George Orson Welles (George Demas) collaborates with Frank Beacham (Stephen Pilkington) in Maverick at the Connelly Theater (photo by John Painz)
Connelly Theater
220 East Fourth St. between Aves. A & B
Tuesday – Saturday through March 2, $30-$50
646-343-1584
mavericktheplay.com
www.connellytheater.org
In 1985, Frank Beacham, the owner of Television Matrix, which produced the hit series Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, got a surprise phone call from George Orson Welles, the radio, film, and theater legend behind such masterpieces as Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, and The War of the Worlds. Welles had found out that Beacham’s company was using one of the first Betacams, a Sony portable video camera, and Welles wanted to create a one-man show with it. The story of their little-known collaboration is revealed in the inventive Maverick, cowritten by Beacham and George Demas, who portrays Welles in the two-act play, which runs at the Connelly Theater through March 2. “When I met Orson, he was seventy and looking quite old,” Beacham (Stephen Pilkington) says near the beginning. “But I didn’t see him that way. You couldn’t see him that way. It’s as if you met Salvador Dalí when he was in a wheelchair with tubes coming out of his nose. You don’t think of being with an old man who struggles to make it through the day. Far from it. You-are-with-Dali! And this is Orson, as I see him. And here I am, as a narrator too —” In true Wellesian fashion, Orson emerges out of the darkness and cuts Beacham off. “There’s no need to say that,” he explains. “What?” Beacham asks. “It’s obvious you’re a narrator. You’re narrating,” Welles says. “I’m sorry, Orson, I’m not a theater person,” Beacham responds. “Well, you better get up to speed. You’re standing on a stage as we speak,” Welles replies. Beacham apologizes to Welles and turns back to the audience: “John Houseman once said, if your life is ever touched by a genius, a real one, you are never the same again. And this is my life, my memories, my . . . imaginings. And I’m . . . still piecing it all together.”
Maverick tells the story of Frank Beacham (Stephen Pilkington) and Orson Welles’s (George Demas) foray into video production (photo by John Painz)
Beacham’s memories include lunching with Welles and his beloved dog, Kiki, at Ma Maison in Los Angeles; shooting a Welles pitch for funding for King Lear with his personal cameraman, Gary Graver (Brian Parks), who sidelined in porn to earn extra cash; discussing Touch of Evil and stained carpeting with Zsa Zsa Gabor (Alex Lin); and Welles trying to solicit money from a hot young director. Welles also shares memories of his tense relationship with Houseman (Pilkington) going back to the Mercury Theatre days and his battle with Universal Pictures head Ed Muhl (Jed Peterson) over the editing of Touch of Evil. Tekla Monson’s affectionately cluttered garagelike set is strewn with all kinds of props on the sides; tables, chairs, and other elements are carried center stage as scenes change. Codirectors Demas and David Elliott (Edison’s Elephant, Arrivals and Departures) employ Wellesian flourishes throughout the 110-minute Cliplight Theater production, with unexpected breaks of the fourth wall and a herky-jerky narrative inspired by many of Orson’s later films, including the recently released The Other Side of the Wind.
Orson Welles (George Demas) takes charge in world premiere of Cliplight Theater’s Maverick (photo by John Painz)
Axis Company regular Demas (High Noon, Last Man Club), who was an understudy as Kenneth Tynan in Austin Pendleton’s Orson’s Shadow, is terrific as the auteur-magician; he might not be as big as Welles was in 1985, and his voice is not as deep and resonant, but he wonderfully captures Welles’s deceptively whimsical nature, intense curiosity, fondness for wine and cigars, distaste of begging for funding, and endless imagination and charm. “I was very much encouraged to create myself,” Welles tells a reporter (Parks). “Ever since I can remember, someone was whispering to me that I was a genius. Of course, I didn’t find out until much later that I wasn’t!” Demas makes you feel like you are in Welles’s awesome presence. Pilkington (The Winslow Boy, The Home Place) plays Beacham with a wide-eyed innocence as befits a young producer suddenly thrust into his hero’s domain. Lin, Mundy, Parks, and Peterson do a good job shuffling quickly between minor characters, including Beacham’s line producer, an attentive Ma Maison waiter, a UCLA film school administrator, a loan officer, Merv Griffin, and Robin Leach. There’s a franticness to it all that matches the legends of Welles’s working methods, where anything could happen at any moment, all overseen by an iconoclastic mastermind and ambitious visionary who was so often ahead of his time.