The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 70, No. 24, Ed. 1 Friday, March 18, 1983 Page: 9 of 20
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Thresher/Fine Arts
Alley explores trauma of Vietnam with comedy
How I Got That Story
Alley Theatre Arena Stage
Through April 10
It took a long time for American
performing artists to focus on the
national trauma of Vietnam, but in
the past few years, there have been
a spate of films and plays on the
painful subject of that conflict and
its aftermath. The scab was peeled
off the wound on the American
consciousness with films such as
Coming Home, The Deerhunter,
and of course, Francis Ford
Coppola's epic Apocalypse Now.
Stage artists also helped with the
national catharsis, presenting such
works as David Rabe's The Basic
Training of Pavlo Hummel, and
Streamers. The Alley Theatre has
joined the trend this season with
two bitingly funny productions on
their Arena Stage — 5th of July,
and now How I Got That Story.
Amlin Gray's two-man show is a
sometimes silly, sometimes
moving depiction of a young
American reporter's adventures in
a war-torn country. Set in the
mythical Southeast Asian country,
Ambo-land, the play shows how
The Reporter is changed by his
encounter with The Historical
Event, a group of zany and
pathetic characters portrayed by a
single actor. Fresh out of West
Dubuque, The Reporter sets out
with his TransPanGlobal Wire
Service press card in hand,
believing in his wide-eyed naivete
that "if I can just keep my eyes
open, I can understand the whole
world." To his dismay, he finds
that he sees everything but
understands nothing.
This funny and finally chilling
work on the senselessness of war
has a rather odd history.
Playwright-in-Residence at the
Milwaukee Repertory Theatre,
Gray discovered in the spring of
1979 that he had three weeks to
come up with a script. The plav he
had been working on for six
months had bogged down and
rehersals were about to begin.
Consulting his file box of rough
ideas, Gray found a card
describing a play in which a
reporter would encounter an
unspecified "historical event" to be
played by a single actor. That idea
combined with the original play
and the result was How I Got That
Story, a comedy with the
emotional impact of a rifle butt to
the neck.
Alley Artistic Director Pat
Brown, relieved of the thousand
details of season's opening, has
done a fine job directing this
production. "Hie format of the
play, including the two almost
allegorical characters and the
device of having The Reporter
speak directly to the audience,
lends itself easily to a Brechtian
production and Brown has made
her choices of direction with that in
mind. The use of exposed lighting,
obviously unreal special effects,
and projected slides with actors'
names, pictures and scene titles
the visceral grip of "that story." As
The Reporter, John Woodson
begins the play shining with a
schoolboy innocence, becoming
more and more confused and
Alley does well with How I Got That
produce a classic Verfremdungs-
effekt (Alienation Effect). The
closing montage of slides is
especially nice. Overall, the
audience is continually kept just
aware of the theatricality of the
situation — an aspect of the
production which enhances
intellectual comprehension of
ideas without negating the
powerful emotional impact of the
message.
Certainly the performances of
the two actors do nothing to lessen
Story
disheartened as he treks through
the misery of the war-savaged
Ambo-land. At the play's end he is
a lost man — estranged from
profession, country and self.
Michael LaGue gives a stellar
performance as The Historical
Event. His characterizations range
from the hillariously bizarre
(Madame Ing, ruler of Ambo-land
and Lieutenant Thibodeaux, an
officer who "learned to kill and
swear" in the army) to the deadly
serious (a self-immolating monk
and a guerrilla information
officer). He is at his most touching
as Li, a young prostitute, and as an
Ambonese nun in scenes that show
who the victims of war really are.
One image is hauntingly grotesque
an American photographer
(highly reminiscent of Dennis
Hopper in Apocalypse Now) who
continually seeks the joy-ride thrill
of battle, despite the loss of an arm
and (eventually) both legs.
Production work is uniformly
excellent. Keith Belli's set and
Penny Remsen's lighting combine
to create the entire spectrum of
Ambo-land. Rosemary Ingham
designed the multitude of
costumes — LaGue's amazingly
quick changes in and out of these
good looking pieces is a real feat in
itself. LaGue also performed the
sound track, consisting of an
incredibly varied number of sound
effects and a couple of very funny
oriental rock and roll numbers.
A final note — the atheletic
LaGue plays the entire show with
jne leg in a cast. A chat with a
fellow theatre-goer revealed that
many people took this for a
metaphor of the crippled Ambo-
land. It's a nice idea, but the
unvarnished truth is that Mr.
LaGue has a ruptured ligament in
his foot. As they say, the show
must go on.
— M. Christopher Borer
Late nights bubble with Main Street's Coca-Cola
El Grande de Coca-Cola
Main Street Theatre
Friday and Saturday nights at
11:30
Midnight movies have been a
weekend fixture in large cities for
quite some time now. Cinema
owners schedule unusual films,
often with a cult following, to run
for months at a time on Friday and
Saturday nights. The idea, of
course, is simple — the late night
crowd likes off-beat entertainment
to keep them amused during
breaks from partying. Witness to
this is the success of TVs "Satur-
day Night Live" and "SCTV. But
midnite theatre is a brand new
concept. Drawing on the whole
notion of lunatic fringe, not-ready-
for-prime-time comedies , is Main
Street Theatre's late night
production of El Grande de Coca-
Cola.
Alan Sherman, Diz White, and
Sally Willis, EI Grande is hokey in
the extreme. Using money
borrowed from his uncle (manager
of the local Coca-Cola bottling
plant), Pepe Hernandez has
started a night club in Trujilo,
Honduras. But in order to borrow
the money, Pepe has promised his
uncle (and the local press) an
International Parade of Stars. *
Unfortunately, the only
performers Pepe has under
contract are members of his own
not-so-talented family.
The result is a delightful farce,
replete with a myriad of costumes,
languages, singing, dancing, and
acting — all bad. The Hernandez
family (under different guises)
stumble through their repertoire,
appearing as a troupe of
acrobats, French actors, German
(or Italian or Hawaiian) singers
Director Theodore Luedemann
has done a fine job of leading his
cast through this brash piece of
silliness. The production has the
flavor of a drunken rehersal —
which is exactly the way it should
be. The pace is frantic; the fun,
unending. There is a fine art to
making bad acting funny and
Luedemann has helped his actors
Hit the mark.
The cast is led by Joel Vazquez
as Senor Don Pepe Hernandez, El
Maestro Magnifico. Sporting an
assortment of wigs that he must
have borrowed from Rip Taylor,
Vazquez mugs his way through
operatic arias. Elvis imitations and
a hilariously horrible rendition of
"Shakespeare's Greatest Hits."
Vazquez is hysterically insuffer-
able in his role as host to the
evening's lunacy.
A master of the long take and
waggling eyebrows, Steve
Garfinkel is most funny as Miguel
Hernandez. Perhaps his best role
of the evening is Toulouse Latrec
in a tangled-up love story.
Mary Hooper is the obligatory
sex object in this south-of-the-
border slapstick. She has a
delightfully pouting sensuality as
Maria Hernandez, displaying
enough T & A to keep the late
night patrons more than awake.
TWO oz STRIP
The cast is completed by Lisa
Sheppard (Consuela Hernandez)
and Steve Kobrin (Juan
Hernandez) who add their own
bright energy to the production.
Kobrin shines in the I^atrec skit as
a gangster and adds a touch of
macabre humour as Blind Joe
Jackson, the deaf blues player.
So, if you've seen one too many
rerun of "Saturday Night" or one
too many Rocky Horror's,
hustle on down to limes Blvd.
some Friday or Saturday night
soon to catch Main Street
Theatre's El Grande de Coca-Cola.
It's the real thing.
— M. Christopher Bover
/IHESQWEIanoi bet
ON A GOOD NI6HT SHE |
COULD ADD AU.TWOSE
NUMBERS UP
Cast members in gleeful cancan
El Grande de Coca-Cola is a fine
example of what MST artistic
director Rebecca Greene Udden
affectionately terms "trash
theatre." A musical review by Ron
House, John Neville-Andrews,
and even as themselves in an
onstage wedding, a la Tiny Tim
and Miss Vicki. And of course,
there are continual messages from
"our sponsor," including the
inevitable "Coke" joke.
WOULD *X)
THAT ZANEflJfc
LOOK AT THAT AN6EL.
SHE'S GOT ALOT GOING
FOR HER IF TOU KNOW
WHAT I MEAN..
"~V
YFAH LIKE HER BROWN HAIR.
TW5 TOE ONE TH1M6 NAT
I KEEPS HER FROM BEING
JUST ANOTHER DUMB
0LOND.
WHAT. '?!
The Rice Thresher, March 18, 1983. page 9
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Cooper, Jeanne. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 70, No. 24, Ed. 1 Friday, March 18, 1983, newspaper, March 18, 1983; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth245526/m1/9/: accessed June 21, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.