Date: Fri 04-Dec-1998

Publication: Bee

Author: JUDYC

Quick Words:

Abstract-Wharf-Rebeck-Stern

Full Text:

THEATRE REVIEW: A Thoughtful Look At The World Of Art

(with cut)

By Julie Stern

NEW HAVEN -- Back in the Seventies my cousin Phil, who was the art director

for a San Francisco advertising company, was bemused by the attention showered

on abstract impressionist painters like Jackson (Jack the Dripper) Pollock and

Willem de Kooning.

As a gag, he laid a roll of canvas on his garage floor and slopped cans of

housepaint on it. Next he criss-crossed it with dribbles of paint from tubes,

then he invited his friends to throw things at it. Finally he took a saw and

cut it into segments, chose the ugliest one, and hung it on the wall of his

office. A few weeks later, a client walked in, stared at it, asked if it were

a genuine Pollock, and offered him $3,000 for it on the spot. According to

family lore, Phil took the money and ran.

I thought of this watching the premiere of Abstract Expression at Long Wharf.

Then, as the applause died out and I stood up to put on my coat, the elderly

woman sitting behind me smiled and said, "Don't you wish you had written

that?"

"Yes," I told her. "Don't I ever!"

Billed as a "contemporary comedy," Theresa Rebeck's take on greed and the art

world is a writer's play, tightly plotted and full of substance. The play

grapples with two very different issues at the same time: the vast disparity

in our society between those who have money and those who don't, and the moral

question of whether a work of art can be judged independently from the

character of its creator.

These two themes are neatly tied together in Ms Rebeck's parable of an

abstract expressionist painter who is suddenly "discovered" after a lifetime

of dire poverty. Its comedy comes not only from one-liners or witty repartee,

but from the satirical nature of the characters' blindly self-serving

rationalizations, and its skewing of the contemporary art world.

At a dinner party given by the insufferable matriarch Sylvia to celebrate the

engagement of her lugubrious son Eugene to Lillian, a sophisticated art

dealer, the talk turns to money and the question of whether the poor really

have it any harder than the rich. They turn to the hapless cater-waiter,

Jenny, and batter her with questions: "Are you poor?" "What's it like?" "Don't

your parents work?"

Obviously exhausted, struggling to balance a heavy silver coffee service on a

tray as she gropes for words, Jenny blurts out that her mother is dead and

that her father works hard, but because he is an artist who received a

devastatingly bad review in The New York Times 15 years ago, he has never had

another show, or sold another painting.

At the same moment, Jenny's father, Mack Kidman, is presenting one of his

painting as a gift to his downstairs neighbor. Charlie is a gentle

African-American recluse who exists on his Vietnam disability pension. He

doesn't understand what Kidman is trying to do but he likes the painting

because it "looks like a duck."

Then, because kindly Charlie has promised to provide a home for his newly

paroled nephew, he tries to sell the duck picture for enough money to buy a

television. The art gallery he takes it to turns out to be the one owned by

Lillian, who sees in it the potential for a major revival of abstract

impressionism, and snaps it up for $600.

She immediately embarks on a massive promotional campaign to launch Kidman's

career, roping in all major names and institutions in the art world, who are

all anxious to jump on the Kidman bandwagon.

Does it matter that the people who will be buy the paintings neither like nor

understand them, and want them only because they have heard that art critics

are going to declare them "important?" (This Emperor's New Clothes aspect is

nicely enhanced by the staging; the audience never actually sees Kidman's work

until the last scene, and his massive 15 year output is represented by a

single picture viewed from the back, or wrapped in protective covering).

Do his new "handlers" care that Kidman is an abusive, self-indulgent drunk,

incapable of feeling for anyone but himself, whose only devotion is to his

private vision of light and color, in the pursuit of which he has sacrificed

his wife and ruined his children's lives?

Meanwhile an ironic parallel emerges between the ruthlessness of his vain and

stupid mother, who grandly declares herself an expert on economics because she

doesn't know anyone with less than $2 million in their brokerage account on a

good day, and the empty vicious jailhouse rhetoric of Charlie's nephew Ray,

who claims that the white man's exploitation of the black man justifies any

crime he might be accused of committing, including stealing his uncle's meager

possessions to pay for crack.

Against all the others in the play looms the oversized figure of Kidman

himself, brought beautifully to life by Jack Wills, who is by turns explosive,

tyrannical, boorish and charming when he needs to be, tormented by private

demons and possessed by his consuming need to get onto canvas what he sees in

his mind.

Ms Rebeck is a television script writer, most notably for "NYPD Blue," and she

knows how to construct a good story, full of unexpected twists, leaving no

loose ends.

Neil Patel's set is stunning in the old Long Wharf tradition. The stage is

divided between Sylvia's Park Avenue luxury apartment, illuminated by the

sparkling night lights of the city, and Kidman and Charlie's lower East Side

tenement, where through the single window of the garret-studio you can see the

radiant glory of the Brooklyn Bridge.

This is thoughtful, provocative entertainment, well worth seeing.

(Theresa Rebeck's work continues at Long Wharf until December 13. Call the

theatre's box office at 787-4282 for curtain times and ticket information.)