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Painting With Words
By KAREN SHADE World Scene Writer
05/08/2007


Marc Scofield is Van Gogh in Heller Theatre’s production of “Inventing Van Gogh.”

SHERRY BROWN / Tulsa World
Heller cast compellingly
recreates 'Inventing Van Gogh'

Heller Theatre is a small space, but the audience to Thursday's opening of "Inventing Van Gogh" felt the force of live theater that night.

With her small cast of Marc Scofield, Jason Watts, Dale Sams, Bre Bolding and Michael Massey, director Julie Tattershall superbly translates playwright Steven Dietz' sublime drama.

Watts and Sams have appeared on stage together before. And while the rest of the cast has not worked together similarly (to the best of my knowledge), Tattershall has hit upon a combination of actors turning "Van Gogh" into compelling stuff on stage.

Scofield, however, is the on stage fuel that moves "Van Gogh." Even if he bears a resemblance to the artist in some of his self-portraits, Scofield's depth of character brings you to awe.

In other words, if smart dialogue and sophisticated subject matter in the hands of capable people are your thing, you won't be bored.

The key to "Van Gogh" comes from the artist's own words, "Exaggerate the essential, leave the obvious vague."
Dietz follows, blurring transitions of time and place. In fact, it could be said that "Van Gogh" is set outside of both but for the introduction to a frustrated painter named Patrick (Watts). Patrick is alone in his work space, seething beneath the surface and unable to paint until an infamous art authenticator named Bouchard (Sams) walks in uninvited.

Bouchard baits Patrick, telling him he's seen his work, an idea Patrick finds contemptible. Then, he talks about Patrick's late obsessive mentor, Dr. Miller, and about Miller's morbid pursuit of a lost Van Gogh self-portrait.

Patrick is curious and then repulsed when the dry, unscrupulous Bouchard offers the painter a job forging the lost self-portrait. He never verbally agrees to it, but Patrick reluctantly picks up his brushes after he's learned that Bouchard has found Miller's estranged daughter, Hallie. A woman with a penchant for artist-types, she and Patrick had a relationship until she lost him to her father's fixation with Van Gogh.

Resentment, obsession and love begin to show constant parallels in characters and situations once Van Gogh (Scofield) steps out from backstage, bewildered at the sight of Patrick. When he returns for good, Van Gogh begins breaking down the myth of a depressed, solitary lunatic who ended his short life.

"Van Gogh" looks at the artist through his written words (much of which Dietz extracted from Van Gogh's letters), revealing a life given to searching out a world through a very particular perspective.

He converses with Patrick, neither man recognizing this as unusual. Miller often appears as if he is giving a lecture to a class, and people out of Van Gogh's life emerge beneath the vivid colors lighting the stage. The colors of life, Van Gogh says, are essential.

Patrick literally finds himself between Van Gogh and Paul Gaugin in a marvelously feverish debate of nature, art and the nature of art. Looking past nature, Gaugin (Sams) says, is how you move beyond all limits, physical and metaphorical.

While its characters condemn the conceit and pretentiousness found in the art world, the play itself doesn't entirely take on those muddy tones.

Far from a dissertation on aesthetic theory, "Van Gogh" gives us a haunting sense of lives filled with regrets, passions and, yes, even optimism. It contains the glow of life the artist inexhaustibly sought to paint.

And because of this, "Inventing Van Gogh" gives off its own very special brilliance that is exciting to watch in the close confines of the Heller stage and highly thought provoking.

"Inventing Van Gogh" continues at 2 p.m. Sunday and 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday at the theater, 5328 S. Wheeling Ave. Tickets are $6-$8. For reservations and more information, call 746-5065.



Karen Shade 581-8334
karen.shade@tulsaworld.com

Theater
“Inventing Van Gigh”
When:
8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday and May 10-12; 2 p.m. May 6
Where:
Heller Theatre, 5328 S. Wheeling Ave.
Admission:
tickets are $8 for adults and $6 for students and seniors For more information, call 746-5065 or go online to www.hellertheatre.com.

This site sponsored by Heller Theatre Council.
To contact the webmaster e-mail alb74066@aol.com or Heller Theatre at Parktheater@ci.tulsa.ok.us

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