HERRINGBONE, at times a red herring bone, is a dark musical theatre piece I would have expected to see in the La Jolla Playhouse’s Edge Series, rather, it’s a standard offering. This is a good thing. The BD Wong carried one actor show is the Playhouse’s first genuine noncommercial production in its current programming and is appealing in its challenge. Better if it had been originated in La Jolla; it is a package from New Jersey’s McCarter Theatre that retains its original artistic team.
Gothic in atmosphere with Brechtian informed qualities, sweated out by Mr. Wong under the deft direction of RSC alum Roger Reece, HERRINGBONE showcases the quirky, ironic and at times hauntingly lurid words and music by Ellen Fitzhugh and Skip Kennon respectively incorporated into Tom Cone’s reincarnation of his play by the same name.
The story follows a humble yet hopeful Depression era southern family, sporting its ideal little eight-year-old boy, George, a recent winner of a small town speech contest on American patriotism. Depression era entertainment highlighted child actors. George’s success leads his family to invest in acting lessons that lead to bedevilments and George’s possession by the spirit of a vengeful and lascivious vaudevillian midget hoofer, Lou, who taps the kid and family to profit and, well, you can guess the moral outcome. Eventually, the simple minded horny hotel clerk, Dot, feeds the vaudevillian’s domination of George, which tilts the story to a horrific sexual molestation as Lou satisfies his voracious carnal appetite.
HERRINGBONE trucks with the dark under belly aspects of the give and take of emotional-spiritual nature of acting and America’s ambitious Hollywood fame hungry obsessions at any cost. HERRINGBONE is about numerous topics that a second viewing would prove more satisfying.
Early in the evening, we sense George’s doom. Fame and power hunger drives the evening’s characters and with it the poltergeist’s sexual molestation that arrests George’s development and the result is lasting. The opening of the show presented us with George, head in hands, in a dimly lit drab canvass colored room and closes with the same image only what we assumed was a dressing room changes to the isolated feel of a padded cell.
The story takes on the slow cumulative rhythm of a bolero as the first act plods to populate itself with nine of the ten character’s Mr. Wong, best known for his Tony Award winning performance as M. BUTTERFLY and television roles, skillfully manifests. Act two ratchets up to psychological-spiritual terror and it seems the two and a half hour evening could lose one hour to the same results.
It is Mr. Wong’s diminutive athlete body and voice that must carry the show. This Mr. Wong does and it is an evening of endurance for actor and George alike. The show is a tap dance obstacle course of demanding pinhead character turns and fancy footwork. At times Mr. Wong is working too hard, which may change as HERRINGBONE’S run progresses.
Mr. Reece is a firm practitioner of theatre as communal creative process. Though HERRINGBONE’S titular character is born of deforming family dysfunction, the work is rendered from a vividly functional family of artists. Less serves more in Eugene Lee’s spare scenic design of black high-gloss concentric turntables, pivotal doorway set in dark obscurity framed by classic chaser lights.
Chorographer Darren Lee seamlessly blends a movement vocabulary and vaudeville dance into Mr. Rees’s staging giving Mr. Wong syntax of movement that keeps the ten character’s distinctive. Musical Director Dan Lipton, also at the piano, has trained Mr. Wong through the series of ditties and soliloquies, which at times bare a hint of stressful Kurt Weill-like strains. Mr. Wong’s baritone range proved the richest, yet, he tended to sing flat.
William Ivey Long’s striped pants, white shirt and vest serve as a basic skin for the chameleon demands and his two-toned tap shoes help us keep an eye on Mr. Wong’s telling character touches. Christopher Akerlind’s lighting design and Leon Rothenberg’s sound design deepen HARRINGBONE’S nightmare side-show atmosphere.
This is a tough show for the audience and performer. Mr. Reece and company demand the audience work to keep up with the show, a good risky choice.
The company uses an alienation technique of approach-repel in storytelling; the show progresses with our investment then is abruptly stopped by the narrator’s or BD Wong’s editorial comments on story or the evening’s performance. The derailing reminds us we are sitting in a theatre watching an actor attempting to conjure a story. Returning to the action is a challenge and requires re-attuning oneself to the show’s particulars in order to keep up with the story. We do resume relationship with the show due to Mr. Wong’s performance and our concern for George.
I remained a reluctant participant with the piece till well into act two when the story dynamics converge, making the last 20 mins of the show worth its taxing trip. Mr. Wong’s commitment to the role and tour de force performance in these remaining minutes in a paranoid schizophrenic auto-immune suffocation of George’s last shreds of innocence is hypnotic and horrific. We sit helpless witnesses to Lou’s last power grabs, mixing molestation with his Hollywood star ambitions, that crumble to his downfall and little George’s dive into insanity along with him.
For an edgy evening of theatre, HERRINGBONE is worth the workout.
Photos by Craig Schwartz.
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Herringbone
Starring BD Wong
August 1 - August 30, 2009
Sheila and Hughes Potiker Theatre
book by TOM CONE
music by SKIP KENNON
lyrics by ELLEN FITZHUGH
directed by ROGER REES
based on the play by TOM CONE
La Jolla Playhouse Box Office
(858) 550-1010
www.lajollaplayhouse.org
The “39 Steps,” currently at the La Jolla Playhouse, offers the fine Ridiculous Theatre styling of Hitchcock’s classic film of the same name. The difficult directing and acting style that didn’t work with the current Old Globe production of Charles Ludlam’s “The Mystery of Irma Vep” works splendidly in Maria Aitken’s restaging of her Tony Award winning production.
