"The Old Settler" and "Spin"
Contents: October 17, 2000:
(1)"The Old Settler"
(2)"Spin"
"The Old Settler"
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| Brenda Pressley and Cathy Simpson in Freedom Theatre's production of "The Old Settler." Photo: Posse Studios | |
The play, a regional theatre favorite since its 1997 premiere at the MacCarter Theatre in Princeton, is set in a modest Harlem apartment during World War II. Bess Borny, a warm but fastidious and penny-pinching "Spin"ster has recently taken in her more spirited, relentlessly churchgoing sister as well as a young boarder. The sister, Quilly (yes, she’s prickly), is a cleaning woman who just split up with her husband. The boarder, a South Carolina naif newly arrived to seek the hometown sweetheart now at large in Harlem, is named Husband. The sweetheart, who has changed her name from Lou Bessie to Charmaine and her manner to all-tart-all-the-time, only retains an interest in Husband because she can wrap him around her little finger and because he seems to have inherited some money from his late, lamented Mama. Perhaps you can anticipate the possible rivalries and showdowns.
Director Walter Dallas, who is also Freedom’s Artistic Director, is occasionally heavy-handed in his staging and underscoring of hokey lines. The cast, however, bring wit, sensitivity, and deep feeling to their roles, all of which offer moments to shine.
Brenda Pressley as Bess emerges like a butterfly from a cocoon and blossoms as she experiences passionate courtship. She is guide, friend, and guardian angel to Husband. Pressley’s concern and dignity make you wish she were your very own aunt or sister or closest neighbor. The play is largely Bess’s story. When she finally has it out with her sister and we learn the secret that kept them from talking to each other for eight years, Pressley’s hurt is as compelling as was her earlier nurturing.
Cathy Simpson’s Quilly is all fuss, gossip, petulance, nosiness, and appetite. Simpson can sashay, shuffle, break into a dance, go deadpan, crack a joke, wheedle, connive, and -- late in the game -- expose a broken heart with panache. Quilly disapproves of her sister’s post-menopausal flirtation and engagement, but she holds her peace when asked to do so. The revelation of the fear that she has been holding much longer opens a new dimension that a lesser actress than Simpson might have buried in either bathos or numbness.
The younger couple are broadly sketched. Husband goes from Act I bumpkin to Act II swain aided by changes in costume (by Andre Harrington), hairdo, and conversational devices. (Mercifully, by Act II the character stops saying “Mama always said...”) Actor Victor Mack gradually shifts registers but also manages such details as continuing to hike up his pants to expose a hefty length of calf no matter how flashy a suit he’s wearing. Mack knows you can’t take the country out of the boy overnight. Lou Bessie, the former small-town nobody who now knows every club and every pusher in Harlem, verges on caricature, but Lisa Summerour wisely keeps from going over the top as she tells Bess (the doubled names are another blunt instrument) off.
The production is well served by the lighting, set, and sound design. An early evening tryst that never happens is also never discussed; Troy A. Martin-O’Shia’s pink-to-blue-to-navy sunset tells us all we need to know. Nick Embree’s rendition of the sisters’ apartment sits on the cusp between shabbiness and respectability. The framed photos, 1920s stove, antimacassars, and houseplants are arranged to be recognizable without being merely by-the-book. Sounds of traffic when the windows are open and the nonstop chatter on the party line every time Quilly picks up the telephone testify to Steven Smith’s ear and expertise.
No one would call this play groundbreaking. But old isn’t always bad in the theatre. Freedom Repertory is housed in a building that was once the home of nineteenth century superstar Edwin Forrest and the venue is a physical reminder that theatre can be a kind of time-machine. "The Old Settler" is an unabashedly 1940s vehicle, even if it does have a 1990s copyright, but it is no less entertaining or engaging than a ride in a vintage and well-tuned Edsel. Relax and don’t expect to break any speed limits.
"Spin"
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| Adam Grupper and Jen Childs in The Wilma Theater's "Spin." | |
Robert William Sherwood’s play is in its American premiere at the Wilma Theatre until October 22 under Blanka Zizka’s direction. It is set on the day of a pre-convention debate between two presidential candidates. We follow the panic and strategies of one campaign manager as a scandal bomb about his candidate’s wife is dropped by the rival candidate’s manager. The play had its first run a London’s White Bear Theatre, where it earned a Time Out Critic’s Choice.
The Wilma’s newsletter tells us that London audiences were mostly unfamiliar with the working of American politics, yielding a sense that they were watching something exotic and foreign. “This won’t be an issue in Philadelphia,” said Sherwood in an interview. It’s an issue precisely because Sherwood has few original ideas, can’t stick to satire for his investment in realism, and mistakes prosaic explanation spiked with profanity for incisive wit. Oddly, it made his take on American politics feel very foreign.
The five characters who go at each other in "Spin"’s campaign-trail motel room all pontificate. Jerry, the foul-mouthed manager whose wife has just left him, gets lines like “When a woman leaves you, no matter how much you loathe and abominate her, a little bit of you dies.” He is still trying to figure out how a woman could give him a blow job on Monday and serve him with divorce papers on Friday. His young assistant, a terrifyingly analytical cynic who sees citizens as demographic sheep confesses that she hasn’t had a real boyfriend in a year. For Jerry, who has just gone on at length about the joys of fellatio, Elizabeth’s admission is out of place for being “so personal.” Yes, Jerry is a character who “doesn’t understand women,” a piece of information that is repeated several times and in so many words, in case we didn’t get it.
The candidate is a bland midwesterner who is coached not to go off script and not to be original. He gets to utter profundities such as “People mean nothing any more....It’s wrong.” His wife, the source of the scandal, is a trophy blonde who has pulled herself up from the other side of the tracks and who has such stunning admissions as “If I’m guilty, than I’m guilty of wanting what everyone else takes for granted.”
Sherwood’s method is to pile new twist upon new twist, successivly undercutting them all. We never know if any of the accusation is true. What interest there is lies in watching every character react and adjust to every new version of “the truth.” The idea is that he who has the best "Spin" on the gossip will win at the polls.
For a play that is all about media and the mediatized, the production gets the electronic environment all wrong. There is a huge television upstage center but it is never on. A "Spin" doctor who isn’t even watching one channel? No way. An endlessly ringing telephone gets dumped in a drawer, but it doesn’t even have so much as a “hold” button on it, much less a bank of lights. It’s like a relic from the seventies doing central duty in a play that seems to want to be about right now. A cell phone does get answered (fancier technology commands more attention), but there is not so much as a laptop computer in sight. We are reminded several times that the campaign experts are out of touch with reality. The irony is completely lost by having them literally isolated and sequestered instead of surrounded by the mediatized versions of the world that they mistake for the world itself.
Playwright Sherwood has gone on record saying that he doesn’t want his work to be limited to any specific genre and that his next work will be a romantic comedy. A change of genre and a change of scenery can do one good. [Chansky]
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