THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 4, 1995 TAG: 9508040048
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E9 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Theater Review
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, THEATER CRITIC
LENGTH: Medium: 80 lines
``PRAIRIE CAFE,'' the final entry in the Generic Theater's ambitious ``New Plays for Dog Days'' series, has a fine sense of place and character.
It is set in a town where the bus doesn't stop anymore - Paris, Ill. In free-wheeling flashes to Paris, France, it attempts, occasionally successfully, to chronicle the gropings of the world's outsiders.
When all is said and done, ``Prairie Cafe'' is perhaps the most sensible of the five plays featured in this summer's adventurous, but woefully slim, theater festival. We can be thankful for ``newness'' for only so long until we begin to realize that perhaps commercial theater producers speak the truth when they say good, new scripts are difficult to find.
From Eugene O'Neill onward (and backward), the local cafe has been a natural habitat for playwrights to assemble their characters. The cafe here is ``D'Elbert's Cafe, Dedicated to the Fine Art of Staying Open.''
But if Paris, Ill., is dying, it is not without extensive mourning. The characters tell us, over and over again, about the symptoms.The bus has passed it by, the factories have closed and apparently even the church and the whorehouse have gone out of business.
But what are we to make of it? Why are we to care? Once he effectively creates this compelling setting, playwright R. Scott Deutsch doesn't really go anywhere with it.
One gets the idea ``Prairie Cafe'' is meant to be a quirky comedy but it is almost entirely lacking in humor. It is more acceptable as a study of seeping angst.
The characters, in themselves, are interesting.
Elbert, the cafe's owner, insists on keeping the cafe going, even though he's received a generous buy-out offer from Japanese investors who want to turn it into a shrine. It seems that Ed Cowan, one of America's most popular artists, once lived and painted here.
Flash to Paris, France, where we meet the famous artist himself. Ed Cowan left Paris, Ill., charged with statutory rape - an accusation leveled by Elbert himself. Now, the famous man wants to find his son but, because he is a fugitive from justice, is barred from returning. A mysterious woman ``from the East Coast'' shows up. The set-up is all here, and so are the characters.
Charles Burgess gives the role of artist Ed Cowan an analytical and carefully modulated performance.
Ed Jones, a local stage veteran, brings a world-weary presence to small-town Elbert, which is about all one could bring to it. Joan DiGirolamo brings a refreshingly sprightly quality to her role as the real estate agent who still thinks there's hope for the town. Chelsie Raye Linquist has an attractive stage presence as the mysterious woman visitor but her identity is very easy to unravel. T. Sean Foley is the local crazy, Caz, a bum who hangs about the cafe but often uses arty phrases that betray an inner layer of intelligence.
That leaves the cafe's resident wannabe, Heffer, a waiter who envisions himself as ``the people's poet,'' as the nearest thing to a comic character. Bob Scott has the role and should probably have played it with more comic verve. He's almost tragically serious about his ambitions to write.
Kelly Klaers, the director, has allowed her actors to take it all too seriously. Or, perhaps, there is no humor here to mine.
As it is, we get pronouncements like ``this town has been dying for a hundred years and it's going to be dying for another hundred years.''
Perhaps so, but there is little reason for us to sit around and watch.
``Prairie Cafe'' will continue through Sunday and then all four entries (three full-length plays plus a bill of two one-acts) return for one additional performance each. MEMO: THEATER REVIEW
What: ``Prairie Cafe'' by R. Scott Deutsch
Who: Directed by Kelly Klaers, featuring Charles Burgess, Bob Scott,
Ed Jones, Joan DiGirolamo, Chelsie Linquist and T. Sean Foley
Where: The Generic Theater in Norfolk, as the last entry in the ``New
Plays for Dog Days'' series
When: Tonight and Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m., to be
repeated Aug. 9
How Much: $5
Call: 441-2160 by CNB