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Look Homeward, Angel I have come to admire the work of certain theater artists within our artistic theater family of the Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex, artisans whose work I always appreciate and look forward to viewing. One of those admirable practitioners of the art of theater is Susan Sargeant. Ms. Sargeant achieves success as an actress constantly, but after observing a second production in which she holds the reins as director, I can say she is without a doubt, one of this city's most treasured masters of the theater arts. Sargeant's current directing project is Garland Civic Theatre's mounting of Ketti Frings' Pulitzer Prize winning play, Look Homeward, Angel. Frings' script is based on the novel by Thomas Wolfe. There are an abundance of parallels between the play and Wolfe's own personal life. Wolfe grew up in Asheville, North Carolina, which was at that time a middle class mountain resort town dazzled by real estate speculation. Wolfe's Mother, Julia E. Wolfe (in the play the character's name is Eliza Gant), was ahead of her time as a successful real estate speculator. Wolfe felt her interest was a disease that interfered with her duties as a wife and mother. William Oliver Wolfe, his father, was a tombstone maker with a great vigor for living and a constant need to hurl himself against the prison bars of his dreary provincial life. Wolfe and Frings changed the name of this shell of a man to W.O. Gant. While he provided well for his large family, this man delighted in all of the robust sensual aspects of life. He drank heavily, and in an inebriated state often verbally stormed at his family with great torrents of rhetoric and quotes from Shakespeare. Wolfe was the youngest of eight children, six of whom survived to adulthood. During his childhood the family member closest to him was his brother Benjamin. In Look Homeward, Angel Ben is portrayed as a loner who hides his love for his youngest brother behind a mask of short temper and sarcastic denial. It is perhaps through Ben's feelings of bitter regret for his own lost opportunities that Thomas Wolfe acquired his drive to escape his provincial life so he could go out into the world to achieve his dream of being a writer. Wolfe would write Look Homeward, Angel nine years before his death. Frings adapted Wolfe's 1929 novel into a play that premiered on Broadway in 1957 starring Anthony Perkins, Jo Van Fleet, and Hugh Griffith. The production ran for 564 performances and received six Tony nominations, but alas did not take home a single award. The play is now slightly long in the tooth, but still provides an emotional arc that can easily reflect today's version of the "American family." The piece takes too much time in unleashing the exposition, and a few of the characters are not written to their fullest extent, but where the piece begins to unravel is in its final scene. This final scene (involving an apparition) seems tacked on as an afterthought, with the prior scene doing all that is required to achieve the goal, so the added scene feels anti-climatic and slightly shortchanges both the script and the emotion. Thankfully, Sargeant does not let the creaks and moans of this 1957 script stop her and her cast from achieving success. Sargeant creates realism in her direction. She allows "natural life" to continue behind the actors who are to be the focus of that scene. In other words, while downstage there may be a scene unfolding, behind them are characters reading, talking, drinking, or performing other mundane everyday life rituals, thus giving the piece better grounding for the audience to feel as though they are accidental passersby rather than theatre patrons sitting in the dark. Sargeant never allows this "background" to pull focus, but instead allows it to color the action perfectly. She also has an unerring eye for movement, stage "pictures" in her blocking, and keeping the action going. Such touches, such as having actors in character move set pieces or having scenes gel into the next one with a simple blocking movement, work like a charm. Finally, Sargeant brings forth instinctive performances from the entire cast. In someone's else's hands this play could easily have fallen into melodramatic hysterics. But Sargeant keeps her cast on the right emotional tempo that gives the arc of the piece much more emphasis. Sargeant is greatly assisted in this task by her top notch creative team. Claire Floyd DeVries' caramel colored set is skeletal and authentic in its attempt to reflect the decay and crumbling state of the Gant family's personal relationships. Mike Garner's light design gives the set a sun kissed look, while Celeste Rogers' costumes are accurate in taste, color, period, and execution. My personal favorite is the purple taffeta creation Rogers created for Madame Elizabeth. The mood for the piece is also greatly assisted by Lowell Sargeant's sounds of old cars and simplistic parlor song instrumentals. The cast is headed up by Brandon Bales as Eugene Gant, and he delivers a substantial performance as the youngest Gant sibling who is dressed in hand me downs and has been tightly controlled by his dominating mother. Bales handles the role's major arc with the right mixture of restraint and heartache. Where the role and acting could easily swim in the waters of overacting, Bales stays true to the core of being genuine. Andra Buschmann is fascinating as Laura James, the young woman who rents a room at Eliza's "Dixieland Room and Board". Ms. Buschmann's pretty ingénue face is framed with bright red hair. The role can easily be the villain of the piece, but Buschmann does not let this happen. She layers her acting work with believable care, love, and support for Eugene. The love interest subplot is greatly aided by the impassioned chemistry between Bales and Buschmann. Jimmi Wright bequeaths the audience an impeccable performance as Ben Gant. Wright is handed the toughest assignment any actor can tackle, that of being "ill". It must read truthful and believable; if it does not, it becomes a fabrication that the audience will focus on, thus losing its impact. Wright instead just lets the illness sneak in and out of his acting, thus it achieves its emotional impact in the second act to its fullest. Jane Willingham is a fusion of Ma Kettle, Margaret Hamilton, and Gale Sondergaard. Willingham has proven she can handle dialects and her portrayal of a caustic second wife to W.O. Gant is gratifying to watch as it unfolds. Rod Blaydes is W.O. Gant, the patriarch of this dysfunctional family. Blaydes supplies the right amount of bombastic energy and presence for his characterization of an alcoholic father who feels he has let life and his craft fall by the wayside of his empty life. Its a grand performance to watch. There is an old rule in the theater that no part is too small. Frings supplies an array of supporting and minor roles in this piece. All of the thespians Sargeant has cast in these roles give it their all and thus provide a solid backbone for the principals. In the sizeable company there is reliable and exemplary work done by such actors as Charles Timothy Bates as the ukulele playing suitor Jake Clatt; Kris Schroyer as the hard working sister of the Gant family, Helen Gant Brown; Brian Hathaway as the stylishly dressed Hugh Barton; Mitch Carr as the sympathetic Dr. Maguire; Alice Montgomery as the owner of a brothel, Madame Elizabeth; Laura Jennings as the flirtatious Miss Brown; and Terry Justis as Marie "Fatty" Pert, an older woman who loves Ben dearly. In conclusion, let me say that the cast, creative design team, and director of GCT's Look Homeward, Angel substantiate a point that I have been making for years concerning equity and non-equity theater: it really doesn't make a difference if someone possesses a union card or not when it comes to providing good theater. The talent (both in front and behind the curtain) is what matters in the final outcome. Look Homeward Angel CAST Ben Gant: Jimmi Wright |
