Saturday, October 18, 2008

Theater Review: Losing Daniel

By Jason Rice

Losing Daniel is a world premiere of a local playwright opening this week in Plano. The plot revolves around a “rediscovered” play of an internationally famous author whose influence is so great that even 20 years after leaving New York, he has enough pull to control the casting of a specific lead on Broadway to fill his hero’s role. The actor cast locally just happens to be fresh off the farm in Texas and resembles to a tee the role’s namesake, Daniel, the dead son of the playwright lost in a car crash at age seventeen. Yes exactly the age of the chosen green actor. If at first this seems a bit pat and a far stretch, the premise provided is the playwright’s own obsession with Providence and second chances.

Before going further, I should clarify that I am a friend of the playwright and therefore have a much longer familiarity with the text and a bias to see it succeed. That confessed, it doesn’t in this production. Fortunately, the audience was composed primarily of people like me, friends of the author who were there “to see a good show” and that can make for a good time and forgive a myriad of sins.

The set designed by director John Mallory Land gives a nice first impression, filling the space obliquely with warm modern blonde wood but contradicted by the dark heavy furnishings that you wouldd expect in a “Southwestern” Colorado mountainside retreat. It has everything you think you need for a set: levels, three distinct acting areas and a nice cozy fireplace front and center stage. That said, had it not stated the director designed it, the use of it would lead me to believe the set designer never even met the director. One single exit forces interminable scene changes and entire costume changes occur right onstage. The only option was full cast exeunt the one door stage left, all change and file back in.

Opening night was a bad night for tech overall with a cued cell phone ringing and ringing through the exposition – ignored by the cast so we know it’s a gaff. Then when the action stops and people start looking at each other…. Finally a cell phone call comes in and the phone is answered to the sound of a bird squawking. Let’s just say that pretty much set the tone for slow and misplaced sounds and lights throughout – yes, the bird reappears at the most dramatically awful times, like preceding a first kiss.

So at least we can look at a good promising cast. The playwright is played by local veteran Ray Gestaut, his wife by venerable local mainstay Juli Erikson, and our budding young acting sensation by a rising star from Collin College, Chad Halbrook. The cast is filled out with “the agent from Broadway” tasked with producing this new classic played by Nicole Metcalf and her assistant/niece and the actor’s love interest played by Elizabeth Robinson. Juli Erikson delivers the most watchable performance. It’s a daunting role and she does well enough with it. The size difference between petite Ms. Erikson and towering Gestaut is just worsened by horrible misuse of the levels of the set and pedestrian blocking. While much of the stress of the exposition lay in the need for the drawling Texas beginner to convince that he can lose the accent, the half of the cast twanged like a Fredricksburg banjo --- not seasoned New Yorkers. Finally, an injury that brings the actor back to Colorado to recuperate and learn playwriting at the master’s hand is so poorly physicallized by young Mr. Halbrook that it becomes comic: “limping” with a deliberation that was painful to watch. Overall the acting was uneven, made worse by the immediate convention that all important and emotional lines were delivered “Out the Window” directly to the audience in a five foot swath of downstage that was also supposed to be a towering flagstone fireplace. When they weren’t being “dramatic at the fireplace/window”, the stage business of “hand games” to make the playwright and actor seem “buddies” was downright childish.

On the up side, lighting designed by Plano Stages resident whiz kid Jason Fehrm is frankly the best I’ve seen in the space in over 15 years. Good solid work, save the one shaky follow spot used to suggest an out of town location for a phone call from New York.

As I said, I had definite need to like this production, and while I enjoyed moments of Juli Erikson’s performance, the bulk of the production, while acted against a beautiful if impractical set, was overreaching and uneven – and technically underprepared, with a run time of 134 minutes.

Losing Daniel, produced by Teatro delle Muse, runs through October 26 at the ArtCentre Theatre. Purchase tickets online or by calling 972-424-MUSE.

Jason Rice is a local theater director and producer and a founder of Bucket Productions in Dallas and Rover Dramawerks in Plano – and an avid PegasusNews fanatic.

Related stories

• Pegasus News week in view: Boos and ballots edition (Oct. 23, 2008)

See more stories in:

• Arts > Fine Arts > Theater > Plays

Comments