Braodway.com
June 6, 2001
by Ron Lasko
On the heels of their critically acclaimed production of Lobby Hero, Playwrights Horizons has done it again. Their newest production, Keith Bunin's provocative The Credeaux Canvas, is yet another must see.
In The Credeaux Canvas, the lights rise to reveal a shabby but spacious attic apartment on East 10th Street in Manhattan. With a massive skylight in the ceiling and stretched canvases littering the perimeter of the apartment, it is obviously the home of a painter. Soft morning light shines through the muslin-covered skylight, barely illuminating the figure of a young man sleeping on a futon mattress in one corner. A girl sits center stage staring at an unfinished painting on an easel. Another young man sleeps in another room, unseen.
These are the three characters that populate The Credeaux Canvas. The man asleep on the sofa is Winston, a library clerk and an aspiring painter with a fondness for Credeaux, an obscure turn-of-the-century French artist. The other man is his roommate, Jamie, an unhappy real estate broker who is desperate to settle down with his lover, Amelia, a waitress at Miracle Grill who is trying to jump-start her floundering career as a singer.
Jamie's father, a wealthy art dealer has just passed away and has completely cut his son from the will. Broke and unhappy, Jamie hatches a get-rich-quick-scheme. Using Amelia as his model, Winston is to paint a portrait in the style of Credeaux. Jamie, drawing upon his father's credentials as an art dealer, will sell the painting to one of his Dad's more zealous buyers, claiming it is a long lost Credeaux.
Naturally, there are a few predictable plot turns in The Credeaux Canvas. Do get-rich-quick schemes ever work? And doesn't something bad always happen when a beautiful young woman is forced to pose naked? Yet somehow, so much of what happens after these moments is delightfully unexpected. Although the events unfold at a leisurely pace over the course of nearly two and a half hours, Bunin has crafted a play that is nothing short of fascinating. The characters of Winston and Amelia are so fully realized, that they feel eerily familiar. The play is so realistic that I actually went home to do an Internet search on Credeaux--just in case.
As we've come to expect with Playwrights Horizon's, the production elements are top-notch. Director Michael Mayer has assembled a first rate team of designers and actors. Particularly noteworthy is Lee Pace, who brings real depth and charm to the character of Winston, even when he's behaving badly.
Ultimately, The Credeaux Canvas is beautiful and haunting portrait of three people desperate to be loved. It is a portrait painted by a gifted playwright--one to definitely keep your eye on.
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