Re-create a pre-feminist, pre-media-mad world for a postmodern, TV-nurtured audience—say, staging Arthur Miller's tragic A View from the Bridge at UNLV—and expect a new perspective.
Brooklyn longshoreman Eddie Carbone (Steve Rapella) to housewife Beatrice (Andrea Gallo) in View: "Whadda you know? You haven't worked a day in your life."
Audience: "Ooooooooh."
Audience member: "It's like All in the Family."
Or derive a retro-kick in an L Word/Queer Eye culture from Eddie's reaction to his niece's cooking/singing Italian suitor. "Da guy ain't right!"
Some plays are timeless (Miller's The Crucible). Some age beautifully (Miller's Death of a Salesman). Some are A View from the Bridge, whose '40s-centric sensibilities occasionally get in the way of its otherwise electric dramatic momentum and thematic relevance. Such are the ravages of time.
Yet the Nevada Conservatory Theatre's intense interpretation expertly preserves the legendary playwright's central ideas in View: betrayal, ignorance and human weakness.
Peppered with refreshing flashes of humor but anchored in a faithfully melodramatic approach, NTC's season-ender is built on fierce performances—particularly from union "guest artists" Gallo (affecting an uproarious Brooklynese accent when she "tauwks" about having a cup of "cauwfee") and Rapella, in a blue-collar characterization that veers from affable to agonized in beautifully measured stages. Add crisp direction by Robert Brewer and set design of stunning depth and detail evoking 1940s Brooklyn by Emmy-winning "guest designer" John Iacovelli, and this is one hell of a View, social anachronisms aside.
Laced with an incestuous undercurrent, View takes us to Brooklyn's Red Hook section in 1948, and into the ground-floor apartment of the Carbones. Since the death of Beatrice's sister, the couple has raised their niece, Catherine (Regan Cooley), from childhood into a disturbingly beautiful young lady. Eddie and Catherine's bond is a close, dad-daughter-ish one, but Eddie clearly struggles with repressed sexual desire while growing physically distant from his wife. Enter Beatrice's illegal immigrant cousins from Sicily, searching for a better life: the married but quick-tempered Marco (a strong Sean Boyd) and ebullient, opera-loving Rodolpho (a nicely modulated Jonathan Shultz, sporting a comically distracting, platinum-blond dye job), to whom Eddie takes an immediate dislike, especially when Catherine succumbs to his gentle, exuberant charms.
Grappling with his own forbidden yearnings while accusing Rodolpho of homosexuality—and of scheming to wed Catherine solely to gain U.S. citizenship—a seething Eddie sets a tragedy on the tracks when he anonymously betrays the cousins to immigration authorities.
Authored in the mid-'50s, View's views first surfaced in Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront, before Miller reconfigured them into a one-act verse play, and finally its finished form. And though Miller's drama was widely interpreted as condemnation of McCarthyism and blacklisting—of "naming names"—it's lost none of that thematic power 50 years later.
Though stylistically quaint, View remains a work of ideas, laden with humanity. That, one hopes, will never fall victim to the ravages of time.
Act II
C'mon along and listen to "the Broadway musical for people who love Broadway musicals" at the Aladdin through Sunday. As the road-company 42nd Street taps through town, its flagship production back east is this week installing Mama Partridge Shirley Jones and her son—no, not David, the other one ... no, not Shaun, the other one ... no, not Danny Bonaduce, the other other one ... yes, Patrick Cassidy!—as the new leads through July.
Here's 42nd Street trivia for Law & Order addicts who can't imagine Det. Lennie Brisco was ever anything but a sardonic, old wiseass: Jerry Orbach is one of the most dynamic musical-theater performers the New York stage ever produced (Chicago, The Fantasticks, Promises, Promises—his Tony winner—and Guys and Dolls). Orbach topped 42nd Street's original Broadway cast in 1980 as hotshot director Julian Marsh. Pick up the original soundtrack and revel in the moment when the ingenue informs Orbach that she's giving up the show-biz life and catching a train back home.
"What was that word you just said? Allentown? I'm offering you the chance to star in the biggest musical Broadway's seen in 20 years and you say AL-LEN-TOWN? C'mon along and listen tooooooo ... the lullaby of Broadway ..." It's some of the classiest corn ever grown on Broadway.
Curtain Call
"SOLD OUT." Words looming large around here, where they're infrequently said, heard or thought. But they were during the delightful Floyd Collins at UNLV's Black Box Theatre, and the ambitious Sweeney Todd at the Community College of Southern Nevada. Sweeney director Philip Shelburne weighs in on the sweetly surprising turnout:
"One of the principal goals of Sweeney Todd was to unite several community organizations into the artistic output of a singular show. We were also curious to see if our community audience would support a title that was not on the tried-and-true list of shows perceived to be palatable to Las Vegas," Shelburne says.
"Fortunately, the audience reaction was most gracious. The average attendance was 485 [out of 525 seats], and the last three performances were sold out. I was elated to watch our community demonstrate a maturing base of support for our cultural arts. I think it's an exciting time for the arts in Southern Nevada." Amen, bruddah.
The Marquee
Nevada Conservatory Theatre will add a post-play "discussion night" next season following Thursday performances, for audiences to hang with the actors and director and pose questions … Las Vegas Little Theatre has posted next season's main-stage menu: Driving Miss Daisy, A Streetcar Named Desire, Woman in Mind, A Good Man, Surviving Grace and Steel Magnolias. September's Daisy marks LVLT's move into a bigger space at 3920 Schiff Drive, twice the size and just down the sidewalk from its current digs.
Which makes it the Las Vegas Larger Than It Used To Be But Nevertheless Little Theatre.