Critics' Reviews

 

By Judith Newmark
POST-DISPATCH THEATER CRITIC
04/30/2008

Two new productions test the idea that theater is really about language and performance, not a lot of eye candy. HotCity's "Men with Clubs" and Hydeware's "The Caucasian Chalk Circle" are so scaled back that they barely have sets.

They don't need them.

Although the plays have next to nothing in common, their directors share a great attitude and know how to make the most of small, inexpensive gestures.

At HotCity, Annamaria Pileggi puts some golf equipment on a naked stage. Now, imagine greens. That's where the characters in "Men with Clubs" — prep school friends, now in their 30s — get together for an annual game of golf. Bags of clubs are all it takes to set the stage for Gregory Jones' shrewd little comedy of rue and rapprochement.

Ember Hyde, at Hydeware, may have spent even less than Pileggi. Her "set" is a big white sheet at the back of the stage, lit to reveal dancers behind it, in silhouette. The dancers stage tableaux to illustrate the emotions of the characters in Bertolt Brecht's faux-folktale of revolution and personal responsibility. The characters are played by actors actually on the stage, in front of the sheet. To tie it all together, there's a gypsy narrator (Margeau Baue Steinau) wandering through the audience. That's three versions of one story. How presentational can you get?

The plays aim for different audiences. "Men with Clubs," which won HotCity's new play competition last year, may be the first Gen-X play to insist on adult characters with adult problems. As one of the characters observes to his friends, "We're grown men now." But the reply is quick and apt: "Not when we're together."

Jones establishes an earthy rapport among the men but needs to rework his treatment of one of their big issues, marital fidelity. If you're going to deal with that, then deal with it directly instead of coyly hinting at what might have happened. This is theater, not the House of Representatives.

Pileggi draws solid performances from Tyler Vickers, Christopher Lawyer, Jared Sanz-Agero and, especially, Travis Estes. His bright blue eyes, variously icy or hurt or radiant with joy, are a very nice tool for an actor to have.

"Men with Clubs" is a here-and-now production meant to appeal to contemporary theatergoers.

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Sarah Broslaugh - Talkin' Broadway

Christopher Lawyer, Tyler Vickers, Travis Estes and Jared Sanz-Agero
Gregory Jones's cleverly titled new play, Men with Clubs , presents an interesting take on masculinity relationships among men in modern American society. It's sort of like Sam Shepard in a much more genteel environment, where the clubs are the kind you play golf with, and the men in question met as prep school classmates 20 years ago. As befits their social class, the guys stay in touch by getting together for an annual game of golf, which also serves as an excuse to get away from their wives and engage in a little male bonding.

Men with Clubs won HotCity's GreenHouse New Play Festival last year, which gave it the right to the mainstage production now running at the ArtLoft. I didn't see the original production, so I can't say how much the play has been revised, but the current version is an effective piece of theatre which uses standard techniques of play construction to develop four distinct characters, fill us in on their backgrounds, and create and resolve conflict among them. If the characters are types, they are never absolute stereotypes, which is a tribute both to the playwright and to the actors.

Clay (Travis Estes) is the worst golfer in the pack, and he knows it. He's also defensive about his occupation, which he insists is not PUBLIC relations but MEDIA relations, as if anyone but him cares about that distinction. He touts the joys of parenthood but has more than a wandering eye, and has been carrying a grudge against one of the other men since his prep school days.

Hammer (Tyler Vickers) is a know-it-all who is constantly on the attack, having learned early on that the best defense is a good offence. He's also the best golfer of the lot, and in an early monologue tells us that he loves golf because it's the last refuge of individual honor and accomplishment: "There are no free throws. No bonus points. Nobody's going to call a foul on you but you. I wouldn't expect you to give me a break." The basketball analogy is not accidental.

Wood (Christopher Lawyer) organized the game but keeps reminding the others that they don't have to be there (they are meeting near his home in Missouri because he claims he can't leave his medical practice). He's recently become religious and annoys the others by emailing them "God spam." On the bright side, Wood has many of the funniest lines in the play, religiously tinted non-sequiturs like "tears of false prophets are the devil's bubble bath" and "adversity is the ham salad in God's sack lunch," which Lawyer delivers absolutely dead-pan.

Rich (Jared Sanz-Agero) plays the role of clown within this circle of friends: he always wants to smooth over differences with a joke. He functions as something of a wise fool among the foursome: at one point he tells a joke about a duck hunter and a farmer, which sums up the play's entire theme, without realizing the import of what he is saying.

Over the course of fewer than 18 holes, these old friends manage to bring up old grudges and new disputes, pick fights and settle them, and even challenge the notion that they are really friends at all. There's nothing particularly new in either the characters or their conflicts (except for the fact that they are enacted during a game of golf), but it's all nicely realized and makes for an enjoyable evening of theatre.

Men with Clubs is a text-heavy play: the game of golf exists primarily to provide a framework for their dialogue and extra-curricular scuffles. Carrying a show entirely through dialogue is a heavy burden for the playwright, and sometimes interest sags, particularly in the first act; it livens up considerably in the second act, when the character's conflicts are brought out into the open. Some of Jones's best writing is done in the monologues which allow the men to express feelings which they feel they must hide from the others: to speak such thoughts in the presence of their buddies would be "girly" or worse. As a group, these are guys who think nut shots are hilarious and pepper their speech with misogynist comments, so it's a relief to find out there is something more beneath the surface.

The HotCity production is not elaborate, but its very minimalism keeps the attention on the characters and their relationships. Scott De Broux's sand-swept three-level set effectively suggests a golf course (complete with sand trap, which plays a crucial role in the evening's action). Kimberly Klearman's lighting design shifts attention among the characters as the script requires. Scott Breihan's costumes nicely differentiate among the characters, and Annamaria Pileggi's direction keeps things moving along briskly.

Sound designer Sean Savoie provides an interesting blend of music between scenes, mostly rock and country (with a surprising number of songs on golf themes) but with a brief cut from Beethoven's "Pastoral Symphony" to open and Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" as an ironic counterpoint to a less than heroic expedition in a golf cart. Special kudos to whomever was running the sound board: this production includes many sound effects that are coordinated with the players' golf swings on stage, clearly not an easy task to bring off.

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Reviewed by Laura Kyro - KDHX

When I volunteered to review a play called Men with Clubs, I had no idea what to expect. A possible retooling of the recently cancelled Cavemen? A couple of hours of misogynistic bashing of the fairer sex? No, it turned out to be something even worse...golf. I'm afraid my general thoughts on the game were mentioned in the play itself, specifically, "[Golf is] a tedious waste of time and real estate." Nonetheless...

Gregory Jones' play was an entry and the winner last summer in HotCity's GreenHouse Series of new plays. After having undergone a multi-day workshop for fine-tuning, its World Premiere took place this weekend with HotCity. The results are a pleasant evening of theatre, if not terribly deep or groundbreaking, and a script more than a tad contrived so as to get everything "just so."

The setting was a meeting of former high-school basketball buddies for their annual golf game on an unnamed course somewhere in Missouri. "Media Relations" drone Clay (a nicely low-key Travis Estes) alternately loved and hated the game, based upon the success of his latest shot. High-powered lawyer Hammer (a strong Tyler Vickers) argued a mastery of the history of the game. Spiritually fervent Wood (Christopher Lawyer) tended to spout perplexing aphorisms such as, "The tears of false prophets are the devil's bubble bath." The quartet is rounded out by Rich (Jared Sanz-Agero) whose head was constantly in the sexual gutter, the most stereotypical of the characters.

Director Annamaria Pileggi has molded the four men into a comfortable group of buddies, and all inhabited their respective roles nicely. Pacing was brisk, and the audience seemed fully invested in the show, laughing at both verbal and physical humor. And if reality and logic were subverted to the needs of the play, well, that's just the way it was.

Technically the show seemed uncomplicated--blank stage, minimal dressing, clothes that wouldn't be out of place on any course (Costume Designer Scott Breihan), special lighting spots (Lighting Designer Kimberly Klearman) for ruminating characters--but that was a good fit. The timing of drive and putt sound effects (Sound Designer Sean Savoie) was spot on with the actors' movements, and a nice selection of golf-themed songs kept the show moving during the breaks.