A scene from "Bullet for Adolf"
Woody Harrelson has been on a career upswing in recent years, with witty roles in the genre satires Zombieland and Defendor, and an Oscar nomination for his dramatic performance in The Messenger. It's with more than usual goodwill, then, that we come to Bullet for Adolf, the new play that the much-loved Cheers star has co-written and directed at Toronto's Hart House Theatre.
But all the goodwill in the world - and the hard-working efforts of a young, non-Equity cast - just isn't enough when you're dealing with a play that looks and sounds more like a failed sitcom pilot.
The raw material for Bullet for Adolf comes from Harrelson's own youth, when he spent the summer of 1983 as a construction worker in Houston, Tex., and became fast friends with a black co-worker (Frankie Hyman, who co-wrote the play). It may have been a formative experience, but it's hard to tell from this half-baked comedy. Harrelson and Hyman don't have much to say about race relations and - apart from video designer Christian Peterson's between-scenes barrages of vintage clips - the show gives us little sense of its time period.
What we do get are lots of big, colourful, one-dimensional characters and the endless rat-a-tat of wisecracks, good, bad and ugly. Harrelson and Hyman are anything-for-a-laugh writers. One minute, we're treated to a tasteless quip about Germans and ovens, the next, to the kind of corny jokes you'd expect from Harrelson's Captain Stone in The Messenger.
And speaking of half-baked, there's plenty of pot-smoking in the play, not to mention a yoga session and references to vegetarianism - all well-known Harrelson passions. Most amusingly, he indulges in some amiable self-parody with the character of Zach, a dumb good ol' boy played by Brandon Coffey as if he'd spent weeks locked up in a room watching Cheers reruns.
Zach and his high-strung buddy Clint (David Coomber), both fresh from college, have arrived in Houston to find only one of them, Zach, has a promised job. To help pay the rent on their apartment, Zach invites Harlem native Frankie (Ronnie Rowe) to bunk with them. Frankie, in turn, introduces the guys to his new love interest, Jackie (Tashieka McTaggart), who works in human resources at the Houston Chronicle, and her friend Shareeta (Meghan Swaby).
The meandering first act comes to a head when everyone attends a birthday party for Zach's teenage girlfriend Batina (Vanessa Smythe), daughter of his boss Jurgen (Thomas Gough). A stern German bricklayer and the son of a Nazi, Jurgen is the owner of a Luger once used in an attempt to kill Adolf Hitler. When the gun goes missing, it sets up a poorly conceived mystery plot that preoccupies most of Act 2.
Harrelson tries to make up for his bloated, lazy script by directing it in a brash, aggressive style on Melanie McNeill's dully functional set. But the play refuses to be corseted and we're finally left with an interminable last scene that's nothing but flab.
He does coax some funny outsized performances from his young actors, however. A hyper Coomber is often a scream as the fey-but-straight Clint, even if the skinny actor has one too many scenes in nothing but a pair of jockey shorts. Swaby is wonderfully sassy as Shareeta. Rowe's lanky Frankie also has charm, but the suggestions that he's poetic and contemplative are never developed. The only real dud, though, is Billy Petrovski's strident Dago-Czech, an Italian-Czechoslovakian who affects a jive African-American persona. Ali G he's not.
If Bullet for Adolf is aiming for a life beyond Toronto, I suggest Harrelson and Hyman hire a dramaturge to help them trim the fat and find a clearer focus. They've modestly subtitled their work "Almost a Comedy," but that's not enough. Right now it should really be called "Almost a Play."
Bullet for Adolf
- Written by Woody Harrelson and Frankie Hyman
- Directed by Woody Harrelson
- Starring Brandon Coffey, David Coomber, Thomas Gough, Tashieka McTaggart, Billy Petrovski, Ronnie Rowe, Vanessa Smythe and Meghan Swaby
- At Hart House Theatre in Toronto
Bullet for Adolf runs until May 7.
Special to The Globe and Mail