The Curious Savage is, without a doubt, a difficult play to perform and direct. Set in a sanatorium shortly after the end of WWII, it is filled with both deep emotion and over-the-top silliness, and weaving these often-contradictory dimensions into a coherent whole requires a deft directorial hand and impeccable execution by the performers. Alas, the current production by the Is What It Is Theatre of John Patrick's serio-comedy fails at almost every level.
The tone for the evening is unintentionally established before the play even begins, as the audience is presented with a set that features an unbalanced combination of two-and-three dimensional set pieces. Having a piano painted on the back wall is "curious" enough in its own right, but the viewer's eye is most drawn to the painted window, with its bright yellow sun shining through, even though the program states that the story begins and ends in the evening.
In an ensemble piece such as The Curious Savage, all the pieces must work seamlessly together in order to create a believable rhythm, and the lack of that rhythm is this production's most notorious downfall. Even though there were some fine performances by some of the actors - as well as some wonderful moments provided by every performer - the pace of the show was, overall, so uneven and "herky-jerky" that the audience was never allowed to actually be drawn into the story's intimacies - kept instead at arm's length, far more intrigued by the actors and their foibles than the characters they portrayed. Not even the perfectly designed costumes alas, uncredited could weave the evening together into something vaguely resembling a polished production.
This is sad, for scattered throughout the maelstrom were pockets of calm brilliance, such as Drew Riley's spot-on portrayal of the reclusive/explosive Mrs. Paddy, Peter J. Good's kind and gentle Hannibal and Tricia Arnseth as the flighty-yet-delicate Fairy May. (A special mention deserves to be made herein of Annie Jackson as the designed-to-be-overlooked Miss Willie. Her consistency was a breath of fresh air.) Even Alice Bjorkland, as the pivotal Ethel P. Savage, showed flashes of radiance, although they were all-too-often lost in the madness of the moment.
These performances, however, could not salvage the production as a whole. Clumsy blocking and spacing appeared at times almost caricaturish , and unforgivably long pauses between lines demolished any sense of realism and pace that had been occasionally established. Indeed, when Mrs. Savage's three step-children would enter, they were accompanied by campy music straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon, creating even more distance between the audience and the performance. (By the time this stylised "entrance dance" occurred for the second time, the audience had withdrawn to a safe distance well beyond the fourth wall, and when one of the characters accidentally slammed into a somewhat recalcitrant door as he hurried to make an exit, the slapstick moment turned into the highlight of the evening.)
Director Tom Leveen bears the ultimate responsibility for this production, and one is left to wonder if the demands of a play such as The Curious Savage vastly exceeded the resources available, of if Leveen made directorial choices that simply did not work. In the end, the result is, unfortunately, the same.
Production Details:
The Curious
Savage by John
Patrick
Is
What It Is Theatre
Studio One Performing Arts Center, Phoenix (For a
map to location, click this
link)
(480) 994-9495
June 14th - 29th, 2002