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In Gus Van Sant's iconic 1991 Portland film My Own Private Idaho, tribes of homeless kids camped out in boarded-up downtown buildings, and Chinatown's sidewalks gleamed with broken glass. Now, 25 years later, New Seasons holds empire and doughnuts cost $4. Jonathan Walters, founder of Portland's Hand2Mouth Theatre company and the director of the first-ever stage production of Van Sant's Idaho, wonders: "Have we lost our underground? Have people lost their souls?"
Time, A Fair Hustler is more of a sequel than a adaptation. It takes place in a cleaner, Portlandia-style present. An eclectic group of five has been called to give testimony of their 1990s memories of Mike and Scott, the two beautiful, young street hustlers from Idaho. As the characters take turns reminiscing, Hand2Mouth pays homage to Van Sant's original with flashbacks that re-enact scenes from the movie.
In Hand2Mouth's production, Scott is Portland's mayor and Mike has disappeared. Although Mike shows up only in flashback scenes, his presence hangs over the entire production. His absence mimics the death of the character's original actor, River Phoenix, who died two years after his highly praised performance in Idaho.
In addition to time jumps, gender switches also set the stage show apart from its inspiration. Hand2Mouth company member Julie Hammond will play Mike, and New York actress Erika Latta takes on the role of Scott.
"We're competing with the film," says Walters. "We have to make a strange theater piece that makes the audience stop referencing the film." Walters thinks that casting women as the two leads will help quell constant comparisons.
Time has been over a year in the making. Hand2Mouth interviewed Portlanders who were a part of downtown grunge in the '90s. Andrea Stolowitz—winner of the 2015 Oregon Book Award in drama— joined to write the courtroom scenes, and the company ran multiple work-in-progress readings where local writers, performers and the general public provided feedback. Dramaturge Jess Drake, who helped write the script with material from the interviews and Idaho's screenplay, sat through the many rehearsals to make edits to the dialogue.
But when words aren't enough to express the decay of youth and the pangs of lost friendship, the actors start singing. The play uses music from Peter Holmström of the Dandy Warhols and Al James of Dolorean, along with new pieces that Portland musician Jack Gibson composed for the show. In a memory scene, as Mike and Scott's friend Gary (Jason Rouse) watches the boys walk away from him and into a convenience store, he's overcome by the memory of Scott refusing his kiss. He sings: "What's gone is gone/What's here is now."
âItâs a play about growing up,â says Walters. âThe city is in parallel.â
SEE IT: Time, A Fair Hustler is at Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison St., hand2mouththeatre.org. 7:30 Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays through Aug. 16. Additional show 7:30 pm Sunday, Aug. 2. $25-$30.
WWeek 2015