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Edgy
'Canvas' portrays humor and inspiration
Christine Dolen
Miami Herald
Sometimes, relative
ignorance can lead to the bliss of discovery.
Keith Bunin is a young, not-yet-famous
New York playwright. His play The Credeaux Canvas
caused a ripple Off-Broadway two years ago but
didn't get the wave of acclaim that plays by
writers like Kenneth Lonergan or Neil LaBute
have scored.
And New Theatre, which has just
opened the Florida premiere of The Credeaux
Canvas, has such an eclectic aesthetic that
it's at least a small surprise to find Bunin's
edgy, sexy, discomfiting play here rather than
at nearby |
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GableStage, which seems to own
the franchise on such works.
In other words: wow. From Rafael de
Acha's smart, subtle direction to the four-member
cast's nervy, verve-filled performances; from set
designer Michael McKeever's observant rendering of
an on-the-cheap fifth-floor walk-up to lighting designer
Travis Neff's own form of painterly illumination,
the production of The Credeaux Canvas is as good as
anything New Theatre has done in its 17 seasons.
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The play itself isn't flawless. The first act
is far stronger than the second, which leaves
you giddy at intermission and vaguely let down
at the end. Yet the play's cumulative impact includes
insightful and often funny writing, particularly
into the mating rituals and mental stresses of
twentysomethings, as well as observations about
the art world in all its divine inspiration and
pretentiousness. |
The actors feel completely plugged
into Bunin's characters. As Jamie, the wound-up and
wounded guy who dreams up an art scam, Brian Louis
Hoffman gives the kind of gut-tearing performance
that local actors like Paul Tei and Chaz Mena have
built careers on. Kimberly Daniel is Jamie's snooty
''victim,'' a woman far more astute than the young
hustlers imagine.
Laif Adam Gilbertson is charming as
the morally vacuous Winston, a student artist who
executes the fraud and appropriates Jamie's beloved,
Amelia (Aubrey Shavonn, whose line readings are a
little too flat). A wannabe singer and reluctant model,
Amelia is settling inch by inch into a quicksand of
depression. And Winston doesn't help. The lifeline
he throws her, as subject and artist get naked on
a moonlit night, turns out to be nothing more than
a frayed thread. Wow.
The
Miami Herald
Marzo
2003
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