ROGER MASTROIANN

Someone shoot this lame duck 12 Good adaptation of 116-year-old Ibsen play suffers front overblown production

Uncomfortable visit to

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Cleveland-A gay director from Los Angeles was in town last month making his Cleveland directing debut with Great Lakes Theatre Festival's new adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's The Wild Duck. The play is adapted from its original 1884 text by Ohio playwright Anthony Clarvoe, and is set in modern-day Cleveland. It opened January 29 and runs through February 13 at the Ohio Theatre at Playhouse Square.,

But the only thing Great Lakes got right was the theme of self-righteousness the character Gregory Worley is accused of possessing in the play.

Artistic director James Bundy's pre-performance speech boasting that his theater is the only one in Northern Ohio receiving a NEA grant this cycle reflects the 22-hour walking grant proposal that is to follow.

The play reminds this writer of her high school's production of Carousel, where the director changed one of the angel's lines to include, "Would you please hang this star over Chanel High School."

So many of The Wild Duck's anachronisms remove you from the subtle realities of Ibsen. These include Lieutenant Akers dressed in loud plaid pants and a Cleveland Browns Starter jacket, soapopera music cues at key dramatic moments, fake creaking sounds

Director brings classic plays to diverse audiences

by Michelle Tomko

Before The Wild Duck director Bill Rauch returned to the West Coast, where he is the co-founder and artistic director of Cornerstone Theater Company, this writer had the opportunity to speak with him by phone.

"It's [The Wild Duck] really about the mixture of tones and the interplay between lies and ideals," said Rauch.

Asked what the play was about for him, and whether or not he found any gay themes in the 116-year-old play, Rauch added, “You have to bring who you are to the work. Growing up gay, the fear that some lies are good, and how to deal with that.'

The Cornerstone company operates under a unique philosophy of community-based work.

"Part of our journey has been to bring issues into the community. Everything about our work is teaching tolerance-every day and every project.” said Rauch.

The theatre collaborates with diverse communities throughout the country in producing classic plays, involving community members with professional actors.

"We are sort of nomadic by design," said Rauch while describing his theater and their lack of a formal performance space.

Cornerstone even does a production of William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night in which one of the male characters, the foppish Malvolio, is gay.

"We do an answer to 'don't ask, don't tell'," said Rauch on the merits of the production.

Rauch resides in California with his husband of sixteen years, who is an actor at Cornerstone.

"There are moments you can't come home and complain about work because one affects the other," laughed Rauch.

when the cellar doors were opened, and two parallel giant photos of the Akers family that

are flown in perhaps to point out to mentally challenged audience members who have not figured out on their own that this family is disintegrating.

The play begins with a party at Henry Worley's pseudo-Shaker Heights home where the audience gets a chance to see several Cleveland personalities as themselves, including Indians announcer Jack Corrigan and U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones. Here Great Lakes suspiciously left out any theater professionals from their list of Cleveland movers and shakers, using instead radio disc jockeys and news anchors.

Ibsen is about realism. His works aim "to produce in the reader a feeling that he is witnessing a slice of real life” according to Ibsen. The audience should feel that they are intruding on the characters by peeping through a keyhole in the fourth wall.

But with this production's beautiful yet too wide set, foot lighting that makes the characters distorted shadows rise away from the set and puts your focus on the black masking, and lines delivered directly to the audience, this nuance of Ibsen's writing is impossible. Unless, of course, in your own observation of life you hear faint music com-

ing out of nowhere--in which case you probably also hear voices telling you Martians are invading.

Instead of voyeuristically observing life, the audience is privy to a family in turmoil role playing in a living room.

The acting, too, is over the top and larger than life. With the exception of Mike Hartman, who plays a sincere, yet conniving, wellrounded Henry Worley, the remainder of the cast, instead of taking the slice of life so recommended by Ibsen, were fighting for the whole pie.

Unfortunately, the two biggest offenders were key players Michael Ornstein and Billy Jones, the latter whom you may remember from his two-dimensional portrayal of Walter Lee in A Raisin in the Sun last season at Great Lakes. Both actors seem to have attended the Robin Leach school of I'M SCREAMING AND I DON'T KNOW WHY! Fifteen-year-old Sarah Lord seemed a bit too mature for this role, and was directed in a manner as to make her a shoo-in for a revival of Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

The translation by Anthony Clarvoe is

trademark of the Ibsen philosophy. While a translation using such modern phrases as "don't go there" or replacing Ibsen's use of the word poison with “toxic waste” may bother some purists, Ibsen demands these rewrites of his translators.

Ibsen felt a play should be rewritten again and again until each actor has his own voice and sounds completely natural. Clarvoe accomplishes this with both timelines and integrity by modernizing without saturating the script with the latest pop culture slang.

What is brilliant in the production is the multi-racial casting. As we learn that Harold's daughter may not be his, the multi-racial casting puts another layer on the "living with lies" theme that is at the heart of this drama. That Harold never notices that his daughter might physically not be black, when his occupation is a photographer, a presumed keen observer of life, we see how far deceit can really run.

This production is a case of convention for convention's sake. Unfortunately, quite a bit of the natural beauty of the play is lost.