The Dexter Leader
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Purple Rose offers 'smart and biting' comedy
By Sean Dalton, Staff Writer
PUBLISHED: January 24, 2008
The relationships and personalities that have come together at the Purple Rose Theatre for its first premiere play of the year could not be more fitting.
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"Vino Veritas" is David MacGregor's second Purple Rose Theatre Company production. It is also his first Purple Rose Theatre world premiere.
MacGregor brought "The Late Great Henry Boyle" to the PRTC in the spring of 2006 with much success.
"Vino Veritas" has been built from the ground up specifically for the PRTC, according to Macgregor, who described his relationship to the company as being extraordinarily open and honest, which makes this and every other play on which they collaborate so special.
"'Vino' is a smart and biting comedy about the dangers of telling the truth," says PRTC Artistic Director Guy Sanville.
"The play unapologetically confronts the question of whether it is better to tell the truth or to hide behind the facades we create to protect ourselves."
Proof of concept
The script for "Vino Veritas" is the evolution of a concept that MacGregor unintentionally vetted from a previous short play straightforwardly titled "18 Holes."
"After ('The Late Great Henry Boyle'), Guy asked me if I would write something else and I kind of had this idea circling around in my head for awhile," MacGregor said. "So I started developing the script after we were done with 'Henry Boyle.'"
So impressed with the audience reaction to "18 Holes" was he that it just made sense to further examine what resonated so well with people.
"It's basically a 10-minute play that was about two men playing 18 holes of golf and talking," MacGregor said.
There was no overarching story, no plot and no character development.
"All there is are two people who are very close," he said.
MacGregor found that people really identified with how comfortable and open the characters were with each other.
"There was no fear or judgment," MacGregor said. "They could just let out the kind of thoughts you, I and everyone else have floating through our heads, but we always keep to ourselves."
It's in the wine
"Vino Veritas" is an apt name for a play about the truth, since those very words are a Latin phrase meaning "In wine, the truth."
Whereas the core idea behind "18 Holes" was of truth thriving between two people in an open, endearing friendship, the characters in MacGregor's latest work stand at an opposite pole.
These characters are involved in spousal relationships and, as pairs, interpersonal relationships, and the truth isn't so beautiful.
"Since we're dealing with truths that the characters don't necessarily want to share, I needed something to help propel that forward," MacGregor said.
"I didn't want my characters to be close in the same kind of way (as '18 Holes'), but there had to be some kind of agency that comes in and facilitates the truth."
The obvious answer was "this frog-wine," he said, with a wry smile and a chuckle.
One of the couples vacation in Peru and while exploring some Incan ruins, go off on a side adventure with their tour guide.
They witness a wedding ceremony in which a couple must drink blue wine made from various ingredients, with the skin of the Blue Dart Tree Frog being chief among them for purposes of the plot.
The skin, which in reality is poisonous, acts as a reagent that induces telling the truth against the imbiber's will.
"In the morning they know everything there is to know when they emerge from their hut," MacGregor said.
"Before the couple return from the trip, the woman brings back a small, illicit sample of this wine and that's how this whole thing gets started."
Something for everyone
The alternating volatility and necessity of addressing "universal truths" is where the meat of "Vino" lies.
"My thinking in writing the play is, it just seems to me that some people lead the happiest, most fulfilling lives possible if they can just avoid the truth as much as possible," MacGregor said. "And there's other people that need it and can suffer and whither without it."
One of the couples in the play is going to be better off if the truth can somehow be avoided or they can separate themselves from it, MacGregor explained.
The other couple needs it, they've lost it and they discover it during the course of the play.
"It's not that it's easy, by any means. The 'wine' that keeps cropping up in the play is that it hurts," MacGregor said.
"The trick is not minding that it hurts, and that's the nature of truth and the relationships that people have. Some people need that openness and some people, quite frankly, don't."
Sanville urged people to watch "Vino Veritas" without feeling the need to know a particular character personally to understand what is happening.
"I think there are larger issues at play here that everybody is going to recognize to some extent," Sanville said.
"That is the goal here: You particularize it with specific incidents, but they speak to larger issues that are things that everyone experiences at some point in their lives."
A rare vintage these days
Modern pop culture is too focused on what the individual wants, in an effort to make everything palatable (read: salable), so part of what drives "Vino Veritas" is the idea that sometimes you have to go beyond pandering.
"So much of it is about, 'What do you want?' 'What kind of music do you want?' 'What kind of movie do you want, and I'll make it,'" MacGregor said.
"I wanted to go for something that is really genuine and true, which is so rare.
"I think when people see it, it is really appealing. People are starved for that. It's kind of like a nutrient that popular culture-wise we seem to be lacking these days. In this case, I'd rather throw together a little broccoli salad and give it to people."
Sanville says "Vino" is more about humor than jokes.
"You have to find the humor in the situation, because humor is a person's personal trait — it's how we deal with problems. Comedy is about pain," he noted.
"The play is very humorous and very funny, but it's smart-funny. It's physical; things happen and you may think they're funny and you may not, but the comedy in this play comes from the trouble that these people get into, the pain that they're in, and I think, too, some of the heroism."
Some of the things that the couples say under the influence of the frog wine is shocking, Sanville said.
"They will shock people and some people may find that funny and some people won't," he said.
"It will depend on your sense of truth, because everybody, I guarantee, somebody in the play with say or do something you agree with and somebody will say or do something you don't agree with, and I think that's true for everybody who sees the play."
Sanville called "Vino" a "comedy for grownups," but invited everyone to see it and be entertained; possibly gain some deeper insight into the truth and, perhaps, themselves.
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