Sometimes it's hard to know what to expect from a play. How should the audience react? Be quiet? Participate? Feel happy? Sad? Shocked? Annoyed? With playwright James McClure's Lone Star, the answer is easy - laugh.
Not to say that humor is the sole component of this play. Lives are changed, family relationships are explored and a lot of beer is consumed. Simply stated, Lone Star is one of the funniest plays to be produced at Oberlin in quite some time.
What makes it particularly rewarding is that it becomes neither traditional theatrical farce nor simply a staged version of a bland television sitcom. The play does have a sort of Texan Jerry Seinfeld in the character of Ray (junior Matt Van Winkle), who observes, "Did you ever notice how a Baby Ruth looks like a turd?"
Lone Star is the story of one long, dark night in Texas for Roy (senior Will Alexander), an aging Texas football star who has returned from "Vitnam" two years ago. Slowly getting drunk behind the local bar, he realizes that nothing in life stays the same. His saviors, as it were, are his brother Ray and a geek cowboy named Cletus, who is nicknamed "Skeeter" (junior Gabriel Carleton-Barnes). It is a play chock-full of junk food, cars, backseat sex, fights, crickets, and of course, beer.
The actors, directed adeptly by senior Chris Niebling, manage to portray clearly defined characters without resorting to cartoonish stereotypes, as could have occurred easily in a play like this. The accents are also impressive, with Roy's jockish swagger and Ray's bumpkin-ish cornpone still allowing deeper facets of the characters to come through. Ray, for instance, deftly blurs the line between stupid and clever, while contrasting nicely with Skeeter's awkward twang.
Senior set designer Alice Dodge uses a neon Budweiser sign as the most noticeable piece, though less gimmicky ideas like a disembodied fender, wooden pallets and scattered milkcrates help to evoke the trashy
atmosphere of a bar's back lot as well. Lighting design and sound design, by
Andrew Platt ('97) is both minimal yet effective, providing a realistic ambience-the sound of a car passing made the audience turn its heads toward the back wall in surprise.
The play dragged a bit in places, as when Roy repeatedly pretends to be an American soldier sneaking up on Ray's pretend Vietcong. This sight gag pays off in a rewarding punch line. Other sequences, such as when Roy narrates a trip to a city of ill repute, are crippling in their hilarity. Cletus' scenes, while fewer and farther between, provide nice counterpoint to the two other oddballs that inhabit McClure's story.
In some ways, the best description of Lone Star comes from one of Ray's lines: "What kind of t sit back and be amused; deeper things can be left to the classroom. With four performances, there's no reason not to see this immensely enjoyable production.
Lone Star by James McClure and directed by Chris Niebling goes up in the Little Theater Friday 9/17 @ 8pm, Sat. 9/18 @ 2pm and 8pm, and Sun. 9/19 @ 2pm. Tickets are $2 at Wilder desk.
Get ready to laugh: Beer, junk food and cars provide comic material in Lone Star. (photo by Elizabeth Fein)
Copyright © 1999, The Oberlin Review.
Volume 128, Number 3, September 17, 1999
Contact us with your comments and suggestions.