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
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