Past plays haunt 'High'

    By Jerry Stein

    The theater can conjure terrifying darkness even with the lights pushed up to hot white.

    Matthew Lombardo, in his program notes for his play “High” that opened the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park’s 2010-2011 season Sept. 9, has written a semi-autobiographical play about the devastating physical, mental and spiritual destruction that addiction brings.

    Lombardo, last on Broadway with “Looped,” his stage biography of Tallulah Bankhead; offers a harrowing portrait of a young man’s descent into drug abuse. It is as painful as it is riveting. The Broadway-bound “High” is a three-character play that brings Kathleen Turner to the Mt. Adam regional theater’s stage in an impressive performance. She plays Sister Jamison, a foul-mouthed recovering alcoholic nun who has found purpose in her work at a Catholic-sponsored rehabilitation center.



    Only some overt associations with such past plays as “Doubt” and “Equus” brings “High” some mitigated praise than it otherwise would garner.

    Turner, 29 years past playing that plotting sexual furnace Matty Walker in “Body Heat,” has made a commendable transition. The erotic steam that so characterized her screen presence has lifted.

    What is revealed is a maturity that has enabled Turner to bring authority and an underlying compassion to her salty nun. She now has the kind of stage presence associated with that other matured beauty, Vanessa Redgrave.

    Kathleen Turner is joined in this play, which shows great influence of Alcoholics Anonymous principles of recovery, by Michael Berresse (original cast of the musical adaptation of “The Light in the Piazza”). His priest, Father Michael, written a bit superficially in contrast to the other two roles, is strangely intense about keeping Sister Jamison as counselor for a new patient, the young, volatile drug addict Cody Randall (Evan Jonigkeit).

    This young man, played by Jonigkeit with delivery hesitations characteristic of a somewhat fried brain, is walking bad luck. His childhood makes Dickens’ urchins look like characters in farce.
Cody’s father skipped out. His mother was a prostitute. One of her johns sexually abused him.

    The end result is Cody’s ingesting a whole formulary of restricted drugs–crystal meth, heroin. You name it; Cody took it.

    Cody’s profligate life culminates with the mysterious death in motel of his teen ager lover with whom Cody was doing drugs. This sends him to the treatment center in lieu of prison.
“High,” directed by Rob Ruggiero (he also directed "Looped" for Lombardo on Broadway) keeps the reins of dramatic tensions taut. It’s eternally midnight for these lives on stage.

    The troubled Cody has no monopoly on interior devils. In a series of monologues, Turner steps forth in blocks of light and articulates a kind of diary of Sister Jamison's life and addiction.

    And what is behind Father Michael’s unrelenting interest in Cody’s case? Isn’t he just another damaged kid moving through rehabilitation with extremely limited odds for success? No, it’s not that simple.The plot ruptures a bit to give the priest something more than a professional and/or spiritual connection. The twist is a bit convulsive but undeniably surprising just when you start thinking the worst about the priest and his intentions.

    "High” is even more emotionally exhausting than those films about alcohol and addiction, namely, “The Days of Wine and Roses” and “The Man with the Golden Arm.”

    "High" reaffirms that watching addiction being depicted on stage seems more raw, less filtered than images flashing on the same subject through a projector. Thankfully, though, there’s some relief in the onslaughtof humorous darts propelled out of Sister Jamison's mouth.

    Lombardo incorporates the main principles of recovery from AA in his dialog such as references to what recovering alcoholics call a “spiritual awakening" and the importance of a "higher power," a generic term for God. Additionally, there is also much use of the spiritual restoration from the Catholic faith.Yet, visually there is a force in designer David Gallo’s set that manifests itself as a kind of silent, watchful presence as powerful as any dialogue.

    Upstage, Gallo has placed a huge cyclorama of a star-studded night sky that could easily serve as a back drop for Grizabella’s song “Memory” in “Cats.” This serene sky, suggests a watchful God of many eyes peering down, observing this somber pageant of struggling life beneath Him. And He does act.

    The set pieces are all in white–the chairs, the institutional doors, and a huge pair of white brick walls at the bottom of which Cody is seen shooting up. But the wall also suggests those great doors of a cathedral. It is here Sister Jamison conducts a rite that Catholic and Anglican churches call The Reconciliation of a Penitent, an infrequently used kind of confessional. It's a most dramatic scene.

    Gallo’s set with expanses of bare stage is so conversant with the play. It is a striking example of how set can be in a constant dialogue with what is happening in front of it.

    Lamentably, the only real low for "High" is some unwanted associations with past plays This play comes after John Patrick Shanley’s 2004 play “Doubt” also containing a brittle nun but not so benign in intent as Sister Jamison.

    Reaching farther back there is most notably Peter Shaffer’s 1973 drama, “Equus.” This play involves a psychiatrist who also engages in self-probing monologues just as Sister Jamison does in "High." He also is treating a most troubled boy who blinded horses.

    And it is even harder to overlook the duplication that "Hifh" shares with "Equus. ” and “Both plays have key scenes in which both boys are fully nude.

    Little if anything is original in the theater or anywhere else for that matter. But surely Lombardo must have been aware of these parallels writing this play. The trick, though, is to be artful enough not to be so similar as to encourage comparisons. Some, perhaps even most audiences, one of which gave “High” and Turner a standing ovation on opening night, may not be aware of these associations with iconic plays or, if they are, won't even care.

    Still, “High” is derivative. Because "High" doesn’t manage to cloak the stage history that haunts it effectively, it cannot escape the label of being just another variation on an extensively treated theme.

    "High" is being presented at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Eden Park, Mt. Adams Tuesdays-Sundays through Oct. 2. Tickets: $25-$64. Reservations: 513 421 3888.

Photo by Sandy Underwood: Kathleen Turner is a nun who treats Evan Jonigkeit in 'High.'

Art Angst

By Jerry Stein


    I'm beginning to dread living room sets on stage.

    It used to be when you walked into the theater and you saw a couch you could expect something rip-roaring like "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" or a "Long Day's Journey Into Night" but not with Donald Margulies' "Collected Stories," which opened the Ensemble Theater of Cincinnati's 25th season Sept. 8. As handsome as Brian c. Mehring's set is with its built-in book shelves and print of Matisse's "Dance" on the wall, it all begins to at least sound like a teacher's office.

    The ETC's producing director D. Lynn Meyers has assembled a more than competent pair of actors in Amy Warner and Corinne Mohlenhoff. As the crusty writer-teacher Ruth Steiner and budding creative writing student Lisa, respectively, there is a lot of spirited oral boxing here.

    But though Margulies gives each actor choice, witty, even decently reflective lines in their edgy student/teacher relationship, the play visits the well-worn theme of the struggling artist engaged in finding her/his voice.

    Perhaps it would be tolerable to sit through a writer's development, ambition and some unattractive behavior that a good review conjures up in the young writer for the umpteenth time.

    The problem is that Margulies has written a kind of treatse on the vicissitudes of writing, nothing less than a diary most likely on himself. In the first scene, Steiner takes apart Lisa's struggling prose. It's supposed to be a tutorial and, believe me, it is. Long after we get the point that this kid needs lots of work, the critique goes on.

    There are other self-indulgences on the part of the playwright that try the patience. There's a long recitation of Ruth's short story about two women baking cakes. It's necessary to draw a conclusion that Ruth is writing about herself. But hopefully those cakes won't turn out to be as over done as this scene.

    The play gets out of the living room briefly in the second act so we can attend Lisa's reading of her new novel before a literary society. Something dramatically is revealed in this reading but it goes on far too long especially when it treats Lisa's insecurities of giving her first public speech.

    Climatically, it's not giving too much away to reveal that the final scene, set six years later from scene one, is one of hurt and betrayal over Lisa's success as a novelist. The catapulting retributions elicit engaging enough passion from Warner and Mohlenhoff.

    But rivalry and betrayal between mentor and student have been all so much more effectively in all sorts of art world and backstage dramas and cinema. The film of "All About Eve" accomplishes this theme with a lot more economy than what is on display here. They never seen to tire of using their tongues as swords on each other.

    Despite the length of the interchanges in that final scene, Margulies' script takes an abrupt turn from betrayal to a kind of flash analysis on the part of Lisa as to what is really causing Ruth's rancor. She gleans all of this from that short story about the cakes.

    The connection between the story and Ruth's life is telegraphed in act one to the detriment of the final confrontation. For all its drama, the final scene just swings the hammer too hard concerning what most of the audience will have figured out.

    The generous audience gave the play (or was really in honor of the performances?) a standing ovation.

    But at about two hours and 40 minutes, including a break for the class, I mean audience, the grade for the play certainly is not an F but a good argument could be made for an incomplete.

    "Collected Stories" will be presented at the Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, 1127 Vine St.,Over-the-Rhine, Wednesdays through Sundays through Sept. 26. Tickets: $34-$42. Reservations: 513 421 3555.

    Photo by Sandy Underwood: Amy Warner, left, and Corrine Mohlenhoff in 'Collected Stories.'