Arts Review
Review of Bakersfield Mist by Stephen Sachs at QUT Gardens
Bakersfield Mist is written by Stephen Sachs in 2011 who was inspired by seeing a 2006 documentary on a true story. Teri Horton, a retired long distance trucker from California bought an ugly, oversized painting from a charity shop for five dollars to cheer up a depressed friend. Fortunately for Teri the large canvas of squiggles and paint splats didn't fit through the friend’s trailer door and they hated it and refused to accept the joke gift or be cheered up by it. Unable to tolerate the work herself, Teri attempted to flog it at a garage sale. A local art teacher saw the canvas and unselfishly suggested that it might be a Jackson Pollock. Teri’s response was "Who the f*** is Jackson Pollock?”
The premise of Bakersfield Mist is it real or not? Does the trailer park alcoholic ex-barmaid Maude Gutman (Julie Nihill) indeed have a Jackson Pollock, giving her the ticket to escape her miserable small town life? The answer is we don't know!
The play opens with the character Maude in her tiny trailer greeting Lionel Percy (John Wood), a pompous overweight art valuer who had once been the Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Maude greets him at the trailer door and promptly tumbles down the stairs in a drunken heap as Lionel leaving the safety of the limo fights off the neighbour’s dogs before struggling into Maude’s trailer. His face is of disgust and unquestionable authority as he is seated in the tiny trailer furnished with charity shop bargains bought by what he believes to be a rough woman of low intelligence.
After twenty minutes of Lionel espousing his credentials and the true value of his judgment whilst Maude fawns pretending to be cowed by such a prestigious giant of the art world he (and we, the audience) finally get to see the canvas. Lionel espouses that his judgment of a forgery is intuitive occurring within two seconds of viewing a painting. He waits for “the tingle,” a frisson of excitement which overcomes him on witnessing a true missing or unknown masterpiece.
To the uneducated audience the canvas could be a Pollock or a load of bollocks, but it is not for us to decide. The anticipation is palpable. We all await the esteemed judgement of Lionel and assume he will scrutinise the art work with a well-tuned eye. However, there is no “tingle” for either Lionel, Maude or the audience. He takes a glance at the canvas of colourful and robust streaks and splats and claims it is a fake. We are all disappointed, especially Maude as she immediately ramps up the pressure on Lionel to change his opinion with begging, cajoling, alcohol and even threatened suicide.
After the proclamation of the Pollock being a fake the play seems to trundle along to no real conclusion. Somehow Maude manages to get Lionel drunk and drop his guard when he admits to having been mistaken on his “tingle” before and even being sacked from his cushy MET Directorship. The character of Lionel also seemed to take a nose dive as the crafty Maude played convincingly by Nihil uses forensic evidence and a temper brought on by frustration to beat Lionel’s ego to a pulp so he will question his swift judgement and lack of “tingle.”
Wood, a prestigious Gold Logie Winner (2006) and star of Blue Heelers and The Doctor Blake Mysteries never really seems to fulfil the potential of the juxtaposition of the character of Lionel. Bakersfield Mist has played world wide with actors such as Ian McDiarmid and Kathleen Turner who may have been able to create the “tingle” that I was longing for. When the play ended there was a long silent pause from the audience before the applause. Who, may have like me felt short-changed by the abrupt and unresolved fizzle at the end.
Perhaps Wood was having an off-day and had lost his “tingle” as he stumbled over several lines and created long pauses of memory lapse and even a repetition of a few lines as he fought to find the words. Whereas Nihil also from (Blue Heelers and her lead role in ABC’s Every Move She Makes) was excellent; fooling the audience with her drunken trailer trash act until revealing the character's sinister manipulative side.
Overall the play was entertaining with a philosophical look at the important, yet subjective role of art with a diatribe from Lionel about the true nature and value of artworks and Jackson Pollock. Maude didn't convince Lionel that the canvas was a true Pollock, but as in the arts the worth is in the eye of the beholder and I just didn't get that “tingle!”
QUT Gardens Theatre July 10th-11th 2017