Chris Bennion
Procaccino and Hodges: "Help me, I'm miscast."
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The Night of the Iguana
ACT Theatre; ends Sun., Aug. 28
Jon Jory's production of Tennessee Williams' sex-and-salvation opus is so unbelievable, it barely exists. The show is blatantly fraudulent and distressingly blah, despite its continued attempts to convince us otherwise with a lot of pacing and yelling and the kind of carnal missed connections better suited to the staging of a bedroom farce than a work by one of America's two or three greatest playwrights.
Iguana finds a defrocked, detoxifying, and delinquent Southern minister–cum–tour guide holed up at a flea-bitten hotel in Mexico with a few other lonely travelers. There's a lot of railing at God, but much more of a singularly exposed Williams—entering into the last round of his own game of self-delusion with this 1961 play—praying that our shared, beautiful deceptions be allowed to help us live out our desperate days and inconsolable nights. Or, as Hannah Jelkes, a faded flapper also in need of lodging south of the border, puts it, "The moral is to accept whatever situation you cannot improve."
You cannot, unfortunately, improve what's gone wrong in Jory's staging, which becomes evident within moments of Patricia Hodges' appearance as Maxine, the widowed, horny proprietor of the rundown villa. Hodges reaches for the earthy, loose-limbed languor of the role, but she doesn't look right in her jeans. I don't mean that as a slight on designer Marcia Dixcy Jory's costume choices; I mean that Hodges doesn't look right in her jeans. Her imperious Maxine doesn't seem like a jeans wearer, nor does she have the relaxed sensuality of a woman who's casually screwing her establishment's two young Mexican staffers (Ben Gonio and Dennis Mosley, both more happy puppies than the oblivious Latin studs one would suppose ol' Tennessee had envisioned). Hodges also can't strike a spark with John Procaccino's lapsed Rev. Shannon, for which I cannot blame her since Procaccino is even more miscast than she is.
The production is so miscast, in fact, that there's a loud voice in your head screaming "Liar!" each time a character onstage utters a line that does not fit the description of the performer we're watching. Procaccino's Shannon, who arrives at the hotel with a broken-down busload of randy church girls and their bullheaded chaperone (Laura Kenny, all bluster), tells old flame Maxine, "A spook has moved in with me," yet he doesn't appear to be haunted at all—twitchingly neurotic and irritated, yes, but nothing resembling a man with an unshakable spiritual crisis. And while I've always had a soft spot for Suzanne Bouchard, who shows up as Hannah with her "97-years-young" poet grandfather (Clayton Corzatte, just fine), I'll confess to stifling a slight cough when she claims to be "pushing 40." Shannon, who falls for Hannah, much to Maxine's dismay, eventually calls the virginal spinster a "fantastic cool hustler"; she calls him one right back, and there you are in your head again howling, "Liar! Liar!" And so it goes.
There is no sexual or romantic tension between any of these people. When you've got the time to contemplate the wonders of the sound design—good on you, Dominic Cody Kramers, for that crackling storm—something is amiss no matter how proficient the technical work (and you can count Paul Owen's credible set among the night's other few successes). Director Jory addresses all the angst in a frantic manner that captures some of Williams' humor but none of his poetry, making the play feel twice as long because it isn't grounded in a world where anyone can believably do and say the things on display. When Procaccino drops to his knees and begs Kenny not to break his human pride, it's so removed from any inner conflict it plays like a hyperbolic joke; Lada Vishtak's Charlotte, the reverend's persistent teenaged amour, has been directed as a screeching comic harpy.
Act II has a little tenderness, but it's a sign of how much Jory has mishandled everything that the production's loveliest scene ends up as a kind of punch line. Hannah shares with Shannon the story of her one intimate experience, a brief encounter with a lonely, middle-aged businessman who shyly masturbates with an article of her clothing. When Shannon asks Hannah why she wasn't disgusted, she calmly replies, "Nothing human disgusts me." It's a moment of pure grace, and Bouchard catches something of Hannah's humbled dignity, but the scene goes so awry that the opening-night audience was laughing, which caused a disgruntled older patron next to me to mutter, "It's not funny."
No, it's not. This Iguana never finds its way into a universe where people can be both pitied and admired. "We live on two levels—the real level and the fantastic level," says Shannon. Yes, we do. The misfits of ACT's Mexico don't reside on either plane. STEVE WIECKING
Joe Bean: A Rock Fable
UW Ethnic Cultural Center; ends Sun., Aug. 21
It's not that Joe completely blows. The Bainbridge Island High School–spawned musical that updates the Book of Jobas a sort of satire of Northwest New Age types is surprisingly tuneful and sung by its dewy 15-member cast with palpable Judy-and-Mickey-have-a-show-in-the-barn brio. Composer Mark Nichols is the string arranger for the Walkabouts, and auteur of lots of popular local shows in cahoots with Joe co-lyricist and coauthor Bob McAllister. This work was invented out of sweaty necessity in two weeks, when Bainbridge High couldn't acquire rights to Jesus Christ Superstar in time for its 2003 show. And it's nothing if not ambitious: Andrew Lloyd Webber's company is called the Really Useful Theatre Company; Joe Bean is published by the Really Big Publishing Company.
