Gustave Johnson and Tom Wolfson in Derek Walcott’s “Pantomime.”

‘Pantomime’ uses comedy to take a serious look at roles
By Sue Harrison
Banner Staff

What happens when two middle-aged guys flee the worlds they have always known and wind up on the same tropical island, one as the owner of a hotel, the other as his servant? And what if they looked at a role-reversal play as part of the hotel’s entertainment? That is the thread that weaves the storyline of Derek Walcott’s “Pantomime” together and gives audiences a two-hour non-stop romp through cliché, humor, drama, societal roles and most interestingly, self image.

“Pantomime” is performed at Payomet Performing Arts (see ticket information below.) through Sept. 2. 

Vernice Miller gives razor sharp direction to the two emotionally shipwrecked men — Tom Wolfson as Harry Trewe, the expatriate Englishman running the run down hotel on Tobago, and Gustave Johnson as the black former calypso singer who is the hotel’s single employee.

The play opens in the off season with no guests on hand or in sight. Trewe fills his time by working on a panto — which derives from pantomime — a traditional form of light theater put on around the Christmas period. The pantos often featured gender reversals and were based on familiar stories like Goldilocks. 

Trewe is working on some take offs on Christmas carols in which he is telling the Robinson Crusoe story. His gimmick for the panto is not a gender reversal but a race reversal. He wants Phillip to play the part of Crusoe, the educated and resourceful shipwrecked Englishman while he will play Friday, the black cannibal. 

Meanwhile, Phillip is trying to serve breakfast and Trewe is stripping down to his underwear to “get into character.”

“Don’t get into your part, get into your pants,” Phillip urges and though Trewe is the boss and Phillip the servant, we see the first reversal with Phillip is being the more restrained and mannerly while Trewe is behaving without regard for customs. Phillip doesn’t want to be in the play, Trewe insists and when Phillip does embrace his new “role” and takes over, Trewe is unbearably uncomfortable and wants to call the whole thing off.

Throughout the play the two men shift back and forth between the sophisticate and the rube, the mannered and the lewd, the well spoken and the babbler, the intelligent and the not so bright. The shifts are rapid and sometimes happen without the audience even being aware that it has and  at other times each becomes a caricature of himself or of what he imagines the other to actually be. 

The Robinson Crusoe story merges with the life story of each man as they dip back and forth from fiction to memory and sometimes, fictionalized memory. 

Trewe has lost a wife and son and abandoned a stage career in England. Phillip has left the wild streets of Trinidad — where he was a singer — under what is alluded to as an attempt to escape punishment for a violent crime. 

The set is basic, the veranda of the hotel overlooking a steep cliff down to the beach. The men’s shirts unbuttoned halfway down their chests manage to evoke the feeling of the ever-present heat. 

Both actors do a terrific job with the twists and turns in their characters but Johnson as Phillip gets many of the standout lines to work with and he takes them and runs. 

Wolfson is spot on as the smarmy Englishman all full of himself and thinking he’s above being prejudiced who finds he cannot bear looking into the mirror created by Phillip to see himself as he really might be. 

And while the whole reason for a panto is to have light diversion, as the two men start to create theirs it leads to some very dramatic moments. 

“In the sun that never sets,” says Phillip referring to the British empire, “I am your shadow” he says, referring to the numerous native groups converted entirely into servant classes. He later continues, “We are acting out the history of imperialism” causing Trewe to retort, “If it becomes more serious we are in danger of committing art.”

The panto takes on another role in the play as it becomes a way for each to confront his past and find some resolution, or perhaps not. In the second act Phillip says they must finish the panto but Trewe now resists. 

Each character reaches deep to expose his core but the layers are too complex and we can never be sure of what we are seeing. 

One thing for sure, it’s definitely worth seeing this play and maybe finding a few of your own beliefs rocked.

“Pantomime” plays at Payomet Performing Arts in Truro Thursday through Sunday at 8 p.m. through Sept. 2. Tickets are $5 to $20 by calling (508) 487-5400.

artseditor@provincetownbanner.com

'Orphans' tells moving tale of redemption

By MELANIE LAUWERS
CAPE COD TIMES STAFF WRITER

"Orphans," on stage through Oct. 12 at Cape Rep Theatre Company, is an award-winning drama that is deep and deeply moving. Lyle Kessler's two act, two-hour play requires an enormous amount of effort on the part of the three-member cast. Brian McNeany, Shawn O'Neil and Tom Wolfson are more than up to the task. They are simply superb onstage.

On one level, "Orphans" is a family story. Treat, a young tough in his early 20s perhaps, has been left to look after younger brother Phillip after the death of their mother some years before. The way Treat goes about this huge

responsibility is to shut out the world beyond their North Philadelphia row house, keeping Phillip intellectually and physically tied to his older brother. Phillip is not allowed to leave the house - based on a previous physical illness

that occurred when he was outside (perhaps an asthma or a panic attack) - and he is left supposedly unable to read or make much sense of the world. Treat supports their shabby lifestyle through mugging and petty theft.

Into their lives comes Harold, a well-groomed and thoughtful man, perhaps an executive or mobster - he really could be either one - whom Treat brings home drunk one night with the intention of robbing. But when he finds stocks and bonds in Harold's briefcase, Treat decides that kidnapping and ransom will bring in more income.

This is where the play turns on its head, and what happens next transforms both brothers so that just two weeks later, Treat has lost his grip on his brother's life, Phillip has made his first tentative steps into the outside world, and Harold - well, Harold has been redeemed in a way that leaves the viewer wondering just how much to read into his character.

An orphan himself, Harold is, on one level, drawn to the young men because they are, like he was, much in need of what he calls "an encouraging squeeze." But on another level, Harold plays a much larger role, and the issue of redemption suggests something we all need at some time in our lives. Call it the intercession of a higher power, if you will.

McNeany, O'Neil and Wolfson pull off this charged play with humor and vivid emotion. There is a complex physicality to the play that they also handle well.

Underpinning the play are two other strong suits: James P. Byrne's set, which so carefully illustrates how people live at various stages of their lives, and the flow of recorded music by jazz guitar great Pat Metheny and keyboardist Lyle Mays, music that curls itself around the stage during brief interludes between scenes and acts. The music is not part of the play, but it sets a tone of change and shifting images that contributes to the production of "Orphans."

Directed by Cara Caldwell Watson, "Orphans" is a great play and a refreshing change from the oft-repeated, usual choices of our local theater companies. For that reason, and many more, it should not be missed.

(Published: September 21, 2002)
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Copyright © 2002 Cape Cod Times. All rights reserved.

The Lake Wobegon Gazette October 21, 2007

Mary Ellen Carter FLOPS
Bob Woodward, STAFF WRITER
Three Mile Rock, Mn

After arriving in a driving, pouring rain for the opening of The Mary Ellen Carter at Three Mile Rock’s historic theater, the beleaguered audience became enraged at the play’s alleged star performer Thomas Wolfson when he reeled onto the stage along with his stage manager, both of whom appeared innebriated. Together they began gyrating suggestively and singing incoherently and off-key. Amidst an angry din of widespread heckling, popcorn and many super-sized cups of soda pop showered down upon the stage. The performers fled. The audience then left in droves, stopping first in the lobby to demand a full refund from the bewildered theater manager before exiting the building. Later found in his dressing room by this reporter and asked to comment on his behavior, a winded but smiling Wolfson shrugged, caught his breath, and proclaimed simply, “The Mary Ellen Carter will rise again.”