Passion won out for Chad Calvert, director of BareBones Theatre Group’s next production, Closer, opening this week at the Afro-Am Cultural Center. “When we were looking at shows for this season,” Calvert recalls, “Jim Yost and I both found Closer independently and submitted it at the same time. And our rule when deciding who’s directing shows is whoever’s the most passionate about a particular piece wins.” Obviously the Patrick Marber comedy wasn’t difficult to find. Winner of the Olivier Award for Best New Play and the Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy of the 1997 London season and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Play in 1999 Closer has been produced in over 50 countries in the past five years.
A romantic quadrille exquisitely crafted for the cyberspace age, Closer detonates with a riotously obscene episode of mistaken identity over the Internet.
Yost, BBTG’s founder and artistic director, didn’t exactly get cheated on his end. The newly crowned CL Theatreperson of the Year will play Dan, one of the juicier comic/dramatic roles of recent years. For awhile Dan writes obits until he is inspired by Alice to write his first published novel. Things begin to spin out of control when he meets Anna, the photographer shooting Dan’s portrait for the dust jacket.
Before long, Dan is pulling his hilarious online prank and Larry the dermatologist completes our quartet of faithless lovers.
“The things of substance are fairly timeless,” Calvert is quick to point out. “You’ll see them in any good drama or play about love and sex. It’s all about desire and betrayal, the contrast between emotional love and physical love. Very often, characters will mistake lust for love and vice versa.”
Mistaken identities and audacious masquerades have been comedy staples since before Shakespeare. With the advent of phone sex and cybersex, such familiar devices can be presented with a new level of credibility.
“One of the themes in the play is very much illusion and how people hide behind different identities,” Calvert asserts. “The cybersex element is a very clever way that Marber has been able to introduce that common kind of mistaken identity theme in romantic comedy. There’s a certain technological shorthand that has grown into our language nowadays that people understand automatically. Once the lights come up and people see two guys typing on their computers in separate rooms and the guys get into their conversation they’ll realize very clearly what is going on.”
As the pace of evolving technology accelerates, the contexts of the classics are receding rapidly. Supplying new contemporary contexts does more than refresh the old verities. It helps initiate a critical examination of newly altered realities.
BareBones has recently been involved in a couple of projects that shine new light on old classics. Calvert directed and starred in a fresh adaptation of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, opening up in the Afro-Am Attic Theatre on Halloween and eerily emphasizing the deep psychology embedded in the enigmatic ghost story. Playing all the supporting roles behind the female protagonist including the roles of the avuncular narrator and the timorous housemaid Mrs. Grose Calvert was responsible for all the additional absurdist layerings.
Then in January came the landmark BareBones collaboration with Chickspeare on the epic Othello-thon, including a concert reading of Shakespeare’s tragedy and a full production Paula Vogel’s feminist variant, Desdemona: A Play About a Handkerchief.
Then, lest you thought giving a new edge to the classics was the exclusive domain of Charlotte’s fringe theater companies, along came Charlotte Rep with a fire-wired revival of Moliere’s The Misanthrope. Suddenly those loving antagonists, Alceste and Celimene, were equipped with laptop and E-mail.
If you think, however, that BareBones is going to lavish anything like Rep’s high-tech fireworks on their upcoming production, kindly rein in your expectations. BareBones will continue in the threadbare tradition that gives them their name. And they’ll be following Marber’s example somewhat when they do.
When the notorious Internet scene was first produced, the actors remained silent while their chat-room dialogue was projected behind them. But like the famed subterranean boat in Phantom of the Opera and the mating dumpsters we mean the awesome barricades of Les Miz, the vaunted technology sometimes broke down. So Marber transcribed the scene into actual dialogue as a hedge against techno glitches.
BareBones takes it a step further.
“We’ve eliminated a lot of the very high-tech things because that’s not what BareBones is about,” Calvert confides. “The story really is a very deep intimate look at the lives of these four strangers. And we really wanted to focus on their relationships and really bringing them to the forefront rather than rely on stage tricks. I didn’t want people to come see this play and leave not talking about the emotional experience they just had or their connection with the characters.”
That would be another BareBones tradition “Theatre that makes you think,” to cite their longtime credo.
With Closer, BBTG has a script that will also likely make you laugh. Marber is a notably colorful character himself. Before his theatrical apotheosis at London’s National Theatre, he was an actor, a hit TV writer, and a stand-up comedian. That’s when he was behaving himself. He suffered clinical depression in his late teens, became a compulsive gambler in his early twenties, and now, in his late thirties, vigilantly guards against his addictive tendencies.
As a result, Marber writes comedy that is fluent with the manic fever, the brutal cruelty, and the ultimate mystery of desire.
“Some of it,” Calvert concludes, “is the kind of stuff that you laugh at because you’re so uncomfortable that you can’t react otherwise. There are places where, I guarantee, the audience is going to find itself laughing and then feeling just terrible that they laughed at the terrible things that just happened onstage.”
Closer opens at the Afro-Am this Thursday and runs through March 17.
Call BareBones at 704-577-7274 for info and reservations.
Reviews
With two top-6 finishes in the National Poetry Slam, Asheville native Glenis Redmond has proven that she can get down with her catchy tributes to icons of black heritage and her perky plugs for literacy. With lauded appearances from Seattle to London and back to Hickory as a performance artist, poetry reader, and collaborator with blues guitarist Scott Ainslie Redmond has also proven she can get around.
Now with her recent performance of Heroes and Sheroes at Children’s Theatre, Redmond has proven that she could get audiences on their feet, get them enthusiastically involved, and leave them clamoring for more. Redmond warmed up her Saturday matinee audience with exuberant performances of Carl Sandburg’s “Fog” and Ogden Nash’s “Termite.”
Then she plunged us all into her world of poetry with a suite of eight original compositions. Heroes included Michael Jordan and Redmond’s dad. “Sheroes” included Harriet Tubman, Redmond’s mom, and her grandma.
More delightful than these homages were the poems drenched in attitude. These tended to be the works that Redmond used to spark the most intense audience participation. Redmond co-starred with four volunteer moms in “Five Little Monsters” and choreographed the entire audience after splitting us in halves for “Nerds Rule!” An irresistible plea for library membership.
Redmond was at her best for “If I Ain’t African,” before wrapping up with a Q&A session. Considering the wrap-up came when she’d barely been onstage for 40 minutes, I felt the “How I Do It” section of the program was premature.
No doubt about it, Redmond can certainly work a crowd. The Q&A led smoothly to an encore and some down-home merchandising in the lobby of the Morehead Street fantasy palace. Keeping up with Charlotte’s demand for the product is about the only thing Redmond couldn’t get right. Books and audiocassettes that had been available for the Friday evening performance were sold out.
Charlotte Symphony is marching fearlessly into rarely explored territory this month. On the weekend before Passover, they’ve thoughtfully chosen to showcase Richard Wagner, and last week they brought Bach’s Mass in B Minor to the PAC for the first time.
Belk Theater wasn’t filled anywhere close to capacity when the fine Oratorio Singers of Charlotte launched into the opening “Kyrie” last Friday evening. Nor was there a review in our metro daily the morning after to rouse interest in the Saturday night encore. Apparently the classical music boycott which victimized the sterling Opera Carolina production of Der Rosenkavalier back in January has now been extended to Symphony whenever the whim hits. Even if they happen to be celebrating the Oratorios’ 50th anniversary.
For those of us who came to watch CSO associate conductor David Tang lead the Oratorio celebration and work his customary magic with Bach’s chorales the massive chorus and the slimmed-down orchestra were quite persuasive. While the slightly tart tones of guest tenor Michael Lockley might not be quite flavorful enough for leading operatic roles, his “Benedictus” was quite winning and heartfelt.
Similarly, while soprano Jennifer Ellis looked somewhat labored in her breathing at times, the sounds that wafted from her throat in the “Laudamus te” aria were heavenly. In solos with Lockley and mezzo Margaret Bragle, Ellis brought out the best in her partners. Or nearly their best. Bragle’s dialogue with lead bassoonist Mary Beth Griglak in “Qui sedes” couldn’t go on too long for me. The only disappointment was the debut of bass William Stone, a Grammy winner in 1988 who may have reached us too late in his career.
The concluding “Sanctus” and “Osanna” sections found the Oratorios in their most impressive and spirited form. Symphony responded brilliantly and sensitively all night long. Aside from the haunting work by Griglak, solos by principal flutist Susanna Self Huppert and concertmaster Jinny Leem were particularly distinguished.*
This article appears in Mar 6-12, 2002.
