What’s real on television?
At a time when news and entertainment divisions are blurring, when “reality” TV shows have never been more orchestrated and when the credibility of the nightly news has never been more suspect, you have to wonder.
A CBS news anchor hosting “Big Brother”? “Survivor” castoffs interviewed like they’re legitimate newsmakers? Evening news shows giving more coverage to Britney Spears’ public implosion than to the burning of Kenya? Anyone remember full and unfiltered war coverage?
As Howard Beale might say: It’s mad as hell, and people are going to take it more and more. The TV writers strike and bleeding newsroom budgets all but ensure that.
The simultaneous corrosion of journalism and rise of reality TV are fertile territory for Theresa Rebeck’s new dark comedy, “Our House,” a scathing satire commissioned by the Denver Center Theatre Company that opened Thursday in its world premiere. It’s about an ambitious, rising news anchor who is happily drawn into a hostage situation by a seriously disturbed, TV-obsessed fan who loves her. Or maybe he hates her guts.
The underlying question for audiences, says actor Rob Campbell, is this: Can those whose primary concern is profit be trusted to tell us the truth? Especially when that info is distorted, controlled, withheld or manipulated?
If only a few people are in charge of providing us not only with entertainment but also with the news and information we need, Campbell said, then “It really does make you wonder if they are actually keeping us from truth.”
Rebeck, the acclaimed author of plays like “Bad Dates” and “Omnium Gatherum,” says there’s never been a better time to be a satirist in America. “The place is just lousy with it,” she said with a laugh. “I mean, you can just reach out and pick something up off the street, it’s so easy.”
Her play, she says, “is about how network news and reality TV are becoming the same thing, and how the media culture in America is contributing to a sort of psychotic psychological landscape.”
“I mean, really,” she added, “There is something that comes out of that television set that just dements our psyches.”
The danger any playwright faces when writing such a current, contemporary comedy is twofold: whether the material might become too quickly dated before it can ever make it to a stage and whether a topical landscape as ludicrous as TV is beyond lampooning.
To the first point, Campbell says, Rebeck is quite prescient about the subjects she chooses to write about. “The questions she asks actually continue to thrive, as opposed to die out,” he said. “Over the past two years, these issues have actually continued to spiral. Reality TV doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.”
And to the other: Rebeck doesn’t see TV or the media as easy targets.
“I want to know why we aren’t talking more about television and what it has done to us as a race,” she said. “TV is an enormous part of what it means to be an American. It has had an absolute impact on our history and our humanity, and I think that makes it an essential subject for drama.
“But I think the only person who has taken it on with any kind of ferocity is Paddy Chayefsky,” she said of the mad-as-hell “Network” screenwriter. “But certainly there’s much more room for contemporary writers to be looking at. It’s the elephant in the room, I think.”
And when reality shows are now dropping off kids in a desert for “Lord of the Flies”- like, survival-of-the-fittest warfare, that’s a room with space for lots of elephants.
One where the term “reality TV” is already giving way to something that’s now being called “actuality TV.”
“It means a kind of cooked reality,” Rebeck said. “When I first heard it, I’m like, ‘Wait, reality doesn’t mean reality? That’s pretty (expletive) crazy.’ ”
So what is reality? That’s what Campbell’s uncorked character, Merv, is trying to figure out, in his own psychotic way, in “Our House.”
“He is equipped with great intelligence and vision, but he is also cursed with an emotional membrane that’s just a little too thin for the conundrum he’s in,” Campbell said. “Because TV is his main source of information, his reality is disastrously distorted. And that’s true for a lot of people.
“There’s a line in the prologue to ‘Henry VIII’ that talks about ‘the history you are about to witness’ — Shakespeare refers to it as ‘a chosen truth.’
“That goes back again to this notion of who’s in charge of disseminating the truth — and can they be trusted?”
John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com
“Our House”
Dark comedy. Denver Center Theatre Company. Written by Theresa Rebeck. Directed by Daniel Fish. Starring Rob Campbell. Through Feb. 16. 6:30 p.m. Mondays- Thursdays; 7:30 p.m. Fridays; 1:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays. $36-$46. 303-893-4100, (800-641-1222 outside Denver), all King Soopers or .
Warning: Strong language, violence.
The review
Look for theater critic John Moore’s review of “Our House” to be published in the Monday, Jan. 21 edition of The Denver Post.
3 More Plays
“Jeffrey.” Theatre Group presents Paul Rudnick’s outrageous rom-com about a gay man who swears off sex and instead finds love during the AIDS epidemic. 7:30 Fridays-Saturdays (and some Thursdays) through March 1 at Theatre Off Broadway, 1124 Santa Fe Drive. $22 (303-777-3292, )
“Girls Only: The Secret Comedy of Women.” This comedy by and for women (seriously — no dudes allowed through the front door) looks at self-described “girlie milestones,” like first bras, first loves and first heartbreaks. Written and performed by local comedians Barbara Gehring and Linda Klein. Ladies, savor your sisterhood. Exiled guys, consider yourselves lucky. 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays at The Avenue Theater, 417 E. 17th Ave. $20 (303-321-5925, )
“Closer.” A new company called Uncorked Productions debuts with Patrick Marber’s “Closer,” a brutal 1997 relationship drama about four strangers who meet, fall in love and get caught up in an intermingling web of sexual desire and betrayal. The staging includes original compositions by area chanteuse Elizabeth Rose (she performs live at the Jan. 25 performance, tickets $25). 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays at the Bindery Space, 720 22nd St. $12-15 (877-862- 6752 or )
John Moore
Weekly podcast
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Running Lines with . . . Ted Neeley. On this special, expanded episode, John Moore talks with Ted Neeley, who starred in the seminal 1973 film “Jesus Christ Superstar.” Neeley headlines the national tour playing tonight and Saturday in Avon, and twice Sunday at Denver’s Buell Theatre. One thing we’ll say for him, this Jesus is cool. To listen,
