The Quiet Model

There are two kinds of playwrights in this world: those who can make poetry sound like dialogue and those who write in a straight, natural fashion. And there are two kinds of actors in this world: those who can make poetry sound like dialogue and those who perform in a straight, natural fashion. For a prime example of these dichotomies, may I suggest L.A. Mitchell's The Quiet Model, a dreamlike fantasy about the creation of John Everett Millais' Victorian painting Ophelia, now playing at the Midtown International Theatre Festival.

With gentle, flowing passages that verbally reflect the art being created on canvas, Ms. Mitchell glides us into the competitive world of professional painters, showing us both the fantasies and the realities of the business. Millais has just completed his masterwork-- a young woman laying in a river surrounded by flowers. The art world assumes that the painting is of Shakespeare's Ophelia and that the model is Dante Gabriel Rossetti's young wife, but, Mitchell suggests, the truth is much less picturesque. With flowing dialogue that often borders on poetry, Ms. Mitchell sets up a fascinating mystery with interesting characters, and lets her work be unapologetically intelligent and achingly beautiful.

And I should pause here to state for the record that Ms. Mitchell is a student at Hampshire College, and that The Quiet Model is her first play. The Midtown International Theatre Festival is the ideal launch pad for up-and-coming writers, and Ms. Mitchell should be commended for getting her work into such a prestigious festival at such a young age.

That said, The Quiet Model, while frequently quite lovely, betrays its author's youth and inexperience. The jumps from prose to dialogue are awkward, and there are a few too many cliches for the story's own good. If Ms. Mitchell delved as deep into her characters as she does her mystery, the play would be much stronger. For all its beauty, the script is ultimately uneven, and could use another revision before a second production.

The cast is likewise uneven. Some make the surrealism seem natural; some make it simply surreal. Director Chelsea Miller, who also appears as Effie Millais, creates some beautiful imagery and visuals with limited set and space, but does not seem to have enough consistency to make her cast function as a unit. Some actors, like Cary Hite as Millais, flow naturally from prosaic soliloquy to dialogue. Others simply do not transition as effortlessly, and that dichotomy shatters the theatrical illusion. As the titular model, Marguerite French is wonderfully intense and eerie in a largely silent role, communicating worlds of emotion through her eyes. The economical costumes are also elegantly effective: the men wear various articles of formalwear, and the women dress in uniform black skirts with differently colored corsets on top.

As a first draft of a premiere work, The Quiet Model shows great promise for Ms. Mitchell, and the play is certainly worth a second production once it has a chance to grow and bloom.