Golden West promises a divine performance

Tom Titus

When a director is casting the key role of the retarded youth in “The

Diviners,” he usually has two ways to go -- take a youngster of the right

age, 14 to 17, and (literally) toss him over his head, or pick someone in

his early 20s who may have the edge in stage experience.

At Golden West College, director Tom Amen has split the difference.

His Buddy Layman, Huntington Beach’s Josh Matheson, is 23 years old, but

with just two plays, both at Golden West, behind him. And Amen couldn’t

be more pleased.

“When I was auditioning, most of the kids went overboard with the

retardation business,” Amen says. “But Josh had an honesty, a

straightforward approach that really sold the character for me.”

Matheson, who grew up in Wyoming and moved to Huntington Beach less

than three years ago, hadn’t acted before enrolling in Golden West

College and taking a class from Amen -- an experience he found

exhilarating. He tried out for Golden West’s “Our Town” and was cast in

three minor roles.

His next step was a big one -- the part of King Creon in Amen’s

production of “Oedipus Rex” earlier this year. That gave him the

confidence to take a crack at “The Diviners,” which opens next weekend in

Golden West’s Mainstage Theater.

“It’s a real challenge, but I appreciate the honesty of the role, the

simple black and white aspects of the emotion,” Matheson said of the

prizewinning Jim Leonard Jr. play set in Depression-ridden Indiana.

In “The Diviners,” Matheson’s character of Buddy was left

brain-damaged from a near-drowning on the family farm. His mother drowned

attempting to rescue him. This episode has traumatized the youth and

given him a deathly fear of water -- yet he is so sensitive to it that he

can locate it in the ground, and he knows well ahead of time when it’s

going to rain.

“Josh takes acting very seriously. He’s really committed,” Amen

declares. “It’s a tough role, but he’s doing very well.”

Matheson, who said he was a big movie fan growing up, seems to have

found his calling.

“I really like acting, and would like to continue at it,” he said. “It

was scary at first, but after I took the first class, I really started

having fun with it.”

Since he doesn’t have the credentials of many of his fellow cast

members, Matheson has taken every opportunity to watch them and pick up

some pointers.

“It’s fascinating just watching them work,” he says.

Of “The Diviners,” Matheson stresses the simplicity of his character

and its relation to the rest of the drama.

“It’s really great the way everything fits so well together,” he

notes. “The scenes really flow.”

At the point of this interview, two weeks before opening, the lighting

design for the horrifying climactic underwater scene hadn’t been set into

place, but the young actor predicted that “when it’s all set, with the

lights, it’ll really be fantastic.”

For director Amen, it’s his third crack at staging “The Diviners,”

which he calls a sentimental favorite. He said he’s drawn to the play for

its spare, haunting, yet ultimately human quality, and he also is fond of

the characters and their dedication to one another.

“They are a community, an extended family that goes far beyond the

bonds of blood,” he said. “The characters of this play are bound together

by love, faith, friendship and a reverence for the land. They are people

that stick together at a time in our nation’s history when that was not

an easy thing to do. They are survivors.”

Perhaps Amen’s warmest compliment for Leonard’s play was this: “I love

these people as if they were members of my own family.”

That sort of reverence generally translates into memorable theater.

* TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Independent.

FYI

WHAT: “The Diviners”

WHERE: Golden West College Mainstage Theater

WHEN: June 14-30; Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 3 p.m.

COST: $10 & $8.50

PHONE: (714) 895-8150