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BY JOHN KEENAN,
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
Published Saturday
May 26, 2001
SNAP Productions opened its first show in the new Shelterbelt/SNAP
Theater at 3225 California St. Friday, Glenn Rawls' comedy-drama "Earl,
Ollie, Austin & Ralph."
Fred Goodhew, left, Bart Thompson and Patrick Schwery are among the cast of
Snap Productions' "Earl, Ollie Austin & Ralph."
Michal Simpson directs the production, which features Fred Goodhew and Pat Schwery
as Earl and Ollie, an aging pair of cantankerous Southern innkeepers. Bart Thompson
and Tom Lowe play Austin and Ralph, a squabbling couple who come to the inn
on vacation.
Rawls' play is often very funny, particularly in the first act, as Earl, Ollie and longtime guest Rodgers take the measure of Austin and especially Ralph, whom they nickname "Yankee Trash." But as the play progresses, it delves deeper into more serious issues, including love, fidelity, prejudice and betrayal.
The juxtaposition works primarily because of some strong performances, particularly by Norm Filbert as Rodgers. Filbert, a gifted comic actor, is hilarious as a lecherous old man who still has some important lessons to impart. He almost steals the show.
Thompson takes a low-key approach as Austin, the Southerner trying to salvage his relationship with the truculent Ralph. The actor brings a sense of wounded faithfulness to the part, and his interpretation meshes nicely with Lowe's broader, funny take on the cosmopolitan Ralph, unhappy with Southern life and perhaps ready to give up the relationship. Lowe is carrying a burden here as the only unsympathetic character in the play, but Lowe makes Ralph understandable, if not especially admirable.
Goodhew gives a slow but
authoritative performance as Earl, the aging innkeeper, who is trying to decide
with his partner Ollie whether to sell the property. And Schwery is often very
funny as the sharp-witted Ollie, resistant to the idea of selling his property.
Both Schwery and Goodhew convincingly adopt the mannerisms of characters quite
a bit older than the actors are.
"At our
age, all we can do is give advice," Earl says at one point. Indeed, the
play itself is about learning from the past, even the hidden past, and using
those lessons to try to craft a better future. Austin, who doesn't understand
Ralph's resistance to the idea of couplehood, tries to draw from the experiences
of the older men, but Rawls' play is ultimately ambiguous about how well he
can apply their lessons.
Simpson stages his play well in the new, larger space, SNAP's first permanent home in the 10-year history of the theater. It is appropriate that the theater company opens its residency with a play about the joys and difficulties of creating a home and a family, joys and difficulties that have a universal resonance.
"Earl, Ollie, Austin & Ralph" has things to say, but the play delivers its message in an unpreachy way, and the script is leavened by a great deal of humor. It's a nice theater-warming gift from SNAP to fans of area theater.
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READER
REVIEW by Meg Arader |
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On Memorial Day weekend, as the first Hollywood blockbuster of the summer, Pearl Harbor, opened to critical derision, a little known, 13-year-old unpublished play called Earl, Ollie, Austin and Ralph began its four-weekend run at the Shelterbelt/SNAP! theater. This two-act SNAP! production about the end of a love affair exudes a respect for history and the World War II generation that puts to shame Pearl Harbor’s cookie-cutter characters and shameless revisionism.
Playwright Glenn Rawls calls Earl, Ollie, Austin and Ralph “one of those little plays that keeps coming back year after year.” Written in 1988, the play takes place in 1995, 50 years after Earl (Fred Goodhew) and Ollie (Pat Schwery) became a couple during World War II. Earl and Ollie are the proprietors of a run-down hotel in Myrtle Beach, S. C. The Blue Angel is a vacation haven for gay men of a certain age. Into this backwater storms a feuding young couple; a native Southerner named Austin (Bart Thompson) and his Yankee gay activist boyfriend, Ralph (Tom Lowe). Ostensibly about the attempts of Earl and Ollie to guide the younger men through a relationship crisis, the play’s theme emerges when Austin, fascinated by the unfamiliar specter of long-lived gay couplehood, convinces Earl and Ollie to reveal closely kept secrets about their lives. As Austin absorbs their abbreviated history lesson, he realizes that Earl and Ollie hold the key to the permanency he would like to find with Ralph. Unfortunately, Ralph not only seems incapable of commitment, he dismisses the idea that he and Austin have anything to learn from the older men.
The fifth character in the play is Rodgers, a lonely, aging hotel resident who brazenly flirts with Austin one moment and dispenses wise, world-weary advice the next. As a character, Rodgers is indicative of how adept Rawls is at blending comedy and pathos, and Norman Filbert puts his heart into every aspect of the role. Similarly, Goodhew and Schwery trade humorous barbs and insults, never losing sight of the tenderness that lies beneath.
Compared to the older characters, Austin and Ralph seem unformed. This may be intentional. Rawls is examining the conflict between youth and age, and his point is that strident youth, in the form of Ralph, ignores the lessons of his elders at his own peril. But Rawls has erred in not including a scene where the audience could experience the Ralph-Austin relationship as it may have been in happier times.
Michal Simpson directs Earl, Ollie ... with a light touch, trusting the script’s strengths. As a result, the performances are easy, unforced and laughs are frequent and spontaneous. The set, designed by Filbert, suggests a homey old hotel with a few telling touches, such as the arched lettering on the “Welcome to The Blue Angel” sign and Earl’s comfy stuffed chair in the lobby.
Written three years before
the publication of Coming Out Under Fire, Allan Bérubé’s
exhaustively researched book about gay men and lesbians serving in the armed
forces during World War II, Earl, Ollie, Austin and Ralph gives a human face
to this long-ignored story. What Rawls reveals is that while the straight world
initially may have suppressed knowledge of these men’s existence, today
it is frequently young gays themselves who are too caught up in their particular
battle to absorb the wisdom of those who came before. Memorial Day is for honoring
sacrifice, which can come in many forms. The lesson of Earl, Ollie, Austin and
Ralph is that by dismissing the past as irrelevant we dishonor ourselves.