Sowelu Theater
Portland, OR
503.730.9066
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| Jared Roylance and Brittany Burch |
Reviews: Star of Hope by Lea Floden, 2008
The Oregonian says: " In its collaborative approach to putting a production together, Sowelu Theater emphasizes the importance of the interaction among actors. That emphasis is well-displayed -- and the main pleasure -- in the company's entertaining revival of Lea Floden's amusing comedy Star of Hope.
The play itself (which won a Drammy Award for Best Original Play when Stark Raving Theatre first produced it 13 years ago) is uneven in places and seldom laugh-out-loud funny, but Sowelu's actors connect repeatedly in ways that draw humor from moments as simple as one character watching another drink a glass of milk.
Nan Gatchel gives the show's one truly hilarious performance as Gerry Vandervooten, the antic half of a seemingly average older Midwest couple with a fun-loving, gee-whiz attitude toward life. While the other performances are in a lower register, they complement Gatchel's manic ways by setting up a kind of counterpoint.
The show opens with Gerry and her fix-it-man husband Jim (Rick Mullins) wearing Cheesehead hats to welcome a pregnant girl named Tootie (Brittany Burch) to Wisconsin. The girl mistakes them for the younger Walter and Sam Peterson (Jared Roylance and Heather Rose Walters), a seemingly barren couple who have arranged to house her until she gives birth to a baby they'll adopt. This is just the first in a long series of mistaken identities, misunderstandings and misrepresentations that drive both the humor and the plot.
Floden relies a bit too much on the withholding of information and surprising twists to produce suspense, and there isn't much below the surface in her story, but the situations she arranges among characters allow the Sowelu ensemble to do what they do best.
Under Lorraine Bahr's sure direction, the actors give an almost musical flow to the show's constant comings and goings, as well as the brief conversations among different combinations of two or three characters that these entrances and exits create. Even when the script runs dry, the actors find ways to make the action worth watching. A gesture, an inflection or a glance can bring a smile at any moment.
Tiny Back Door Theater is a difficult place to construct more than a simple set, but Brett Beserock, with design help from Bahr and Barry Hunt, has managed to create an entire home with floor-to-ceiling walls, a hardwood floor and believable exits to a kitchen, bathroom and stairwell. (In a clever accommodation to the demands of space, the audience enters the seating area through the room's front door.)
Gatchel and Mullins are reprising roles they played in the 1995 production and they are clearly comfortable in them. They work fluidly together, exploiting every chance for humor. Their comfort fits their characters, who seem to be self-satisfied Wisconsinites (though nothing here, we learn, is as it seems). It contrasts sharply with the mysterious unease of Tootie, played playfully by Burch with the right mix of slyness, mocking petulance and hidden malice."
—Michael McGregor
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