Theater review:
CATCO's 'Pierce to the Soul' a fluid, fascinating
homage to folk artist
Saturday, April 10, 2010 12:25 AM
By Michael Grossberg
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Good new plays are uncommon in Columbus, but Pierce to the Soul succeeds against the odds with
charm, humor and homespun wisdom.
Contemporary American Theatre Company's enjoyable world premiere, which opened yesterday in the
Riffe Center's Studio Two Theatre, celebrates Columbus folk artist Elijah Pierce.
"What to cut and what to keep" is an apt metaphor for the issues that emerge in Pierce's long life and
art as he looks back from his East Side barber shop at nine decades of ups and downs that sparked his
spiritual growth.
Judging from the pleasing modesty and fluidity of the production, similar issues were paramount in the
minds of playwright Chiquita Mullins Lee and director Geoffrey Nelson in shaping and repeatedly
revising the script together over more than half a decade. Just as Pierce carved his pieces carefully
between and after his haircuts, Lee and Nelson have shaped a play that cuts close to Pierce's essence.
Many one-actor works these days wisely are limited to one act and run no more than about 90 minutes.
Yet, at about an hour and 45 minutes, this engaging and enlightening two-act mostly avoids wearing
out its welcome.
A good share of the credit must go to Dayton actor Alan Bomar Jones, whose deft portrait of Pierce
commands interest throughout while adding down-to-earth personality and fascinating nuances.
His masterful and relaxed performance converts even brief lapses of memory into reinforcements for
Jones' convincing portrayal of a 90-year-old eager to close up his barbershop (expansively designed by
Edith Dinger Wadkins) for a flight to Washington, D.C. to be feted by the first lady.
Although a larger man who doesn't resemble Pierce physically, Jones inhabits Pierce's life as if he's
become just as comfortable in his own skin.
Above all, Jones makes his monologue feel natural -- even when Lee gives him obvious punch lines to
deliver.
After Pierce's sculptures become famous in national and international exhibits and his telephone starts
ringing off the hook with calls from the media and art world, he comments to his wife with surprise and
pleasure: "Folk art!... Guess what? They've got a name for it."
The production avoids many of the pitfalls common to one-actor shows, while Pierce was a preacher
and Jones delivers a sermon in the second act, the play mostly avoids preachiness.
While too much Interactive shtick has become entirely predictable today, Pierce to the Soul refreshes
the tired genre with several amusing encounters between the actor and the delighted audience.
Yet the piece doesn't solve every challenge.
While a few pieces of Pierce's art are picked up and shown for comment and others are discussed sight
unseen, the play's creators haven't figured out how to adequately highlight a more representative range
of the sculptures and carvings that, after all, sparked all the fuss.
Overall, not much happens in Pierce to the Soul, just as in Having Our Say, the Tony-nominated
Broadway play adapted from the best-selling autobiography of the Delaney sisters, two remarkable
African-American women who each lived more than 100 years.
But just as audiences found it easy to warm up to the Delaney sisters in the popular CATCO 2002
production of Having Our Say, central Ohio theatergoers should be charmed and cheered as Pierce has
his say.