`Yellow Kid' Tries To Rise Above Greed

Theater review "The Yellow Kid," by Brian Faker and Bliss Kolb. Directed by Brian Faker. At Annex Theatre, 1916 Fourth Ave. Thursdays-Sundays through Oct. 15. (728-0933, ext. 1.)

Annex Theatre has an unflappable ability to concoct epics on the cheap. And with "The Yellow Kid," the sprawling low-budget spectacle penned by Brian Faker and Bliss Kolb, the company has risen to new levels of moxie.

"The Yellow Kid" marshals 27 committed actors, two nervous dogs, a goat and a roving slide projectionist around Kolb's four-chambered set - a logistical feat for any small Seattle playhouse.

But this docu-fantasy, about the Faustian bargain of a 19th-century cartoonist, also aims for a political-historical complexity and resonance of unusual span. With its splintered focus, March of Time echoes of the film classic, "Citizen Kane," Brechtian nuances, and attempts to deconstruct a catalytic period in American history and a conflicted chunk of the American soul, "The Yellow Kid" pushes a bold thesis along with its brazen stagecraft.

That the show does not win its case can be laid to script defects - some rhetorical stiffness, soggy moralizing, and an iffy central concept. Yet it still manages to go far in conjuring a sweeping, synergistic panorama of American can-do progress, greed, grit and imagination, the sheer size and impudence of which make it a fascinating event.

Enter at Hogan's Alley

Faker's subdivided staging (abetted by Lindsay Smith's lighting) stresses atmospherics from the get-go. The audience enters the Annex via an alley strung with laundry. Inside, panhandlers and swells in period dress (good costumes by Sara Jaecks) greet you. And a noisy evocation of Hogan's Alley, the Manhattan tenement that was the backdrop for a popular 1890s comic strip by artist Richard Fenton Outcault (Adrian La Tourelle), assaults you.

The star of the historic cartoon, and Outcault's alter-ego here, was a bald, impish street urchin in a long yellow nightdress. Played by gifted Seanjohn Walsh with an ecstatic leer and a toddler's spastic gait, The Kid is the mocking, uncowed wisenheimer who expresses the exuberance and cynicism of life in the immigrant ghetto.

Faker deftly recreates live tableaus of Outcault's original drawings, and contrasts that gritty world with overlapping spheres.

Diverting glimpses of the cut-throat New York news business come through as publishing titans William Randolph Hearst (DJ Hamilton) and Joseph Pulitzer (Joe Seefeldt) vie for Outcault's services.

Nicely realized, too, are the callous pretentions of the high society Outcault and wife Mary Jane (Elizabeth Gordon) as their stock rises.

Struggle against greed

Conceived as a war between Outcault's artistic and social conscience, and his lust for prestige and wealth, "The Yellow Kid" also puts Outcault's mentor Thomas Edison (John Holyoke) on display to spout his reactionary social theories and demonstrate his formidable inventions.

There's an intriguing connection to be made between American scientific genius and its collusion with the forces of avarice. But the Edison patches get dry and didactic.

Moreover, Outcault's decision to abandon The Yellow Kid and draw the blander, more commercial Buster Brown strip is swollen into an earth-shaking betrayal - of the artist's conscience, as well as his patly virtuous wife.

Eventually frisky ambiguity and irony are replaced with two-fisted moralizing. A legendary anarchist, a famous documentary photographer, even a victimized elephant drive home the sin of Outcault's sell-out to the point of near-ludicrousness.

"The Yellow Kid" regains its sure footing in an overlong but provocative coda set in a present-day rock club. And the show already has so much else going for it, one hopes its authors keep striving to realize its abundant promise.