By Judith
Newmark POST-DISPATCH THEATER
CRITIC
04/26/2006
Writer
and director Philip Boehm explores heady issues about the cost of creativity in
this new work about a Mexican-American painter. Alluding to everything from the
legend of Dr. Faustus to "Rent," this play can seem kind of self-referential:
Artists, after all, are more apt to be worried about their process than anyone
else is.
But the play, designed by Boehm and Patrick Huber, looks
spectacular in its strange setting - an outdoor, covered courtyard. (Not
perfectly covered - Sunday night's performance had to stop, briefly, when
hailstones drowned out the actors.) The actors are on a stage set off by a huge,
broken picture frame; drop cloths are both apt and magical; a number of local
painters give the artists' oeuvre real style.
There's strong work from
Jerry Vogel as the troubled painter and from Magan Wiles in a number of roles,
including a muse wearing a crown of peacock feathers. It looks exactly right.
In
English and some Spanish.