The Credeaux Canvas

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

What a breath of fresh air.

Jason Lee Burnside as Winston and Stephanie Lynn Prugh as Amelia in the Colorado premiere of The Credeaux Canvas.

No Santa Claus. No Jingle Bells, brightly lit Christmas Tree, or halls decked out in Holiday cheer.

Fraught with humor, escaping silly jokes, and slapstick Pratt falls, a new theatre company bows in splendor with its inaugural production of Keith Bunin’s thought-provoking play The Credeaux Canvas. Founders, Stephanie Lynn Prugh and Karla Puskas introduce Denver to Identity Theatre Company currently gracing the stage at the Phoenix Theatre. If The Credeaux Canvas is a sound representation of their expertise, this is a theatre company to keep an eye on, demanding attention.

The one disheartening aspect is this extraordinarily well done play has only been granted a three week run. Standing up against overwhelming competition, and only one long weekend left to play, Identity Theatre Company needs to be encouraged to remount this play after the Holidays. It demands and deserves a wider audience than three weekends can provide.

Director Bernie Cardell brings the best out of his four top-notch actors to present a mind-probing experience on the realities of life for twenty-somethings watching their dream bubbles pop in front of them.

Set designer Peggy Morgan Stenmark dressed the set to realistically resemble a cluttered attic apartment on East 10th Street in New York City. For the artist who lives there, Winston (Jason Lee Burnside), the skylight provides just the right light he needs for his painting. Working on his Masters Degree, he has a growing awareness his penchant for copying the work of great or even obscure artists shines over against his own creations. During a trip to Paris, he discovered the ambiguous French painter, Jean Paul Credeaux. Only a handful of his paintings exist. Credeaux fed his gambling hunger with his paintings as payment. Even though he has a piece to finish for his degree, Winston absorbs himself with Credeaux’s technique, busying himself by attempting to copy a Credeaux piece. Burnside diligently provides Winston with exuberance for his interest in the details of the art world. Winston’s expertise lies snugly wrapped in paint and canvas rather than relating directly to other people. It matters little to him the apartment is cluttered with paints, and easels, and doesn’t have a kitchen sink. So the dishes have to be washed in the bathtub. That’s a minor technicality. What matters most: the skylight gives him what he needs.

Jamie (Lance Beilstein), Winston’s roommate, peddles his untamed enthusiasm as a real estate agent, although that isn’t where he lives. Emotionally fragile, Jamie drives himself with an over abundance of positive reinforcement toward his girlfriend, Amelia (Prugh) who he reiterates frequently as being the most beautiful girl in the world. He thinks Winston is the most amazing artist he has ever seen. Beilstein technically carves Jamie into a bubbling flibberty gibbet hiding his once upon a time suicide attempt, the pain of losing his mother early in his young life, the remarriage of his father, his father’s death, and discovering at the reading of the will he has been cut out of his father’s estate completely. Beilstein ties the emotionally taunt strings together with an over abundance of taped energetic cheerfulness.

Amelia dreams of being a singer, but at 25 she realizes she spends more time waiting tables then she does singing. Part of her recognizes her dream bubble has begun to dissipate. Part of her, half-heartedly, hangs onto her bubble. Having slept over with Jamie several nights, she wakes early for the opportunity to meet Winston eagerly painting through the night.

Humor sneaks up on the characters frequently, but it isn’t humor that says “look, isn’t this funny?” It’s humor caught in awkward moments such as when Amelia and Winston agree it is time they get to know each other, and they sit and stare in silence because neither of them know how to break the ice. It’s humor that travels down the emotional spear when it’s a choice to laugh or cry, and the characters decide it is far better to laugh. Those moments hide behind every corner in the conversation.

Desperate moments call for desperate measures. Without missing a beat or allowing his disappointment squeak into reality, Jamie has a plan to get money from his father, to get revenge, laughing all the way. So it involves fraud, why should he care? It means Amalia posing in the nude for a fraudulent painting by Winston. It means Winston copying a Credeaux painting, and selling it to Tess, (Betsy Grisard) an art dealer who made several art deals with Jamie’s father. This appeals to Winston’s artistic ego, and to Amelia’s reticent wanting to know and be known. Her naked vulnerability aches for attention getting more than what she bargained for.

Grisard wraps Tess up into a tightly knit motor mouth busy with words going nowhere, even when she explodes into the apartment after walking up five flights of stairs in heels. Slightly eccentric, obviously man hungry, she wears frivolity in her eyes and on her breasts. When it comes to art, she knows technique. She knows there is always a secret between the painter and his subject. Eccentric frivolity slides out of sight when her eagle eyes identify nuances imbedded in brush strokes. Behind her back Jamie and Winston can hardly control their excitement for having fooled her when truth literally crashes through the door into her face. The business side of Tess emerges and she flatly announces, “The viewing is over.”

The final scene, four years later, is almost anti-climatic, and cruelly anticipated between Winston and Amelia. Unrealized dreams provoke sell-outs. Prugh paints a vivid portrait of Amelia in juxtaposition to Winston’s once upon a time fraudulent painting.

Bunin’s dialogue with these four characters comes easily with simplistic brilliance. He understands his characters, and perhaps has been there. The actors wear the dialogue with truth and honesty.

As an inaugural production for Identity Theatre, this show should not go unheeded. If you can’t make any of the three remaining shows, call the reservation line and demand it be brought back. Honestly, it is that good.