Arts & Entertainment

Review: MTC's 'Tiny Alice' Clears Up Some of its Mysteries

Strong cast, monumental design and ominous lighting add up to an intense production.

opened this week in an intense, handsomely acted, straightforward production that helps to clear up some of the play's mysteries.

Alice is both a mystery play and a monster play, a narrative of torture, trauma and failed humanity, its three acts crafted by Albee as if they were symphonic movements with overarching crescendos and calming resolutions.

As for the mystery, John Gielgud, who had the lead role of the lay priest Julian in the 1964 premiere, claimed that there were so many layers of it he never understood what it was about. MTC Artistic Director Jasson Minadakis' careful staging helps to clarify and make the narration come clean, however, and nothing of the text is lost.

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The principal onstage mystery wraps around a trio of characters: the beautiful and wealthy Alice, her lawyer, and the butler. The plot is laid at the play's beginning in a poisonous conversation between the lawyer and a Cardinal (Richard Farrell), who happen to be former schoolmates. Through the lawyer, Miss Alice offers the Cardinal billions of dollars as long as he agrees to go along with her plan to seduce one of the lay priests in his church.

The cast for Alice is uniformly strong. Carrie Paff is the beauteous and ruthless Alice; Rod Gnapp is her mouthy, crass lawyer; Mark Anderson Phillips is a marvelously droll butler; and Andrew Hurteau handles the agony and ecstasy of the priest Julian with nobility. His is a difficult role, as he struggles to come to terms not only with deceit and betrayal, but with the conflict between an earthly God very different from the one he believes in. Hurteau never makes a false step.

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Another mysterious wrinkle is the title of the play, which refers not to Alice but to the model of a castle onstage that is a replica of the castle Miss Alice lives in. When there is a fire in the model's chapel, a fire is discovered in the castle chapel, a reference to an otherworldly scene that matches the one we see.

Scenic designer J.B.Wilson has designed a model that is more monumental and forbidding than the usual doll house, and Kurt Landisman's lighting contributes to the ominous mood. Fumiko Bielefeldt's costumes must be mentioned, too, because they describe in subtle ways the playing out of each character. Despite the playwright's insistence that Tiny Alice not be cut, it has been done successfully on other stages and could be substantially trimmed here.

Only the butler knows what he, Alice and the lawyer will do next and he is not talking, but we can guess that there will be future victims, and soon. Tiny Alice plays at Marin Theatre Company through June 26. Click here to buy tickets or call 415.388.5208 for more information.

--Bay City News Service


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