Dirty Story at Intiman Theater - Theater Review

Shawn Law, Allen Fitzpatrick and Carol Roscoe

Question : Have you ever seen a woman in the front row of a theater, bend forward to put her face between her knees and cover her ears with her hands so she won't see or hear anything that is coming in the following potentially disturbing sequence of events on stage? Have you then seen that same woman, after intermission, laughing uproariously with the rest of the audience at the hilariously ridiculous antics that the play and its players are presenting? If you have, then you were fortunate enough to be at the Intiman Theatre's studio space this past Friday night, enjoying the vastly entertaining production of John Patrick Shanley's 2003 play Dirty Story with me.

While certainly extreme, this woman's physicalized reactions are the perfect way to frame the experience of witnessing this play. Brutus (Shawn Law) and Wanda (Carol Roscoe), who we meet, and who meet each other in Act 1, start their relationship with barbed tension and allow it to develop into frightening physical and psychological abuse. But shortly before intermission, broad and most welcomed comedy bursts through the door and announces that nothing we have seen so far is quite what we thought. When we return to Act 2, our expectations have been thrown out the window and we are taken on a wild ride that includes an overweight cowboy as Uncle Sam, a British bartender who seems to have walked in from a a Beckett play, ballroom dancing, a hilarious duet of "You Light Up My Life," slow motion stage combat and some of the best comic timing I've seen on stage in  a while, all in the name of global politics.

Director Valerie Curtis-Newton

If it all this sounds a bit like a mess of a play, well it kind of is. John Patrick Shanley is really pushing his metaphors and symbolism here and not all of it comes together. But under Valerie Curtis-Newton's tight meticulous direction, the evening moves at the perfect pace. The conviction and commitment of the cast to the material, in both its silliness and its import, keeps us fully invested throughout. The design team, with a smart, clean and imaginative set by Jennifer Zeyl and transformative lighting and sound by LB Morse and Matt Starritt respectively, really help focus the, at times, three ring circus of a script.

Quinn Franzen and Allen Fitzpatrick

The charming Quinn Franzen as Frank and the outstanding Allen Fitzpatrick as Watson, have such great comic timing together, that I'd love to see them cast together again in a similar Vladimir and Estragon type of relationship in the future. Carol Roscoe is pitch perfect as Wanda/Nipples/Israel, carefully navigating her character's evolution from wide-eyed and hopeful apprentice to militaristic and pious warlord. Only Shawn Law's portrayal of Brutus fell flat for me. He seemed possessed by a manic anger that didn't seem called for by the script and never found a grounded focus on stage.

With classics like Hedda Gabler and Romeo and Juliet and such a great name like Dan Savage associated with Miracle!, it would be easy for Dirty Story to be the least noticed production at the Intiman Theatre Festival. I hope that is not the case. This is a fun and wonderfully executed production that deserves to be seen by a wide audience.

Dirty Story plays as part of the Intiman Theatre Festival through August 25th tickets here

The Actor's Choice vs The Director's Choice -The Reviewer's Dilemna

The situation : You have just seen two plays within a couple days of one another. In working on your reviews for these plays you find that there are central performances in both plays that you felt were off. However, in describing the performances you realize that in one case you commend the actor and blame the director for the choices made. In the second case you notice that you are putting all the fault on the actor's choices. What makes the difference? Is it fair for the reviewer to assign blame to one rather than another?

For me, in thinking about these two performances, the first Marya Sea Kaminski as Hedda Gabler in Hedda Gabler, the second Shawn Law as Brutus in Dirty Story, the distinction became more clear to me. Kaminski was fully executing clear bold choices in a production  that was full of such bold choices. The miss in that production for me came down to the overall vision of Andrew Russell's direction - what I didn't like about Kaminski's take on Hedda paralleled all the other problems I had with the show.

Yet in Dirty Story Shawn Law's portrayal of Brutus, seemed quite a bit off in a production that was otherwise extremely tight. He played Brutus with a manic anger that wasn't called for in the script, a manic anger that came off to me more like an actor trying to keep himself at what he believes the level of his character's energy need to be rather than what the director necessarily asked for. So, unlike my assessment of Hedda Gabler, I found director Valerie Curtis Netwon's take on the John Patrick Shanley script to be uniformly consistent throughout and no external devises (like Hedda's odd dance-like hand movements in the other production) imposed on the actor playing Brutus by the director. Law was performing within the boundaries of Curtis Newton's direction but making small choices with his energy on how to portray the character's frustration (again, mostly coming off as manic anger) that corrupted that performance for me.

Is this completely subjective? Of course. I assume many could see these same two performances and come out with completely different, if not entirely opposite takes.