The trio of one-acts was performed in the Byron Theatre at the Newman Center from February 9-12 brought together two of the most famous playwrights of the twentieth century and the head of drama at the University of Denver.
The students’ acting was impressive and as DU director Craig Volk said, “G.B., Tennessee and me…my, oh my. What good, daunting fortune to be on the same bill.”
The first one act,”Overruled,” which was written by George Bernard Shaw and guest directed by Kathryn Gray, follows the extra-marital relationships between two couples. It takes place in the lounge of a seaside hotel during the 1920s.
Mr. Juno, played by Chris L. Johnson, is madly in love with his wife, played by Lyndsay Dru Corbett. Yet, he is having an affair with Mrs. Lunn, played by Lesley Ann Beckmann. Incidentally, Mrs. Juno loves her husband with all her heart, except the passion she saves for Mr. Lunn, played by Jeffrey K. Graves. The play itself has a rather fluffy, trite, and simplistic feel, as the characters banter with each other throughout.
Confusion ensues as they try to decide who they are supposed to eat dinner with and how they should behave around one another. In many ways, they play felt comparable to Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest.” For those of you who enjoy a good, silly chuckle, you would thoroughly enjoy “Overruled.”
Guest director Kathryn Gray has been working in Denver theatre since 1978 and clearly knows the ins and outs of staging and dramatization. She not only directs, but is also a dialect coach for 10 minute intermission and set change was Tennessee Williams’s “This Property Is Condemned.”
The play follows the interactions between young Willie, played by Kari Delany, and Tom, played by Jon Webb, two teenagers who meet at the railroad tracks in a small Mississippi town during the Great Depression. Willie’s beloved sister has recently passed away, leaving her with a condemned house and haunted by memories.
Willie is desperately lonely and constructs elaborate stories about her life, as Tom sits quietly listening. Though Willie may appear to be crazy, it seems that her craziness is simply a cry for help. She wants friends and misses her family. What’s more, she passes her days walking the tracks, hoping to meet strangers who will show her the slightest sign of affection.
This is a much more serious performance; few laughs were heard during the course of the play. The acting was very impressive, and the characters came alive with their sadness and solitude. Guest director Lawrence Hecht has created and produced over one hundred plays across the country, focusing on the Denver Center of Performing of Arts for the past several years. While he focuses mainly on stage productions, he played the role of Sydney Prescott’s father, Neal Prescott, in the Scream trilogy.
Following another 10 minute intermission and massive set transformation, came “What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor?” written and directed by Craig Volk. The play, set in modern time New York City, is about interactions between strangers and the effects of kindness on the human psyche.
Beth, played by Erica Bates, is a lonely and scared girl who comes home one day to find a mute sailor, played by Matt Cornish, on her doorstep. Concerned about her well being, as well as his, she repeatedly asks him if he needs help.
He shows her the inside of his dirty, bloodstained cap, which contains numbers. She dials the numbers, hoping to find an answer to his bizarre behavior, but fails. Soon she and the sailor wander into the house, only to be discovered by her paranoid, angry sister Marsha, played by Sara Stevens.
As Beth and the sailor become friends, Marsha fears Beth is losing her grasp on the world. The sailor’s parting words leave Beth in awe: he simply repeats her name and gives her his cap.
His eeriness lends to the overall affect of the play: clearly something happened in his life to make him mute. It is Beth’s kindness that renders him alive once again. Writer/director Craig Volk graduated from Yale and worked on the staff of famous television show Northern Exposure.
He wrote the play when he was twenty and in the peak of an absurdist stage. As he says, “I had long fallen under the spell of “character dramas,” two fragile yearning characters longing for the privilege to dream.”
