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The North Plan: Review

'The North Plan' review: At Portland Center Stage, the revolution is a laugh riot
Published: Saturday, January 14, 2012, 4:10 PM    
By Marty Hughley, The Oregonian 


The revolution will not be televised. But it will have a soundtrack: Lynyrd Skynyrd. 
    
Then again, maybe it’s less a revolution than a resistance, a desperate attempt to preserve liberty, a people’s pushback against secretive, conspiratorial forces bent on oppression. 
    
So just as well for this humble movement to begin in humble surroundings -- such as a police station in the tiny (and fictional) Southern Missouri town of Lodus. That’s where we meet Tanya Shepke, the most -- let’s try to be polite here -- colorful character in the Jason Wells play “The North Plan,” and the most unlikely political-thriller heroine you’ve ever encountered. 


The country is in turmoil, a provisional government has taken power, checkpoints have been set up on the highways and curfews have been imposed in the cities. But Tanya’s concern is a DUI she feels she doesn’t deserve. (Sure she was blasted on Long Island iced teas, but shouldn’t she get credit, she argues, for turning herself in?)
    
Anyway, as long as things are changing, she figures, who better to be pictured on the new money than Skynyrd.


Tanya’s a little crazy, a lot crass, and constitutionally unable to shut up for more than a few seconds. Which makes her the perfect comedic centerpiece for the world-premiere production that opened on Friday at Portland Center Stage. Because despite such serious thematic concerns as the legitimacy of political authority, the importance of dissent and the uses of torture, “The North Plan” is a threat to public order because it’s a laugh riot.


Directed by Rose Riordan with a fine sense of timing and tension, it overcomes its rather static setting (a pair of jailhouse rooms, rendered with apt institutional efficiency by scenic designer Tony Cisek), building a headlong momentum until its sudden conclusion -- which on opening night brought the crowd to a hooting, hollering standing ovation. 


Considering that nothing less than the fate of the nation is at stake, you might expect the story’s protagonist to be renegade State Dept. staffer Carlton Berg (an amusingly undone Brian Patrick Monahan), who has stolen a database that might provide liberty’s last hope. But Tanya might be a more authentic representative of the people, and in any case Kate Eastwood Norris (pretty much unrecognizable from the prim professional woman she played here in 2009’s terrific “How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found”) portrays her in such brilliant redneck hues that she’s the clear people’s choice.


Tanya’s profanity flows like a mountain spring, so quoting her here is pretty much impossible. But Norris gives her enough dimensions that, however outrageous, she no mere cartoon. 

Patrick Weishampel
Tanya Shepke (Kate Eastwood Norris) transforms from party girl to freedom fighter in "The North Plan," a comedy/thriller getting its world 



While Tanya goes about her idiosyncratic way, the other characters have more rational calculations to make. Carlton expects to be shipped to some secret prison, but hopes his database can help save “the blood of millions.” The police chief (Portland veteran Tim True, disappearing into a subtle, fully realized character role) and a lowly administrative officer (the endearing Ashley Everage) have to decide whether to stick their necks out for motormouth prisoners or just pray the new government won’t be so bad. 


Then come the bad guys from Homeland Security (Fredric Lehne and Blake DeLong), invoking conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia as they justify their ruthless, bloodthirsty means.


Wells, who developed the script in part at Center Stage’s JAW festival in 2010, cranks up coincidences of timing and mistaken identities, almost the point of farce. And if you might be reminded at times of a sit-com slickness, that could also be interpreted as an admirable narrative efficiency.


And if the revolution ever comes, we should all hope it offers us so much opportunity to laugh.


-- Marty Hughley

Thomas Lauderdale In Portland Monthly Magazine

RAPSU's youngest member, Thomas Lauderdale, in Portland Monthly Magazine's August issue.

Thomas Lauderdale Tours Portland from
Portland Monthly on Vimeo.

tenebrous

clipped from dictionary.reference.com

Word of the Day

Friday, October 30, 2009

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tenebrous

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\TEN-uh-bruhs\ , adjective;

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1. Dark; gloomy.

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Origin: Tenebrous derives from Latin tenebrosus, from tenebrae, "darkness."

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And lurking behind our every move is the knowledge of our own mortality. It gives life its edgy disquiet, its tenebrous underside.

-- Douglas Kennedy

"Sudden death", Independent, June 3, 1999

Iran's National Poet Speaks Out On Recent Events In Her Country

clipped from www.youtube.com

Iran's National Poet Speaks Out On Recent Events In Her Country

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Simin Behbahani, Iran's national poet, spoke with NPR's Davar Iran Ardalan from Tehran on Friday June 26th. She recites two poems inspired by the protests -- one dedicated to the people of Iran and the other dedicated to Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman mourned around the world because her death during last Saturday's protests was viewed by millions on the Web and TV.

Invisible man

clipped from www.hoax-slayer.com

[The] attached photographs show a man who skillfully paints himself so that he so closely resembles his surroundings that he appears to be virtually invisible. At first glance, these amazing images may appear to be the result of digital manipulation and indeed a number of self-proclaimed experts have already dismissed them as being "photoshopped".

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However, the images are in fact genuine photographs depicting the work of clever Chinese artist Liu Bolin. The Beijing based artist has exhibited his work around the world with shows in China, Paris, the United States and elsewhere. News.com.au notes that Mr Bolin is a perfectionist who can take up to ten hours to ready himself for photographs of his performances. The UK's Telegraph also reports on Mr Bolin's art, noting:

In a series of mind-boggling pictures Liu melts into any background, almost entirely invisible in front of red phone boxes, Chinese flags and even earthquake rubble.

It means people walking by while he is carrying out his performance often have no idea he is nearby until he moves away. Liu said he wanted to show how city surroundings affected people living in them and how.

He said the inspiration behind his work was a sense of not fitting in to modern society and as a silent protest against the Government's persecution of artists.

Mr Bolin generally uses assistants who help to paint him in readiness for performances.

Book thieves beware

clipped from www.oregonlive.com

Security returns to Multnomah County's thief-prone library system

By Nikole Hannah-Jones, The Oregonian

October 27, 2009, 5:56PM

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For years now, stealing from the Multnomah County Library has been an easy feat. You just have to pick up a book and walk out with it.


The Central Library -- which holds half of the library's collection -- has had no security system since the building was renovated 13 years ago. None of the 16 branches has working security systems either, leading to hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost materials each year -- nearly $300,000 in the last six months alone.


But book thieves beware: The days of easy pickings are almost over.


For the past month, workers at the Central Library have been busy in the back rooms sticking little flat tags in books and CDs that officials hope will reduce the number of missing items by 40 percent or more.

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Doug Beghtel/The Oregonian

Library pages Deanne Gabriel (right) and Wendy Dudelheim attach security tags to books at the Central Library in the Multnomah County system's new attempt to cut down on thefts.

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Multnomah County commissioners approved about $1.3 million last year from the general fund and another $1.6 million this year from a planned bond to pay for installation of the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) system at all the branches by the end of 2010.


"We're going from security that is pretty much people watching to an automatic system that works," said Deanna Cecotti, Central Library collections administrator.


The move comes four years after a police officer discovered hundreds of stolen library CDs and DVDs at a patron's home and the public learned that staff annoyed by repeated false alarms had turned off the few security gates that existed in library branches. The discovery led to a study of library security released two years later that showed massive annual losses.

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Doug Beghtel/The Oregonian
The Multnomah County Library is installing a new $2.9 million system to reduce theft and make materials handling easier in the Central Library and 16 branches. The small, flat RFID tags allow several books to be cataloged at once and will set off an alarm at new security gates if someone tries to remove an item that hasn't been checked out.

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The library made security changes after that, said Cindy Gibbon, access service manager for the library, such as moving DVDs -- the items of choice for thieves -- and some other media behind counters and experimenting with locking shelves. But Gibbon said it took time to come up with the money to pay for a security program that would work systemwide and with all library materials.


RFIDs are small devices about the size of a nametag sticker that adhere to books, CDs and the other materials. They've been gaining popularity among libraries nationwide for the last five years and have been used in libraries in Europe even longer.


The tags store and retrieve data and contain antennas that enable them to respond to radio-frequency queries. They can't be removed from items without damaging them and will trigger an alarm at the door if the item isn't checked out.


RFIDs are favored because they're much more accurate than the magnetic strip systems often used by libraries.


In a year, items lost from the Multnomah County Library account for about 10 percent of the system's annual materials budget. The tag project, which will cost about $155,000 a year to maintain and mark new materials, could save $238,000 a year in lost materials, according to library estimates.


But just as important, library officials said, is that RFIDs are more efficient for both library workers and users and will save both time and money in handling books and other material.


"We wanted to make sure that whatever we did for security would make handling easier, not harder," said Gibbon.


The library is one of the busiest in the nation, but also has among the smallest in square footage for the number of books it circulates.


That means employees spend huge amounts of time logging books that must be transferred to, or that come in from, different branches throughout the county.


With the current system, workers must pick up each item that comes in and scan it in. Check-out workers must touch each item twice -- once to scan it into the system, the other to demagnetize the metal strip.


The new system allows workers to scan an entire shelf at once with a hand wand. Or, they can set a stack of books on a flat scanner and the scanner will catalog the entire stack. The tags will also allow the library to put DVDs back on the shelves where patrons can get them themselves.


Checking items in and out can be 60 percent faster with RFID tags, Gibbon said. That could save another $425,000 annually in streamlined materials handling.


The library is also adding new self-checkout kiosks that will work the same for library patrons.


"It speeds the checkout for patrons and for us," said Lucien Kress, project manager for the new system. "We handle so many items in this system and it take so much time that it can take 24 hours to get a book back on the shelf. With this system, things will go much quicker."


So far, the Central Library has tagged about 250,000 of its 800,000 items with a completion goal of early January. The new Kenton library will open by February with the new system and other branches coming online after.


"This should make it harder for someone whose intention is to steal materials," Cecotti said. "And it makes us better stewards."

-- Nikole Hannah-Jones