“ Pamela Palmer” a work being given its world premiere by Williamstown Theatre Festival is as much an enigma as it is a play.
The work offers playwright David Ives a fascinating opportunity to create an intellectual satire on noir mysteries. Ives, who is one of the brightest comic talents of our era, uses stock characters of the genre to solve a complex mystery. It’s a promising concept that could be challenging fun.
Sadly, before long it simply becomes a challenge.
It difficult to say with certainty, but the mystery the private detective is asked is a crime that may or may not have been committed. Nonetheless, it causes deep sense of dread to Pamela Palmer (Tina Benkin), a wealthy socialite, originally from Ohio.
She hires a hard-boiled, cynical detective,(Clark Gregg) to find out her crime. Also in the play is her nerdy rich British husband (Max Gordon Moore) and mother (Becky Ann Baker). Baker, a long time WTF favorite, is wise in the way of the world but has little purpose in this play. It takes place at an elegant Connecticut estate named “Wishwood”.
It's a tough case to crack. That's because they are trying to discover the mystery of life. Perhaps more specifically, attempting to find out why mankind can overthink everything to the point of destruction. You could say “Pamela Palmer” wants to be an existentialist comedy about self-destruction. And yes, it’s as funny as it sounds. Which means, not at all.
Well, maybe a little. Ives has such fine-tuned sense of human frailty that for the first 15-20 minutes of the 90-minute play, performed without intermission, it offers great promise and several laugh out loud moments. I particularly enjoyed the detective giving his age as 14. Explaining - “the same as all men.”
Each individual, except the mother, is so filled with self-doubt that they truly have no idea about who they really are. Thus their discovery is simply that they are who they want to be. The crisis is that no one knows who or what they want to be.
By now, it is should be easy to see how this circular quest can become tiring rather quickly. And were it not for a fully-invested cast it would be tedious more than tiring. Rather than dwell on the pretensions of existentialism to describe the problems of the play, let’s use a sporting analogy.
The play is like a boxing match. The fighters move about and spar with each other, trying to find a weakness in their opponent in which to exploit. However, after several rounds and the boxers have thrown nothing but jabs, you realize there is no end goal in sight. You become weary of the evasive style and yearn for a climactic battle. Like in “Pamela Parker,” that never occurs. The fight can only end in a draw, which means no winners.
Adding to the analogy is the horror that would result if because the fight was a draw, they’d have to return to the opening round and start again.
Seeking something positive to say, the cast is uncanny in how they compel the audience stay interested in their dilemmas. The cast of four has rich credits in all forms of entertainment but none are bankable stage names. They should be, as each performance is about as good as one can expect from a script without firmly developed characters. As for director Walter Bobbie, he should be grateful for his royalty checks for his direction of the musical “Chicago.”
“Pamela Parker” plays at the Williamstown Theatre Festival through August 10. For tickets and schedule information go to wtfestival.org
Bob Goepfert is theater reviewer for the Troy Record.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.
