[NEohioPAL] Berko review: THE HYACINTH MACAW @ convergence-continuum

[Roy Berko]

*Mac Wellman’s THE HYACINTH MACAW confounds at con-con *



Roy Berko

(Member, American Theatre Critics Association, Cleveland Critic’s
Association)



Clyde Simon, the Artistic Director of convergence-continuum has a thing for
Mac Wellman.  As Simon states in his director’s note for THE HYACINTH
MACAW, now in production at con-con, “Wellman’s plays have been particular
favorites of mine.”  Simon goes on to explain that he was a resident
director and actor at The Flea, Wellman’s off-Broadway theatre.



Simon finds Wellman’s work “the kind of plays truly suited to our company’s
artistic outlook, acting styles and intimate environmental staging.”



THE HYACINTH MACAW is the sixth of Wellman’s works that the theatre has
done.  I find it the sixth of the writer’s works that have confounded me!  I
tend to agree with a reviewer who stated, when a local theatre in his city
presented Macaw,  “There are thousands of words in Hyacinth Macaw.
Unfortunately, one word is missing:  ‘stop,’ as in ‘Stop this nonsense
IMMEDIATELY.’”



Simon isn’t the only person who has a thing for Wellman.  The writer is
considered by some to be the icon of American experimental theatre.  He has
written over 40 plays, and is the winner of three OBIE citations.

Wellman states that Macaw is one of “four plays that taken together tell a
story about a young woman adrift and alienated in a world essentially gone
mad…populated by corporate thieves and religious maniacs and desperate
losers of all kinds.”  In this space in time, with ponzi schemes, the
fanatical religious right in full political bloom, and bank foreclosures on
houses, we could use such a play to reflect our society.  I’d love to
believe that’s what he is saying, but I have trouble digging that out from
his continued stream of doublespeak.

How the actors remembered their lines is a wonder.  Try these on:  “What is
real has no name.”  “What happens when the casket doesn’t fit in the hole?”
“Invisible college of devils.”  “Adolescent episodes of theatrical
dementia.”  So, you’re saying, “These are taken out of context, that’s why
they don’t make sense.”  Nope, there isn’t much context from which they
were removed.  It’s more like a group of people with Tourette’s syndrome,
streaming gibberish.

Try this on:  a stranger appears in a family’s backyard in Bug River (state
unidentified).  He carries a suitcase which, we find out much later,
contains the dying moon.  (I kid you not.) He calls a teenager an orphan,
gives her mother a letter, informs the father/husband he is a fake and has
to leave his family.  (End of Act 1.)  Act 2:  The stranger gives dad a
snake, dad leaves, everyone sings *Battle Hymn of the Republic*, the
stranger is now the new dad, mom talks to Mad Wu, a Caucasian-Chinaman with
ever-changing accents, the daughter and the new father bury the moon and
she caw-caws like a macaw (the world’s largest flying parrot), while
listening to the new dad inform her that they are now all orphans. Black
out!

Okay, life is illusionary.  I get that.  English is a language of many,
many words.  I also get that.  But, randomly stringing them together in the
guise of making sense, is not, in my opinion, good theatre.  But, as the
play says, “never doubt your ignorance.”

The fact that the cast could try and make us believe that what they are
saying makes any sense, is a wonderment.  Yet, they do.  Hurrah to Lucy
Bredeson-Smith, Lauren B. Smith, Michael Regnier, Clyde Simon and Michael
Prosen for having the chutzpah to try.

I guess I’m from the school that says a play must be purposeful and the
audience has to understand what is going on.  In other words, the script
has to tell us what the playwright wants from us.  Yes, some plays are
abstract, that’s not the issue.  WAITING FOR GODOT and NO EXIT aren’t for
the non-thinking, but at least when they are done, I have a pretty clear
inkling of what Samuel Beckett is trying to tell me.  Same goes for Pinter
and Albee.  Sorry, but I can’t say the same for Mac Wellman.

*Capsule Judgement: Mac Wellman’s THE HYACINTH MACAW is not theatre for
everyone.  If you like abstract doubletalk and want to sit and pretend you
are an intellectual who understands what the author is trying to say, this
will be your thing.  I’ll wait and hope I better appreciate the theatre’s
next production DEVIL BOYS FROM BEYOND, the tale of a journalist who
investigates reports of flying saucers in the swamplands of Lizard Lick,
Florida. *

THE HYACINTH MACCAW runs through April 7 on Thursdays, Fridays and
Saturdays at convergence-continuum’s artistic home, The Liminis, at 2438
Scranton Rd. in Cleveland’s Tremont neighborhood. For information and
reservations call 216-687-0074 or go to http://convergence-continuum.org
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