Title: Sweet Tornado, Margo Jones and the American Theater.
What is it? : Dallas PBS TV station, KERA's documentary on the life of theater innovator Margo Jones, by Kay Cattarulla and Rob Tranchin. Premiere March 27 at 8PM KERA-13.
Technical Quality: Good. This is a well done, one hour, TV production. It's a nice mix of black and white, and color, live action and classic film and photos.
Innovative Quality: Very high. The bio of Jones is an innovative mix of real footage, classic photos, bio information, narration, snippets of live theater, and actors playing Margo, Judith Ivey, and Tennessee Williams, Richard Thomas. The mix enlivens the bio and gives it a theatrical flair - how apropos!
Review: This rare production for Dallas' PBS TV station, KERA, is a real delight, a fascinating bio, and a fine piece of art in itself.
Narration by Marcia Gay Harden connects the parts up. There are interviews of friends of Margo including Ray Walston, best remembered as My Favorite Martian. (Plus comment from Betsy Swank, a Dallas woman that worked at KERA during the Jones era and a person I knew and admired.) Classic theater photos and film clips of the era. And actors recreating Margo and Tennessee Williams plus play snippets.
Judith Ivey is a standout as Margo, and looks just like her. She brings both the fire of the "Texas Tornado" as Tennessee named her, and a vulnerability side that came from her personal problems: too much drinking, chain smoking, and no lasting personal relationships.
One can get a sense of the real Jones' personality in her grading system as a teacher. Her students got either A's or F's and no grades in-between. "You either belong in the theater or you don't."
The gist of the program centers on highlights of her many notable achievements (and some failures) in both New York and Dallas theater.
They include: re-inventing theater-in the round, starting up a Dallas theater -in -the-round at Fair Park called Theater -' 47 that year, then the next year Theater '48 etc., pioneering the regional theater movement in the US that has since spread out to every major city, championing the work of playwrights like Tennessee Williams and plays like her world premiere production of Lawrence and Lee's Inherit the Wind, crusading against the commercial domination of New York Theater, and probably most important of all, this "Theater Evangelist" promoted theater in all its aspects to Dallas, a region that was provincial to say the least.
That local resistance, plus her bad habits, and troubled personal relationships, began to take their toll. But bizarre events did more harm, and led to her untimely death. She was poisoned by cleaning fluids used to clean up a party in her hotel room.
KERA has brought some well deserved attention to a Dallas art pioneer in a town seldom known for promoting anything innovative in the arts. They have done such a fine job that I encourage them to make this the start of a series of works celebrating art and artists of our city. Or they can use that great local talent to produce other notable TV programs. Congratulations to all involved. I encourage all those who love theater, or Dallas, or art innovation, to see it.
Contact Info:
www.margojones.org
www.kera.org
Overall Grade: 6.5
Grading system: 9-10 Highest grade - Life's work of a master (ex. Collected plays of Shakespeare, collected symphonies of Beethoven) 8-9 Single best work of a celebrated master's career. 7-8. Best work of an era or genre or decade. 6-7 Best work of the year. 5-6 Very good. 4-5 More good than bad. 3-4 Average amount of good = amount of bad. 2-3 Mostly bad with some redeeming parts. 1-2 Nothing redeemable. 0-1 So bad it is offensively bad and outrages the reviewer for taking up that time in his life - just awful.
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