Ruben Jones and Ensemble (Photo by Ian Flanders)
Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum
Through October 3
Willow Geer and Ruben Jones (Photo by Ian Flanders)
The biggest draw to seeing Treasure Island, now running in rotating repertory at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum, is the verdant and sprawling outdoor venue, tucked away in Topanga Canyon.
Go early. Bring a sweater. Have a picnic. Listen to the shrieking calls of the peacocks. Then, be prepared to sit through Ellen Geer’s painfully protracted “reimagination” of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island.
Geer, who also directs, is the daughter of Will Geer, who gained late-in-life success as the grandfather on The Waltons. Blacklisted during the McCarthy era, Will Geer opened the theater in the 1950s to provide a home for musicians and artists in similar circumstances.
Since its inception, the theater has been very much a family affair. Ellen’s daughter Willow Geer, who has acted in numerous roles over multiple seasons, marks the third generation of Geers to be associated with the Theatricum, an Equity house that deserves full credit for employing so many professional actors, several of whom are featured in this production.
Over the years, Ellen Geer has adapted various classic novels for the stage. Island is her most recent world premiere effort.
Stevenson’s tale of mutinous buccaneers and hidden treasure has all the components for a great adventure story. However, brevity is the soul of adaptation, and Geer’s slavish adherence to the source material results in an overlong and tedious recapitulation rather than the gutsy, sea-faring yarn it was meant to be.
Young Jim Hawkins (Ruben Jones) narrates key elements of the play — plot points that would have been more successfully addressed in dialogue. In the unnecessarily long opener, boozy Billy Bones (Jeff Bergquist) drinks at length in the parlor of Jim’s family inn before succumbing to a stroke. His death leaves Jim in possession of the map that provides the exact location of long-dead Pirate Flint’s legendary treasure, and the pirates are closing in to snatch it.
Escaping the pirates, Jim joins forces with cooly courageous Doctor Livesey (Aaron Hendry) and blustering, loose-lipped Squire Trelawney (Steven C. Fisher), who bankrolls the expedition. The ship is skippered by the savvy Captain Smollett (Arthur Hanket), who senses something amiss. As Jim and the others soon learn, the supposed ship’s “cook” is actually peg-legged Long John Silver (Gerald C. Rivers), who has finagled populating the entire crew with his old pirate chums — bloodthirsty villains on a murderous mission.
The first act is a slog, but cannon salvos and musket fire liven up the second act with a literal bang. A later fight sequence (credit Hendry with the choreography) pits the pirates against the good guys, hand-to-hand and cutlass to cutlass — an example of how thrilling the production could have been.
Among the large cast, over 20 in all, Hendry and Hanket are particular standouts, while Rivers’s artfully conniving pirate strikes a nice balance between wickedness and geniality. Unfortunately, Geer bombards us with so many ill-defined peripheral characters that we are truly lost at sea. When one of Trelawney’s loyal servants is mortally wounded during a set-to with the pirates, we witness his pitiful dying agonies – but since he we don’t really know who he is, it’s difficult to care.
Geer does depart from the novel by reimagining the character of Ben Gunn, the half-mad pirate marooned on the island, as Jenn Gunn, a female buccaneer who befriends Jim and helps the heroes. As portrayed by Willow Geer, who personifies the perfect pirate, “arrghs” and all, it’s the most successful tweak of the show, an indication of the treasures that can be found when an adaptation boldly departs for new innovations.
Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, 1419 North Topanga Canyon Blvd. Topanga. Check website for schedule; thru Oct. 3. www.theatricum.com (310) 455-3723. Running time: two hours and 45 minutes with an intermission.
