The Hold Up

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

Please don’t shoot the horse. Do whatever you want, but please don’t shoot the horse. Oh-oh, the Outlaw has to, and in so doing, off stage in the dark, comes a glimpse of this rough and tumble hard-edged, smart mouth with a soul full of pride and loneliness, an outlaw on the run.

From Left to Right: Stephanie Jones, Dan Mundell and Matt Zambrano in The Hold Up at The Denver Victorian Playhouse.

In many ways the setting of this play, The Hold Up, could be anywhere. Four lonely, isolated individuals find and lose each other, only to find themselves again. It could even take place in the midst of New York City or Denver, Colorado. Yet, appropriately, it takes place in the vast openness of New Mexico with Western empathy, Western Heritage, Western Mythology.

Although the Victorian Playhouse stage is small, Susan Roshan and Wade P. Wood designed a delicious set of old West charm and expansive skyline drawing one into the smells, harshness, and open air expansiveness of the Old West.

With a sensitive cohesiveness, Director Terry Todd applied his magic to unleash the actors to fill the boots of the Old West mystique.

Tall, lanky, dust laden hard core, Dan Mundell strides onto stage as The Outlaw. The last of the great outlaws who has avoided capture for 20 years, who has walked the last mile through the desert carrying his saddle after having had to put down his beloved horse. When Mundell strides onto stage in hat, boots and chaps he gives the sense that what the story has told us so far is true. He’s believable as an outlaw of the Old West where 1914 closes in on his open range status with World War I and airplanes.

With the lights still out another voice is plentifully heard halfway talking to himself, giving himself encouragement as a skilled playful coyote follows him back to camp. Partly intrigued, partly worried, hyper nervous, the voice turns out to be 17-year-old Archie Tucker, a simple talkative protected-from-the-world young man who completes his sentence with profound truths. Matt Zambrano wears Archie’s boots with embroiled enthusiasm, wearing Archie’s innocent, naive heart on his sleeve. Zambrano is awesome in this production. The other wranglers laugh at Archie. He’s not exactly the rough and tumble type. He knows that.

As Archie is simple, naive, and innocent, his resentful bully of a brother, Henry, stands at the far end of the rope. Henry feels trapped having to care for his “baby” brother, keep him in line, and keep him out of trouble, and Jude Moran sees to it the audience takes a dislike to this overpowering pretender. Henry not able to see Archie for who he is nurses his obsessed anger with relish as an excuse for his own inadequacies. Archie won’t let Henry forget he knows about the outlaw books Henry reads and hides. Henry literally hogties Archie to show him that’s what Archie always makes him feel. In his simple naiveté, Archie maintains his slick cunning humor that has a habit of cutting to a truth Henry would rather not face.

In the middle of the New Mexico desert nestled next to a cook shack, four endings and four beginnings emerge through confrontation, humor, emotional jabbing, heartbreak, probing, awakening from a small protected world to a vast horizon of possibilities.

Yes, there’s a fourth, a classy successful well-dressed woman who emerges not from a horse, but a shiny car. Lily waited 20 years to reunite with The Outlaw, waited 20 years to re-connect with him while she developed her hotel, wealth, and status. But he was the love no one else could replace. Stephanie Jones stands tall, firm, and professional while melting into the vulnerable persona of Lily.

They clash, they threaten, they grow, they awaken, they struggle, they drink, and in the open desert night air they lay their hearts around the campfire. In anger one loses his life. Anger reveals and lays bare the soul, and remorse brings strangers together, and then sends them on their way.

Playwright Marsha Norman, yes, a woman, with brilliant imagery, brought The Hold Up to life. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her play ’Night Mother in 1983, Norman gives an honest-to-God true Western story straight out of the mythical mystery, painting portraits of four delectable characters brought to life by four sensitive artists. Her dialogue stands brilliant under the New Mexico sky.

Karolyn Star Pytel designed a lighting structure bleeding the color of the Old West into the colorful characters. Muted, dim, bright, the lights dance to the action as a flute melds into a symphony.

The coyote become so real in Archie’s distress, you expect him to leap from the back of the small theatre onto the stage.

The Hold Up, an enormously well-produced, well-acted, well-constructed play, it would be shame to miss it.The Outlaw has to come to grips with the end of his outlaw days to face a new era of automobiles and airplanes.

Henry can’t move past his fierce anger.

Lily proves her mettle, through her strength, her courage, her warmth, her love, her hope.

Archie, before our eyes grows up, opens his eyes, embraces new horizons.

But did they have to shoot the horse?