The one man play, starring Las Vegas English teacher and former Alaska resident, Taylor Hanes, is nothing short of pure, twisted, black comedy.
Hanes said “Arthur and Esther’s” 90-minute dialogue will either make you laugh, morbidly reflect on your own life, or leave you a tad bit squeamish ” but he hopes it’s all three.
 Photo courtesy of Taylor Hanes Taylor Hanes plays Arthur, as well as Esther, in the one man black comedy 'Arthur and Esther,' premiering tonight at the Red Beet Cafe in Palmer. |
Small town librarian Arthur Huey’s world is crumbling. It seems best friend Chuck’s is too. But wooing Esther dressed as a caveman and chasing her around his museum with a spear means that things do get better for Chuck.
Not so for Arthur. He lost his library which is being turned into office space. Bad enough, but when you are a direct descendant of the man who invented the Dewey Decimal Classification System, there’s a legacy at stake.
If Arthur’s wife was around, things might be okay.
But Arthur's wife is, in fact, Esther, the woman who was chased around the museum by Chuck.
Playwright Howard, a theater and playwright instructor at Fresno State University, said that when he wrote “Arthur” two years ago, friend and theater colleague Hanes immediately came to mind to play the lead character of Arthur. The younger Howard met Hanes at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas while both were enrolled in the prestigious graduate school’s theater program.
“I knew him as an actor and I knew I wanted to write a one character play,” Howard said. “He’s older, as is Arthur, and so I wanted him to be in it.”
Howard’s Arthur was created out of his curious infatuation with a profession he says many people scratch their heads at.
“I picked an occupation for the main character that had a sense of mystery to it and a librarian seemed like a good one. I’d always been curious about librarians. They’re very polite, very reserved, and don’t show much but they have this air of mystery to them. They also have a wealth of knowledge about a lot of things, so a character like that can go into all kind of areas. It seemed to make sense. Libraries are a bit strange. They give you things for free. There are not many institutions left that do that.”
Howard, who has produced a slew of minor stage hits for the past six years, said he had always wanted to write a one man show and began writing down notes in December of 2006. By April, his play was finished. Originally, Howard wrote Esther to be played by another actor, but after performing last minute at the Fringe Festival in New York in early 2007, Howard decided Hanes could play both.
“You can really go into depth with the one character and don’t have to worry about other people getting in the way,” Howard laughed. “There were difficulties at the beginning, but once it was all set up, it worked. I had written it pretty quickly, getting the first act done in a week. At first it was a one-act play and when we performed it at a festival in Fresno, it got unanimous appeal. So then I decided we could make it into a full evening of theater, so I extended it to a 90-minute, two-act play.”
A scene that garnished noticeable attention in “Arthur” was during the second act, when Arthur visits the stoop where Esther had dies, in an apparent suicide, dressed up as her. The Hitchcock-ian build-up keeps the audience guessing.
“In some ways it’s autobiographical,” Howard said. “Whenever you write, there is a piece of you in it, just more exaggerated. Taylor and I shared some things together. I’d gone through a broken relationship at one point, lost in part to devoting too much time to my writing, so that bled into this story of a librarian obsessed with his library pretty well.”
“It focuses on a guy who starts the play at his darkest hour, having to justify to the audience why he is like he is. In this he inadvertently discovers more things about himself.”
Howard said reactions to “Arthur” have varied, with prodigious laughs produced at the Cherry Lane Theater in New York, to the “not-so-much” reactions given at the Phoenix Theater in San Francisco.
“It’s a black comedy,” Howard said. “We thought San Francisco would be our best reaction, but suicide is a serious thing I suppose. He has a funny story, despite all of his troughs. He’s very charming in a way, so yeah, its very quirky.”
Taylor Hanes grew up in Anchorage and by high school was thinking more about girls and sports than a future in acting.
“I was going to UAA and I needed to take another elective, so I signed up for acting,” Hanes said. “I walked in and fell in love with it.”
Taking on each play as if it were a Broadway production, Hanes continued acting through colleges in Seattle and Tennessee, eventually settling down in Las Vegas for the past 13 years.
When Hanes and Howard began working on “Arthur and Esther,” Hanes knew he had the dubious luxury of taking over the stage on his own, also noticing he had pages of lines to rehearse.
“An actor will say lines are the least important part of a production,” he said. “I continue to spend many hours rehearsing for this one.”
Hanes said “Arthur and Esther” may seem like a melancholy production, but he pointed out it carries a jovial message.
“I think this play has many different levels,” Hanes said. “Here’s a fellow going through a mid-life crisis, the loss of his family and job, and the audience gets to see how he deals with those situations.”
“This show is about a pitiful fellow, yet it’s a poignant story at the same time because he’s likable. I think it certainly makes light of who Arthur is and the extremes he goes through to rationalize what he’s all about. It’s certainly not cut and dry, but it is very thought provoking.”
Howard doesn’t expect audiences to walk away inspired, but does hope his one man show keeps the imagination lively.
“It reads as a comedy, but obviously there are quite serious scenes involved,” Howard said. “Audiences either laugh, or don’t laugh at all. If there are funny moments, he’s anchoring for laughs. I mean, there’s not a guy in the background with a symbol or anything.”
Hanes said he anticipates a good time at both shows this weekend as he has always had a deep regard for the theater community within the Mat-Su Valley.
“This show is a deep show, a thinking person’s show,” he said. “It requires good listeners and I would hope that the audience would come away with a new appreciation for the writing of Ross Howard. He’s a brilliant person.”
Howard said he has been working on two scripts that he hopes will shape into production later this year. The first is about an English literature professor who kidnaps a student and is obsessed with Robert Browning. The other, a dark sex comedy about a painting that overpowers three generations of admirers in a very erotic way.
“It sounds crude, and it is I suppose, but I’m really poking fun of the art scene,” Howard said.
“Arthur and Esther” will premiere in Alaska at the Red Beet Cafe (320 E. Dahlia St.) in Palmer at 7 p.m. tonight, then head over to the Make-A-Scene playhouse (Meta Rose Square in downtown Wasilla) at 7 p.m. on Saturday. Tickets are $10 at the door.
Both shows are sponsored by the Valley Arts Alliance.
For more information, visit Valleyartsalliance.com.
Contact J.J. Harrier at valleylife@frontiersman.com.
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