A highly talented and dynamic actor/director/producer leading the company. A featured actress willing to take risks. Provocative, though flawed, material. An ensemble of mixed talent who are the impresario's acolytes, willing to do anything he asks, no matter how outrageous. A performance in a difficult venue. Wait a minute, I thought Peter and Mollie Cirino had moved to Seattle. Don't worry, they're still up where the sun doesn't shine. I'm speaking of their inheritors: Damon Dering and Nearly Naked Theatre. Mr. Dering is establishing himself as the man mounting shows in the style of Planet Earth theatre. Performer and designer talent levels will vary greatly, but there's still something inexplicably compelling about the final product.
For their third production, Mr. Dering has decided to mount something a little more lighthearted than his two previous efforts. Mind you, it's not necessarily happier, but it's definitely a show that has its tongue firmly planted in its cheek, Ken Russell's Salome's Last Dance. This play-within-a-play takes Oscar Wilde's wonderful tragedy, Salome, banned from production in 1892 by London's censoring Lord Chamberlain, and presents it's mounting in a brothel, with the owner as Herod, Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, playing John the Baptist, an inept chambermaid as Salome, and the various prostitutes and johns as the remainder of the ensemble. It's not a very good setup, but the script within, Wilde's Salome, is still brilliant, even when portrayed as a base farce.
And base it is. Fart jokes, drunkenness, onstage and offstage copulation, and intentionally mediocre performances abound. The intention is to juxtapose the power of the scripts implied sexuality and brutal violence with the actuality of the whorehouse, making one balance the power of art with the mercurial rules of censorship. Mr. Dering has gone for broke, broadening the show to its farthest extents. Of course, with a cast of mixed acting abilities, the difficulty of portraying talentless and merely being so makes for a hopelessly uneven evening.
His leads, Tim Butterfield as Wilde's boyfriend Bosey and the Baptist, Andrea Morales as chambermaid and Salome, Mary McGary as Lady Alice and Herodias, and himself as brothel owner and Herod, are well cast and offer some great performances. Mr. Butterfield is subdued as Bosey, and offers great pronouncements as the Baptist. Ms. Morales overplays both her roles, though the effect is both enjoyable and disturbing. Ms. McGary is more subdued, but effective. Mr. Dering, a gifted actor, is manic here, and the point of the script is brought home through his and Ms. Morales' performances.
Beyond this group, though, the offerings are subpar. The best work comes from Cisco Saavedra as the young Syrian Captain, and Matthew Harris as the golden-faced pageboy. The others either play bad badly, or overplay unimpressively.
Also in the tradition of Planet Earth, the design elements are as mixed as the performances. Alicia Marie Sanderson's set is functional, though very unattractive and shoddily dressed. Scott Campbell's light design is full of dark spots and muddy colors. Marc Pacheco's sound design is impressive, though, and Rahlan's costumes are schizophrenically great or bad.
Every theatre community needs a company that acts both as a proving ground for actors testing their mettle or trying to break in, and as a purveyor of challenging material. Nearly Naked Theatre is filling that void. Is their latest offering well-presented? Not really. More important than that, is it challenging? My companion and I talked about the concept long after the show ended. Mr. Dering wins in the thought department, and that's a victory in itself. Let's hope that he's able to find balance with their next offering, my favorite script for teaching playwriting, David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago.
Production Details:
Salome's Last Dance by Ken Russell,
incorporating Oscar Wilde's Salome
Nearly Naked Theatre
The Helen K. Mason Center for the Performing Arts, Phoenix (For
a map to this location, click this
link)
(602) 274-2432
November 25th - December 18th, 2000