Theatre in Review: Vincent (Starry Night Theatre Company/Theatre at St. Clement's)If you are weary of the standard solo-show format in which an actor, impersonating a Great Historical Personage, faces the fourth wall and tells the story of his or her life, for no apparent reason, you have to appreciate the tack taken by Vincent. The author, Leonard Nimoy -- yes, that Leonard Nimoy -- devising a touring vehicle he could trot out between engagements as Mr. Spock, set out to illuminate the life of Vincent Van Gogh by telling the artist's story through the eyes of his brother, Theo. One of the most put-upon siblings in all of art history, Theo supported Vincent for most of the latter's adult life; an art dealer, Theo also had to endure streams of abuse for not selling his brother's paintings -- many of which Vincent would withdraw from the market before they could be sold. Vincent is structured as a kind of eulogy offered by Theo a couple of weeks after Vincent's death; it's an ideal setup for exploring a relationship that must have been a web of rage and dependency mixed with authentic love. Theo was intimately acquainted with the demons that drove his brother, and he stood by Vincent when many others would have fled in total frustration. Even so, at times Theo rightly found Vincent to be impossibly difficult, even as he worried about the depths of poverty occupied by his brother. Too bad that the text doesn't begin to explore these complexities; instead, it is a straight-up art history lecture, a parade of banalities about the tortured artist and his suffering. We get the high points -- Vincent's childhood, clouded by his forbidding minister father; his abortive career as a man of the cloth; his identification with the poor; the years of struggle and poverty; the suicide attempt and mental illness, here diagnosed as epilepsy; the severing of his ear; and, finally, death from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. It's a sad tale, delivered without much in the way of insight and further harmed by the hand-wringing performance of James Briggs, who makes Theo into a saintly, fretful presence of the purest pasteboard, forever shaking his head and clucking sorrowfully over his brother's latest excess. The director, Dr. Brant Pope, hasn't managed to coax many signs of life out of Briggs' elocutionary performance; everything feels predetermined, even the vocal sob that the actor produces seemingly on cue. Even as one's mind is wandering, however, there are the paintings, as seen in a stunning series of (uncredited) projections, which show, far more dramatically than anything in the text, Van Gogh's development as an artist. What a distance he traveled: The later works, especially a self-portrait created out of hundreds of vibrantly colored brushstrokes, reveal a visionary sensibility; one can only imagine what he might have given us had he lived. The rest of Vincent -- including the scenery and sound design by Briggs, the single costume by Barbara Pope, and lighting by Scott Pinkney -- are all perfectly acceptable, but this is one of the duller evenings on offer at the moment. The late Nimoy managed the dubious achievement of taking an already problematically artificial dramatic genre and making it seem even more stilted. The team behind this production has done nothing to ameliorate matters. A tempestuous, tragedy-scarred life is given all the flavor of a Wikipedia entry. Still, there are the paintings, forever dazzling. If Vincent gives you little to think about, there is, at least, plenty to look at. -- David Barbour 
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