Word: majeski
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...first act of the play, we meet Michael Majeski (played by Will Paton), newly returned from his trip to Valparaiso, Chile. He becomes an instant celebrity, telling his story to vacuous interviewer after vacuous interviewer. Majeski is a wonderful subject: he always tells the story with the same words, with, as he later notes, "the same thoughtful pauses in the exact same places." He leaves nothing uncovered; his obsessive wife Livia (Caroline Hall) happily joins the circus, offering reporters intimate details about their life and marriage. The reporters eat it up: Livia boasts that Michael has done "65 interviews...
...talk show: the audience in the theater becomes the studio audience. The host is Delfina Treadwell (Randy Danson), an unholy combination of Ricki Lake and Oprah Winfrey intent on getting at her guest's deepest, darkest secrets. Her guests on this occasion are Michael and Livia Majeski. "What are you hiding in your heart?" she asks Michael. A series of revelations ensue when she doesn't believe Michael's story, necessitating a major reinterpretation of what has transpired...
...cast uniformly shines. Paton brings a wonderfully deadpan delivery to the character of Michael Majeski, sounding strangely like a sedated Garrison Keillor, while Hall is wonderfully neurotic as Livia. Danson and Derrah, as Delfina Treadwell and her assistant are guilty pleasures--the most cartoonishly satirical elements in the story...
...come to the core of Valparaiso: a story about a man who, having a meaningless life with a largely negative impact on those around him turns to the media in an attempt at salvation. His wife, not strong enough to effect change for herself, jumps on board. Michael Majeski uses the media just as much as the media uses...
...insatiable god: after every detail of his life has been brought to life, Delfina turns on him, reading between the lines of his story, in the hope of bringing to light an even bigger story, but there's no glory to be found at the core of Michael Majeski's story, just a broken life. Valparaiso is, at its heart, a Death of a Salesman for a radically changed world. While the world has changed, people have not: the existential questions that Willy Loman could not solve remain unanswered...