The Story
The Bare "Bones" of Mankind
Perhaps waking up in the backroom of a porn theater, blindfolded and tied to a chair in your underwear isn’t the worst way to wake up. Then again, accidental kidnapping happens every day.
For those familiar with the playful deification of gangsters in “Anything Goes” and “Guys and Dolls,” Peter Straughan’s “Bones” will offer a grittier exploration of masculinity, self-hatred, and the first kill through its raw characters and wit.
Ruben (Jamie Ellis, ’13) is just a guy in Gateshead, 1968. A guy working the door for a porn theater run by his brother Benny (Chad Murla, ’10). And like any other guy, when he sees the name of Reggie Kray (Mary Myers, ’10) " one half of an infamous gangster duo " and attaches it to the violent patron sunk into a drunken stupor, he sees an opportunity. Benny sees only trouble, but Ruben’s coworkers Beck (Lex Powell, ’11) and Moon (Joel White, ’13) have visions of large sums of money to pay back their landlords and buy prams. The amateur kidnappers, however, find the task isn’t as easy as it looks in the movies.
Myers was a force to be reckoned with. Myers swore, slumped, and snarled with the best of men, and she could believably threaten someone taller than her while blindfolded in underwear. Myers and Ellis were in sync from the beginning. When Myers slammed the phone down, Ellis jumped. Myers commanded, and for the most part, Ellis obeyed " and even when Ellis had Myers tied to a chair with a bare bulb overhead, the power and influence remained up in the air.
Ellis was a nervous admirable, while his brother Murla was an idealistic admirable. The contrasting versions of a “brotherlike connection” between Ellis to Myers and to Murla, were striking and authentic. Where Murla raved and snapped, his attention was aggressive yet constructive. A stark contrast to Myers’ sly influence.
“I cross-cast Reg as a woman to study the ‘performance’ aspect of masculinity, which is what masculinity is often perceived as [a performance],” Director Keegan Cassady (’10) said.
Cassady referenced several notable philosophers, including Aristotle, Nietzsche and Plato. In his choice for casting Myers as Reg " a male character " he based his logic in Plato’s philosophy of the “table.” The ideal model, or table, is molded by the craftsman and mimicked by art " at each step drawing farther from the original ideal model.
“Every time it is mimicked, it becomes less and less true and more and more false. Reg is a copy of a copy of a copy,” Cassady said.
Powell, on the other hand, played a man " in spite of appearing on stage first as a foul-mouthed flapper. Still, he barked testosterone in his tirade to White. While White juggled a gentle, family side while an accomplice in kidnapping dressed as King Kong, Powell found place where the bravado ends and the self-doubt begins with just a deck of cards.
The performances, though occasionally with posture slightly stiff or arms swinging loose, were strong and engrossing, tangling the audience in the mess of brotherhood.
During scene changes, a projector perched in the back of the theatre run by stage manager Hayley Rushing (’11) plays snippets from the 40’s gangster movies which the characters used as a frame of reference " “Haven’t you seen the movies?” Reggie cries. “It’s stick ‘em up!” " for their situation. Bullets, fire and Humphrey Bogart offer the historical perspective of the movies they would have seen by 1968.
Having a projector tucked in the far back of the theatre was only one of several widely framed elements of the set design by Lauren Cheniae (’11). Though the design was minimalist, and offered few historical points of reference to establish setting, the props and set pieces were spread and dynamically used.
“We worked on deep staging. How we could control what you see, and how what you see controls you,” Cassady said.
There could be actors in a backroom under the projector, or at the table on house right, or the desk at house left. The actors would come from the hall from behind, or sit in the seats at the front row of the audience, engrossing all parts of the stage at different times.
Though this invites the inevitable problem of seeing only actor’s backs at times, or having to split attention between several important elements, the actors were diligent in turning as much as they could afford to, and the result of the whole was integrating the audience more in the show.
“Do you know you?” Reg challenges Ruben. “Do you have belief? Belief in what you’re capable of?” The answer for the college’s presentation of “Bones” is a hearty affirmative.