John Huston, legendary director of a legendary actor, is centre stage in this play from writer-performer Phil Stewart, captured live at the Binge Fringe Festival at Santa Monica Playhouse.
Stewart doesn’t try to impersonate Huston’s distinctive voice, or the way he looked. He could be any elderly man with jacket, tie, and walking stick. But with the vaguest suggestion of the man, he inhabits him with ease.
But this man took The Maltese Falcon, the third version no less, as his first directing project for Warner Bros. He had spunk, and he was a storyteller and mythmaker.
As as well as directing, Huston was writer, gambler, hunter, fighter, and lover of women. He was popular with his peers, but often span a lengthy yarn and built a tall tale.
So we hear about the issues around adapting Key Largo from a blank verse play, the discovery of Marilyn Monroe for The Asphalt Jungle, and the experience of hunting elephants with Katharine Hepburn.
This is a good play, with first hand accounts that are framed as if we are hearing from an old friend. Stewart isn’t particularly mobile, and just two director’s chairs offer a set.
John Huston: The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of could be an excellent radio play, as it is the words and the images they convey that are important. Edward G Robinson being deferred to by Bogart. Monroe’s audition wiggle. Bogart’s intolerance for leeches.
A powerful section on the realities of war is almost thrown away, which feels a shame, in order to spend much more time on the tension on the set of The African Queen.
Paul Linke’s direction is watchful and workmanlike rather than adding flair to the piece, but yet I felt pulled in, perhaps because I am a lifelong film buff and knew all the folks mentioned in the story.
I can’t imagine casual film fans getting much out of this. Huston is remembered largely through his acting cameos and his daughter, Angelica, to a wider audience.
But, this play is well-acted and produced, and I enjoyed it very much. With a bit more audio-visual content or scene changes it could have been a stronger stage play.
I’m giving this 3 stars.
John Huston: The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of was part of the Binge Fringe Festival, streamed on YouTube from Santa Monica Playhouse.