Profile Announces

No matter how much I cajoled and wheedled, my so-called friends at Profile Theatre remained tight-lipped about the playwright the company will feature next season. I even promised to embargo the information until tonight.

As I write this, Jane Unger is making the momentous announcement over at Theatre! Theater! I'm but two blocks away, but it's raining and I have a lovely drink at my side and the smell of roasting garlic and tomatoes is tantalizing, so I won't be going over there.

Fortunately, my espionage network is strong, and I learned the secret this afternoon. (Unless I've been double crossed!).

HORTON FOOTE!

HORTON WHO?

Horton Foote, who died at age 92 last month, will be Profile's featured playwright over its 2009-2010 season. You can read his obit from the NY Times here.

I'm never ashamed to show my ignorance, so will tell you that I'm not familiar with his plays. However, I know some of his screenplays, and am particularly fond of his adaptation of Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" -- an example of a great book that is also a great movie. He also wrote the screenplay for "Tender Mercies" starring Robert Duvall, which I remember being a fabulous movie. (Both of those flicks are on my top fifty list of "Movies I Think I Might Want to Rent and Watch Again Sometime). Oh, he also wrote the screenplay for “The Trip to Bountiful,” which I don't remember, but at least I recognize the title.

Frank Rich, someone our household adores, called Foote “one of America’s living literary wonders.” (That was before Mr. Foote died, I presume). Mr. Rich also called him “a major American dramatist whose epic body of work recalls Chekhov in its quotidian comedy and heartbreak, and Faulkner in its ability to make his own corner of America stand for the whole.”

In these troubling times, I'm all for quotidian comedy. Does quotidian mean using a Dr. Seuss picture to illustrate an important cultural story? Or is that just juvenile?

UPDATE! UPDATE! Read all about it!

Just one-half hour after posting my scoop, I received the official press release on Profile's 2009-2010 season. Here's the line-up:

The Trip to Bountiful (full production)
(September 30 – November 1, 2009)

Dividing the Estate (staged reading)
(November 12 - November 22, 2009)

Valentine’s Day (staged reading)
(February 11 -14, 2010)

The Carpetbagger’s Children (full production)
(February 24 – March 28, 2010)

To Kill a Mockingbird (staged reading)
(April 1 – April 11, 2010)

The Young Man from Atlanta (full production)
(May 19 – June 20, 2010)

In addition to its staged productions, Profile will continue its “One Night Stand” series, presenting one night readings of Courtship, 1918, The Last of the Thorntons and Tender Mercies.

FlexPasses and subscriptions are on sale now. Call 503.242.0080 or visit Profile's website at www.profiletheatre.org.

Monday Evening Looking Back

I was delighted that Culture Jock posted a fresh edition of “Last Call” on Friday. But having it just sit there as our top post all weekend and all day Monday was bugging me. It kept reminding me of how uncultured my weekend was. Oh, but that glorious sunshine was simply wonderful! Here's my weekend report:

(1) Finally watched “No Country for Old Men,” and was blown away (a distasteful word choice, I know). The best Coen Bros. film ever? Quite possibly … if you have the nerves and stomach for violent action. Javier Bardem is incredible as the psychopathic killer, but Josh Brolin and Tommy Lee Jones are his equals. The cinematography is as stunning as a blow to the forehead from a cattle gun (again, sorry). I’ve put the Cormac McCarthy novel on reserve at the library.

(2) Drank beer and ate a huge Black Pepper and Beer Sausage over an extended happy hour at the Hopworks Urban Brewery (aka “The HUB”) on SE Powell. Being our first visit, we started by sharing the beer sampler (8 x 3 oz tasters), before settling on the Hopworks IPA; its delectable hint of crisp citrus was a perfect fit for the sunny afternoon. We met up with a colleague and long-time friend who is now part of Profile Theatre’s management team. If we’d poured a few more pints into him, we might have been able to break the secret of which playwright Profile will feature next year. He stayed mum, so we’ll have to wait for the official announcement later this month.

(3) Read the NY Times, including a review of the Nines Hotel which concluded: “Fashionable and comfortable, the Nines provides a chic haven to guests who might need a breather from Portland’s grittier scene.” That led to discussion of where exactly is that gritty scene in Portland?

(4) Politely asked the busker wailing under our window to move along to another location so we could enjoy the spring evening with our windows open. So much for supporting the arts. Oh … there’s the gritty scene—literally under our noses!

Biloxi Blues @ Profile Theatre

When Profile Theatre announced its 2008-2010 season, I thought Jane Unger’s choice of Neil Simon as the featured playwright would turn out to be a marketing mistake. (I'm presuming readers know that Profile has the unique mission of focusing on a single playwright through an entire season, “celebrating the playwright's contribution to live theater”).

Before this year’s author was announced, Profile mailed a teaser postcard listing playwrights under consideration: Sam Shepard? Samuel Beckett? Moliere? My memory is hazy about the list, but I recall liking most of the other prospects more than Neil Simon. With most theater companies around the country trying to figure out how to attract a new, younger audience (a topic Culture Shock has covered before), picking an old-school writer such as Simon seemed retrograde. It certainly isn’t a sexy choice. Of course, Simon is America’s most successful playwright for a reason, so what do I know?

More than a week ago, I attended Profile's opening night performance of Simon's Biloxi Blues (1985) expecting to be mildly entertained. Instead, I enjoyed an outstanding production of a well-crafted script. No big fireworks, but a well-told story. I should have given more credit to Neil Simon, as well as to Pat Patton, a veteran stage director. After close to four hours immersed in the multimedia extravaganza of Apollo the previous night (reviewed here), I was primed for straightforward theater that moved at a crisp pace.

Biloxi Blues is a simple coming-of-age story set in a boot camp in Biloxi, Mississippi during WWII. It sits in the middle of a semi-autobiographical trilogy that starts with Brighton Beach Memoirs and ends with Broadway Bound. (Many critics have declared Biloxi Blues to be the best of the three). The opening night audience chuckled and guffawed through the whole thing, but it’s more than a two hour laugh-fest as it sensitively tackles serious issues such as homophobia and anti-Semitism.

What really stands out in this production--and what I've been meaning to comment about for more than a week-- is the uniform quality of the acting ensemble. There wasn’t a single mediocre performance to be found from the group of mostly young actors.

At the reception following the performance, Jane Unger told me they’d auditioned a lot of actors to find just the right mix of young men who could embody the play’s distinct characters – from the intellectual misfit, Arnold Epstein (played by Matthew Sa) to the tough-guy Pole, Joseph Wykowski (Mario Calgano)--a manly stud who is alleged to sport a perpetual pole. The two women roles are played perfectly by Brooke Fletcher (as the prostitute, Rowena) and Brittany Burch (as first-love, Daisy Hannigan). In early scenes, Todd Hermanson’s portrayal of the tough drill sergeant borders on stereotype (written that way by Simon). Later, he nails the sergeant’s gentle response to the young soldier Hennessey (played by high school senior Derek Hermann) who is being arrested on charges of sodomy. He is also superbly menacing in a drunken encounter that is at the climax of the play.

This is one of those rare productions in which EVERY performance is great. I recommend that any casting directors looking to fill roles straddling the transition age from teenage to adulthood go see this cast in action. (For instance, if you’re developing a play called The Mentoring of Beau Breedlove). I hope this cast ends up being nominated for "best ensemble" in this year's Drammy Awards. (As long as I’m suggesting nominees, let me also include set design by Tal Sanders).

p.s. The accompanying photo is not from Biloxi Blues. It's from the Phil Silvers Show (originally titled You'll Never Get Rich)--a mid-century (1955-59) work of television sit-com brilliance starring one of the funniest comedians of the age. The 1996 Steve Martin film adaptation of the series sucked.

The picture to the right is also not from Profile's production of Biloxi Blues. Rather, it is a portrait of the inimitable and debonair Top Cat (known as "T.C." to his friends) from the eponymous Hanna Barbera series of the mid-60s. That cartoon series was modeled on The Phil Silvers Show, with Top Cat's voice being a loose imitation of Phil Silvers' (which was also imitated for the cartoon character Hokey Wolf).

But I digress.