"Bakersfield Mist": Treasure Trove or Trailer Trash?

by Jack Craib, New Rep Reviewer

There must be something in the water, as we’ve recently been treated to a goodly number of artful, and artfull, local productions involving painterly creative works, given Speakeasy’s “Red”, New Rep’s “ART”, and now, again from New Rep, “Bakersfield Mist”. (Surely someone ignored the memo and should’ve been inspired to present a version of “Pitman Painters”). “Bakersfield Mist” is the new play by Stephen Sachs, part of the National New Play Network and a co-production with WHAT (Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater). It comes to New Rep with its collaborative team intact, including its Director Jeff Zinn (WHAT’s former Artistic Director), Scenic Designer Jiyoun Chang, (WHAT’s resident Set Designer at the top of her form) and the two stars of the previous run, Ken Cheeseman as Lionel Percy and Paula Langton as Maude Gutman.

The title of the play, which takes place in Bakersfield, CA, is a clever reference to one of Jackson Pollock‘s more famous titled paintings, “Lavender Mist”. Based on the true story of a retired truck driver (with only a grammar school education), living in a mobile home, who bought a painting for five dollars at a thrift sale only to be told it might actually be a Pollock, this short (75 minute) work is full of biting wit. Its brevity means that subtlety, of necessity, suffers a bit.

Cheeseman as Percy (a perfectly apt name for such a snob), an art expert contacted by Maude to pronounce his judgment on the painting, makes the most of his character‘s strengths and shortcomings. His elegy to the effects of Pollock‘s creative process is a hilarious physical recreation of love at first blink. No wonder that his professional (and, as we come to realize, personal) life rests on a tenous reputation for making snap judgments as to the authenticity of paintings (and people). Langton as Maude, ever within reach of a cigarette and a shot of bourbon, sporting a very visible arm tattoo to “Eddie”, captures her vacillation between tentative hope and dreaded desperation with both her waivering voice and sly body language. It’s not surprising that the bios of both actors evidence considerable Shakespearean experience.

The play is all about authenticity, in several forms, and the ability to recognize forgery when we encounter it. Percy proclaims that the awful truth is that the world wants to be fooled, yet he urges Maude to “be a person” (as she volleys back to him later in another context). It’s also about what matters more regarding the proof of the painting‘s provenance, the money it might bring or the validation she is seeking. Percy declares that his opinion means something, while hers does not. This may sound dry and pedantic, but it’s more often than not an extremely funny two-hander in these capable hands. There are occasional easy targets; Percy opines that “the Metropolitan is the Vatican of the art world”, to which Maude responds “out of touch with reality?”. Most often, Sachs hits the mark fairly and squarely. The bottom line, for this reviewer, is that this is a “Bakersfield” not to be “Mist” and earns a decidedly authentic and verifiable …..thumb up.