OFF-BROADWAY REVIEW
A BRUSH WITH GEORGIA O'KEEFFE REVIEW
Reviewed by David Sanchez
Published 2008-09-22
At one point in the show, Georgia O'Keefe, whose character is played and written by Natalie Mosco, asks whether six months is worth a surrounding lifetime of misery and indifference. The audience member might proportionately ask themselves the same thing about watching "A Brush With Georgia O'Keefe."
In the last year, the New York theater community has seen its share of plays about painting and painters from Potomac Theater Company's production of "Scenes from an Execution" to Roundabout's revival of "Sunday in the Park with George." The former was a bare bones production lacking much of the spectacle and production values of the latter. "A Brush with Georgia O'Keefe" falls into the former category. While I've seen shows with smaller budgets and more humble means of production values, certain plays have surpassed all expectation and still created a moving and awe-inspiring production through smart design, directorial choices, and competent execution.
Many of the design elements for this play are puzzling. Five poles reside on the right side of the stage, while a screen to the left, cut in the shape of a flower alluding to one of O'Keefe's subjects, seems oddly out of place. An anonymous voice, obviously pre-recorded, will speak out through this mostly linear play to update us on time and place. It's a half thought out design that alludes to nothing (at least effectively) in the subject matter or adds to the theatricality of the piece. So it takes us out of the world of and leaves us further indifferent to this mostly well written play.
By the second act, the actors had really warmed up and I was intrigued. It was then that I realized that script itself was a diamond in the rough. The play itself as written by Ms. Mosco is poetic and very intriguing. It has a clarity to it and a movement of spirit that transcends and avoids the plodding traps of biography. This is not simply a history lesson or a pseudo lecture in the guise of a theatrical performance, though the effect (or lack thereof) of the screen sometimes supports the lecture idea. It is evident in the script that this was an endeavor that goes beyond simply wanting to tell the story of a person's life. Ms. Mosco, who also wrote her dissertation on Georgia O'Keefe, digs deep. She presents the subject with such authenticity and pluck. There's a playfulness and a sense of fun given to the audience that never regresses into the sentimental or takes the easy way out through platitudes.
Her two co-actors are capable, but misguided. The parts are written a bit more thinly, and the theatrical device of having the other two actors play a multitude of roles delineated (again by the dreaded lecture screen) seems to serve no dramatic purpose. The two actors don't play their individual characters with enough distinction, and so the effect of having one actor playing the many parts becomes just another disappointment. Their displayed pictures up on the screen seems to be almost an apology to the audience, a sign of defeat, that one couldn't present these characters through theatrical devices and had to resort to an easy fix.
As Georgia O'Keefe's lover/husband/artistic partner, Stieglitz, David Lloyd Walters portrayal is more of a caricature than a true character, played too forced, at least at the beginning of the show. Virginia Roncetti as the various women is unconvincing and perhaps this is due to the fact that there just isn't enough material for her in the script. Her part could probably have been excises or the opposite, bolstered up.
This ambivalence is a problem with the show. Is this a true theatre piece or merely a glorified lecture? This problem, which is never reconciled, makes the elements surrounding Ms. Mosco's words and performance flabby, leaving the audience member either indifferent or at least with the feeling that the provocative and awe-inspiring nature of the subject matter should have been matched.
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