Category: Arts & Architecture

It really was sort of mesmerizing to watch the stage adaptation of John Frankenheimer’s 1962 film masterpiece “The Manchurian Candidate” at the Maverick Theater the other night. I mean the stage is so dinky; and yet somehow this production was so ingeniously staged (including a turntable built into the stage) that the whole thing seemed plausible.

I was in town for a couple days and my husband and I thought we’d give the little theater another try. Okay, Joe kicked up a little fuss, but went anyway.You have to remember, I’m not even much of a theater goer, but I enjoyed writing a review a few months ago and thought I’d give it another try.

I have to admit I wasn’t too optimistic about the play – after all the Richard Condon novel spans two continents and many years, and the Maverick Theater is what, about 25 feet wide? And the movie had left some pretty indelible character images such as Angela Landsbury’s wicked Mrs. Iselin.

The story is kind of simple. Generally loathed sergeant Raymond Shaw and his platoon are captured during the Korean War and become the brainwashed tools of commie masterminds. Later, back in the States, Shaw gets a Medal of Honor for “saving” his troops. This delights his Machiavellian monster mom and Joe McCarthy-like stepdad, Mrs. and Senator Iselin, respectively. Other platoon members including Marco Bennet are having horrible flashbacks and trying to figure them out. The suddenly and inexplicably likable Raymond Shaw is the nexus. And the Reds have something really big planned for Shaw…

As noted above the choreography of story and scene changes was tight and extremely well adapted for the (small) stage. There were even a chase scene! The use of interactive video really helped expand the scope of the mis-en-scene. Congrats to director Brian Newell – a bit of a mastermind himself.

The level of acting performances seemed varied to me. John Brennan, who previously did a boisterous turn as Randall McMurphy in Cuckoo’s Nest is back as the disturbed Marco Bennet and did pretty well, although I get the impression his personality leads him to more expansive and gregarious characters. Marco Bennet is about to really crack-up, and I didn’t quite get that sense of acutely anxious desperation that informs bad anxiety disorders.

Raymond Shaw was played by William Marty in a really hard part. Marty’s Shaw seemed sort of uneven to me: sometimes convincing, other times less so. I would have liked to have seen a more developed early profile of the SOB he was supposed to be. Part of the problem may have been that the script didn’t permit a little more attention to Shaw in Korea, as did the film. His Shaw under the influence was convincing. And of course he did get the best line of the script: “It’s a terrible thing to hate your mother. But I didn’t always hate her. When I was a child, I only kind of disliked her.” BTW, William – remember to work the diaphram!

The other main character, Mrs. Iselin, was played to menacing perfection by Veda Franklin who brought to her role a consistently calm and calculating Lady McBethesque evil that really filled the bill. The touching transient moment between Iselin and her son near the end of the play was deftly and quickly turned to pathological hatred toward her manipulators. Brava to her.

Of the other performances I noted Percival Arcibal’s Dr. Yen Lo, turned with the required nuance of humor, and with a good line about yak dung cigarettes; and Robert Craig did an okay, although sometimes stiff presentation of the dim-witted, red-baiting Senator Iselin. Kelsie Blackwell injected some bouncing feminine effervescence with her portrayal of Jocie Jordan, Shaw’s girlfriend.

Overall, I’d like to see the Maverick casts become more relaxed and convincing  with both their hand work and incidental interaction with props, something I’ve always thought was the mark of the best actors. But what do I know?

Anyway, that’s the summation of The Manchurian Candidate at the Maverick Theater by me, The Fullerton Shadow – amateur critic. As before, take it for what it’s worth. And go see the show. It runs through June 5th. It’s entertaining and at times startling. You’ll have fun.

On a pea-green pool

Skim the long-legged water bugs

A distant gong sounds

Back in town for a few days from wrangling wild horses outside Pioche, Nevada, I decided to traipse around downtown Fullerton last night to check out the new Fullerton “Art Walk.” I dragged along my husband Joe who has never gone to an art gallery without the kicking and the screaming.

The idea seems like a good one: walk around and see what local artists are doing, and by doing so help inspire and cultivate art. I didn’t take any notes so my comments are just impressions – and you can feel free to take them for what they’re worth.

While we didn’t get to all the places on the map, I think we stopped at enough places to get a sense of what was happening. The Fullerton “art scene,” if such a term can be used, (and I devoutly hope it can’t) seems to be dominated by the usual avant-garde collage/mixed-media, assemblage creep art that is supposed to be either thought provoking, or unsettling, but that almost always seems to be humorless, self-important and always makes me wonder if the perpetrators can even draw. The target for such stuff is invariably younger people, which is good, but there remains the now-hackneyed Tim Burton-esque mindset behind this stuff that really makes me wonder if 20-somethings even appreciate traditional artitistic expression. The Hibbleton Gallery on Wilshire seems to have staked out this territory, especially.

The Violet Hour on Santa Fe is a pretty interesting place – an old industrial space converted into a performance art studio/gallery – and while going for a hard-core non-traditional ambiance included some interesting photography of a place called Zyzzx.

I have to note one exception to this avant-garde trend is evident at the Village Art Center (we didn’t make it that far north last night) where the gallery is full of simply stunning pastels by Brad Faerge and oils by John Hunzicker; plus paintings and even sculpture from some other really exquisitely talented artists. Philistines like me know it’s good when we couldn’t possibly conceive of doing it ourselves.

We also stopped by a place called the Graves Gallery on Amerige, of which I had some hope; alas, much of it was dedicated to some truly awful acrylic paintings. This is really too bad since this place was by far the best space for exhibiting art.

And I have to mention another stop: the Fullerton Museum Center where a woman named Lora Lingl had a couple of “kinetic” sculpture pieces made out of wood on display. One was an interactive hammer/metal plate device operated by a crank and gears; the other was a motor driven contraption that manipulated leaves on tree branches via monofilament fishing line.  This piece had a strange, mesmerizing effect as it juxtaposed the mechanical and the natural. Watching this piece was really engaging.

The highlight of the evening may have been a stop at an office suite over on Malden where they had put up a bunch of paintings some guy had collected over the years from garage sales. It actually made a pretty ironic and persuasive statement about the world of local art galleries.

Next time I hope to stop in at some of the other venues to see what direction they are going in. Overall, the idea is good one and I congratulate and encourage the  organizers.

My two-cents worth is that a lot more attention needs to be dedicated to finding and presenting the work of first-rate artists. They are out there, all over the place, in fact – professionals and amateurs alike.