Word: pullum
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...director Don Pullum '79 and his cast produce a play worthy of the script's brilliance. Most of the characters are natural and believable, and a few are portryed superbly. Marley Clause '79, cast as a conquettish Concord girl who nearly wins Thoreau's heart, is quite professional. James Thorn '79 does a good job of playing an aging Ralph Waldo Emerson. Augustine Caimi '79, as Thoreau's cellmate, and John Newport '78, as Thoreau's brother, put on fine performances as well. But the nature of the play demands that the portrayal of Thoreau be executed with perfection...
Landiss's main problem is that he overacts-perhps at Pullum's insistence. Certain scenes reach an emotional level which is entirely too high. The play seems to peak every five minutes, leaving the audience on a lurching roller coaster. And Landiss's method of attaining these misplaced emotional peaks is awkward. It is as though someone told him the only thing an actor can do to increase intensity is talk faster or louder or both. Landiss fails to realize that in many scenes a well-placed whisper can be more effective than an ear-shattering, rapid-fire sequence...
Perhaps Thoreau was a kinetic, hyper-active, easily excited individual who bellowed at the top of his lungs at the drop of a hat and treated every other word he uttered as though it was destined to be chiseled in granite. Perhaps Landiss and Pullum have captured the essence of the man on stage, I don't know. But a calmer, more subtle, more contemplative characterization would probably be more effective in portraying the gentle man who could live by himself for nearly two years on the bank of a New England pond...
...Mathews, a onetime slave who is sexton of Big Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. He wears white robes, golden keys around his neck and his own long, crinkly beard. Pilgrim of Determination is Esther Jones, a dry-cleaner; Millionaire is Hubert Jones, an Atlanta barber; Devil is George A. Pullum, a railway postal clerk. Reader or interpreter, who also helps guide the action of the play, has been Estella Z. Wright, 20-year-old Negro stenographer, soon to join the staff of Pittsburgh's Negro Courier. None of the actors in Heaven Bound receives wages. The first production cost...
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