Many years ago, as the story goes.. and I think I saw the TVcommercial... the story goes that Andy Warhol, famous Pop Artist, was hired by the Coca Cola Company to make a thirty second spot to promote Coke. Andy was seated on a bare set facing the camera. He simply sat there..as he had many of his Factory pals and celebrities sit for video and for Polaroid photos he made. For 28 seconds he sat and quietly observed the camera. Then, Warhol held up a bottle of Coke and said, "Eat Coke!"
This moment, to me, defines what the artist was really all about. Making something out of the obvious. With style.
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Keith Stevenson and Derek Chariton Photos by Teak Piegdon-Brainin
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Quite obvious with Dana Jackson's direction of Vince Melocchi's world premier play "Andy Warhol's Tomato" produced by the Pacific Resident Theatre, is that the playwright imagines that the somewhat tentative relationship Andy has with "Bones" the bar owner, Keith Stevenson, over the course of a summer in Pittsburgh was a major influence on the super star that Warhol became. It's a full length one act in a somewhat cinematic style, chronicling days that dropped a very unusual young man into the realm of a working class roughneck who may have some prejudices about other guys who are, like, you know: "Funny..." (I'd hoped for a Joe Pecci moment here and it was not included. But still.)
Stevenson falls into the Pittsburgh sound "wid aplumb." He plays it natural and is at a loss with what to do with this young man who is in his basement just because it was convenient to where the kid fainted.
At rise, Rich Rose's spectacular set: summer 1946, a basement store room for Mario "Bones" Bonino's pub. We discover Derek Chariton as Andy, propped up in a chair, having fainted outside the bar. Warhol was an unusual guy from the start: a child of immigrant parents with two older brothers.The family led a simple existence, with Andy's dad saving up to send the boy to Carnegie Tech. What should be mentioned and isn't, is that Warhol suffered from a rare disease, St. Vitus Dance, which sometimes put him on the floor which is probably what happened in front of Bonino's bar. The first and best joke in the show refers to Andy's pallor.
Bonino: You're white as a sheet!
Warhol: I'm Slavik.
The unlikely friendship turns on a straight man, trying to figure out what this ghost of a kid is about. Chariton plays Warhol's homosexuality with such superficial indicating that it calls attention to itself. It is a distraction. Director Jackson has either led Andy's character down this primrose path on purpose, or Chariton has opted for the obvious, even though Warhol's sexuality was probably much more complicated than obvious gestures and tone.
The opening night audience was thrilled with the show and probably didn't notice that the prop Coke bottle that has factored prominently in Warhol's artwork over the years was much too new. This nitpick is because I've had a lot of experience with old fashioned Coke bottles and allowed this mistake to take me out of the play a bit.
The casting of Chariton, who is in his late twenties as the eighteen year old is another note that rankled me. The dialogue presents a very sophisticated kid but the actor's mannerisms and speech patterns seem much more mature than one would expect even from a prodigy. The story tells that after being ejected from school, a kindly professor recognizing Warhol's innate artistic talent gave him a summer drawing assignment that would eventually re-enstate him at Carnegie. Andy had big plans to take his illustrating talent to the Big Apple after graduation and become a star.
That happened!
The pace of the show lacked energy. The divergent acting styles seem more about the acting than about the characters. Had the casting gone another way, emphasizing the feeling of post war 1940s and the suspicions about Warhol's sexual orientation been made more subtle, giving the audience an opportunity to come to a conclusion on their own, this script might have been better served.
A World Premiere
Andy Warhol's Tomato
by Vince Melocchi
Pacific Resident Theatre
703 Venice Blvd.
Venice, CA
Thursday through Saturday 8PM
Sundays at 3PM
Through September 22, 2019
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