- a bad script exposed by misguided acting and direction
- a clever script done fairly well
- a good script mangled by such poor direction that the acting didn't really matter
- a fun/unique script brought to life by great acting and direction
On Friday 5/7/2010, I experienced another permutation of the acting/direction/script conundrum: some good actors crippled by a weak and wordy script that gives their characters no purpose and stage direction that is fundamentally flawed.
Presented by Geneva Underground Theatre, K-PAX tells the story of a mental patient who claims he is a visitor from the planet K-PAX and goes by the name of Prot (rhymes with boat). His purpose for being on Earth is revealed on a landscape of de rigueur "psych ward" scenes dotted with unnecessary monologues by each character, all at a distressingly slow pace. Should you want more details about the story and the author, take a gander at this newspaper article.
The main problem with the show is that it lacks dynamic conflict and doesn't play well on stage. I'm sure it's a wonderful novel, but as a script, there's no cohesive flow to a story arc that takes us nowhere and essentially poises itself for a sequel. Written by Gene Brewer, it is based on his novel of the same name, which is the first segment of a trilogy. As I watched it, I had a feeling of deja vu: the common room scenes in the psych ward had all the stereotypical characters seen in One Flew Over A Cuckoo's Nest except for the pony-tailed Native American with a push broom, and the weary psychiatrist delving into the mind of the enigmatic patient made me yearn to see Equus again. And, without being too specific, the whole motif smacks of the basic framework of Christian religions. The pace is deadly slow and plays on one level that never builds dramatic tension. When the big climax does occur, it just happens. Then the show smokes a cigarette, rolls over and goes to sleep, leaving us feeling unsatisfied as an audience.
The therapy sessions between Prot and the psychiatrist are a series of Q and A sessions steeped in endless and circuitous psychobabble. At times, it felt like two people reading lines, since there was nothing onto which the actors could anchor and drive the story forward. When Dr. Brewer feels he's not making progress, he turns to hypnotherapy. Unfortunately, these scenes don't play well on stage either. Hypnosis scenes ask an audience to take an extra large leap of faith in the suspension of disbelief. The de facto reality is that the audience knows one actor is not really going to hypnotize the other, so there is a preconceived artifice that needs to be overcome. If your actors aren't strong enough, the scene fails.
Scott Surowiecki plays Prot in a manner that is all style with little substance. In my notes, I wrote "Mork from Ork without humor." There are no honest moments in his portrayal, and all I got from him was acting, not the result of the acting. It was superficial at best. This character has to be accessible to the audience in order for them to care about whatever happens. He is, after all, the focus of the show. Unfortunately, Surowiecki's Prot comes off as smug and smarmy. The lack of emotional investment was tangibly evident and created a wall that kept us from connecting. This is especially daunting in the hypnosis scene when he goes back to the age of five, then nine and then seventeen. His way of portraying the younger kids had the physicality and nasal tenor of Lily Tomlin's character Edith Ann, which is not how kids talk, but how adults pretend they talk. His teenager was painted as a hipster street thug and was clearly lacking in honesty. All of this made believing in the hypnosis scenes difficult. And, as a side note, his self-absorbed and exaggerated bow during curtain call reeked of narcissism and was off-putting.
Dr. Gene Brewer (yes, the author named the character after himself) is played by Pat Able, a good actor who was fettered by a weakly-written character. There were times when you could see Able starting to break the surface, but the weight of the script kept holding him under. He seemed to have difficulty deciding who Brewer was, and the tactics he would need to actualize it. This speaks more to the script and the director. Able had energy, and was invested emotionally, but his shotgun approach to finding a comfortable niche forced his focus to be too wide.
The other characters are, in my opinion, superfluous; if not by design, then by portrayal. Angelicque Cate plays Betty, the nurse who seems to serve no other purpose than to announce that a patient has arrived and to get cantankerous and snippy with Brewer. She does a pretty good job with what she had to work with. She did, however, rely on a southern twang from her vocal repertoire, which distracted from, rather than enhanced, her character. Steve Lord as the patient Chuck spoke in such quiet tones that it was difficult to hear him. The character seems to do nothing but make inappropriate scatological utterances, and not very well. It was as if he was suffering a case of meek Tourette's Syndrome-lite. He brought nothing new to this obligatory "psych ward" persona. He did better in his monologue, but like most of the other monologues, it was strictly time filler.
Peter Lemongelli did a nice job as Howie, another patient. He wore his character like a tight glove and was interesting to watch. Russ Devereaux played Ernie, the overly-twitchy OCD character that always appears in these "mental ward" shows. He did pretty well with the tried and true character, hitting the right notes for the most part and was passable with his monologue. He just needs to tone down the twitching in the initial scenes.
A "mental hospital" show is not complete without the character who hasn't spoken aloud since some life-shattering event in their past. The character Bess is right out of a Psychology 101 textbook, and is played by Angela Bend. Her scenes in the common room were appropriately catatonic. I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt and say she worked the nuances of an empty stare to perfection. It was that, or she was shutting down because of the mind-numbing pace of the on-stage action. She did the best job with her monologue, even though it's not a necessary component of the story, since it only estabishes back story for characters that could easily have been left out of the script, or minimized to simple tasks. K-PAX is, at its heart, a one-on-one of Prot and Brewer, and could have made a concise and compelling one-act.
Into this mix is thrown a reporter named Giselle, whose only purpose appears to be making goo-goo eyes at the alien. She serves as a conduit for a background check of Prot being done off stage by her unseen cohort (yes, it morphs into a detective story at one point). Again, I'm not sure why she became part of the story, which takes place in 2003 (established during a hypnosis scene when Brewer asks Prot to go back 5 years to 1998). They had Google back then and most of what she says to help the story along would be easily found during a computer search done by Betty. Kathy Richardson gives us Giselle through a lackluster performance that had no energy, emotion, commitment or basic stage craft. She is another one I had problems with hearing from the back row...which is only four rows from the stage. Her monologue was monotonous and monotone, and when there was an opportunity in the script for her to turn up the volume and energy, only her vocal pitch rose. The director should have corrected this before the show opened.
The pacing of the show was terribly slow. Director Eric Peter Schwartz should have instilled a sense of energy into the blocking, which was mostly lethargic. He needed to make the dialog snap, especially the scenes in the psychiatrist's office. The slow pace was exacerbated by the long blackouts between scenes. The one-person stage crew, garbed in a long-flowing blue outfit instead of the usual stage-crew black, moved with no sense of urgency to set up the next scene. She took her time putting up pictures on a wall to show the passage of time. It almost felt like days were passing as the audience sat in blackout. And she moved slowly. And then would start to leave the stage, only to turn around and come back because she forgot something. And she moved even more slowly. Many times, she erased something on a white board in the common room that you couldn't read in the first place because of the glare of the stage lights, and replaced it with something else you couldn't read. She erased and wrote slowly. And then left the stage.
Slowly.
In too many scenes, actors were upstaging each other. Entire conversations took place with one of the characters forced to keep their ass to the audience because the scene was played front to back, rather than side to side. Theatre is a visual and auditory medium, and I prefer to see the faces of the people talking.
As I've mentioned in other reviews, when the stage work is not compelling, my mind will wander to little things that I would normally ignore, like everyone moving with glacier-like speed during the curtain call and the anachronistic use of exploding fist bumps when Prot meets other patients. What you really want to know is the answer to this question: Is it worth the price of admission? Sadly, no.
Paid: $20
Worth: $8
Run time: 2 hours and 18 minutes, with intermission. They could knock 20 minutes off this with tighter direction, cue pick-ups, vocal and physical energy and getting the stage crew to move quickly during the blackouts.
Presented by Geneva Underground Theatre, K-PAX tells the story of a mental patient who claims he is a visitor from the planet K-PAX and goes by the name of Prot (rhymes with boat). His purpose for being on Earth is revealed on a landscape of de rigueur "psych ward" scenes dotted with unnecessary monologues by each character, all at a distressingly slow pace. Should you want more details about the story and the author, take a gander at this newspaper article.
The main problem with the show is that it lacks dynamic conflict and doesn't play well on stage. I'm sure it's a wonderful novel, but as a script, there's no cohesive flow to a story arc that takes us nowhere and essentially poises itself for a sequel. Written by Gene Brewer, it is based on his novel of the same name, which is the first segment of a trilogy. As I watched it, I had a feeling of deja vu: the common room scenes in the psych ward had all the stereotypical characters seen in One Flew Over A Cuckoo's Nest except for the pony-tailed Native American with a push broom, and the weary psychiatrist delving into the mind of the enigmatic patient made me yearn to see Equus again. And, without being too specific, the whole motif smacks of the basic framework of Christian religions. The pace is deadly slow and plays on one level that never builds dramatic tension. When the big climax does occur, it just happens. Then the show smokes a cigarette, rolls over and goes to sleep, leaving us feeling unsatisfied as an audience.
The therapy sessions between Prot and the psychiatrist are a series of Q and A sessions steeped in endless and circuitous psychobabble. At times, it felt like two people reading lines, since there was nothing onto which the actors could anchor and drive the story forward. When Dr. Brewer feels he's not making progress, he turns to hypnotherapy. Unfortunately, these scenes don't play well on stage either. Hypnosis scenes ask an audience to take an extra large leap of faith in the suspension of disbelief. The de facto reality is that the audience knows one actor is not really going to hypnotize the other, so there is a preconceived artifice that needs to be overcome. If your actors aren't strong enough, the scene fails.
Scott Surowiecki plays Prot in a manner that is all style with little substance. In my notes, I wrote "Mork from Ork without humor." There are no honest moments in his portrayal, and all I got from him was acting, not the result of the acting. It was superficial at best. This character has to be accessible to the audience in order for them to care about whatever happens. He is, after all, the focus of the show. Unfortunately, Surowiecki's Prot comes off as smug and smarmy. The lack of emotional investment was tangibly evident and created a wall that kept us from connecting. This is especially daunting in the hypnosis scene when he goes back to the age of five, then nine and then seventeen. His way of portraying the younger kids had the physicality and nasal tenor of Lily Tomlin's character Edith Ann, which is not how kids talk, but how adults pretend they talk. His teenager was painted as a hipster street thug and was clearly lacking in honesty. All of this made believing in the hypnosis scenes difficult. And, as a side note, his self-absorbed and exaggerated bow during curtain call reeked of narcissism and was off-putting.
Dr. Gene Brewer (yes, the author named the character after himself) is played by Pat Able, a good actor who was fettered by a weakly-written character. There were times when you could see Able starting to break the surface, but the weight of the script kept holding him under. He seemed to have difficulty deciding who Brewer was, and the tactics he would need to actualize it. This speaks more to the script and the director. Able had energy, and was invested emotionally, but his shotgun approach to finding a comfortable niche forced his focus to be too wide.
The other characters are, in my opinion, superfluous; if not by design, then by portrayal. Angelicque Cate plays Betty, the nurse who seems to serve no other purpose than to announce that a patient has arrived and to get cantankerous and snippy with Brewer. She does a pretty good job with what she had to work with. She did, however, rely on a southern twang from her vocal repertoire, which distracted from, rather than enhanced, her character. Steve Lord as the patient Chuck spoke in such quiet tones that it was difficult to hear him. The character seems to do nothing but make inappropriate scatological utterances, and not very well. It was as if he was suffering a case of meek Tourette's Syndrome-lite. He brought nothing new to this obligatory "psych ward" persona. He did better in his monologue, but like most of the other monologues, it was strictly time filler.
Peter Lemongelli did a nice job as Howie, another patient. He wore his character like a tight glove and was interesting to watch. Russ Devereaux played Ernie, the overly-twitchy OCD character that always appears in these "mental ward" shows. He did pretty well with the tried and true character, hitting the right notes for the most part and was passable with his monologue. He just needs to tone down the twitching in the initial scenes.
A "mental hospital" show is not complete without the character who hasn't spoken aloud since some life-shattering event in their past. The character Bess is right out of a Psychology 101 textbook, and is played by Angela Bend. Her scenes in the common room were appropriately catatonic. I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt and say she worked the nuances of an empty stare to perfection. It was that, or she was shutting down because of the mind-numbing pace of the on-stage action. She did the best job with her monologue, even though it's not a necessary component of the story, since it only estabishes back story for characters that could easily have been left out of the script, or minimized to simple tasks. K-PAX is, at its heart, a one-on-one of Prot and Brewer, and could have made a concise and compelling one-act.
Into this mix is thrown a reporter named Giselle, whose only purpose appears to be making goo-goo eyes at the alien. She serves as a conduit for a background check of Prot being done off stage by her unseen cohort (yes, it morphs into a detective story at one point). Again, I'm not sure why she became part of the story, which takes place in 2003 (established during a hypnosis scene when Brewer asks Prot to go back 5 years to 1998). They had Google back then and most of what she says to help the story along would be easily found during a computer search done by Betty. Kathy Richardson gives us Giselle through a lackluster performance that had no energy, emotion, commitment or basic stage craft. She is another one I had problems with hearing from the back row...which is only four rows from the stage. Her monologue was monotonous and monotone, and when there was an opportunity in the script for her to turn up the volume and energy, only her vocal pitch rose. The director should have corrected this before the show opened.
The pacing of the show was terribly slow. Director Eric Peter Schwartz should have instilled a sense of energy into the blocking, which was mostly lethargic. He needed to make the dialog snap, especially the scenes in the psychiatrist's office. The slow pace was exacerbated by the long blackouts between scenes. The one-person stage crew, garbed in a long-flowing blue outfit instead of the usual stage-crew black, moved with no sense of urgency to set up the next scene. She took her time putting up pictures on a wall to show the passage of time. It almost felt like days were passing as the audience sat in blackout. And she moved slowly. And then would start to leave the stage, only to turn around and come back because she forgot something. And she moved even more slowly. Many times, she erased something on a white board in the common room that you couldn't read in the first place because of the glare of the stage lights, and replaced it with something else you couldn't read. She erased and wrote slowly. And then left the stage.
Slowly.
In too many scenes, actors were upstaging each other. Entire conversations took place with one of the characters forced to keep their ass to the audience because the scene was played front to back, rather than side to side. Theatre is a visual and auditory medium, and I prefer to see the faces of the people talking.
As I've mentioned in other reviews, when the stage work is not compelling, my mind will wander to little things that I would normally ignore, like everyone moving with glacier-like speed during the curtain call and the anachronistic use of exploding fist bumps when Prot meets other patients. What you really want to know is the answer to this question: Is it worth the price of admission? Sadly, no.
Paid: $20
Worth: $8
Run time: 2 hours and 18 minutes, with intermission. They could knock 20 minutes off this with tighter direction, cue pick-ups, vocal and physical energy and getting the stage crew to move quickly during the blackouts.
