It would be hard to find a play more irrelevant to its audience than Incorruptible, the would-be farce currently being offered by Hat Trick Theatre. This regrettable comedy about a group of medieval monks who sell bogus saints' relics to churches all over Europe has nothing interesting to say about religion, capitalism, history or human credulity; it runs out of humor soon after it starts and drones on and on long after our patience has vanished.
It's a pity to see an actor as talented as Jack Holloway wasting his time in such a turkey, and the earnest efforts of several of his co-players can't sufficiently distract us from a script they can't vivify. Is the dramatic repertory really so small that this was all Hat Trick could find to inaugurate its 2007-2008 season? I wish I'd gone to the movies. I wish I'd stayed home.
The plot: It's approximately the year 1200, and a certain monastery in France is rapidly approaching bankruptcy. Its main attraction, the bones of Saint Foy, aren't healing anyone — in fact, it's been 13 years since the Saint worked a miracle. Meanwhile, the Pope, who was supposed to visit, has detoured to the town of Bernay, where miracles galore are occurring, thanks to the bones of — Saint Foy!
Yes, someone has apparently moved the lady's relics, and she's producing out of town in a way she never did at home. An investigator discovers that a minstrel named Jack apparently sold the saints' bones for 30 pieces of gold, and further probing turns up the news that Jack only pretended to sell Foy's bones — what he offered to the Bernay abbey were really the remains of a common pig farmer. The success of this deception leads the denizens of the failing monastery to imagine a new scheme: Why not dig up the whole churchyard and sell all the bones there as if they were saints' relics? The project's a success: Soon churches far and wide are paying handsome sums for John the Baptist's head or a 10th saint's collarbone or a 30th saint's foot. But then the graverobbers run out of graves. And when the Pope announces that he's come to see an "incorruptible" — a saint so pure that his body won't decay — the crooked monks are tempted to move to a whole new level of crime.
If this sounds like the premise for a potentially dazzling free-for-all, well, it is but it isn't. That is, if some more capable author had tackled the same historical material — say Tom Stoppard or Peter Shaffer — you can be sure there'd be lots to think about as the farce progressed. But playwright Michael Hollinger is no intellectual: He's written a piece that's almost all (eventually tiresome) action, with few if any stopovers for interesting commentary on the issues he raises.
What he gives us — and what director Joe Winskye does nothing to mitigate — is lots of shouting, lots of physical combat, a little juggling (by Holloway, and only partly successful) and a kind of shell game involving gunny sacks. Of course, there's nothing at all wrong with a farce that's mostly action, providing the action is inventive enough. But there's nothing in Incorruptible that wasn't hackneyed a couple of millennia ago.
Fortunately, Lani McGettigan's costumes are pleasant to look at, and Samantha Dix's set, of the interior of a monastery, is tolerable in a cartoonish way (best touch: the alteration of the seating at the Silver Meteor Gallery so that we seem to be filling pews). If only the play were as well made as the monks' cassocks, this might be a good experience.
Can one accurately judge the acting when a script is this crude? I'll do my best: The thespians who manage to rise above the occasion are Carcena Cornette as a bad-tempered peasant woman; David Barrow as the monk Felix; Jan Ray as the Abbess Agatha and Betty-Jane Parks as Jack's love-interest Marie. Best of all is Parks, who manages three full dimensions when most of the other performers are struggling with two. Her Marie is assertive, playful, infatuated and simply lovely; she's also the only woman character who's not mean-spirited and poisonous.
Still, Cornette and Ray offer persuasive versions of women in the throes of a really bad mood, and Barrow quietly convinces us of his tender heart and religious soul. As for Holloway — well, talented as he is, he just doesn't evade the coarseness of his part as written. I'm worried about Jack Holloway: A couple of years ago, after wonderful work at Stageworks and elsewhere, he seemed to be one of the best actors in town. But his exclusive relationship with Hat Trick in recent months has placed him in too many second-rate plays, or first-rate plays in second-rate productions.
Anyway, just for the record: In Incorruptible, he's too loud, too blunt and too predictable. Also overly obvious are Stephen Ray as Martin and John Hooper as Charles. There are glimmers of something special in Ben DeWitt's portrayal of Olf, though; in a different play, this actor might turn out to have real talent.
One of these days Hat Trick is going to turn out to be a treasure: The company is going to stop choosing the wrong scripts, experiment with other directors, cast more carefully, get out of the constricting Silver Meteor (I'm told there's a possibility of moving to the HCC Theater, also in Ybor).
When this company finally clicks — and I feel confident it will — I'll be the first to play cheerleader. Everything I've seen, both in front of and behind the scenes, tells me that these theater artists have spirit and sincerity. I'll be the first to trumpet their successes — when they come.
'Til then, my job is to bide my time. And to warn of unfortunate flops like Incorruptible.
This article appears in Sep 26 – Oct 2, 2007.