Ward Haarbauer spent 40 years at UAB's theater department, as founder, teacher, director and administrator. After retiring in 2007, he has appeared in a couple of dramatic readings, but "Bus Stop" at Birmingham Festival Theatre marks his return as a director....
Haarbauer answered five questions about "Bus Stop" for us:
Why did you pick this show?
Actually BFT asked me if I would be interested in directing it. It had been a long time since I'd read it, and, in the words of one of the cast members, I'd forgotten what a good script it is. So much of its public image comes from the film, which starred Marilyn Monroe, and which also added and deleted characters and spent a lot of its time outside the diner where everyone is snowbound, which totally changes the feel of the piece. The play is an ensemble piece rather than a star vehicle, and I like that a lot. It's also a piece about the lives of regular and not very important people—like most of us—whom Inge understands really well.
Can you tell us a little bit about it?
In my research I found such references to it as "an uproarious comedy," and it's not. It's funny, very funny very often, but it's really a bittersweet play. Eight people get snowbound in a diner in a small rural Kansas town. In the course of our and their night, we discover what their lives are like, and they're pretty much like ours—sad, joyful, caring, frustrating, misunderstood, loving. And lonely. I think it's the underlying loneliness of each of the people that makes the comedy meaningful and the pleasure of watching it rich. As you would expect, some people find other people and some find themselves alone—like most of us. Inge wrote the play in 1955, and it comes out of the tradition of Checkhov, without answers but with a lot of sympathy for the people looking for them. His name, by the way, is pronounced "inj."
Who do you think will like this show?
Simply put, I think anybody who is human will understand and enjoy it. In some sense, I think the more experience you have in life, the more you recognize the characters. Lest I make it seem like A Great Play, let me be clear that it's fun and entertaining.
Anything else you'd like to add?
I think I owe it to BFT to recognize the work they've been putting into the facility while we've been rehearsing. The public areas have been redone, and they're very handsome. And the backstage has been improved. It's an environment very conducive to doing, watching, and enjoying good work.
What's next for you or the theater?
For BFT, the next show is "The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940" by John Bishop, directed by Stephen French, March 4-20, but I'm not involved in that project and it would be presumptuous of me to write about it. For myself, I'll be playing Don Juan in a reprise of The Seasoned Performers' reading of George Bernard Shaw's "Don Juan in Hell" in the Bolding Studio Theatre at Samford on Feb. 21.
© 2010 Alabama Live LLC
It's been a little bit of deja vu for Ward Haarbauer recently.
The last time he directed a show at Birmingham Festival Theatre was 27 years ago, a production of "Macbeth" that ran in January and was cursed by frozen pipes and delayed rehearsals.
"I had a great time, but ironically enough, it froze really badly that year," he says.
So when he was asked to direct William Inge's "Bus Stop" for BFT -- again in January -- it brought back memories.
"I had to think about it, not only because I wasn't sure if I wanted to get back into the grind, but it opens in the middle of January," says Haarbauer.
It's Haarbauer's first directing job since retiring 2½ years ago from UAB, where for decades he directed plays and led the university's theater department.
Since then, he has performed with the Seasoned Performers in readings of "Don Juan in Hell" and "The Odd Couple," but he had been concentrating more on projects around the home rather than directing on the stage.
But when BFT came calling, he said he'd do it. "Bus Stop," Inge's comedy-drama about a group of bus passengers stranded by a snowstorm in a diner in rural Kansas.
"I had read it, but honestly, I had never paid that much attention to it," Haarbauer says.
What he, and many others, remembered was the 1956 movie that starred Marilyn Monroe.
"One of my small concerns is that people are coming to see Marilyn Monroe, and they're not going to get her," Haarbauer says, adding that the movie was tailored for Monroe's character and has little to do with the play. "For the play, that's a very good thing. It's really an ensemble cast, and that's because there is no star to focus on."
One of those in the ensemble is attorney Gordon Pate, whom Haarbauer directed 40 years ago in two plays at Town and Gown Theatre.
"The first one was 'JB,' and he had some lines in it and did a fine job," says Haarbauer. "Then came 'Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feeling So Sad." Gordon played the corpse, and his job was to fall out of the closet every night. He fell out of the closet every night and never moved. To his credit, he never complained about not having enough lines."
Haarbauer is looking forward to the opening of "Bus Stop," which has had a rehearsal schedule interrupted by Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, freezing weather and the BCS Championship Game.
"It has been the most disjointed rehearsal project I've ever been a part of," Haarbauer says, laughing. "The other side of that is that all the people in the show are pretty experienced, and the cast has been very committed to it."
© 2010 Alabama Live LLC
“You´ve got to have a few bad habits to rely on when things with women go wrong.’ -Bus Stop
That kind of statement drives character. What do we know about a person who would say that? Probably a man – not a kid. Someone with some real-world experience, likely some heartbreak, and some bad habits. Maybe a person who´s not on the right side of the moral fence all the time. Not a sunny-eyed optimist.
When a writer builds a character, every word in a script offers another “dot’ for an actor or director to try and connect. Some scripts are really “tight’ – maybe like David Auburn´s Proof – and the words themselves offer a fully fleshed-out character for the action and the performance. Although I haven´t read Bus Stop, some scripts seem looser and more open to interpretation. As a parallel, songs work the same way. Some you´ve got to sing exactly like the original, but there is music – Brown Eyed Girl comes to mind (“Hey there, Rodrigo’) – that offers worlds of “space’ for improvisation and play.
Since I mentioned improvisation, I recently saw the Extemporaneous Theatre Company´s To Mock a Killing Bird show. (If you don´t know, that´s our local improv troupe, and I highly recommend them.) For shows like that one – an improvised murder mystery – each of the performers sketches out a character and sticks to it throughout the show. In every show, we get to watch these personas get developed on stage, right before our eyes. Some bloom into full-blown (and very funny) people, but occasionally, promising characters drift into difficult and unfunny dead-ends. Much like off-stage life, you can get boxed in by your own decisions in certain circumstances.
Non-improvised characters can too. Add the right touches and everyone gets rewarded with that satisfying feeling of watching the ball sail off the bat. Miss ‘em, and you´ll just get a thunk – and another 6-3 groundout.
The Birmingham Festival Theatre´s version of Bus Stop, written by William Inge, sails off the bat. It´s probably the best and most entertaining performance I´ve seen at the Birmingham Festival Theatre. The play is almost like Gilligan´s Island – people from all walks of life who get stranded for one night in a bus stop diner. There´s a Professor, a Ginger, a Maryann, a Sheriff-Skipper, and some Cowboys. They interact in funny, romantic, and occasionally moving ways. There´s a fistfight and some kissing. But no cheese…
Directed by Ward Haarbauer, the dots get connected in such a way that it works. The juiciest parts probably go to actors Tavi Juarez, Holly Croney Dikeman, Gordon Pate, and Ron Bourdages. Juarez represents a dowdied-up “Maryann’-type waitress, but, brimming with youthful enthusiasm, she´s hard not to watch. I think the film version was famous for casting the almost unfollowable Marilyn Monroe as Cherie, but Dikeman´s got her own chirpity charisma and big, blue-shadowed eyes. The most intriguing subplot is between Pate, the “Professor’, and the underage waitress, and I think those dots could´ve been connected in a hundred different ways, from creep-out to sugary-sweet. Finally, Bourdages plays Virgil Blessing (good name!) and his contribution greatly exceeds his lines – plus, he plays guitar onstage and wrote a song for the performance.
Once again, thanks to the Birmingham Festival Theatre for admitting me and letting me write a piece about this well-acted show. “I´ve always exercised excellent taste, if not the best judgment.’
© 2010 Birmingham Verse
Review gets two stars out of five
There´s nothing terribly wrong with Birmingham Festival Theatre´s production of “Bus Stop,’ but there´s very little that´s terribly right with it, either.
Mostly, it´s just fine. The actors, with a couple of exceptions, are OK. The direction, by Ward Haarbauer, is good, though some of the actors are miscast. The play, by William Inge (“Picnic,’ “The Dark at the Top of the Stairs’), is tolerable, but you can see why it had to be considerably rewritten to make the 1956 movie, well, interesting.
This is a play where very little happens. A petulant cowboy, for reasons that are still unknown, gets the girl he has been mistreating all night, and Grace, who runs the diner where passengers on a bus are stranded for the night, finally decides to buy some cheese. Those are about as deep as the revelations get.
It all makes for a tolerable but somewhat boring evening of theater, which, perhaps because BFT´s small space was so hot on Thursday night, left at least a couple of folks in the audience asleep.
They shouldn´t be blamed.
Inge´s play has very little to say about the four people stuck in Grace´s diner — Cherie, a perky dancer-singer; cowboy Bo Decker, who has all but kidnapped her and forced her on the bus with him; Virgil, Bo´s gentlemanly but oh-so-bland sidekick; and Dr. Gerald Lyman, a drunk and alleged sexual deviant who seems like he´s in the wrong play.
They interact with Grace, her co-worker Elma, bus driver Carl and sheriff Will, but the only two we end up caring about are Cherie and Elma. That´s thanks to strong performances from Holly Croney Dikeman and Tavi Juarez; they are as understated as the rest of the “Bus Stop’ crew, but they´re much more interesting to watch.
In the end, the greatest flaw of this “Bus Stop’ is that it´s just not that memorable. It ambles along. But meandering can only get you so far. After two hours, you want something to happen, and it never does.
The whole thing is very safe, which is not what people have come to expect from a usually edgier BFT.
© 2010 Alabama Live LLC