'Drinking Party' all about monologue
By JAMES D. WATTS JR., 04/12/2010
Above, clockwise, from left: Starr Hardgrove, Rob Harris, Ira J. Smith, Andy Axewell, Alexander Walter, Terrence Bellows, and Craig Walter, in the Midwestern Theater Troupe production of "The Drinking Party." Below: John Cruncleton, Owen Froeschle, Terrence Bellows, and Craig Walter
At this year's Academy Awards, Robert Downey Jr. said the main thing an actor wants to see in a script is "long, dense columns of uninterrupted monologue" that go on for pages.
If that truly is the case, then the actors in the Midwestern Theatre Troupe's production were handed the script of their dreams in "The Drinking Party," which opened a three-weekend run Friday night at the Nightingale Theatre.
"The Drinking Party" is described as an "original translation" by Amy Elizabeth Page Wilson of Plato's "Symposium" (which, literally translated, means a drinking party).
A group of men in ancient Athens have come together, and it is suggested that each one in attendance present his ideas about the nature and meaning of love or Eros, which one character calls "the most neglected of the gods."
In other words, a series of monologues — at least until it comes to Socrates (Craig Walter), who gets to indulge in his personal method of teasing out truths by asking questions of the others.
It's one thing to be given "long, dense columns of uninterrupted monologue." It's another thing to know what to do with such a text.
Some of the members of the cast do, fortunately. Rob Harris as Aristophanes gets one of the best speeches — he's playing a master of comedy, so his talk had better be entertaining — and he handles it masterfully.
He builds from an absurd premise to reach the deeper ideas he wants to convey, as if his monologue were a miniature comic play. And he keeps the audience's attention from start to finish.
Walter fully inhabits the character of Socrates, bringing a conversational naturalness to the text's formal language that makes his character seem at once a child-like innocent and an all-knowing sage.
Director John Cruncleton reserves one of the juiciest parts — the soldier and scholar Alcibiades — for himself, and he acquits himself well as he describes the course of his relationship with Socrates, and how that reveals the philosopher to be like a Silenus statue: plain on the outside but filled with images of divinities when opened up.
Flavia Carbone as Diotima, the oracle who taught Socrates all he claims to know of love, did well in her scenes with Walter, and Owen Froeschle as Apollodorus — the fellow who is remembering what another person told him about this particular party and its conversations — gave his words a nice languid, droll spin.
Of the rest of the cast, the best managed to deliver their speeches competently. I think Alexander Walter, as the gathering's host Agathon, was probably the most effective, but even in the intimate confines of the Nightingale Theatre, he spoke so softly as to be inaudible at times. Starr Hardgrove as Pausanius resorted to reading his speech, and still managed to lose his way through his particular thicket of words several times.
The uncredited program notes state that "great care was taken not to skip any steps in the logical sequences of thought, nor to interrupt the natural philosophical progression of the speeches."
Admirable goal, but it made for some very static theater, with everyone — on stage and in audience — sitting around listening for more than two hours (apparently an intermission would be too great an interruption in the natural philosophical progression).
And then there was the just plain bizarre staging of the latter dialogue between Socrates and Diotima. As Diotima intoned her lines from off-stage via a temperamental loudspeaker, a strange little shadow puppet show took place on one side of the stage.
True, the words and ideas got a little thick through this part, but having back-lit pictures of birds bobbing, crocodiles chomping and Grecian soldiers fighting neither enhanced nor complemented the talk. It was just odd and out of place.
"The Drinking Party" continues with performances at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and April 23-24 at the Nightingale Theatre, 1416 E. Fourth St. Tickets are $10 at the door.
Director's comment: I'd personally like to address the note in the review regarding translation which reads:. "The Drinking Party" is described as an "original translation" by Amy Elizabeth Page Wilson of Plato's "Symposium". Although I'm certain there was no intentional disrespect, I want to clarify for readers who may be misled by the archness of the sentence that Mrs. Wilson did indeed translate the text from the original Greek, (with great artistry, I might add).