The Time of Your Life
THE ARGUS
THURSDAY. March 6,1997
'Time of Your Life 'is a work of art
By June Griffin
Two years ago Knuti VanHoven directed a one night staged reading of "The Time of Your Life" for Stage I Repertory Theatre. Even with that small production, she knew she had a winner.
Now VanHoven is directing the West of Broadway Theatre group in an excellent full-scale production of the Pulitzer Prizewinning William Saroyan play. It closes this weekend.
The play is set in Nick's Saloon, Restaurant and Entertainment Palace in San Francisco during one afternoon and night in October. 1939. Joe, brilliantly played by Peter Jon Shuler, spends his days drinking champagne at a table here. He is a gentle, loving soul, infinitely composed, and Shuler captures him perfectly with a fine creative performance.
Joe has plenty of money from the days when he worked hard. Now he is searching for something - unspoken, but probably cosmic consciousness - and obviously feels he will find it in himself. He has no desire to leave this shabby bar.
Joe also dabbles in matchmaking. When his gofer buddy Tom falls for the prostitute Kitty Duvall, Joe aids this romance. Neil Rafanan is superb as Tom, offering a first-rate performance as an engaging but dimwitted misfit. Kirsten Schulz gives a poignant and moving portrayal as Kitty Duvall.
West of Broadway is a collaboration between Stage I Theatre and the Fremont Adult School, and this production, despite its length (it ends after 10:30 p.m.) is a triumph on both the artistic and technical sides.
Stage 1 president and producer Paul K. Davis took four vacation days from his job designing telescopes for NASA to create and build the handsome set, with much help from the cast. It is simply everything you would expect the saloon to be, from moose heads to juke box.
The play develops in small vignettes, excellently timed. Joe
sends Tom out for a bag of toys, plays with the toys, then gives them away. He buys all the newspapers from the newsboy and tosses them over his head. Headlines of Hitler hit the floor twice more during the day when the newsboy comes back with bigger and bigger stacks of papers. Joe buys them all and treats them - and the sad world situation they reflect -with contempt.
There are plenty of fine performances by members of the large cast.
Nick is played by David Turner, a 15-year veteran of melodramas. All that experience is evident in his strong, confident and beautifully-realized characterization of the personality-minus bartender, who's actually a pussycat, allowing the hard-luck pianist Wesley and the would-be comedian Harry to be saloon entertainers.
David Harold Cardoza, a professional musician, plays Wesley to perfection and the show is indebted to him. His flawless, and constant, tinkering at the keyboard - always melodic, never intrusive - adds immeasurably to the mood and the charm of
the evening.
Jorge Doctolero, a wonderfully comic singer/actor/dancer with a background in melodrama, gives a delightful performance as the ever-hopeful Harry whose original comic routines just aren't funny.
Two barflies add much to the saloon atmosphere with their
vivid personas: the drunk played by Todd Watson and Arab played by Sergio Alexandre are standouts. Dane Bunton was a dandy newsboy.
Darwin Mathison could use a bit more consistency but on the whole does well as the old windbag Kit Carson. Kevin Maddock is a delight as Willie, showing how to become one with a pinball machine. Jack Martin as Dudley and Connie Chew as his girl Elsie offer their finest performances to date. Rex and Kathy Fletcher brighten the scene as a slumming society couple who get more than they bargained for.
Two fine players were miscast. Dale Komai needs to mellow out as the cop, Krupp, so as not to shoot out of the Saroyan orbit. John Lathbury, a marvelously comic actor, played a longshoreman and fooled nobody.
There are many scenes to ponder. Joe enjoys and respects the company of sad and lonely women. He flirts with a young woman, Mary L., nicely played
by Loretta Farrer, who enters the bar. He tells her he loves her, and she leaves - It all goes nowhere. Joe and Tom have a gum-chewing contest, filling their mouths with 19 sticks of gum each, but the contest ends pointlessly.
In the end, when Kit Carson is acclaimed a hero by taking vengeance against a brutal cop (well played by Chris Hernandez), Joe simply disappears out the door. His world apparently has no heroes or villains. Joe lives in this world but is not of it - he seeks a dimension of time that is timeless. He is "not the movie, but the screen."
Saroyan, an Armenian playwright, won - but refused -the Pulitzer Prize for this comedy, saying that all his plays had equal merit. "The Time of Your Life" has over the years been performed by theater groups everywhere that feel compelled to recreate Nick's Saloon and its strange, pathetic and marvelous assortment of characters. This is a work of art for all time, and that's prize enough.
Go home.
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