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Artful Performances Elevate Taut 'A Picasso'

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By KATHY L. GREENBERG, Tribune correspondent

Published: January 22, 2008

TAMPA - When a director and two actors embrace an exceptional script and bring it to life onstage, the effect can be palpable. Stageworks' production of "A Picasso" exemplifies this power of interpretation.

In 1941, on the eve of his 60th birthday in Nazi-occupied France, artist Pablo Picasso (Petrus Antonius) arrives at an underground vault stocked with confiscated artwork (Keith Arsenault's appropriately stark set design).

Miss Fischer (Linda Slade) enters the basement and introduces herself to Picasso as his interrogator. She is all business as she presents three drawings for the artist to authenticate, claiming they are intended for an upcoming exhibition. He readily identifies them as "Picassos."

Before leaving, however, he learns that these works are in truth destined for a bonfire - victims of Goebbels' condemnation of so-called pornographic art.

His interrogator has been instructed to find "a Picasso" to burn, and here she has lucked into three. Outraged, Picasso retracts his earlier statement and declares the pieces fakes.

So begins an intense psychological deconstruction of the characters' motives and a relentless power struggle rooted in sex, intellect and politics.
Jeffrey Hatcher wrote a remarkable play - intellectual, emotional, relevant. His acerbic and poignant language conveys the bitter irony of Fischer's and Picasso's situation.

Art symbolizes profundities for each of them, and, on the most basic level, the matter of its existence is the key to their individual survival. At the same time, Hatcher notes the effects that both external and internal repression wreaks on reason and spirit.

Director Anna Brennen wisely cast actors whose matched chemistry and strong performances form the backbone of Hatcher's evocative play.

Antonius' portrayal of Picasso is very human and real. He could have easily lapsed into a contrived imitation of the artist. Instead, he chose to play a vulnerable man protecting himself with egocentric defenses.

The actor simply is an artist whose drive for self-expression is frustrated by barriers of war, which at the same time fuel his imagination. With great skill, Antonius is at once detached from the interruptive chaos and charged by the drama.

Slade, too, is terrific as the outwardly efficient but inwardly desperate Miss Fischer. Her facade is eggshell-fragile, while the emotional guts are worthy of sympathy but, thankfully, not gooey with sentimentality.

She is wholly believable as a woman at odds with who she was and who she is now forced to be. Slade gives a nuanced performance that enhances her character's complexity.

"A Picasso" is a formidable play that will leave audiences pondering the compatibility of freedom and survival.

ON STAGE

A Picasso

WHEN: Through Feb. 3; 7 p.m. Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday

WHERE: Gorilla Theatre, 4419 N. Hubert Ave., Tampa

TICKETS: $20 to $25, depending on date of performance; (813) 879-2914; www.gorillatheatre

.com

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