April 1, 2005
THEATER BEAT
Len Jenkin's fascinating if inchoate 1984 play "My Uncle
Sam" loosely sets a surreal detective story within a prosaic memory-play
frame. It's a shape-shifting picaresque with tenuous dramatic grip, but
director Joshua Moyse's new production gives it a stunningly clear, fluid
style, with a monochrome set haunted by Jason Mullen's stark side-lighting and
animated by Rachel Eberhard's sharply demarcated period costumes.
The tightly focused setting often lends this rough diamond a
genuine gem-like gleam. Jenkin begins and ends the play with a narrator (Paul
Plunkett) recalling his childhood awe for his Uncle Sam (Joe Jordan), a retired
novelties salesman who spent his waning years resolutely alone in a Pittsburgh
hotel. These scenes point us in a conventionally wistful direction, with the
ramrod Jordan, though barely in his 30s, confidently evoking age and regret.
The play then whiplashes into an increasingly fanciful tall-tale
version of Sam's young manhood amid a noirish nightscape of hoods, molls and
other shady characters. It follows young Sam (laconic Ben Cubbedge) on a fool's
errand at the behest of his purported fiancee, dance-hall hostess Lila (sleek
Amanda Decker)Ņa search for a missing person that soon makes Sam the true
absentee.
Moyse's committed cast throws itself into this shaggy-dog fantasy
with engaging verve. Not all the performers are quite on point with Jenkin's
wide-ranging voice, which aims for a pulp-poetic hybrid of sales pitch and home
truth, and the play has speculative codas rather than a satisfying conclusion.
But like the luminous crucifix Sam hawks with a convincing patter, "My
Uncle Sam" is a seemingly trifling conjurer's trick with a resilient glow.
Rob
Kendt
"My Uncle Sam,"
Sacred Fools Theatre, 660 N. Heliotrope Drive, Hollywood. 8 p.m.
Thursdays-Saturdays (no performance Apr. 1). Ends Apr. 30. $20. (310) 281-8837
or at www.sacredfools.org. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.