GRAY'S ANATOMY

Give Actors Theatre of Phoenix's Artistic Director Matthew Wiener credit for chutzpah. My research shows that this is the first time a Spalding Gray monologue has been performed without the playwright himself portraying it. Just as last season, Mr. Wiener presented an excellent Phoenix-based performer in John Leguizamo's Spic-O-Rama, this season, he is breaking new ground in having talented Phoenix-based performer Jon Gentry portray Spalding Gray portraying himself in the middle-age lament of 1993 Gray's Anatomy. It's a gamble, but that's what Mr. Wiener is famous for. As a gamble, while it doesn't take the jackpot, it definitely holds its own.

When Mr. Gray creates a monologue, such as Swimming to Cambodia, his famous reflection on his small part in the film The Killing Fields, he takes a year to workshop a piece in front of a live audience, honing the words, the limited physicalization, the pauses and even the drinking of his water into a performance of impeccable timing. Scottsdale has been one of Mr. Gray's consistent workshop and performance spots, so there may be some in the ATP audience who have seen Mr. Gray in action, even in this piece.

Director Kirk Jackson has made this piece his own. Rather than limited physicalization (Gray almost never moves from his chair), he has given Mr. Gentry the run of the stage, letting him leap on, under and around his desk to keep the eyes of the audience engaged. Paul A. Black has also been given latitude, lighting his unit set of desk, chair, microphone, desk light and rectangular scrim behind with blocks of white and multicolored light to create differing performance areas. The uncredited sound design effectively gives Gentry the opportunity to create different vocal presentations for the many situations. The result is less of a dependence on the words and their precise presentation, as monologist Gray stresses, and more of a concentration on Gentry's trademark energy and physicality.

Does this work? Purists and fans of Gray's work such as I will find this disconcerting. Revision is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as it serves the material. Here, I feel it's more about serving the performer, with which I usually don't agree. But then again, when you have a great actor like Gentry performing one of Gray's middling monologues, reinvention and revitalization is probably the better choice than mimicry and impersonation. For those who have not seen Gray's work and/or performance style, they will probably enjoy Gentry's explosive presentation of Gray's search to cure an eye ailment around his 50th birthday. He portrays an endearing schlemiel, a writer so in denial of basic realities that he circumnavigates the globe and the legit and illegitimate medical communities to avoid a surgical inevitable. Gentry has an expressively screechy and panicked voice that works to his advantage. He is a bundle of nerves and conveys the neurotic Gray in a funny way. He putters and sputters around the stage, zipping from one denial to another. While he doesn't quite cut it as 50 years old, he still presents the harrows of middle age quite well.

I have been accused of being a closet purist by a member of the theatre community. This portrayal rankles me, yet this review can be added to the long list that supports his argument. I'd like to think that it isn't only that I expected a faithful recreation of Gray's work that I was a bit disappointed. I'd rather believe that it was a director choosing to make his mark with the performer in a way that did not necessarily serve the text that makes me hesitant to be more positive about this show. It's up to you to decide which is more correct, his observation or my denial.