Reviewed
by Will Stackman
The
Huntington Theatre Company seems to choose one new play revolving around
painting or fine art every season. This year's offering is a short piece of
juvenilia by West Coast playwright, Mat Smart, a young author given to name
dropping. "The Hopper Collection" was seen at San Francisco's Magic Theatre last
fall, and should have been returned for a rewrite at that point. The script is
a long one-act that aspires to the American Absurd, but is instead ridiculous,
piling unlikely situation on peculiar characterization. The audience is asked
to believe that a millionaire has purchased Edward Hopper's "Summer
Evening" for his wife, since she believes she was the inspiration for the
young woman in the painting. Incidentally, this picture is the only one in
their "collection." She is seriously deranged and apparently keeps
trying to kill him. He's an amateur boxer--of sorts. This mismatched pair keep
the picture in the living room of their seaside mansion while living separate
lives in adjacent wings of the house. They haven't let anyone else see the
picture for years.
Enter
a young man with a fatal brain tumor, who's written to the wife asking to see
the picture. Why? Because his girlfriend Sarah, who left without explanation
one night, sent him a postcard of the painting. When "Sarah" shows
up, she's an art student doing a project on Hopper, whose name really turns out
to be Natalie. They met in a coffee shop where the boy was staring at the
postcard--reportedly for hours. She apparently told him who to write to, though
how she'd know is unclear. Add quirky dialogue that seldom rings true, and the
result is naive derivative playwrighting, trying to be smart, and falling
woefully flat.
The
millionaire Daniel is played by Bruce McKenzie, a middleweight at best, who
copes with the script as best he can. Leslie Lyles is Marjorie, his ditsy wife. Her
approach is often over the top, which would be more effective if her character
had somewhere to go. Young Brian Leahy is Edward, who deals with the eccentricities the
author has imposed on the character, including immanent death, without becoming
ridiculous, but without creating an identity. Thus B.U. senior, Therese
Barbato, playing
Natalie/Sarah is the most believable, suggesting a humanity the rest of the
characters lack. The whole exercise comes off as a waste of talent, despite the
efforts of director Daniel Aukin from the Soho Rep, where Smart is currently working on
another script.
With
typical extravagance, the Huntington has created a large but empty realistic
set, decorated out of a glossy magazine. The back wall is sliding doors which
look out on trees which rustle in the wind, thanks to offstage fans, for no
good reason. There's little logic to the furnishings. If the intention was to
suggest sterility, designer Adam Stockhausen has surely succeeded. Kaye
Voyce's
costumes, especially Marjorie's several changes, suggest the characters, but
don't add to the play. Lighting and sound are unobtrusive. The technical
aspects of the production are as devoid of relevant meaning as the script.
Smart
aligns himself with contemporary playwrights such as Adam Rapp and Sarah Ruhl,
and credits an interview with Albee at the Eugene O'Neill Center as inspiring
him. He is working hard to produce scripts and get heard, but might perhaps
step back and decide if he really has anything to say. "The Hopper
Collection," which was submitted as his MFA project at UC/San Diego, has
all the earmarks of collegiate cleverness without substance, merely
speculation. Actors, try as they might, can only add so much to a script whose
message, if any, is that we can't live in the past. As his younger characters
might say, for no good reason, "That's whack."