STAGE REVIEW: GREEN GROW THE LILACS

Laurey (Willow Geer) and Curly (Jeff Wiesen) in Green Grow the Lilacs.

Planting the seed

By Ed Rampell

This seems to be the stage and screen summer of “Oklahoma” -- and all of these productions set in what had been called “Indian Territory” have Native-American connections. The recent LA Film Festival screened Sterlin Harjo’s had-hitting indigenous indie about the homeless, Natives in Tulsa. Les Blank’s just-released documentary about Leon Russell, A Poem is a Naked Person, was shot in the 1970s and includes traditionally garbed Natives performing. Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum is presenting Tracey Letts’ August: Osage County.

As part of its current repertory season the Theatricum Botanicum is also presenting the part-Cherokee playwright Lynn Riggs’ 1931 classic, Green Grow the Lilacs, wherein two of the townsfolk identify themselves as being one quarter Native. In any case, Green Grow the Lilacs inspired the fabled Rodgers and Hammerstein, who adapted Riggs’ drama into a full-blown 1943 Broadway musical extravaganza, with Fred Zinnemann directing Hollywood’s 1955 version of Oklahoma!, where “the corn is as high as an elephant’s eye.” (A production of the musical opens July 17 at Cabrillo Theatre in Thousand Oaks.)

The plot of Oklahoma! is similar to that of Green Grow the Lilacs, which incorporates folksy songs into the play, performed and sung by Curly (Jeff Wiesen), Aunt Eller (Melora Marshall) and the ensemble. These standards include numbers such as the title song (from which Riggs presumably derived the name of his play) and "Skip to My Lou" -- the tunes may be cornier than those stalks growing higher than an elephant’s eye, but when theatergoers received their Playbills they were also given separate lyrics sheets and invited to sing along during the choruses. This, of course, enhanced a homey ambiance that served this play about ordinary people well.

Green Grow the Lilacs takes place around the turn of the last century, before Oklahoma joined the Union and was known as Indian Territory or Indian Country, when Riggs was a boy. The simple farm folk and story are drawn from Riggs’ childhood.

The Pulitzer Prize-nominated 1931 production was produced on Broadway by the Theatre Guild, which was, among other things, part of the proletarian theatre movement depicting the common man and woman, presenting works by playwrights such as leftist John Howard Lawson, as well as plays by Eugene O’Neill, bard par excellence of the heartbreaking family drama. Green Grow the Lilacs was directed by Herbert Biberman who, about 30 years later as a blacklisted independent filmmaker, helmed another piece about ordinary people called Salt of the Earth.

Many are familiar with the storyline of Oklahoma!, if not Green Grow the Lilacsper se, so your plot spoiler averse reviewer won’t spoil surprises for those readers who aren’t. But allow this ink stained wretch to render these observations: Sex (and the thwarting of it) is an important part of the plot. Laurey Williams (portrayed with aw shucks aplomb by Willow Geer) spurns the advances of Jeeter (Fry, not Derek), a hired hand ignobly and savagely played by Steven Green. She then proceeds to pursue doing with Curly exactly what Jeeter had wanted to do with Laurey and had caused her such revulsion.

Interestingly enough, it is the repulsive Jeeter, the blue collar-less brute, who has the most class conscious dialogue in Riggs’ folk-poem, aware of the fact that he is looked down upon because he is a manual laborer with dirt under his nails who does not own land, property. As a sort of cowboy, Curly is a rung up the Indian Territory’s social ladder, and along with his better looks, is more appealing to Laurey. So it’s not a case so much of what is being sought as who is seeking it.

Laurey and Curly’s troubled attempts to form their sexual union can be symbolic of the Indian Territory’s transition upon joining the Union in 1907, becoming Oklahoma, the 46^th state. The Green in the title may refer to the territorial status of a pre-statehood land not yet fully “mature” as one of the United States per se.

In any case, Riggs’ play is a bit strange and doesn’t necessarily actually have a denouement per se. But this production ambles amiably and dramatically along where appropriate in a folksy way that WGTB founder, mid-Westerner Will Geer, would likely have felt right at home with -- especially as his TV alter ego, Grandpa Walton -- and this Green Grow the Lilacsis quite enjoyable. Some ticket buyers will get a kick out of the sing along portion in particular (follow the bouncing ball!).

Given that this seems to be the summer of the “Okies,” I’d be remiss not to mention the Theatricum’s other Oklahoma connection: That most famous “Okie” of them all, Dustbowl-refugee-turned-people’s-balladeer Woody Guthrie, lived in a cabin on the grounds back in the day when he and Will Geer used their artistry to organize unions, agitating for working people’s rights.


Green Grow the Lilacs runs through Sept. 26 at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum: 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga, California, 90290. For repertory schedule and other information call: 310-455-3723 or see: Lilacs.

 

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THEATER REVIEW: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

Puck (Will Hickman) in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Puck yes

By Ed Rampell

 

What is even the point of writing a review about such inspired madcap mystical mirthfulness? Honestly Dear Reader, you should save your reviewer the effort and simply just go see the concoction and confection that is the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Geers’ effervescent version of the Bard’s dream-like yarn is such rip-roaring good fun that it should suffice to say, that if you love yourself and believe you deserve to have a good time, get thee to a Topanga amphitheater.

 

Yet review it I shall -- once more into the literary breaches, lads and lasses! Where shall I begin in describing this surreal romantic romp written with quill and ink way back when Amazons were female warriors and not online book retailers, and pixies not pixels reigned? William Shakespeare’s frothy supernatural tale with its plot about lovers blithely switching partners the way most people change their socks inspired Woody Allen’s 1982 A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy.

 

Costumer Katherine Crawford’s regalia -- especially of the motley crew of faeries -- is the best pixie-ish apparel this side of Tinkerbell. As usual, the troupe’s organized mayhem of mise-en-scene, co-directed by Willow Geer and her auntie, Mellora Marshall, takes full advantage of the surrounding woods and hills, literally putting the Botanicum into the Theatricum. But in this production the WGTB outdoes itself, offering something I haven’t seen before on this stage amidst the sylvan glade: Puck (played by the athletic Will Hickman) swings above the boards, Tarzan-like, on a tree-attached rope -- not a vine, although the theatrical effect remains divine.

 

Although methinks A Midsummer Night’s Dream is age appropriate for children of all ages, the opening is quite sensuous with sinewy, sexy Sydney Mason as Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, adorned by war paint in a revealing outfit, embracing Theseus, duke of Athens (the lucky J.B. Waterman; Valeka Holt generally plays Hippolyta). Leaping leopards -- a sort of leopard skin-garbed, war whooping Tanya Edwards is a standout in the ensemble of Amazons.

 

The shape shifting Mellora Marshall, who sheds genders the way we mere mortals change garments, surpasses herself here, playing a character who isn’t even human. The grand Marshall is neither a man nor a woman -- portraying Titania, she is Oberon’s fairy queen. As Helena, Marshall’s co-helmer, Willow Geer, is confronted by a creative challenge: Somehow this young woman who is, offstage, a radiant redheaded beauty, must somehow convince audiences she is a plain Jane. That through her dramatic sleight-of-hand Willow manages to do so is proof that she’s one of L.A. finest stage actresses.

 

And now we come to the bottom of Will’s bill, with Katherine Griffith’s hilarious cross-gender turn as the male, mustachioed, bellowing Bottom. Shakespeare, of course, slyly comments on the art of acting and those who do it in Hamlet, wherein “the play’s the thing.” The Bard also does so in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Bottom is part of an itinerant troupe of actors (or something or other) who perform a play-within-the-play about the Roman mythological characters Pyramus and Thisbe (Ovid tells their tale in his Metamorphoses) to celebrate the nuptials of Theseus and Hippolyta and company. Griffith’s Bottom is a bottomless pit of ego magically transformed by some stage effects into Shakespeare’s notion of what the playwright thought of hammy actors.

 

To be sure, the Botanicum Theatricum, as usual, does the Bard proud. Nevertheless, the most magical thing about A Midsummer Night’s Dream is Shakespeare’s vision and his deathless dialogue. Go Puck yourselves and allow the enchanting, irreverent revels of this tidbit of Topanga tomfoolery cast a spell on you.

 

 

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is runs through Sept. 28 at the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum: 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga, California, 90290. For more information: 310-455-3723; www.Theatricum.com.

 

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THEATER REVIEW: HEARTBREAK HOUSE

Hector (Mark Lewis) and Hesione (Melora Marshall) in Heartbreak House.

Shaw are screwball

By Ed Rampell

I was especially eager and curious to see the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum’s excellent adaptation of Heartbreak House because I know little about George Bernard Shaw beyond his plays, Major Barbara and Pygmalion. To be sure, Heartbreak House is veddy British, and the Theatricum troupe regales the audience with convincing English accents, although its thespians are mostly or all Yanks. But there’s much more to this work than being a mere drawing-room comedy of manners.

Shaw wrote Heartbreak House under the influence of playwright Anton Chekhov, subtitling it A Fantasia in the Russian Manner of English Themes. However, Heartbreak House seems in turn to have had a major impact on American screenwriting and playwriting: It is arguably the prototypical screwball comedy, a genre which hit its prime on the silver screen during the Great Depression. Shaw’s play has the attributes of this breed of humor, notable for its madcap perspective and cross-class romancing, such as in Frank Capra’s 1934 It Happened One Night and George Cukor’s 1940 The Philadelphia Story. Indeed, Heartbreak House’s Bohemian household seems to be forerunners of the wacky, freethinking Sycamore family in Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman’s 1937 play You Can’t Take It With You, which Capra adapted for the screen a year later.

Heartbreak House debuted just as the twenties started to roar, and must have seemed very libertine in its day. With its shifting romantic liaisons, dalliances and alliances, the play seems as sexually footloose as characters in Woody Allen films, particularly his 1982 A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy.  The play is largely seen as an allegory of Europe on the eve of destruction, as World War I, that charnel house of trench warfare and poison gas (the WMDs of its day),looms. This conflagration is hinted at near the end, wherein director Ellen Geer makes good use of the Topanga Canyon grounds where the Theatricum’s amphitheater is set. In any case, what especially interests me about Shaw is that he takes complex theories about economics and class and renders them in dramatic form in a popular mass entertainment medium.

For example, in 1913’s Pygmalion, smug middle class Prof. Henry Higgins, that cunning linguist, indulges in class struggle (as well as the war between the sexes) with the plebian flower girl Eliza Doolittle, whom he endeavors to convert from a guttersnipe into a well mannered repository of respectability. (Along with Moss Hart, Lerner and Lowe famously transformed Pygmalion into the beloved musical My Fair Lady; incidentally, Rex Harrison starred in screen versions of My Fair Lady in 1964 and of Heartbreak House in 1985.) In 1905’s Major Barbara Shaw, a man of the left, dramatizes an economic theory about the role the armaments industry plays in industrial capitalism that is similar to that of the German Spartacist Rosa Luxemburg.

Shaw similarly skewers capitalism in Heartbreak House, and Alan Blumenfeld has good fun deconstructing Boss Mangan. At the heart of the play is whether or not the far younger and more attractive Ellie Dunn (Willow Geer) should wed this presumed man of means. Shaw poses the predicament: Is one to marry for money or love? He also reveals the dilemma of women during that era, disadvantaged by society’s chauvinist conventions and constrictions, and how marriages of conveniences were among the few options open to the so-called “fairer sex.”

Heartbreak House also references race relations. Captain Shotover, the world rover, mentions that he married a “Negress” in the Caribbean, which would make his coquettish daughters with their Greek myth inspired names, depicted by the Caucasian actresses Ariadne Utterword (Susan Angelo) and Hesione Hushabye (Melora Marshall), biracial. However, unlike in the Theatricum’s version of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, also playing this summer in repertory, the themes of miscegenation and race are barely if at all explored in its Heartbreak House.

To my untutored ear Willow affects a flawless English accent, as does most of the cast, as they toss Shavian barbs about like so many verbal Molotov cocktails. Willow’s Ellie convincingly careens from girlish innocence to Lady MacBeth-like scheming. As the family patriarch, Captain Shotover, Hunt is alternately daft and worldly wise, and dispenses some indispensable pearls of wisdom to befuddled Ellie. Mark Lewis is suitably dashing as the rakish raconteur Hector Hushabye, while Ed Giron as the bungling burglar, Aaron Hendry as Randall Utterword and David Stifel as Mazzini Dunn, all have suitably comic turns. On opening night some of the best dialogue was delivered by a dog who repeatedly barked during the first scene -- before adlibbing lines in a droll improv that led to the canine thespian’s expulsion from the stage.

Ellen skillfully helms the ensemble cast of around 15, but one standout who demands to be remarked upon is the mellifluous Marshall, who marshals her considerable energy and talent like a preternaturally gifted shape shifter. In the Theatricum’s Measure for Measure Marshall plays a mustachioed male character, but in Heartbreak House she portrays one of Captain Shotover’s daughters, the eccentric seductress Hesione Hushabye. As she slings zingers with savoir faire, clad in her gown and wig of long black tresses, Marshall is simply unrecognizable from the Lucio she depicts in Measure for Measure. A non-actor can only marvel at how thespians can transmute themselves from one role to another completely different, even diametrically opposed part.

There is much to commend this play to the viewer, but Marshall’s performance alone is worth the ticket price. This type of sophisticated theater driven by the oral pyrotechnics of Shaw’s dialogue may not be everyone’s cup of tea and crumpets, but to them I say “pshaw!” I loved this sparkling, sexy, witty gem.

Heartbreak House runs through September 30 at the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga. For more information: 310/455-3723; www.Theatricum.com.

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