Written by local dramatist Pamela Turner (with a nod to Russell Blackmon, a colleague who first suggested the idea to her) and mounted by 7 Stages artistic director Del Hamilton (in a co-production with the University of Georgia theater department), “Hidden Man” is a portrait of the Atlanta-based artist Robert Sherer as a troubled young man.
The play is set in the 1980s, during his formative years as a gay atheist, when Sherer was going through a particularly unpleasant phase as an anti-social punk-rocking junkie. Running away from his life on a path of self-destruction, in more ways than one, he finds himself at a North Georgia abode called Paradise Gardens, where he meets Rev. Howard Finster, the renowned folk artist and preacher (who died in 2001).
It’s debatable to what extent they really knew one another, or how much of the story actually happened and how much of it is purely imagined. Ultimately, “Hidden Man” leans a bit too heavily toward the latter.
One of its supporting characters is named The Stranger, a colorful figure in circus-clown drag and an apparent figment of young Robert’s drug-addled imagination. He could have stepped out of a Finster painting, or he might be an alien from a faraway star, if nothing less than a heavenly angel.
Hamilton’s modest production evokes the alternately rural and seedy environments of the play most effectively with smaller, quieter brush strokes. For all the bells and whistles of a fantasy exorcism sequence, it leaves no more lasting an impression than a couple of fleeting moments in which a screen door or a bicycle pump become musical instruments of a sort.
A nude love scene between fellow UGA students and brave co-stars Malcolm Campbell-Taylor (as Robert) and Jordan Harris (as his boyfriend) is sensitively handled, when it could have felt gratuitous or exploitive. They shower together, literally washing away their “sin” (the word is painted on their chests).
Turner’s even-handedness is admirable. She exposes Robert’s nihilistic lifestyle without condemning it, and she makes Finster neither a paragon of homespun wisdom nor a parody of backwoods eccentricity. George Contini, an associate theater professor as UGA and an occasional actor for hire (the Alliance’s “Shear Madness”), is excellent in the role.
Still, just as Robert seeks to fill the “empty hole where his self used to be,” something is missing at the core of the central relationship. The intellectual conflict between the two characters is easy to recognize, but the play falters in terms of satisfactorily revealing Finster’s impact on Robert as a spiritual adviser or artistic mentor.
In the end, that Sherer cleaned up his act is the main thing. What Finster had to do with that may not be hidden, exactly, but a lot of it remains to be seen.
Theater review
“Hidden Man”
Grade: B-
Through March 25. 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 5 p.m. Sundays. $20-$25. 7 Stages, 1105 Euclid Ave. N.E., Atlanta (in Little Five Points). 404-523-7647. 7stages.org.
Bottom line: Interesting but flawed.
About the Author
