ONE AND ANOTHER, PART TWO
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I still believe that. However, after having seen Blind Parrot’s follow-up evening of one-acts, One and Another, Part Two, I’m more hopeful. Sure, in losing Perkins Blind Parrot lost a wonderful, talented, inspired artist who was responsible for such successful productions as Oedipus Requiem and Largo Desolato. But the surviving members clearly have not lost their desire to keep making theater–though neither of the two plays that make up One and Another, Part Two ever approaches the standard set by Perkins in Oedipus Requiem.
The better of the two is George Sand’s Minnesota, a minimalist one-act that is for all practical purposes a puppet show, performed by a single actor using cardboard figures to represent the farmer, his wife, his lazy brother-in-law, and so on. “Here is a play that takes place on top of a kitchen table,” Sand writes in his stage notes, evoking the faux-naif style popular until David Byrne, Garrison Keillor, and Ronald Reagan did it to death.
If Hansell had a little more faith in The Boor, he would never allow his trio of performers–David Lamar Dosch, Martie Sanders, and John Hightower–to interpret their roles with all of the grace, subtlety, and timing of the Three Stooges. Sanders, in particular, fills her interpretation of the widow with so many quirky gestures and affected movements that it’s exhausting to watch her move through a scene.
