Monday, March 06, 2000
New 'Scarlet Letter' deserves an ovation
BY JACKIE DEMALINE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
If the words “Nathaniel Hawthorne” send you running to the basement where you cower in a corner and remember high school literature class with horror, fear not.
The new Ovation Theatre comes up a winner with Phyllis Nagy's Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter. It deconstructs the classic, using modern language and modern thinking to re-explore the story of Hester Prynne (Gina Cerimele-Mechley) who has an illegitimate daughter by the saintly Reverend Dimmesdale (Blake Bowden) in Puritan Boston.
In so doing, Hawthorne's 17th century symbolism is replaced by late 20th century psychological underpinnings. Letter also benefits from a contemporary sense of theatricality, that thrives on minimal setting and a clear — but never simple — narrative line.
Trimmed in gold
Hester won't name her lover, he doesn't have the courage to come forward. She wears a scarlet “A” stitched on her dresses to identify her as an adulteress. This Hester trims her “A” in gold. (There's a lot of gold trim in this Letter.)
She has an easier time of it than does her one-time lover, who lets his guilt, and shame for his cowardice, eat away at him. What little damage is left to be done to completely destroy him is provided by the ministrations of Hester's long-absent husband, returned in disguise as Roger Chillingworth (Mike Ward), and passing himself off as a physician.
Ovation is showing spunk in its sophomore season with talent to spare, especially its directors. Last fall, Dennis Murphy brought a worth-seeing A Perfect Ganesh to life at the Carnegie in Covington, where hardly anyone saw it.
Now Deborah Ludwig, Ovation's managing director, takes the helm of Letter and gives the Fifth Third its best directed work since the departure of Cincinnati Shakespeare a couple of years back.
Ms. Ludwig does everything right within some serious constraints:
One of the great dilemmas of the several start-up semiprofessional companies is that on-stage talent hasn't developed as quickly as the companies have.
That's a problem here, too, but Ms. Ludwig casts her three key roles so well, and infuses the entire ensemble with such understanding, conviction and urgency, that the rest pretty much doesn't matter.
Blake Bowden, who's been working on local stages for about three years, finally gets the role and the director he deserves. He's a stand-out as Dimmesdale and is riveting in the play's final scenes.
Tina Manchise also shows to good effect as Pearl. The adult-like child of the book is played by an adult in Ms. Nagy's adaptation. Dressed in hussy scarlet, Ms. Manchise is part-time narrator as well as a 7-year-old wise and foolish wild child.
As Hester, Ms. Cerimele-Mechley, a veteran of Cincinnati Shakespeare and Stage First, has the most difficult role. What are the hidden depths of Hester, anyway? What drives her?
Ms. Cerimele-Mechley fearlessly takes on tough roles, like Roxanne in Cyrano de Bergerac and The Old Woman in The Chairs. Hester is the strongest effort in her repertoire to date, although you're still left wanting that window to the character's soul.
The other built-in problem is the Fifth Third space itself.
Risers! Will the Aronoff please build and/or buy some risers? Or help the companies that use the black box theater work together to build and/or buy or rent at something less than exorbitant cost?
The audience's ability to see the action is an ongoing problem at virtually every Fifth Third production.
Captures the eye
Ms. Ludwig uses the space beautifully, laying out the action in a long horizontal and diagonal line, so that actors work on three different levels. It captures the eye and maintains the flow of the unfolding story.
But when the players sit down in the graveyard, which they do a lot, sight lines are blocked for everybody sitting beyond the first two rows. It steals a play's — and a good performance's — momentum when frustrated and increasingly irritable audience members can only hear it, not see it.
Ovation returns to the Carnegie in May for The House of Yes. The company deserves to build a following that will loyally follow where it leads — even across the river.
The Scarlet Letter, through March 11, Ovation Theatre, Aronoff Fifth Third Bank Theater. 241-7469.
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