There were reasons to revive 'Rimers'

ARTS /ENTERTAINMENT

There were reasons to revive 'Rimers'

By HARMEN MITCHELL

NEWS ARTS WRITER

Community High School has a lot of things going for it, but one of the brightest stars in its diadem (or, given the students’ sartorial tastes, the slickest stud in its leather Jacket) is the school’s 14-year-old Fine Arts Repertory Company.

The last school year has seen a dramatic increase in the public profile of this cooperative effort between CHS students and members of the local professional theatrical community, largely due to a September 1985 grant of $6,500 from the Michigan Council for the Arts. One of the ways the group celebrated was to tackle an artistically ambitious project: a December 1985 production of Lanford Wilson’s psychologically rich, dense, miserable “The Rimers of Eldritch.”

So successful was that production that FARCO has revived it for a final run, tonight through Sunday at the Performance Network. In some ways, though the play is quintessential Wilson, it provides a complex challenge to the cast and a cathartic lure for the audience.

Lanford Wilson is compared most frequently to Tennessee Williams, primarily because both playwrights took small, decaying communities and peeled back in as excruciating a manner as possible the jealousies, grudges and perversities that have festered for decades or even generations. Wilson, however, is even more exacting in his reproduction of dialect, linking himself more closely to the school of realism prevalent in literature at the beginning of the 20th century.

Set in a backward, dying town in post-World War H Missouri, “Rimers” shows the efforts of one young man to escape the dead end the town represents to him, and the resultant upheaval in the town. There are the requisite characters (town tramp, goony rednecks, crazy old and young people, and the town Peeping Tom), but what lifts the play out of mere melodrama is the way in which most of them have parallels in classic Greek tragedy.

Supplementing FARCO director Betsy King and her Community High cast (uniformly good, with several real standouts) is a committee of local professionals, ranging from costumer Martha Andrews-Schmidt to the Performance Network’s David Hunsberger, who is assistant director of “Rimers.” With its stark, four-tiered stage and only two props, “Rimers” relies heavily on its cast, which has honed the play’s “blackout” structure with ensemble playing. As a proven quantity, “Rimers” is a blast from the past you won’t soon forget.

The Community High School Fine Arts Repertory Company will present Lanford Wilson's 'The Rimers of Eldritch' at Performance Network, 408 W. Washington St., tonight and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $4, $3 for students and seniors. For more information, call 663-0681.

The cast of 'The Rimers of Eldritch' includes, from top, Josh Meisler as Shelly, Natalie Sternberg as Eva, and Sean Kozma as Robert.