Too hot to handle? Carney, Jones take community theater to next level

WASILLA — Walk into a show in Anytown, USA and chances are good you’ll be blown away by just how talented your fellow townspeople, churchgoers, neighbors and friends really are. Community theater’s not making anyone rich or famous, but in this cozy confine, you’d swear they’re ready for the silver screen.

One of the most remarkable examples of this you’ll see anywhere wraps up the third of three weekend sets Friday, Saturday and Sunday at Valley Performing Arts in Wasilla, where Ted Carney, as George, and Tracey Jones, as Martha, drive three hours of drama as uncomfortable as it is irresistible in Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

“For people in the community, there’s not a lot of shows with this much raw emotion and intense content, and I think that’s really refreshing to them,” Jones said. “To be able to spend three hours and walk away emotionally drained — where do you find that?”

Jones’ portrayal of Martha, a loud, shrewish, vulgar wife of an underachieving college professor, goes right at the limits of what her throaty, scratchy, voice can belt out. It’s a wonder she’s made it through six shows in two weeks with her voice still in tact.

“It’s a rough, strong voice I have — I love it,” Jones said. “It’s a natural thing. I work on it — always working on it. It’s a lower voice but it’s very strong and it can take a lot.”

Carney’s ears take the brunt of that voice for most of the three-act, three-hour play. The audience cringes with him as he tries to tamp down his urge to explode with drink after drink after drink. Of course, as drink tends to do, it only serves to build up the ferocity of the explosion when his top finally blows.

“I just try to be as natural as I can and play the character,” said Carney, a 17-year veteran of VPA. “I can get carried away, especially on Sunday, I slapped the s—t out of her. But I care about her; I know she can handle it. She wants me to make it real, so we do.”

Carney believes that in spite of the harsh invective, cruel jokes, and lewd innuendos George and Martha lob at one another — deep down, theirs is a love story shrouded in domestic violence.

“They love each other to death, but they tear each other apart, too,” Carney said. “Some relationships are that way, and in their case it’s for obvious reasons, but you don’t know that until the very end.”

Carney said Tennessee Williams’ “Night of the Iguana” is the only play he’s done that comes any where near this level of intensity. He said it took him a while to ease into the role of George, and the transformation didn’t really take until Jones came on board late in the process.

Fresh off directing VPA’s season-opener, “Harvey”, Jones wanted to audition for the role of Martha, but knew she wouldn’t have time. But when the original lead dropped out, director Grant Olson knew where to turn.

“I finished Harvey on Sunday and Grant called me two days later and said, ‘I heard you’re pretty good at memorizing lines. Two weeks?” she said. “I said, ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ It’s an amazing play, amazing content. I love dramatic roles. With comedies I will laugh the whole time through and break character. Here, I can make people cry.”

Due to either the length of the play, or perhaps the somewhat risqué and violent material, it’s not been uncommon for Wasilla audience members to leave early.

But all in all, Jones and Carney say the response has been enormously favorable.

“I think it caters to an older male audience,” he said. “I see the older women watch it and they enjoy it, but the men — it really hits them hard. They have tears streaming down their face… It did take me a long time to get into this character. To feel the way you would feel if you were this character, I tear up when I think about it.”

Jones, who moved to Alaska from Utah just over a year ago, said her over-the-top portrayal made famous by Elizabeth Taylor in the movie version, only works because Carney can receive it so well.

“It’s refreshing to act one on one with such intent content, not worried about the energy coming out of the other end,” she said. “You don’t want to do this if your playing partner isn’t going to bring it.”

Jones was scheduled to have already returned to Utah to perform with her band “The Launch”, but because of the play, pushed her plane ticket back two weeks. She vows she’ll be back, and vows to perform again someday with VPA, with whom she got her start last year in the title role of “Jane Eyre”.

“This was definitely my last for 2016, there’s a couple of projects I’m going to have to be gone for,” she said. “It depends on where work takes me, but VPA will always be part of my life… forever VPA.”