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| Mandy Fason and Michael Kerr - Photo Eric Keitel |
By Joe Straw
One looked at the bare stage and noticed a single chair near a fireplace. Oh, good I thought, one prefers a play where actors will be relating to each other with very little set pieces on the stage. And that happened throughout the night, but there was one fascinating thing that stood out far beyond the play, the actors, and the writing that I’ll share later.
Theatre 40 presents the world premiere of A Clean Brush written by Norm Foster, directed by Howard Storm and produced by David Hunt Stafford.
Dick Stern (James Lemire) and Mello Boggs (Michael Kerr) are housepainters. That classification, a simplification, is minute for both. They have other interests as well.
Dick is tall, with a sonorous voice which resonates from his diaphragm and is projected out of the left side of his mouth. He has a funny accent, almost Canadian, or Chicagoan but it’s loud enough to wake up the dead. But today, dead is dead, and he is not going to raise any hackles.
Dick is a hapless independent contractor, and he has been contracted is to paint the downstairs/basement/apartment-like room.
Dick brings with him his partner Mello, an obsequious servant, a seedling of a man in comparison. Mello is articulate, with a knack for asking astute questions. Their relationship is recent given their conversations. Dick is the teacher and Mello is the absorbing student and someone to help him make it through the day and to help him paint.
Mello, an odd name to be sure, was named by his hippy parents and he is mellow in certain ways. In his way this job is all fodder on his way of being a stand-up comedian.
As they set up, Dick tells Mello not to mention the recently departed dead husband. He says the woman who hired them Zoe Caldwell (Mandy Fason) was upset and was crying over the phone when they spoke, and wouldn’t you know it it’s the first thing Mello asks Zoe.
Zoe, stepping down in colorful attire to explain, says she wasn’t sad, and she wasn’t crying either. (Her appearance hardly looks like someone who is grieving.) She didn’t much care for her husband and her crying was the results of her allergies that were giving her trouble. To explain his death Zoe said she was out fishing when her husband collapsed, fell, and hit his head on the fireplace poker numerous times.
Hmmm, that sounds suspicious.
Even if one weren’t too bright, one would suspect that she had a hand in the matter. No matter, Zoe tells them she’s self-sufficient, a book editor, and has already collected the life insurance money so there’s plenty of that to pay them. She leaves, and Dick and Mello start to work on painting the place.
Brushing that aside and getting back to work Dick has a philosophical idiom is that painting, like life, always starts with a clean brush. It’s a hallmark, in a way, ignoring the past, and taking on the new roads of life. Still, there are other things to think about.
A neighbor enters Lois (Susan Priver), pleasantly dress and with a facetious smile in tow, and an offbeat since of self, (“We must be who we are” she says.) mentions that their work is essentially covering up a crime scene that Zoe had something to do with it.
Zoe finds Lois in her house and asks her to leave before she walks out of the room. But Lois doesn’t leave, she fills in the gap of what happened a couple of nights ago, with all the blood on the walls and the carpet that Zoe cleaned up and burned in the backyard.
Later, Zoe finds an interest in Mello and vice versa, and they decide to take matters privately upstairs. Mello comes down and tells Dick everything, eventually telling Dick they’ve been contracted to do more work to the space for thirty thousand dollars.
Unfortunately, there were some slight problems upstairs which complicates matters and there’s a lot more to discover.
Howard Storm, director, sends everyone home thinking good thoughts about the play. I caught myself laughing at some of the antics onstage late into the night. Storm, also noted for directing Woody Allen’s Bananas, and Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask, and numerous television shows, was in the theatre on this night, and I spoke to him briefly. He is nearing his 91st birthday.
Norm Foster, the writer, and one is told the Canadian Neil Simon, gives us an amusing night of theatre. The visuals on the program suggest a paint brush smearing blood with “A Clean Brush” fingered in the blood. Makes one think about the nearly departed in films when the dying writes the name of his murderer before he shakes his mortal coil.
Although “A Clean Brush” is a comedy there is a lot to say about discovery in this two-act play. And it is mostly about the two men discovering who they are first and then discovering Zoe and Lois. Dick Stern and Mello Boggs find out a lot about each other but most importantly they discover who the other person is, and that relationship must grow. Mello ask Dick Stern if he was Jewish, and this catches Dick so off guard that he must think about it, deep in thought be brings up his uncle Schlomo, and then his son Itzhak. He gets more Jewish as the night rolls along. More could be made of this.
The comedy works best when the comedy bites and the relationship changes between the participants. One thinks about Laurel and Hardy and other comedy teams how those teams worked when they absorbed the relationship
Early in this run there may be things missing that the actors will find to solidify their objectives. Things that will move the actor to a push that catapults the night. It doesn’t mean the effort wasn’t there, it just means there’s more work to be done. Not a lot, maybe a little, but some.
James Lemire is Dick and there were some interesting character choices, but James needs to define his objective, make it creative, and make it his own. He must own up to his purpose and find the way of the character. A couple of day earlier, a man was bludgeoned to death, in that very room and when finding out the information there is little or no reaction to either woman or to his partner. Is he a teacher? Does he take delight in the antics of his partner? How does he react when finding out this information? Also, find a way to paint (if it’s only the fourth wall so be it) and do this when carrying on the conversation.
Michael Kerr, Mello, wants to be a comedian and he moves in that direction, but not taken as far to make it more creative. Mello might find ways to do his standup during the evening. He seems to be absorbing the information, things that will help him grow understanding human awareness, but he is not using that information. He gets involved with a woman who two days earlier was covered in blood and he thinks nothing of bedding her even though she might have an instrument of destruction under the bed? And then relating the sad story to his boss. Boy this is just comedy fodder!
Mandy Fason, Zoe, was recently brilliant in Metromaniacs and does well here. There’s more to add and possible choices that might work better for the character. Without giving too much away, the entrance of the neighbor can create a maelstrom of possibilities, but we don’t see much in the way she treats her given all that she knows about this person. She just asks her to leave and then she walks upstairs. Also, if finding a man of her dreams is her objective, then her choices must move her in that direction.
Susan Priver, Lois, always delights and does a good job here but there’s also more to add to character in the offbeat sense of self. The reason for entering the home has its justification that we find out later in act two, but we must sense that in act one with her physical and mental behavior. Priver’s movement on stage just delights still there is something more to add to the character.
The thing that fascinates me is that Howard Storm is still creating, still mastering the craft, and still loving what he does at the tender age of 90 and he brings his stunning wife, Patricia Storm, along as the assistant director.
Other members of the crew are as follows:
Jeff G. Rack – Set Designer
Michele Young – Costume Designer (One wouldn’t mind seeing Zoe dressed completely in black and a clown broach.)
Derrick McDaniel – Lighting Designer (Nice work especially when we see the transformation of the newly painted place, but the illusion is slightly dissipated when the broom is seen leaning against the wall during that transformation.)
Nick Foran – Sound Designer
Craig Hissong – Stage Manager
Run! And take a contractor with you!
RESERVATIONS: (310) 364-0535.
ONLINE TICKETING: https://theatre40.org