184. THE
JACKSONIAN
Beth Henley’s
THE JACKSONIAN opened over a month ago at the Acorn Theatre but I finally
caught up to it this weekend. The reviews have been all over the map on this
one, ranging from A+ to F, but my response is somewhere in the C vicinity. Those who approve of the play praise Ms.
Henley for moving away from her comfort zone as a depicter of comically eccentric
Southern characters to the sphere of blood-inflected Southern Gothic melodrama,
overlaid with a patina of black humor. I, though, find little humor here at
all, black or otherwise, and while very little of THE JACKSONIAN gave me chills,
despite all the ice thrown around, I can’t say my reaction wasn’t chilly.
From left: Juliet Brett, Ed Harris, Bill Pullman, Amy Madigan, Glenne Headly. Photo: Monique Carboni.
Four of the five actors involved are
major players on stage and screen—Ed Harris, Amy Madigan (married to Mr.
Harris), Bill Pullman, and Glenne Headly—and it’s hard to resist concluding
that the chief pleasures to be gained from THE JACKSONIAN lie in watching their
colorful performances. Ms. Henley has provided them with a drama set in
Jackson, Mississippi, from May to December 1964, when the newspapers were
filled with stories of bombings and burnings of black churches. Over the course
of 85 intermissionless minutes the play touches on racial prejudice, marital
abuse, medical malpractice, mental illness, family dysfunction, sexual perversion,
murder, deception, illegal drugs, perjury, adultery, and other friendly
subjects, giving the actors plenty of juicy meat into which to sink their
teeth.
Teeth, in fact, are another feature
of the play, since Mr. Harris plays a dentist named Bill Perch, who loses his license to practice. Bill is living at the Jacksonian Motel, on the city’s
outskirts; he’s there because of discord with his wife, Susan (Ms. Madigan),
who’s threatening to file divorce papers. Although he insists he’s there only
temporarily because he thinks he can quickly resolve his conjugal problems, his
motel room, seen at stage left, becomes his permanent abode. He’s often visited
there by his poorly adjusted, acne-plagued teenage daughter, Rosy (Juliet Brett), who
serves as a sort of pseudo-poetic narrator, occasionally speaking directly to
the audience. Rosy uses the motel’s restaurant/bar, occupying stage right, as
her hangout, where she does her homework, and where she’s befriended by Fred
Weber (Mr. Pullman), the bartender, whose weirdness is emphasized by his
constrained speaking style, his hesitant movements, and his
huge, Elvis-like pompadour. Fred takes a creepy interest in the unprepossessing
Rosy (her father tells her: “Someday you’ll be out of the ugly duckling
phase”), but he himself is the object of affection of Eva White (Ms. Headly),
the blonde maid, who is both a ditzy floozy and a pious Jesus worshiper. One of
the play’s most memorable lines is hers: “Every Sunday I get His forgiveness.
Regular, like a bowel movement.”
Ed Harris and Amy Madigan. Photo: Monique Carboni.
A
female cashier at a nearby gas station has been killed by Fred during a
robbery, and Eva—because Fred has promised to marry her (a lie)—is
perjuring herself during the trial to protect Fred and convict instead an old
black man who works at the station. Eva, you see, is a racist, one who finds it
difficult to say “Negro” in place of “nigger,” when Bill, the dentist, insists
on it. The liberal Bill, for his part, is in professional trouble for pulling
out all the teeth of a patient who was involved in the burning of a church and
who planned the same for a synagogue. Bill, who even seems to get sexually
excited by a mouthful of choppers, is on the outs with Susan because she
blames him for agreeing, while under anesthesia having an ovarian cyst
removed, to have her given a hysterectomy. Before the evening is over, Bill
will get sky high on nitrous oxide and chloroform, Susan will get socked in the
face, Fred will attempt to swallow a table knife, and someone else will die,
among other moments of theatrical malfeasance.
Despite
all the twists and turns, Robert Fall’s direction during the first half moves at
a plodding pace, failing to ignite. Only when Bill--who seems a serious guy
hoping against hope that his mentally unstable wife will take him back so his
family can be reunited--suddenly turns into a drug freak in an over-the-top
bedroom romp with the underwear-clad Eva, does the production come to life, but
it’s tough to swallow the change in his demeanor or the shift in tone to Joe
Orton-like farce.
THE
JACKSONIAN is simply one of those plays where you have to accept strange
behavior from the characters and hope the actors will be deft enough to make
you believe in what they’re doing. That, fortunately, is the case in this
production, originally staged at L.A.’s Geffen Playhouse with the same cast,
apart from the actress playing Rosy. Mr. Harris makes Bill believable, even
when he’s acting like a lunatic; Ms. Madigan, wearing a flaming red wig, is
suitably neurotic; Ms. Headly, quite fit and attractive at 58, is
appropriately kooky; Mr. Pullman brings a bizarreness to his role that is
far from what he usually projects; and Ms. Brett is convincingly quirky and
vulnerable, if ultimately vague, as a 16-year-old.
The
dark set, combining bar/restaurant and bedroom spaces to convey the motel
interior is suitably seedy, especially under Daniel Ionazzi’s subdued lighting.
Richard Woodbury’s
music provides the required tone of things not quite being as they should, and, for the most part, Ana Kuzmanic’s costumes all look right for the period (especially Eva's underwear, girdle included). However, the seamed stockings worn by the women seem to be an anachronism, as my wife points out that by 1964 seamless stockings were in and seamed ones were out; an Internet check bears this out.
There’s
no question that parts of THE JACKSONIAN are absorbing, and, although they’re
scattered, there are a few genuine laughs, but it’s hard to become fully
engaged with these people, or to care about them one way or the other. Ms.
Henley succeeds in depicting a world of moral depravity but it’s so farfetched
its impact doesn’t last. It has A qualities, B qualities, C qualities, and D
qualities, but C seems the most comfortable fit.
