‘Dancers’ — Visalia Community Players

There have been discussions throughout the theatre-going world on the acceptability of leaving a show at intermission. Some people will bite the bullet and endure a show’s entirety even if it is painful to them. I prefer the anaesthesia of leaving and having a beer, or three. After all, I’m leaving seats that I paid for so its not as though they’re losing money. My absence, if it is even noted, may speak more than any review could and I’ll definitely enjoy that hour more over beers with a friend.

A companion and I attended the final performance of the VCP’s mid-season offering, Dancers. We apparently got the last two seats of a full house, so the VCP’s aging audience certainly responded to the show’s marketing. The play’s plot deals with a guilt-stricken Kevin’s friendship with a patient named Julia at a nursing home after his mother dies there. It attempts to show how forgotten and lost the very real people living in convalescence are. Unfortunately, the show’s production values just don’t live up to its desires.

Now, some readers may know that the sort of plays that could be a Lifetime movie are NOT my cup of tea. I like my theatre to be presented theatrically, not televisically. So the likelihood of my giving this show a rave would have been slim.

HOWEVER, I still have some desire to see some craft, some direction, some sense of detail work applied to the elements of the show. From the moment I sat down, the set’s unfinished nature glared at me. There was nothing finishing the top of the flats, no sense of convalescent home decoration in the patient rooms (convalescent homes TRY to not be depressing places by allowing floral wallpapers and hutches with personal items displayed), and not even an attempt at a privacy curtain in the co-ed room. I imagine the bright green paint was chosen to convey a sickly feel to the place and I’ll give that to them. But whenever you put flats up to construct actual rooms, your detail work has to be exceptional. A painting is actually mentioned in the dialogue at one point. The actors indicate it is hanging on the fourth wall. Well, why not hang an actual picture on the expanse of blank wall they have stage left? I just don’t get it. And, I’m even the more disappointed because director Keith Lindersmith was once so excellent with sets and set decoration. If anyone is going to do a box set justice, it would be Keith. I just feel that he fell short of his abilities on this one.

Mike Russell’s lighting of the solarium window in a second room is quite lovely enough. Unfortunately, when the lights are supposed to be ‘out’ on stage and the actors in a darkened room, there isn’t enough cool light in front of the actors– who are speaking full lengths of dialogue in this state– so there is this glare from the solarium window and the actors are almost just silouettes.

As for the acting, during the first act I was appalled by the stiffness of Timothy Rich as one of the play’s protagonists. I had expected to find this was his first role, but alas no. . . he’s worked with the Players twice before. He’s still very much in the beginning actor stage of “I have a line coming up, I will move here, I will now say my line.” There is no internalization of his dialogue or understanding of the motivation for his movement. I realize that directors have little time in rehearsal to deal with these things, but at some point. . . if local actors are to learn and grow. . . SOMEBODY has to carve out some time to teach them what those things mean.

Nancy Holley as the play’s protagonist, Julia, lacks the depth of texture her character calls for. She’s all Pollyanna with no Aunt Polly. She also has a tendency to raise her voice to an unnatural level and play her sense of elderly ‘cuteness’ to the audience. It comes off as hammy and not crafted.

I’m not sure to what extent the leading performances is due to lack of direction or lack of direction-taking, but there were definitely some moments of awkward staging. At one point, Julia is hiding from Nurse Montcrief, but they are standing not 4 feet from one another on the same plane of the stage. The only obstacle is another actor between them. From the audience’s perspective, we’re wondering why Montcrief– who has been looking for Julia all night– doesn’t say something TO Julia. If Montcrief had been brought downstage with Kevin and Julia left upstage in a shadow, the ‘hiding’ would have worked. It’ s a simple bit of staging that should have been corrected by Lindersmith’s 30 years of experience.

Donny Graham’s first scene turn as the irascible Jack was quite engaging, until I became inured to the swearing and aware the halting as everyone tries to remember what lines go where. His performance was the highlight of the first act, however.

The nurses are very small parts in the first act, but Randi Saul-Olson and Melinda Hatfield are delightfully natural. Their characters are fully formed and responses are quite consistent. These two seemed to understand, more than anyone else, what style of play they were in.

I’m not sure I can say the same of Lesley Dyer’s Nurse Raymond. She only had two brief moments before the end of the first act. In those moments she matched Graham irascibility for irascibility and suddenly the moment seemed unbalanced. There was no foil, no contrast to make things interesting. A cold, calculated, eerily still Nurse Threatening would probably enhance the arc of the character more for the explosion I expect happened in Act II.

But as it is, overall, I had a hard time sitting still to watch this slow car wreck happen. There were two or three groups in the audience who were sincerely enjoying the show for what it was, others had a good chuckle here and there, a few more, like me, were cringing. And in such situations, having paid for my full 2-3 hours, I feel my time more profitably spent in the company of a charming young man over beers across the street.

Call me crazy.