A Picasso

Critiqued by Holly Bartges

As a little girl, I use to wonder. Who are these people? Really? Did they honestly buy into their hard-core interrogation demeanor with their clipped speech and stern faces? There were times I lost the movie story line because I was so caught up pricking my imagination over a particular frightening character. I learned early to never question out loud. These people were the “bad guys”, end of story. They were the devil incarnate. Period. They lived in Germany, and wore high top boots, and moved in syncopated rhythm. But I wanted to know who they really were. Were they what they appeared to be, or were they wearing a mask out of self-preservation? In the midst of World War II, those weren’t acceptable questions for a little girl to ask.

Paige L. Larson as Miss Fischer and Chris Kendall as Pablo Picasso in Miner Alley’s production of A Picasso Photo Credit: Richard H. Pegg

Jeffrey Hacker generously picks up on my very early-in-life questions not allowed verbalization in his gripping play A Picasso that just opened at Miners Alley under the astute direction of Robert Kramer.

Featuring Chris Kendall as Pablo Picasso and Paige Lynn Larson as Miss Fisher, a beautiful cultured attaché from Berlin, the one act opens in a basement storeroom on a dimly lit stage with Picasso alternately restlessly sitting at a table and pacing in circles.

Arrested in his favorite cafe in Paris, 1941, Picasso’s arrogant impatience shines through the dim light. Miss Fletcher enters in military stiff attire, including the shapeless business suit. Her beauty can be plastered down, but not erased.

There’s going to be an exhibition, and she needs Picasso to authenticate three of his paintings. Her job: bring one true Picasso. She insists he sit. He refuses. She insists he take off his hat “in the presence of a lady”. In a stern sly smile, he refuses, adding, “That remains to be seen”. Cryptic, arrogant, defensive, Picasso stands his ground.

An exhibition? And he’s not invited? Coldly, she tells him he wouldn’t want to be there. Reality hits him hard. This isn’t an exhibition. It’s a burning. What if he insists all three of the paintings are fake? Ah, you don’t understand. Her orders are to produce one Picasso. If she doesn’t, she won’t be around tomorrow, and he will be in prison for a very long time without brushes. He simply responds, “You might as well put a bullet through my head.”

Hatcher brilliantly weaves historical fact with not so far fetched integrated imagination. During World War II, the Nazis indeed confiscated skillions of paintings from the Jews, burning many at private exhibitions. It is known Picasso was interrogated several times, but it is not known if any of his paintings were burned. It matters not. The play isn’t overly concerned about the Nazis burning paintings, as it is about the inside stuff of people doing what they have to do in order to survive.

As control passes from Miss Fletcher to Picasso, and back again, as Kendall’s Picasso loosens his tight grip on his emotions, he returns to remembering when and how he painted the three, Miners Alley becomes a time machine. Kendall and Larson are so adept at engaging the audience in the explosive conversation it is as though one is swept back in time to a storage room in Paris witnessing an encounter that could have taken place, and if it didn’t it should have.

The chemistry between Kendall and Larson electrifies the entire theatre. Facial expressions of these two exquisite actors play a poetical symphony through their eyes, the lines around their mouths, the muscles holding their faces together. To understand the dialogue, one almost doesn’t need to hear the words. Their perpetually changing expressions paint the words in brilliant watercolors ringing across the ears.

Miss Fletcher, convinced one of the paintings holds a marked political statement, Picasso vehemently insisting he isn’t a political man, leads to a fiery discussion on the place of art, the value of art, in society. Why did the Germans even bother? Were they more afraid of the artist than the insolent? Ah, one might burn the artwork, but that does not destroy the art. It can be doodled and replicated, and classified as a piece of nonsensical pencil scratchiness, but art holds its own power. The Germans of WWII understood that.

Chris Kendall as Pablo Picasso in Miner Alley’s production of A Picasso Photo Credit: Richard H. Pegg

When Kendall’s Picasso dives into a memory when he was 12 years old painting what his father called a self-portrait, the heart wrenches from his painful portrait of a beloved sister. You can see, hear, and smell his memory. When Larson’s Miss Fletcher launches into her life before the war, the heart jumps, and you see her for who she is. A woman who fell deeply in love, a woman who became a critic to hide her love, a woman who explored her anger over changing times and styles so no one would know. Now her life depends upon her producing one authenticated Picasso painting.

In spite of the varied emotions the two plow through, Hatcher’s humor weaves in and around with a strong sense of reality. After authenticating the three pictures, and discovering the truth, Picasso rescinds. She has no proof. He didn’t sign an affidavit, and what would happen to her if she proclaims authentic Picasso and he insists it is a forgery? Where does that leave her? Yes, they made a deal, but now he holds the cards.  For the one she is most interested in, he says, ”This is a bad picture. Picasso does not make a bad picture,” a humorous line, but one that holds its own truth. She dissects hm. He, in turn, dissects her. Hatcher reaches down deep to provide human nature, and its truth. He turns on his charm. She spits in his face. In a basement storage room, two opposing natures find a compromise through smug laughter, anxious fear, recalled memories, and a way for each one to uphold their dignity.

Richard H. Pegg designed and constructed the basement storage area set. You can feel its cramped coldness. You can smell the musty air. You can sense the reality that clouds the atmosphere beyond the heavy storage room door.

Sharon McClaury’s costume designs meet reality. There stands Miss Fisher in strict business demeanor, with Picasso in baggy pants, a striped shirt smattered with paint, and the traditional painter’s French beret.

Hatcher’s wit drenched provocative play transports the audience to another time, when art threatened the German forces as much as resistance to their plan, raising critical questions, offering hints at resolutions, only to raise more questions, and just simply take the breath away.

Kendall and Larson totally engulf themselves in the moment of a chance encounter that might have been, could have been, and maybe even should have been.

What does A Picasso have to say for the future, sans Picasso, of course? Art stands on its own two feet with or without the artist.” In high political confiscation what and who threatens aggressive powers the most?

Not to be missed under any circumstances: A) because of its magnificent “word smithing”, B) the realness of the imagination, C) the incredible chemistry and ultimate transcending performances by Kendall and Larson, and D) the exquisite poetic symphonic expressions singing Hatcher’s song, and E) remembering when someone once tried to destroy art and it didn’t work.

A Picasso
By Jeffrey Hatcher, Directed by Robert Kramer