<b>✭✭✭✭</b>✩ / <b>✭✭✭</b>✩✩
<b>by William Inge, directed by Rod Ceballos
The Remnants, Toronto Fringe Festival, Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse, Toronto
July 3-13, 2013
</b>
The theatre group calling itself The Remnants is currently presenting a fascinating double bill of two short one-act plays by William Inge (1913-1973), one of which is essentially a rewrite of the other. Both concern the return of the male character Bus Riley to the small town where he got his underaged girlfriend Jackie pregnant. The focus of both plays is how the two will interact after a long period of time following the affair that changed both their lives. It is intriguing to see how the author imagines two very different outcomes to the situation, both of which are valid and believable.
The earlier of the two versions is <i>Glory in the Flower</i> from 1959 set in the Paradise Roadhouse in Illinois in the late 1950s. The later version is <i>Bus Riley’s Back in Town</i> from 1962 set in the Fiesta Room of the Hotel Boomerang in Texas in the early 1950s. <i>Bus Riley</i> is the more famous and more successful of the two and was made into movie in 1965. The screenplay was written by Inge who withdrew his name when the director made too many changes to the story.
The Remnants present the plays in chronological order of when they are set rather when they were written. This is appropriate because Inge has Bus and Jackie meet when they are much older in <i>Glory</i> that they are in <i>Bus Riley</i>. After seeing <i>Bus Riley</i>, this arrangement allows us to wonder, “What would happen if these two volatile people had had a chance to cool down and see more of life before they next met?”
In revising <i>Glory</i> into <i>Bus Riley</i>, Inge has clearly changed what was merely a highly charged meeting between two former lovers into a drama verging on tragedy. In <i>Glory</i>, Bus Riley has left town not because of social sanctions against what he has done but because there are no jobs. He has gone to Hollywood and become a success although we don’t quite believe him. Jackie had to leave town and gave her baby up for adoption, but has moved back and after many years has finally been accepted back into the community. She knows she once loved Bus but know sees him for the cheap seducer he is and will have nothing more to do with him.
In <i>Bus Riley</i>, Inge gives the characters much more resonance, changes their social status and puts much more at stake on their meeting. Jackie’s father, unimportant in <i>Glory</i>, is now the man who once controlled the entire town. Filled with delusions of grandeur, he imagined marrying Jackie to European royalty. Instead, she gets pregnant by Bus, a man who is now revealed to be half-Mexican and thus of lower status than whites. Jackie is sent away, but in this version has an abortion and is later sent for a time to an insane asylum. Jackie’s father is so enraged at Bus, that he manages to have him arrested and jailed for three years for having sex with a minor. Upon his release he joined the navy and, in both versions, returns to the town to provide blood transfusions for his father. The key difference in <i>Bus Riley</i> is that Jackie, despite al that has happened, is still in love with Bus and will do anything to be with him again.
Both plays are beautifully directed by Rod Ceballos who shows a great attention to detail and mood. In <i>Bus Riley</i> the travelling Salesman (Jeff Gruich) and Howie the bartender (David Mackett) are both congenial and Jackie’s married friends Bernice (Suzette McCanny) and Ralph (Tim MacLean) are comic but dull. These serve as a foil to the extraordinary lives of Bus (Joseph Mottola) and Jackie (Katherine McLeod). In <i>Glory</i> the Salesman (Gruich) gets progressively drunker as the action continues and Howie (Mackett) is prone to irritation. In place of married friends we have a couple (McCanny and Mottola) who represent the younger generation of weed-smoking bobby-soxers that the older generation, including Bus (MacLean) and Jackie (McLeod) do not understand. In a change of dynamics, Inge links Jackie’s vitality to that of the younger generation and the failure Bus hides from himself to the older generation of the blotto Salesman and Howie.
Katherine McLeod is outstanding as Jackie in both versions and clearly distinguishes the younger, obsessed Jackie of <i>Bus Riley</i> from the older, more self-reliant Jackie of <i>Glory</i> in range of voice, style of delivery and gestural language. Joseph Mottola is well-cast as the young Bus of <i>Bus Riley</i>, though he could show more internal conflict beneath the indifference he shows to Jackie’s confession of love. Tim MacLean is rather too stolid as the older Bus of <i>Glory</i> and could show us more of the inner dissatisfaction that drives him to drink. David Mackett and Jeff Gruich are excellent in both versions as Howie and the Salesman and differentiate the two versions quite clearly from each other, with Gruich especially comic as the Salesman of <i>Glory</i> whose increasing drunkenness undercuts his lament for the glory days of the past.
The pairing of these two versions is instructive and satisfying. It gives us insight into Inge’s creative process and into the alternate lives most fictional characters lead until their creator settles on one unalterable fate. This is a double-bill that should appeal not just to Inge fans but to anyone interested in playwriting and theatre in general.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a <i>Stage Door</i> exclusive.
Photo: Katherine McLeod as Jackie and Joseph Mottola as Bus Riley. ©2013 Allison Bjerkseth.
For tickets, visit <a href="http://fringetoronto.com">http://fringetoronto.com</a>.
<b>2013-07-12</b>
<b>Inge Snapshots: Still Life in Mid America Mid Century</b>