Bob: A Life in 5 Acts

I saw the world premiere of Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s Bob at Actor’s Theatre of Louisville in 2011. The ubiquitous Sean Daniels directed this same version at the Aurora Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2011 Daniels was Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Associate Artistic Director; now he’s Geva Theatre Center’s Artist At-Large, and also the director of the comedy Geva was playing in its Mainstage at the same time as Bobin the Nextstage. He gets around.

The piece is cut down now. I think Bob even runs a teeny bit shorter, but Daniels’ 2011 Louisville premiere was hilariously more elaborate. I saw it as part of ATL’s Humana Festival of New American Plays, and – although they disagreed about whether it was an insane mess or a significant work or just a delightful put-on – the theatre critics I talked to all agreed that the crazily extravagant original production helped to put Bob over but didn’t seem to be required by the text. Bob is a wildly fanciful journey through the life of Bob, from his origin as a large baby abandoned at birth in the ladies room of a Louisville White Castle hamburger joint, through a random exploration of public rest stops across America in search of fame and fortune and, of course, of the Meaning Of Life.

Cast and stagers are all changed from that premiere, but Michael Raiford is still the set designer, so the basic concept is the same, including a huge sign that reads “BOB,” with the first B backward, facing stage right, the O with a black center shaped like an 8, and the final B a small-letter b, facing stage left. Colored lights in a swirling pattern cover a star curtain behind the letters. Then we mostly get suggestive step-units, arches, projections, and whatnot to let us know that “we‘re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.” So the production is cut-down but not so much changed – and definitely not really re-interpreted -- just quieted down a tad.

And remember the arches. Few playwrights get as arch as Nachtreib. I have seen or read several of his plays, and except for the one he got a major prize for, Hunter Gatherers, I’ve liked them all, especially Boom and Bob. They are all disingenuous, wildly inventive yet derivative, maddening, goofy, and what might be called “hard-working clever.” Nachtreib seems to walk right up to great subjects and then retreat with a snicker, often creating a kind of pill-coated sugar like the plays of American eccentrics Thornton Wilder, William Saroyan and Charles Ludlam.

So Bob finds his supposed mother, who rescues him from urine and teaches him to yearn. Then much later he discovers his actual mother, who also learns to hold her nose while savoring the world. He grows up, gets to make out with virtually every woman or man he meets, and loses all for a despairing intermission after the three acts of Act I. In the two more acts of Act II he becomes a millionaire plus plus plus and lives in a castle that was a casino and gets so famous that he has his face super-sculpted next to the four Presidents’ faces on Mt. Rushmore. But we still don’t really know much about him. [Nachtreib writes everywhere that Nachtreib is 6 ft. 6” and gay but won’t list a date of birth.] And I guess that the play arrives at something like a synthesis/happy ending.

An actor plays Bob and four “Chorus members” play everything else, and I do mean everything: men, women, spooks and animals. Chorus #1 Veronica Duerr is variously sweet, weird, clownish and semi-sexy as the woman Bob thinks to be his mother. Chorus #2 Scott Warren is a chameleon who moves unusually well even as scruffy wild animals. Chorus #3 Wendy Melkonian, as Bob’s birth mother and world-class animal trainer, has a big, brassy stage presence that can become unexpectedly sexy and touching. Chorus #4 Doyle Reynolds demonstrates impressive versatility as he dances, fights, leers and becomes haughty, and loses the menace to become flirty-gay. And as Bob, Dan Triandiflou is obviously a skilled physical comic and even makes his all-over-the-place Everyman sympathetic and sexy, but his dopey wonder in Bob’s earlier stages [I don’t think of Bob’s having “development”] is more convincing and appealing than his thin characterization of the later selfish, then bitter, then somewhat more mature final transformation. To be fair, I suspect that the thinness of the final character is mostly the playwright’s fault.

I’m unaware of any strikingly new designs in costuming or lighting; the overall look of this production might be described as slightly humanized and “production light.” Director Daniels and scenic designer Raiford seem to be the controlling forces here in simply scaling down the pretentious fireworks of the Humana premiere. No choreographer is credited, and the dancing throughout shows why. I think that Sean Daniels has tamed the show-off quality of the overly inventive original, and, maybe only because I’ve seen some of his brightening of other comedies, I suspect that Daniels has polished up some of the laughs in this odd play.