There’s much to like in Michael Weller’s solo piece for John Keabler, irrespective of what you think of the evolving political views of Ronald Reagan—from admirer of FDR to speaker for Barry Goldwater in 1964. Keabler has the mannerisms and physicality, playing Reagan as much as a gangly kid as statesman.
The framing device for the play is an imagined interview for a magazine, while the last moments of Reagan’s life slip away from him on his hospital bed. (In Reagan’s fever dream, he is still the good-looking young man who is Keabler.) This allows Reagan to control the flow, so his story unspools as a greatest hits compilation, with good mini re-enactments of his film roles. That is to say, when Reagan’s late life dementia allows him to remember. Unfortunately, the interview trope gets in the way, requiring Reagan for much of the work to maintain focus on the interviewer, who seems to be sitting in the aisle of Studio 112’s seating, about two rows back.
Weller’s script is salted with nuggets of current affairs irony, as when Reagan rails against the idea of a wall (in his case, the one in Berlin) being the solution to security problems, or when he despairs of Russians in D.C. guiding policy.
People and places from Reagan’s past are subtly suggested by monochrome screen projections by Christopher Erbe and Taran Schatz—very fine work.
- Contemporary American Theater Festival at Shepherd University, Shepherdstown, W. Va.
- A Late Morning (in America) with Ronald Reagan, by Michael Weller, directed by Sam Weisman