The Illustrious Bradbury
Gayle Bartos-Pool
February 23, 2009
Directed by David Smith-English from material written and adapted by Mr. Bradbury, The Illustrated Bradbury made its Los Angeles Premiere with a small, multifaceted cast that captured characters ranging from a disgruntled man who confessed to a murder, a family of four escaping the Depression, an Irish bloke who discovered a unique form of exercise, to an old woman who refuses to give up the ghost. And there were more roles in this presentation: a Cuban, a private eye, a wily inventor, and one particular character drove home the most famous soliloquy from Bradbury´s Fahrenheit 451.
The actor…yes actor, who captured all these magnificently crafted characters, was the brilliant thespian, Tobias Andersen, who did this one-man show with such ease and style, you felt that the stage was crowded with all these talented players doing their parts flawlessly.
Actually there was another character on stage. Throughout the telling of these nine tales, there was the constant, steady voice and heartbeat of Ray Bradbury, for without his words, all there would have been was an empty stage.
Tobias Andersen formed a life-long friendship with Mr. Bradbury after having been the first actor to tackle the pivotal role of Fire Captain Beatty in the original production of Fahrenheit 451 at the Colony Theatre in L.A. in 1977.
The nine stories in the production are woven together by a human tapestry, The Illustrated Man, who is encountered by the narrator. The idea, taken from Bradbury´s celebrated novel of the same name, has a young man meet this tattooed marvel along a country road and he is astonished by the elaborate paintings undulating on the man´s flesh. The Illustrated Man considers himself cursed, not able to find work due to these paintings that come to life on his very skin. As the man falls asleep, the stories begin.
The first tale, "The Murderer," written in 1953, will make you think Bradbury had access to a Time Machine when he wrote it. The story centers around a man who confesses to killing his telephone. He cries, "Phones change the meanings of words." And worst of all, when it rings, that means there is someone on the other end. The man wished for a revolution where in people would stop "being in touch." And perhaps most prescient of all, he rails against the Medusa who freezes people every night. Hint: he shot his TV.
"The Foghorn" tells of a lighthouse keeper who notices the churning sea as a monster rises out of the "deeps" in answer to the plaintive call of the foghorn that sounds as melancholy as "an empty house." Then the beast answers back in the fog. It´s love.
A Depression Era story called "The Inspired Chicken Motel" finds a family crossing the country in search of work. They stop at a motel and are greeted by the proprietor who listens to their woes that are like seventeen million others who are out of work, and then shows them her treasures. One of her hens, the brightest and most wonderful of all those dumb creatures, laid two special eggs. One bears the image of a skull, the other an inscription: Rest in Peace – Prosperity is Near. Doom or Optimism awaits you. It´s your choice.
"The Anthem Sprinter" is a light-hearted story about an Irishman who created a game out of who can exit the local cinema fastest after the final scene is flashed on the screen and the national anthem is played.
The absolutely delightful story, "There Was an Old Woman" finds a spinster sitting in her living room, knitting, talking to a young man with a six-foot long wicker basket. The woman realizes what that basket is for and defies the man to approach her. She has remained a single lady and avoided people in general just to stave off having to discuss death in any manner. She won´t listen to the radio or hear talk of war. But she is snatched when she falls asleep. She walks off the stage, angry that she had to die.
Then there was an intermission.
When the play resumed, the "old woman" comes back, this time loaded for bear. She confronts the mortician and threatens to haunt him for 200 years if she isn´t given back her body. The end of the story is to die for…
Another story, "A Graveyard for Lunatics," finds an actor who won fame playing Christ on film and who parlayed that celebrity into a rather scandalous, shallow life, returns to Hollywood to once more play a character far above his station.
A classic film noir story with a humorous twist finds a Private Detective named Ray (or Raymundo as he´s called down at the Cuba Libre Bar in Havana) searching for a notorious parrot. This bird was a close confidant of Papa Hemingway. Rumor has it, Papa dictated his last story to the bird. Oily Shelly Cappone (who reminded me of Truman Capote) kidnapped the bird and will sell it to the highest bidder. Raymundo tracks down both bird and bad guy and uses a clever ruse to disguise the bird and spirit it away.
Two selections from Fahrenheit 451 are presented, one from Professor Faber as he tells about the lack of quality in writing: quality of information, quality of time to digest the meaning, and the innate right of people to determine what they want to read, not to have it dictated to them.
The longer selection came from Fire Chief Beatty who decries the right of every group of people who demand their rights supersede those of everyone else, thus crushing all people into equality of sameness. That section alone explains why Fahrenheit will live through the ages.
The last two selections feature an inventor who lives in a time of great despair and who gives people hope by telling them he has traveled into the future in a homemade time travel machine and tells everyone the future is wonderful (The Toynbee Convector), and a story taken from "The Illustrated Man" called "The Fire Balloons" which has space travelers encountering beings who have shed their temporal bodies and have achieved immortality by realizing each person is a temple unto himself.
One touching moment in the presentation was during "The Foghorn." Tobias Andersen, in the persona of the lighthouse keeper, was commenting on the cry of the mysterious beast from the sea and the plaintiff foghorn, when I heard a loud sigh from the audience. Mr. Bradbury was in attendance and he was reacting to the sound of his own words being delivered with such passion from the stage. It was beautiful.
The play runs through Sunday, March 8, 2009, at the Fremont Centre Theatre located at 1000 Fremont Ave. (at El Centro) in South Pasadena, CA
For Reservations call: (323) 960-4429 or visit www.plays411.com/bradbury. Tickets range between $20 for adults, $15 seniors, $10 students.
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