Attention aquatic actors: Why just splish around on the Strip when you can make a theatrical splash just off Spring Mountain Road?
A quirky query, perhaps, given that the moneyed marvel that is the Wynn hotel-casino commanding the Strip skyline is more of a performance draw—by about a billion-fold—than modest Las Vegas Little Theatre, a storefront space on an inconspicuous side street tucked discreetly behind Chinatown.
But the latter is where cast members moonlighting from the swim-tacular spectacle of Wynn's Le Reve chose to dock to reconnect to their dramatic roots on terra firma, now in their encouraging debut as the New American Theatre Project, Las Vegas' latest bid for entrenchment in the local community theater scene.
So welcome to the club, rookie drama dorks (we mean that with affection). But be forewarned: When it comes to newbie thespian troupes in this town, history has a habit of bouncing up and biting them in the tuchus theatricalus.
In its premiere production of Kenneth Lonergan's This Is Our Youth, renting out Las Vegas Little Theatre's cozy Black Box, NATP's three performers and director—Jim Slonina, Carmen Tausend, Wayne Wilson and Gregg Curtis, respectively—are all Le Revvers, comprising a unique quartet of Strip pros diving into the local talent pool.
Flawed though it is, their inaugural effort sent a bracing signal that after all the false starts and failed promises of other wannabe companies in this city that wound up gone with the desert wind, NATP could possess the talent and the balls to kick the odds in the ass.
Unbridled joy of performing—that's what radiated from the intimate stage.
And that pulled these performers through several problems that could have toppled lesser talents, perhaps the most critical being selection of material (admittedly based only on this opener, but that was no insignificant decision). This Is Our Youth is a minor piece with no point or direction until late in the second act, and by then it's of little consequence.
Still, their motivation—simplicity over the spectacle they usually star in—is laudable. "We chose the play because of its simple nature," Curtis writes in the program's director's notes. "No big moving parts, no glitz, no glamour. It is 'anti-Vegas.' ... The narrative is all that is important ... In this way we have taken a big step off the Strip as we do our part to infuse noncommercial art into the belly of the commercial beast."
That's what we like to hear, even if we've heard it all too often.
But Lonergan's script, a seriocomic study of '80s self-absorption, is a navel-gazer dipped in drugs, about bored post-adolescents on New York's Upper West Side in early-Reagan-era America.
Warren (Wilson), a needy nerd who's swiped 15 grand from his abusive dad, takes refuge at dealer-pal Dennis' (Slonina) cramped apartment (pad paid for by his folks). Mildly spicing up the proceedings is Jessica (Tausend), a confused fashion-school coed who gets involved in a halting but tender affair with Warren. The play climaxes as these jaded, yeah-whatever dudes redefine their relationship, the superficially cool Dennis and the awkward Warren coming to a mutual but not particularly engrossing catharsis about the inequality of their bond in a predictable resolution that pretends to say something profound about the vapidity of the times and the adjustments we all make into adulthood.
But the actors make this middling material speak, and at times even sing. Slonina packs immense power into the braggadocio of Dennis, investing a startling emotional rawness that feels thoroughly authentic, while Wilson creates a layered Warren—more than the character, as written, deserves—a portrayal intriguing not only for what plays across his often dumbfounded face, but what seems to be bubbling behind it, a pride and maturity impatient to bust through.
Tausend's rather vague Jessica required more fleshing out from first-time director Curtis, whose uni-level approach—the tone is almost relentlessly excitable for a play that could use dollops of reflection—at least benefits from brisk pacing.
Yet this production's vibe is of potential on parade. Is that enough?
The casualty list is long in Las Vegas stage circles: Giacomo's Classic Dinner Theatre, Empress Theatre, Got Theatre? Project, hit-and-miss New City Theatre. Ernest Hemmings' and Francine Gordon's Test Market produced often-outrageous, avant-garde-minded material by the bucketful, most of it sparsely attended (and, frankly, of scattershot quality born of overextending themselves, though their fierce dedication and talent was admirable). That forced them to abandon their crackerbox SEAT venue at the Arts Factory Downtown and become, at least temporarily, homeless, hooking up with various vacant spaces around town, and with much less frequency.
Most heartbreaking of all was the September 2005 shutdown of Deanna Duplechain's stellar Nevada Theatre Company, and her reasons illuminate the issues so daunting to even the heartiest artists.
"We just could not continue to survive realistically with the income we were receiving," said Duplechain, NTC's artistic director, at the time. "We always did well in ticket sales, but that should only account for, at the most, 60 percent of a not-for-profit theater's income. The other 40 percent or so needs to come from individuals, corporations, government and foundations ... We could not raise our budgets to offer consistent compensation to artists, hire a development person and do all of the steps necessary to continue on a professional track."
After seven seasons, Duplechain liquidated NTC and hopped a plane to Austin, Texas.
And one of the most intelligent, inventive and boldly experimental stage gangs in town, the Cockroach Theatre, has at times looked as dead as a bug on a windshield, though it is, mercifully, still up and crawling.
Not that success is ever-elusive. Give it up for the drama die-hards of Las Vegas Little Theatre, Jade Productions, Signature Productions, Theatre in the Valley, P.S. Productions and Super Summer Theatre, enduring over some lean, mean years. (Tied to UNLV's School of Fine Arts, Nevada Conservatory Theatre operates on a somewhat different financial model, as does CCSN's drama program.)
Do the dewy dreamers of the New American Theatre Project have the steel innards to plead for donations and sell subscriptions in a city notoriously stingy with the funds it funnels toward community theater? Can it subsist on a budget that can barely squeeze out nickels and dimes for advertising, persuade other performers to fill out their ranks, coax folks with full-time jobs and full-time lives to volunteer for a myriad of administrative migraines?
Not to mention smiling through gritted teeth at contentious, cantankerous critics?
All offstage obstacles that felled a considerable pile of predecessors.
But at least onstage, NATP is a reinvigorating jolt of optimism that this new troupe can dodge the same old traps.