Friday, October 22, 1982

Honolulu Star-Bulletin

'The Rainmaker' a Winning Effort

By Joseph T. Rozmiarek

The production of 'The Rainmaker' now being offered by the Army Hawaii Theater Guild could be mounted with pride on any stage on the island and would serve as example to any theater group. It is an unusual combination of effort, and the result is that everything works out just right. The play is well cast and well directed by Joe Craver; the set and costumes by Karen Palmer are thoughful and imaginative; and the seven cast members bring honest feeling to their individual roles, giving the script the right touches of poignancy, optimism and humor.

The production emphasizes the central message of the play--that people are entitled to dignity and dreams despite their frailties--and this gentle telling of the story easily wins over its audience. The script by N. Richard Nash has a western setting, on a ranch plagued by drought and heat. The head of the Curry family is an easy-going type who has turned over the management of the land to oldest son Noah, a practical fellow who takes it on himself to manage the family as well. Managing the family means convincing sister Lizzie that she is fast becoming an old maid and must give up the fantasy of ever catching a husband. Younger brother Jim must also be kept in check from chasing the local floozie and falling victim to his earnest, but shortsighted impulses.

Into the Curry household appears a fast-talking con man named Starbuck, a self-proclaimed tainmaker who can bring an end to the dry spell for the small fee of a hundred dollars. Starbuck promises to break up the emotional drought as well, helping Lizzie to realize her womanhood and Him his potential.

But the play is very much Lizzie's story, and is told with wonderful feeling by Jo Pruden's sensitive performance in the central role. This is Pruden's best work since her performance as Big Nurse in 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.' Even though, as Lizzie, she is playing a woman younger than herself, Pruden's characterization is beautifully drawn. Her Lizzie glows without polish, and captures all the ache and longing of a woman who sees even her 'little dreams' slipping away due to circumstances and neglect.

Catalyzed by Starbuck, she becomes for a moment a Great Plains Cinderella--and her mesmerizing 'I'm pretty, I'm pretty' works a wonderful moment of theatrical magic.

Tom Jerke is appropriately bigger than life as Starbuck the rainmaker. His spiel is the rapid-fire pitch of the circus barker and his physical presence intrudes on personal space with cocky self- assurance and mesmerizing attraction. Jerke shows the private nature of the character equally well, revealing a con man with genuine motives who can convincingly sell even himself.

The Curry men are uniformly well drawn. Jim Kidd is all spunk and vinegar as the younger brother, radiating the warm fuzzy enthusiasm and lack of control of an overgrown puppy. Tom Triggs is consistently good as the dour brother Noah, and keeps the character appealing and well-meaning despite the rigid, accounts book orientation to life. Rom Palma is always ingratiating as Pop Curry, a man who accepts life and his children for their values and without complaint. Michael L. Parton does good work as File, Lizzie's reluctant suitor, and George Hearn is unaffected and just right as tobacco chewing, laconic Sheriff Thomas. Karen Palmer's set makes good use of the small stage, creating three distinct playing areas and the illusion of depth and outdoors.

Tuesday, October 19, 1982

Honolulu Advertiser

'The Rainmaker': It's extraordinary

By Pierre Bowman

The Army Hawaii Community Theater Guild's production of N. Richard Nash's lovely, substantial romantic comedy, 'The Rainmaker,' is an extraordinary achievement that soars to heights of delicate sensibility and plunges to depths of emotional understanding. Nash's play appears at first to be a set-piece placed on a ranch in the throes of a drought. The grasslands have gone brown. The cattle are dying. Every day and every night, the heat never leaves the land.

Soon, with eloquent simplicity, it is clear than the drought is a metaphor for life on the Curry ranch. Lizzie is drying up, just as the land has dried. She is becoming a tart-tongued spinster. Her father and two brothers know she needs to marry, before she becomes too brittle to bend and sway with life's joys and sorrows. The only immediate prospect for Lizzie is File, the deputy sheriff.

But then Starbuck--the Rainmaker--almost literally invades the Curry ranch. He says he's there to sell his services, to bring rain to the parched earth. But Starbuck is as much a metaphor to the play as the drought. He's really there to sell dreams that will nourish lives and make them green and sweet like the prairie grass after rain.

Under Joe Craver's direction, Nash's play opens like a rare blossom planted in the subtle middle-ground between comedy and pathos.

Jo Pruden's Lizzie is angularity personified, from elbows going a little dry to a quick-silver intellect turning from heary good humor to cynicism.

Ron Palma, playing the father, creates a believable fulcrum of stability and warmth for the family. Tom Triggs, as the older brother, is convincingly stolid but never tiresome as a man who believes that life is essentially black or white and that both its essence and its detail can be tallied in the neat columns of a ledger.

But it is the actors playing File and Starbuck , especially when they're with Lizzie, who take 'The Rainmaker' to its full dimensions. Michael L. Parton, as the former, does exceptional work. He's first revealed in a fine scene with George Hearn, playing the sheriff, that's all droll drawl and seems to be about the possibility of having a dog for a pet. But with Parton's excellence--against Hearn's skillful work-- the scene subtly reveals a man unwilling to embrace any new warmth that might be transitory, a man who has chosen lonliness.

Tom Jerke comes on as Starbuck, big and almost thundering like a cloud building on the horizon and promising hailstones. But then the cloud parts and gives glimpses of a dazzling warming sun so that Jerke gives a full, rich, charismatic performace.

The ultimate power of the play rests with Pruden's Lizzie. She takes no shortcuts with the role. Pruden is at a point in her life where playing a role like Lizzie is a full-blown artistic risk. An actress in her ingenue years can wear her hair in a bun and paint on make-up to plysically transform herself for the audience, when Starbuck convinces her that she's beautiful. Pruden, however, is a mature actress. When she looks into Jerke's eyes, when he's told her as Starbuck that she'll see a reflection of her beauty that will never be visible in a mirror, Pruden must show that beauty to the audience, not physically, but through pure acting. And she does so--triumphantly, touchingly, superlatively. It is a crowning moment in an evening of excellence.

Friday, October 14, 1983

Hobolulu Star-Bulletin

'Odd Couple' is Right on the Button

By Pierre Bowman

Neil Simon's 'The Odd Couple' was an enormous Broadway hit, a beloved movie with Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, and an exceedingly successful TV series. 'The Odd Couple' is gratifyingly also still very much a successful comedy on the stage. In a production by the Army Hawaii Theater Guild that opened last night, the laughs, rooted in keenly observed character, were right on the button and there was a small but definite glow of humanity about the whole business.

The play, of course, os Oscar and Felix, the former divorced and six months into bachelorhood, the latter in his first refuge with Oscar as his marriage is coming apart. Oscar is the sports- writer slob; his apartment and finances are heading from mess to full-scale crisis. Felix is a fugue of compulsive neatness and a number of psychosomatic physical complaints. The two of them, of course, are best friends.

Under Joe Craver's direction, Tom Jerke and Ron Palma, playing Oscar and Felix, create the heart for 'The Odd Couple' in skillfully conceived, excellently timed performances. Jerke may have borrowed a good number of vocal mannerisms from Matthau's movie performance, but creates an Oscar who has a fascinating quality of lumbering energy. Palma's Felix seems to be totally original, without a trace of Lemmon or Tony Randall's TV Felix. Palma treads a delicate line that could take his characterization to irritating whining--but never crosses it. His Felix is a carefully polished gem.

Together, Jerke and Palma create characters that function in many ways, not the least of which are in a pairing on stage as quarreling friends and not as objects for an audience to love. It takes finely wrought performances to make the quarreling 'real' while remaining loveable to an audience-- and that's exactly what these two actors do.

The rest of the show is a quartet of poker-playing cronies, whose ensemble work is a rather far cry from the skilled interplay between Jerke and Palma. They're very much a part of the first act and make the start of the show somewhat slower than it ought to be.

The dollop of special delight in the play is the Pigeon sisters--Gwendolyn and Cecily-- who are Oscar's upstairs neighbors. Deborah Broderick and Brendal Brummer play them as near- Cockney bubble heads, chirping and tittering on a disastrous first double date with Oscar and Felix. The two women play off each other with wonderful effect and one wishes--as usual--that Simon had given them a bit more of his play.

The show is presented on a single, well-detailed set designed by director Craver. It will be presented at 7:30 Thursdays through Sundays through the end of the month. The Army Hawaii Theater Guild, which has had a policy of presenting its shows free, is charging $4 general admission for 'The Odd Couple.'