‘Ten Unknowns’ has glowing performances at The Schoolhouse Theater

By David Begelman

Theater Critic 

The title of the Jon Robin Baitz play refers to Malcolm Raphelson, a painter

 

who showed early promise in a 1949 exhibition of newcomer artists in New York City.

 

But with the juggernaut of enthusiasm for abstract expressionists like Willem de

 

Kooning and Mark Rothko, Raphelson’s figurative painting style is in disfavor.

We find the disgruntled artist a near recluse, a heavy drinker and virtually destitute in a Mexican village, along with his apprentice, Judd Sturgess. The latter has a heroin habit, and a penchant for dismissive cynicism, much like his mentor. Raphelson detests American enthusiasms like the new art-craze, while Judd morosely reflects the same pessimism: “It’s too late to do anything about everything.”

Trevor Fabricant, a penurious, but knowledgeable South African expatriate, whose current claim to fame is being arrested in Spain for spray-painting a Vittore Carpaccio canvas, casts a seeming ray of hope on this somber scene.

Trevor, who happens to be a past lover of downtrodden Judd, has hatched a new plan. He wants to promote a new showing of Raphelson works, coinciding with the revival of interest in the artist’s style. He’s clued in to the often arbitrary shift of enthusiasms in the art world, and his mercenary impulses are never far from the surface.

He has a hard time turning Malcolm on to any promotional scheme reeking of commercialism. The latter’s older disappointment of having missed out on being a darling of the New York set has turned him into a prophetic voice of decay in the wilderness of taste outside of him.

Into this mélange of rancor and dashed hopes steps Julia Bryant, a Berkeley biology student, equally penniless, but earnestly pursuing her research locally on a unique species of frog. She ignites a nascent spirit of sexuality in Malcolm, an impulse that is thwarted by fits and starts in the intellectual warfare between the two about honesty and authenticity.

 “Ten Unknowns” at The Schoolhouse theater can boast about nothing less than a dream cast of performers, spirited and informed direction by Pamela Moller Kareman, and terrific Scenic Design and Lighting Design by Jason Bolen and David Pentz.

The cast includes Keith Barber (Malcolm), Kevin Cristaldi (Trevor), Jack Berenholtz (Judd) and Hannah Wolfe (Julia). The fireworks go off whether or not all four actors are interacting, or when pairs of them do their thing together. One highlight of the show was when Cristaldi (who bears a striking resemblance to Malcolm McDowell of “A Clockwork Orange” fame) and Berenholtz had at each other.

You couldn’t ask for a better production group to showcase the Baitz drama, another in his tradition of works which, like “The Substance of Fire,”  “A Fair Country” and “Other Desert Cities” are fairly bursting with intelligence, witty observations, the calculated use of the bon mot, and similar delights.

The downside of the Baitz script is that it overloads the dialogue with too much of a good thing. There is little economy of issue in the play; no sooner is one theme explored, than another is broached in what can only be described as an embarrassment of riches.

As a result, no clear narrative line emerges, and the dialogue starts to take on the semblance of clever, but unending chatter in what would be anathema to Malcolm Ralpheson: the patter of the New York cocktail set.

“Ten Unknowns” runs till March 30 at The Schoolhouse Theater, 3 Owens Road, Croton Falls, NY. Performances are Thursday, Friday and Saturday 8 p.m., Sunday matinees at 3 p.m. Tickets are $33 to $35 and may be purchased by calling the box office at 914-277-8477 or online at www.schoolhousetheater.org.