Good Nights, Good Shepard

Two current productions provide local theatergoers with vastly different but equally worthy fare.

For sheer theatricality, you'd be hard-pressed to find a finer experience than Arabian Nights, mounted collaboratively by Actors Bridge Ensemble and Belmont University. What a smaller nonprofit theater company like ABE might lack in the way of technical budget can be nicely rectified with an institutional connection. In this case, the Troutt Theater stage is graced with a fabulous set design by Paul Gattrell, featuring a front thrust, impressive ribboned pillars and ornate angular platforms. The 16 players are elegantly fitted into June Kingsbury's sumptuous, colorful costumes, and it's all glitteringly lit by Richard K. Davis.

Davis' backlighting alone—shifting shades of aquamarine and magenta, plus a glorious crescent moon—certainly lends the appropriate exotic aura to Mary Zimmerman's adaptation of ancient Middle Eastern folk tales. The play, under the adroit direction of Bill Feehely, is enjoyable in the main, with a cast that features three veteran Nashville actors—Jon Royal, John Silvestro and Tom Mason—plus 13 uniformly poised Belmont students.

The Arabian Nights canon includes familiar tales such as "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" and "Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp," but Zimmerman gathers other, lesser known fables. The framing device concerns the bitter caliph Sharyar, who, since discovering one of his wives in flagrante delicto with a slave, takes new wives and visits his wrath on each by killing them. Scheherezade is his latest spouse, but she wins a reprieve and forestalls her death with her magical powers of storytelling. The stories then unfold as lecherous, clownish or officious men engage with lovely, innocent or clever ladies, in scenarios that explore deceit, the course of true love, arranged marriages, the precepts of Islam, a battle of wits and more. Plus there's one big Act 2 fart joke that is successfully navigated with self-aware silliness.

In the modern age of terrorism, it's hard to ignore the depiction of virulently misogynistic Arab males and the historically subservient place of women in that culture. Yet the females here prove their mettle throughout, and it is Scheherezade's verbal skills that ultimately melt Sharyar's hardened heart.

Each new narrated fable brings a sameness in general performance style that grows a mite wearying. Nevertheless, despite the occasional callow line-reading, the students acquit themselves with professional aplomb, notably Daniella Mason (as Scheherezade), Liz Young, Nicole Pearce, Max Desir, Will Butler and Michael Rosenbaum.

The original music by Pru Clearwater is uncommonly atmospheric, featuring various stringed instruments including sitar and African drums along with some interesting choral textures. Mallory Gleason's sensual choreography is also commendable.

A million miles from the world of Sinbad the Sailor is the world of playwright Sam Shepard, whose True West receives a respectable staging at People's Branch Theatre under the directorial guidance of Ross Brooks.

Among the cast of four, Eric Pasto-Crosby snags the juiciest role—that of Lee, the eldest of two brothers who psychically (and later physically) battle it out in their mother's kitchen while she's away on a bus trip to Alaska.

Little brother Austin, played with credible control by Chuck Long, is a screenwriter with an Ivy League background. While he works on his latest draft, Lee—a PBR-swilling, articulate loser—hovers about, serving up distracting inquiries, veiled threats and general unpleasantness, all apparently rooted in jealousy.

Then a producer arrives to confer with Austin, whereupon Lee impresses him with a story idea of his own, thus undermining Austin's project. This role reversal advances deeper into the action, and the brothers' contentious verbal sparring proves revealing about themselves and their family—including their destitute father, who resides somewhere in the desert. Then Austin starts to drink heavily, and Lee pounds at the typewriter until he literally pounds it in frustration.

Pasto-Crosby successfully effects a subcutaneous explosiveness without which the play would falter. His smoldering bully is consciously and cannily crafted, and Long balances him well as his essentially polar opposite. There are talky patches that risk tedium, but otherwise the duo mount those hurdles and successfully make it to the Mexican standoff conclusion.

John Mauldin offers an honest reading as the producer, though he presents a less self-assured or flamboyant Hollywood persona than we might have anticipated. Cinda McCain makes a late entrance as the self-absorbed mother, getting off some funny one-liners.

Shepard's typically offbeat cultural references are in evidence (Lee Trevino, the film Lonely Are the Brave, etc.), and there are plenty of memorable ripostes that ring true to the author's reputation for satirizing the American mind-set. The good news is that, on balance, True West—oft-touted as a landmark work—still holds up pretty well.