Potomac Stages
Review
by Brad Hathaway
Look back through reviews of Warren Leight's Tony Award-winning memory play and you will think it has always been a story of a jazz musician as told by his son, the stalwart who even at age ten could be "the man of the house" and try to rescue his mother who couldn't quite cope with the life of a musician's wife. The wife always seemed to exist only in her relationship to the males: man and boy. In this stunningly compelling production, the wife comes into her own, making the play something more than it was. It becomes a more fully formed family story with Amy McWilliams' performance elevating the role of the wife and mother to co-equal status with Kevin Adams' somewhat subdued work as her trumpet playing husband and Chris Stezin's smoothly modulated portrayal of the son/narrator through whose eyes all the events are seen.
Storyline: The thirty year old son of a sadly dysfunctional couple relates the tale of their marriage in a memory play of flashbacks blended with narration. The father is a jazz trumpeter whose life was the music he made as a side man in the big band era, a time and an occupation that has slipped away. He was one of what the son tells us were a band of men who "conquered their obsessions to the exclusion of everything else." His wife could not survive that exclusion with her mind and spirit in tact. She fell into abuse of her self through alcohol and tobacco, and of her family through violently spiteful behavior, moving between mental wards and their small apartment throughout the young boys' life.
McWilliams begins the evening as a raging maniac screaming insults at her son. How difficult must it be to then gain the audience's understanding and compassion for her character? She handles it through Leight's marvelous script, which, in director Leslie Kobylinski's balanced production, shows the weight of each burden that has cost her her sanity. Stezin carries the show through multiple levels of appreciation and understanding of the twin burdens of the two parents caught in a marriage without a common foundation or commitment. Kevin Adams doesn't quite pull off the required dramatic coup of displaying indifference and disinterest on one hand and absolute obsession on the other. The play has a famous second act scene in which the jazz musicians late in their career listen to a tape of the legendary last performance of Clifford Brown. The scene is famous for giving the actor playing the father the opportunity to show, without speaking a word, just how otherworldly his obsession can be as he is literally transported by music. Adams misses the mark, leaving the scene a sweet but slightly overlong one. Still, its the only miscue in Kobylinski's structure.
This is at least the second time that Kobylinski has directed this play. In 2001 she directed it at the Elden Street Players in Herndon. That production earner her her first Washington Area Theatre Community Honors (WATCH) award. One skill she brings to each of her productions is a touch for casting. Of course, her reputation for giving her actors every opportunity to develop impressive performances helps her recruit just the right people for the roles, but she has an uncanny record of matching stage persona to character traits even when she's drawing from the pool of a company's regulars, as she is here. The smaller parts of the side man's side kicks are cases in point. Eric Lucas might not be an obvious choice for the role of the flippant observer Ziggy, but he is fascinating to watch as he takes the character from youthful confidence to a certain prideful old age. So, too, does Mark Rhea make the drug addicted Jonesy a person who changes with age and experience in a nicely restrained performance.
So many fine theater companies in the Potomac Region are doing exceptional work with constrained resources. The only real disappointments in this production come from technical elements that probably reflect more a limited budget than artistic failing. Dan Martin's lighting design does what is called for with its tight pools of light drawing attention to various points on the stage as memory flits from place to place and moment to moment. What may be a limitation on the number of lights he can use, however, leave gaps between the pools through which characters pass and hard shadows in the lit spaces. A similar technical gap may be a result of having only one location for speakers for the sound system. The sound of the on-stage source music still comes from the rear of the house where it is appropriate for other scenes involving off stage or remembered music. Still, the sound of the jazz trumpet solo at the back of the house makes Amy McWilliams' scene in the first act where she listens to her man making music on their first date tremendously effective. Written by Warren Leight. Directed by Leslie A. Kobylinski. Design: Stefan M. Gibson (set) Grant Kevin Lane (costumes) Dan Martin (lights) Ray Gniewek (photography) Rose Kobylinski and Donna Reynolds (stage managers). Cast: Charlotte Akin, Scott Graham, Eric Lucas, Mark Rhea, Chris Stezin, Amy McWilliams. Potomac Stages
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