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DEEMER IS AT HIS BEST IN `VARMINTS'
Oregonian, The (Portland, OR)
April 28, 1989
Author: BOB HICKS - of the Oregonian Staff
Estimated printed pages: 3


Nobody ever accused Charles Deemer of understatement.

``When I'm at my best I'm really cultural and careless at the same time. Reckless,'' said the Portland playwright. ``This is my version of the Old West.''

``This'' is his newest play, ``Varmints,'' a brawling comedy that has its world premiere Friday night at Firehouse Theater.

``It's yet another attempt to deal with time and space and all those things that interest me,'' said Deemer, whose fertile imagination has led him into several ``simultaneous action'' dramas and a quartet of plays exploring the new universe of quantum mechanics.

Deemer's play is set in 1865 in the eastern Oregon gold rush town of Canyon City, and peopled with a Pinkerton detective, a one-eyed hotel manager, a black cook who was once a Shakespearean actor, a mysterious woman, a one-legged miner and a writer of insipid doggerel who is later lauded in England as ``the Lord Byron of the West.''

The bad poet, Cincinnatus Hiner Miller, is the play's only historical character. Miller -- who went on to fame as Joaquin Miller -- lived in Canyon City for several years and even was a judge there. Deemer has made liberal use of his poetry.

``The great test for you will be to figure out which lines are Miller's and which lines are mine,'' he said. ``It'll be a great test of your knowledge of doggerel. I've taken his absolutely worst stuff. I haven't even given him the benefit of the doubt.''

``Varmints'' began life five years ago, when Deemer was playwright in residence at New Rose Theatre and Gary O'Brien was artistic director there. Deemer wrote a first draft of a first act (it was called ``Oro Oregono'' at the time), then stopped.

But O'Brien liked it, and so did Steve Smith, Firehouse's producer. When Firehouse announced that its entire 1988-89 season would be devoted to Deemer's plays, O'Brien persuaded the writer to pull out the old manuscript and finish it.

``Quite frankly I'd never have finished this play if someone hadn't said, `Finish the sucker,' '' said Deemer.

The final version is very different from that first draft, said O'Brien, who directs ``Varmints.''

``It's still the same characters and situations, but it's got a larger dimension to it,'' he said.

``There's a more apocalyptic feeling to the ending now. It reminds me a lot of Jacobean revenge tragedies. Violence, greed . . .''

``And,'' interrupted Deemer with a grin, ``they get it in the end.''

ROTTEN KIDS: Lillian Hellman and controversy seemed to go together like pork barrels and politicians. ``The Children's Hour,'' her Broadway debut in 1934, caused such a stir that none of Broadway's leading ladies would play in it.

``Alice Brady and other actresses were afraid police would close the play,'' Harry Gilroy French reported years later in a The New York Times piece about Hellman.

Fifty-five years later such fears seem extreme. Hellman's play -- about two spinsterish schoolteachers who are accused by their vicious students of ``sinful sexual knowledge'' -- would hardly cause a cop to lift an eyebrow these days.

But for audiences, said actress Mollie Chapman, ``It's a very interesting period piece.''

Chapman plays Martha and Sue Ellen Christensen is Karen, the victimized teachers in director A. Nannette Taylor's revival of ``The Children's Hour,'' opening Friday at Columbia Theater.

Young Zina Moreno plays Mary Tilford, the girl who starts the gossip and pushes it to the bitter end.

``I hark back to `The Bad Seed' all the time in this,'' said Christensen. ``She knows the lie is potentially dangerous, even though she doesn't fully understand what it is.''

More important, added Chapman, is that the lie ``really destroyed several people's lives.''

``Martha is completely, totally unaware of her latent tendencies,'' she said.

The play is like an evil trap.

``Nannette's vision is the spiderweb,'' said Christensen. ``The child at the center of the spiderweb, and the effect she has on the people who get tangled in it.''

PREVIEW Varmints Where: Firehouse Theater, 1436 S.W. Montgomery Plays: 8 p.m. Fridays- Saturdays through May 27 Tickets: $6-$8.50 (280-6592) The Children's Hour Where: Columbia Theater, 2021 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd. Plays: 8 p.m. Thursdays- Saturdays through May 27; 2 p.m. Sundays, May 14-21 Tickets: $7-$8; opening night $15 (232-7005).
Photo of GRORGIA CACY and HANK CARWRIGHT.
Edition: Fourth
Section: Arts And Entertainment
Page: F22
Index Terms: Theater Review
Copyright (c) 1989 Oregonian Publishing Co.
Record Number: 8904280039

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