Less Isn't More if It's "Tiny" Local Talent Shines in "Laramie"

In the Cardinal’s garden, there are two chairs, one for His Eminence and the other for his visitor, the Lawyer. They’ve known each other since school, agree that they’d always detested each other, and banter about each other’s flaws until the Lawyer gets down to business.

His fabulously wealthy client, Miss Alice, will give the Church one billion a year for twenty years, but the Cardinal must send his secretary to finalize the arrangements. Their crisp, arch dialogue suggests they’ve had this conversation before, that there is something ritualistic about it. Muted lighting and gloomy music between scene changes reinforce the impression of foreboding.

The Cardinal’s secretary is Brother Julian, a lay brother and an innocent, who arrives at Miss Alice’s mansion in his long brown cassock and meets both Miss Alice (who is not at all as she was described) and Butler. He’s also introduced to Tiny Alice, which is either a large replica or a model of the building they’re in. Everyone at the mansion is respectful of Tiny Alice. Everyone is also curious about the six blank years in Brother Julian’s resume, which he explains as a loss of faith that sent him to seek help in a mental home. He’d had hallucinations, he says. He had also met a woman there who thought she was the Virgin Mary, but whose pregnancy was really advanced cancer.

After the Lawyer and Miss Alice confer together, the first of two intermissions occurs. Some in the audience leave their seats making wisecracks about needing Cliff Notes. By the second intermission, they’re less forgiving, and by the end, a woman seated nearby was murmuring, “Die, die.” A good pair of scissors could improve this script, but the playwright, Edward Albee, allows no changes in his prose, as A.C.T. found out to its distress in 1975, when he sued them.

Albee wrote the play in 1963, when he was 35 and fresh from his recent success with “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Since then, “Tiny Alice” has had a spotty production history, but it now reappears as the closing work in Marin Theatre Company’s 2010 – 2011 season.
Artistic Director Jasson Minadakis states in his program notes that seeing “Tiny Alice” eleven years ago in New York “turned a deep interest in the play into an obsession.” He has directed the MTC production himself and has supplied it with an all-Equity cast, all of them familiar to Bay Area theatergoers.

Andrew Hurteau portrays the hapless, sacrificial Julian, and Rod Gnapp is the menacing Lawyer. Richard Farrell has the part of the complicit Cardinal who, when pleased, forgets to refer to himself as “we.” Carrie Paff plays Miss Alice with seductive and deadly purpose. Mark Anderson Phillips as Butler knows the game, is bored with it, but plays it anyway. Fumiko Bielefeldt costumes this group; Kurt Landisman provides the murky lighting; Chris Houston designs the sound. Scenic designer J.B. Wilson contributes both the set and the Tiny Alice temple.

Marin Theatre Company’s closing play, “Tiny Alice,” will be performed until June 26, every day but Monday. Performance times vary with the days of the week, and ticket prices range from $32 to $53. For complete information, see the website, www.marintheatre.org or call the box office at 388-5208.

A little gem of a play opened in Larkspur this month, and Tiburon’s Karen Leland has eleven parts in it. The play, “The Laramie Project,” examines the murder of a gay young man, Matthew Shepard, in a Wyoming town in 1998. All its dialogue is authentic.

It was assembled in real time by Moises Kaufman and the Tectonic Theater Project. The group collected interviews from townspeople, law enforcement, bartenders, a bicyclist, academics, clerics, gay residents of Laramie, and family members of both Shepard and his killers. But the Tectonic Theater interviewers have speaking parts too, describing their six trips to Wyoming and the progress of their search. As their collected information begin to build, writers and dramaturges within the group collaborate on creating this play.

Larkspur’s Theatre-at-Large production is a bare-bones presentation in which eight actors face the audience and tell their stories with the aid of minimal props. The story that binds them is this: in Laramie, Wyoming, Matthew Shepard, a student at the University of Wyoming, is beaten, tied to a fence outside of town and left for dead. His brain injuries are so severe, he’s taken to a hospital in Colorado where there’s a neurological unit. He doesn’t die right away, but as this hate crime becomes known, the town’s rosy picture of itself begins to darken and fractures appear. As one resident says, Laramie, like Waco, will become synonymous with violence. The death of a young Highway Patrol officer is barely noticed. And of the three faiths established in town – Baptist, Unitarian and Catholic – only the Catholic priest offers a vigil. Eventually, however, justice will take its ponderous course, and recovery will begin, both for the town and for the researchers of Tectonic Theater.

“The Laramie Project” has a large cast: eight actors and eighty-three speaking parts. Every cast member in the current production has extensive theatrical experience, but that’s a lot to put together. How did director James Hurwitz manage it? “The director chose the cast,” says Karen Leland. They were people he’d worked with before, and they formed a natural ensemble.
Karen herself says she’s been acting all her life and majored in musical theater at college in Southern California. She found the play both “challenging and rewarding for the same reason. These are real words that people have spoken. They’re not from a playwright.” When not onstage or in rehearsal, Karen Leland is a best-selling author of business books. She also works as a marketing and social media consultant.

“The Laramie Project” will be presented only through next Saturday, June 18. Performances will be Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. at the American Legion Hall, 500 Magnolia Avenue, in downtown Larkspur. Tickets are $15 for students and seniors, $20 for general seating. For reservations or additional information, call 827-1373.