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Perfect actor elevates 'Lintel' librarian
(by Herb Hammer - May 04, 2011)
THEATER, BY HERB HAMMER
Perfect actor elevates 'Lintel' librarian
By the time we catch up with the Dutch librarian, he has lost his job. Now he feels compelled to tell to the world, at least the small part of the world willing to step into his rented lecture hall, a rambling story about an overdue book.
Glen Berger's precise, complicated comedy "Underneath the Lintel" opened this past week at the Chagrin Valley Little Theatre's River Street Playhouse.
The success of this 70-minute play is largely due to the perfect small theater but more so to Robert Hawkes who plays the eccentric librarian. Mr. Berger has written an engrossing narrative, but it's the remarkably talented Mr. Hawkes, whose timing and straight-faced dedication to exploring this engrossing trip through time, that makes it endearingly sad yet full of laughs.
The librarian is surrounded by a chalkboard, a battered suitcase filled with scraps of evidence, audio tapes and a well-organized slide show. He also feels compelled to show us his rotating stamp that can produce any date in history.
We know early on that this dejected, rebuffed ex-librarian will explore his quest. The quest is rather simple; the complications come later.
It is the librarian's job to check in books dropped into the overnight slot on the previous night. He then assesses late fees. One morning he comes across a battered Baedeker travel guide which was last checked out in 1873 and thus was 113 years overdue. He explains how he checked the back records, "so I can send him the fine of his life."
He now explains precisely how his quest has taken him to several parts of the world, and he details that date back to the beginnings of Christianity.
While the first half of the playwright's narrative is compelling and comical, he loses his way, or rather our way, in the second half, for one senses he knows where he's going with his meandering trip.
The librarian, speaking with what I imagine to be a Dutch accent, retells the legend of the Wandering Jew. The librarian is out to prove that A, who apparently checked out the book, is the Wandering Jew. According to myth, the cobbler of Ahasuerus underneath the lintel, the horizontal top of his doorway, is where Jesus came to rest while dragging his cross. Fearful of the Roman soldiers, the Jew chased Jesus away. Then Jesus told the cobbler, "I will go, but you will tarry till I come back," thus the Jew wanders to this very day.
There is much to interrupt from the ramblings of this fidgety librarian, that is if one chooses to do so. The audience can also just enjoy the talents of an exceptional actor and a storyteller who I would bet isn't quite sure where he is going any more than we are.
There is no secret thread to be pulled on until the answer can be found at its end. There is only sympathy for the librarian, who was hoping for more of an audience for his lecture, more listeners to be mystified as he is over this unexplained returning of a long-overdue travel book.
Mr. Berger has put together a quizzical story to be told only by an exceptional actor.
The River Street Playhouse gives us the perfect actor, who will certainly fill the house in the next three weeks of performances.
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