Seattlest Pix 09Nov24
Tuesdays are Muppet Days
Seattle to Remain Famous for Coffee and Rain
Thanksgiving Pairing Suggestion: Dessert Isn't Just a Meal
Mayor-To-Be Schedules Town Halls for Input and Companionship
Intiman's All the King’s Men (through November 8; tickets: $10 to $50) is one of those rare instances where everything that's needed comes together: cast, script, direction, intention. The close of Intiman's American Cycle, a celebration of great American plays, it's a grand Southern epic (18 actors play 50 parts) dotted with moments as personal as a phone call home.
Thoroughly grounded in the poor-as-"doit" days of 1930s Louisiana (Judith Shahn's dialect coaching sounds extensive), the play foregrounds a classical sense of history, history that (as Mark Twain put it) may not repeat but rhymes: Caesar, JFK, Huey Long. John Procaccino plays populist politician Willie Stark (inspired by but not based on Long), on his journey from being a wet-behind-the-ears, small-town lawyer to the benevolent dictator of a statewide political machine. He's shadowed by Jack Burden (Leo Marks), a reporter whom Stark turns into his personal opp-research tool. It's Burden who, in telling us his story, tells us of Stark's rise and fall.
There are two kinds of dirt on stage, and while the dirt of poverty might be washed off, political dirt--loss of honor--clings to you, assuming you have a sense of honor to begin with. But as all politics are local, so all political dirt is personal, as Burden discovers when Stark orders him to dig up something on a longtime friend of his family, Judge Irwin (Philip Davidson). Nobody gets through life--let alone politics--without getting a little mud on them on the way.
Intiman's cast is led by a singularly good quartet of actors: Procaccino (who effects a surprisingly nuanced series of transformations in Stark), Marks (who makes Burden's ethical punctiliousness one with his precisely bitten-off diction), Lori Larsen (as Burden's mother, almost indescribably good as a damaged goods society dame), and Deirdre Madigan (as Sadie Burke, Stark's "other woman" slash campaign manager). Eight of the actors also play instruments, and all sing Randy Newman's songs, which feel as if they were written for the show--though it's hard to imagine a producer asking for a song about "keeping the niggers down."
Though the play isn't perfect--Robert Penn Warren was a poet and his language seeks an elevation not always available in situ--it makes a virtue of its Southern-style digressions, which besides giving insights into Burden (his passivity and directionlessness), give a sense of how plot can accrete through time rather than jump cuts. Marks plays Burden with a shade too much self-possession for a man who finds himself in such an ethical bind--Stark has picked him drunk out of the gutter, while the Judge has been a father to him--but that is about all you'd fault in Pam MacKinnon's direction, which invites your attention at every moment in a three-hour play.
Tony Cisek's scenery--giant flag backdrop, a few halls-of-power Greek columns, weathered timbers--is more iconic than functional setting, though it has its moments thanks to Colin K. Bills' lighting, in which it springs to ominous life. Otherwise, MacKinnon uses character's interactions to define the space, and this pays off nicely in play that has so much to do with social class. The audience, in imagining the Judge's manor, is reminded that social class has much to do with imagination.
John Procaccino as Willie Stark and Leo Marks as Jack Burden in Intiman's production of All the King's Men (Chris Bennion photo)
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
Post a comment (Comment Policy)