Down Home Treachery at PLTC

I walked in blind to the first weekend performance of People’s Light and Theatre Company’s last show of the current season – Mr. Hart & Mr. Brown.      

I walked out in disbelief that I could be so blind.

Local playwright Bruce Graham has crafted a clever and intriguing premise in this
prohibition era tale.  Audience members are artfully drawn in to the world where a young journalist (Michael Doherty), a local law enforcement legend (Christopher Patrick Mullen), and a supposed antiques dealer (Richard Ruiz) peel away at what they value in life and the price that value holds.  It is alluring until the very end.

Set in 1920s Nebraska, a rustic log cabin takes center stage in the simple
surroundings.  This backdrop belies the complex web of secrets and tales woven throughout the show.

To draw out the true tale here would defeat the playwright’s intention – and ruin the fun of discovery.  Suffice it to say, all is not what it appears to be.

Peter DeLaurier rounds out the four man cast as a local historian in the 1960s. He sits in his den at home, down stage right and interjects his viewpoint forty years
after the play’s action.  His unassuming, elder point-of-view also draws us in as he talks to an unseen student who is interviewing him for a thesis about a local law legend.  His facial tics, body language, and homespun style create the character’s likeability. He makes sure we are completely at ease as he reminisces about spaghetti Westerns and heroes.

The use of black and white Western films screened on the front of the cabin reinforces a wished for simpler time when you could easily discern the good guys from the bad guys; when evil was a blatant, easy target and its demise was certain.  

Themes of honesty, deception and violence ebb and flow throughout the production, but the realization that everyone has a price sits squarely at the play’s core.  And that price is not always a dollar amount. The characters toss around their values like a collection of hot potatoes, each hoping to be the one that pushes his off on the others and have them stick. 

Michael Doherty’s sweetly scrubbed naiveté as the college age journalist Ambrose Healey offers the homespun bravado that most certainly places the audience in the Midwest.  He confidently reassures us and his cast mates early on that right is right and wrong is wrong and never the two shall meet.  Christopher Patrick
Mullen’s portrayal of quiet lawman Richard Hart counters with a somber swagger
that maintains the play’s pace at a steady cantor.

Richard Ruiz as Al Brown brings swarthy city to this back country locale and is duplicitous as he tries to convince us, his compadres, and himself of his own simple narrative.  On the sun blazoned Nebraska landscape, he’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Pete Pryor takes the directorial reigns just off last month’s reading of his authored Beautiful Boy at PLTC and I am appreciating his many theatrical talents. Graham has woven fact and fiction deftly, leaving the audience with plenty to think about well after the sun sets in Homer, Nebraska.

Mr. Hart & Mr. Brown continues through to August 19 on the Steinbright Stage at People’s Light.