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Theater commentary: Two artistic directors try to build their reps

Posted October 13, 2009 11:00 pm

Alexander Stevens

Maybe it's unfair to make pronouncements about the tenures of two new artistic directors - Diane Paulus at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge and Kate Warner at the New Repertory Theatre in Watertown - based on the first shows they've staged in their new positions.

But maybe not.

Any theater director will tell you that it's important to make a statement early in the play you're directing. Let the audience know where the night is headed. The same certainly applies for a new artistic director choosing a new season at a new theater. Lead off your lineup with a show that says something about your plans for the theater. Show us your vision.

With that in mind, Paulus and Warner are off to contrasting starts.

Paulus landed with a splash, choosing to revive her New York hit, "The Donkey Show," which she staged with her husband, Randy Weiner. Paulus renamed the ART's second space - changing it from Zero Arrow Theatre to Oberon - and then turned it into a 1970s disco. The show, which has been extended to Jan. 2, starts on the street, where characters from the show are already interacting with the patrons as they lineup for entrance. Inside, the joint is hopping. Glamour boys, wearing more sparkles than clothes, interact with the audience, reminding the pointy-headed intellectuals of Harvard Square how to boogie. A DJ spins records, a disco ball hovers and glitters.

It's cool. Paulus seems to have accomplished Job One: attracting a younger audience to the theater. The truth is, I didn't see a lot of graying professor types on the night I attended. It was a bunch of youngsters - most of them probably born after Donna Summer released "Last Dance" - who seemed hungry, and ready, for something new. They brought a wonderful energy to the theater, and they seemed ready to follow Paulus anywhere she wants to lead.

The whole thing becomes a little sketchier once the "play" begins. Essentially, Paulus and Weiner have taken the very basic story of "Midsummer Night's Dream," reset in a disco, and used all those hokey, enduring and irresistibly bad disco songs as the interior monolog of the characters.

As a directorial concept, it's fun, but also a little stupid. It's the kind of idea that could get dreamed up by a group of college theater students one night while they're passing around a joint - "Hey, Bottom could work at a car wash, and then sing 'Car Wash'!" Sounds great in the fog of late-night fellowship, but usually, such ideas dissipate when the sun rises and heads clear.

But more to the point, what does "Donkey Show" tells us about a Paulus tenure? You have to admire her sense of daring. In a conversation with me months ago, Paulus said that the American theater really needs a complete transformation. No small task. But there were times while I was watching her trippy take on "Midsummer Night's Dream" that I thought, "By God, maybe she's actually doing it."

"Donkey Show" also tells us that she's not afraid to deconstruct a classic. The ART has a history of rethinking Shakespeare and Ibsen, et al., but if, in the past, some of those ventures felt ponderous and obtuse, "Donkey Show" exhibits a refreshing lack of pretension. If there's a fault in tone, it's that it goes too far in the other direction - it's as light as cotton candy.

If Paulus is submerged neck-deep in a lake, coaxing us to "Dive in, the water's great," then Warner, at New Rep, seems to have tiptoed up to the shoreline, and dipped her toe into the water to test the temperature.

She opened with "Mister Roberts," a choice that's surprisingly safe and a little perplexing. The 60-year-old play (turned into a film starring Henry Fonda in 1955) offers almost nothing new in 2009. And although Warner showed an eye for talent by snagging Thomas Piper for the tile role - he's the mensch the role requires - the play is a pretty unexciting choice.

To be fair, it was possible, while watching the show, to find some ideas to chew on. I was intrigued by the notion that sometimes, in wartime, the enemy we need to watch is actually someone fighting on our side. Or perhaps the play tells us something about the hollow promise of finding glory in battle. Indeed, Mr. Roberts' great gift of leadership was ultimately wasted in war.

But I'm not sure that any of these intriguing tendrils of the play are enough to explain the choice or justify the expense. The art form of theater rests on shaky ground these days, and it's hard to believe there's stability, or a future, in a revival of "Mister Roberts." Later in this season, Warner offers up the more intriguing choices of "Indulgences," "Opus" and "Hot Mikado." She's tested the waters; let's hope she now dives in.

Meanwhile, this week I'm off to see Paulus' second offering. She's brought the Punchdrunk theater company into town to perform "Sleep No More," a mash-up of "Macbeth" and Alfred Hitchcock thrillers. More points for piquing our interest with another show that can't be described in a blub. But it's not enough to just be different; now she and Punchdrunk have to deliver the goods.

Yes, it's fair to take a hard look at the first offerings of a new artistic director and see what she's trying to tell us. But it's unfair to draw hasty conclusions. Rick Lombardo, who left the New Rep to become the artistic director of the San Jose Repertory Theatre in California, always admitted, with a smile, that he didn't know what he was doing during his first season at the New Rep. He, like Paulus and Warner, did not live locally when he got the job. He freely confessed his first show - "The Mystery of Irma Vep" - was the wrong choice, and a flop. He said it took him a couple of years to understand his new audience and serve their tastes.

That seems fair enough.

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