Traveling far from home ­ to find himself

Robert Hurwitt, Chronicle Theater Critic
Wednesday, September 29, 2004

The "Little Man Clapping" is equivalent to a four star (out of five) review.

The Bone Man of Benares: Travel monologue. By Terry Tarnoff. Directed by Mark Routhier. (Through Oct. 31. Encore Theatre Company, Thick House, 1695 18th St., San Francisco. 80 minutes. Tickets $15-$20. Call (415) 821-4849 or visit www.encoretheatrecompany.org.)

Ron Campbell is such a mesmerizing performer -- as welcoming and personable as he is infectiously comic and astonishingly versatile -- that he can lead an audience just about anywhere. That was true for the intricate intellectual twists and turns of his long-running solo stint in "R. Buckminster Fuller: The History (and Mystery) of the Universe." And it's just as true of his solo performance in "The Bone Man of Benares," which opened Monday at Thick House.

This is fortunate, and not just because "Bone Man" is a theatrical travelogue that takes the viewer through some strange and unsettling experiences. A first play by Terry Tarnoff, adapted from his slightly fictionalized memoir of the same name, the quirky monologue's central story isn't filled out enough to stand on its own. Bolstered by Campbell's magnetic, richly comic and continually surprising performance, though, the Encore Theatre Company world premiere is a general delight.

"Travel," Tarnoff writes, "is putting yourself in impossible situations to find out who you are." In "Bone Man" -- as cut back (by Tarnoff with help from dramaturge Jandy Nelson, director Mark Routhier and Campbell) from wider- ranging adventures in the book -- that means a journey from living in a van in sub-freezing Sweden through unpleasant episodes with ants and cockroaches in sweltering Kenya, getting stoned amid burning corpses on the banks of the Ganges, and kicking heroin in a hotel in Vientiane to a kind of nirvana in Bali.

It also means falling in love with an enigmatic Swede and losing her -- because of persistent jackhammers and nightmares about vampires (don't ask) -- on a Greek island. It entails hitting a blues epiphany with a band in a Nairobi bar (Tarnoff supported himself during his travels as a musician, as reflected in David Molina's evocative score). It involves interactions with several other figures -- an English hippie, an Indian leper, the bone man, a boisterous Turkish junkie in Bangkok -- each vividly conjured through Campbell's mercurial skills.

Working barefoot in a loose, travel-rumpled striped shirt and black pants (costume by Cindy Rae), Campbell switches instantly from one character -- or critter -- to another with deft, simple but definitive shifts of stance, gesture, accent and vocal tone. There are no props. Campbell's mimetic strokes make a guitar, backpack, harmonica, joint, boat or rearview mirror materialize out of thin air. James Faerron's attractive set of stacked wood crates, a few clever projections and Christopher Studley's inventive lights provide all the visual support that's needed. Tarnoff's tales of life on the road are well observed and cleverly told. Campbell's embodiment of their physical reality brings them immediately to life as his lean frame melts into stoned mellowness, wilts in the heat or contorts in horror at a swarm of bats or the roaches covering every inch of a dark outhouse. His trip across a Stockholm museum parking lot, shivering body leaning into a remarkably tangible blizzard, becomes an epic trek topped only by the ecstatic relief he derives from the invisible sinks and hand-dryers in the building's bathroom.

But Tarnoff's episodes don't add up to the meaningful odyssey the play's ending implies. The contributions of the characters we meet remain somewhat ambiguous at the end, including the rather anticlimactic interaction with the title figure. The narrator, too, never assumes more than the vague shape of a congenial everyman with some distinct phobias, quirky enthusiasms and occasional odd stubborn streaks.

"What is travel?" Tarnoff asks in an excerpt from his book printed in the program. "Deep down we're all after some answer," he suggests, adding, at the end of the quote, "We're all trying to connect to something sacred." The narrator of the play makes that connection, but not in a manner that seems earned or implicit to the story. A willing suspension of disbelief is the common currency of theater. The conclusion of "Bone Man" demands a pretty enormous leap of faith.

SF Gate, the online version of the San Francisco Chronicle, recommends the following theatre piece for the week of September 30 - October 6:

'The Bone Man of Benares' (Thru Oct 30)
Master of His Universe

I'll admit, anything that looks slightly New Age-y has me running in the other, more cynical direction, but even this realist was intrigued at the prospect of a "lunatic odyssey" advertised on a card with a giant flame and tie-dye colors. "The Bone Man of Benares," based on the novel by Terry Tarnoff (who also penned the play), has come to life with stellar performer Ron Campbell and the Encore Theatre Company. Campbell acts out a trip around the world that takes the audience from Laos, with 99 percent humidity during poppy season, to Mumbai, with a wind-chill factor of 116 degrees Fahrenheit. Along the way, the protagonist falls in love with a Swede named Anika, battles with heroin addiction and tries to outsmart thousands of ants in Africa, all in the name of finding himself. Tarnoff's tales wax philosophical, and you're left thinking about nature, time and what it means to just be in the moment when you're on the road. -- Anna Mantzaris, special to SF Gate

The Thick House, 1695 18th St. (between Arkansas and De Haro streets); Thu-Sat 8 pm, Sun 5 pm; $20; (415) 821-4849.

By Lee Brady. October 6, 2004

Terry Tarnoff may have written the book but it is performer Ron Campbell who grabs us up and takes us along on the writer's drug-and-love-fueled trip, The Bone Man of Benares. Campbell, who earlier transformed Buckminster Fuller into the guy next door, is a superb solo performer and if Tarnoff's tireless adventure becomes exhausting, blame the performer who is "on the trip" every second of the 90-minute show. Which means the audience feels Sweden's icy winter, shudders at man-sized bugs in equatorial Africa, stifles in hotel rooms in India and Laos and is heartbroken at the loneliness of this youthful long distance traveler seeking his soul. Campbell gives full measure to each character he meets, whether it's a waiter, a driver, a lover or a jaded expat. All have something to teach and he's hungry to learn. One thing Campbell doesn't do is play the harmonica, and since Tarnoff worked his way around the world as a professional musician, that is a loss. It would be nice to have some swinging and jazzing periods occasionally instead of all those "what am I doing here and what does it all mean?" moments. Director Mark Routhier's impressive sound and light designs keep us on the right road but it is Campbell who makes us captive on his "heart of darkness" trip.

The Bone Man of Benares runs through Oct. 30 at The Thick House, 1695 18th St., S.F.; 415/821-4849, www.encoretheatrecompany.org.

Ron Campbell's sharp solo turn nearly cracks 'Bone Man of Benares'

By Chad Jones
STAFF WRITER

Thursday, October 07, 2004 - TERRY Tarnoff spent much of the 1970s traveling through intense and scary parts of the world because, as he says, "Travel is putting yourself in impossible situations to find out who you are."

Apparently Tarnoff found enough about who he was to fill a book. When he returned home to San Francisco, he turned his adventures into "The Bone Man of Benares," published this year by St. Martin's Press.

Now Encore Theatre Company, with the help of the author, has turned that book into a one-man play having its world premiere at the Thick House in San Francisco.

The irony is that Tarnoff's travels were all about finding himself, and the play suffers because we have no idea who this character is.

"The Bone Man of Benares" begins on a stage dominated by a giant moon (fantastic video projections by Jeff Diehl). There are some crates here and there and a compass painted on the floor, but that's it. Another projection tells us we're in Bangkok, and it's 94 degrees.

Actor Ron Campbell, playing a character who is never named -- we can only assume it's Tarnoff -- enters, and within minutes is caught in a heroin spiral that inspires flashbacks to an earlier part of his journey.

From the heat of Thailand we go back three years to the icy winter chill of Sweden. Our narrator is living in a van and spending as much time as possible in the Stockholm Museum of Modern Art so he doesn't freeze.

While playing harmonica with a local band, he falls in love with a woman named Annika, and the two eventually flee the depressing winter by going to Santorini.

After the relationship falters, our traveler heads out on his own to Africa and ends up living in a crumbling mansion by the beach for $9 a month.

The storytelling up to now has been a little herky-jerky but interesting. Once in Nairobi, however, "Bone Man" takes off because our hero is pitted against nature. He battles bats, safari ants and cockroaches as big as a hand.

After fighting the good fight, he gives up. "I learned that sometimes you have to adapt, compromise and let nature win," he says.

Tired of living the primitive life and feeling the need for God, culture, curry and hashish, he heads to India. In Benares, he has a supposedly profound experience with holy men and a leper in the Hindu cremation grounds along the Ganges River.

By this time, however, we know so little about our hero that his quest for self-knowledge has ceased to be anything but a fairly intriguing series of vignettes.

What elevates "Bone Man" beyond a sort of hippie travelogue is Campbell's incredibly dynamic performance.

No stranger to the field of solo performance, Campbell spent years alone on stage in "R. Buckminster Fuller: The History and Mystery of the Universe." It's good to see him commanding a stage again.

With astonishing energy and near-perfect physical comedy capabilities, Campbell can make you think he's laboring under the weight of a bulky (and invisible) backpack or getting tangled in a telephone cord that you'd swear was really there. Campbell is probably at his best while trying not to freak out when the outhouse he's using is invaded by enormous, disgusting insects.

Campbell gives an extremely satisfying performance, but he'd be even better if we knew more about the character he's playing. We know his parents live in Milwaukee and that he went to college. Beyond that, we don't know where he gets the money to pay for his trip, why he embarked on his travels or why nothing pulls him back home.

"The Bone Man of Benares" is nicely produced, and director Mark Routhier gives the 80-minute show texture with David Molina's evocative sound design and Christopher Studley's lights.

But in some respects, this might as well be a slide show of some guy's trip around the world. What we really want is more about the fellow who took the pictures.

Traveler's Tales

Terry Tarnoff captivates with stories of his crazy trips, true and otherwise

BY MICHAEL SCOTT MOORE

The charm of the play is Ron Campbell's great talent for shape-shifting.

• The Bone Man of Benares

• Through Oct. 30
• Tickets are $15-20
• Directed By: Mark Routhier
• Starring: Ron Campbell
• Where: Thick House, 1695 18th St. (between Connecticut and Arkansas), S.F.
• Written By: Terry Tarnoff

October 13, 2004. "In 1971, fed up with the politics and culture of America," reads the jacket copy to Terry Tarnoff's new novel, The Bone Man of Benares, "Terry Tarnoff packed a bag, a guitar and sixteen harmonicas and headed out on an eight year journey that would take him into the jungles of Africa, the mountains of India and beyond." He did, in other words, what hundreds of other people from the United States and Europe did in those days, and still do now, only he did it for eight years. Now he's written not just a semifictional book about the -- voyage? hiatus? homeless career? -- but also a play, which Encore Theatre Company has mounted at Thick House as a one-man show starring Ron Campbell.

Campbell plays "Terry" in a loose striped shirt that looks faded from too much harsh soap in too many Third World villages. The piece starts in a Bangkok hotel. "I hadn't been in an elevator in two or three years," he says, and before long he's lying on the floor of a room, paralytic from a gift of 90 percent pure China White heroin. "OK, I did it," says Terry, showing off some of the hard traveler's vanity that bleeds through Tarnoff's writing. "I tried the local stuff an hour after arriving in Bangkok." The story of how he wound up in such blissfully wretched shape can't be told in Bangkok, though. It starts three years earlier in Sweden, where Terry has fallen for a woman named Annika.

He lives like a vagrant in Sweden, sleeping in parking lots in his underheated Volkswagen bus. During a 22-below winter, to warm up, he pays morning visits to the forced-air hand dryers in a public men's room. Annika is his tall, blond reason for suffering. He persuades her to join him for a cruise in Greece, where it's warm, but the affair falls predictably apart ("You're looking for something but you don't know what!" she says), and he moves on, in a daze, to Kenya and India. In Kenya he rents a house for nine bucks a month from a stoned Brit named Pete, joins a blues band in Mombasa, and has bad encounters with insects of various kinds. When Pete leaves unexpectedly for India, Terry decides to head in the same direction, and on the banks of the Ganges, like any self-respecting hippie, he has a religious epiphany.

The charm of The Bone Man of Benares is Campbell's great talent for shape-shifting. He plays not just Terry, but also every character Terry meets, with a magnetic intensity. Pete the stoned Brit may be the funniest member of this rogues' gallery; whenever Terry asks a dumb question -- "Is there a flush toilet?" -- Pete gives a sycophantic laugh and says, concedingly, "Noice one." But Campbell does just as well as a mosquito, a gang of ants, and the mysterious Bone Man of the title. Terry himself is straggle-haired, barefoot, and exuberant; Campbell seems to play him by drawing on giddy memories of being so footloose and young.

You may remember Campbell as Buckminster Fuller, from last year's runaway hit Buckminster Fuller: The History (and Mystery) of the Universe. In Bone Man he stretches a different set of muscles. There isn't a hint of Fuller's nerdiness in any of Tarnoff's characters, though Campbell handles them all with energy and style. The actor is good at setting a mood, too: Using movement and facial expression he communicates the dead cold of Sweden, the sluggishness of a heroin jag, or the nightmare of a Kenyan outhouse full of roaches. Christopher Studley's lights also help with mood-setting; they evoke everything from putrid cremation smoke to a swinging overhead fan.

There's one problem. A detail at the intense and spooky climax of the show stamps the whole thing as a work of fiction. While Terry sits by the Ganges at night, smoking a chillum pipe with lepers and holy men, he accidentally pulls off a leper's finger. It makes for a beautifully atmospheric and very funny scene, but it also belongs to biblical legends and wives' tales and sensational novels. That's because leprosy's not a rotting disease: It's an infection. It may kill nerves, so lepers can't feel cuts or burns, and little injuries may get infected and disgusting, flesh might grow bubbly with pus or even ragged with gangrene. But fingers and limbs, as a rule, don't loosen like wet bread and fall off. That's an age-old superstition, and it marks The Bone Man of Benares -- at the very moment you want to believe it's all true, at the incredible peak where Campbell and Tarnoff really have the whole audience going -- as an aromatic, if entertaining, traveler's tale.

Show Guide

Northern CA October 13, 2004
Fall's Fare 'Lethal' Lessons

SAN FRANCISCO--Are we all trying to escape reality? Or to reflect it, re-imagine it? For lovers of fanciful but substantial theatre, the season began auspiciously, with Robert Wilson's expressionist The Black Rider (reviewed in BSW, 9/10/04). Other theatres followed with flights of the fantastical.

Bay Area novelist Terry Tarnoff conjured a semi-fantasia by adapting his book The Bone Man of Benares for Encore Theatre Company. Based on his early 1970s world travels, the solo one-act is a funny, hallucinatory, and occasionally gruesome travelogue that falters only when Tarnoff tries to inject an unearned spiritual revelation. Ron Campbell, a veritable repository of human and non-human characters, is a delight as the intrepid wanderer and others, under Mark Routhier's imaginative direction.

--Jean Schiffman

Uncategorizable highlights as 2004 reaches final curtain

THEATER in the Bay Area is many things - occasionally thrilling, frequently quirky, almost always original and very rarely dull. Herewith some "achievements" that don't fall neatly into a Top 10 list:

Solo show spotlight - The Bay Area is rife with one-person shows. Among this year's crop, the winners were Mike Albo's "Spray" at Theatre Rhinoceros, Mark Lundholm's "Addicted" at the Marines Memorial Theatre, Ron Campbell in Terry Tarnoff's "The Bone Man of Benares" at Encore Theatre Company and Eve Ensler's "The Good Body" at ACT.

--Chad Jones