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Smith's 'Last Year' plays well with others in New York

Thursday, September 30, 1999

By JEFFREY ERIC JENKINS
SPECIAL TO THE SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

NEW YORK -- The theater season has just begun, but Seattle artists already are taking juicy bites of the Big Apple. Rather than bathing in the bright lights of Broadway, though, these theater folks are working in small venues where tourists from the American heartland rarely are seen and critics from the major dailies rarely review.

At Here Arts Center, a tiny performance space on the fringe of Greenwich Village, Seattle native Matt Smith just completed a run of his funny and thought-provoking one-man show, "My Last Year With the Nuns." When Smith performed "Nuns" in 1997, Seattle critics (including this one) were enthusiastic, writing that his monodrama was "fascinating and entertaining" (P-I) and "a subtle seminar on how to get comedy right" (Times).

At the legendary La MaMa Experimental Theater Club, also in the Village, Seattle's newest troupe, the Seattle Experimental Theatre Company, premiered its first work last weekend.

Photo  
Matt Smith took his one-man show "My Last Year With the Nuns" to New York in an effort to extend its life and was pleasantly surprised. Kim Zumwalt  
It's clear, after seeing "My Last Year With the Nuns" here, that monologist Smith hasn't lost a step in the past two years and his material even seems a little sharper. New Yorkers agreed and Smith enjoyed a multiweek run that earned audience cheers and critical plaudits.

"My Last Year With the Nuns" relates a tale of hormones raging out of control as a group of boys complete their Catholic school education at St. Joseph's on Capitol Hill. Dividing lines -- both figurative and literal -- crop up everywhere in a series of adventures that finally weave an unsettling web of racial disharmony, class struggle and homophobia.

"My whole life," said Smith, "I wanted to write something about what it was like growing up on Capitol Hill. To have that village kind of mentality is a rare and fading experience. Most people don't have it and there's a real value to it."

While Smith's values regarding family and community are laudable, his monologue has nothing of the sermon in it. With unflinching, clear-eyed conviction, Smith's performance demonstrates his mastery of storytelling, accented with a generous dollop of superb comic timing.

Ranging from the industry newspaper, "Back Stage," to the popular going-out guide, "Time Out New York," to the "Chelsea Clinton News" (which covers two Manhattan neighborhoods, not the president's daughter), to the grandparent of alternative publishing, "The Village Voice," Smith's reviewers were taken with his honest, unironic delivery of per

sonal tales laced with cultural

barbs.

When he enacts a story about a 5-year-old boy imitating Smith's own impersonation of stereotypical "black behavior," no one laughs. Indeed, no one seems to breathe. The masterly storyteller then leads us gently away from this potent image of racism bequeathed to the next genera

tion.

There were reports that Here Arts Center -- a funky cross between Seattle's Crocodile Cafe and the late, lamented Aha! Theater -- heard some complaints from patrons about Smith's unvarnished (and decidedly politically incorrect) language. But it is a tribute to Smith's straightforward performance that nothing he says or does seems gratuitous.

What drove Smith to leave his wife, writer Elizabeth Heffron, and their two daughters for a month to stay on friends' sofas and risk the approbation of critics who tend to view out-of-towners with a wary

eye?

"I wanted the show to have more of a life," said Smith. He attempted longer runs in Seattle, but "the theaters would always want their space back and it costs a lot of money to do publicity."

So he tried a booking conference where presenters go to find performers to fill theater spaces. Finally, after investing much time and effort in videotapes and publicity, he began to negotiate with a booker in eastern Oregon for a series of dates.

"It occurred to me that it would be wonderful to go to eastern Oregon. My director, Bret Fetzer, could come and we'd have a really great time doing this piece. But not as the big payoff. I realized that it was not appropriate to market the piece in this way. It's an urban piece."

He decided that, based on his limited Seattle run, he was not going to get booked outside of Seattle, Portland or Vancouver. "I decided I had to do something," he said, "because if you don't do something, you're going to do nothing. My wife encouraged me to bring it to New York, so I did lots of research on theaters with ex-students who live here."

Smith, who teaches at Seattle's Freehold Theatre these days, also has taught at Youth Theatre Northwest and Seattle Children's Theatre's Young Actor's Training Program.

One of his former students, Ben Weber, has a recurrent role as Skipper on HBO's "Sex and the City." After a recent performance of "Nuns," Weber seemed about to burst with pride at his mentor's success. Other students such as Robert Davenport and Ethan Sandler also work regularly in New York theater.

"Ideally," Smith continued, "what I wanted was to get some reviews. And I got them. I can't believe it -- it's what I wanted -- but it wasn't necessarily what I expected, because you hear all these stories about what happens in New York."

And now, it seems, Smith has one he'll enjoy telling.

Jeffrey Eric Jenkins is a New York-based theater writer for the P-I. He can be reached at 718-789-5553 or by email at Crritic@compuserve.com

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