FOOLPROOF: 'Fool for Love' sets the right tone

THEATER REVIEW: Directors hit right mood with Shepard

12:00 AM CST on Sunday, March 9, 2008
By MANUEL MENDOZA / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
 

What really happened to Eddie and May to fuel their volatile relationship? The characters in Sam Shepard's Rashomon-like Fool for Love, including the pair's two-timing father and an innocent bystander, engage in a psychological dance as they come together and pull apart in a shabby motel room on the edge of the desert.

Mr. Shepard wrote Fool during his 1980s heyday, when he regularly used the mythic American West as a metaphor. Riddled with clichés and less than revelatory, it's not his best play of the period. But theater companies keep mounting Fool because it's a good showcase for actors, and it's short and easy to stage.

The latest Dallas version is from a couple of new companies, the MET Theatre and Totally Wow Productions, which debuted last fall with another minor work, David Mamet's Oleanna.

Once again, the depth of local talent appears bottomless, with Randal Scott particularly compelling as Eddie, a cowboy who travels 2,000 miles to rekindle his love affair with half sister May (Haven Powers).

While Ms. Powers wrestles with the difficult task of making an irrational woman seem sane – she keeps retreating to the bathroom, where May keeps all her valuables – Mr. Scott gets to be cool and understated. On the rare occasion when he raises his voice, you listen.

Larry LeMaster and Bill Fountain direct with a sure hand, setting the mood with twangy, old-timey music. They also do a nice job of bringing out the play's humor.

Eventually Eddie and May's dead father, called Old Man (Ken Long), shows up to tell his side of the story. Past traumas are recounted. We learn what's behind their abandonment issues, and how the dramatic circumstances of their first meeting sparked their unconventional relationship.

Mr. Long, who gets the most poetic lines, brings gravity to the stage. His Old Man is both scary and sad. And Don Long, as May's doltish date Martin, is utterly believable. His confusion is palpable. On the other hand, Fool resolves most of its questions even if everyone isn't happy with the answers.

• Through March 29 at the Hampton-Illinois Library, 2951 S. Hampton Road. Runs 75 minutes. $10 to $15. 213-926-9772. www.foolforlovedallas.com.

From the Peoples Paper, Dallas (March 19, 2008)

A FOOL FOR OAK CLIFF

 It’s always a pleasure to see new theater companies cropping up, and especially with solid productions like Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love by MET Theatre and Totally Wow Productions. They’re using the new black box theater at the Hampton-Illinois Library to stage this complex play and ultimately mythic play about obsessive love.

Randal Scott plays Eddie, a rodeo cowboy and stuntman, who finds his lost love May (Haven Powers) in a motel somewhere in Texas. She left him at some point in the past, for reasons that don’t quite come clear at first, and he’s betrayed her with somebody May calls The Countess. May has a date that night with a local man named Martin (Don Long), with whom Eddie has an exchange that’s both hilarious and threatening. Present throughout as a one-man chorus is the Old Man (Ken Long), whose identity gradually emerges through the course of the play.

Randal Scott’s Eddie is believable from the first scene. Full of desire and rage, Eddie begins the play sitting at a table downstage left, working with his rodeo equipment, straining against a leather strap held under the legs of his chair. It’s as though he were already riding a bronco he might not be able to tame.

Haven Powers also does well, though her May — who turns out to be Eddie half-sister — doesn’t seem quite roadworn enough for the role as Shepard imagined it. Ken Long as the Old Man performs with increasing strength as the play goes on. Afterwards, I find that his monologues resonate most strongly, especially one in which he recalls calming May when she was a child as they were surrounded in a field by unknown animals. Don Long as slow Martin brings a pitch-perfect comic plainness to his role.

2951 S. Hampton Road. 213-926-9772.

— Glenn Arbery