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<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.0pt;text-autospace:none"><b style><span style="font-family:Palatino;color:black">IN ARABIA WE’D ALL BE KINGS inaugurates Lab Theatre in Allen
Complex</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Palatino;color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Palatino;color:black">Roy Berko</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Palatino;color:black">(Member, American
Theatre Critics Association)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Palatino;color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Palatino;color:black">It’s been an amazing year for the Cleveland Play
House.<span style> </span>On Fall of 2011 they moved
into their new Allen Theatre home, a beautiful and functional facility in the
Playhousesquare complex.<span style> </span>Last
month they produced their first-ever theatre in the round production in their
new Second Stage performance space.<span style>
</span>And, now, the Helen Rosenfeld Lewis Bialosky Lab Theatre is open for
productions.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Palatino;color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Palatino;color:black">The Lab Theatre is a flexible black box.<span style> </span>For IN ARABIA WE’D ALL BE KINGS,
performed by the Case Western Reserve University Cleveland Play House MFA
Acting Program, the space was set in a runway configuration.<span style> </span>In this type of staging, the audience
sits in parallel sections opposite each other, with the action taking place on
a rectangular space between the seated groups of viewers.<span style> </span>Think—the traditional high school
football stadium—in minature.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Palatino;color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Palatino;color:black">The format worked well for the in-your-face
writing of Stephen Adly Guirgis.<span style>
</span>The Irish-American/Egyptian Guirgis, who was nominated for a Tony Award
for his THE MOTHERF* *KER WITH THE HAT, is one of America’s new breed of
playwrights.<span style> </span>IN ARABIA WE’D
ALL BE KINGS, like much of Guirgis’s writing, is gritty, free form, and uses
the language of the streets.<span style> </span>There
is no sugar coating, no happy endings, no political correctness, just
no-holds-barred realism.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Palatino"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Palatino">The play is set in a Manhattan bar.<span style> </span>It’s the kind of dive that most
educated, suburban people, would walk out of as soon as they walked in.<span style> </span>The place is sleazy, it’s inhabited by
the “sociological sub-strata” which Guirgis seems to know so well.<span style> </span>Among others, there is a recently
released from jail thug, a prostitute, a junkie, and, a drunk whose entire life
is spent sitting on his corner-of-the world bar stool. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Palatino"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Palatino">The play is about a group of dysfunctional people who have
formed their own community with their fellow bar inhabitants.<span style> </span>These are people who live by their
wits, often perpetuating violence and often are on the receiving end of
it.<span style> </span>These are the people who used
to populate New York’s Hell’s Kitchen until the city cleaned up its act and
closed their homes-away-from home.<span style>
</span>These off-beats who have nothing more to do than dream far-fetched
dreams, living in the constant hope that things will work out for the better,
and escape from reality through drugs, sex, liquor and talking, were left
without their culture and way of life when the bars and flop houses were
shuttered.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Palatino"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Palatino">Guirgis’s dialogue is filled with language that might easily
offend…racial and ethnic slurs, swearing, gutter slang.<span style> </span>They say what pops into their
often-confused minds.<span style> </span>These are
feeling, not thinking people.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Palatino"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Palatino">On the surface, theatre-goers, who tend to be the type who
have probably never come in direct contact with this urban underclass, might be
repulsed by the motley group.<span style> </span>Yet,
as written about by Guirgis, there is audience understanding, compassion, a
feeling of being sorry for and wanting to reach out to these misguided folks. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Palatino"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Palatino">The playwright is an actor turned writer, and, as such, he
gives his thespians the material to work with.<span style> </span>He writes complete characters whose motivations are
transparent.<span style> </span>He sets forth language
that is natural and real.<span style> </span>The
motivations that push the characters forward and the story are clear.<span style> </span>He writes isolated scenes rather than
the usual flowing script which has transitions from one segment to
another.<span style> </span>He doesn’t waste
words…the viewer can fill in the blanks.<span style>
</span>Often he motivates stunned silence, at times he forces laughter, often
out of embarrassment rather than a joke or a funny instance.<span style> </span>This is heady stuff.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Palatino"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Palatino">Ron Wilson’s direction is spot on.<span style> </span>The action whips along, the characterizations are clear, and
the staging creative.<span style> </span>He is aided
by a group of first year MFA students who show potential for making this a very
special class.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Palatino"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Palatino">Everyone in the cast is strong.<span style> </span>Especially effective were Stephen Spencer as Skank, a
spaced-out druggie, whose ability to live in a fantasy world is clearly
etched.<span style> </span>Spencer is Skank, Skank is
Spencer!<span style> </span>Christa Hinckley is
appropriately pathetic as the needy, airheaded Christie, who will do anything,
including prostituting herself, for drugs.<span style> </span>Therese Anderberg (Demaris) has a wonderful touch with
exaggerated comedy.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Palatino"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Palatino">Tiffany Scribner’s scuzzy realistic bar and street corner
sets visually take us where we need to be.<span style> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Palatino"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><i style><span style="font-family:Palatino">CAPSULE
JUDGMENT:<span style> </span>IN ARABIA WE’D ALL BE
KINGS gets an impressive production and is a perfect vehicle to open CPH’s new
Lab Theatre.<span style> </span>Due to its language
and subject matter, it’s not a play for everyone, but those interested in
having an up-front emotionally involving theatrical theatre experience, should
definitely see this production. </span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Palatino"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Palatino">IN ARABIA WE’D ALL BE KINGS runs through February 11 at the
Helen Rosenfeld Lewis Bialosky Lab Theatre in CPH’s Allen Theatre.<span style> </span>For tickets call 216-241-6000 or go to
<a href="http://www.clevelandplayhouse.com">www.clevelandplayhouse.com</a>.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Palatino"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Palatino"> </span></p>