[NEohioPAL]Berko review: La Turista/convergence-continuum

[Roy Berko]

‘LA TURISTA’ MAKES A STRANGE VISIT AT
CONVERGENCE-CONTINUUM

(Member, American Theatre Critics Association)


--THE TIMES NEWSPAPERS--

Lorain County Times--Westlaker Times--Lakewood News
Times--Olmsted-Fairview Times	


One of the area’s newest theatres,
convergence-continuum was founded with the idea of
“going against the grain” and doing “in-your-face
style theatre.”  It’s not theatre for everyone, but
within a brief three years they have carved for
themselves a slice of local audience that is
fascinated by the avant garde and the plays that other
local theatres won’t produce.  

Yearly, they produce a Sam Shepard play.   Shepard is
considered by many to be a leader of the avant-garde
in contemporary American theatre.   He has been called
the Eugene O'Neill of the Seventies.  Others,
including myself, disagree.  They feel that he is much
too willfully opaque, that he toys with viewers' minds
and is a tease when it comes to meaning.   I feel that
he has never emerged from the era of the 60s in which
“happenings” and plays that left meaning to the
imagination of the viewers was in vogue, with morals
and messages not a requisite for good theatre. 

Shepard mixes fantastic settings and raw personal
revelation with free-flowing language based on musical
rock riffs and jazz improvisations. If his plays sound
as if they were written at high speed and never
revised, that's because they are.   He is not big on
rewriting.   As he tells aspiring playwrights,
“Writing is a journey of self discovery, but a good
play is not an elaborate device to point our attention
elsewhere. It exists in the world like anything else
and must be confronted in all its three dimensional,
multi-sensual, undeniable reality.” 

In his plays, Shepard's characters shout a lot, and
fight each other quite often. He admits that his work
is violent because it is about America.  "It's a
tangible presence, you feel it every where in America.
There's no need to be frightened of it.  I find I can
use it as a vehicle for other feelings."  His plays
set out to confront the audience with a view of
America as a broken, fragmented, unhappy society...

‘LA TURISTA,’ this season’s convergence-continuum
play, is an early Shepard work.  Written when he was
23, it was Shepard's first foray into the two-act
form.   It opened March 4, 1967.   

A surreal tragicomic ‘LA TURISTA’ finds Salem and Kent
in Mexico.  They are suffering from both sunburn and
the famous “la turista” an intestinal malady of
Americans who venture south of the border.  In the
first act, a native boy, a witch doctor and his son
enter into their world.  Whether this is delirium or
reality is left to the imagination of the viewer.  The
second act finds the two back in America, but still
ill.  This time a “doctor” and his son are the
“curers.”   As the play progresses it becomes more and
more surreal, more and more abstract.

The convergence-continuum production, under the
directorship of Clyde Simon, is inconsistent.  It
often appears like the actors are not sure where the
play is going, where they fit in, like they are saying
lines, lines that have no meaning. 

Geoffrey Hoffman, as Kent, does a herculean job.  The
first act, in which he appears clothed only in his
tighty-whities, is dragged and thrown around like a
rag doll.  Most of the second act finds him climbing
the small theatre’s ceiling pipes and bouncing along
platforms above the heads of the audience.  It’s an
exhausting performance.  As Salem, Jovana Batkovic
doesn’t ever quite develop a consistent character. 
Brin Metzendorf is not very believable as the boy. 
His Mexican pronunciation is poor and he fails to
clearly define himself.  Cliff Bailey works hard as
the Witch doctor and later the doctor.  Brian Breth
and Arthur Grothe who portray the son and Sonny expend
much energy, but with little effect.

Sam Shepard has said, "I guess I'm always hoping for
one play that will end my need to write plays. Sort of
the definitive piece, but it never happens. There's
always disappointment, something missing, some level
that hasn't been touched, and the more you write the
more you struggle, even if you are riding a wave of
inspiration. And if the piece does touch something,
you always know you haven't got to the depths of
certain emotional territory. So you go out and try
another one."  His ideas well  define  ‘LA TURISTA.’  
This is not his “one play that will end my need to
write plays.”

CAPSULE JUDGEMENT:  ‘LA TURISTA’ is not a play for
everyone.  If you are a Sam Shepard fan you might like
it.  If not, you probably will leave the theatre
message frustrated and unfulfilled.

‘LA TURISTA’ runs at 8 pm Thursdays, Fridays and
Saturdays through September 25 at
convergence-continuum’s artistic home, The Liminis, at
2438 Scranton Rd. in Cleveland’s Tremont neighborhood.
 Tickets are $12 general admission and $9 for students
and seniors. For information and reservations call
216-687-0074. Seating for this production will be
limited to about 50.


=====
Roy Berko's web page can be found at royberko.info and many of his theatre and dance reviews appear on artscleveland.net.


	
		
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