"Wanamaker's Pursuit' at the Arden

Supported by the influx of free-spending American millionaires, Bohemian Paris in 1911 was too big for its britches. But Gertrude Stein's weren't big enough for hers. With the contributions of her brother, Leo (a bumptious prig of a beleaguered soul played by David Bardeen), her contributions increased.

At their salon, the Steins entertained themselves endlessly with themselves and anyone else who came along for the free lunch, drinks and dinner. Greatness surrounded them as well as those with them. Thus Gertrude could write the way she did.

Into this egotistical world enters the Philadelphian, Nathan Wanamaker. Widowed the year before and still grieving, Nathan has been sent by his hardheaded business family to buy fashions for the conservative Philadelphia ladies who shop at his grandfather's famous department store.

Promoting Picasso

As portrayed by Jurgen Hooper, Nathan is solemn, knowledgeable, considerate, good mannered and commercial-minded. He often must tell Gertrude that he's not an artist, just a man who must spend grandfather's money wisely. When Gertrude (Catharine Slusar) hears this, she grabs Nathan into her fold. Money in Gertrude's world exists to be spent wisely on genius; and since she has enough of her own, Gertrude is determined to familiarize Nathan with another who needs his money: Pablo Picasso.

Nathan however, has something else in mind. He's on a quest to meet the renowned dress designer Paul Poiret, unaware that he's already met Poiret's captivating wife, Denise (a beguiling muse, Genevieve Perrier) at the Steins'.

Nathan is wise if melancholy and conducts his unrequited fascination with Denise with discretion even when fencing with her husband (a masculine romantic Wilbur Edwin Henry). Gertrude cannot be fooled. Determined to make Nathan a new man, she presses him to buy a Picasso and pursue Denise.

Off kilter

This is the world premiere of Wanamaker's Pursuit, and I would like to believe that this piece is still a play in progress for its talented author, Rogelio Martinez. For one thing the ensemble cast seems to be working off-kilter with the playwright's best lines.

For another, even a Philadelphia audience (and this play is full of in-town references) was left a little bored by the first half. The script contains too many personal diary conversations with Nathan's dead wife and not enough lively confrontations between Nathan and his anxious-to-strike-a-business-deal father. As Gertrude once said of Oakland, "There is no there, there."

By Act Two, though, with the introduction of a wily young Picasso (played with arrogant blandishment by Sawn Fagan) and Nathan's confident challenges to Gertrude's assertion that art for art sake is nobler than anything or anyone else, the action picks up.

Nathan Wanamaker represents the new man of the 20th Century: The American, moral, polite, work-driven and efficient. The Steins, by contrast, have embraced the avant-garde and it has embraced them and their father's hard-earned money. In the end, Nathan discovers he couldn't buy everything he came for. He leaves Paris with a better understanding of himself and Paris with herself.