The Collegian

Issue date: 4/16/09 Section: Arts

Actors stand beneath a magritte-inspired set during a dress-rehersal of the show. The show's first production in 1921 inspired the entire audience to walk out.

Characters and actors search for reality and existence in Luigi Pirandello's "Six Characters in Search of an Author," and director Natalie Scarlett, a senior, said she hopes audiences will leave her production asking questions, too.

When it was first staged in Italy in 1921, the audience walked out in protest. Its themes and characters remain controversial even today. It's scandalous and weird. It's messy and it doesn't resolve. But that's why it's powerful: the audience must ask and answer the questions.

The play centers around a rehearsing theater troupe interrupted by six characters who want their story written. The action hinges on the actors and characters as they tease out their relationship to each other and to the story: Which is more real, the characters or the actors? What is illusion and what is reality?

The curtain rises on a rehearsal - groups of actors milling around, stretching and warming up. Stage manager John Scribner scurries about the stage, clipboard in hand, checking on actors and set pieces.

It seems a normal play rehearsal is just beginning, when a family in striking 1920s period costume shows up, silhouetted against a 16-foot cut-out of a man wearing a bowler hat. Their grey-and-black-toned clothes, their affected personas, even their accents and body language show they don't belong.

The set looks like a 1950s Formica counter-top pattern with other sets added on top of it. When the characters lose themselves in a re-enactment of their story, the lights and music swell. The twilight-zone-esque interludes contrast perfectly with the flip of the switch.

The characters say they're not acting. They say the scene is real. Yet the lighting and the music make it feel like it's just another play within a play. Or is it?

When the stage lights go back on, the music dies down and the actors and director get involved again. Senior Rob Ogden's music composition complements the scenes perfectly, adding another aspect of the surreal and dramatic to the characters' narrative.

The play is full of philosophical questions of the validity of reality and lots of not-so-subtle digs at the art of theater and acting itself. Even the distinction between characters and actors is confusing, because the actors are merely stereotypes of actors themselves.

Scarlett darkens the relationship between father, played by junior Christian Campbell, and daughter, played by senior Betsy Stone, in this story of predator and victim - nothing is quite as innocent as one might hope.

Stone is at times in a show of her own, with her caustic laugh and aggressive body language. Campbell is resolute and brings a guilty dignity to his scenes with Stone that makes the tension between them tangible and even excruciating.

Accompanied by the hauntingly aloof son played by freshman Brian Thomas and riveting Italian Madam Pace played by junior Kate Jones, the family of characters reveal piece after piece of their story, opening up new questions with every glimpse into their lives.

In style and personality, the characters are more real than the actors in the play. With a few exceptions, notably sophomore Kirsty Sadler and Associate Professor of Theater James Brandon, the actors portray less pizzazz and dimension than their counterparts.

The stereotype of Sadler's diva actress interjects the play with needed humor and Brandon's character's brusque directing style ties the play together.

"Six Charcters" is troublingly ambiguous. The actors and audience are left to understand the characters on their own. The omnipresent, unwieldy 22-member cast also adds to the confusion on stage, but the question of where the line between illusion and truth lies is worth asking.

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