REVIEW: 'The Whale' offers a whopper of a tale

Tom Alan Robbins and Cory Michael Smith in The Whale. Photo by Terry Shapiro.

WHAT: The Whale
WHERE: Ricketson Theatre, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, 1050 13th Street, Denver
WHEN: 6:30 p.m. Tuesdays to Thursdays, 7:30 p.m. Fridays, 1:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays and 1:30 p.m. Sundays through Feb 19
COST: $47.00 to $57.00

Even as a (part-time) theater critic, I rarely get to see the world premiere of a major new play. Fortunately, I live just an hour and a half from the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, which is a hotbed for new play development. And last Thursday I saw a new drama by Samuel D. Hunter which reminded me why I go to the theatre: to be entertained, of course, but more importantly, to experience life more fully and to connect with people different than me.

The play is The Whale, a deceptively simple story about a man named Charlie. Charlie is slowly killing himself. Not through drugs or alcohol, but through food. Charlie, you see, is morbidly obese.

"I haven't been able to weigh myself in years," Charlie replies when asked how much he weighs. "Five-fifty? Six hundred?"

His friend Liz, a registered nurse, has had it. She threatens to send him to an emergency room, but he refuses to go. He has no health insurance. And besides, he's saving all his money to give to his daughter Ellie when he dies. A daughter that he hasn't seen since he left her mother for his gay lover 15 years ago. A daughter that now hates the very idea of him.

But when Charlie finally cajoles her into visiting him--it takes a hefty bribe to do it--he discovers that the hatred she so lovingly feeds is not directed only at him. It's directed at the world and everyone in it. And so Charlie, who makes a living as an online literature instructor, tries to break through the only way he knows how. He has her start a journal.

"Just write what you feel," he tells Ellie. "It won't be boring if it's honest."

It's that search for honesty that drives the story. Everyone is hiding something, it turns out, even Charlie. And as the characters discover, it's only in dropping their  facades that they can hope to make any connection worth having with the people in their lives.

It is a funny play, very funny at times. But it's not always an easy play to watch, not with so much hatred and invective spewed from every side. And these aren't easy people to like. Still, you can't tear your eyes from them, glimmering as they do with a rare and almost noble authenticity.

There are mysteries as well, so subtly done that you don't even realize you don't know the answers until you do. What does Charlie see in the missionary? Why does the missionary work alone? And why does Charlie insist on having a particular essay read to him--an essay even he admits isn't very good--every time his heart threatens to quit.

Moby Dick makes its appearance, as does the Biblical story of Jonah and the whale. But these never get heavy-handed or pedantic. Instead, they add layers of meaning to a story already brimming with it.

Charlie is brought to life by Tom Alan Robbins, a study in contrasts who shows emotional dexterity while making us feel the burden of his weight with with every lumbering step. Cory Michael Smith's gawky Elder Thomas bristles with nervous energy. And Nicole Rodenberg as Ellie may have the hardest task of all, making her snotty high school senior not just funny but charmingly so.

The technical highlights include Jason Simms' set, a cramped, nondescript apartment that acts as a treasure chest of details, from the empty soda boxes piled high in the kitchen to the pizza boxes jammed under the sofa to the mysterious stains soiling the well-worn carpet.  William Burns' whalelike calls create a haunting link between the often brief scenes.

and can someone give Kevin Copenhaver an award for constructing that amazingly fluid and lifelike fat suit?

Yes, pain can be a wall that keeps people apart. But The Whale is a powerful reminder that if we would only be honest about it, pain can also bind people together.

Two crazy nights

I just finished the most exhilarating, liberating experience of my life. And it didn't involve hang gliding, alcohol or drugs of any kind. Unless of course you consider caffeine a drug.

I'm talking about 24SEVEN, a wild, wacky and wonderfully exhausting 24-hour theatrical event.
Yeah, I know. No big deal. Lots of cities do these.

But not here. Not in Colorado Springs. Out cultural community is notoriously conservative, so it came as something of a relief (miracle?) when the highly regarded Springs Ensemble Theatre announced they were going to give it a shot.

Here's how it went down for myself and the six other writers who committed to this project (and should be committed period).

The event began at 7 p.m. on Friday at a non-descript office that is used by one of the writers in his day job. The rules were explained and we picked the seven prompts out of a hat (actually, a shoebox).

Location: New York City subway

Character name: Lola

Prop: Rat

Sound cue: Ringing phone

Line of dialogue: ""The more coffee I drink, the more it throbs."

We were given until 4 a.m. to complete a coherent 10-minute play that included all of these prompts.

Faced with this task, I felt nothing but bone-gnawing fear. Why? Because I'm the world's slowest writer. It takes me weeks to write a 10-minute play, six months for a full-length. But here I had just 7 1/2 hours.

I knew I couldn't overthink it. I had to just open my mind and turn on the faucet.

So that's what I did. Starting with that line of dialogue and working forwards and backwards from it to figure out who said that it and who were they with and what, oh what, were they fighting about.

It was glorious, the words coming so fast it felt like flying. Much different than the nitpicky slog my writing sessions usually consist of.

I sent off my "masterpiece" at 3 a.m.--a full hour before the deadline. At 5 a.m., the producers read, reformatted and printed out the scripts. At 6 a.m., the directors got to read the scripts and they were given only an hour to cast their plays from an array of head shots taped to the wall.

At 8:30 a.m., the actors "finally" rolled in and rehearsals began--grinding, mind-numbing rehearsals that lasted the entire day and didn't end until the first showtime at 7:30 p.m. The plays were well-written and well-received, surprisingly so, considering the headlong rush to production involved.

The best Christmas present of all

 

As many have been doing in this troubled economy, my wife and I kept our Christmas gift buying to a minimum this year. But I still got what I most wanted. Yesterday, Pioneer Drama Service informed me that they will be publishing my second play with them in the spring.

The play is Long Tall Lester, the one-act western comedy that I've written about before.

How does that make me feel? Ecstatic.

In a way, this feels like an even bigger breakthrough than getting my first play published. One play can be a fluke. But two... well, maybe one small part of my brain is starting to figure out this playwriting stuff.

The only problem? I've run out of plays to submit.

It's not that I haven't been writing. I've been writing like crazy.

It's that I haven't finished anything. Call it the Siren Song of the New Work. As any writer knows, a new play, a new novel, a new anything, seems brilliant when first conceived. The characters are vibrant. The storyline mesmerizing. The dialogue sparkling.

And then you start setting it down on paper.

Soon the characters lose some of their luster. The plot points start stumbling over each other. The dialogue isn't quite so clever.

Then a New Work calls. This one promises to be different. This one promises to be perfect in every way.

So you drop the first work.

But the truth is that good stories don't spring fully-formed from the mind. They're born kicking and screaming, and they only reach maturity through a lot of sweat, tears and mind-numbing drudgery.

And so for 2012, I'll be making just one New Year's resolution.

Resist the Siren Call and finish something.

The other side of the footlights

 


Just finished a two-week run at the wonderful Millibo Art Theatre in Colorado Springs. Only this time I wasn't a playwright, I was an actor.

Yep, you read that right. I -- Mr. Introvert, Mr. Can't-Act-His-Way-Out-of-a-Paper-Bag -- took a rare turn on the proverbial boards.

It wasn't my plan, but when a prominent local director drafted me to appear in a play, who was I to question her judgment?

The play was "Out the Window", a hilarious 15-minute comedy written by the criminally talented Colorado Springs actor Jordan Mathews for a 44-hour playwriting contest. (That's my equally talented co-star Carolyn Sinon grasping me for dear life above.)

I was only on stage for about two minutes, but what I learned will feed my writing for a lifetime.

The thing that most surprised me about performing was how monotonous it was playing the role every night. And that was for just six performances! Carolyn and I had to change it up every night just to keep ourselves sane.

And that was the saving grace of the whole experience. Not only did it make performing more fun, it helped us come up with bits that squeezed every drop of laughter from the audience.

In our scene, we played two office workers taking a coffee break outside. Early on, we came up with the idea of me reading a newspaper as a veritable between my cocoon and the deluge of vernage spewing from her mouth.

We played with the newspaper a bunch of different way. Some of them worked, some of them didn't. But we didn't come up with the real payoff until the final night of the show.

That night, instead of holding a full section of the paper, I held only a single sheet. This meant that when she grabbed my newspaper, instead of it coming free in her hands, it ripped right down the middle in two long strips.

And I continued to read one of the strips, impervious to her rant, to the delight of the audience.

So what's the takeaway for me as a playwright?

Simply this. Trust your actors.

The script is merely a blueprint for the play. Lay the groundwork for the story, of course. But then step back and let the actors do what they do best: play.

The actors will be happier. The audience will be happier.

And your play will truly come to life.

If Tony Kushner can't make a living at this, what chance do I have?

Although his politics are somewhat suspect, I can't help but love the always insightful scribblings of America's most influential theatre critic. No, not Ben Brantley of the New York Times. He's merely the most influential theatre critic on Broadway.

No, I'm talking about Terry Teachout of the The Wall Street Journal. He covers not just the Broadway stage or the New York theater world, but the vast reach of our country's regional stages from Provincetown to La Jolla.

So it was with with considerable relish that I read his latest Sightings column, in which he commented on a recent interview with Tony Kushner in Time Out New York.

Turns out that Mr. Kushner, who wrote the groundbreaking Angels in America, can't live on the money he makes from plays. He makes the bulk of his income writing for movies.

Which led Teachout to ask, why does anyone still write plays?

For Teachout, the answer was simple. It enables the solitary writer to get out from behind his keyboard and collaborate with the nicest--and, I would add, most interesting--people around.

Theatre also gives the writer an experience no novel or magazine article can emulate: the immediate and visceral response of your audience.

I concur. I have never felt as fulfilled or--let's just say it--happy as when I heard an auditorium full of normally cynical high school students laughing their earbuds off during one of my plays.

But there's something more. I write because I have to write. Money doesn't enter into it. And the voices that come to me, demanding to be heard, are ones that belong on a stage.

I don't know if I'll ever make much money from these ghostlike voices. But I do know one thing.

If I didn't write them down, I'd go crazy.

The most important part of theatre

My new playwriting group, The Drama Lab, had its first meeting last night and everyone agreed it went very well. We had twelve people show up, including four actors and two playwrights beside myself.

I never worried about attracting writers. There's a healthy number of aspiring playwrights out there and we're one of the only places in town where they can see their stuff on a stage.

My big worry has always been actors. While we offer them a great opportunity to practice their craft, they have a lot more places to go.

But I was pleasantly surprised by how many people came just to watch. And I soon realized the incredible gift they bring to the readings. Their comments to the playwrights were spot on, and I know that hearing their laughter--or lack thereof--during the reading of my play helped me nail down which lines needed work.

Sure, playwrights are the ones who turn blank pages into stories. And actors breath life into those stories.

But in the end, it's the audience that makes theatre happen. For without them, we're just shouting into a dark and empty room.

Making theatre where you live

Westcliffe, Colorado is a town that takes its theatre seriously. And that's largely because of one woman, Anne Kimbell Relph.

Relph is a former stage and screen star who in 1992 planned to retire by buying her dream property, a large ranch just outside this little town in the shadow of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the dream. Relph learned that the six-decade-old Jones Theater was about to be sold and turned into a laundromat. Horrified, she bought the building and rechristened it the Westcliffe Center for the Performing Arts, eventually adding a costume shop, youth theater and radio station.

That's where my one-act comedy Long Tall Lester was performed this weekend along with three other plays as part of the New Rocky Mountain Voices competition. The two-night run attracted about 100 people in this town of 300--a percentage of the local populace that playwrights in New York would kill for.

The historic 184-seat theater is still used to show first-run movies, but it also hosts community theater productions, high school plays, bluegrass concerts--even the occasional opera. Ever supportive of her community, Relph also offers the theater for free to local fundraising groups.

Oh, and that ranch? Forget about it. Relph lives with her husband in the small apartment above the theater.

And she couldn't be happier.