ROAD TO NIRVANA
In a year-end review of the theater scene in PerformInk, WBEZ critic Andrew Patner compared Steppenwolf’s new space to a mausoleum. Then the company received an incredible amount of bad press following the cancellation of Frank Galati’s production of As You Like It. Several weeks ago New York Times reporter Bruce Weber gleefully revealed in his Friday theater column that Steppenwolf had had a run-in with the Dramatists Guild, which condemned what it described as the “substandard contract” the company had signed with The Song of Jacob Zulu playwright Tug Yourgrau to bring the show to Broadway. Even playwright Arthur Kopit jumped into the fray, telling Weber that though the company was set to produce his Road to Nirvana he “wouldn’t dream of allowing Steppenwolf to do another play.” Frankly I don’t think that would be Steppenwolf’s loss.
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Begun in 1988 as a tongue-in-cheek parody of David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow, Road to Nirvana (originally titled Bone-the-Fish) hasn’t transcended its roots as a Mamet satire. The sections of the play that work best are those that mimic Mamet’s trademark dialogue: “I know this guy! He says a thing, you can fuckin’ COUNT on it! You can bet your fuckin’ life on it! Jerry does not fuck you over!”
Sadly, director Gary Sinise’s production only emphasizes what’s most tiresome about Kopit’s play. This is especially true of Richard Woodbury’s trite sound design (Would someone please tell him that using “Hooray for Hollywood” ironically has been done to death?) and of John Arnone’s big, expensive, vulgar set. First Arnone presents us with what looks like a giant shower curtain decorated with caricatures so badly rendered–Lauren Bacall looks like Jackie Kennedy, Bob Hope looks like one of Charlie Chan’s sons–that only Mickey Mouse looks like himself. Then Arnone opens the curtain to reveal, sigh, a pastel-colored bungalow with a view of the old Hollywood sign on the hill.
In bringing this show to the stage, director Ralph Flores has wisely kept the performances simple and to the point. While all the actors participate in one another’s tales, no one steals the focus from the storyteller. And Rebecca Hamlin’s simple but striking set design never overshadows the performers, even at the end of Kane’s story, when Hamlin uses yards and yards of parachute silk to signify the clouds Kane dreams of flying through as Peter Pan.
