{"id":274401,"date":"2026-04-18T16:40:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T16:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/274401\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T16:40:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T16:40:09","slug":"bakersfield-mist-funny-and-smart-in-catskill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/274401\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Bakersfield Mist\u2019 funny and smart in Catskill"},"content":{"rendered":"

CATSKILL \u2014 This is the sort of talent Bridge Street Theatre attracts: Lusia Strus, one half of the company\u2019s new two-hander production, \u201cBakersfield Mist,\u201d was notified as the show was about to open<\/a> that she\u2019s been cast opposite Jude Law in a major but unnamed streaming series and must fly to Europe next weekend.<\/p>\n

To accommodate her, Bridge Street rescheduled its April 25 matinee to the prior afternoon, meaning audiences have one less day but no fewer opportunities to see Strus\u2019s gale-force performance as Maude, a recently fired, 50-something bartender living in a trailer park in present-day California. She has little company besides a case of Jack Daniel\u2019s she took from her former employer as \u201cseverance pay,\u201d a bunch of kitschy, thrift-store paintings that she likes \u2014 a dog dressed as a pirate, a cat smoking a cigarette, a clown \u2014 and one she considers ugly but believes to be a lost work by Jackson Pollock that could fetch tens of millions.<\/p>\n

The arrival of a snooty art expert, Lionel (Conan McCarty), sent by a foundation to assess the drip painting\u2019s authenticity, sets up a fast, funny 80 minutes of zingy dialogue, progressive intoxication and examinations no less heady than the value and meaning we place on expertise and even art itself.<\/p>\n

First produced in 2011 by the Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles, \u201cBakersfield Mist\u201d was written by the Fountain\u2019s co-founder Stephen Sachs, who has 17 other plays to his credit. It forms the third corner of an informal triumvirate with \u201cRed,\u201d John Logan\u2019s two-character 2009 play about abstract expressionist Mark Rothko, and Yasmina Reza\u2019s widely produced \u201cArt,\u201d from 1994, in which three friends argue over the merit of an all-white painting.<\/p>\n

Less effete than \u201cArt\u201d and not as brainy but just as passionate as \u201cRed,\u201d Sachs\u2019 play has something lacking in the earlier two: a female character. She\u2019s loud, delivering both her first and final lines as bellows out the front door of her trailer, well-worn by life and possessed of raw, bruised wisdom. It makes her a surprisingly able foil for Lionel, who has impeccable education, credentials and a certitude in his opinions that is perhaps in need of a good rattling.<\/p>\n

Sachs, through Maude, has clever fun doing so. And while the broad outlines of the play seem predictable \u2014 of course they\u2019ll find some common ground, of course they\u2019ll learn from each other, of course his bow tie will come undone \u2014 the script turns corners you didn\u2019t know were there, and the lines give the actors abundant meat to showily chew on and context with which to deepen their characters.<\/p>\n

While Maude is the more arresting role, in which Kathleen Turner was no doubt perfectly cast for the London production, Lionel has his own expansive development, from droll one-liners to a monologue that starts with him being captivated by his first Picasso to a frenzied acting out of how Pollock made one of his action paintings. (The title of the play alludes to Pollock\u2019s \u201cLavender Mist.\u201d)<\/p>\n

In charge of all of this is Mark Perry, the interim (and likely incoming) artistic director of Bridge Street Theatre, who directed the production, designed the expertly dressed set and designed the sound. Lighting is by Bridge Street\u2019s co-founder and emeritus co-founder John Sowle.<\/p>\n

Perry created an environment in which his actors can excel, illuminating moments as tiny as a glance and as calamitous as an opera\u2019s mad scene. Near the end of Friday\u2019s performance, Maude\u2019s violent slamming of her front door knocked off a piece of wall molding.\u00a0Maude flung it aside in a moment so real that you couldn\u2019t tell whether it was meant to happen or that Strus, completely inhabiting the character, didn\u2019t have to think about how Maude would respond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CATSKILL \u2014 This is the sort of talent Bridge Street Theatre attracts: Lusia Strus, one half of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[151,153,152,967,118887,118133,972,15060,1058],"class_list":{"0":"post-274401","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bakersfield","8":"tag-bakersfield","9":"tag-bakersfield-headlines","10":"tag-bakersfield-news","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-gcco","13":"tag-latestnews","14":"tag-local","15":"tag-review","16":"tag-theater"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}