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Peer Reviews
Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean By Ed Graczyk Reviewed by Cristina Martin Entire contents copyright © 2008, Cristina Martin. All rights reserved.
Exactly twenty years to the day after their idol's death, a group calling itself the Disciples of James Dean comes together at the five-and-dime of a little Texas town not far from where Giant was filmed. What's in store? Thirtysomethings mooning over their spent youth, reliving how a teen heartthrob would make them go weak in the knees? A Then and Now comparison suggesting it's all been downhill since the excitement of the little town's brush with Hollywood? Hardly. Or rather, sort of, but Wayward Actors Company's production of Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean is so much more. While its title might suggest a jump-rope jingle or the mantra of a bobby-socks-and-poodle-skirt-clad crowd, the play is by turns profound, humorous and revelatory, and it makes for an eminently worthwhile way to spend an afternoon or an evening. At a variety store run by Juanita (Kathy Todd Chaney), five women gather: Mona (Pamela Slack), Sissy (Janet Morris), Joanne (Christina Biller), Stella (Vanessa Mulden) and Edna Louise (Katie Graviss). All five were members of the Disciples of James Dean as teens, but their lives have taken refreshingly varied paths in the last twenty years. Mona has stuck around because any other environment seems to make her asthma act up; Sissy moved away but came back and now works at the truck stop nearby; Stella married a wealthy oil man and is no stranger to the country club scene; Edna Louise is mother to six (going on seven) children, and Joanne ... well, Joanne, too, has had experiences all her own. The details and disclosures that surface in the characters' dialogue hold the audience's interest, and the actors' pacing is lively and engaging.
As Sissy, Janet Morris has some of the funniest lines in the play and plays them to the hilt. Sally's snobbery and Edna Louise's affable blankness come across well, too. Each of the Disciples truly shines in her own right and contributes to a dynamic, well-balanced group. I questioned Mona's delicate fragility and timorous mannerisms initially, thinking that perhaps Pamela Slack was too youthful-looking and lacked the presence necessary to be president of the Disciples of James Dean and organizer of their reunion. Her fluttery manner makes increasing sense the more we learn of her history and psychological makeup, however. The same holds true for Joanne's brusqueness and sometimes deadpan delivery. How satisfying when what appears questionable at first comes to light as perfectly fitting! The set, designed by John Hess and Kevin Butler, makes good use of the MeX Theatre's performance space while drawing us into the play's present and making the past not hard to imagine. In flashbacks offset by effective lighting changes, we meet 1955 versions of some of the above characters. Going back and forth through time this way presents staging challenges and invites scrutiny as far as casting is concerned; the play rises to the former with ingenuity and stands up tolerably to the latter. Past and present versions of the same characters frequently inhabit the same small space and even speak in unison at times, yet they remain unmistakably of two different worlds. While the audience might wish for a somewhat closer physical resemblance between the older and younger versions of Mona et al., there is no shortage of talent among the promising young actors who play the 1955 characters. Samantha Watzek and Rebecca Chaney do well in bringing out the excitable nature of young Mona and the boldness of young Sissy, respectively. Watzek's performance is particularly wholehearted; slowing down and making sure to speak clearly would guard against young Mona's lines getting garbled and lost at times in the midst of her avid display of emotion. Macreena Groody plays a convincing young Stella, and Victoria Barnes brings out young Edna Louise's sweet ditziness well. As Joe, an employee at Juanita's store in 1955 and a contemporary of the girls, Jacob Banser does not have an overwhelming number of lines but manages to bring to life a character devastating in its poignancy nonetheless. Kathy Todd Chaney's Juanita lends continuity to the back-and-forth through time. At various points, she is maternal, curmudgeonly, slow on the uptake, unenlightened, in denial, and finally accepting; through it all, she exudes an unpretentious endearing quality both in 1955 and twenty years later. Chaney covered for and successfully recovered from a number of line flubs on opening night. The play's religious allusions are inescapable, from the very name of the James Dean fan club ("He is our God," says one member in a 1955 scene), to the religious portrait on the wall of the five-and-dime which remains illuminated even after everything else goes dark, to Juanita's banter about her church activities and Sissy's lighthearted comments about the (in)effectiveness of prayer. Pray as Juanita might, when a passing storm fails to relieve the drought the town has been suffering from, even this professed woman of faith draws a momentary parallel between herself and the James Dean fans, who all find themselves fervently hopeful in a state in which,"...what you believe doesn't even know you exist." In the grand scheme, we might consider ourselves specially Chosen in some respect or not, or we may be skeptical of who, if anyone, is doing the choosing, but whatever our take on the unverifiable Truth, discerning the truth — about concrete details regarding our own lives — provides plenty of fodder for contemplation. Each of this play's characters struggles with illusion and self-delusion after a fashion. As unlikely as it may be to happen so neatly in real life, it is dramatically tidy and emotionally uplifting to have the scales fall away from everyone's eyes by the end and to realize that the light has dawned for each character on stage by the time the house lights go up. Wayward Actors Company concludes its sixth season with a very fine show. I left the world of Mona, Sissy et al. reluctantly, marveling at the caliber of local talent in evidence and eager to attend further productions of the company in the future.
Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy
Dean Posted July 1, 2008
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