Jason Tratta

A CurtainUp Berkishire Review
Coyote On a Fence
http://www.curtainup.com/coyoteonafence.html

Bobby Reyburn knew no charity or wisdom or peace in his life. And the only person who ever loved him taught him how to hate — from John Brennan’s obituary of his death row prison neighbor. This is CurtainUp’s third review of a play by Bruce Graham. Like those earlier plays (linked below), Coyote on a Fence is a provocative, incisive drama. While it can easily be viewed as a message or issue play, it never descends into polemic at the expense of entertainment. Sure, it will have you thinking and talking about capital punishment, but for the hour and a half you’re in the theater, you’ll simply find yourself caught up in Graham’s smart and often sardonically funny dialogue, James Warwick’s crisp and edgy direction, and the superb performances of the actors.

The stage of the Unicorn Theatre has been transformed into the darkly claustrophobic world of an unnamed prison. Jessica Wade’s multi-level unit set is dominated by two small adjoining prison cells, whose occupants can reach in and out of the cell bars, but cannot see each other. One of the cells is furnished to give some semblance of “home” with a shelf to hold books and photos. At one side of the cells there’s a bar room booth and at the other a visiting area. Downstage is an area resembling a dog run, but actually the prisoners’ exercise yard. The boxes at the top of the steps at either side of the stage are also utilized. This dynamic setup, takes us back and forth between the two convicts at the drama’s center and the prison guard and New York Times reporter who help to create a sense of drama that reaches beyond the prison walls. The action gets underway with the sounds that accompany each execution (Jason A. Tratta’s eerily evocative sound design is a powerful mood setter throughout). Outside the prison gate, there’s the cheering and jeering of the crowds; inside, as prisoner and editor of The Death Row Advocate John Brennan (Michael Waelter) describes it, “the silence rolls in, one cell at a time.” John, a white educated former social worker is an anomaly in the largely undereducated minority prison population. As each execution attracts protesters and pro-execution yea sayers, tearful relatives and the deafening silence spreading through the cells, it also brings an obituary by John, who is passionately committed to writing something about these men’s lives that shows that, no matter what their crimes, there was a side of them that was decent. The execution which sets the play in motion also empties out the cell next to John and brings him a new neighbor. Bobby Reyburn (Greg Keller) is everything John is not — unschooled, rabidly racist, a mass killer. Worse still, he is as committed to his belief in a God who hates Jews and “niggars” as John is to finding good even in the face of evil. (The coyotes of the title are a metaphor for the predators who, according to Bobby, should be destroyed). The conflict between the two men is further exacerbated by Bobby’s acceptance of his impending execution as a first step to heaven, which is contrary to John’s belief that the death penalty is a form of murder which every prisoner must fight by demanding clemency to his last breath. What lifts John and Bobby out of the realm of stereotypically odd couple in adjoining cells — one who has turned what looks like an unjust imprisonment into an almost saintly cause, the other a loathsome sociopath — are Graham’s subtly honest and unromanticized characterizations, especially as interpreted by Waelter and Keller. John can be as pompously annoying and self-deluded as he is admirable, and Bobby, believe it or not, manages to charm and amuse even as he repels. While two convicts are the pivotal characters, with the tension from the tick-tocking of the clock set to end their lives commanding our attention, the two other players help us to see the many sides of Graham’s story and intensify its drama: Shawna DuChamps (Mary E. Hodges) and Sam Fried (Richard Ercole), a Jewish reporter from The New York Times who’s read the Death Row Advocate and requested a series of interviews with John. Shawna is, like the tick-tocking clock, always present, always in her prison guard uniform even when she is in the bar room booth addressing an invisible reporter. Sam Fried (Richard Ercole) challenges John’s insistence that capital punishment is murder. He admires the writing of the obituaries but sees them as a whitewash. At one point he passionately defends the article he wrote about John’s obituaries as “undemonizing” the men who are monsters to the rest of the world: “You people frighten us. We-are-not-the-bad-guys just because we want to protect ourselves.” Sam and Shawna could be viewed strictly as devices for presenting society’s view of how to judge and deal with murderers. However, like John and Bobby, they are fully dimensioned, flesh and blood people, played with immense feeling and sympathy. Ms. Hodges who, according to her program bio is fresh out of acting school, is simply terrific as the prison guard. Wearied and toughened by close to twenty years as a prison guard she’s as impatient with the “ya-hoos out there blowin’ their horns” as the excuses of those she guards about what landed them in prison. And yet, underneath all her cussin’ and hard as nails talk, there’s a remaining spark of compassion for people like John and a yearning for the reporters (and by extension, society) to view her as an ordinary, good person. Coyote on a Fence has moments when it veers towards cliche. It is, in spite of the playwright’s not wanting it to fit that label, a message play — albeit an entertaining one. It is also a play that is best suited to small theaters like the Unicorn and the Blue Heron Arts Center Off-Broadway where it ran briefly last season. Wherever it goes next, I couldn’t think of a better director than James Warwick or a more impressive cast than the quartet he’s assembled here to insure its success. COYOTE ON A FENCE By Bruce Graham Directed by: James Warwick Cast (in order of appearance): Mary E. Hodges, Micahel Waelter, Richard Ercole and Greg Keller Set Design: Jessica Wade Lighting Design: Tamy Owens Slausan Costume Design: Toni Wright Sound Design: Jason A. Tratta Berkshire Theatre Festival, Stockbridge, MA, (413) 298-3868 Running Time: 100 minutes without intermission br> 7/06//2000-7/29/2000; opening 6/07/2000

A CurtainUp Berkshire Review
The Einstein Project
http://www.curtainup.com/einsteinproject.html

It’s not enough of a trend to paraphrase Shakespeare and declare that all the stage is a laboratory and all the players scientists and mathematicians. Still, as the list of links at the bottom of this review indicate, there’s a definite ripple of interest in plays with science and technology backgrounds. And, now, at the Berkshire Theatre Festival’s Unicorn stage, Paul D’Andrea’s & Jon Klein’s The Einstein Project proves to be exactly what fits its artistic mission best — giving still unknown young actors a chance to cut their teeth on a provocative script, innovatively staged. In this case, the co-authoring and co-directing credits also provide a fine illustration of theatrical collaboration.

The production does of course have one illustrious name, the man whose public and private image the playwrights have dramatized. Tommy Shrider’s Albert Einstein is not the beloved twentieth century genius who made everybody familiar with the term “theory of relativity”" even if they didn’t grasp the theory’s meaning. The genial public figure whose quotable wit and wisdom was snapped up by the media is seen mostly in the Pathé newsreels interlaced throughout the play. The Einstein we meet via Shrider is the one behind those newsreels — an intense, charismatic but not very loving or lovable man. His relationship with his overly sensitive son (Amanda Byron) most tellingly illustrates the contradictions and flaws in his personality. He has an intense relationship with the boy, yet overchallenges him cruelly and ends up putting his public concerns before the boy’s needs. (He also abandoned his first wife and was repeatedly unfaithful to wife #2). His friendships were equally problematic.

The play’s construction is nonlinear, with many short scenes cross-cutting between different periods in time. It begins with the explosion of the atomic bomb, which Einstein urged President Roosevelt to build; flashes back to his stint as a clerk in the patent office in Switzerland and his World War I pacifist arguments with Fritz Haber (Craig Baldwin), the inventor of mustard gas; and forward again to the World War II era.

While Einstein is the central figure, D’Andrea and Klein try to take us inside the minds of Germany’s other leading physicists who were who were once Einstein’s colleagues and friends. The most intriguing of the other scientists is Werner Heisenberg (James Barry), particularly in view of Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen which uses Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty as a central metaphor for its imagined replay of the mysterious meeting that led a permanent rift between Heisenberg and the Danish physicist Niels Bohr. Frayn’s play was neutral about Heisenberg’s claim that he remained in Germany to make sure the Nazi regime would not develop an atomic bomb. D’Andrea and Klein seem to support Heisenberg. Whatever the case may be, The Einstein Project, which was written fifteen years ago, is distinctly different in content and style from the much acclaimed Copenhagen. The chief common denominator between the two plays is that both are stimulating, intelligent theater and that you don’t have to understand any complex scientific theories to enjoy.

Like the Unicorn’s last production, Coyote on a Fence the current offering has had some previous productions. What’s new and exciting about this one is the dynamic staging by Eric Hill and Oliver Butler which marries drama with performance art. The subtleties of the images simply take your breath away, from the astonishing opening in which the Hiroshima bombing becomes a stark modern dance, to Einstein and son on a sailing voyage simply and effective evoked with fluttering white cloth, to the masked audience at one of Einstein’s lecture. The intermittent newsreels nicely anchor the public and private Einstein story.

As with any play cast with young and unknown actors, the performances vary from outstanding to adequate. Tommy Schrider and Amanda Byron prove themselves up to the challenging major roles of Albert and Edmund Einstein. Greg Keller stands out among Einstein’s Uranium Club colleagues, as the aristocratic Max Van Laue, so does Jennifer Elder-Chace as Clara Immerwahr, Fritz Haber’s tragic lover.

The Einstein Project marks a triumphant finale in an interesting and worthwhile Unicorn season. The price of the tickets, also makes this one of the best theater buys in the Berkshires — recommended for kids (13 and up) as well as adults.

THE EINSTEIN PROJECT
By Paul D’Andrea & Jon Klein
Co-directed by Oliver Butler & Eric Hill

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Cast (in order of appearance): Tommy Shrider, Amanda Byron, Daniel Winerman, Craig Baldwin, Joshua Tussin, James Barry, Jennifer Elder-Chace, Greg Keller, James Waterman, Tara Franklin; Ensemble: Sarah Autumn Feeley, Tara Franklin, Barb Lanciers, Kristina Short
Choreography: Isadora Wolfe
Set Design: Steven K. Mitchell
Lighting Design: Melissa McLearen
Costume Design: Moira Shaughnessy
Sound Design: Jason A. Tratta
Berkshire Theatre Festival, Stockbridge, MA, (413) 298-3868
Running Time: 1 hour and 20 minutes without intermission
8/03//2000-8/26/2000; opening 8/04/2000

Reviewed by Elyse Sommer based on 8/04 performance

http://www.newberkshire.com/archive/theatre/einstein.html

“total theatre” – invigorating…

August 4, 2000 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

The Einstein Project would have delighted William Butler Yeats, who, a century ago, advocated a kind of total theatre uniting all the arts-voice, dance, text and art (not to be confused with “scenery”). Yeats was inspired by the intense simplicity of the Japanese Noh theatre, and so it is interesting that Eric Hill, whose directorial hand is strongly present in this work, also looks often to Japan.

Yeats never made it to Japan; having Ezra Pound as a secretary was as close as he got. Hill has, though, and The Einstein Project bears traces of his insights and study. It is very much a collaboration of all the theatre’s arts. Co-written by Paul D Andrea and Jon Klein, it is has been co-directed by Hill and Oliver Butler, with dance choreographed by Isadora Wolfe. Lighting by Melissa McLearn and sound by Jason A Tratta provide all the setting the play needs.

This is a play of many short scenes that flow effortlessly into each other. Place is suggested rather than defined, shifting from Germany to Switzerland to America; time is also fluid, beginning in l945 but cutting backwards and forwards. Characters live and die in the time warps.

Central to all is Einstein, physicist and man, German and Jew. He leaves Germany for America where, still insisting he is a pacifist, he writes the famous letter to Roosevelt that unleashes the horrors of Hiroshima. The play probes his conscience, exposes its frailties, lays bear his cruelty and inability to act towards others with love and compassion. He “thrives on ice” and “never talks as a friend.”

This man’s family, his country, are “outside”. He believes in “tracking the mind of God” but cannot look with pity into the human heart of his son. The play attempts to go beyond the stereotypical image of the scientific genius who at age 42 won the Nobel prize and give us the flawed and contradictory being that he was. In doing so it deals with scenes of shattering emotional intensity. The bomb of l945 destroyed all it touched and “only shadows were left behind.”

The play opens with the bomb. An orderly spaced group of humans stand staring upwards; they gradually, slow motion retreat, pull inward, circle and become a huddled ball in the center of the stage to be flung distortedly outwards, upwards, grotesquely mangled in slow motion, finally to stagger or be carried from sight. It is nightmare and dream.

The next scene has Einstein in Switzerland with his son Edward. They are in a boat, beautifully evoked by a stout rope and billowing white cloth flapped by two actors. In this scene Einstein’s unnecessary cruelty to the child is shattering as he tries to force him to understand a mathematical principal concerning the counting of his fingers.

Baffling the child, he insists the answer must be eleven; the rebuked child in dismay holds up his two hands fighting for his own answer of ten. Lines from this scene will occur later with the child, grown to a young man of 20, is in a strait-jacket, totally mad and still groping for the answer. One cannot help but fault Einstein’s lack of compassion in his human relationships.

Tommy Shrider gives a virtuoso performance as he delves into the character of the conflicted man that Einstein was. He reveals the dark underside of a man few people, perhaps Einstein himself, ever knew. As his son Edward, Amanda Byron, is especially moving. The scenes in which she appears are memorable.

The tightly knit cast in this play move, at times in slow motion, though scene after scene-Einstein’s former German colleagues as prisoners of war in England disbelieving the bombing news on the radio; his daughter Clara, (hauntingly played by Jennifer Elder-Chace) picnicking and dying; his fellow-scientist Werner Heisenberg (James Barry) exhibiting the compassion and conscience that Einstein lacks.

At times the scenes, strong in themselves, come too rapidly and one feels one has missed important clues. But then a tiny wordless scene, in which a Japanese woman pours tea, stabs the heart. This play would be more enlightening second time around. It is accessible, however. One delights in the unusual details of stage movement, in the fluidly shifting time and space that move to the tempos of the play’s essence. The plot line will be easier to follow if one arrives early and reads the program notes, especially those on chronology, which is deliberately shifted in this production.

Our theatre is invigorated by many kinds of plays. This is one of them. Eric Hill’s presence in the Berkshires making such theatre available to us is a blessing not to be taken lightly.