'Scotland Road' a captivating performance
Redwood Curtain's latest play too intriguing to give away in review
by Barry Blake
TIMES-STANDARD • NORTHERN LIGHTS Thursday, Nov. 6, 2003
"Scotland Road," which just opened at Redwood Curtain, is one of those plays that isn't easy to write about. That's not because it is an awful play. Far from it. "Scotland Road" is an intriguing, thoughtfully crafted, and completely engaging mystery. Playwright Jeffrey Hatcher is arguably one of our best young playwrights. His award-winning plays are in constant production. He is extremely prolifc -- he's done some "Columbo" episodes, is always working on at least one play, and has written texts, including the greatly admired, definitive "The Art and Craft of Playwriting."
And under James Floss' meticulous direction, this production's pace and claustrophobic puzzlement subtly bend to bedevil the viewer from curtain to curtain. And There's the rub. This is one of those deals where if the reviewer says almost anything about what goes on in the play or how or why things happen, the show is ruined for the prospective audience.
Trailers on television for "coming soon" movies so often deliberately misinform confuse audiences about the film, so I'm a little touchy on this issue. One is reminded of Bernard Levin's classic review of "The Geese Are Getting Fat" in the "Daily Express." Mr. Levin found it uncomfortable to get to the gist of the production; so he spent all his words (about a thousand) delivering a minutely detailed description of the stage design. "On the extreme left is a window-seat, upholstered in pale blue to match the curtains. On the window-seat there are three rust cushions and one pink one," he wrote. And on it went.
For "Scotland Road," Jayson Mohwatt's scenic design is ... a solitary deckchair. It was impossible to ascertain whether the joints were mortise and tenon or dovetail. The deckchair rests alone on a slightly raked, multi-sided white riser.
(So much for that idea.) Oh, there's a scrim and some odd shaped drapery behind it.
Okay. Here's the back-story. "Back-story," by the way, is a term that has only recently come into Popular usage; we can thank Television.
A young Welsh woman is found on a floating iceberg in the middle of the North Atlantic. She is wearing 19th century clothing. She utters just one word -- "Titanic."
The woman (intensely, terrifically, convincingly played by Caroline Goin) is brought to "a white room" and questioned there by John. Randy Wayne seizes the obsessive adamancy as well as the quivering doubt and joyful release of John.
A Doctor Halbrech Lara Ford) is there to monitor the patient and see that everything goes according to International Red Cross rules, or something. Another character is wheeled in later.
The audience is asked to join in the search for what is true, what is authentic.
Fifteen short, intense scenes whisk the viewer through the first act. Each of these scenes is accom panied by that kind of music heard when someone in a horror movie is tiptoeing down a hall toward a door behind which waits the unthinkable. It's the suspense building music in the background as a quiz show contestant sweats out the final answer: Dee-dee, dee-dee, doo-doo, dee-dee, dee-dee, doo-doo. Can you hear it?
By scene 13, it's really annoying.
Before the sudden black out of each scene, there is somewhere a little nugget of information to be spotted and mined by the audience. The notion comes over you that there may be more to this than the rising room temperature. Then, suddenly -- it took the audience by surprise -- the first act is over. The play ends in a similarly unexpected way.
At Redwood Curtain, "The play is (indeed) the thing." Peggy Metzger, Clint Rebik and whoever else is involved, select plays for production that are not likely to have been seen before. The size and scope is manageable, the scripts original and fresh, always top shelf. You leave the theater inspired, exhilarated.
More than anything, the plays are theatrical. In the same way that close up magic -- Ricky Jay's or David Blaine's slight-of-hand card tricks, for example -- must be seen in person, these plays are meant for the stage. Not for television, not for the movies, but to be played out right there in front of you. It is a rare kind of magic. "Scotland Road" is another one of those compelling productions.