Something Intangible
Philadelphia playwright Bruce Graham dramatizes the birth of a classic film Walt Disney envisioned not just as a movie, but as a revolutionary event in the art of cinema. The Arden presents the world premiere of Something Intangible on the Arcadia Stage through June 7th.
Tony Wiston (Ian Merrill Peakes), the hectic, imperious, wildly creative head of a successful Hollywood animation studio, is always at loggerheads with his brother, fastidious accountant Dale (Scott Green). Dale is a devoted family man with no greater ambitions than pancakes on Sunday with his mentally disabled son and appreciation from his driven, dynamic brother. As Tony burns through his film budgets, it’s Dale who must woo prickly investors and soothe the artistic egos clashing in Tony’s office. Tony Wiston’s studio is riding high on the success of its trademark cartoon character, a goofy pup in pants. But Tony, agonizing over his legacy, embarks on a risky, inspired masterpiece that sets beloved classical music to animated images. As the revolutionary film hurtles beyond its allotted budget and the start of WWII threatens the studio’s profits, Dale realizes that making his infuriating, beloved brother’s dream possible will mean risking his son’s future.
Bruce Graham’s new play about the Wistons and their film "Grandioso" is a retelling of Walt Disney’s toils on the now-revered "Fantasia", first released in the 1940. The play unfolds through Dale’s encounters with a staid lady psychiatrist (Sonia Feldman), but it becomes increasingly clear that it’s Tony who could use the psychological aid. Graham hustles Dale’s counselor (who brings little to the plot beyond prompting the sequence of events through the device of Dale’s therapy) on and off stage throughout the show, as Dale’s therapeutic musings overlap with the "real" scenes. The first act builds smartly to an engrossing crisis, but the second balloons as Graham goes beyond the Wiston brothers’ relationship and artistic process to call on a surfeit of weighty themes: mental illness, drug abuse, mortality, prejudice, artistic integrity and the emotional and economic shadow of war. But sharp dialogue prevails throughout, and the play’s final scenes offer some engaging, unexpected reversals.
The battle between a painstaking, practical man bound to a vigorous, inventive spendthrift is not a new story, but under director Terry Nolen, Scott Greer and Ian Merrill Peakes develop a touching rapport to underlie the brothers’ ire. Scott Greer brings canny, sympathetic warmth to Dale as he’s pinioned between the dueling egos of his artist brother and "Grandioso’s" purist orchestral conductor. Dale proves a deft manipulator, showing his own intuition in the face of his famous brother’s manic, ineffable genius. Ian Merrill Peakes’s Tony is a florid, compelling mix of loyalty and bigotry, bravado and panicky insecurities. Doug Hara plays Leo Baxter, a mousey, pliant animator drawn into Tony’s orbit, while struggling against his employer’s casual homophobia. Walter Charles also succeeds in the dual roles of demanding investor Doc Bartelli and the temperamental Austrian conductor, Gustav Von Meyerhoff.
Costume Designer Rosemarie McKelvey and Lighting Designer F. Mitchell Dana work overtime to build swift, cogent transitions between the relentless shifts in the script, from concert to ceremony to office to therapy session to screening and round again, at lightning pace.
As Director Terry Nolen is careful to say, "Something Intangible", while based on Roy and Walt Disney and the creative process of Disney’s "Fanstasia", is "a work of fiction". It’s an ambitious framework for a play about the fundamental bonds and challenges of polar opposite partners, and you don’t have to be a fan of the classic Disney film to appreciate this worthwhile premiere.
The Arden Theatre Company’s Something Intangible, directed by Terry Nolen, is running on the Arcadia Stage through June 7th. For tickets and more information, call 215-922-1122 or visit www.ardentheatre.org.
