Year in theater: In 2014, Moments of Stagecraft that Stayed with us – Alaska Dispatch News, December 25, 2014. Mike Dunham
Did I waste my time by going to this show? Or will something about this stick with me for weeks or years to come?
That’s the big question you ask yourself anytime you attend an art event, whether it’s live, static, recorded or whatever.
When the genre is one person on a stage, there are reasons to be nervous. Monologues usually get dismissed as second-class theater, introspective, self-important, one-sided and, by definition, lacking that lifeblood of drama — dialogue. But as the curtain comes down on the 2014 theater season, two monologues have stuck with me.
The first is Diane Benson’s “Mother America Blue,” seen on Veterans Day at Cyrano’s. Poet, playwright and politician, Benson is no stranger to the local stage, but this is her best work to date, perhaps because it is her most personal piece to date.
Benson tells the story of her son Latseen, who joined the army and was seriously wounded by a roadside bomb during his second tour of Iraq. There are motherly memories of his childhood and trepidations when he marches off to war.
Where the piece elevates itself beyond narrative, however, is when Benson is put on the military flight taking Latseen and other wounded soldiers back to America. Such passage is unusual for civilians, we’re given to understand. Latseen is the most seriously injured passenger and under sedation. The flight is long. The circumstances are surreal. The other soldiers represent the diverse mosaic of America. Hurt and craving family and a touch of home, they begin calling to her, encouraging her, talking about themselves. One by one, she becomes a temporary mother to all of them.
The piece was first done in London. When Benson told me about the stunned reaction of the audience there I was tempted to consider it authorial hyperbole. And the subject might easily turn into a maudlin mama-son reunion story or political rant.
But life isn’t that simple. Benson simply lets the facts speak for themselves and they do so with palpable authenticity. Seeing how she convincingly conveyed helplessness, tenderness and quiet resolve in the single Anchorage performance, I found myself agreeing with the British critic who found “colossal dignity” in the work. My sense is that most of the audience felt the same way.
It may be the only performance we’ll get. In an after-show discussion, Benson said she had only presented it a few times after the premiere and it required so much emotional energy that she was disinclined to do it again. Perhaps she’ll change her mind, with appropriate support. The Veterans Day presentation, for instance, was co-sponsored by the Military Order of the Purple Heart.
The other monologue that broke the mold was Bostin Christopher’s one-man “An Iliad,” presented by Perseverance Theatre in October. The condensation of Homer’s epic by Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare got a little preachy halfway through, but for most of the two-hour tour-de-force, Christopher kept me on the edge of my chair with the tale of pride, war, retribution and sympathy. Lucy Peckham supplied live cello accompaniment in the latter part of the piece and the lighting was a character all by itself. But it was Christopher’s energetic and clear delivery that brought us to the cornice of profundity.
The undying appeal of Homeric storytelling came home after a reader sent me a desperate email. He was a tow truck driver on a remote stretch of Alaska highway, the only one for hundred of miles. Anyone who’s been stuck on the side of the road hours from the next semblance of a town will agree that Alaska’s towers are our modern equivalent of Homer’s heroes. He could not in good conscience abandon his post to see the play. But he was something of a Greek literature scholar as it turned out and was hoping that there might be a video of the performance. There should be.
Following the show, Christopher announced on Facebook that he was leaving Perseverance. Here’s hoping he stays close enough that we can see him again and, if not, gets enough movie roles so that we can catch him on the big screen.
In more traditional theater, actor Linda Benson turned in memorable back-to-back performances with “4000 Miles” at Cyrano’s in September and “‘night Mother,” co-produced by Anchorage Community Theatre in November. Both plays dealt with death, but the first was a comedy, though a serious one, and the second a shattering tragedy. In both cases she played the older relative of a troubled young person, a wise grandmother in the comedy, a foolish mother in the tragedy. Both required razor-sharp stage skills. Benson had the crowd cracking up in one show and frozen with grief in the other. We’ll look forward to seeing whatever she shows up in next.
It felt like there was less new local work presented this year than any time since the Last Frontier Theatre Conference in Valdez stirred up an interest in playwriting among Alaskans a couple of decades ago. But Dick Reichman’s “The Audition” is one that deserves to be seen again. The action took place at an acting workshop in which small-town wannabe actors try out for a formerly famous director. The director’s agenda felt confused, a weak spot in the conception. Was she mercenary? Desperate? Crazy? But the writing was lively and illuminating and the theme of how we choose between following a dream or retreating to safety was powerfully developed by a good script and very good acting.
I was particularly impressed by Tiffany Allen as a store clerk who auditioned with a monologue from August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson.” In a matter of a couple of minutes we watched a touching but tame and tepid, Hallmarky reading of the part transformed into a seething cry for selfhood. They were the same words but came from a totally different woman in totally different circumstances. It was one of a chain of magic transformations in the play that made us rethink things we thought we knew.
In the realm of established repertoire, two masterworks by Tennessee Williams stood out. In April, Perseverance Theatre presented “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” Enrique Bravo shined as Brick in a predictably fine cast. One reader was incensed that out-of-state actors were in the play, saying it did not befit an Alaska company. I respectfully disagree; Perseverance has probably done more to put Alaskan performers, like Bravo, into excellent play productions than any other entity in the state. Furthermore, I recall when Boris Karloff came up to do “Arsenic and Old Lace” with Anchorage Community Theatre. Nobody complained then and no one suggested that ACT was somehow un-Alaskan.
The all-local cast was much less even in the University of Alaska Anchorage’s “The Night of the Iguana.” But the production was more than good enough to make a strong case that the rarely performed “Iguana” is at least as great a play as the much-seen “Cat.” And lead performers Alex Albrecht and Gloria King were strong and convincing in their roles. A memorable piece of special effects came with the tropical storm that closed the first act.
Spoofy and goofy, “The Musical of Musicals: The Musical!,” produced by Midnight Sun Theatre at ACT, was a summer surprise. The same skeletal plot was told over and over in styles of different Broadway giants with a rapid-fire succession of song, dance and really bad puns. The audience laughed for a solid 90 minutes. The cast sang well and limned their parts to perfection.
A footnote on “Musical:” Ernie Piper IV had the role of a narrator who shouted stage directions and retreated to the piano when the singing started. I later learned he wasn’t actually playing the instrument. The real pianist, who had not wanted to be identified as such, was backstage and doing a glorious job with a lot of fun and complex music. (Emphasis added)
