Mistakes Were Made
The Hartford Stage
www.hartfordstage.org
Playing through November 22, 2009
Review by Donna Bailey-Thompson
Sometimes, the
play is not the thing. Maybe the problem is not knowing what the
definition of "thing" is supposed to be. In Mistakes
Were Made (about 105 minutes, no intermission), on stage for the
full one act, there are a human being and a plump, exotic fish,
and off stage there is a secretary who may feel as if she's
in a parallel universe playing a telephone operator in Bells
Are Ringing because incoming and outgoing calls are nonstop.
The human being is Felix Artifex, (Will Lebow) a theatrical
producer, desperate to bring a hit show to Broadway and willing
to compromise any standards he may have to fulfill his desire.
Denise is the name of the fish, probably a koi. Esther (Susan
Greenhill) is the long-suffering secretary to Mr. Artifex who
manages to prevent the phones from tying their competing lines in
knots. As for Denise, she seems to be superfluous unless she was
invented to provide a point of reference, a raison d'etre for
Felix Artifex suddenly ceasing to be a flailing drowning loser
and instead becoming a defeated drowning loser.
If following this review is difficult, sorry about that. Watching
Felix say whatever he thinks will strengthen the chances of
acquiring name actors for roles in a cumbersome play about the
French Revolution whose author believes it will be a blockbuster,
or to secure the leasing of a theater for said extravaganza, or
to become vicariously entangled with a live ammo skirmish over
the ownership of multitudes of sheep somewhere in the besieged
Middle East, and not to become sidetracked by counting audience
members who have dozed off, well, those were some of the
impediments while trying to get a handle on the play.
Because, expectations were high. Craig Wright is a multi-honored,
award-winning playwright for stage and television, a musician
(co-leader of the alternative rock band, The Tropicals), and a
graduate of United Theological Seminary. In Mistakes Were Made,
his sly witticisms are stunted by liberal cussing and the
breakneck pace of Felix Artifex's interminable monologue
(delivered with unflagging energy by actor Lebow). Director
Jeremy B. Cohen has warded off physical stagnation by giving
Felix Artifex a mix of moves at his desk (standing, sitting,
leaning), a speaker phone that allows him to walk by the long
cadenza fronting large twin windows which double as weather
forecasters, and to honor Denise with soliloquies offered within
the immediate aura of the aquarium (which is much too small to
healthfully accommodate so large a fish, but this is a play and
not an inspection stop for the ASPCA). Walt Spangler's scenic
design is appropriate (rented furniture?) for an opportunist as
is Alejo Vietti's costume design: Felix Artifex's
knife-edge trouser crease is poised to cut a deal.
Only minutes from the end, after wheeler-dealing at full throttle
for more than an hour, Felix Artifex was deflated by rational
thoughts. Suddenly, an implied invitation was extended to the
audience, asking them to re-evaluate the slippery producer
they'd been led to dislike so they could empathize with his
emotional meltdown. This abrupt change of focus and pace was as
if behind the scenes Mel Brooks had morphed into Arthur Miller.
Perhaps at this point in Mistakes Were Made's development,
reading Craig Wright's script is the better way to appreciate
his inside theatrical humor and his enormous talent because it is
probably fair to assume that choosing to produce this one act was
based upon reading the script.
OF SPECIAL NOTE: Craig Wright to Receive 2009 Horton Foote Award. Wright's writing credits include Six Feet Under and Dirty Sexy Money.
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© The Arts, etc., Copyright
2009
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