By Chuck Graham, TucsonStage.com
Leah Taylor, Bill Epstein (center) as Walt Disney and Tony Caprile depict a somewhat imaginary episode around the famed filmmaker.
You just guess from the unusual title, “A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney” that something's up.
Something good, to be sure. Because this production is the debut of Scoundrel & Scamp Theatre, sharing performance space in the Historic Y compound off Fifth Ave. and University Blvd. with the inestimable Rogue Theatre.
I asked co-founder Bryan Rafael Falcon somewhat informally if these Scoundrels would be the research and development arm of the Rogue and he smiled warmly.
Can you say “exciting?” I thought you could.
Putting your mind-stretching concerns in the hands of talented idealists is a rare treat, to be sure, so who can be blamed for believing these scoundrels and scamps will actually achieve many of the lofty goals this debut is promising.
Falcon has conceived and directed this non-biographical play about Disney with impressive thoroughness. Every detail means something, contributing to a theatrical experience more akin to non-linear poetry than to a plot-driven meat grinder that has a satisfying resolution.
The set-up involves a few layers of make-believe. First of all, four people sit facing the audience at a bare table, reading from their personal copies of the screenplay.
We know they are actors, they stay seated, acting from the waist up in 70 non-stop minutes of reading and arguing, appeasing and – always – acting. It turns out, the screenplay written by Walt (played by Bill Epstein) is being read by Walt, his older brother Roy (Tony Caprile), his unnamed daughter (Leah Taylor) and her husband, Ron Miller (Ben Branch).
Walt wants them all to read what he has written about them, and about his plans to preserve himself indefinitely rather than actually pass away.
Lucas Hnath (pronounced nayth) actually wrote the play, using this confined family confrontation as an opportunity to study the nature of power and responsibility, particularly when the famous and powerful family member is more obsessed with power than with his own family.
Walt also knows he is dying of lung cancer, continues to smoke and drink constantly, while plotting a scheme to become immortal by having his head cut off and frozen until medical science has advanced to the point here he can be thawed out and recreated. Sounds grisly, but fits believably into Walt's mindset.
The public Walt Disney, so successful at creating illusions of happiness in his films and magic kingdoms, didn't spring from happiness. Just the opposite. Walt did not want success so much as he wanted power and influence.
Instead, he got tons of success and that bothered him immensely.
Every person who sees this play will see something a little different. Just know, the production is excellent, intended specifically for people who love theater.
Not for people who love to be entertained, but for people who appreciate shaded gestures that imply weighted qualities of personality. Thinking, watching, measuring.
That kind of theater. The rare kind that can keep percolating around in your head for a long time.
“A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney” continues through Dec. 10 , with performances at 7:30 pm. Dec. 7-9, and 2 p.m. Dec. 10, in the new Scoundrel & Scamp Theatre at the Historic Y, 738 N. Fifth Ave.
Tickets are $22, with discounts available. For details and reservations: 448-3300, scoundrelandscamp.org,
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