REVIEW: 'Night of the Iguana'

Among mid-20th century American "realistic" playwrights, Tennessee Williams is right up there with Arthur Miller, Eugene O'Neill and William Inge. Williams' best plays present a person on the precipice of a complete mental and emotional collapse, surrounding them with characters who alternately push and pull the protagonist over or back from the edge. Most of the time, the protagonist falls.

"The Night of the Iguana" isn't "top-tier" Williams, compared with "The Glass Menagerie," "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." But it is a worthy play, and deserves to be performed more frequently, just so long as you have a director who "gets" Williams, and can find a leading man who is able to present a carefully graduated total breakdown for a little more than two hours.

Director Rick Bernstein clearly understands and appreciates Williams', and he's brought in union guest artist Cajardo Lindsey for the Miners Alley Playhouse production of "Iguana." The result is a commanding success, a powerful, cathartic drama that, unlike some of Williams' plays, has more than a hint of personal redemption.

T. Lawrence Shannon (Lindsey), a disgraced Episcopal priest who crashed and burned less than a year after graduating from the notoriously liberal seminary in Sewanee, has a weakness for pubescent girls, a fondness for drinking himself blotto, and a flawed theology that recognizes God only in storms, or as a senile delinquent. Establishing a new career as a tour guide for groups of women traveling through Mexico, he's reached total burnout, finding dubious sanctuary at a run-down resort owned by a lusty, red-headed widow (Rhonda Lee Brown).

Having succumbed to the advances of a clingy, underage "Lolita" (Kenzie Kilroy), and subjected to the wrath of an emasculating harpy (Kellie Rae Rockey), he's facing permanent blacklisting in the tourism industry. Shannon exhausts himself trying to salvage both ruined careers, and resisting the obvious alternative: helping the widow run the resort.

In addition to some delightfully annoying German tourists and an amiable Mexican "handyman," the resort shelters two other hangers-on: a frail, elderly poet (Roger L. Simon) hoping to finish one last poem before he dies, and his artist granddaughter Hannah (Paige L. Larson) who has faced loneliness and grown through it.

All but Hannah are satellite characters, existing primarily to orbit around Shannon, bringing out the best and the worst in this deeply wounded man, urging him to an existential crisis and beyond. Only the angelic Hannah can offer true compassion, deftly maneuvering Shannon toward acceptance and peace. I'm not even sure he ever realizes what a gift from God she truly is.

Lindsey's performance as Shannon is electrifying. He finds seemingly limitless ways to depict a man drowning in his own brokenness, with only his desperate need for dignity to keep him going. Larson is rock solid yet ethereal as the self-sacrificing artist who has accepted her vocation of living to serve others. Brown is wonderfully loud and lascivious, a perfect expression of unashamed carnality, while Simon is touchingly poignant as the feeble poet, living entirely in an interior world. Rockey is terribly intimidating as the formidable church lady who has her own secret attraction to the young temptress, ably played by Kilroy, though Kilroy's role is much smaller than in the Richard Burton film version of this play.

Bernstein, an accomplished director, has a special sensitivity to Williams, and it shows. This is a particularly tricky work, with lots of characters moving through the action, but he keeps the focus exactly where it needs to be. Special mention must be given to Richard H. Pegg, whose scenic design is extraordinarily detailed, and who even manages to create a tropical storm on the small stage.

I love plays that take the audience through the "valley of the shadow of death of the ego," and bring us through to a greater appreciation of the human condition, of the frailty of fallen man, the need for meaningful relationships and the hope of redemption. Miners Alley Playhouse's excellent production of "The Night of the Iguana" does this beautifully.

 

Miners Alley presents Tennessee Williams' classic drama "The Night of the Iguana" 7:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 6 p.m. Sundays through October 23. (Note the October 23 performance is at 2 p.m., with no 6 p.m. performance that day.) Tickets are $19-$26.50, with senior, student and group rates available. The playhouse is located at 1224 Washington Avenue, Golden. Call 303-935-3044 or visit online at www.minersalley.com.

REVIEW: 9/11 Firefighters eulogized in 'The Guys'

Michael Ingram and Rita Broderick in The Guys.Photo Credit: Michael Ensminger

Ten years after THE terrorist attack, 9/11 has become a kind of national holiday. Citizens are encouraged to fly their flags, attend community events, concerts, picnics, even remembrance runs. On the flip side, conspiracy theories persist, t-shirts are sold, TSA thugs fondle our children and our infirm elderly at airports in the illusory name of "security," and all of it is based on the realization that our identity as Americans changed forever that fateful day. An event like that brings out the best and worst in people.

"The Guys," one of the very first plays to emerge after this tragedy, reminds us that approximately one tenth of the fatalities on 9/11 were firefighters and other first responders who willingly but unwittingly went to their deaths in the hope of saving the lives of others, and that our duty, first and foremost, is to honor their sacrifice and grieve.

The premise is simple, and based on a true-life encounter. A fire department captain (Michael Ingram) who was off duty that shift, is required to give eight eulogies in two weeks, and can't think of what to say. A former journalist (Rita Broderick) agrees to write the eulogies for him. They sit in chairs facing each other. He describes four unique and memorable individuals. She writes the eulogies. Not a lot of external action, but inside, there is a strange and compelling transfer of grief. He feels better, because now he can express his loss while affirming the lives and work of his men. She pays a terrible and heart-wrenching price, writing intimately and authentically about guys she never met, and never will.

This kind of play is an actor's tour de force opportunity, and the great danger would be to just let the actors direct themselves, which could lead to all kinds of self-indulgence. Thankfully, Firehouse Theater Company's production, playing at the John Hand Theater through September 17, has brought in Don DeVeux, an accomplished actor AND director, to guide the actors into the deep places of their psyches required to transform this from a performance into an experience. DeVeux also provides a bigger picture, a concept and context through which the audience, a decade later, can enter into this intimate conversation. Our response rightfully falls somewhere between those of the two characters.

"The Guys" runs 75 minutes and is performed without intermission. Each performance is followed by readings of first-hand accounts of the events on 9/11.

There is no shortage of 9/11 themed programming available as the anniversary approaches. But if you want to get up close and personal, check out Firehouse Theater Company's production of Anne Nelson's "The Guys."

"The Guys" plays through September 17 at the John Hand Theatre/Colorado Free University, 7653 East First Place, Denver. Call 303-562-3232 or visit www.firehousetheatercompany.com for information.

REVIEW: "Reefer Madness"

Natasha Gleichmann, James O'Hagan Murphy and Whitney Fisher in Equinox Theatre Company's "high" and mighty production of the musical "Reefer Madness."

The principal difference between "Reefer Madness," the 1938 cautionary film and "Reefer Madness," the "hit" musical presented by Equinox Theatre Company at the Bug Theatre, is that the first takes the "high" road, and the latter aims very, very low. The first was unintentionally amusing because of it's deadly earnestness in presenting a grossly fictionalized account of small town teens brought to destruction and despair by the demon weed marijuana. The musical delights in its over the top, below the belt depiction of the slippery slope from loss of innocence into degeneration and depravity precipitated by experimentation with the forbidden "fruit."

Naive high school student Jimmy (in a stellar performance by James O'Hagan Murphy), abandons the sweet girl next door Mary (Ariel Cagan) and the "square" life when he falls under the influence of several seedy characters who get him hooked on a kind of pot that is so potent it seems to have been laced with a combination of PCP, Meth, crack cocaine and Satan himself. Jimmy's freefall from grace leads to lying, theft, sexual deviance, violence, futile attempts to turn over a new "leaf," and eventually to a seat in the electric chair.

In a pivotal scene, a goofy, grinning "Jesus" (Robert Harbour) urges Jimmy to renounce marijuana and embrace the greater pleasures that God offers, but Jimmy cries out "I have a different god, now." Too true, and he reaps the whirlwind. Later, the drug-fueled hallucination of Jesus, the great "High" King returns, not to save the repentant Jimmy, but to gloat at the sinner's comeuppance. Ouch.

The frequently semi- and often cross-dressed cast are clearly having so much fun celebrating the aberrant behavior depicted in "Reefer Madness," it's possible they have no idea how effective this satire can be in actually discouraging drug abuse. But the extremely bright director, Colin Roybal obviously "gets it," and makes the most of Kevin Murphy and Dan Studney's brilliant book, lyrics and music. The show is uproariously funny, the musical numbers are show-stoppers, and the cast over-acts (if that's possible with this material) with total abandon. Despite numerous heavily eroticized situations, the show is far from titillating. It's hysterically funny and repugnant at the same time.

The only sour note in the whole show is a last minute indictment against the "government" for telling us lies about the true properties of marijuana, in an effort to scare its citizens into avoiding the pitfalls of drug use. It's true that marijuana is more likely to render people stupid and useless than turn them into drooling lunatics, rapists and murderers. But the "evils" of weed are so demonized, it becomes a metaphor for other threats to human dignity, and so actually and compellingly makes the very point the show seeks to ridicule.

Equinox Theatre Company's three most recent big hits: "Night of the Living Dead," "Little Shop of Horrors" and "Reefer Madness," are all horror comedies in which the laws of society and personal integrity are seriously eroded by an irresistible and irreversible external force. All three shows present the post-modern deterioration of human dignity and collapse of moral boundaries into a fatalistic orgy of excess. Damnation has never seemed like so much fun. But it does give one pause to recognize a pattern.

"Reefer Madness" is absolutely "adults only." It's not going to poison their minds or destroy their morals, but it would simply be too hard to explain to children why adults who should know better are acting so stupid. Ah, the innocence of youth.

Equinox Theatre Company's "Reefer Madness" plays at the Bug Theatre, 3654 Navajo St. in Denver, through September 17. All tickets are $15, and performances are Fridays-Saturdays only, at 7:30 p.m. Visit www.equinoxtheatredenver.com for tickets and information.