Spinning Into Butter Review

'Spinning Into Butter'
focuses on the shades of gray
By MICHAEL SMITH World Scene Writer
5/8/2004

The premise of "Spinning Into Butter," Heller Theater's production that opened Thursday night, finds a small Eastern college campus in an uproar when racism surfaces in this politically correct environment.

The school is largely populated by white faces. One of the few black students has been receiving hate mail, to the shock of the college's students, faculty and administration.

But it's too easy to think that this case is simply a black-and-white issue. No, there are shades of gray everywhere in playwright Rebecca Gilman's work.

For example, Sarah Daniels, the dean of students at the center of the play, sees herself as a forward-thinking administrator, someone who can help "minority" students.

Harriet Chenault (left) as Sarah and Liz Masters as Kenney point fingers in "Spinning Into Butter".
JOHN CLANTON / Tulsa World

It turns out that Daniels is the villain in this piece, who early on finds her slippery slope with one "student of color," as he prefers to be labeled.

Sarah has a $12,000 scholarship at her Vermont college that she wants to go to a deserving minority student. Patrick Chibas seems an excellent candidate.

But there's conflict right away on the racial pigeonholing front. Patrick says he's Nuyorican. Sarah says the scholarship application will look better if he lists himself as Hispanic. The money talks and Patrick compromises as a Puerto Rican.

But this situation blows up in Sarah's face later, not surprising for someone who speaks to students with ridiculously qualified, politically correct dialogue like "I wasn't paying attention to the definition of your composition."

Sarah is but one sad example of the out-of-touch administrators and educators on this campus. One can hope they are closer to a parody than reality, or college students everywhere are in a lot of trouble.

These leaders see themselves as socially liberal -- and they largely are -- but they can also be blindly insensitive and elitist, puffed up with intellectual pomposity.

Or, as a campus cop with plenty of common sense tells Sarah, "I figured out a long time ago that these people don't know their ass from a hole in the ground."

That certainly seems the case when the hate mail case throws them into panic mode, staging campus forums that backfire and offend students, as Sarah knew they would.

The administrators hold the meetings to rap with students about race "and then you heave this collective sigh of relief and everybody feels better, and then you drive downtown in your Saabs and buy sweaters," Sarah ridicules them.

But she's one to talk. In the second act, Sarah admits in a disturbing, black-as-night monologue her own racist feelings, examining the irony in the fact that she was hired by the Vermont college to help with campus diversity because of her background at a Chicago school with mostly black students.

The irony? She came to Vermont because it would be "clean, quiet and white."

When you get to know many black people personally, "you just can't aestheticize them anymore. It's too damn scary," says Sarah, adding that blacks should want to improve themselves, but "I think they don't do it because they're lazy and stupid."

There's some good work in this production that keeps it engaging, but a shot-at-redemption conclusion feels tacked on and is not believable.

The role of Sarah is a complex one, and it demands a wider range of emotions to pull it off than just simple exasperation. Harriet Chenault isn't quite up to the task under Julie Tattershall's direction.

Instead, her Sarah is a joyless, bitter pill of a woman who it seems finds no pleasure in her work, her personal life or anything else, for that matter.

Chenault certainly has, however, perfected a dumbstruck look with regard to the volume of stupid comments that come out of her fellow colleagues' mouths. She spends a good portion of the play with her mouth agape in jaw-drop position.

The supporting cast is better, especially David Gray as a self-absorbed professor with whom Sarah has had an affair that's ended badly. Chenault's best scenes are confrontations with Gray, her real-life husband; it's clear these two have debated before.

Liz Masters as a fellow college dean and Barry Maxwell as a no-nonsense cop stand out for their ability to play their roles straight and yet still find the humor in this unfortunate situation. Also very good here is Larry Latham's neatly appointed set of Sarah's office, where all the play's action is set.

The title of the play finds its origin in the children's book "The Story of Little Black Sambo." Several tigers steal Sambo's new clothes and argue about which one looks the grandest wearing them. The tigers chase each other around a tree, revolving so quickly that they spin into butter -- which Sambo then uses to enjoy some pancakes.

So the young boy allows those who dominated him to run around in circles and defeat themselves, stopping them from seeing a bigger picture. Does that happen in the play? It's a point worthy of further debate by audiences.

Performances of "Spinning Into Butter" continue 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, 8 p.m. Thursday-Friday and closes with an 8 p.m. show May 15. Heller Theater is located at 5328 S. Wheeling Ave. Tickets are $5-$7 and may be reserved by calling 746-5065.