A thrilling journey through time
Spirited performances, laugh-out-loud moments, gorgeous costuming, and a healthy dose of the metaphysical — it's all waiting in The Violet Hour. The work by Richard Greenberg debuted in 2002, played Broadway in 2003, and now graces the stage at Milwaukee's Renaissance Theaterworks in the Third Ward.
The story is set in 1919 New York and tells of aspiring publisher John Pace Seavering (charmingly played by Neil Brookshire), a businessman who's just starting out and has yet to publish a single novel. Armed with the funds to send just one book to print, John is torn between a poetic tome by his Princeton chum, Denis, or an honest autobiography by his mistress, Jessie Brewster — a quasi-famous singer (the bewitching Marti Gobel slays this role).
Denis (played by Nicholas Harazin, oozing charisma) hasn't a penny to his name, though he's in love with an heiress named Rosamund (a lovely, lilting Cara Johnston) and needs the promise of being published to win her hand in marriage. Jessie, a black woman who rose to a glimmer of stardom in pre-1920s New York, is intent on having her life story nailed into peoples' brains.
It seems the fate of his friends lies in John's hands — or does it? Now for the metaphysical twist! John and his melodramatic assistant, Gidger (played with hysterical gusto by David Flores), receive a mysterious gift: a printing machine delivered to their office, unannounced. The machine starts spewing pages of history from the future (remember, this is 1919) — history of the world and the personal histories of each of the characters in our play.
The Violet Hour repeatedly plays with the concept of predictability. John has tickets to a play that is said to be a good-but-predictable bit of theater, and Gidger questions why John would bother going at all if you can see the ending all along. Now, John and Gidger have their own sort of script before them: these pages from the future. Of course The Vioet Hour itself plays with this predictability, as who among us could foresee that a rogue fortune-telling printer would show up in 1919 — unless you read the show program.
As John and Gidger marvel at the historical pages before them, it raises the question: Is the future fixed? Truly, the only certainty in life is that a future of some kind is inevitable. That, and death. How we get from here to there — the journey — depends entirely on our choices here and now. You might think life can be predictable and the future scripted, like a play with an ending you see coming a mile away, but in fact our choices make it unpredictable.
Having peered into the future, John must decide: Denis' book or Jessie's? I certainly don't want to spoil the ending, but I will say that The Violet Hour offers no shortage of conversation and introspection after the curtain falls. If you could glimpse the consequences of your actions, how would you proceed? A good decision now can lead to sadness down the road — but how can we know that? All we can do is make the best of the present, as the future is indeed uncertain.
The Violet Hour is playing at Milwaukee's Renaissance Theaterworks through April 30th. Information and tickets at r-t-w.com.
*Photos by Ross E. Zentner
No comments:
Post a Comment