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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (March 15, 2012)
theater Shamelessly Entertaining In The Crucible of Mediocrity In an unsettling trend, Broadway has turned to Hollywood for inspiration. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is one of a string of hit fi lms revamped with razzle-dazzle and shoved onto a stage. Legally Blond will run at Actors Cabaret of Eugene later this spring, and if you’re in New York you can try to fi nd a ticket for — yes, it’s true — Pricilla Queen of the Desert. It’s an American trend that would be a lot easier to turn up my nose at if it wasn’t so wonderfully entertaining. Take the Very Little Theatre’s current production of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. I loved the 1988 fi lm about two conmen who get mixed up with the wrong mark, so happily peopled by Michael Cane and Steve Martin. But I like the musical even better. Minor characters are fl eshed out and mildly humorous scenes are given a shot of steroid-strong song and dance. Scoundrels is very consciously a play, with spiraling self-references and open acknowledgement of the audience. Michael Walker’s set works this shtick beautifully, operating like a Transformer, quickly and easily moving the imagination from a cliff top overlooking the French Riviera to a posh casino. Director Chris Pinto sets loose on the stage a riot of local talent. Michael P. Watkins as the consummate playboy/conman Lawrence Jameson is pure casting genius. Tara Wilbrew is delightful as Christine Colgate the Soap Queen. Shannon Coltrane and an outrageous blond wig create a fearsome Jolene Oaks from Oklahoma, and Jennifer Sellers is a sketch as the ever-faithful “Lady Muriel” of Omaha. But as good as these actors are, audiences may have some trouble noticing them; all eyes are on Tom Wilson, gleefully wrecking havoc as Freddy Benson. Seriously, this actor could be sentenced to hard time for stealing the show. He is funnier than Steve Martin. The cast is supported by an extraordinarily strong chorus, which in turn is backed up by a fi rst-rate band. Seated beside my mother who shook with laughter throughout the show, I became convinced of the wisdom in converting a fi lm to a musical. If you’re looking to be entertained, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is the best bet for your theater money. — Anna Grace Inspired by director Elia Kazan’s “naming names” before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952, Arthur Miller — the great used-car salesman of American authors — churned out The Crucible. The play, set during the ‘92 Salem witch trials (1692, that is), locates its lugubrious moral center in the character of John Proctor, a man of courageous rectitude who refuses to succumb to the orgy of persecution that is plunging his preachy peers into madness. That Proctor’s rectitude is the fl y in the Puritanical ointment goes without saying. In fact, The Crucible itself goes without saying. The play is longwinded but short on sophistication and insight, and it transforms a rich, creepy and complexly psychosocial era of this country’s Puritan past into an über-allegory of political paranoia that does little but pander to bumper-sticker bourgeois liberalism and the complacency it breeds. Quaint, incurious, stilted, self-congratulating, pinched, shallow and sexist, The Crucible is to the Red Scare what Thelma & Louise is to modern feminism: The triumphalist bullshit of shooting fi sh in a barrel. Beyond these minor objections, however, there is little to fault in University Theatre’s production of The Crucible now playing at UO’s Hope Theatre. The play is ably directed by Theresa May, though I suspect her notion of “re-purposing” Miller’s work as an “inoculation” against modern McCarthyism may explain the show’s inexpedient running time; instead of recycling, the play deserves reducing. In fact, you could safely cut the thing in half and not lose a stitch in value. Rod Serling wrote a Twilight Zone episode, “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” — a Red Scare fable veiled as a sci-fi chiller — that accomplishes more in 30 minutes, and mo’ better, than Miller achieves in three beleaguered hours. With that said, University Theatre’s production is quite impressive to behold, thanks in large part to Jerry Hooker’s majestic set, the chiaroscuro atmospherics of Gran Geiger’s lighting, and gorgeous period costumes by designer Gina Love. The large cast does its best with Miller’s clunky, formalized dialogue, but you can almost feel the shiver of discomfort when the young actors have to crunch on lines like “There is a prodigious danger in the seeking of loose spirits” and “I give you my soul, leave me my name!” Mouthing such expulsive bombast, which just begs for Monty Python undermining, is a feat unto itself. If you crane your neck skyward and watch carefully during the stroboscopic opening of the fi rst act, you will catch a brief glimpse of authentic dancing-around nakedness that, personally, I rather appreciated (thanks be to Satan, of course). There isn’t enough nudity on Eugene stages. And, beyond all expectations, a few of the actors not only survive Miller’s muddle-fuddle but distinguish themselves in roles cut from the whole cloth of moral caricature. Kylie DeHaven wonderfully ekes out the bitch in Abigail Williams, the manipulative ringleader of witchy mass hysteria. Naomi Wright brings a humanizing humor to the character of Tituba, and Andrew Poletto (Reverend Parris), Riley Shanahan (John Proctor) and Maddie Downes, as Rebecca Nurse, are all solid. In one of Miller’s better lines, the Reverend Hale proclaims, “The devil can never overcome a minister.” Likewise, a good cast can never overcome a mediocre writer, all of whom, of course, are created equal — some writers are just more equal than others. — Rick Levin Dirty Rotten Scoundrels runs through March 31 at the Very Little Theatre; info at thevlt.com or 344-7751. The Crucible runs through March 17 at UO’s Hope Theatre; info at http://pages. uoregon.edu/theatre/ the Through March 24 Ray Bradbury’s Sci-Fi Classic Craft Center Spring Registration starts March 15 at 10:00 am An unforgettable tale of a future without books comes chillingly to life in this stage adaptation by the legendary author himself. “Fahrenheit 451 is delicately choreographed, and the vital performances — inject the material with an engagingly modern flair.” --Rick Levin, Eugene Weekly Thanks to our sponsors: Get Your Tickets Early... Call 541-465-1506 or at lordleebrick.org Coming in April Northwest 10 - Festival of 10 minute plays 30 MARCH 15, 2012 EUGENE WEEKLY 541-346-4361 craftcenter.uoregon.edu WWW.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM • BLOGS.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM
