Inventing van Gogh

City Theatre

Directed by Neel Keller

Playing Friday…

Inventing van Gogh

City Theatre

Directed by Neel Keller

Playing Friday through Sunday

(412) 431-CITY

In “Inventing van Gogh,” “art is the conjuring of absences,” according to Jonas Miller, an expert on the 19th century Dutch painter who bordered on obsessive.

Central to the play, the first of City Theatre’s new season, is the idea that absence is, ironically, ever present in people’s lives. For Patrick Stone, an artist blackmailed into forging a self-portrait of van Gogh, it is the absence of Miller, his mentor, and the doctor’s daughter Hallie – while overcoming the artistic absence of inspiration – that he must conjure in order to complete his task.

The relationships in the play are at the center of the story, which focuses less on the forgery and instead on the events leading up to it – in Patrick’s life, and also in the life of van Gogh, who appears in Patrick’s studio and brings a host of characters from his life with him. There are no shocking twists in the plot, but as a study of emotional absence, “Inventing van Gogh” is compelling enough to keep its audience attentive.

This is in part because of Steven Dietz’s informed and ambitious script, packed with detail about the painter. At times the detail is overwhelming, particularly since all of van Gogh’s lines seemed to be culled from the most quotable phrases found in the artist’s many letters. Luckily Kelly Boulware as van Gogh pulls off his list of generalizations with a serious and careful delivery.

He is joined by a talented and synchronized cast, including Larry John Meyers, who plays Miller with admirable restraint, instead of overdoing the character’s fixation with a manic bent. Janelle Baker fights against the unforgiving character of Hallie, who as written is one-dimensional, shrill and selfish, and with the pairing of confident movements and a near-constant vulnerable expression wins the audience over. Lee Sellars as Patrick and Martin Giles as Bouchard, the person that proposed the forgery, work wonderfully together on stage, playing off each other with expert timing.

Anne Mundell’s set of a dilapidated loft is nicely understated, leaving the visual focus of center stage to the masterful lighting of Rand Ryan. In a play about van Gogh, an artist renowned for his use of light, the light itself must play a role, and it does – rich golds and blues infuse the set via opaque windows on the loft’s second level.

Director Neel Keller must be commended for reigning in this script and making it shine with a superlative cast and crew. “Inventing van Gogh” has the potential to be yet another play about people driven, and driven apart, by their angst – but the production retains an understated dignity that makes the audience overlook the play’s unwieldy moments and focus on the simple human emotions that drive it on.