarded giant and the brutal anguish of his friend.

This was an important and valuable effort by Producer Hobgood. Mayhe and SMU bring us more. To thatend, we hope Director Sherrin manages to infuse this production of OfMice and Men with some of Steinbeck’s raw, uncompromising, gut-wrenching spirit before it hits Broadway. Lord knows, the Great WhiteWay could use some.