[NEohioPAL]THEATER REVIEW

[David Benson]

Quirky play is worth the drive to Hiram

Saturday, July 02, 2005

Linda Eisenstein
Special to The Plain Dealer

In these trying economic times, it's hard to think of a riskier proposition 
than founding a theater company and mounting a first season of unusually 
challenging work. So Tyst - a new company devoted to modern Scandinavian 
work, performing all summer at Hiram College - deserves some kudos and 
support based on sheer nerve alone.

Their second show, "Dead and Gone to Granny's" by contemporary Finnish 
playwright Jussi Wahlgren, is a quirky mix of dark comedy, social 
observation and family drama. Though it isn't perfect, it's different enough 
from the usual summer fare to warrant a country drive to check out the 
company.

Wahlgren's three-hander, which has hints of Joe Orton and a nod to Sam 
Shepard's "True West," looks at the rivalry between two brothers.

Patrick (played by the sepulchral Noah Varness) is the elder, a competitive 
marketing entrepreneur who has made and lost fortunes by introducing 
direct-marketing coupons to Finland. Broke, on the verge of divorce, and 
suicidal, he's waiting for a call about a Russian business deal that will 
put him back on top.

His passive-aggressive younger brother, Freddie (the shaggy, funny Adam 
Ziemkiewicz), is a wannabe writer who is pitching a reality show about 
"funniest home video deaths" to a local TV station. Their screwball 
interactions - including Patrick's passing on his pregnant mistress Linda to 
Freddie - leads to Patrick's accidental death and a reshuffling of the 
others' lives.

The play takes a while to get going, partly because Varness' take on the 
suicidal Patrick is to be affectless, which sucks some energy out of the 
farcical proceedings. He's better in the second act, when he becomes an 
outraged ghost in a white suit. But things begin to spark when the marvelous 
Bailey Varness shows up as Linda, vamping in her low-cut chiffon dress. 
She's sharp-edged, funny, voluptuous, and vulnerable, a perfect comic 
Desperate Housewife.

In Wahlgren's comically observed world, the dialogue often rattles on three 
simultaneous tracks, as people talk past each other while they obsess over 
their own needs. Most of the time, director Chad Stutz keeps the pingpong 
pace going. There are some nice moments of comic staging, like a 
conversation between the brothers as they practice a sword routine, and 
several clever uses of video. There are places where the script flags, 
including a video audition scene that seems like padding, but overall it's 
engaging and unusual.

Although the production values are decent, the show looks a bit forlorn in 
Bates Hall, a large auditorium where the small, appreciative audience is 
lost among way too many empty seats. Tyst deserves more bodies in those 
seats, and a more intimate venue to show off its quirky sensibility and 
unique programming.

Eisenstein is a playwright in Cleveland.

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