MST's Ouroboros shines
The play, directed by Robert de los Reyes, has gotten solid reviews from both the Houston Chronicle and the Houston Press, but the reviews themselves are interesting because of the difference in quality. The Press review literally blows the Chronicle review away.
Here is a representative excerpt from the Chronicle review by Everett Evans:
MST is alternating the two versions, but it's not necessary to attend both. The material is the same in both, though the order of the scenes is reversed.
If this sounds confusing, it often is. Beyond the "time trap" premise, Jacobson mixes Twilight Zone fantasy, travel adventure, Will & Grace-style banter (in mischievous Tors' flip humor) and earnest exploration of faith, myth and miracles. Plus (inevitably) lots of jokes on whether Catholics, Lutherans or Jews inflict the heaviest guilt trips. If the mixture sometimes feels uneasy, certain lines strained, certain situations contrived — well, is it any wonder?
Yet the play usually remains intriguing. Give Jacobson credit for trying something different, keeping things unpredictable. This may be the first "Americans in Italy" tale in which not a single character falls madly in love with a gorgeous Italian.
[snip]
Director Robert de los Reyes has his hands full with all this and acquits himself resourcefully. It's tough to establish a secure tone in a play encompassing everything from hymn-singing to risqué quips about seducing priests, but Reyes and his cast make a game effort.
In the Nun's Tale version (which I attended), Celeste Roberts' searching and patient Margaret and Justin Doran's wryly irreverent (but with secret depths) Tor seem to predominate. Fritz Dickmann's distraught Phillip and Sara Gaston's volatile Catherine are convincingly agitated as the pair who (in this chronology) know from the first appearance that something weird is happening. Given Catherine's hysteria and hallucinations, Gaston may have the most challenging role and does pretty well at making a rather mind-boggling character credible.
That's pretty superficial analysis that actually gets wrong a critical point (bolded, to which I'll turn momentarily).
Contrast that lackluster account with the following representative excerpt from the Houston Press review by Lee Williams:
Tom Jacobson's Ouroboros might be one of the most richly textured works Main Street Theater has put on in years. The story is told from two points of view in two productions shown on alternative nights. One is a comedy, A Nun's Tale; the other a tragedy, A Priest's Tale. Both stories collide in the middle, when the minister and the nun make love. Faith, death, the possibilities of miracles, and the corporal sorrows of human love are all at stake in this strange and fascinating work about two lonely couples who meet in Italy. They go searching for answers to some very heady questions.
[snip]
Soon enough, we discover that Philip and his wife are sad, and their marriage is in deep trouble. Though Margaret, the nun, is the one who starts out the play seeming unbalanced, we quickly learn that it is Catherine who is taking antidepressants. "They don't work," she tells us frankly. Guilt-ridden because he's unhappy with his marriage, Philip has resigned himself to his sorry situation, spending most of his time nursing his fragile wife through her suicide attempts and obsessive-compulsive behaviors. The Lutheran minister has lost faith. He has trouble believing in the simple joys of life, much less in any miracle.
Just as Philip has lost his faith, Margaret, the nun, is also in a bit of a spiritual crisis. She recently witnessed a death that left her terrified. Her gay friend Tor's longtime partner passed away; beforehand, he had a very dark vision of what awaited him on the other side. It has shaken Margaret to the core. Tor, on the other hand, is simply grieving. He has followed Margaret to Italy to distract himself from his sorrow and to fulfill a longtime sexual fantasy: He wants to sleep with a priest.
The story takes us through Venice, Florence, Siena and Rome. The characters make strange and mystical discoveries involving a pair of golden rings, the head of Saint Catherine and a darkly violent priest. Somehow, these odd happenings manage to add up to a story that's perfect for the theater. It touches the kinds of profound mysteries – death, love, faith – that only art and spirituality can answer. Both highly dramatic and wonderfully eccentric, the script and this production are intelligent and so provocative, it's hard to see one show without longing to see the other.
Earlier in the review, Williams notes that (s)he had only seen the play in one direction (A Priest's Tale), although (s)he perceptively writes in the opening of the review that the direction of the play (i.e. A Priest's Tale or A Nun's Tale) effectively sets the overall tone.
Williams (and the guide to the play) suggests that the direction sets the play as either a comedy or a tragedy, but that's not quite how I would describe it. Having seen both versions of the play, I can state emphatically that the direction does establish the tone, with one version growing more bleak and desperate as it progresses (the priest's tale), and one growing more positive (the nun's tale). The priest's tale is definitely the darker version. And the Chronicle reviewer just blew it by implying that the direction makes no difference, which is a pretty crucial thing to blow given the nature (and name!) of the play.
If you have any interest in theater, I highly recommend both versions of this play. Robert de los Reyes has done a spectatular job interpreting a very difficult story, and the actors really pull it off (it would be easy for the actor portraying Tor to overdo it, for example, and steal the show while overshadowing the story; Justin Doran does not). The fact that they pull off this difficult story within the unique room that is the Main Street Theater (audience on four sides) is just another testament to the skill of the cast, crew, and director. The play runs through April 9. Information is available on the Main Street Theater website.
UPDATE (03-26-2006) It's been pointed out that reviewer Lee Williams might be female. Since I don't know for sure, I changed the gender references above.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/25/06 03:49 PM | Print |
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