In theater, momentum wins over motif every time. At least it should.
A lot of good, occasionally great, work gets swept under the bed in the venerable Evergreen Players’ ambitious new production of “Marvin’s Room,” because director Craig A. Bond doggedly chomps onto a high concept and never lets go, even though it repeatedly grinds his storytelling to a halt.
“Marvin’s Room” is a straightforward, realistic story about a dysfunctional family forced by two illnesses to become functional. Dad’s dying slowly, his dutiful daughter (and primary caregiver) more quickly, of leukemia. Enter a long-estranged sister and her arsonist kid for some bone marrow and quality family time.
This is the last play you would expect a director to go all stylized on. But Bond got the notion that what we are really watching here is “the game of life.” Game on … and on … and on.
The set is made up of toy blocks, which constantly shift. The walls are adorned with game pieces such as chess pawns and dice. The never-seen dying patriarch lies in a bed represented by a headboard that’s placed front and center, making us in the audience, in effect, Marvin. A stretch, but fair enough.
But at each scene break, Bond freezes all but one actor, cues maudlin piano music and has a player march ritualistically in a straight line like a toy soldier to the bed, removing one (game) piece. This funeral march represents the gradual decay of both our patients – get it? Yeah, the first time. But this plays out with aggravating repetition – 17 times – adding more than 20 minutes to the run time in set changes alone. A director should never interject himself into the proceedings when it does not serve the play.
But the production boasts its positive aspects.
“Marvin’s Room” is a well-conceived and often brutally funny character study, making it delicate and difficult to pull off. Michelle Hanks and Lisa DeCaro won’t make anyone forget Diane Keaton and Meryl Streep, stars of the 1996 film, but they each have sparkling moments and great chemistry as incompatible, one-upping sisters Bessie and Lee.
DeCaro is great as the hapless single mom who has struggled more than her ego is willing to show. But her troubles are personified in her institutionalized 17-year-old son Hank (a promising Jos Esqueda in his stage debut) and his stoic little brother, Charlie (Michael Dyer).
Hanks nails Bessie’s saintliness, though there’s more emotional terrain to mine. It’s young Hank, of all people, who recognizes something rather wretched in Bessie’s 20-year isolation as the family’s sacrificial lamb. Much more could be made of this – and the irony that though a spinster, Bessie shows Hank more parental wisdom in a few short weeks than Lee has managed in 17 years.
To lighten the mood, playwright Scott McPherson adds an unstable, soap-obsessed aunt Ruth (Rose Rogers), whose pain-relief implant triggers the garage-door opener, and a likeable nincompoop of a doc named Wally (Peter Burghart).
There’s nothing new in the structure here: The first act is meant to make you laugh, the second to make you cry. Bond’s crew nearly manages both, but neither to full effect because of that shackled momentum. Still, the climax builds nicely. Ultimately Bond’s most subtle touch is his most effective.
The biggest problem with Bond’s overall approach is the irreverent notion that this is all somehow just a game. Nothing is more real than death. There’s a helpless terror that accompanies impending loss. McPherson knew that. He wrote his play as he was dying of AIDS. That didn’t stop him from writing some terrifically funny lines. But to sell leukemia as just a game? That’s an insult.
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-820-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
** | “Marvin’s Room”
DRAMA|Presented by Evergreen Players|Directed by Craig A. Bond| Starring Michelle Hanks and Lisa DeCaro|At Center Stage, 27608 Fireweed Drive, Evergreen|THROUGH APRIL 9|7:30 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays|2 hours, 38 minutes|$14-$18|303-674-4934 or evergreenplayers.org
