Shane the new co-production between the Guthrie Theater and the Cincinnati Playhouse is the final play in the Guthrie’s 60th anniversary season. On paper it must have seemed like an ideal way to end the season with a bang. Unfortunately, the reality is a but more muted, like the six shooter was fitted with a silencer. A good idea bolstered by a great cast but handicapped by a script that is far too didactic and some directorial choices that alienate the audience. With all the fantastic theater in the Twin Cities it’s hard to recommend Shane, though it does have it’s good points. One of those actually is the exception to my main problem with the script. At the beginning of the performance there is what has come to be the standard land acknowledgement statement. What should have been the first step in a larger address of the historical injustice has become something that we almost stop hearing, like the safety instructions on an airplane. Within the play the characters actually discuss and correct some of the historical inaccuracies regarding the treatment of the indigenous people. That was a refreshing and effective moment that felt like knowledge being imparted to the characters and the audience.
I’m a fan of playwright Karen Zacarias, both her Native Gardens which was produced as part of Daleko Arts final season and The Book Club Play which was part of Theatre In The Round Players perfect season this year, were highly recommended. For this adaptation, Zacarias set aside the famous Alan Ladd starring film adaptation from 1953 that adapted the novel by Jack Schaefer. The correction to a more racially and culturally accurate adaptation is a welcome one. Unfortunately, Zacarias doesn’t trust those changes and the audience’s ability to make the connections, and uses the dialogue to drive home points that we’ve already grasped. The play runs 90 minutes with no intermission, which is a wonderful phrase in the theater. The plot and the runtime should make for a lean little western about a cattle baron trying to force homesteaders off their land. The title character of Shane is a mysterious man passing through, who upon meeting the Starrett family and experiencing their generosity, discovers a lifestyle that he didn’t know he longed for. When trouble comes knocking on the the Starrett family’s door, Shane decides to hang around awhile and help his new friends deal with it. The story is told in flashback by the Starrett’s son Bobby. This is another miscalculation either on the writer or the directors part. Both older Bob who is telling the story and young Bobby who is in the story are played by the same actor. It’s the technique used recently by Aaron Sorkin in his To Kill a Mockingbird adaptation, but what worked there, doesn’t work here. The difference is in the function of that choice, here it doesn’t need to be told in flashback, the commentary by the adult Bobby doesn’t add insight or humor to the story, as it did in Sorkin’s play.
Juan Arturo plays Bobby, always a difficult task for an adult to play a child and not be annoyingly childish. Arturo mostly avoids doing that, but something about the execution rather than his performance just falls flat. William DeMeritt is well cast as Shane. We sense, as does the Starrett family, that while he has been a hard man, there is a desire within him to change, to be better, to find a new way of life. When the need to fight comes, we see the vulnerability first cave him inward in resignation and then the steel creep in and the hard man he used to be is resurrected. Ricardo Chavira and Gabriela Fernandez-Coffey play Joe and Marian Starrett, they radiate goodness without being bland or one dimensional. It takes skill to make characters this well intentioned as these are interesting, but aside from Shane they were the most interesting character in the play, and I don’t mean that to say the other characters were not interesting, but to say that I really liked these characters and that was due to the sensitive and nuanced performances by Chavira and Fernandez-Coffey.
Blake Robinson’s direction was a mixed bag of creative choices, some worked, some didn’t. The opening of the play where the characters start slapping their arms and knees and stomping rhythmically, begged the question, why? It didn’t lead to anything, it felt affected and indulgent. Opening the show with an act that seems pretentious really started the show off on the wrong foot. But the unique staging of a fistfight between Shane and several other men was quite interesting. As was the staging of the final showdown. The set design by Lex Liang is cool looking but it’s also kind of pretentious. Maybe I think that the way to share this story that moved Zacarias in her youth was not to turn it into arthouse theater, but theater for the people. I write and talk alot about creating new audiences for live theater, I think it’s the single most important issue that theater companies face right now. A Western actually seems like a good way to lure some who might not normally attend the theater. Once you have them, giving them a faithful adaptation of the novel that reflects the diversity of the source material could be a powerful way to create empathy. But do it in an entertaining way, don’t get them into the theater and remind them of why they don’t go to the theater.
Shane is running through August 27th at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis for more information and to purchase tickets go to https://www.guthrietheater.org/shows-and-tickets/2022-2023-season/shane/. This is a blip in the record of the Guthrie nothing more than a missed opportunity or a near miss, they will be back beginning Sept. 9th with their 61st season which is filled with must see shows.
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