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--Michael Scott Moore
A Relative Mess
My Uncle Sam. By Len Jenkin. Directed by Cliff Mayotte. Starring Joe Bellan, Jennifer Bainbridge, Mary Beth Caton, and Robert Parsons. Presented by Rough and Tumble at the 450 Geary Studio Theater, 450 Geary, through June 15. Call 673-1172.
Comedy is a curious alchemy. It can take the awful, irritating base stuff of everyday life and turn it into something hard and bright. When it works, the payoff is undeniable. When it doesn't, the material lays there, inert and unremarkable. Upstart company Rough and Tumble's highly acclaimed productions of Tom Jones and Macbeth suggested that artistic director Cliff Mayotte had mastered this baffling science. But My Uncle Sam, the group's latest foray into the land of laughter, reminds us that clever antics do not necessarily produce the goods. One needs the magic words, which Len Jenkin's play unfortunately lacks.
The story follows a character ("The Author") in his reveries about his Uncle Sam, an elderly bachelor and traveling salesman of novelty items. From his solitary hotel room, Uncle Sam recalls his younger years, particularly a trip in search of the disappeared brother of his sweetheart, a tough-talking barmaid named Lila. As if this awkward conceit (author-imagines-old-man-remembering-past) isn't enough create a Grand Canyon of ponderous prose between the audience and the action, Jenkin alienates the audience further with a mess of stage cartoonery. In the end, the botany professor who grows flesh-eating plants, the clique of bumbling gangsters, the suitcase of lurid novelty items never inspire much more than bewildered squinting or, as in the case of the man next to me at the show, a nice long nap.
Part of the problem is that Jenkin -- and to some extent Mayotte -- is too eager to show off his avant-garde wackiness. Too much of the show is presented with the broad ta-da! of a circus performance. Maybe in a different town (or century), a scene in an opium den would be considered risque, or a multiple-narrator technique might be construed as cutting-edge. But here today such stylish stuff merely comes across as pointless, particularly since it's not grounded in a compelling story or theme. Without enough intellectual substance to appear postmodern, without a keen enough wit to pass as satire, My Uncle Sam emerges as a hodgepodge of styles, story lines, and schtick. In the service of the flawed script, Mayotte runs his 11-person cast through an obstacle course of quick transitions and campy characterizations. If Len Jenkin's play has an emotional center (and I'm not at all sure that it does) such stylistic graspings only serve to occlude the play's nuances.
Joe Bellan portrays Old Sam with an undeniable feel for early 20th-century working-class cadences, but he never develops the emotional variety that would allow us to see Sam as an individual rather than merely a type. Clad in cardigan sweater and reading glasses, Robert Parson plays the Author with the chummy avuncularity of John Boy Walton. This gather-round-the-fire attitude only reinforces the suspicion that the play is a slight indulgence, not a tale of urgent import. At one point, he beams at the audience with a broadcaster's smirk and says: "He never told me a story. I'm telling myself one for him." (How nice for you, but what possible bearing does this have on us?)
Despite its many shortcomings, the production displayed numerous minor treasures. The sound design and musical composition, by Mayotte and Joshua Pollock respectively, punctuated the evening with a soundscape as rich as the text could have been. Amid a solid cast, a few performers positively glimmered. The magnificent grotesquerie of Michael Carroll, the seamless frippery of Blancette Reynolds, and the bad-girl poise of Mary Beth Caton and Jennifer Bainbridge offered ample pleasures, while we waited for the comic chemistry to kick in.
-- Carol Lloyd
