Listen & Be Heard Weekly Archives

[tag]Dead Man Walking[/tag] is playing at the Harbor Theatre in Suisun City through 29 October. It is a commentary on capital punishment and, unfortunately, the message gets in the way of the story.

The story of Sister Prejean and her dialogue with Matt Poncelet, a convicted rapist and murderer, is told in a montage of flashbacks. Poncelet is on death row in Louisiana, and reaches out to Prejean as a life-line. Her attempts to be his advocate and to press him to admit his terrible crimes before his execution is the thread that holds the show together.

A few years back, one of the student directors in my graduate program presented a play called, Coyote on a Fence. The parallels between the two plays are profound, but the emotional connection couldn?t be further apart. After Coyote on a Fence, I left with a lump in my throat, unable to talk, and wound up crying most of the way home. The play didn?t preach, it told a story, and in the telling, made the ugly, white supremacist young man a human being worthy of pity and compassion. By contrast, SCC?s production left me cold, and apparently failed to touch some others who left at the interval.

I will identify what made the difference. Director George Maguire states in the program that ?[T]heatre and the arts has the journey not only to entertain, but also to impose questions – to provoke thought.? His notes make clear his own feelings about capital punishment. This colors the production and the actors comment on their characters rather than personifying them.

Carmalita Shreve plays Sister Helen Prejean. Her first contact with the audience is current – the sum of her experiences. Throughout her retrospective there is little arc to her character. The same steely resolve, kindness, and confidence she presents initially, is carried throughout. In conversations with Poncelet, where she is out of her comfort zone, confronting an individual that insults and challenges her, she remains unshaken. This does little to tell a compelling story when she remains personally unaffected by ugliness and evil.

James Breedlove, high-school senior, plays Matt Poncelet, the twisted and remorseless rapist and killer to whom Prejean ministers. He does an admirable job with the mannerisms of false bravado inherent in this character. Unfortunately, he doesn?t give any impression that he could hurt a fly, much less be capable of brutal rape and murder. Scenes where he insults and baits Sister Prejean lack real bite, and his ever-present smile is bashful rather than sardonic or mocking. His barbs at Prejean are weak and joking; not angry or mean. The audience is given no one to hate, nor anyone to challenge their feelings.

Breedlove does, however, show arc to his character. The best scene of the play is his last meeting with his family. Poncelet?s mother (Valerie Knowles) and his two brothers (Daniel Lachman and Thomas Allen) give some of the most genuine performances of the show. The scene elicits genuine laughter followed by genuine pain. I only wish more of the show had drawn us in.

A hurdle for the actors is a total lack of physical contact between the people who should have the most emotional connection. Most of the scenes with Prejean and Poncelet are set with yards between them, forcing the audience to view as if at a tennis match. Physical contact in a prison setting is unrealistic, but some attention to staging would have strengthened the story and helped the audience too.

The set is designed with a cold flatness. A gray wall with two windows and an open area between them is set squarely across the stage with no perspective at all. Perhaps it is the perfect stage for this show. A lack of perspective permeates this production. Performances tend to be flat and one-note, and the ?ugly? emotions and scenes of the rape and murder are given superficial attention.

The two windows provide spaces where both still and moving pictures are periodically projected during the show. The arch above the opening between these windows is used to project quotations and statistics. Many of the statistics are redundant to information in the program, others were oddly disconnected. I wondered how ?the U.S. has 6% of the world?s population but consumes 50% of it?s resources? was applicable to capital punishment. (I found no credible estimate that confirmed the 50% figure.)

Lighting for the show was spotty with some actors playing in shadow. Also, the catwalks as play space (where some lights were positioned) drew attention to the theatricality of the production, but also risked lights being bumped by the actors, which happened during the Friday show. The addition of a cyclorama behind the wall provided a space for color projection, with minimal effectiveness.

Costumes are adequate, if uninspired. Sound effects are well done, and mostly effective. Incidental music is sometimes used to create a mood, but seems to act as a crutch for the actor. If, as Maguire states, theatre should ?not only…entertain, but also..provoke thought,? this production is only half successful. Dead Man Walking is food for thought, but as entertainment it leaves the audience cold. This presentation runs through 29 October at the Harbor Theatre in Suisun City. Contact Solano College Theatre for tickets, or visit their web site at www.solano.edu/fine_arts/theater.

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