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The Year of Magical
Thinking
June 17 – July 5,
2009
Wednesday - Sunday at 7:30 pm;
Saturday – Sunday at 2:30 pm
Reviewed June 21 by
David Siegel |
A detached, dispassionate solo
performance piece
of survival after the death of loved ones
Running time 1:40 – no intermission
Tickets $41 - $61 |
Click here to buy the script
Click here to buy the memoir
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How does one survive the arduous time after the death of loved ones? If you
are the un-ruffled Joan Didion, who, for four decades, was a dispassionate
observer of human intimacy, how far you are from throwing yourself onto the
coffin and bewailing God for the losses? For an audience viewing Didion’s
The Year of Magical Thinking, the question might be; is the existential
approach to coping what you want to spend your time with? She scripts with
almost clinical detachment, reciting detail upon detail to beat back
depression without a mention of the Divine. Or perhaps she replaces a
God-like presence with a different type of authority, that of mysterious and
miraculous spirits. In this one-woman show, God - or something akin to such
an entity - has been replaced not just with mysterious sprits to explain the
unexplainable, but with a survival technique creating an almost fairy-tale
of facts hoping that knowing and following the rules will be a protective
factor and that bad things will not happen or can be reversed.
Writers are
always selling somebody out, Didion suggested long ago. In this theatrical
work written originally as a book after the death of her husband and then
her daughter, Didion sells herself out as so cool a character that
losing control even for a split second seems a weakness of character to be
rarely displayed and then quickly overridden. Under the direction of Serge
Seiden and Joy Zinoman, Helen Hedman has the demanding task of touching an
audience when the script is not so touching. She alone must carry the weight
of the evening, describing a certain kind of grief and mourning. That Hedman
succeeds is a testament to her infusing her character with some warmth
through the slightness of gestures. Is she Didion in appearance? Not so
much. But so what? What matters is Hedman slowly taking over the stage as
she talks directly to us, explaining what to expect as death takes a loved
one away. How you respond may well be determined by your own deep beliefs.
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Storyline: After the death of her husband and her daughter, Joan Didion
distilled her grief into a memoir. Her adaptation of that work for the stage
features a single actress and Didion’s chiseled prose.
Joan Didion was born in 1934. The original book The Year
of Magical Thinking won the 2005 National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize.
Her own adaptation into a theatrical production premiered in New York in
March, 2007 running for 144 total performances with Vanessa Redgrave, who was
nominated for a 2007 Tony Award as Best Actress in a Play and won a Drama
Desk Award for Solo Performance. With Year of Magical Thinking.
Didion placed herself under her own intense gaze. As she says in the opening
lines of the text, she wrote to inform others which she does in with an
unblinking memory as a chronicler. It is a shifting account. The melding of
two deaths that can be a bit muddy at times as she moves back and forth to
present aspects of her love for her husband and her daughter. She is a keen
observer of little bits and pieces. One line gives a sense of others; she
asks as she calls in her husband’s obituary to the LA Times, “Is he
dead in pacific coast time since it is 3 hours earlier?” Directors Serge
Seiden and Joy Zinnoman have created a work with fluid movements. Scenes
appear as Hedman finds places to sit or stand with short bites of
violins and piano music by Eric Shimelonis flooding feelings into the
production. This is a tough production about thorny matters, but under their
direction, the humanity does come through.
Helen Hayes Award nominee Helen Hedman - a veteran of
dozens upon dozens of productions in the Potomac Area for the likes of
Arena, Olney, Signature and the Shakespeare Theatre Company - is the guide
on this journey. She leads the audience by the hand with a warm pleasant
voice that shoulders the entire burden, and remains affecting over the course
of the evening. She can be so detached, her breathing level, her voice not
rising, rarely smiling even with her little slight, off-hand humor. Yet she
finds means and methods to show tidbits of emotion. While the performance
moves along, there are quieter moments when Hedman’s face can tighten, as
she twists her hands and fingers, or far from daintily almost crumples into
a chair. She fits a social worker’s description of the real-life Didion,
"one cool character." She take an audience that is willing to listen on this
profound interior trip, bearing witness so that an audience might save it to
remember when it is their turn to live through such time.
The Metheny Theatre stage set is almost architectural …
framed by a maple veneered structure with French blue tinted light
surrounding at curtain up. Spots that Hedman unerringly finds are used to
depict scene changes. There is a large high back rattan arm chair with a
small circular rattan table on audience right and a smaller rattan settee on
audience left. Behind the chair is a black and white abstract painting; sort
of black squiggles as a motif on a white canvas … giving a sense of no color
as when all color leaves the body of a deceased. Brandee Mathies dresses
Hedman in an outfit of a cowl neck cashmere white sweater with full sleeves,
black pencil-thin pants with loafers, and of course, the Didion trademark
big sunglasses.
By Joan Didion. Directed by Serge Seiden and Joy Zinoman.
Design: Luciana Stecconi (set) Brandee Mathies (costumes) Collin K. Bills
(lights) Eric Shimelonis (sound and original music) Carol Pratt
(photography) Che Wernsman (stage
manager). Cast: Helen Hedman. |
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Radio Golf
May 20 - July 12, 2009
Wednesday - Saturday and select Tuesdays at 8 pm
Saturday and Sunday at 2 pm;
Sunday at 7 pm
Reviewed May
10 by
David Siegel |
Bittersweet, disarming and
stinging in parts, but a lean final August Wilson installment
Running time 2:20 - one intermission
Performances in the Mead Theatre
Tickets $41 - $61 |
Click here to buy the script
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This final installment of the majestic, potent ten play odyssey by August
Wilson focusing on the African-American experience in 20th
Century America is a bittersweet, ultimately lean evening. Radio Golf
contains disarming, stinging confrontations about the struggle to keep a
community’s roots alive against the onslaught of progress in this tale of
resentments and grievances in long ago 1997 when it seemed the economy might
lift everyone up. Here the struggles are visually depicted with the dueling
images of Tiger Woods and Martin Luther King Jr. casting their potent forces
upon the proceedings. Situated between their images is a man who thinks he
knows the right path, but finds his way blocked and skidding along. And his
own poster image bears a striking resemblance to the iconic one of President
Obama. For those familiar with the Wilson saga this is a must see: a chance
to grab at his last words. For those accustomed to the mystical matriarch,
Aunt Ester, as the repository of traditions, Radio Golf presents a
sad, inglorious passing as she is represented not by breathing flesh and
blood but as a ghost of a worn-out, unlived-in house considered a blight.
Unfortunately, this final chapter in a 100 year saga has too many set
pieces, keeping it from cooking into a spicy, thick, pungent, savory stew.
The characters seem as if animated arch types from which arguments emanate,
rather than fully-formed individuals with emotional centers. Under Ron
Himes' direction, the cast has perplexingly few sharp edges given the
agonizing about destruction of values. Verbal fireworks do come as the
audience is slapped about and asked to choose between life styles
represented by the words “Negro” and “Nigger.” At the center of it all is
Walter Coppage projecting a soft-spoken, well-dressed, hard-to-anger,
well-educated, African-American real-estate developer turned Pittsburgh
mayoral candidate. He's learning that his allies are fleeting, his power
limited, his trajectory is going backwards and his wife is weighing her own
options. He is trying not to go limp and spineless as the unforgiving White
dominated world places a target on his back. He drinks from a Starbucks cup
when he really needs a meal from Ben’s Chili Bowl. |
Storyline: In a run-down storefront in
Pittsburgh’s deteriorating Hill District, mayoral candidate Harmond Wilks
works out the logistics of a redevelopment project that will raze the
decaying buildings of a primarily African-American neighborhood and bring in
chain retailers. All that stands in his way is an old house and its
eccentric owner, an elderly man who refuses to be cleared out.
August Wilson completed Radio Golf just a few
months before he died in 2005. He sets his marker down clearly, asking the
audience which side are they on as the bulldozers are at the ready. Your
reviewer can only wonder what might have been without death on his mind and
with more time to possibly further refine this work. There is a feel of a
rush to the characters moving forward quickly into their positions to
surround the central character forcing him to react to their views and
society whims. Ron Himes is the Founder and Producing Director of The Black
Rep, a professional African-American theatre company. For Radio Golf
there is a reticence in his approach, as if there is a line over which the
actors cannot and should not cross. They contain themselves in small spaces.
A screw driver held in a hand to open a can of paint is the greatest
physical menace, while a finger full of white paint becomes war paint on a
face as the most visual sign of fury. Even when going “all manly,” the
actors seem to be holding back from clenched fists, tight cheeks and spit.
The relationship between husband and wife seems coolly professional, giving
little hint of sexual energy.
Erik Kilpatrick infuses his street-smart, fast-talking
handyman, ex-con of a character with hard earned life experiences and
survival skills. He stirs the pot of this plot with the tough questions of
what it means to be yourself when faced with a larger community out to do
harm to the essence of an urban community about to be destroyed to make way
for the likes of Whole Foods and Starbucks. He presents the image of
physical power never raising a fist to make his presence felt, but forces
others to consider and re-consider their positions. Frederick Strother is
marvelous as the eccentric old man, seemingly one to be toyed with, who uses
his street smarts to out-flank the men in suits by bobbing-and-weaving. He
takes blows, but his resilience has him re-appear much to the chagrin of the
moneyed and educated. Deidra LaWan Starnes is Wilks' wife and professional
advisor. With her flashing eyes she is the most dramatically emotive of the
cast as she learns her value to others is based on the value others place
upon her husband. Then again, her interpersonal chemistry with Coppage is
unfeverish, they seem an unlikely sexual paring. Kim Sullivan is the most
ruthless as a man willing to do anything to make a buck including let his
best friend and own community be skewered. It is his golfing radio
commentary that gives this play its name. He is an impeccable snake.
The Mead Theatre set is a cluttered storefront looking
outward to the street. Used metal desks and chairs are strewn about along
with files, and boxes are scattered here and there which gives a sense of
lived in reality. Lighting moves the show through bright middays, dark
nights and sullen moments. The costumes and shoes of Starnes change in each
scene, but are always tailored and looking a marvel. Coppage and Sullivan are
nattily attired in suits while Kilpatrick and Strother are in
character-rendering outfits. The pre-show and scene changing music moves
from toe-tapping bright rhythm and blues and urban pop through the Jimmy
Hendricks rendition of the Star Spangled Banner.
Written by August Wilson. Directed by Ron Himes. Design:
Daniel Conway (set) Reggie Ray (costumes) Colin K. Bills (lights) Neil
McFadden (sound) Scott Suchman (photography) Katherine C. Mielke
(stage manager). Cast: Walter Coppage, Erik Kilpatrick, Deidra LaWan
Starnes, Frederick Strother, Kim Sullivan. |
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