Bakersfield Mist: A Collision of Class and Values

Bakersfield Mist
A National New Play Network 
Rolling World Premiere
A comedy-drama by Stephen Sachs, directed by Jeff Zinn
A co-production with 
Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater

New Repertory Theatre
Black Box Theater
Arsenal Center for the Arts
321 Arsenal St.
Watertown, MA 02472
(617) 923-0100
Feb. 26- extended run to March 25

Jiyoun Chang (set Design), Anne Miggins (costume Design), John Malinowski (lighting design), Nathan Leigh (sound design), and Nick Dorr and Mary Fritz (prop design) Phill Madore (stage manager)


Jackson Pollock was one of the most gifted, or crazy, artists to have emerged in the 1950s. He’s the artist who laid his huge canvases on the ground and dripped paint over them, or scrawled paint around with sticks, dry brushes, trowels, or his bare hands. Many viewers think his non-representational, abstract art is junk. His canvases hang in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. They are worth millions.

Bakersfield Mist, beginning its run at the New Repertory Theatre at the Arsenal Center for the Arts, tackles the theme of the value of art and the stature of people who judge it with the same vigor as Pollock created his paintings.For 75 minutes, the play hurtles, pauses, lurches, then settles into a satisfyingly ambiguous finale.

Maude Gutman (Paula Langton) learns that a painting she picked up at a thrift store might be an undiscovered work by Jackson Pollock.  Through fierce determination, the unemployed bartender convinces a foundation to send Lionel Percy (Ken Cheeseman), a distinguished expert from Manhattan, to come to her woebegone trailer park in Bakersfield, California, to authenticate the painting. What’s really cool is that the play is based on a true story. What’s also cool is that Langton and Cheeseman play their roles to the hilt.

With gestures, mannerisms, and facial expressions, Langton and Cheeseman are perfect foils. Tall and lean in his dark, tailored suit, Percy’s hauteur exudes New York entitlement. Gutman, in jeans she nervously hikes up during exchanges with Percy, appears mildly disheveled in her loud faux leopard skin top, likely from a thrift store, and in need of a nip of Jack Daniels.

Photo Andrew Brilliant

Gutman, whose trailer is filled with oddball items she’s collected over the years, throws F-bombs around like a trucker with attitude. Percy’s soaring rhetoric, on display as he cites his credentials to Gutman, makes it clear he’s not accustomed to being chauffeured to a shabby trailer park in the boonies to assess a painting he’s probably written off as a fake long before he enters her trailer.

Watching Percy try to find a clean place to sit for the first few minutes is hilarious. The gap in social class between these two characters is as wide as the Grand Canyon. Champagne vs. Jack Daniels.  Brie vs. Velveeta. Country vs. Bach, it’s a cultural steeplechase.

Gutman is not the crackpot that Percy first believes her to be.  As uneducated as she is, she has used her resources to learn details about Percy that he omitted in the comically self-aggrandizing resume he recites to her.

The dialogue crackles. About halfway through the 75 minute one act play, it becomes clear that the power of money is not the only driving force that motivates these two. Being “right” about the provenance of the painting is important. But so is determining the value of something you love, whether it hangs in the Met or on the dingy wall of a trailer in Bakersfield.

Percy has made one big mistake in his career as an authenticator. He doesn’t want to make another.  The stakes are higher in a trailer park. With a right call, he could become a hero. With the wrong call, he could become a laughingstock. No matter what call he makes, there will be controversy.

Gutman, all to aware of her trailer trash status, needs the painting to be authentic not so much to become rich as to ‘be somebody.’

The set design acts as a third character. Jammed with items that look like cast off yard sale stuff to outsiders, it is an extension of Maude Gutman’s personality and her value system. It isn’t a loft in SoHo but Maude can tell you where every item came from. She collects on the basis of her intuition and she trusts it. Can Percy say the same thing?

In judging whether this painting is a Pollock or a fake, Percy has to make a leap of faith, knowledge guided by intuition, that Gutman’s painting is the real deal. Can he make the leap?

There are a couple of times the jousting between the two characters lags but it’s more than compensated for by the nagging questions that still beg to be answered. What makes a piece of art valuable, and who determines that? What does ownership of a valuable piece of art say about the social class of the owner?

The uncertainties aren’t neatly resolved by the play’s end but there’s no question that Langton and Cheeseman have done a bang up job showing us a collision of class and culture.

Comments

[Ms Blossom]

Well, I'm taking a chance here by saying that perhaps Percy learned a thing or two from Maude. As the saying goes, "you can't always judge a book by it's cover".

by Ms. Blossom

[Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. aka pt at large]

It may take time, but if he's brave enough, he'll learn something from Maude that could transform his life.

[Ann Baker]

Nice review. I agree.

[Jim Petosa]

Thanks, Paul, for your email and the terrific thoughts and ideas you express about our production of BAKERSFIELD MIST. I'm delighted you and Ann were able to attend and look forward to seeing you at New Rep productions!