Skip to main contentThe key to understanding Michael Lasswell's approach to his adaptation of H.L. Davis' novel Honey in the Horn can be found within the director's notes in the playbill. Here, Lasswell has written a marvelous memory piece on his early discovery of Davis' book and how it influenced his life. His parents, we learn, are among those rare individuals who insist that their progeny discover the world through books rather than from pictures coughed-up from a cathode tube, and Davis' magnificent, picaresque Oregon tale became a Lasswell favorite--so much so that the Lasswell brood often played make-believe as Davis' characters.
This delightful anecdote, with its accompanying images of children rough-housing literary scenes while finding an abiding respect for the pasturelands where they play, is the stuff of fine memoir if not drama. But Lasswell had another project in mind. What he wanted was to break this wild epic of Northwest literature and tether it in a theater. Unfortunately, it's a stalling Honey in the Horn can't endure.
Though a wry, ironic (and rollicking) story, Horn is a novel of great psychological depth. The sheer complexity of Davis' story and his people defies simplification, which is all Lasswell can offer us. But worse, this adapter-director has not quite shaken his childish devotion to the material, and in reducing it he has only created a cartoon adumbration--great fun to play in a summer field, but an unrelentingly empty experience in a confined space.
Lasswell's cast hits the stage like a well-oiled children's theater troupe hellbent on convincing sixth-graders that old books can be fun. The ensemble--Don Stewart Burns, Christine Calfas, Jim Caputo, Jim Davis, Michael Fisher-Welsh, Vana O'Brien, Mark Schwahn and Stephanie Shininger--are allowed to flaunt their versatility in all but elocution. But the often garbled, breathless delivery is the price one pays for perpetual action. So unmerciful is the chore of skimming every inch of Davis' tale that it begins to resemble a 1930s marathon dance with only the "How Long Can They Last" banner missing. Stumble, and the teetery project topples.
In this sweaty three-hour skirmish with prose, there are exactly two moments that clarify the depth of Horn, and both are quietly realized outside of the chaotic storytelling. The first is in the hop field scene where the Huck-like Clay (Schwahn) meets the guitar-playing woman (Shininger). This section in Davis' book contains six folksongs that the woman serenades Clay with, and Shininger, singing three songs with her effortless style, creates the first multidimensional soul of the evening. Here's a woman with a past looking for a passable present, all brought to life in Shininger's cool rendering of the songs.
The second is the play's last moment (not in the book), where a soulful Calfas scares three vultures from a dead horse. Her wails of "shoo" seem directed at her character's difficult memories as much as at the birds--played by black umbrellas, which three actors open and close rapidly to sound like powerful wings.
Such inventiveness runs throughout this production, where Lasswell cleverly employs inanimate objects for myriad purposes. But Honey in the Horn is more than this round of Let's Pretend lets on, and the honesty of Davis' words, occasionally heard in the tumult, belies this incessant recess.
Artists Repertory Theatre, 1516 SW Alder St., 241-1278. 7 pm Tuesdays-Wednesdays, 8 pm Thursdays- Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. Closes Dec. 22. $15-$30.
H.L. Davis won the Pulitzer Prize for
in 1936-- the only Oregon novelist so far to have won the prize.
Davis was one of film and stage director Douglas Sirk's favorite authors. Sirk was particularly fond of Davis' book
. Lasswell's cast hits the stage like a well- oiled children's theater troupe hellbent on convincing sixth- graders that old books can be fun.
WWeek 2015