The Director vs The Critic: How we talk about theater

By Barry Johnson

Earlier this week, critic Bob Hicks and director Chris Coleman had a robust yet civil disagreement about how critics should go about their business. The occasion was a Coleman-directed production of Moliere's The Imaginary Invalid at Portland Center Stage, one that Hicks enjoyed with reservations. What I like about the argument is that it opens up the business of criticism as it's conducted these days. And as we all know, everyone is a critic at one time or another: It's useful to think about what our rules of engagement should be as we consider works of art (and most other things -- but that's another subject).



It started with a review by Hicks, in which he called the production a glossy, handsomely appointed crowd-pleaser. But he had some problems, too, mostly that Constance Congdon's translation and Coleman's direction accentuated the comedy of Moliere's play and missed its context. Here is the crucial graph of this critique:

"Key to any understanding of Moliere's plays and the culture in which they existed is an appreciation of their sense of danger, a heightened stake that playwright Constance Congdon's adaptation carries mostly by a few flatulence jokes and a little heavy-handed sexual innuendo. It's the Jack Black school of cultural commentary, which, whatever it may miss in genuine satirical force, is always good for a few laughs."

Hicks's review then prompted a letter by Coleman, which he posted on his blog at Portland Center Stage. Coleman argues that critics arrive with preconceptions about what a production, especially of a classic, should accomplish, and that they aren't open to the intentions of the director of the translator (in this case, Congdon): "So I have, of late, found myself impatient with reviewers (the world over) bringing so much of their own ‘expectations’ to a production of a classic, and judging its merits based on what they walked in hoping to see."

Dance review: Mary Oslund slows it down

By Barry Johnson

When I was working on a story about choreographer Mary Oslund for Portland Monthly back in November, I sat in on a rehearsal of Childhood Star, which premiered Thursday in White Bird's Uncaged series. At that rehearsal, she was experimenting with the idea of slowing the movement phrases she'd created by something like half. Usually, Oslund's work occupies the entire tempo spectrum, from still to explosive, but most of the time I'd characterize it as "brisk." At least. So the rehearsal worked to my advantage -- it was far easier to see what was going on when everything was in slow motion.

"Childhood Star"/Photo by Julie Keefe

Oslund must have liked what she saw back then, because Childhood Star, now in performance, still moves along at a deliberate clip, and seeing it that way again was informative. It made the dance seem "minimal" somehow, reduced to the basics, even though the phrases themselves, if you sped them up, wouldn't have seemed that way at all. So I don't mean less complex. But stretched out in this way, we appreciate those lingering phrases, those slowly unfolding gestures, those pauses which grow into full stops, in a different way, as though we are seeing them for the first time, maybe in the same way we appreciate a cube differently when we've seen Sol LeWitt address the idea.

I don't think it's any easier to dance it this way, though sometimes, when a long line of muscles engaged in order -- thigh to belly to shoulder to arm to wrist to fingers -- it seemed positively luxurious.  I wanted to stretch in this way, too. But then at other times, keeping the momentum of a  phrase going seemed nearly impossible or the dance asked the dancer to extend a leg very slowly, almost too slowly to maintain balance.

Theater review: "Superior Donuts" is not a sitcom snack

Bill Geisslinger and Vin Shambry/Photo: Owen Carey

By Barry Johnson

Artists Repertory Theatre has extended its run of Tracy Letts's Superior Donuts through February 12, four more performances, which isn't surprising. A good comedy in January in Portland is hard to pass up.  Portland Center Stage is running Constance Congdon's raucous version of Moliere's The Imaginary Invalid now, too, more proof of Montesquieu's contention that climate is destiny and that we ignore it at our peril.

Although I've already characterized Superior Donuts as "a good comedy," I want to argue against the prevalent descriptions of the play by the nation's critics. Just about all of them, from Chicago and New York to D.C. and the Bay Area, mentioned sitcoms when describing the comedy.  They didn't use "sitcom" as a pejorative, either, as it once was when we described stage comedies. Not at all. Because except for a few dissenters (The Village Voice, for example, the New Yorker), the critical reception to the play has been kind.

The reviewers didn't just leave it at "sitcom," either. Some of them mentioned Norman Lear's '70s sitcoms (All in the Family, Maude) specifically. A couple brought up Chico and the Man. And from those hints, you might be able to figure out a lot about Superior Donuts. It has a "social" edge to it; it makes fun of a certain sort of racial stereotyping; a clash of generations is involved. And something else: It's all going to be all right in the end. Because "sitcom" still means "comfortable" and "familiar" along with "funny."