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THEATER REVIEWS
NEW PHOENIX THEATRE

‘Translation’ a very wordy play, but it doesn't really say much

By RICHARD HUNTINGTON
New Critic
3/5/01

"Translation," a new play by Boston-based Playwright Michael Bettencourt, is a tough piece to stage. It is a well-constructed play with dialogue that moves along in good approximation of the rhythm of contemporary people in conversation. The characters seem developed enough, even if a bit too earnest for real life.

But there is a hitch. These people routinely quote great poets. German poet Rainer Maria Rilke is the primary source, a poet who seems by a remarkable coincidence to provide spiritual sustenance and emotional guidance for three out of six characters in the play. Poet and essayist Heinrich Heine and German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe also have their passing moments.

"What's in life, life in general -- my own life," asks translator Oral Timmins (Richard Lambert) in the first scene. He answers with a Heine quote: "Thoughts come not from the head but from the heart."

Helen Guild (Tami-Lyn Grys), a successful curator of theatrical photography, is not to be outdone by such learned, heartfelt asides. She is in the middle of quizzing him to find out if he is the best person to translate a journal from her new German friend and potential lover, Pallas Worte (Sharon Strait). Very personal stuff is bound to be revealed, so she's wary. But there's always time for a little poetic philosophy.

"The world wants to be betrayed," she says. And like dutiful academic, she give the source tag line. A play that builds its footnotes into the script cannot help but be at least a little pretentious.

And mind you, none of this poetry-slinging has a hint of irony. A couple of bad jokes about Oral Roberts and other relatively light exchanges aren't enough to make the preening high-mindedness quite believable. Is anyone ever going to say, as Oral does at one point, that Helen shouldn't "let caution defer the sunlight"? Not without elaborate special pleading on the part of the playwright.

But with the exact right tone -- and I mean exact -- the play still might fly. And there is no reason to think that director Lambert and his cast are not the ones to enliven this sometimes overly sober script.

Friday night, however, only Lambert himself seemed to have relaxed into this part. He had evidently really worked out the details of this rather stuffy character named Oral. Against all odds, he made him almost ingratiating.

Nobody else seemed anywhere near that confident or comfortable. Joel Repman, playing Oral's on-the-outs boyfriend, made a colossal effort to casually toss off a series of witty lines, and wit was surely something the play needed badly. But, alas, the effort appeared contrived and hesitant.

I got the feeling that no one knew the play intimately. Grys strained mightily to get into her role. As the impetus for Pallas' passion, she was the key figure around which the sparks would fly. That they didn't was mainly due to an underlying stiffness in gestures and delivery that remained for the entire evening.

Strait was fine -- if not so much depended upon her. She offered hints of deep emotion that never quite made it to the surface where it could make its effect. She was a living illustration that complex characters like this one don't just spring forth whole. More rehearsal time might have shaped this fragment into something moving and complete.

The vagueness of characterization also happened with Margo Davis and John Kreuzer, who played a German couple. In terms of the play, they were supposed to expand our understanding of the tough mentality of Helen. Instead, when they meet in the couple's living room with Pallas on hand, we get the feeling that nobody much liked this Rilke-quoting curator or her smug opinions.

The music -- which was totally inappropriate to the content of the play, and annoying besides -- the elemental lighting and the almost interesting set didn't help the situation.

I'm guessing, but a lack of time may have been the culprit here. Bettencourt's work has many complexities that require some fine interpretive decisions and then ample rehearsal to work them out dramatically. And time may not be a luxury that the New Phoenix Theatre has in abundance.

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