The concept of a foul mouth
ex-bartender living in a Bakersfield trailer park (Mobile Home Village for
those who want to be more elite) conjures comic images right away. You
think it would be the man who drinks and swears, right? WRONG. It’s Maude
Gutman, who has a face like a pixie and a mouth like a trooper and has a
painting that she believes was done by Jackson Pollock. She bought it for
$ 3.00 and for a while couldn’t give it away until the high school art
teacher suggested it might be a real Pollock. Now she has spent her time
and energy trying to authenticate it, and she has summoned Mr. Lionel
Percy from the International Foundation for Art Research to take a look
and declare it a real Jackson Pollock work.
Nick Ullett as Mr. Lionel Percy,
is the very model of modern major critic, if we may paraphrase Gilbert and
Sullivan. He is properly British, very restrained, quite serious and
fanatically dedicated to his work. Contrast that with Maude’s free
wheeling, free swinging, four letter word style and you have a combination
that is doomed from the start but lucky for the audience, erupts in
constant gushes of unrestrained laughter.
It would be easy for Percy to
look at the painting and give it a yea or a nay. But author/director Sachs
knows better. He has the gift of knowing how to milk a situation that
allows Mr. Percy and Maude to banter and dance around the issue. First
Percy tells Maude all the ground rules associated with the visit and what
she can and can't expect from him. Then she tells him how she found the
painting, bringing up some past experiences; discussions about her life,
her past job and finally after a lot of small talk the painting is brought
out. A huge canvass at least 6 feet high, which Percy scans with mild
interest, quickly giving his verdict (the audience never sees the
painting).
What follows is classic theatre.
The characters engage in all types of discussions, drinking, hurling
insults and even a threatened suicide. There is madcap slapstick, deep
introspective conversation, sexual innuendo and physical attacks, all
punctuated with super clever barbs from both sides. Their quips and
put-downs keep the frenetic pace going and the audience howling with
laughter. During their exchange Sachs allows Percy a wonderful soliloquy
about the meaning of life and its relation to art, which is one the
pillars of the show. The final upshot is perhaps expected by some - maybe
not by others, but seems to follow life fairly predictably.
