Eye of the Beholder
This Live show is written by Stephen Sacks and is based on a true incident. It is directed and designed by Donald Horn, and is playing at their space at 1785 NE Sandy Blvd. (free parking lot next to the building) through February 12th. Be advised that full Covid protocols are in place…vaccine cards, masks, temp. check, etc. For more information, go to their site at www.trianglepro.org or call 503-239-5919.
This story reminds
me of a short, silent film I saw some years back. A disheveled man walks out on a dry dock, on
which sets several cans of paint of different colors. He begins tossing the paint from the buckets
onto a giant canvas he has positioned on the dry ground below the dock.
He then gets a mop
he has brought with him and jumps off the dock and begins smearing the paint
around on the canvas. When satisfied of
his creation, he takes a saw and begins cutting the canvas into smaller
sections and stacks them on the dock.
As if on cue, a
helicopter lands onto the dock and some very well-dressed individualsget out of
the copter, approach the scruffy man, giving him a wad of cash, pick up the
stacks and load them on the helicopter and fly off. On the copter’s door is printed the name of a
very exclusive art gallery in New York.
Art? It’s in the eye of the
beholder!
The play by Sacks
concerns a trailer park, ex-bartender, Maude (Helen Raptis), who goes to a
thrift shop and picks up a painting for $3, which she believes is a genuine
Jackson Pollock work, worth millions. In
order to prove her claim, though, she must get an art expert to authenticate
it.
Enter Lionel (Michael
Fisher-Welsh), an uppity, famous New York art critic, to make just such a
decision. Unfortunately, he doesn’t view
the paining in the same way she does.
What ensues is a battle of wits (such as they are), as much about class
distinctions and education between them, as it is about the nature of art. During the confrontations, they both expose
personal sides of each other and their pasts, which I can’t really go into
without revealing plot devices the audience should discover.
But it does bring up
some universal issues as to what constitutes real art. Is it the brush strokes by hand, or the
passion of the heart of the artist? And
who is to decide this, an “expert” whose word we just need to take, or the
viewer who may become transformed/enveloped by the art? “Ay, there’s the rub….” A question devoutly to be pondered.
Both actors have
their supreme moments of passion and rage upon the stage. Fisher-Welsh is very impressive in his
monologue wherein he endeavors to immerse himself in the soul of Pollock, as he
writhes and contorts himself on the canvas of her living room floor. And Raptis is equally impassioned when she
attempts to convey the emotional response she has to the work, as it relates to
her family’s tragic circumstances, and very well performed, also. When two worlds collide, one has to give way
to the other…or do they?
Horn has once again
turned our worlds upside down and made us think, as well as be entertained by
his plays. In essence, he has two titans
of the stage do battle in an arena with each one matching the skill of the
other. And I especially like Horn’s set
design, an elegance in simplicity.
Definitely worth seeing!
I highly recommend
this production! If you do choose to see
it, please tell them Dennis sent you.
--DJS
