By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Do we deserve this happy ending?
That’s what the playwright wonders as “The Amateurs” nears its conclusion. On stage is the 14th century troupe of players who are themselves completing their staging of the story of Noah and the Flood. We have witnessed our share of death, deception, and cruelty.
In this version, though, Noah is not the central character. His wife, nameless in the Bible, has stepped forth and objected to entering the ark, given that all their friends and most of their kin will die in the flood. Her argument with her husband presages those of Lucy and Desi and so many sit-com couples to come.
The darkly comic and insightful play, “The Amateurs” by Jordan Harrison, is being presented by the BGSU Department of Theatre and Film this weekend. The production, directed by Sara Lipinski Chambers, opens tonight (Oct. 28) at 8 p.m. in Donnell Theatre in the Wolfe Center for the Arts on campus and continues Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. with matinees Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m.
We are introduced to this troupe of wandering entertainers as they are rehearsing for their biggest show. They are traveling through a plague-ravaged land to see the duke, whom they hope will make them his resident company. That would mean they could stay in town and be shielded from the plague. The stakes are high for a troupe that, as one actor Hollis (Hailey Wright) says, is greeted by people emptying bed pans on their heads and their departure celebrated with tarring.
In the opening scene, the plague strikes down one of the actors, Henry (Zachary Davis) who collapses during a rehearsal for the Seven Deadly Sins. This leaves the company one person down. They were already so short of members that the now dead Henry was doing double duty as two sins.
But God, that is the director Larking (Fern Torres), is undeterred by this nor Hollis’ grief over the loss of her brother, who was left on a pile of corpses along the side of the road. They will push on, or rather he will push them on. But no, he will not let Gregory (Braden Evans) step into the role. He deems Gregory too dim-witted to act, though he also considers him a genius at creating costumes and scenes.
The diva of the troupe is Rona (Nykera Gardner), who is pregnant. Hollis assumes the father is Larking, but Rona tells her that Henry impregnated her, though it’s immediately made clear that Gregory is the father.
Henry’s lover was Brom (Rick Hodgson), who prays for forgiveness and takes the sores erupting on his body as a sign of his sinfulness.
They are joined by a mysterious doctor (Zachary Davis) who is on the run. As we’ve recently learned in the pandemic, those who heal are sometimes blamed for the disease they are treating.
All these struggles continue as they try to pull together their production of Noah and the Flood. Gregory frets over creating two of each animal and scaling the insects small enough and the elephant – which none of them has ever seen – large enough. A dove that Larking insisted needed to be bigger ruins a scene.
Larking, who casts himself as God, never sets aside this role and utters loud and empty phrases and makes arbitrary demands. He’s upset when Hollis starts questioning a single line in the play about Noah’s wife not yet being on the Ark.
Hollis is struggling to understand what the woman is feeling. Feelings have no part in this, Larking bellows at her.
In the second act, Gregory steps out of character into another, the playwright Jonathan. He explains, or rather struggles to explain, the roots of the play in his middle school health class. The lessons were replete with misinformation about the then raging plague, AIDS, and delivered with a large dose of anti-gay rhetoric. This left Jonathan fearful and ignorant into adulthood. He also remembered Mr. Goldsworthy, tennis and debate coach, who was teased behind his back as being gay. A snooping Jonathan learns this is true. Later Jonathan encounters Mr. Goldsworthy who has transformed from the closeted married man in pleated khakis into a purple haired proudly gay man. Six years after that encounter he died of AIDS. Yet Jonathan celebrates that he no longer had had to hide.
He explains, though, that what particularly inspired “The Amateurs” was that single passage in a Medieval Mystery Play about Noah’s wife. Then Hollis, who uttered that line, steps out of character into the character of the actor Hailey. She explains how her acting has been informed by her role as Mrs. Cratchit, another female character without a first name. She gave to Mrs. Cratchit a more central, though hidden, role in the story. She made Mrs. Cratchit a conjurer.
The Third Act returns to the 14th century and to the duke’s castle where they are to perform. When Hollis improvises her objections to entering the Ark everything seems to go awry.
“The Amateurs” ends as does the story of Noah with a rainbow. For that instant we can almost believe all will be well with this troupe of ancient thespians. The audience will have no need for the contents of bedpans or tar.
