Actors' Summit: Well written script gets excellent production
Tennessee Williams, Edward
Albee, William Inge, Arthur Miller, Stephen Dietz. What do these playwrights have in common? They are on the list of the top ten
American writers who have the most produced plays. Never heard of Dietz?
You are not alone. He is a regional playwright who makes a living as a
college professor and writing scripts that are done in mid-America.
Dietz is a prolific writer,
having penned more than 30 original plays. He’s scribed political, comedic, and
personal scripts. Most center on
the effects of personal betrayal and deception.
In contrast to playwrights
who write a script, showcase it, and then have some production company stage
it, many of Dietz’s works go from computer right into acting editions that are
published by Dramatists Play Service or Samuel French. Many of his short plays appear in
anthologies. Broadway is not on the
list of sites for his works.
Actors’ Summit, which is
producing FICTION, a 2002 Dietz work, did a delightful production of his
commissioned piece, BECKY’S NEW CAR, in 2011, which was written as a birthday
present from a man to his wife.
Dietz is a wordsmith. He writes poetic language and produces
quotable feasts. His lines include
such bon mots as describing a character in FICTION as “having a mouth like a machine
that goes by itself.” Another
character states, “you don’t leap a shadow, you just run through it.” Describing a discussion between a man
and his wife, he states, “The point? Why does there need
to be a point. . .the Great Reductiveness in which everything we say must be
shrunk down to You Make a Point and I Refute it; I Make a Statement and You
Rebut It. Is that really the best we can do?.” A secret that his ill wife is
keeping inspires the statement, “A secret, like a disease, is a very human
thing. It hides inside you. Discovers where you are most vulnerable. And then
it hurts you.”
FICTION centers on an author (Michael), his wife (Linda)
, his lover (Abby), and a series of secrets. The married duo originally met at a Paris café, develop an
argumentative repartee, and avoid “real talk” by playing verbal ping pong. Michael and Abby met at a writer’s
seminar, and have a strained relationship.
Linda, who has been diagnosed
with a fatal brain tumor, teaches literary fiction and book writing, and is the
author of a critically acclaimed novel based on her supposed rape while in
South Africa. Michael is a commercially successful novelist who is
uncomfortable with his having “sold out” to the movie industry and forced to
write best selling pithy novels. Both are prolific journal keepers and it is
their journals which serve as the touchstone of their problems.
Linda figures she has about
" twenty meals" left in her life, and asks Michael to read her
heretofore strictly private journals after her death, and she asks to read his.
She explains " “It's
ludicrous…not to mention vain -- I mean vain in a truly Tom Wolfe-ian sort of
way -- to think that they are not real, that I am not real unless someone reads
them." From this
request, through a series of audience affronts and interactions, we are led
down an intriguing path which reveals much and makes for the questioning of the
truth of it all.
The well paced Actors’
Summit production, which is adeptly directed by MaryJo Alexander, is
compelling. Though it is all
words, with no comedy, and no explosive action, there are enough highlighted
twists and turns and questions of what is true and what is fiction, to grab and
hold the audience.
Sally Groth (Linda),
Bob Keefe (Michael) and Cassandra Capocci (Abby) each develop a real, living character. The parts aren’t acted, they are lived.
CAPSULE
JUDGEMENT: FICTION is a well crafted
script which should be appreciated by people who enjoy good acting and literate
dialogue. I’d class it as a “go
see” for those who can forsake lots of pseudo-drama or escapist comedy.
For tickets to
FICTION, which runs through February 3, call 330-342-0800 or go to
actorssummit.org.
Coming up: ACTORS’ Summit’s next offering is the
recent off-Broadway smash, FREUD’S LAST SESSION, from February 28-March
17. It will star 2012 Cleveland
Critics Circle’s Best Actor award winner Brian Zoldessy. For a review of the off-Broadway show
go to http://www.royberko.info and
search under the Broadway link.
