Review: Oh Virgil! A Theatrical Portrait

Troy Valjean Rucker performs. Below, Victor Truro as

Virgil Thomson. Photos by Antonio Minino

The Portrait is Interesting, but Not Complete

By Lauren Yarger
Oh Virgil! A Theatrical Portrait, Wallace Norman’s new play about the life and music of Virgil Thomson playing Off-Broadway at Judson Memorial Church, gives us a glimpse into the life of the award winning composer and music critic, but doesn’t give us a full picture.

Norman uses five vignettes to paint a portrait of Thomson (Victor Truro) and links them with musical works performed on a piano offstage by musical director Michael Conley and sung by soprano Watson Heinz and baritone Troy Valjean Rucker. Rucker also plays Ogden Reid, editor of the NY Herald Tribune for which Thomson was chief music critic from 1937-1951 and Heinz doubles as Gertrude Stein, with whom Thomson collaborated on two of his most famous works, the operas Four Saints in Three Acts and The Mother of Us All. Rounding out the cast are Victoria Devany and Dan Via who play other roles.

Most of the action takes place in Thomson’s room at the Chelsea hotel (Craig Napoliello, scene design), where he works primarily from his bed, fighting with Stein, yelling at his secretary, writing scathingly critical letters, giving interviews and making a male visitor uncomfortable with veiled advances. Director Nicola Sheara offers a nice picture of the judgment his homosexual tendencies received as the rest of the cast gathers around Thomson for a “decency trial” in which they collectively “shush” him.

“I don’t want to be queer,” the conflicted Thomson, who tells us he has tried to keep these tendencies under control cries. “I don’t want this in my life.”

Though the format of combining biographical information with Thomson’s works is intriguing, the snippets aren’t really enough to give us a full picture of who this man was. There is a vague reference to someone named Maurice, but we're not sure who he is, what importance he had in Thomson's life, or whether he might have been the visitor we just saw in the bedroom, for example.

Norman, in program notes, explains that the abundance of information made it almost impossible to offer a biographical portrait in the

time constraints of a theater piece. Instead, he decided to write a “theatrical portrait,” similar to

the “musical portraits” Thomson personalized

compositions completed after he had spent some time studying a person. It works theatrically, but leaves us wanting more substance.

If you want to see the show, hurry. The limited run closes this Sunday. The show is a collaboration of Woodstock Fringe and Judson Arts. The church is located at 55 Washington Square South, at the corner of 4th and Thompson streets. Tickets are available at http://www.woodstockfringe.com/.

Christians might also like to know:

• Language
• Judson Arts is a ministry of Judson Memorial Church, one of the first “off-off” Broadway venues in NY back in the 1960s. The church is affiliated with the American Baptist Church and the United Church of Christ and describes itself as “a gathering place for people who seek spiritual nurture to build public capacity for social change” and supports immigrant rights, arts, peace action, women’s reproductive rights and Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender events.