Sowelu Theater
Portland, OR
503.730.9066
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| Sean Skvarka and Nan Gatchel |
Reviews: Blue Night in the Heart of the West by James Stock, 2000
Willamette Week says: "British playwright James Stock's Blue Night in the Heart of the West is a stunning mess befitting its subject: America. It's the Book of Esther as told by David Lynch; a bleak and scathing revelation into the soul of New Canaan, which is as mythic as it is psychopathic--much like the Bible.
America is the great broken-promise land--a plain wandered by sky-god-worshiping primitives who have passed the landmarks of reason to set up their spun-candy stands and tent-show apocalypses. Battened on trash like hogs on draff, and armed for Armageddon come, America's destructive energy is as mesmerizing as a freakshow. How the City on the Hill became the shacks on the plain is in itself worthy of Jeremiah's scorn, as is the fall of the children of Jefferson who have become a mob enchanted by the false profits of Bush. Stock is, of course, an outsider who can relish our miserableness as he castigates it (a European specialty). Yet lurking behind this dark pageant of our decline is a profound sadness. Europe has long been morally bankrupt, and now the "last great hope" is itself hopeless.
On the sinking ground of Epiphany, Iowa, the American Purim, Independence Day, has become a twisted fertility rite of hog-slaying and incest. But after sonny-boy Carl rolls his mother, Ruth, a tornado rips through their farm and their herd of pigs commit suicide (as the pigs did when Christ cast demons into their unclean hides). For Ruth, these are signs that Satan is loose and an important visitation has been foretold.
The prophesied visitation will be the arrival of Andrew, an exile from Scotland's "misery and drizzle." Scotland is "dying of nostalgia," lost in memories of past glories while simultaneously packaging and selling them. Andrew (the name of Scotland's patron saint) still believes America to be Beulahland and has come--carrying cross shears and a book titled Landscaping the Mind--to claim Nevada's MacAlpine Mountains, which bear the name of his clan. But at the foot of the desert range, he meets a wandering priest who is haunted by a rash fingerbang in Reno.
The priest tells Andrew that his mountains were so worthless that they were given to the Shoshone (another spent people hawking their history as trade). Before laying his head upon a train's track, the priest strips off his vestments and gives them to Andrew. Then Andrew heads for Reno to seek answers just as St. Andrew left the Baptist to seek Christ. But rather than Christ, he finds Kristen, a palmist and sacrificial blonde who apes Marilyn Monroe. Reading palms like maps, Kristen foresees a journey that she and Andrew must make to Epiphany and Ruth's farm.
Though Stock's play is excessive and frustratingly wayward, it's also as potent and disturbing a vision as the mad Ezekiel's. No company other than Sowelu could do this piece justice, and director Barry Hunt has again generated power from a complex work. The Sowelu troupe is first-rate, especially Kelly Tallent's Kristen and Shawn Skvarka's corn-fed Carl, as well as Chris Harder, Nan Gatchel and the multiple roles played by Lorraine Bahr and Brian Russell. Hunt could make more of Tim Stollenwerk's sound design, and the staging of the tornado might be more effective if the swirling cast cut the swooshing noises and, perhaps, swung debris as they formed the funnel. But as with all of Sowelu's work, the audience never knows if the piece's dangerousness will spill over onto them. That's as it should be."
—Steffen Silvis