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Actors’ talent balances out weak structure in ‘Violin’
(by Bob Wilcox - March 03, 2010)
Designer Dunsi Dai has created some incredibly complex sets for the tight spaces in which the New Jewish Theatre finds itself mounting its productions.
But for their current production of Charlie Varon’s The People’s Violin, Dai has simply set up a row of gray panels at Clayton High School’s Little Theatre, with a table and a couple of chairs on one side of the stage and another table and chairs of a different style on the other side. Glenn Dunn’s lights show us where to look, while projected titles name the place and, often, the person in it.
That’s all that’s needed for The People’s Violin, because no more than two people ever play a scene together, and those scenes have little dramatic action. Mostly, one of the two talks about something that happened in the past. The rest of the time, just one person is on the stage talking to us.
We’re supposed to pretend, as the actor is, that he’s really talking to a camera that is recording a documentary he’s making. Pretending is what we do at the theater, so that’s all right. But I’m afraid that this particular pretense is one of the things about The People’s Violin that irritated me. It’s a device that I’ve seen too often, and it usually serves as a crutch for a playwright who hasn’t done his work. I go to the theater to see things happen, not to hear about something that’s already happened.
And the device of using a letter from the past to resolve the play’s dilemmas is a device that wore out its credibility, with rare exceptions, in the 19th century.
Sol Shank is the person making the documentary and talking to the camera. The documentary is about Sol’s father, a famous psychoanalyst and author who has had great success treating Holocaust survivors. Sol hopes that his father’s name and fame will open the doors that none of his other film projects have opened.
But as he explores his father’s life and career, he uncovers question after question about who his father really is. And that leads him to question his own identity.
That search can lead to occasional bursts of dramatic excitement: a few early moments with his father, confrontations with his wife as his marriage falls apart, a moving conversation with his mother near the end, and occasionally a flare-up as he interviews someone from his father’s past. Even Sol’s internal struggle has its moments of dramatic excitement.
But much of the time when you’re watching The People’s Violin, you’re listening to people telling stories. Playwright Varon gives them good stories to tell and the people telling them tell them well. In a masterful performance, Richard Strelinger, who never leaves the stage, almost makes up for the weaknesses in the playwright’s structure as he excavates Sol’s troubled soul. Three other actors, with assistance from costume designer Michele Friedman Siler, take on multiple roles. Richard Lewis plays Sol’s father as well as his older colleagues and contributers to Sol’s search.
I had a little trouble at first keeping track of whether Ruth Heyman was playing Sol’s wife or mother — both speak with accents — but less trouble as she unfolded their characters, and none when she became a perky video editor or a worn Holocaust survivor. Terry Meddows amazes and delights, as he so often does, with the range and clarity of his stable of characters.
Ed Herrmann’s music smartly bridges scenes as the performance moves smoothly and clearly under the sure direction of Deanna Jent.
With some good stories and excellent performances, but an unsatisfactory dramatic structure, the New Jewish Theatre’s production of The People’s Violin continues in the Clayton High School Little Theatre through March 14. Tickets and information are available at 442-3282 and at www.newjewishtheatre.org.
• Bob Wilcox also reviews theater for KDHX-FM, 88.1, and for cable’s Two on the Aisle, available online at kdhx.org.
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