BWW Reviews: INVENTING VAN GOGH Throws Washington Into A World of Vivid Color

When I was in third grade, my art teacher would roll her squeaky, overstocked cart into our overcrowded classroom with laminated copies of famous artists. With faded, laminated prints of Degas, Picasso, and Dali, she would urge us with aggressive enthusiasm to imitate. She assigned us, again and again, to emulate them by drawing dancers or disproportionate faces, claiming that by doing these things we were learning the tools to make art.

One day, we each created our own versions of Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night, hopelessly attempting to at least proportion our hills, tiny buildings and stars to the small, blurry print that she presented proudly on the chalkboard in the front of the room.

My senior year of high school, I stopped by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City after completing yet another harrowing round of college auditions. I attempted to understand the many pieces that lined the interior walls of the tall building, sneaking around corners in trepidation of what I might find. My mother, who eagerly lead me around the museum, was always the art connoisseur in the family-lining our bookshelves with tomes full of print after print of Monet, O'Keeffe, and Kinkade. I was more cautious, less enthused, and mostly confused. Why did all these paintings matter? Why were people so captivated by something that stayed so resolutely still on a canvas?

I turned towards another white room lined with paintings and felt generally despondent. A small crowd, however, caught my attention and I drew near to find out what captivated them. To my surprise, it was Van Gogh's Starry Night. As the crowds dispersed and moved on to something else, I stared at the painting. For the first time, I was struck dumb by a piece of artwork. I still cannot fully grasp what gripped me so thoroughly. My gaze flitted around the painting, focusing on the thick globs of paint so viciously smacked and caked onto the canvas over and over again until they finally created the beautiful, and now famous night sky.

The colors in Van Gogh's work don't seep but punch out into the world. Each stroke begs to be seen by its audience, like the artist who put it there. Van Gogh-the pinnacle example of the tortured artist-struggles constantly in his relationship with art, the art world, and reality. Inventing Van Gogh, by Steven Dietz, directed by Steven Carpenter, explores this life-long struggle.

Inventing Van Gogh opened on Oct. 31, 2013, and will be running at the Undercroft Theater in the Mount Vernon Place Methodist Church through November 24, 2013. The battlefield, or the set, for the aforementioned struggle, designed by Carl F. Gudenius and Sigrid Johnaaeesdottir, is encased by two white, framed screens. An easel stands in the center of the stage, haloed in a soft light that casts the two screens in temporary shadow. Pretty yet occasionally haunting music-sound designed by Frank DiSalvo Jr.-presets the show, reminiscent of a european cafe. It sets the audience on a cautious, yet curious edge. What is this play going to be: tragic, comedic, or some bizarre mashing of the two?

The music quiets, the lights dim, and the show begins as Professor Miller (Lawrence Redmond) declares, "All is yellow everywhere!" The lights, designed by Marianne Meadows, shift and brighten the stage into a world of yellow.

This yellow world yields two artists: PatRick Stone and Vincent Van Gogh. They both struggle to find real purposes of art as Stone attempts to forge the work of Van Gogh to create a Van Gogh's "lost" final portrait.

Throughout the show, the lights create two worlds: the world of PatRick Stone-whitewashed and stark-and the world of Vincent Van Gogh-full of vibrant yellows in act one which bleeds into blue by act two. It provides a glimpse of how Van Gogh may have seen nature. He saw it with a glow that no one else could see. The light successfully captured the two separate worlds and their slow blending into one another until the two opposing forces intertwined to create a brighter reality.

It was amazing how uncanny the costumes, designed by Lynn Steinmetz, resembled the outfits within the Van Gogh paintings that inspired them. Pieces of note include Van Gogh's almost aquamarine jacket and Dr. Paul Gachet's hat. In a work where the paintings directly influence the play's narrative, the costumes are a key element. They were no less than an exquisite treasure to behold.

The interchange between reality and the radiating beauty of Van Gogh's world did not, however, translate as well to the acting. Some played within this idea beautifully. Professor Miller and Dr. Paul Gachet (both played by Lawrence Redmond) both dance the fine line between reality and hyper-realism. His performance breathes air into this occasionally dreary, overwhelming piece, giving a place for the audience to laugh and feel connection to the intermingling worlds shaping in front of them.

Rene Bouchard and Paul Gauguin (both played by Brit Herring) fight a different battle in the play than the other characters. Neither of his characters have to dance any fine line between art and reality that Van Gogh, played by Ryan Tumulty, and Miller tried and failed to master. To both Bouchard and Gauguin, the world was not something to be enhanced but something to be imagined. The real world was too ugly, too static to be something worth painting. This complete contrast with Van Gogh's ideology that art is about the mastery the colors nature yields creates an explosive friction between these two characters. This division is far more interesting to watch than most of the other parts of the play. It appeared both of his roles were meant to spark the other artist-Van Gogh in one case, Stone in the other-into action. He executed his role as the fire to the fuse with careful precision.

PatRick Stone (Christopher Herring) and Hallie Miller (Jessica Shearer) the two newest, youngest characters in the play were also the most static. Although the play begged for each character to tremble and reshape themselves to suit the worlds they lived in, both characters took each scene at word value rather than by its deeper seated meaning. Each line seemed forced upon these two characters. They were trapped in the same foggy laminate that my art teacher forced on her print of Starry Night.

Stone never actually grows. He symbolizes the angry, rebellious artist who gradually comes to understand-at least slightly- the world as Van Gogh saw it, but never actually embraces it. Although critics claim at the end of the play that Stone's work glows the same way Van Gogh's did, the painter never changes. How can an audience take a journey with this character if he never even acknowledges the need for the journey?

Hallie Miller has possibly one of the most tragic stories within the play. In a world where everyone is trying to make a name for themselves, she is the only one who can lay total claim to being invisible. Yet, her one-note performance causes a total disconnect between the audience and Hallie's pain.

Throughout the noticeable great, sometimes stumbling and occasionally downright uncomfortable moments is a battle between life and art. There is little else to connect to, because the elements we can connect to as an audience-love, loss, and hope-are hidden underneath caked metaphors.

These metaphors are occasionally delivered with beautiful finesse-especially by Van Gogh (Ryan Tumulty) and Professor Miller-but are usually executed with a noticeable blunder. This may be due more to Dietz's writing than the actors themselves.

But beyond the constant thrum of metaphors and poetry is a tragic story strangely labeled as a comedy centralized upon two men who struggle to find their own purpose in the world of art. I certainly hope Stone finds his purpose, although his art may just end up in a laminate casing on my third grade art teacher's squeaky cart. But then, only the great works of art end up in laminate prints, printed on mouse pads and plastered on lunchboxes.

The play will be running until Nov. 24 on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings at 8 p.m.; and Saturday and Sunday afternoons at 2:30 p.m. More information about Washington Stage Guild and Inventing Van Gogh can be found at www.stageguild.org.

Photo Credit: photo by C. Stanley Photography courtesy of The Washington Stage Guild.

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