'Bastard' review: Family secrets strike an uneven chord at The Purple Rose
Courtesy of The Purple Rose Theatre Company
As is usually the case with a show at The Purple Rose, even before a single actor starts delivering lines, the scenic design is already telling a story. Here we are in present-day Tyler, Texas, where floral arrangements are spread throughout a comfortable family home, an island bar anchors the room and three gold records hang prominently on the wall next to a guitar begging to be played. Because of the intimacy of the 160-seat black box theater, it’s easy to feel transported into this world, and scenic designer Sam Transleau makes sure the Lambert home feels lived-in from the moment we take our seats.
That’s what greets us for the world premiere of Devin Scillian’s “Bastard,” the story of an aging country rocker whose career peaked some 30 years ago with three No. 1 singles, the most prominent being a tune called “Beerwagon,” which, we learn, was once protested by a group of mothers because of its subject matter. That rocker would be Jack Lambert, played by an always reliable and slick Mark Colson, who has traded the sleuthing goggles and pipe from his recent turns as Sherlock Holmes for something a little more domesticated and down-to-earth.
Jack’s mother has just died, leaving him to grieve alongside his younger brother Beau (Joe Kathrein), and it doesn’t take long for the familiar bickering of siblings to give way to something deeper. They debate the logistics of what to do with their mother’s house and navigate all the complications that come with death, but there’s clearly a lifetime of unresolved tension underneath those conversations. Jack isn’t thrilled that the house was left in Beau’s name, though there is a practical explanation. Jack has a messy marital history involving ex-wives who have taken him to the cleaners, and while the house will eventually belong to him, keeping it in Beau’s name protects it for the time being.
Their mother’s death also comes at an inopportune moment for Jack, who is attempting something of a career comeback with the help of his manager, Shiner (John Seibert). Unfortunately, the opportunities coming Jack’s way aren’t exactly the stuff of Nashville legend. One potential gig involves a leisure cruise alongside David Lee Roth, with whom Jack apparently shares some colorful history. Shiner has clearly spent enough time managing Jack’s career and navigating his larger-than-life personality to know when to indulge him and when to bring him back down to earth.
It lays the foundation for all the drama simmering within this family, where the death of the Lambert matriarch has seemingly removed the person who helped keep everyone tethered to one another. Scillian, the longtime journalist and former WDIV-TV anchor, gives each character a distinct personality and has an ear for the kind of quick, conversational dialogue that makes the relationships immediately accessible. Jack is the tortured artist still coasting on the mythology of his younger self, while Beau is the more practical brother who has spent years dealing with the consequences of Jack’s impulsive behavior. Their differences are immediately apparent, but so is the complicated affection that comes from knowing someone your entire life, even when you don’t particularly like them.
There are moments, however, when the dialogue can feel a little too soft and cheeky, particularly when the play reaches for profundity without necessarily digging beneath the sentiment. Jack, reflecting on his mother’s passing, remarks that “she was here, and now she’s not.” There’s truth in the simplicity of that observation, especially in the strange fog that accompanies grief, but “Bastard” occasionally has a habit of announcing an emotion when it could stand to probe it a little deeper.
Elsewhere, Beau’s wife Mary Beth (Hallie Bee Bard) and their son Cameron (Danny Ayotte) are in town for the funeral, with Cameron preparing to sing at his grandmother’s service. In one of the show’s more stirring moments, Ayotte performs a soft acoustic number that briefly transports us beyond the confines of the Lambert home and into the funeral itself. It’s a simple but effective choice from director Rhiannon Ragland, allowing the music to carry some of the emotional weight and providing a welcome bridge between the play’s single-location setting and the loss hanging over everyone inside it.
There’s also Jack’s 24-year-old girlfriend, Sparrow (Hope Shangle), who frequently offers surprisingly sage advice while developing a habit of suggesting song titles whenever Jack says something particularly witty. It’s an amusing running bit that eventually begins to overstay its welcome, but Shangle gives Sparrow enough warmth and self-awareness that she never feels like merely another accessory to Jack’s personality.
Scillian and Ragland are at their best when laying this groundwork and allowing us to settle into the rhythms of the Lambert family. There’s a convincing sense that these people have been playing versions of these roles for decades, with Jack’s fame only exacerbating tensions that probably would have existed anyway. Beau has taken on the responsibilities that come with maintaining some semblance of stability, while Jack still carries himself with the swagger of a man who believes three No. 1 hits should afford him a certain degree of permanent celebrity. Their exchanges are frequently amusing because neither man seems particularly interested in surrendering the version of their shared history that suits him best.
For much of its first half, “Bastard” finds humor and genuine feeling within those relationships without having to force either one. That makes the dramatic revelation arriving roughly halfway through the show all the more frustrating, because it seeks to completely recontextualize what we’ve been watching without doing enough beforehand to prepare us for it.
The theater has specifically asked reviewing press not to spoil that revelation, and preserving it is important because the development becomes the driving force behind nearly everything that follows. Whether you believe it will likely determine how successfully the second half of “Bastard” works for you. For me, that’s where the show begins to lose its footing.
The problem isn’t that Scillian reaches for a big swing or pushes the material into melodramatic territory. Family secrets are fertile ground for exactly this kind of drama. The problem is that the revelation feels less like something that has been quietly embedded within the story than something dropped into it to force the characters toward a dramatic reckoning. Ideally, a twist of this magnitude should make an audience mentally retrace everything it has already seen, suddenly recognizing clues, behaviors and tensions that carry an entirely different meaning. Here, I found myself doing the opposite, trying to reconcile what I had just learned with the play that had preceded it.
From there, the script begins twisting itself into knots trying to justify the narrative gymnastics required to make the revelation fit. Even more complicated are the serious allegations attached to it, which open up questions about trust, fidelity and decades of family history that “Bastard” doesn’t seem particularly interested in examining with the same intensity it uses to introduce them. The play wants the shock of what has been said and the emotional eruption it causes, but it moves so quickly toward the fallout that the implications themselves never have enough time to settle.
That’s where some of the production’s more sentimental instincts begin tipping into something closer to contrived melodrama. Emotions run high, accusations fly and relationships that have taken decades to fracture are suddenly being reconsidered within a remarkably compressed period of time. Ragland’s performers commit wholeheartedly to those emotional turns, but the script hasn’t always supplied the connective tissue necessary to make them feel inevitable. There’s a difference between being surprised by a revelation and feeling as though the story has changed the rules halfway through, and “Bastard” too often falls on the latter side.
As a result, the actors are hitting the emotional beats the play asks of them, but those moments can ring strangely hollow. Instead of feeling like we are watching decades of buried feelings finally combust, there are stretches where you can feel the machinery of the plot moving everyone into position. The heightened emotion is there, but the groundwork beneath it isn’t sturdy enough to support everything being placed on top.
That’s particularly frustrating because there’s a compelling play underneath all of this. “Bastard” is interested in inheritance beyond houses or money, looking at the identities children inherit from their parents, the grudges siblings carry into adulthood and the stories families tell about themselves until those stories become accepted as fact. Jack has spent decades living inside the mythology of his own success, while Beau has partly defined himself by being everything his brother isn’t. Their mother’s death creates an opportunity to examine what happens when the person who connected those identities is suddenly gone, and the play is strongest when it allows those questions to emerge naturally through the brothers’ interactions rather than forcing them into the foreground.
Scillian also knows how to keep a 90-minute show moving. His dialogue has snap, the laughs generally land and Ragland maintains an easy rhythm even as the material grows heavier. Colson is particularly well suited to Jack’s mixture of ego, charm and bruised vulnerability, while Kathrein gives Beau’s frustrations enough restraint that you understand they existed long before we entered the Lambert home. Seibert provides an effective counterbalance as Shiner, while Bard, Ayotte and Shangle each find moments of sincerity even when the material surrounding them begins straining credibility.
Still, the emotional throughline of “Bastard” remains undercooked. Its central revelation needs more time to bubble and fester beneath the surface before exploding, and the implications that follow deserve considerably more scrutiny once it does. There are ingredients here for a sharper examination of grief, brotherhood and the secrets families inherit from one another, but this world premiere too often reaches for catharsis before doing the necessary work to earn it.
“Bastard” is most convincing when it stays rooted in the messy, funny and uncomfortable rhythms of a grieving family suddenly forced to confront what has been left behind. There’s wit in Scillian’s writing, warmth in Ragland’s direction and a strong ensemble capable of finding genuine feeling within both. But when the play finally reaches for its biggest note, the dramatic volume rises faster than the emotional foundation beneath it, leaving this promising world premiere singing an uneven tune.
IF YOU GO:
The Purple Rose Theatre Company's production of BASTARD continues through December 20th. You can purchase tickets here.
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