12 • THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
ARTS
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2002
Play mixes comedy with serious message
By Donovan Atkinson
datkinson@kansan.com
Jayplaywriter
George Bernard Shaw's You Never Can Tell opens tonight at the University Theatre, continuing the season of classic comedies. The play, written in 1897, explores issues of the English class system, romance and what it means to be modern.
Shaw, known for writing serious plays with serious messages, wrote the play to demonstrate his ability to write a light, witty comedy.
"It's a good romantic comedy," said Kelly Mengelkoch, Wichita senior and cast member. Mengelkoch portrays Dolly, a character based on one of Shaw's sisters.
You Can Never Tell
George Bernard Shaw's You Never Can Tell will be performed in the Crafton-Preyer Theatre at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 22-23 and Dec. 5-7, and at 2:30 p.m. Nov. 24. The play is directed by John Staniunas, associate professor of theater and film.
You Never Can Tell is a semi-autobiographical play, with other characters based on Shaw's modern, independent mother and his alcoholic father. Their broken relationship is used to explore the roles of women in society.
Jeff Gockel, Overland Park, freshman, portraying Crampton, argues with his dentist Valentine, played by Dylan Hilpman, Lawrence, freshman. Actors rehearsed the play You Never Can Tell Wednesday night before its opening performance tonight at 7:30 in the Crafton-Preyer Theatre.
The nature of love and class are examined through Valentine, a dentist, and Gloria, Mrs. Clandon's oldest daughter.
John Nowak/Kansan
While the play contains serious messages, its focus is to entertain. That same idea is used with the direction of the play.
"It's a whimsical approach, full of life and breath," said John Staniunas, director and associate professor of theater and film.
Another part of Staniunas' direction, and the set designed by Delbert Unruh associate professor of theater and film, is his theory of the bell jar. Shaw's writings preserve images and characters like a bell jar preserves dolls on display.
"The image itself is detailed and specific in time and place. You can see who, what, where and why it exists, and, if that doll were to come to life, you can understand how it would behave." Staniunas said.
Mengelkoch said a goal of this production was to bring out the life of the characters. The University Theatre production of You Never Can Tell also features a Shaw scholar as a member of the cast. Dean Bevan, emeritus professor of English from Baker University, plays the part of the waiter in the show. Bevan, a KU alumnus, has studied Shaw's work for approximately 50 years.
Bevan is also serving as the dramaturg for the production. Dramaturgs research
and analyze play scripts, keeping the possibilities of performance in mind.
With You Never Can Tell being a popular choice in the theater world, the performance possibility is high.
"It's not stuffy English theater. It's fun and alive," Staniunas said. "It's an all around good time."
— Edited by Chris Wintering
Review
Author writes sincerely in memoir 'My Losing Season'
By Henry C. Jackson
cjackson@kansan.com
Jaylay writer
In a world where victims of abuse frequently act out in negative ways — the Menendez brothers, or the two children in Florida recently convicted of burning their father alive, for example — Pat Conroy has a novel approach to confronting his own demons. He writes about them.
Conroy is a popular author of such fiction as The Prince of Tides and Beach Music. His latest book, My Losing Season, reflects his horrendous early life with startling clarity.
The life Conroy hated was the life of a military brat. It was a migrant, loveless life that wore heavily on the shoulders of a youth looking for acceptance. Contributing to Conroy's discontent were an abusive father and a mother who rarely did more than kowtow to her marine husband.
As a young child, Conroy tells us, he had not yet discovered his gift for writing. He escaped from a life he was uncomfortable living in when he discovered basketball.
But basketball kept Conroy's misery at arms length, at least for the duration of a game or a practice. Conroy's father was a miserable man whose abuse was both physical — in one horrifyingly vivid scene he pummels his son until he is bleeding because, although he scored 40 points, he did not play defense to his father's standards — and verbal. At one point Conroy's father cheers against him, yelling "Take out Conroy," as his son plays in a state playoff game.
Remarkably, Conroy perseveres despite his father's mental and physical attacks, becoming an all-state basketball player in South Carolina and receiving an invitation to walk on to The Citadel's basketball team in the early '60s. A military college in Charleston, S.C., The Citadel is known for its rigid lifestyle and for having particularly difficult hazing for plebes. It is Conroy's senior year at The Citadel, on a team languidly struggling for the mediocrity of a .500 record with a coach who eerily resembles Conroy's father, that forms the foundation of My Losing Season.
Conroy is a wordsmith, and as he describes his 12-year plus love affair with
basketball it's hard not to be swept away. The inanities of life such as locker room chatter, schoolwork and play-by-play accounts of dozens of basketball games played decades ago come alive as they combine with Conroy's erudite prose.
Conroy's writing is brutally honest. Early in the book, he describes the aftermath of an altercation with his father: "I ate in my room and caught up with my homework and wondered if a son ever hated a father as much as I hated mine." Sentences like this are rare in My Losing Season, because, as writers go, Conroy is not a whiner. When these sentences do come, they pack a heavy punch and provide the reader with an up-close-and-personal look into Conroy's tormented life.
Still, My Losing Season has its faults. It takes awhile to gather steam, and it might be difficult for someone who does not have an affinity for basketball to truly appreciate Conroy's love for the game. His liberal use of sports jargon could intimidate readers who aren't knowledgeable of the game.
My Losing Season triumphs, however, if for no other reason than that it bucks the
trend of sappy memoirs. Too often, similar books give the reader little more than a 400-page essay on why you should feel sorry for the author. That is not the case here, where Conroy excels as he describes his survival of first an abusive family life and then a demoralizing military college. The literary world should be glad Conroy survived his horrific pre-writing life. Whi'e it has clearly scarred the author, it has also helped produce some of the most brilliant literature of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. My Losing Season is a fine addition to that collection.
— Edited by Katie Teske