Oil Gluttony

Gillette

Written by William Hauptman

Director by David Wheeler

At the Loeb Drama Center

Through January 22

WILLIAM Hauptman's last play at the American Repertory Theater, the musical Big River,was a Big Winner, receiving seven Tony awards for its subsequent Broadway production. Can Gillette, his new play about the drifters and desperados in a Wyoming boom town, possible do so well? Will it boom or will it bust?

Half comedy, half social commentary, Gillette takes place against the backdrop of oil rigs and wide-open blue sky. It tells of the types drawn to the fast cash and wild living of Gillette--roughnecks, prostitutes, ex-cons--and focuses on the doomed adventures of Mickey Hollister (John Bottoms) and his college-educated nephew Bobby (Andrew Mutnick). They've driven up to Gillette from Amarillo, Texas with high hopes and no money--only to find that 14,000 other guys got there first.

With its Western setting, dashed dreams and ensuing violence, Gillettemight sound just like another Sam Shepard rip-off. But Hauptman tries to make it clear that he's less interested in the "myth of the West" than in the reality. After all, the play's basic situation--tremendous overcrowding in prisons as well as in 12-hour-shift motels, life-threatening work, and a 10 to 1 male-female ratio--comes straight from real life, circa 1981. The oddness of Gillette's events are due to the oddness of Americans and their American dreams, not ARTesian meta-theatre games.

Mickey and Bobby do find some initial success. Their first day in town they land jobs with Booger McCoy (Harry S. Murphy), a big, paranoid toolpusher who's been pushing tools for three days straight, and Mickey is confident he can teach Bobby the meaning of "real work." Then the going gets though, and the tough keep coming to town.

Tied in with the tragicomic tale of Mickey and Bobby is the story of the shocks that an oil boom puts on a small city's system. As Doreen (Priscilla Smith), a local girl who tends bar at the Silver Dollar Lounge, puts it: "Gillette used to be nothing but a wide spot in the road. Now we got two shopping malls, a Kentucky Fried Chicken, and a Cinema One, Two, and Three." They also got drugs, the local favorite being crystal meth, and their share of bar-room brawls.

HAUPTMAN moves Gillette along quickly and serves up a lot of good one-liners ("I've got nothing against [marriage], except that it's a life without hope"). The goings-on become hilarious in the second act, when the expense and danger from next-door roughnecks push the duo out of their motel and onto the open prairie. There they set up house, a hibachi and Mickey's Roy Orbison records, and they look for romance outside the local jail, waiting for the first newly sprung women--two gold-hearted hookers named Brenda (Dawn Couch) and Cathy (Pamela Gien).

Director Wheeler plays Gillettestraight, creating a fine realistic tone aided by Loy Arcenas's detailed sets and country-music interludes.

The ART's cast does a fine job with these down and outers, though there's a silly tendency to slide into Southern accents for comic effect. The players from the ART's new Institute are also sharp, especially Bernadette Wilson, who plays Jody, a girl who abandons Tucson for a biker-ex-con named Sonny (Michael Balconoff). Unfortunately both the script and the actors, particularly John Bottoms, occasionally lapse into caricature. It's here that the production loses good opportunities to be compelling and truly memorable.

Hauptman's play tells the story of Good 'Ole Boys gone bad. As American drama, Gillette is no masterpiece--which certainly won't prevent it from winning ten Tonys--but at the ART, it is a good 'ole play done well.