Stage Review : Walcott: He Sells Sarcasm by the Seashore

It is always interesting to see ourselves as others see us, if not necessarily always pleasant. On occasion it can even be compelling, depending on whose eyes are doing the looking. Poet/playwright Derek Walcott’s experienced eyes are doing it at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, where his “Viva Detroit” opened over the weekend. But the object of Walcott’s focus, however ambitious, remains boxed in tight two- and three-shots. Appropriate in the land of film and television, but how probing or far-ranging? Not enough for this play.

Walcott’s latest stage work takes us to a shimmering beach (designed by John Dexter, who is not to be confused with the late British director of the same name), under one of those thatched beach hotel umbrellas that shelters the kind of bar that makes tourists salivate. The place is a distinguished facsimile of Walcott’s native Caribbean island of St. Lucia, where three people come to clash. Their weapons: social position (as defined by job and education) and culture (native or imported).

We meet Pat (Gates McFadden), a commercial photographer from New York who has bought a house on the island on impulse and is determined to make it live up to her fantasy-expectations. She’s crazy about the island--the views, the azure sea, the white sand. While spending her final night at the hotel, telling the bartender, Ignacius (Moses Gunn), all about it, she is rudely interrupted by a swaggering dude named Sonny, “. . . with an ‘o.’ ”

Sonny (Robert Gossett) is the local entertainment. Some consider him a noisy amusement--the kind of colorful bauble you pick up for a night’s fun or a week’s escapade. But Sonny has his own agenda. He dreams of escaping the pristine beaches and strawberry sunsets for Detroit. Why Detroit? He likes the sound of the word, even if he knows nothing of the city. All of America is the land of opportunity--right? What difference does it make where you go? It’s sure to beat satisfying the latest round of boring tourists in exchange for paltry trinkets.

Sonny blusters his way in, misrepresenting himself to Pat as an ugly American, with cash and ignorance to throw around like the models he emulates. It’s not long before Pat’s on to him and indignation is replaced by friendship and eventually even by love. But love how true, how possible and how bilateral?

At issue: Can these two people, from widely divergent backgrounds, find lasting happiness? One earns pennies on the beach, can barely read or write and wants to make it big in the United States; the other earns big bucks, is educated but wants out of the rat race and on to the beach.

The rest of the plot is best left alone. First, Walcott chooses not to fully resolve it, allowing us to draw our own conclusions. It’s a decision that would have been more intriguing if the journey to the final cliffhanger were itself more of a cliffhanger. Second, the nothing that happens can be too easily tracked, step by sandy step. You might come up with a cosmetic digression or two, but the three protagonists--Pat the driven, Sonny the weak and Ignacius the laid-back patriarch--are pretty predictable people.

Walcott is too seasoned a writer not to provide moments that entertain us, but “Viva Detroit” is a slippery customer, curiously elusive, at once realistic and unreal. What is this strange resort hotel peopled by only three people? Who is the jumpy Ignacius, a man who can’t relate to either Pat or Sonny, whom he professes to love like a son? God? The devil?

The questions remain unanswered and the characters remain in search of the play, despite vigorous (if not enlightening) direction by Claude Purdy. No matter how hard McFadden works at displaying her feminine strengths or Gossett his vulnerability under the happy-go-lucky veneer, we never really get to know them. They are mysteries to us as much as to each other, making the indeterminate ending more frustrating than satisfying.

The temptation is to blame the production’s aloofness on the belated need to find a new cast when the original one bowed out over other commitments. But that would be too easy and unfair. The actors are working overtime not because they came aboard late but because there’s not enough there to work with. Yet. Walcott’s fundamental idea is a good one that simply hasn’t been developed enough.

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