ON THE STAGE
Play ‘resurrects’ titans Actors bring Hemingway and Fitzgerald to life
Tom Wahl is F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gregg Wiener is Ernest Hemingway in Mark St. Germain’s powerful ‘Scott & Hem’ at the Red Barn Theatre in Key West.
Contributed
W
hat if the character you’re to play happens to be an historical giant – a titan of American letters? What if your task is not to create a character from whole cloth, but to resurrect – in a living, breathing form – an icon of literature. Such was the task set before actors Tom Wahl and Gregg Wiener. The two consummate actors will take the Red Barn Theatre stage Friday, Jan. 15 for a very short two-week run as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, respectively, in Mark St. Germain’s powerful new play, “Scott & Hem.” And make no mistake – these two Carbonell Award winning talents don’t just “play” Fitzgerald and Hemingway. They literally bring them back to life in every way, which wasn’t all that easy. “There wasn’t much available to find about his voice, posture, or bearing,” Wahl said of Fitzgerald. “Only a couple of short video clips. So I spent my time researching what kind of person he was, and his relationships, like the people he spent time with in Paris of the 1920s. That was extremely informative.” Wahl is playing Fitzgerald at a critical time of his life – when he was holed up in a Hollywood villa trying to finish a screenplay long past deadline and stay on
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the wagon at the same time. Enter Ernest Hemingway, who turns everything on its edge. The two powers of the written word square off at each other, both full of swagger and bluster, but both intimating that they are afraid they are out of words. Each man shows himself vulnerable but unyielding, and the result is both witty and very revealing. “At least I had a lot of recordings and interviews to draw from,” said Wiener, who brings Hemingway back to Key West in full color. ““I worked on the dialogue with those in mind. And I read a great deal of Hemingway’s stuff – the short stories, the auto-biographical books. And of course, the physicality… he was a big man in every way.” But what was more important to both actors as they slipped
into the skins of such biggerthan-life men was capturing each man’s point of view. They focused a great deal of energy on drawing out what Wiener called “the human. We wanted to go after why each man was doing what he was doing at that time of his life.” And then there’s the fact that Wahl and Wiener have worked together before, and this is the second time they’ve mounted this play, having originated it at the Actor’s Playhouse in Miami last year. They also direct the show themselves. The show also features Key West’s George DiBraud as the alluring Evelyn Montaigne. Tickets for the short run (Jan. 15-31 only) are on sale now at redbarntheatre.com or by calling the box office at 305-296-9911.
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Page 19 • Key West Weekly • Jan. 15, 2016