Review: At TheatreWorks, 'Vincent' is a little too Bland Gogh Review: At TheatreWorks, 'Vincent' is a little too Bland Gogh (March 23, 2005)

By Bryan Wiggin

Almanac Theater Critic

We all think of Vincent van Gogh as cranking out those sun-soaked landscapes of southern France, those carnivorous sunflowers and bursting firmaments, and those lurid portraits of himself and others.

But Nicholas Wright's play, "Vincent in Brixton," takes us to the artist's earlier years, to the age of 20, when Vincent is not yet an artist. Instead, he works at the London branch of an art firm with which his family is affiliated.

He lodges in a house owned by Ursula Loyer, and informs her that he is in love with her daughter, Eugenie. Ursula permits him to stay only if he doesn't speak his love. Vincent agrees.

The reason for this secrecy is fellow resident Sam Plowman, an awfully nice chap who works as a decorative painter and aspires to higher things -- most immediately, a scholarship to art college. It's he and Eugenie who are the real item, which is for the best, actually, because that lets Vincent and Ursula, approaching the fact with glacial slowness, acknowledge that they are in love with each other.

That's about it for Act I.

The noisiest fireworks in the show come in the first scene of Act II. Vincent's younger sister, Anna, has come from Holland and joined the household until she finds a place as a governess. Vincent may be tactless and naive, but Anna is an unrelenting assault of speaking her mind about everybody else's business.

She announces to Ursula that Vincent is in love with Eugenie. Ursula swears she knows better. Anna then assails Eugenie for dallying with two men under one roof. She reviles all this English immorality compared with her Dutch piety -- the kind of piety that can't abide the happiness of others.

Discovering the affair between her brother and Ursula, Anna maliciously tells Ursula that Vincent has been assigned to Paris. Vincent declares he won't go. But in Scene 2, set about two years later, he returns to the home as a virtual vagrant who has decided to preach the Gospel to the poor -- having gone to Paris without even saying good-bye to Ursula.

Sam and Eugenie have two little ones, now, and in the final tableau, as all are gathered at the kitchen table, Vincent begins passionately drawing Eugenie and the baby at her breast. Ah, ha. It looks as if he will become an artist, after all.

Jacob Blumer is innocent, awkward and explosive as Vincent, but I don't think his agonies and ecstasies are extreme enough: they aren't tearing him apart as one has the impression was the case with the actual Vincent.

As Ursula, Gloria Biegler is tautly affecting as she fearfully unbuttons the passion that has been buried under 15 years of widowhood. Jessa Brie Berkner deftly covers a limited spectrum of emotions, as is apt to Eugenie, and does them all convincingly.

Kai Morrison is unfailingly affable as Sam, and his muted shock as he sees that Vincent's rough sketches have more art in them than his own polished works is very well done.

But it's Jennifer Erdmann who really turns up the heat as the officious, insufferable Anna. You really do want to punch her in the mouth.

Director Kent Nicholson maintains the leisurely pace the script requires, enlivened by those bristling clashes in the first scene of Act II.

I thought this play was rather slow and thin. However, there was some vigorous and heartfelt applause at the end. If you can endure some stretches of longueur, enlivened by a few flare-ups, with acting that is very good overall, you'll find this worth attending.
INFORMATION

"Vincent in Brixton," by Nicholas Wright, is being presented by TheatreWorks at the Lucie Stern Theatre in Palo Alto through April 3. For information, call 903-6000, or go to theatreworks.org.

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