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Tangible Problems, Intangible Solutions
Reality And Art Clash Onstage At The Arden
By LINDSAY WARNER, The Bulletin
From watching countless episodes of “Tom and Jerry” and the “Bugs Bunny” shorts, one thing is certain: Cartoon characters can’t die. No matter how many times Wile E. Coyote dives off the edge of a cliff, or how frequently Tom squashes Jerry, the resilient little critters just seem to spring back to life again without any harm done.
The same miraculous quality of the undead applies to the animated character Petey Pup, the star creation of brilliant artist Tony Wiston. But in Tony’s case, it is the franchise of Petey Pup that is even more important than the character — meaning that Petey’s fans simply won’t let him either die, or be written out of the next script.
Bruce Graham’s Something Intangible, receiving its world premiere at the Arden Theatre, cleverly juxtaposes the inverse relationship between Tony’s Petey-driven fame, and his frustration that he feels artistically confined to the silly antics of a cartoon pup.
Tony (madly and memorably played by Ian Merrill Peakes) functions as a stereotype of the “artist”: a whirling dervish of a character who caves to his every whim and fancy in the name of “artistic creativity.” He is the genius behind the wildly successful Petey Pup franchise, but Tony’s vision all too frequently plows over the mundane, but essential, forces in his life too — namely, budget restraints, his artists’ needs, and especially, his brother Dale (Scott Greer). Dale, the financial backup behind Tony’s madcap art, is a number-cruncher, happy to stay out of the spotlight as his brother runs roughshod across the red carpets of Hollywood. Tony rarely acknowledges Dale’s role in the process, relating to his older brother as if he were a lecturing parent — and in many ways, Dale is akin to a parent, restraining Tony and balancing budgets in order to finance his wild schemes.
Like the Disney brothers — or even the Van Gogh brothers — on whom the play was originally based when Mr. Graham first began writing — the Wistons’ relationship is a rocky tug-of-war between money and art, shadowed by Tony’s eternal fear that he is not being respected as an artist by doing animation — don’t mention the word cartoon — in Hollywood among all of the glamorous film stars of the 1940s.
“Petey’s more famous than me,” he laments at one point, revealing the underlying insecurities that inspire him to create a wildly ambitious new work along the veins of Disney’s Fantasia — literally painting the colors of sound.
But it’s ironic that the self-mutilating quest to create this new masterpiece is pursued in Tony’s wild desire to “rewrite his own obituary” with more glowing, fantastical adjectives that don’t include the words “Petey” or “Pup.” For it is in the wild quest for artistic immortality that Tony ultimately nearly destroys himself.
It’s while exploring this manical goal that the script for Something Intangible cruises into something slightly more than an ego-driven romp through the arguments of artistic weightiness, as Tony’s uncontrollable desire to succeed uncovers the countering forces of stability, accountability and love found in Dale, while simultaneously highlighting the lack of these qualities in his brother. On the surface, Mr. Graham’s script plays to the lowest common denominator of our fascination with artistic madness, but just below this lies a narrative filled with the intriguing forces which drive every person’s life — whether genius or mentally handicapped.
Mr. Greer and Mr. Peakes bounce these themes off of each other with remarkable dexterity, as Dale’s diminutive, unobtrusive qualities are swallowed in Tony’s wild urges — yet still provide the essential backdrop to Tony’s uncontrollable flames. Doug Hara puts in a nuanced and haunting performance as Leo, the tortured, underappreciated artist suffering Tony’s wrath, while Walter Charles alternates between a role as a worried investor and a capricious Austrian conductor. Sally Mercer as the psychoanalyst Sonia is less developed, but provides an essential voice of apparent sanity against which the other characters are measured.
Lindsay Warner can be reached at calendar@thebulletin.us
The same miraculous quality of the undead applies to the animated character Petey Pup, the star creation of brilliant artist Tony Wiston. But in Tony’s case, it is the franchise of Petey Pup that is even more important than the character — meaning that Petey’s fans simply won’t let him either die, or be written out of the next script.
Bruce Graham’s Something Intangible, receiving its world premiere at the Arden Theatre, cleverly juxtaposes the inverse relationship between Tony’s Petey-driven fame, and his frustration that he feels artistically confined to the silly antics of a cartoon pup.
Tony (madly and memorably played by Ian Merrill Peakes) functions as a stereotype of the “artist”: a whirling dervish of a character who caves to his every whim and fancy in the name of “artistic creativity.” He is the genius behind the wildly successful Petey Pup franchise, but Tony’s vision all too frequently plows over the mundane, but essential, forces in his life too — namely, budget restraints, his artists’ needs, and especially, his brother Dale (Scott Greer). Dale, the financial backup behind Tony’s madcap art, is a number-cruncher, happy to stay out of the spotlight as his brother runs roughshod across the red carpets of Hollywood. Tony rarely acknowledges Dale’s role in the process, relating to his older brother as if he were a lecturing parent — and in many ways, Dale is akin to a parent, restraining Tony and balancing budgets in order to finance his wild schemes.
Like the Disney brothers — or even the Van Gogh brothers — on whom the play was originally based when Mr. Graham first began writing — the Wistons’ relationship is a rocky tug-of-war between money and art, shadowed by Tony’s eternal fear that he is not being respected as an artist by doing animation — don’t mention the word cartoon — in Hollywood among all of the glamorous film stars of the 1940s.
“Petey’s more famous than me,” he laments at one point, revealing the underlying insecurities that inspire him to create a wildly ambitious new work along the veins of Disney’s Fantasia — literally painting the colors of sound.
But it’s ironic that the self-mutilating quest to create this new masterpiece is pursued in Tony’s wild desire to “rewrite his own obituary” with more glowing, fantastical adjectives that don’t include the words “Petey” or “Pup.” For it is in the wild quest for artistic immortality that Tony ultimately nearly destroys himself.
It’s while exploring this manical goal that the script for Something Intangible cruises into something slightly more than an ego-driven romp through the arguments of artistic weightiness, as Tony’s uncontrollable desire to succeed uncovers the countering forces of stability, accountability and love found in Dale, while simultaneously highlighting the lack of these qualities in his brother. On the surface, Mr. Graham’s script plays to the lowest common denominator of our fascination with artistic madness, but just below this lies a narrative filled with the intriguing forces which drive every person’s life — whether genius or mentally handicapped.
Mr. Greer and Mr. Peakes bounce these themes off of each other with remarkable dexterity, as Dale’s diminutive, unobtrusive qualities are swallowed in Tony’s wild urges — yet still provide the essential backdrop to Tony’s uncontrollable flames. Doug Hara puts in a nuanced and haunting performance as Leo, the tortured, underappreciated artist suffering Tony’s wrath, while Walter Charles alternates between a role as a worried investor and a capricious Austrian conductor. Sally Mercer as the psychoanalyst Sonia is less developed, but provides an essential voice of apparent sanity against which the other characters are measured.
Lindsay Warner can be reached at calendar@thebulletin.us
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