Dear wonderful folks at WCT,
I write with thanks for the deep and delightful production of Bakersfield Mist (seen on the last Sunday). I looked up the writer and his work, never having heard of this play before. I was amazed at the complexity of the scriptwriting and of the acting, not to mention all the other roles (like director, staging, etc.) that went into your production.
First of all, Cindi and Steve did a fantastic job of portraying extreme opposite personalities, initially making one wonder how they could ever come to any agreement about anything in the course of the next two hours. It was also dubious at first that a play based on only two characters in one relatively small trailer home could keep the interest going.
But indeed, there was Steve’s character erupting into a most marvelous explication of Pollack’s work that woke up my own awareness of what was going on for that artist. There was Cindi’s desperate gun incident that brought everyone—especially Lionel—to think about what ends people will go to, not to mention the shouting and shoving match following Cindi’s attempt to take a knife to the precious work she hoped to get rich on. All of these actions kept the audience awake (despite those margaritas that Jeff was plying in the lobby :). This was no mere discussion.
I most appreciated the authenticity of the actors’ presentation. I’ve seen many fine plays at WCT with lots of great acting, but this production was absolutely flawless. The subtlety of the actors’ expressions, the genuineness of some of their more serious thoughts and the ironic humor in many more statements were all delivered with perfection. Maude’s story about her son’s demise was heart rending. While each character started out as, in a sense, a caricature of him or herself (high brow academic expert, low brow working class trailer denizen—and my grandmother lived out her last decades in a trailer in Florida, so I mean no disrespect!), the actors did not take their character into an extreme that would make one wince.
The music and stage set were both perfect, too. I loved Maude’s defense of that clown painting! (My godmother in New York actually painted it ) Watching Lionel walk around and examine every collected piece in the trailer was delightful, too, the expressions of dismay playing across his face. Hearing his “speech” about the fake statue that his wife loved added another twist to understanding his character.
Finally, the choice of the play itself was brilliant. I read one review of the play when it was produced in Chicago. The reviewer said it was a "shallow" rendition of a similar story about a woman fighting for recognition of a painting. I would say that anyone with that opinion of the play is rather shallow him or herself. The irony is so thick in this story, in how the characters speak to one another, each out of their own pain and their need to hold onto their vision of reality. One can see the depth if one only looks hard.
Or perhaps our actors were able to render all that in ways that the Chicago production could not.
Through the play, I learned something about the controversy of fakes in the art world, and I learned something about this controversial artist and his work in a rather surreptitious way. But the play means so much in a time when we are often at odds with one another because of presumed attitudes and values. I really enjoyed seeing how Lionel could try to come to terms with what Maude valued in that painting, what it meant to her—and how much work she had done to figure out its provenance (whatever that word means, ha!), like analysis of the fingerprint on back, wow! Ultimately, I learned that it was painted by Gretchen Moore, so that settles that! All well done.
Thanks again for risking and delivering, Willits Community Theatre.
Kim Bancroft