Date: Fri 03-Oct-1997

Publication: Bee

Author: CAROLK

Quick Words:

Theatre-Stern

Full Text:

(rev "Someone Who'll Watch Over Me" @Danbury Theatre Co., 10/3/97)

Theatre Review--

Bechard's Return Coincides With New Season, Stunning Production

By Julie Stern

DANBURY -- Something exciting is happening in Danbury this month.

Brian Bechard, one of the original founders of the Danbury Theater Company

(when it was known as D'ART) has returned after a three-year hiatus to direct

a stunning production of Frank McGuinness' drama, Someone Who'll Watch Over Me

.

The theme of prisoners trapped in the limbo of an escape-proof dungeon has

been the subject of a broad range of artistic variations, from Jean Paul

Sartre to the Wizard of Id. McGuinness' play about an American doctor, an

Irish journalist and an English professor being held hostage by Middle Eastern

terrorists is closer to Sartre in its study of the psychological currents that

flow between the protagonists.

But where the trio caught in Sartre's No Exit demonstrate through their

relentless selfishness, that "Hell is other people," McGuinness' characters

are able to find resources of humor, compassion and empathy that sustain them

in their ordeal, while making the audience care about them.

Adam (the American), Edward (the Irishman) and Michael (the Englishman) are

strangers who are being held together in a bleak, windowless room "somewhere

in Lebanon." Cut off from the outside world, not knowing whether it is day or

night, and anticipating that their captors might decide to execute them at any

moment, the prisoners are chained to the wall so that they can't quite reach

one another.

Kept barefoot and stripped to their underwear, the three men pass the hours

talking about doing exercises, staving off panic by alternating furious

arguments with sudden excursions into comic routines. Like a standard ethnic

joke, the play draws on the differences in national character.

Edward is a mixture of wheedling charm and truculence, playing the historical

Irish grievance card as he bullies the rather effete British academic,

Michael. The Englishman calmly defends himself with prissily precise

arguments, while Adam scolds Edward in a moralistic tone, pointing out that

"you have a university education, a comfortable income, and you own your own

home in a decent neighborhood," so stop pretending to be a downtrodden working

class bloke.

Perhaps because McGuinness is from Ireland (where he serves on the board of

Dublin's Abbey Theater), Michael and Edward are beautifully realized

portraits. By comparison, the American comes off as a somewhat wooden

construction, combining the straight-arrow social consciousness of a Dr Robert

Coles with the dedication to physical fitness of a Rocky Balboa. In fact Adam

spends the first ten minutes of the play in an impressive calisthenic display

designed to motivate Edward into taking better care of himself.

The acting of all three is absolutely professional, and is enhanced by fine

singing voices, from Mario Prado's (Adam) stirring delivery of "Amazing Grace"

to Bill Wishbow's (Edward) pure Irish tenor, to David Kelley's (Michael) campy

rendition of children's songs. And it has been a long time since I've seen

anything quite as funny as Kelley's one-man imitation of a Wimbledon tennis

match between Virginia Wade and Betty Stover, capped by Wishbow's assuming the

role of the Queen presenting the trophy to the winner.

Although at times the audience rocked with laughter, Someone is certainly not

a comedy. Terrorism and brutalization are not funny, and the comic moments are

overshadowed by fear and tragedy. But the prevailing message that makes

McGuinness more palatable than Sartre is the underlying human resilience, the

capacity for decency, even in the face of barbaric fanaticism.

The fanatics in this play happen to be Arabs, but the setting (which is never

officially identified in the playbill) is really a landscape of the mind that

transcends both history and geography. From what Amnesty International reminds

us each year, this cell could just as easily be located in a hundred other

countries. The villains could follow any faith, and speak any language and be

just as mindlessly cruel. It is all part of the human condition.

For the play, the ideas, the acting and the production -- for all these things

-- Someone Who'll Watch Over Me is definitely worth seeing. Call for

reservations while they're still available.

(The first show of Danbury Theatre Company's 1997-98 season, Someone Who'll

Watch Over Me continues until October 18. Performances are Friday and Saturday

evenings at 8 pm, with one Sunday performance on October 5 which will begin at

7 pm. Tickets are $5, $13 for seniors and students. DTC performs at St. James

Church, 25 West Street in Danbury. Call 790-1161 for details.)