<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><b><span style>Mac Wellman’s THE HYACINTH MACAW confounds at con-con </span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span style> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span style>Roy Berko</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:10.0pt">(Member, American Theatre Critics
Association, Cleveland Critic’s Association)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span style> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span style>Clyde Simon, the Artistic Director of
convergence-continuum has a thing for Mac Wellman.<span style> </span>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.”<span style> </span>Simon goes on
to explain that he was a resident director and actor at The Flea, Wellman’s
off-Broadway theatre.<span style> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span style> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span style>Simon finds Wellman’s work “the kind of plays truly suited
to our company’s artistic outlook, acting styles and intimate environmental
staging.”<span style> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span style> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span style>THE HYACINTH MACAW is the sixth of Wellman’s works that
the theatre has done.<span style> </span>I find it
the sixth of the writer’s works that have confounded me!<span style> </span>I tend to agree with a reviewer who
stated, when a local theatre in his city presented <span style="text-transform:uppercase">Macaw</span>,<span style> </span>“There
are thousands of words in <span style="text-transform:uppercase">Hyacinth Macaw</span>.
Unfortunately, one word is missing:<span style>
</span>‘stop,’ as in ‘Stop this nonsense IMMEDIATELY.’”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span style> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:20.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:13.0pt;font-family:Georgia">Simon isn’t the only person who has a thing for
Wellman.<span style> </span>The writer is considered
by some to be the icon of American experimental theatre.<span style> </span>He has written over 40 plays, and is
the winner of three OBIE citations.<span style>
</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:20.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:13.0pt;font-family:Georgia">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.”<span style>
</span>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.<span style> </span>I’d
love to believe that’s what he is saying, but I have trouble digging that out
from his continued stream of doublespeak. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:20.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:13.0pt;font-family:Georgia">How the actors remembered their lines is a
wonder.<span style> </span>Try these on:<span style> </span>“What is real has no name.”<span style> </span>“What happens when the casket doesn’t
fit in the hole?”<span style> </span>“Invisible
college of devils.”<span style> </span>“Adolescent
episodes of theatrical dementia.”<span style>
</span>So, you’re saying, “These are taken out of context, that’s why they
don’t make sense.”<span style> </span>Nope, there
isn’t much context from which they were removed.<span style> </span>It’s more like a group of people with Tourette’s syndrome,
streaming gibberish. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:20.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:13.0pt;font-family:Georgia">Try this on:<span style> </span>a stranger appears in a family’s backyard in Bug River
(state unidentified).<span style> </span>He carries a
suitcase which, we find out much later, contains the dying moon.<span style> </span>(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.<span style> </span>(End of
Act 1.)<span style> </span>Act 2:<span style> </span>The stranger gives dad a snake, dad
leaves, everyone sings <i style>Battle Hymn of the
Republic</i>, 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!<span style> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:20.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:13.0pt;font-family:Georgia">Okay, life is illusionary.<span style> </span>I get that.<span style> </span>English is a language of many, many words.<span style> </span>I also get that.<span style> </span>But, randomly stringing them together
in the guise of making sense, is not, in my opinion, good theatre.<span style> </span>But, as the play says, “never doubt
your ignorance.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:20.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:13.0pt;font-family:Georgia">The fact that the cast could try and make us
believe that what they are saying makes any sense, is a wonderment.<span style> </span>Yet, they do.<span style> </span>Hurrah to Lucy Bredeson-Smith, Lauren B. Smith, Michael
Regnier, Clyde Simon and Michael Prosen for having the chutzpah to try.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:20.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:13.0pt;font-family:Georgia">I guess I’m from the school that says a play must
be purposeful and the audience has to understand what is going on.<span style> </span>In other words, the script has to tell
us what the playwright wants from us.<span style>
</span>Yes, some plays are abstract, that’s not the issue.<span style> </span>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.<span style> </span>Same goes for Pinter and Albee.<span style> </span>Sorry, but I can’t say the same for Mac Wellman. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:20.0pt;text-autospace:none"><i><span style>Capsule Judgement: Mac Wellman’s THE HYACINTH MACAW is not
theatre for everyone.<span style> </span>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.<span style> </span>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. </span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:20.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:13.0pt;font-family:Georgia">THE HYACINTH MACCAW </span><span style>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 <a href="http://convergence-continuum.org">http://convergence-continuum.org</a></span></p>