Photo By Phoenix Theatre of Indianapolis

Michael H. Smith is Delbert and Deborah Sargent is Sunny in the Phoenix Theatre of Indianapolis production of The Exonerated.

Indianapolis (Oct. 5, 2004) -- The Phoenix Theater, Indiana Repertory Theater (IRT) and Theatre on the Square (TOTS) are the Indianapolis establishments that will be of primary interest to traveling theater devotees. Traveling attractions that visit Cincinnati's Aronoff and Taft are booked into Indy's Murat. There are a dozen or more community theaters of greater and lesser quality, including one of the oldest in the country. Indianapolis Civic was founded in 1914 (www.civictheatre.org). Last June the Civic moved from its longtime home within the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) to a newly renovated, 500-seat facility ($1.9 million worth of renovation, by the way) on the campus of Marian College, located barely a mile away from IMA in Indy's north/northwest quadrant. The Civic's 2004-2005 season has already opened with the musical, Barnum, and will continue with the drama, Terra Nuva, about Scott's doomed, 1911 march to the North Pole. After that comes Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, to be followed in '05 by Smokey Joe's Café, Damn Yankees and The Foreigner.

Near both IMA and the Civic's new home is one of Indy's more unusual attractions, Crown Hill Cemetery, (www.crownhill.org) which is so large and so beautifully landscaped that it offers guided tours of celebrity graves and the hill for which it is named, which is the highest in Marion County.

Arts and Crafts
In September 2005 IMA (www.ima-art.org) will open International Arts and Crafts, an exhibition of over 300 objects representing the beginnings of the Arts and Crafts movement in Great Britain and following its progress through Europe and North America. Curated by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, it is said to be one of the largest exhibits ever to focus on Arts and Crafts. The show's only other stop in North America will be in San Francisco. More about another Arts and Crafts event a bit farther along.

And more Arts and Crafts. Meridian Park is a 16 square block enclave of Arts and Crafts architecture in the near north of Indianapolis, listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1989. On Oct. 9, 2004, the Historic Meridian Park Association is presenting a day-long series of symposia, house tours, notable speakers and a cocktail reception in one of the most notable and best maintained A&C houses, Tuckaway. For information and answers there's a Web site: www.historicmeridianpark.org.

At Indy Theaters
With The Exonerated (playing through this coming weekend at the Phoenix), Pride and Prejudice (also through this weekend at IRT) and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (opening this weekend at TOTS), all three theaters are exploding into their fall-winter schedules. TOTS founder Ron Spencer is noted for his cross, cranky, cross-dressed and, by report, hysterical portrayal of Bette Davis. In Baby Jane, which was adapted for the stage from the same novel that spawned the 1962 Robert Aldrich movie, he'll be joined by Constance Macy in the role Joan Crawford played in the movie. They'll be camping out weekends through Oct. 30.

Pride and Prejudice

IRT (www.indianarep.com, 317-635-5252), which is to Indy as the Playhouse in the Park is to Cincinnati, opened its new season with a charming and effervescent production that brings an enduring novel to the stage about as well as that difficult task can be accomplished, the novel being Jane Austen's evergreen Pride and Prejudice. Most of Miss A's amusing inventions and much of her gentle amusement at the genteel conventions of late 18th-century society are on view, as are most of her artfully drawn characters, artfully played by an able 15-member cast, five of whom double.

First among equals in the company must be Priscilla Lindsay as the forever flibberting, forever breathless Mrs. Bennet, worried mother of five marriageable daughters with nary a son-in-law in sight. Lindsay's comedic flutterings play sweetly against the bemused and amusing rock of good sense that Mark Goetzinger makes of Mr. Bennett. Eldest daughter, Lizzie, and reluctant suitor, Mr. Darcy, owe much to Mr. Shakespeare's sparring, spatting Beatrice and Benedick of Much Ado About Nothing. She's the free-speaking beacon of common sense. He's the iceberg of reserve with a volcano erupting inside. They could fall so very much in love so much sooner if only either of them could give up the pure pleasure they take from gibing at the other. And so Carey Cannon and Jason Bradley play them, as bright young things surrounding themselves with a golden glow of romance.

This new stage version of the novel, an adaptation of an older script, was devised by Irish actor-director Alan Stanford for a 2002 production at Dublin's Gate Theater. A production at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis a year or so ago sparked IRT's artistic director, Janet Allen, to slot it in as this season's opening attraction. And an excellent choice it was, as were her choices of Peter Amster to stage the piece and tech side artists Robert Koharchik (sets), Gail Brassard (costumes) and Ann Wrightson (lights). All four are IRT veterans.

Koharchik's scenic work approaches theatrical magic, capturing both the summer sunshine of the novel's mood and the sumptuous feel of an English country manse. A proscenium within a proscenium has walls muraled in the manner of Royal Academy landscapes. Behind each arch, a sliding section of parquet floor whisks on and off the furniture and set pieces needed to suggest the tale's dozen or more locales. Too bad the moving platforms rumble.

Director Amster has unified the elements into a polished production with a gleam of sweet nostalgia about it, nostalgic not so much for Austen's mannered England as for a bygone theatrical era when Broadway toasted posh productions of literate romantic comedies, and black tie and corsages were common sights among the audience.

The Exonerated

For a theater buff, seeing the same play in two separate and entirely different productions within days of each other can be a revelatory, even exhilarating experience, even if part of one or both is disappointing. Such was the case some years ago when I saw Faye Dunaway, John Voigt and Earl Holliman play A Streetcar Named Desire on a Wednesday night in Los Angeles, then one red-eye flight later saw Carrie Nye play Blanche at the Cincinnati Playhouse. Dunaway got it close to right. Voight was overwhelmed as Stanley. Too small. Too careful. Holliman was poignantly moving as Mitch. In Cincinnati, Nye was unforgivably sluttish in a Playhouse production that was about as misdirected as a play can get. Being that it's one of the dozen best American plays ever, Streetcar remained unscathed by either outing.

The Exonerated, on the other hand, is not one of the best American plays ever. Still, well staged, it can be a moving, even harrowing theatrical experience. It is in the Indy Phoenix production. And, in quite different ways, so it was in the recently closed production at Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati (ETC).

Playwrights Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen spent hundreds of hours interviewing men and women who had been unjustly convicted of capital crimes and sentenced to death. All were subsequently proved innocent and released, in one case after 22 bruising years on death row. Most found pardon and freedom through the efforts of a national group of concerned lawyers who banded themselves together in The Innocence Project. Thus far, the Project has been instrumental in freeing more than 160 people -- usually without apology for the wrong or recompense for lost time from the courts, the prosecutors who convicted them unjustly or the state.

From the wealth of stories they gathered, the playwrights selected seven frightening tales of miscarried justice, such as a black horse trainer found guilty of raping and murdering a white woman, a man convicted of murdering his parents, a distraught woman accused of killing two cops when she was only trying to protect her children from the real killer and four more.

The script they created is more a choric reading than a play. It keeps all 10 people on stage throughout its 95 intermission-less minutes. Mostly the characters speak directly to the audience, telling their horrifying tales of careless defense and law-breaking law officers of the law. At times related characters, husbands and wives, interact. At other times actors assume different personas, usually court and law enforcement officials, as the former prisoners relive moments from their pasts.

Directing at ETC, Lynn Myers chose to have her actors seated on stage when the audience was admitted to the theater. Two rows of four chairs, plus a rear row of two. Each chair sat on its own separate, raised platform. Each actor remained isolated by space and shafts of light. Thus each character remained imprisoned, even after release. The impact was more cerebral than visceral, more contemplative and calmly horrifying. (Production previously reviewed in CityBeat.)

Carey Cannon and Krys Ptasinski with Priscilla Lindsay (on couch) in Indiana Repertory Theatre's production of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

Directing at The Phoenix (www.phoenixtheatre.org, 317-635-PLAY) Bryan Fonseca chose a more mobile, emotional approach to the material. In an opening blackout, nine of the 10 performers file on and sit in a row of light-colored, stool-high arm chairs placed along the front edge of the stage in an otherwise pitch black environment. Lights up, actors and audience are thrown into close, confrontational positions and something like an assault begins.

Each speaker is isolated from the others when speaking and addresses the audience, thus narrowing and personalizing the confrontation. Husband-and-wife pairs are seated side-by-side and turn to address each other. Actors temporarily assuming the roles of lawyers and officials move behind the black scrim backdrop where they are backlit into silhouettes that loom menacingly over the seated speakers nearer at hand. The effect is powerful.

Most notable among a fairly balanced cast of players are Deborah Sargent as the young mother victimized by a maniacal rat who blames her for murders he committed, Matthew Officer, as the black horse trainer railroaded by racist police and an 11/12ths white jury, and Michael Shelton (recently on The Phoenix stage as player/narrator Kippy in Take Me Out) as a laconic Texan who spends 22 of his 45 years on death row for a murder he didn't commit.

Phoenix founder Fonseca, who also designed and lit the production, pitched his storytelling for visceral effect, taking his shots at the heart as much as at the mind, asking no quarter but begging no sentimental response.

In their different ways, both the Cincinnati and Indianapolis productions of The Exonerated play as accusations of complacency on the part of the public -- as played by each successive audience. ©