A 'Jack Goes Boating' recap: What's missing here?

Todd Van Voris, Emily Beleele and Tai Sammons pass the hookah./Owen Carey

By Barry Johnson

Let's say that you have developed a fixation on Bob Glaudini's Jack Goes Boating --  Philip Seymour Hoffman's film version nabbed you, maybe, or his Off-Broadway performance in the play itself -- and you've decided to read every review, story or post you can find about it. That kind of dedication would now lead you to Portland, Oregon, where the play has just opened at Artists Repertory Theatre.  (Which will come as absolutely no surprise to resolute Arts Dispatch readers!)

At this moment, you would have four reasonably formal reviews to help you figure out how things looked to us here in Portland:

Marty Hughley in The Oregonian: "Allen Nause has directed "Jack Goes Boating" with a suitably light touch, making it sweet and engaging all around (despite a touch of violence and lots of drug use). But its the light/dark dichotomies at the heart of the play -- and a performance that balances them so effectively -- that really make this show float."

Ben Waterhouse in Willamette Week: "Their (Clyde and Lucy) exertion in their work and tendency to inflict cruelty on one another feels truer than Jack’s fumbling romance, and their persistence in the face of repeated mutual betrayal is as convincing a defense of the value of marriage as any I’ve seen. (John) San Nicolas and (Tai) Simmons convey roiling discord, absentminded intimacy and reckless affection—and what more is married life about?"

Bob Hicks on Art Scatter: "Let’s just say that Todd Van Voris’s sunk-in, loamy comic essence is ideal for the character of Jack, the shy and schlumpy limousine driver whose only passions seem to be for good dope and good reggae songs until the possibility of Connie comes along."

Barry Johnson on Arts Dispatch (that would be me): "That drama is usually what the romantic comedy is about, after all, not what it critiques. Glaudini’s comedy doesn’t match the ferocity or the cynicism of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,  which is hardly a romantic comedy, but it does visibly cringe and then flee the wilder reaches of relationship conflict. This is awful, get me out of here!"

Our mythical Jack Goes Boating obsessive probably would get a decent idea of how things went at Artists Repertory Theatre on opening weekend -- that the production was sharp and the performances balanced. And maybe some idea of what passes for good theater in Portland, because all of the reviews were so positive and provided some good context.  But there are some things missing, some fairly obvious things, and I have a feeling that my imaginary friend might leave these accounts at least somewhat dissatisfied.

Rocco Landesman: What does an 'over-supply of theater' really mean?

By Barry Johnson

Rocco Landesman, the chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts, made a number of inflammatory  comments at last week's new play conference in Washington, DC, enough to create quite a little firestorm. Most of the discontent among the theater professionals at the conference was channeled toward Landesman's contention that since American theater couldn't increase demand, it would have to limit supply. Which everyone rightly interpreted as close some theaters down. Needless to say, if you're running a theater company, these aren't the words you want to hear tripping lightly from the lips of your NEA chairman.

That wasn't the worst part for me, which arrived in a follow-up interview by the New York Times, when Landesman suggested that foundations and government agencies might have to decide to re-allocate their resources, directing their money to fewer institutions. The implication of this remark is that agencies and foundations will work together to pick winners and losers in order to correct the oversupply. (If they didn't, they'd be working at cross purposes -- if Meyer Memorial Trust cut off Portland Center Stage and the Oregon Arts Commission didn't, then Center Stage might survive to create that nasty oversupply of theater stuff, for example.)

I instantly reached for most inflammatory term I could think of for this concerted action -- Theater Death Panel. Hey, when Rocco's fireballs fill the sky, I reach for my own Molotov cocktail. Fair is fair.

Now I've had a little more time for reflection and research, and I've decided that Landesman was conflating two different critiques of American theater. Yes, one is that whole oversupply issue (which I personally think is crazy -- a "binary" reduction of a complex situation, as Travis Bedard suggests on the 2AMt theater blog). The other is his belief that the great regional non-profit companies have grown too ambitious financially and in reaching for the gold of Broadway (where Landesman has been a significant force for the past few decades) have become less ambitious artistically -- and less connected to their communities.

These are contradictory enough to generate almost any response from the audience. The first argues from a market-based analysis of supply and demand. The second argues that the market has been too important for the country's largest non-profit theater companies. So which is it?  Do we want our non-profit theater companies to be cold-blooded capitalists, filling their theaters with as many suckers as they can? Or idealistic theater flower children chasing their rainbows and butterflies and following their own artistic bliss? Because you can't have it both ways.

We'll deal with the second part first.

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."