Fiction

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

For Jamie Horton and John Hutton of the Denver Center Theatre Company, and two of Denver’s top flight and favorite actors to work under the Curious Theatre Company’s umbrella at the same time is not just a coup for Curious, it is a silver-lined coup.

John Hutton and Martha Harmon Pardee star in Fiction at Curious Theatre Company. Photo by Michael Ensminger

Jamie Horton is the director for the regional premiere of the Steven Dietz play Fiction, now playing at the Acoma Center through June 24.

Fiction explores the marriage between Michael and Lynn Waterman pondering the question what is fiction and what is real. How much should one person reveal to another? Is there a wanting for dead honest truth or does fiction actually aid and abet a relationship? What about secrets? Are there times when some secrets are better left as secrets?

For Denver born Dietz who now lives in Seattle, the essence of the play began with the internal question is it worse to die with a secret or to live with one?

Out of this, the characters stepped forward to tell their story. Married 20 years, having met in a small Paris café, the marriage is rock solid through loving, fighting, arguing, teasing, crying, playing, worrying, stumbling, and supporting each other.

John Hutton fills Michael’s shoes with superb attentiveness to detail with every word and every phrase. Hutton gives Michael a sense of realness flaunting and hiding every emotion a human being floats his life upon. He’s tender, loving, fearful, tempted, insecure, successful, uncertain, strong, weak, proud, and at times wobbly. Hutton’s expertise brings Michael vividly to life defining every wart along the way.

Martha Harmon Pardee, as Linda holds her own with the same qualities of a successful writer, and teacher who thoroughly enjoys the verbal repartee Michael throws at her. Strong, vulnerable, forceful, unglued, peaceful, loving, angry Pardee stands Linda shoulder to shoulder with Hutton’s Michael.

After 20 years, Linda is diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor, and is told she has three weeks to live. She wants Michael to read her diaries after she is gone, and wants to read his while there is still time.

Dairies hold the most personal thoughts combining fact and fiction designed to be read only by the person who wrote them. Because of that, fact and fiction find themselves in a cozy position to snuggle in an intertwining bed of words. Who cares? No one unless time is of the essence as is the case with Michael and Linda.

On a set designed by Charles Dean Packard with tilted platforms, specified areas, and large waves of cloth that fold themselves neatly across each other as a back drop, looking strange at first glimpse, fits itself nicely into the hop scotching time-space melding as though this is the one set that meets the requirements of Fiction.

Into his diary, Michael introduces another woman. Abby Drake beautifully played by Karen Slack. Karen portrays Abby as a self-contained unit of all business hiding and protecting every emotion that is until she has reason to fall apart. In Abby’s self-contained unit, Slack is a marvel to watch throughout the interaction.

Both Michael and Linda have met Abby at different times with two vastly different experiences. Connected with the Drake Colony, a writer’s retreat, Abby greets the writers, presents them with the handbook outlining the rules and expectations of the colony.

Linda’s first novel At the Cape based on her life has already becomes a huge success, using it in the basis of her lectures. In a writer’s slump, Michael takes time to concentrate on his writing at the colony, although he spends a great deal of time inventing and re-inventing Abby.

Dietz endows his characters with intelligent brilliant one-liners: “Writers don’t want to write,” Michael tells Abby, “they just want to be written.” “The lies begin when we lift the pen.” Providing lots of laughs from recognition. With the lines flowing poignantly back and forth sharpened with wit, it becomes apparent no one really talks like this. Perhaps momentarily but not all of the time as do Michael, Linda and Abby. The problem with this production, however, is Hutton, Pardee, and Slack embrace the intellectual witticisms so well, endearing them to the characters; the pointed comments seem all too natural, leaving one to wonder why more conversations don’t crackle with the same spitfire batting practice.

Boundaries are voluntarily removed between the characters and blatantly destroyed as conflict and confusion weave into the mesh. The play bounces across time frames as quickly and easily as a baseball takes on its own life in left field. Because of the quick change in time and space, there is a certain degree of stylization that works quite well in this production. The direction is so precise there is never any question about when and where the characters appear. This quick-change status offers opportunity for several surprising twists and turns coming so abruptly they can’t be predicted. In this particular play, this is a strong point to its credit.

There are numerous reasons to see this production that closes the eighth season for Curious. First of all, the cast with the colorful portraits painted of the characters, second, because of Dietz’ brilliant writing, third, because of the engaging humor, and fourth because of the subtle insightful questions tantalizing a tease, and fifth, Fiction is an outstanding production from lights down to lights up.