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Hunter Bryant portrays Val in \u201cOrpheus Descending\u201d presented by Oakland Theater Project. (Ben Krantz Studio via Bay City News) <\/p>\nIt\u2019s\u00a0gotten to the point with the barebones Oakland Theater Project that everything the company touches, whether\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0a classic or an experimental new play, is golden in one way or another.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the case of its current production, one of Tennessee Williams\u2019 later dramas, \u201cOrpheus Descending\u201d (titled \u201cThe Fugitive Kind\u201d in a 1960 film starring Marlon Brando and Anna Magnani), two elements stand out: superlative acting and a certain amount of surrealism, which director Will Detlefsen knows that Williams wanted.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some of that surrealism is\u00a0easily\u00a0enough\u00a0achieved; performing, as the company usually does, in a storage area in what was formerly Flax Art\u00a0Supply,\u00a0this\u00a0time\u00a0there\u2019s\u00a0no attempt to re-create the elaborate set design that Williams describes. Designer Sam Fehr rigged up some minimal suggestions in that regard.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Instead, the players perform on a strip down the middle of the room, with\u00a0audience\u00a0members\u00a0seated on two sides opposite each other. Old paint cans and supplies\u00a0remain\u00a0on shelves from the Flax days. The stage lights spill over the audience. With a story this electrifying and acting this good\u00a0\u2014and a little bit of narration to describe what\u00a0we\u2019re\u00a0meant to imagine\u00a0\u2014\u00a0it almost feels like too much scenery would have been a distraction.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOrpheus\u201d is set in a gossipy Southern town, where tightly wound Lady runs a small dry goods store and cares for her\u00a0very sick\u00a0husband. Lisa Ramirez, the company\u2019s co-artistic director, seems\u00a0born\u00a0to play Lady.\u00a0Her frantic emotional journey over the course of the play is never less than riveting. Even her touch of an Italian accent, the tension in her body, is\u00a0just right.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hunter Bryant portrays Val in \u201cOrpheus Descending\u201d presented by Oakland Theater Project. (Ben Krantz Studio via Bay City News) <\/p>\n
When a sexy, soft-spoken traveler of the fugitive kind, Val (Hunter Bryant, whose face simply radiates innocence), shows up in a snakeskin jacket, carrying a guitar and looking for work,\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0inevitable that fireworks between the two will eventually erupt.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Various peripheral characters carry almost equal weight to the main characters. There\u2019s the town\u2019s wild free spirit, Carol (Natalie Pasquinelli, achingly needy in the role); its visionary artist, Vee (an intense, pitch-perfect Susannah Martin); two gossips (Lizzie Izyumin and\u00a0Zolboo\u00a0Namkhaidorj, a perfectly tuned, snarky Greek chorus of sorts); and Lady\u2019s sick husband (Robert Parsons, alarmingly nasty). The actors bring the kind of depth to their roles (and some play multiple roles) that surely Williams must have envisioned when writing about these lonely, trapped Southerners.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s\u00a0easy to get caught up in the larger-than-life emotions of these characters, but a few directorial missteps do register.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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L-R, Lizzie Izyumin and Zolboo Namkhaidorj appear in Oakland Theater Project\u2019s \u201cOrpheus Descending.\u201d (Ben Krantz Studio via Bay City News)<\/p>\n
When, early on, a character fiddles around with a cell phone,\u00a0we\u2019re\u00a0put on notice that this production is set in an imaginary time zone\u2014but there are no other meaningful directorial efforts to emphasize that.\u00a0<\/p>\n
More problematic: Val is meant to play his cherished guitar and sing\u2014but the actor clearly is not a guitarist nor does he treat the guitar like the treasured object it\u2019s meant to be; on opening night, he slammed it down on a table several times, never held it with reverence or care.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Still, despite these and a few other minor missteps, the players, the\u00a0dialogue\u00a0and story rise to the top, as is de rigueur for OTP.\u00a0<\/p>\n