Arthur Miller Revivals

In addition to the much lauded local production of Arthur Miller's All My Sons, recently produced by Ferndale Rep and Arcata Playhouse, directed by Jane Hill, there is currently a Broadway revival of Miller's play The Price.  President Obama attended a performance with his daughter Malia.  The last time The Price was in New York was in 1992, when the playwright was alive.  It was the occasion for this interview with Charlie Rose.  Much of what he says about American theatre still pertains (though perhaps the quality of older actors in regional theatre is better), and what he says about playwriting and the role of theatre in society is perennially relevant.

It seems also that Miller's stature as an American playwright continues to grow. Both The Crucible and Death of a Salesman are produced frequently around the world by professional theatres as well as others.  In an American Theatre interview, contemporary playwright Theresa Rebeck said, "I have a theory that anyone who ends up with a career in the theatre was in either Our Town or The Crucible in high school or college."

Now other of his better known plays like The Price, All My Sons and A View From the Bridge are being done more often as well.  But Miller wrote other fine plays, including some shorter works with small casts late in his career.  These are at least as stageworthy as many such contemporary plays, and deserve to be seen.

Blanche and Blanchett

The Oscar for best performance by an actress was awarded to Kate Blanchett for her role in Blue Jasmine.  In her acceptance speech she thanked the theatre company she has been working with in Australia, and noted (here and elsewhere) that her stage training was essential for playing this role.

There's more than one reason for that.  While some critics mention its debt to A Streetcar Named Desire, the classic play by Tennessee Williams, they generally go on to quickly discuss the contemporary resonance after the high profile real estate swindles.  But this movie is almost scene for scene a reinterpretation of Streetcar, and Blanchett is very much Blanche Dubois.  It has been noted that Blanchett played that role on stage in Australia in 2008.

Blanchett as Blanche

The point of mentioning this is not to accuse anyone of anything untoward, but to note both the movie's debt to Williams' play and the fact that this cements the play's place as an authentic American myth.  I can think of only one other American play that has this mythic weight: Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. (They were first produced in New York within two years of each other.)  Miller's play has demonstrated its mythic status through a series of successful New York stage revivals and films, as well as productions in many other countries.  Now Williams' play has proven its mythic power by being powerfully adapted to different times and a different situation.

Korbel IV, Korbel Before and Thoughts on Live Theatre

First, the before IV of Korbel:

 The saga of the Dugan family in the mythical North Coast town of Korbel began in 1994. So before describing the new play, here’s a primer on the story so far, based on Michael Fields’ recollections:

“Korbel I: The Funeral” was centered on the funeral of the Dugan clan’s matriarch, Dorothy, who in financial despair, had committed suicide. Flashbacks revealed the truth about her son Terry, a transsexual Lesbian. Her other son, Tommy, was a logger “who was missing many of his body parts due to logging accidents, and was incapable of doing certain things,” though evidently that didn’t include fathering a child, because…

In “Korbel II: The Wedding,” Tommy had to get married in order to keep his child, but elsewhere in the Court House the Southern Korbel Unorganized Militia (SKUM) was planning a disruption. Meanwhile there was a fight at the wedding, and agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms invaded (“We had people rappelling off the roof at Dell’Arte.”) “Where’s Tommy Dugan?” the ATF demanded, and in a response that Fields says was stolen from the Spanish Baroque playwright Lope de Vega, but which most of us remember from “Spartacus,” several members of the cast—beginning with a 7 year old boy—proclaimed: “I’m Tommy Dugan! I’m from Korbel!” Then, Fields recalls, members of the audience spontaneously repeated it themselves: “I’m Tommy Dugan! I’m from Korbel!”

In “Kobel III: The Birth” the only industry left in the town was a company that dug a deep hole in the ground, and dumped stuff into it. “Nobody knew what was going into the hole, but it was a business, and it was in Korbel” so it was accepted. Until people noticed that no babies had been born since the company came to town. But Dorothy Dugan returned from the dead (as she had in Korbel II), to miraculously cause people to give birth. “We gave little water balloons to people in the audience, and everybody was giving birth—including her son.”




Going for IV

That was nearly a decade ago, and the series seemed to have run its course with what Fields admits was its weakest script. But several factors converged to bring Korbel back this summer. For one thing, there were local events that begged to become part of the saga, like the ongoing drama of Blue Lake’s disgraced police chief, the continuing transformations associated with the Blue Lake casino, and the rise of the marijuana grow house economy. “Kevin Hoover wrote a long article about grow houses in the Arcata Eye awhile back, and suggested in it that Dell’Arte should do a play about it,” Fields said. “The last line of the article was: ‘Are you reading, Michael?’”

But another impetus came from an unlikely source: the Campaign for Love and Forgiveness by the Fetzer Institute, and a series of local forums on the subject sponsored by KEET. The Dell’Arte School was to be one of the locations, so Fields attended. Eventually he went to all of them, and realized there was dramatic material there. “It seemed fitting to do it as a Korbel piece, because it has a past, and forgiveness is a lot about holding onto something or letting it go. You can’t change what happened, but how do you move on? There’s a great quote—I think it was Confucius: ‘Forgiveness doesn’t change the past, but it enlarges the future.’”

(Actually, Dutch botanist Paul Boese said that, but Confucius does have a great quote on the subject: “Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it forgoes revenge and dares to forgive an injury.”)

The question now, as Fields recognizes is, “if comedy and the theme of forgiveness can exist at the same time” in the same play. We’ll all get a chance to find out, starting June 26, the premiere of “Korbel IV: The Accident”… The emergency room of Korbel’s new for-profit hospital and casino, St. Mo’s (she’s the patron saint of gamblers) is suddenly filled with victims of an accident, when a mysterious taco truck driven by the police chief and filled with machine guns runs over several people. But since every second home in Korbel is now a grow house and uses seven times the power a normal home uses, there’s a blackout—only enough power at St. Mo’s to run three life support systems (and of course the slot machines)—but there are four criticals: so somebody has to die!

There are plenty of local references, Dorothy’s obligatory return from the dead and especially, lots of songs by a trio of nurses played by three of the best-known singers around: Joyce Hough, Jayse Lecyour and Lila Nelson. The cast features original Dell’Arte ensemble members Joan Schirle, Michael Fields and Donald Forrest, and local all-stars Jackie Dandeneau and David Ferney, Bob and Lynne Wells, as well as Jane Hill, Lynnie Horrigan, Soren Olsen, Josh Salas and Calder Johnson. Fields promises a spectacular stage set, designed by HSU’s Jody Sekas: “It’s what Vegas would look like if it came to your hospital.”

What's This Review IV?

Opening night of Dell’Arte’s Korbel IV: The Accident saw an overflow crowd in the Rooney Amphitheatre, cheerfully engaged in the annual rites of family mini-picnics, adult wine-sipping and general bundling-up after sundown, gathered to witness the resumption of a hometown participatory soap opera with the Dell Arte brand of comedy, music and local satire. They weren’t disappointed.

Michael Fields anchors the story as ex-logger turned hospital janitor and apparent gun-runner, Tommy Dugan, growling like a North Coast Jack Nicholson (“It’s not a Ken and Barbie world.”) Much of the comic action is in the winsome and capable hands of Jacqueline Dandenau and David Ferney, Bob and Lynne Wells, Jane Hill and Lynnie Harrigan as hit and run victims with backstories, and the singing nurses of St. Mo’s Hospital and Casino: Lila Nelson, Joyce Hough and Jaese Lecuyer.

 In our conversation, Fields likened their musical interpolations to those in Dennis Potter’s breakthrough TV miniseries, “The Singing Detective,” though I was reminded of Potter’s “Pennies From Heaven,” which shares the song “Life is Just A Bowl of Cherries” with Korbel. Josh Salas, Soren Olsen and Calder Johnson are the dancing orderlies.

 The show typically veered from topical local humor and slapstick to the Potter-like poignancy of the world-weary refrain, “Is this all there is?” There were the usual flamboyant touches—a real ambulance arriving at the gate, life support hoses pulsing with neon lights—a spectacular 1950s Las Vegas style set by Jody Sekas, and upbeat tunes by Tim Gray and the Dell’Arte House Band.

What about the question the playwright Michael Fields asked—can this comic mayhem be combined with saying something about love and forgiveness? The answer is yes, thanks to some nice second act writing (the Emily Dickinson lines were perfect), Donald Forrest’s eloquence as Terry Dugan, and Joan Schirle’s brief but delightful appearance as Dorothy, the matriarch. A lot was resolved, but is the story over?

 There’s something about the opening show of the Mad River Festival that inspires ruminations—or pontifications—about theatre itself. Last summer I looked to theatrical origins in traditional festivals. This year had me thinking about the “live” in live theatre, and its relation to the local and community.

These thoughts were also inspired by a conversation with Charlie Myers, my movie-reviewing colleague in these pages, after the benefit concert for Deborah Clasquin last Saturday. (An impressive turnout, though the proceeds will apparently pay for at most one of the three experimental treatments Deborah requires, so donations are still being accepted at the HSU Music Department.)

Charlie and I chatted about the comparative advantages and disadvantages of our respective beats. Although I envy Charlie’s access to on-the-job popcorn, and I’ve noticed that he can critique the latest Spielberg film without much chance of running into Steven at Wildberries (nor of receiving the evil eye from the ticket-taker on his next visit to the theatre), on the whole I think I have the better gig. And that’s even apart from the fact that these days I would only review movies on a sliding scale. If my base rate were $100 say, I’d have to charge $500 just to sit through an Adam Sandler comedy, $400 for Mike Myers, etc.

 Unlike movies, theatre is live and local in various ways, as exemplified by these Dell’Arte summer shows. They’ve become community rituals, and the shows respond to the occasion, even in seemingly small gestures, like a character blowing bubbles for no apparent reason but to interest the children on the blankets near the stage.

That the community sees itself reflected or refracted on stage is part of the “Theatre of Place” enacted in this year’s play, which works because the theatre has the depth of experience and credibility that can come with being located in the community, and because the story on stage can respond to the latest news with the speed and spontaneity of live performance.

 There are prices to be paid in dramatic focus, structure and depth, and references that not everyone knows enough about to find funny. But sometimes revealing the local does more. The Dugan story reflects characteristics of the North Coast, but in doing so it reveals something about many other small towns, counter to media images.

 The kind of differences and diversity symbolized by transsexual Lesbian Terry Dugan (and based on a real story—see Donald Forrest’s moving explanation in the program) is almost always associated with big cities--and “San Francisco values.” But the truth is that they are present in these smaller places, though perhaps less obviously than here on the North Coast. So the shame, guilt and conflict portrayed in this story may exist even more strongly there, and extends to all kinds of differences, not just this one. And the process of forgiveness—including self-forgiveness—or the failure to find it, is a more universal drama of real life.

 In locating an essential drama in the local, there is usually an element of the universal. Being human, the drama is shared, and the community is partly created by seeing it enacted. You can get that universality at the movies sometimes, too. But what you can’t get is the same kind of intimacy when the people on stage and the people in the audience face each other.

 An aspect of this was imprinted on my consciousness some years ago at a small theatre production in Pittsburgh of Arthur Miller’s play, “The Creation of the World and Other Business.” Though it’s comedic, the play deals with weighty themes of good and evil, individuality and community, fate and freedom. The audience was very close to the action, and I had my Satori moment when I saw right in front of me God’s bare feet. That is, the bare feet of the actress playing God. Somehow that made the play real and present.

 These were real people struggling with these big questions, as the human author did, and as we in the audience do. There is something about real bodies on the stage—at times uncomfortable, and yet vitally human. Audiences and actors breathing the same air demonstrates that apparently abstract questions may really be the most basic concerns of the human community. So how do you combine life and art, the everyday with its meaning? Create art. Present it live.

North Coast Prep: The Crucible

The previous weekend, North Coast Prep’s Young Actors Guild presented Arthur Miller’s classic play, The Crucible. This play about the Witch Trials in colonial New England is famous as an allegory of 1950s McCarthyism, but as the audience for this production learned in 2008, it has equally relevant resonance.

There were some possibly anachronistic elements, such as John Proctor's willingness to give up his soul but not his good name. This was very important in the Blacklist and McCarthy era, when people were asked to "name names." But it may have less power in this age of Internet anonimity and the media relativism of reputation. But otherwise, Miller's play holds up very well, both in craftsmanship and in perennial relevance. For example, it was hard not to see the entire Bush era in the arc from fear hyped up for political and economic reasons, and abetted by religious extremism, to a society falling apart.

Miller deftly layers the practical reasons why Salem townspeople want to demonize each other, and later why they need to pull back from a community in chaos. But Miller’s emphasis is on that particular hormone-fueled mixture of fear and ecstasy known as hysteria.

Hysteria in this sense knows no gender, but it certainly is expressed with chilling power by a set of screaming adolescent girls, who mesmerize the court with their “ability” to see Satan. Though the play suggests the role of Puritanical repression, it doesn’t depend on it—there are all kinds of repressions in our “permissive” society. We can even see a template for this kind of hysteria in the national response to terrorism, and a similar exploitation of it by authorities.

After laying the groundwork in the first act, this production gathered force for a superior second act. Overall the presentation (directed by Jean Bazemore) was clear and thoughtful, with many fine performances. Chisa Hughes was daunting as Abigail Williams, the leader of the witch-finding girls; Elena Tessler was a convincing Tituba, and Dominick Roney fully conveyed the transformation of investigator Reverend Hale from self-righteous to conscience-stricken. While Elijah Singer capably portrayed the moral anguish of John Proctor, Fiona Ryder played Elizabeth Proctor with such depth and nuance that this relatively static character became the still center of the drama.

But what made this show particularly vital for the opening night audience was the evident emotion of this diverse young cast, and their deep involvement in the play—a power to communicate that leapt across the stage.