A Nautical Mystery Due at CalRep

“Clearly there was a cover-up,” said Howard Burman. Watergate? Iran-Contra? HUD? The battleship Iowa? Close. The subject is naval, but it goes back to an event in 1842, the hangings of three teen-age sailors aboard the U.S. man o’ war Somers. Burman (artistic director of the 6-month-old CalRep) has dramatized the event in his new play, “Article XXIV,” opening Friday at Cal State Long Beach.

“I’m a sailor, and I was in a bookstore looking at books on sailing when I came across this story,” said Burman, who’s also chairman of the college’s theater department. “There seemed to be something missing.” Wading through hundreds of pages of transcripts in the New York Library’s Special Collections, he was further intrigued. The resulting 10-character mystery is a mix of fact, conjecture and non-realistic theatrics.

Facts: the Somers set sail in September 1842 for Africa, carrying 120 teen-age sailors on a training mission. On its return to New York in December, Capt. McKenzie announced that he had hanged three of the boys--the eldest was 17--for suspected mutiny.

“Suspected mutiny!,” Burman repeated. “It was the only time in (U.S. naval) history that anybody had been hanged in peacetime. But what was this mutiny? Why did he hang the three boys? When he got back, why did all the men on board defend him? What happened ?”

THEATER BUZZ: If you’ve gotten a wave of deja vu glancing at ads for Long Beach Civic Light Opera’s production of “Follies” (opening March 1 at the Terrace Theater), you’re right. Artist David Edward Byrd is the one who’s responsible for LBCLO’s new “Follies’ ” logo also created the similar trademark visage that accompanied the musical’s 1971 Broadway staging.

“When I read that (the theater was) doing ‘Follies,’ I wrote them a note saying that I was here and would love to do a new version,” said Byrd, who’ll recreate another of his 20-year old logos later this season when LBCLO tackles “Jesus Christ Superstar.” Why tamper with success? “The first one was so famous, it’s kind of hard to follow it up,” Byrd admitted. “I did what I consider to be a companion piece--but also hoping to capture a little more of the dark side of the show.”

CRITICAL CROSSFIRE: “The Piano Lesson,” August Wilson’s tale of a family heirloom and the people whose lives it touches, is currently playing at the Doolittle Theatre. Lloyd Richards directs.

Said The Times’ Sylvie Drake: “(Wilson) has an underlying musicality, a poet’s sense of myth and--especially in ‘Joe Turner’ and ‘Piano Lesson’--a window on to a much larger cultural blueprint . . . These plays are written in the bones. They cast spells. They draw you into their mysteries.”

In the L.A. Weekly, Jan Breslauer disagreed: “The spit-and-polish veneer doesn’t change the fact that this is a meat loaf of a play, riddled with clunky exposition, redundancies and dialogue intended to show off Wilson’s way with a phrase rather than add depth to his characterizations or to advance the action.”

But the Weekly’s Maryl Jo Fox had a different impression: “Wilson’s writing . . . has never seemed so rich, exuberant, generous or finally cathartic.”

From Daryl H. Miller in the Daily News: “Wilson makes effective use of all of the elements available to a storyteller, from symbols and myths to humor and music. He uses language especially well, certain dialogue that sounds true-to-life yet resonates with the poetry of the human spirit.”

Drama-Logue’s Richard Scaffidi wrote: “Eight of eight roles are unique and fully drawn; one of them, Boy Willie, is downright towering. At least it is in the hands of powerful Charles S. Dutton, who rips and roars through the role with an astonishing combination of muscle and grace.”