David
Rush's spanking
new play "One Fine Day" starts off with a Chinese dragon monster we soon
learn is "the fucking Jabberwocky" from Lewis Carroll's "Through The Looking
Glass".
This psychic monster through-line is intended to illuminate the demons that
pursue our main character Fred Miller (Don Bender) in his struggles with his life,
letting go of the memory of his recently deceased wife, and the vicissitudes of
the academic culture. Several questions feel a bit more primary in the play,
however. Which teaching strategies are permissible and which are not? How are
different cultures to be addressed in a painfully politically correct world?
And what if the perfectly articulated arguments on the table between teachers
and students actually mask entirely different agendas? This in fact may be the
major issue addressed in this provocative and perhaps slightly flawed play.
Our
two act adventure is set in a small college town where the set design and the
scenes and dialogue quickly paint the sense of Midwestern quiet around the
edges (beyond the faculty home, down the street from the neighborhood bar,
outside the circle of lamplight illuminating the parking lot outside the
classrooms and office buildings.) We are not on an urban campus full of city
distractions but in a self-referential small college community. Fred Miller,
our protagonist, has recently lost his wife to an illness and has lost his
patience with teaching in general, and with the nuances of political
correctness in general. Through a series of scenes, some flashbacks, some and
imaginary friends (that darn Jabberwocky and various other characters out of
literature appear), we learn that Fred and a student in one of his political
philosophy classes have had an intense series of verbal scuffles. On some
dimensions, "One Fine Day" is a study of political and religious and
cultural discussions much like David Mamet's examinations of gender and power relations in
"Oleanna".
And yet, this play goes in a very different direction with a different texture:
more characters -- perhaps too many dimensions and too many characters -- and a
powerful central idea playing off our audience expectations and asking us to
look deeper into our central characters' motivations.
Miller
has several faculty buddies who interact with him differently in the face of a
committee inquiry into his behavior in class. His old friend theatre professor
Helen (the stunning Kate Harris) is fabulous and supportive of him through his challenge
and the imminent hearing. She states it simply and unequivocally early on:
"If you fall we all fall." They are great good friends, as she (long
with a female partner) says "you're my oldest friend I don't have sex
with." He says "I'm fighting the Jabberrwock" to which she
replies that he is ridiculous "as an Andrew Lloyd Weber musical." For
this line alone I love her character. Miller's colleague Charles Clark (Tim
Curtis), while
an old friend and the person who facilitated Miller's original hiring, has his
own position to protect. Charles argues for Miller to back off appearing in the
faculty hearing, in part because the hearing itself jeopardizes the bequest of
a generous benefactor who is skittish of the bad press the hearings might
inspire. The debate is set up in Miller's mind as academic freedom (freedom to
teach content in the way he wants to, e.g. provocatively evoking national socialism
dressed as a Nazi) versus political correctness (or the legitimate though hard
line sentiments of the child of survivors). Miller represents and talks about
teaching as performance art. But is this the whole story?
There
are multiple types of students and their needs presented in this play. Fred is
visited by Mrs. Winston (Angelique Westerfield), parent of a student seeking a
college degree in order to pursue an applied graduate degree. Education for
this student is instrumental not intellectual. The mother makes the case for
her daughter, with echoes of a similar scene in "Doubt" involving a parent called
to school by a nun worried about her child's potential involvement with a
teacher. In "Doubt", the mother is also instrumental, arguing that
ignoring these warning signs will allow graduation and entry into a better
school in the subsequent academic year. In "One Fine Day", the mother
approaches Miller on her own initiative to make the case for Miller to lighten
up his academic standards to allow her daughter to pass a class despite failing
behavior and grades, for a greater good - a future career. A powerful scene.
Another student Betty (Erin Reitz), Miller's thesis advisee, is academically strategic in
her own way. In the course of her professor's slow implosion, when he wants
Betty to be a character witness in the upcoming faculty hearing, Betty instead
asks Miller to step off her committee. She notes "I didn't muddy the
waters ... I'm just trying not to sink." Finally, we have the remaining
students (Rivkah's colleagues) in Miller's graduate Nietzche class .. Harrison
(the strong Joseph Sherman, who also appeared in "Spinning Into Butter"
at Eclipse Theatre this past season), the smart and sassy pragmatist; and other
student stereotypes who provide a context in which we eventually see the
student Rivkah. We learn that the issue is a stand off: Miller refuses to
explain his actions even when simple words might assist his case; and we see
that Rivkah maintains a rigid stance, when softening might assist understanding
of her side.
Rivkah
(Lindsay Weisberg),
our student protagonist and political theoretical provocateur, attempts to meet
with her professor Fred Miller several times before the formal hearing, attempting
to slow down the events leading to a faculty meeting showdown involving egos
and agendas that have now surpassed (or simply passed by) her own. Rivkah says
in her first few appearances "This is getting out of control" before
we, the audience, really know what "it" is. She had focused on tense
and focused debates with her non-Jewish (and importantly German) teacher about
philosophers and political and social events of the twentieth century,
including the Holocaust. We now begin to wonder whether the story is in fact
"Oleanna"-like sexual harassment or ripped from the headlines
political intolerance and political correctness run amok on college campuses or
whether instead the playwright might be attempting to tackle something a bit
more complex.
Through
scenes in campus bar between Miller and his student Harrison, we hear the
details of what actually happened in the Nietzche class: debates in class,
Rivkah's insistently persistent and resistant stance; Miller's increasing
tendency to lock horns, and the rest of the students held hostage to the
personal and intellectual battle between Rivkah and her perhaps imagined
opponent. As we learn, both parties have engaged in battle on behalf of others.
When the question is posed "who is the real Nazi here?" the words
ring with power and resonance.
Director
Drew Martin
efficiently creates a number of distinct spaces and efficiently arranges the
actors. Scenic and light designers Alan Donahue and Ron Seeley similarly create a range of
feelings and settings in the small Stage Left performance space. I am
constantly amazed by the number of configurations this company and their
designers can achieve in this storefront; for this play, we are seating in two
areas buffering the playing space between.
The
" Big Chill"
moments between Miller and a student guitar player () provide interludes and
breathing space, and allow for the boomers in the audience to connect to
Miller's unease (despite the fact that we don't have all the facts for quite
some time). The line that this (Bob Dylan's music the Guitar Guy plays) was
"the sound of a generational heart breaking" is poetic, but it is
unclear whether dramatically it is earned. I respect the playwright's art too
much to indulge in editorial suggestions as part of reviews as a rule. However,
in this case I must say that the playwright's use of Lewis Carroll's
"Jabberwocky" as character and metaphor was, for this audience
member, superfluous. Similarly, Miller's daughter Ginny, distracted, angry,
always calling from her car and yelling at other drivers, is deftly evoked by Lisa
Stevens (who
also, as several actors, does yeoman's duty portraying several additional small
characters). Yet, this additional character and the comedic slapstick dimension
she introduces did not assist the storytelling. We could have discovered the
fact of his daughter in other ways. Focusing on the several faculty friends and
several students might have been enough to set the dimensions of the story. And
the story's resolution might well have come in a starlit evening scene on
Miller's front porch between professor and student. "Space makes time just
go away", one of them observes, calmly, in the aftermath of their
intellectual and emotional exertions. Rivkah laughs at herself for the first
time in the play: "I was going to be Joan of Arc --- I turned out to be
Moe, Larry, and Curly". What an exit line.