drama
Loot’,
‘Clown’
open
at
Carnival
this
week
mi ' - Y-mmm - - : > > «
Photo by Kathie Fujisaka
The beautiful dolls in “The Clown Who Ran Away”
“It’s a sad and funny story, with a lot of action and music, with a
little nostalgia thrown in.”
That’s the recipe for Carnival Theater’s second children’s play,
“The Clown Who Ran Away,” as described by the play’s director, Ian
Mclver.
The play, which appeals to pre-school age children as well as older
theatergoers, follows Dodo, a clown, on an exciting adventure during
which he becomes enchanted with a beautiful doll. The clown is ac
cused of stealing the favored doll and the other dolls belonging to the
world’s greatest doll-makers, “Mr. Frumpkins and Andrew.”
But, the play has a happy ending with the dolls returning to their
owners and Dodo returning to his circus, “where he feels he belongs.”
The play will be performed al 11 a.m. today, and next Wednesday
and Thursday at 11 a.m. Tickets are 75 cents.
“You will either hate ‘Loot’ or like it a lot. But, don’t take your Aunt
Mildred—especially if she has just died.” That description of Carnival
Theater’s “Loot,” by the New York Times’ Clive Barnes, is the most
accurate description that director Betty Bernhard can think of for the
play, which opens Friday.
The play, written by the British playwright Joe Orton in 1967, is a
“black, black comedy,” according to Bernhard, who says, “Here is
the only place in Oregon where it could be performed, because it’s so
outrageous. I can’t imagine anyone else doing it.”
“Loot’s” plot, described by Bernhard as complicated, but entirely
logical,” revolves around a corpse, a coffin, and stolen money in
tegrated with several rogues and one innocent victim. At the end of the
farce, the victim is arrested.
“It’s really funny,” Bernhard says, although “there are some
redeeming qualities to it.” For instance, there are some “very in
teresting statements” relating to police activities “which could be
taken directly out of the Watergate hearings, although it was written
in 1967,” she says.
“Basically, it’s a black mask comedy, a reverse,” she adds, “and I
now find myself laughing at things I never would have dreamed I’d
laugh at before.”
The cast for “Loot” includes Richard Hawkins, Gwen Jackson,
Charles Harrill, Dan Hays and John Savage, all of whom have ap
peared in leading roles in recent Carnival and University Theater
productions.
The play will be performed Friday and Saturday at 8:30 p.m. and
again on August 2,3 and 4. Tickets are $2, $2.50 and $3.
photography
“It was not the intention to record literally what was before us, but
rather to infer the qualities of that particular experience.” This
statement provides the theme for a collection of prints in the
photographic gallery in the Art Museum.
The prints are the product of a group of students who traveled
throughout Oregon during the first four weeks of summer term.
What they have chosen to present is a collection of abstracts—
images they have discovered on the road. If you expect to see a print of
an abandoned shed in sagebrush, forget it. Put aside, too, the cliche of
the old bam with its bleached wood crumbling undo* the weight of age.
If they saw the bam, what they chose to show is a piece of that bam,
a piece of the weathered grain. They take you in for a closer look.
Bob Greene uses black and white to emphasize the designs he
perceives. Texture and composition are enhanced by the use of black
and white in his print of cracking fiber on wood.
Faye Adler integrated color with design to produce a striking
photograph. The subdued colors provide a contrast which lifts the
design from its objective reality to an art form. Peeling paint becomes
an explosive movement, a landscape or any number of related sub
jects.
These are only two prints by two photographers which impressed
me. There are more which should be seen. If you think you’ve seen
Oregon, take a look. And look again.
Charlene Yogi
art
McLarty’s
fantasies
urge
viewer
to
‘follow
his
dream’
A calm, reflective quality pervades the graphic work of Portland
artist Jack McLarty, on display in the mezzanine of the EMU until
August 3. And the woodcuts, drawings, etchings, and collographs that
comprise the show, when they succeed on their own terms, induce a
sympathetic state of calm and reflection in the viewer. Each piece,
even the most straightforward of the drawings of nudes, is a self
contained fantasy into which the artist, in the role of skillful conjurer,
beckons his audience.
The skill just mentioned is a necessary ingredient in achieving this
effect, and there can be no doubt that McLarty has it. It’s the same
skill, as a matter of fact, that the conjurer is admired for, an artifice
that gives pleasure without drawing attention to itself.
This skill finds it’s best expression in the woodcut, a medium that
McLarty seems particularly suited to. In “Evening Dreamer,” for
instance, he creates an image of the state of reflection mentioned
above: The dark hair on a woman’s head that appears in the bottom
half of the print slowly breaks apart as the viewer’s eyes move up
ward, becoming, toward the top, a random pattern of clouds. The main
block, which establishes this image, is printed in black, while other
blocks give a blue tint to the woman’s face and a red tint to the clouds,
subtly emphasizing the transformation that is taking place.
Like a good conjurer, McLarty, too, concentrates on a certain
repertoire of transformations which, though they may be repeated,
never fail to please. He often starts with something as common as a
•Roman's hair, a flowing robe, or curiously static motion of cars on a
highway, and precipitates out of the undifferentiated mass and
movement a wealth of imagery. Where he does this, the creative
process imitates that of dreams, in which images seem to generate
themselves out of the darkness of sleep.
One of the most impressive in this category is a large woodcut,
“Emerging Woman.” The woman of the title is shown putting (m (or is
it taking off?) a richly decorated oriental robe. In the disarray of her
hair, the mirror she holds, and the decoration of her robe, all of which
flow in and out of each other into one organic whole, McLarty has sewn
more symbols of transformation and images of woman and (in the
mirror, significantly) man. The complexity of this print is such that it
simultaneously invites and frustrates the effort to interpret. The ar
tist’s work becomes his dream, his fantasy, and though he gives the
viewer a look into his own private world, the imagery that appears
there can never be interpreted in any one “right” way. That imagery,
in its complexity, can only be grasped intuitively.
A certain balance between invitation and frustration is required,
and where this balance does not occur, the spell that McLarty casts is
broken. There is too much frustration, for instance, in the etching
“The Hunter.” One “hunts” for the substance in this brown, shadowy
world, and comes up with nothing.
The problem of too much invitation is in itself more pervasive and
rarely embodied in one work. Some of the graphics suffer from it very
little, especially those that use the automobile as a sort of totem.
Others, particularly pieces which have an almost erotic quality about
them (such as “Night Clock” or the tiny woodcut “Lavers”), are more
troubled by it.
In the latter works, the critical viewer becomes too aware that be or
she is being seduced by the artist. The “conjuring” that is McLarty’s
strength becomes a trick, and no me likes to be tricked. The sinous,
Art Nouveau line, the sensuous flesh of the nudes, the total effect
becomes a bit too artificial, too stylized, almost, it seems, decadent.
When the poet John Logan visited the University last spring, he
spoke of his activity, like McLarty’s a specifically creative one, as
“following the dream.” The dreams McLarty embodies in his prints
and drawings must be approached and followed in the way Logan’s
metaphor suggests, intuitively. But only if they lead somewhere.
Stephen Bangs