Among the highlights of the current theater season is a concert presentation of Bakersfield Mist, by Los Angeles-based playwright Stephen Sachs. The play brings up issues of class, education and aesthetic training – all key to the notion of “what is art?” The show is the fall opener of 35-year-old Boulevard Theatre, which has persevered largely on the dedication of founder and artistic director Mark Bucher. He directs this piece with considerable skill, as two actors and a narrator take the audience through a sometimes dramatic, and often very funny, series of events.
The play takes place in a trailer park in Bakersfield, California, home to the scrappy Maude (Carole Herstreit-Kalinyen). This middle-aged woman has lived a hard life, and she talks about her past while swilling whiskey and uttering a profanity or two. Her “guest” is a famed art critic, the stuffy Lionel (David Flores). She has hired him (or, to be more specific, her unseen brother has hired him) to pass judgment on whether Maude’s thrift store find could possibly be a genuine Jackson Pollock painting. Maude is convinced that she has “hit the jackpot” with this artwork, and she yearns for Lionel’s approval. Lionel, a veteran of the arts establishment, won’t give her a straight answer about the value of an undiscovered Pollock painting. Reluctantly, he tells her that an undiscovered Pollock artwork could be worth up to $100 million. Imagining the impact that would have on her future, Maude offers him a crude enticement to seal the deal.
The playwright is so careful in setting up the context of his argument that the painting itself isn’t revealed until a good deal of dialogue passes between Maude and Lionel. According to Lionel, the situation boils down to the fact that “my opinion means something, (and) yours doesn’t.” The story itself is based on a true incident, and in the hands of such an accomplished cast, that doesn’t seem difficult to believe. Herbstreit-Kalinyen plays Maude with a down-to-earth charm. She is truly a diamond-in-the-rough, and successfully allows Lionel to underestimate her. As a self-described “pack rat,” she has surrounded herself with thrift store finds or, as she puts it, “somebody else’s junk that they threw away.” Still, she is hopeful that the Pollock could be original. “Miracles happen,” she tells an unconvinced Lionel.
As Lionel, veteran Milwaukee actor David Flores creates a memorable character who lingers in the imagination long after the play is over. Lionel is at first so caught up in his own importance that he nearly misses some of the zingers that Maude tosses his way. The mere fact that Lionel flew in on a private jet and ended up in a trailer park creates all sorts of comic reactions from Flores, who has played this type of effete character often in his career.
At Maude’s urging, Lionel slowly opens up about the ups and downs of his own career. “Forgeries are my passion,’ he insists, even as Maude wheedles him about the authenticity of one statue that nearly ended his career. Before he knows it, Maude has him on the ropes, twisting uncomfortably after she reveals what she already knows about him.
Bakersfield Mist (the play’s title is taken from a famous Jackson Pollock painting, “Lavender Mist”), is done as a concert presentation, which involves the actors following along on scripts without the benefit of scenery, costumes, props or other distractions. The audience’s imagination fills in all the blanks, assisted by stage directions provided by narrator David Ferrie.
Done right (and, in this case, it’s done nearly to perfection) a concert presentation can be as riveting as a full-scale production.
