Mae West said, “Keep a diary, and someday it’ll keep you.”
Actor John Hutton does her one better: “I never travel without my diary,” he said, quoting Gwendolyn from “The Importance of Being Earnest” – “One should always have something sensational to read on a train.”
In his award-winning off-Broadway play “Fiction,” Colorado’s Steven Dietz adds to the discourse with his pungent line, “The lies begin when you lift the pen.”
The subjective nature of diaries – and who should be allowed to read them – is central to “Fiction,” opening Saturday in its regional premiere at the Curious Theatre Company.
Five years ago, it would have seemed a fiction to believe an actor of Hutton’s caliber might one day perform on the Curious stage. But Curious has become a second home for a number of Denver Center Theatre Company veterans. Hutton started the trend in 2002’s one-man tour de
force, “An Almost Holy Picture.” Jamie Horton, the senior member of the DCTC’s resident acting company, followed in 2004 with “Trumbo: Red White and Blacklisted.”
Now, in the greatest casting coup of Curious’ eight seasons, Hutton is back in a lead role, this time with Horton as his director. The pair represent 38 seasons of DCTC history.
“It’s delightful to be back with this other company,” said Horton. Added Hutton: “It’s a real pleasure for both of us.”
Though they have shared the stage in more than 50 plays, “Fiction” is just their second collaboration with Horton as director, following last year’s “Slabtown.” They both say Horton’s vast experience as an actor makes him a better director. Their shared stage time, dating to “Julius Caesar” in 1992, means “Jamie probably knows my acting process better than I do,” Hutton said.
“Jamie has faith,” he added. “I think the big thing for a director is to trust in what he has done. If an actor feels like the director doesn’t have that faith, it’s terrifying, because you just start to shut down.”
Instead, Horton creates an environment of creativity. “Jamie will frequently say to me, ‘You just go ahead and fool around with that, Johnny,”‘ said Hutton. “That tells me he knows I am going in the right direction – but he is not going to tell me what the direction is.”
Horton believes successful direction comes in part from knowing what mistakes not to make.
“What I hope that I am not doing is micromanaging every single moment,” he said. “This is what I think about the great directors: Their vision is very clear, and they are able to state clearly what it is they want. But in terms of dealing with the people who are carrying the ball, it is important to allow them the freedom, within parameters, to explore whatever it is they want to explore. Because chances are, they are going to show you something far beyond what you could have articulated.”
There is plenty to articulate in “Fiction,” the story of two happily married writers who discover the wife has just three weeks to live. The wife asks her husband to read her private journals after her death, but here’s the kicker: Before she goes, she wants to read his. That would mean the revelation of secrets he never planned to share. This is one of those terrifying areas for anyone in a committed relationship.
“Michael says early in the play that a marriage, however good, is not a tell-all enterprise,” Hutton said. “It is in some ways a pact between necessary strangers. But of course, he winds up telling all, or at least more than he had planned to. And I have a feeling that’s a good thing. He winds up being more exposed, and that can only improve him as a human being after all of this is over.”
But is something for the good of the individual also for the good of a marriage, even if it is to end in three weeks?
“I am not going to wade in on this one with my own personal experience,” Horton joked, “except to say that Dietz has hit on a question that occurs in every single relationship.
“That’s what is so wonderful about this play: Deciding what wants to be common ground; how far down that road you will go before you say to yourself, ‘This is me, and I am willing to bring a certain percentage of myself into the middle ground of this relationship, but there will remain at my discretion a reserve. … Yes, there is a great deal of shared knowledge and love and experience in any marriage, but there is a fringe around that somewhere, and in that fringe is where the question marks lie.”
Dietz contends the only thing harder than dying with a secret is living with one. That’s why Horton and Hutton believe the wife, too, is better off knowing.
“The tragedy is the greater because she now knows him that much better, and that brings them closer,” Hutton said. “And that makes it even harder for him to lose her, because now the person who knows him the best in the world is gone, and he’ll never find that again.”
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-820-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
“Fiction”
DRAMA|Curious Theatre Company| Directed by Jamie Horton|Starring John Hutton, Martha Harmon Pardee and Karen Slack|1080 Acoma St.| THROUGH JUNE 24|8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays| $20-$30 (2-for-1 Thursdays)| 303-623-0524 or curioustheatre.org
