FEEL FUNNY AND SMART WITH THIS "HAPPINESS"

By Chuck Graham, TucsonStage.com

 

photo by  Tim Fuller

Ellen (India Osborne) and Bernard (John Keeney) both love the Romantic poet William Blake and each other, maybe a little too much.

Talk about taking your work home with you. Actually, college professors Bernard (John Keeney) and Ellen (India Osborne) -- both fond of each other, also dedicated for two decades to teaching and living the sensual poetry of William Blake – didn't even make it off campus.

Hopelessly caught up one fateful evening in their physical desire for each other, Ellen and Bernard threw their conservative East coast small college values to the wind, threw each other down on the campus lawn and did it right there. Passing students and the college's president saw everything.

Consequently, as Mickle Maher's play begins, “There Is A Happiness That Morning Is,” both Ellen and Bernard are being forced the next morning to fully explain themselves and apologize to their students.

Scoundrel & Scamp Theatre sets this scene in their intimate studio theater. The stage is a flat space designed to look like a miniature lecture hall.

Bernard goes first, standing beside his podium to face his morning class, with a very long blackboard stretching out behind him. We in the audience are his students, listening to this hopeless defense that just because his romantic interests were pure, making love so spontaneously with Ellen right out there in front of God and everybody, proves it was the absolute right thing to do.

Since the play is performed without an intermission, we move directly to Ellen's afternoon class. There will be no wimpy plea in the defense she provides.

Ellen may have a prim and proper appearance, but she is defiant and angry that the college's President should be so provincial as to fail in seeing the beauty of Ellen's proclamation of affection with Bernard, sharing that most natural act which God alone designed into the very creation of life itself.

Thanks to Bryan Rafael Falcon's sensitive direction we get to enjoy not only the intricacies of passionate reasoning in their heartfelt logic, but also the rhymed verse Maher weaves through their labyrinthine journey to self-redemption.

The playwright's touch is light, finding ways to connect “crappiness” with “happiness,” “dump” with ”jump,” “shock” with “chalk,” “dream” with “screamed,” “fraud” with “dickwad,” “anticipation” with “obfuscation, “shrubbery” with ”mummery” and “bear trap” with “spinal tap.” There are hundreds of examples, lots of ear-ticklers.

Enjoying the play doesn't require any knowledge of William Blake. More fun to think about is when can you justify having sex in a public park, and how would you go about it? There isn't much of a leap to remembering the 1970s and the belief in “If it feels good, do it!”

Blake would certainly approve. But should life go around imitating art like that? Bernard does mention that 200 years ago in London it wasn't unusual for people to be having sex al fresco.

Can art finally set us free? You may debate that question with your significant other....as you drive past a Tucson park on the way home.

“There Is A Happiness That Morning Is” runs through April 1, with performances at7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, in the Historic Y, 738 N Fifth Ave. Tickets are $22 general admission with discounts, including students and teachers. For details and reservations, 520-448-3300, on Facebook, and at scoundrelandscamp,org.