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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2009 > August > 17 > Entry
Review: ‘The Last Hippie’
The hippies hanging out at the Dairy Queen only look cool as long as you don’t talk to them. This is not the moral of Vincent Mann’s solo show, “The Last Hippie: A Western Novel,” but it could have been.
The play, at the Vortex through August 22, follows Mann’s bonding with San Antonio Dairy Queen hippies in 1974 rather than, as Mann seems to wish, a hippy fairy tale set in San Francisco in 1964. Mann never quite indicts the decade-late hippies he grew up with in San Antonio for being shallow. Instead, his mix of anecdotes of drug use and philosophizing clings to the past, but never offers much reason to rehearse the period.
Perhaps this stems from Mann’s philosophy of art. In a didactic epilogue, Mann tells his audience to avoid “looking for answers in art.” It is odd to receive such an instruction after sitting through a two-hour play focused on one man’s search for answers.
Directed by Pam Ramirez, Mann wanders around the stage, sometimes making creative use of props: an old bench transforms from teenage bed for drug-induced dreaming to a coffin for a drug-overdosed teen.
The show has a few gems of scenes. Mann’s description of his Colorado Springs country band becoming soundtrack to a bar fight paints a funny picture. Mann’s first experience getting high — he stage light actually brightens the first time he says “pot” — has rich details, too. He recalls sitting in a church pew, noticing the elder deacon next to him reeks of ham, an unfortunate coincidence for a fourteen-year-old churchgoer with raging munchies. But in many spots the play’s language is thin, overly generalized and tries far too hard to wring meaning from music lyrics.
Knowing laughter from pockets of the audience suggested the nostalgic trip might have more meaning for those who shared 1974 with Mann. But one audience member offered another telling response, pulling out his fingernail clippers during the play’s second half and clipping his nails through the remaining monologues.
‘The Last Hippie’ continues through Aug. 22 at the Vortex. See www.vortexrep.org. Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
Comments
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By dave lavallee
August 24, 2009 8:57 AM | Link to this
Who is this chick? Sending her to review something with a little depth to it is like sedning a KKK leader to review a Gospel Festival. Her bias clearly clouds her objectivity. The show is mostly about choice and change and how this is different for everyone. Using the timeperiod he grew up in clearly offends the reviewers delicate senses, but having grown up in the same period I found it cathartic and true to life. And he doesn’t say “don’t let art guide you, he says no matter what you think or feel through art, you still have to make your own decisions. Although to get this far in the depth that was “The Last Hippie”, one does have to be able to think past the shallow and look into thier own soul. Perhaps this made your reveiwer uncomfortable, forcing her to judge the entire work on surface observations. Have her stick to fashion shows and makeovers from now on to the thinking public a favor.
By jimmi
August 23, 2009 9:25 AM | Link to this
What kind of an ego does it take to think your life is so interesting that people want to sit and listen to you ramble about it for 2 hours. I was polite enough to sit through the first act without walking out. I did not bother with the second. Mr. Mann is a cross between a bad stand-up comic, a mediocre playwright, and a crap actor. I can hear similar stories from anyone over a few beers, and more interestingly conveyed.