“Seattle is a small town,” is an axiom of the arts community in our feverishly-growing (some might say hell-bent) metropolis, and it used to be true. In Catherine Trieschmann’s amusingly barbed “The Most Deserving” at Theater Schmeater, director John Longenbaugh brings to the stage, in his words “a show about a small town in Kansas written by an award-winning playwright who actually lives in a small town in Kansas,” a region not often glimpsed onstage in Seattle.
In Trieschmann’s fiendishly clever satire of the arts world we’re not only in Kansas, but right here in Belltown. A local arts council is commissioned to award a $20,000 grant to a local artist to be selected by the five-member council board. Vying interests, egos, and agendas come into immediate and hilarious conflict as an “outsider,” Everett Whiteside (an African-American man, destitute, paranoid and hounded by the IRS, played with endearing and manic glee by Ronnie Hill) gains a voice of support from another non-Caucasian and newcomer to the arts council, Liz Chang (Mona Leach, ranging from deftly sarcastic to emotionally fragile.)
What follows is a screwball whirlwind of entanglements, deceits, alliances, and ploys to line up votes. Some painful questions jab through the comedy: how is art defined, and who decides? Is visionary art defunct? Can an original voice or vision break through the political and economic web of obstacles without losing its soul?
Longenbaugh makes good use of his comedy team, but the script’s twists of plot and word-play call for a swift, light-hearted romp; a quicker pace would better support the frothiness of the plot. Some jokes go a bit flat, as when Ted Atkinson (Matthew Middleton, playing a hapless dishrag of a man sleepwalking through life with his cell-phone) does a riff on art that is one long tangled web of lies but loses its punch before the end. His wife Jolene, wonderfully played by Deniece Bleha as a manipulative and condescending, yet somehow likable and even redeemable arts bureaucrat, helps keep the tempo up, even when scene changes require moving beds and couches through curtains in the dark – ah, the life of an actor!
Karen Jo Fairbrook as the wealthy widow Edie Kelch whose dead husband funded the grant, and Ron Richardson as Dwayne Dean, whose banal portrait series of Vice-Presidents he imagines to be on par with Van Gogh, both have great moments of slapstick and reversed expectations (some of these get a little over-milked.)
The set, with more need backstage for furniture than the charming Schmee can offer, ends up rather awkwardly laid out on a diagonal that leaves actors, especially Mr. Hill, too often with their backs to the audience. Other elements, such as the laid-back country pre-show music (sound design by Doug Staley), excellent, unobtrusive costuming (Janessa Jayne Styck), and effective lighting by Dave Hastings, work in perfect synch to create an atmosphere both casual and professional in the best tradition of Seattle fringe theater. It’s refreshing, after some evenings at ACT or the Rep with their full bars and fancy line-up of pricey treats, to walk into the Schmee and see on the bar a bowl of goodies that include your choice of powdered cider, cocoa, or a Hershey bar (“we haven’t had time to do our Costco run yet,” explained the affable hostess, stage manager Jaime Shure), and then to find your inexpensive seat in either the first or second row – no bad seats here!
While in places this show could use and will probably get some sprucing up, it skips along pleasingly and amusingly. The last scene builds to an uproariously funny and well-timed crescendo of collapsing hopes and shams. Longenbaugh’s track record as a director includes his own company Ursa Major, Theater Babylon, and a variety of his own plays and projects; he manages the challenges of this script and the space with considerable skill, even succeeding in the final moment of the play to scale back for a sober and touching finish.
Fittingly, the Schmee Gallery features eclectic works by contemporary local artists Ellan Borison, Joseph Brooks, Jennifer Chin, Catherine Dickson, Claudio Duran, and Moll Frothingham. Perusing these before and after the show, audiences may find they have some changed ideas about what art is, how it gets to be seen, and how it affects us. All that, plus some good laughs and a Hershey bar, make for a great night out in Belltown.
[An earlier version of this review listed the director erroneously as “David Longenbaugh.” Apologies to John Longenbaugh!]
The Most Deserving, by Catherine Trieschmann
Directed by John Longenbaugh
Theater Schmeater, 2125 3rd Ave, Seattle, WA 98121
Runs March 21, 26, 27, 29 and April 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11, 16, 17 and 18; all curtains at 8:00 pm