Review - Theatre - Valparaiso

 

On Friday, April 15th, I attended the 7:30pm performance of Don DeLillo’s Valparaiso at the Eugenia Rawls Courtyard Theatre on the Auraria Campus in Denver, Colorado. It was performed by the students of the College of Arts and Media at the University of Colorado at Denver.

I arrived early wanting to be certain that I got a good seat never having attended a performance in this theatre before. As is my custom, I sat just right of center two thirds of the way back on the main floor. I noticed immediately the television monitors to the left and right of the stage hanging at or about the same level as the proscenium arch and thought to myself, “Uh oh… this is a CAM event”. I then remembered something my instructor had said about all CAM productions needing to have elements of film/video, theatre, art, and dance. I’ve never been comfortable with the type of hodgepodge productions that often result from such an amalgamation of disciplines so I steeled myself for a bumpy ride.

The intro music was odd and felt out of place. By odd I mean that while it was obviously an original composition it failed to hook the audience in and make them feel comfortable as they took their seats – I couldn’t identify with it. The music was too loud while the audience was gathering and it climbed to uncomfortable levels as the house lights dimmed and the curtain was drawn. This created a nervous feeling in my guts which was only strengthened by the liberal use of multiple spotlights and moving gobos as we, the audience, entered the dying mind of the lead character.

The performances, other than that of the lead, seemed bigger than life and more like melodramatic caricatures than real people. In retrospect, I suspect this was by design but, as I sat there watching, it left me trying actively to achieve a state of suspended-disbelief which proved to be distracting. The actresses each appeared to be strutting about the stage like Prima Donnas trying to outshine the others without listening or responding to any but the most obvious of cues from their peers on stage. The one performance that stands out, aside from the lead, was that of the talk show host DelFina. When she first entered from one of the VOMs after a less than inspiring introduction I thought, “Oh this is going to be terrible.” However, after a scene that was far too drawn out and cumbersome, she really impressed me in that she successfully turned the corner from mindless drivel to plot moving action as she riveted the room and carried the emotional moment of the lead’s death.

The costumes were modern if a bit stylized for some scenes and the vernacular was common. As the entire play takes place in the mind of a dying man in the moments before his death, it’s not surprising to find continuity in the costumes and speech. The setting is entirely realistic and it is juxtaposed against characters and events that seem progressively more surreal as the play progresses.

The story arc is a bit limited. It opens and ends with the lead’s death while everything in the middle is the thrashing of his oxygen-deprived brain. Thematically it could be inferred that women are cruel, uncaring creatures to be used for worship and/or sex and that in doing so we (men) are left ultimately unfulfilled and alone. However, I’m uncomfortable with that perspective. I would rather infer that life is short and should never be taken for granted. I would rather look to it as a model for what not to do – a modern morality play of sorts. In retrospect, all of the cues were there and the writing of the play seemed innovative, even interesting. Where the play failed was in the execution - the play just didn’t work for me.

The word I used to describe it to anyone who would listen was horrible. I would have happily left at intermission and requested my money back had I not been required to sit through the entire show for the purposes of this critique. There was too much happening on stage at any given time - The various actors playing both in front of and behind the scrim, the swirling lights, and the four (!!!) TV monitors. So much of it, like the art displayed on the center monitor, seemed arbitrary and irrelevant. The actors were not well matched to each other and their performances seemed overblown and unbelievable. The light and audio cues seemed abrupt and too intense and did not compliment the performance. In short, I’d like those two hours of my life back. To anyone who might have endured this performance, I extend my condolences.

RCS