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‘Pollock’ Paints Complex Portrait of the Artist in His Final Days

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William Mesnik and Stuart Browne’s engrossing one-hour piece, “Jackson Pollock, Painting on the Edge,” at the Fremont Centre Theatre, explores the boundaries of reality in the troubled mind of this Abstract Expressionist as he confronts critics, his wife and his therapist during an interview just days before his 1956 death.

Pollock (John Harnagel) has already downed six Buds while sitting gloomily in his rustic Long Island studio-barn. It’s the first day of August and an attractive “Vassar bitch,” Esther (Cynthia Mace), arrives to interview “the dripper.” In his alcohol-excited mind, at times Pollock sees Esther as his wife or his therapist, frightening the admiring mask off the eager investigative journalist.

Beginning with voice-overs that recite contradictory evaluations of Pollock’s work, Mesnik and Browne show the fragile barrier that separates good art from bad and perhaps the relative value of critics. Using snippets from real interviews, they give us not only the irascible man who didn’t care to be labeled an Abstract Expressionist but also, ominously, a weak man with very little time left (10 days).

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Although Mesnik and Browne never clearly indicate what forces beyond alcoholism fashioned this self-destructive artist, director Donna Parish creates such complexity and texture in the characterizations of both Pollock and the various women Mace is called on to play that it doesn’t matter.

When Mace, as the reporter, reclaims her dignity and leaves, Harnagel’s Pollock gets down to work, springing like a playfully excited young boy around the corners of the canvas, totally focused on his spidery drippings while riffing off the jazz on the radio. The artistic passion is there, and we’ve gained, if not understanding, at least respect for this practitioner of what one critic called “the slosh-and-spatter school of postwar art.”

* “Jackson Pollock, Painting on the Edge,” Fremont Centre Theatre, 1000 Fremont Ave., South Pasadena. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends Aug. 2. $15. (888) 441-5979. Running time: 1 hour, 5 minutes.

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