Word: chapmans
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WHEN ROBERT CHAPMAN directed his freshman seminar candidates to read 25 lines of script in their interviews last September, few knew what they were in for. First there was the month of kabuki, the weeks of mime, the scattered gymnastics. But tonight and tomorrow Chapman's band of recently-removed high school stars and latent freshman talents converge at the Ex to vent their acting frustrations in the culmination of the course...
Surprisingly, director Chapman meshes the decapitated Shaw and the frenetic Shepard well. Of course adjusting to a sliced-up play is difficult. For an audience, it is almost like walking in on an already erupted party. But the actors make warm hosts, so breaking the ice takes just a few minutes. What unfolds is a perverse look at the Salvation Army, complete with its misfits, military hierarchy and loathesome benefactors...
...Chapman's directorial talents emerge as he harnesses the brute power of the hulking Jon Epstein. The director bottles Epstein into the cold and calculating Undershaft of this second act. In this section we hate this mild-mannered munitions manufacturer who wants to donate his blood-stained profits to the sweet cause of salvation...
...Chapman also channels the talents of John Majors into a penetrating Cousin, who accentuates Undershaft's demonical doctrines as he confronts him. Once Majors conquers his inappropriate Trotsky-like appearance and stops pounding his irritating drum, there ensues a battle which erases any doubt that Undershaft might not be "an infernal old rascal." As the single act draws to a close and Ellen Anderman unconvincingly projects Major Barbara's breakdown, the lingering image of the triumphant Undershaft provides a good conclusion for a play left...
...CHAPMAN DOES not seem to maintain the same sure footing in Shephard's Icarus. Certainly his vast knowledge of Shaw overshadows this less conventional play, so that the result is a less polished product. But this bizarre Shepard play, with its plot based solely on conversational interactions between its characters, fits snugly into the theatre-in-the-round setting. The five characters work quickly but too loosely, relying on a casualness that often lets the show get by as a friendly get-together rather than a plausible dramatic situation. The intital comedy, evolving around a buzzing airplane, establishes Andy Rosann...