'VIGIL:' A GOGOL TALE IN SITCOM STYLE 
                                              By V.I. Hambleton
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area theater
                                                                 Weeks starting April 5, 2010
                                                                 Vol. 12, No. 86
            “Vigil,” which opened at ACT, is a scatter-shot play that comes slowly into focus and is saved by a heart-warming ending. It features  a rare film-star-sighting in Olympia Dukakis, executing a largely silent role on stage.
          “Vigil” opens  with the noisy arrival of Kemp to the home of Grace, an aged, spare woman lying in her bed.  Kemp announces that he is her nephew and has come in response to her letter saying she is dying and needs him.  There follows a series of short staccato scenes in which Kemp makes a morbidly comic remark followed by a brief blackout.  The series of one-liners are funny and dreadful,--he wants her to die and get it over with--his admonitions, together with the blackouts, are done in a style that reminds me of television comedy.  I initially resisted enjoying this play, but fortunately the characters are more fully realized as the play goes on.  And a wholly unexpected ending saves it altogether.
          Grace has only 10 or 12 speaking lines in the entire two-hour play, but Olympia Dukakis clearly does not need words to communicate curiosity, anger, puzzlement, sympathy, concern and a bunch of other emotions and attitudes.  She seems more alive and inter-active in fact than Marco Barricelli’s Kemp.  Between macabre lines urging Grace to hurry up and die, he whines about his own miserable childhood.  His father was bi-polar and his mother an alcoholic who bought his father the gun with which he shot himself. He felt ignored.   His aunt had visited once, and Kemp spent his childhood years hoping Grace would come and rescue him. The second act (there is one intermission) is better than the first, and the surprise ending is a heart-warming touch. 
            Morris Panych, who wrote and directed “Vigil”, had also directed an ACT production of   Gogol’s “The Overcoat” and adapted and directed an adaptation of that play for film.  His regard for Gogol can be seen in these characters.  Ken MacDonald’s set bespeaks Grace’s situation:   forgotten prints on the wall, dust, objects that haven’t been used in a long time and general clutter.  Grace herself spends most of her time in her rumpled bed.  Kemp paces, clumps up and down stairs, looks out the window on the busy street below, commenting on who and what he sees.  One of the figures he sees every day plays a part in the end of the story.  
            As a trustee of the American Conservatory Theatre Foundation, Dukakis has an on-going affiliation with the ACT troupe. She has appeared in 4 previous ACT productions including "Hecuba" in 1995 and 1998.  Her many film credits include "Moonstruck",  for which she won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award.
            Marco Barricelli is artistic director of Shakespeare Santa Cruz and a veteran of many past ACT productions. 
            Morris Panych’s play “Vigil” at American Conservatory Theater, San Francisco, through April 18. For info: (415)  749-2228, or go online.
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        © V.I. Hambleton 2010
            V.I. Hambleton is a regular theater reviewer for artssf.com.
    These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never weakly)focus on theater, dance and new musical creativity in performance, with forays into recordings by local artists, and a few departures into books (by authors of the region)as well.
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