Review: Art Is In The Eye Of The Beholder in BAKERSFIELD MIST

Back in the early '90's, Teri Horton, a retired 18-wheeler driver described by the New York Times as "a sandpaper-voiced woman with a hard-shell perm who lives in a mobile home in Costa Mesa and depends on her Social Security checks," shelled out $5 in a thrift shop for a painting that she subsequently believed to be a Jackson Pollock.

What started out as a lark became a full blown controversy about what I might call the politics of authentication, elitism among the upper crust of the arts world, and the definition of art.

Horton's dogged and frustrated efforts to authenticate the work and to realize its value became the substance of the much-circulated and wildly popularized 2007 documentary, Who The #%$! Is Jackson Pollock?

Fast forward seven years and playwright Stephen Sachs used the story as the basis for BAKERSFIELD MIST, now the current offering at Theatre Artists Studio.

Horton becomes Maude Gutman, played by Marney Austin as a Jack Daniels-drinking, potty-mouthed unemployed bartender who believes with all her heart that the canvas in the back room of her trailer is her ticket to independence and wealth. She merely needs the painting to be authenticated.

Enter Lionel Percy, a former director of the Met (echoes of the real life Thomas Hoving who appraised and denied Horton's claim) and self-proclaimed fakebuster, whom she has retained to eyeball the oil. And eyeball it he does (a delightful theatrical moment) only to deny its authenticity. Tom Koelbel's portrayal of the snooty, self-absorbed and self-righteous art connoisseur is spot on. He reeks of aristocracy and hybris in marked contrast to plebeian Maude whose furnishings reflect a taste for tchotchkes and schlock shop Americana. (Extra points to director Richard Powers-Hardt for fashioning a set that captures Maude's orientation.)

In this contest of wills and wits lies the potential for a dramedy that Sachs's script never fulfills. As intentional as Austin and Koelbel may be in capturing their characters' egos and vulnerabilities, the tussle gets a bit tedious and redundant. Even when their combat erupts into moments of poignant self-revelation that might yield compromise, the arc of the play collapses. There are no winners in the end, save that Maude will fight on. We are left hanging, and so is the wannabe Pollock.

BAKERSFIELD MIST continues it run at Theatre Artists Studio through January 29th.

Photo credit to Mark Gluckman