Eugene Weekly: Special Features 09/19/02

Theater
Mystery and Marriage The writer, the lover, the wife and her jewelry.

Treadmarks
Advantage: Tiburon Hyundai's sports coupe aims to buff the Korean carmaker's image.

Mystery and Marriage
The writer, the lover, the wife and her jewelry.
BY SHARLEEN NELSON

an impressive blend of tightly woven suspense, dark humor and more plot twists and turns than an ess curve, in the tradition of Agatha Christie country house whodunits. Written by British playwright and screenwriter Anthony Shaffer, the Tony-winning play was adapted into the 1972 movie of the same name starring Laurence Oliver and Michael Caine

Essentially a two-man show, Sleuth follows a pair of complicated and intelligent adversaries who set out to humiliate and defeat one another in a series of macabre role-playing games.

The show opens inside the swanky Whiltshire manor of aristocratic mystery author Andrew Wyke (Bary Shaw), who spends a good deal of time occupying his mind with the fantasy world he has created in his mystery crime novels. This same set, which serves throughout the entire play, offers a small number of clues to Wyke's psychological makeup and his obsession with puzzles and games. While mostly festooned in highbrow stately manner, adorning the stage is an odd assortment of subtly placed accoutrements — an uncommon game board, a pendulum motion toy, a boxing nun puppet.

Enter Milo Tindle (Michael Watkins), a charismatic young man of modest means, whom Wyke has summoned to his manor. At first, the two "gentlemen" engage in cocktails and pleasantries, until the true nature of the summons is revealed when Wyke bluntly states, "I understand you want to marry my wife."

Tindle, though taken aback, readily admits to his affair with Wyke's wife, Marguerite. But Tindle turns the tables on Wyke when he tells him that, through some sleuthing of his own, he has discovered Wyke is also keeping a mistress.

Yet, everything seems amicable and it appears Wyke wants to make sure his estranged wife remains estranged. Still, there is one problem. Wyke points out to Tindle that Marguerite is an expensive woman and Tindle has no money.

Playing on Tindle's insecurities about his lower-class upbringing and minimal funds, Wyke draws him into his brilliant and elaborate scheme to steal his wife's jewels and defraud the insurance company. Thus begins a complicated exchange of psychological warfare and intricate game-playing between the seasoned crime writer and his wife's young, spry suitor.

Bary Shaw and Michael Watkins are superbly cast in the roles of Andrew Wyke and Milo Tindle. Shaw is both charming and disturbing as the fantasy-spinning Wyke. In addition to effortlessly delivering a non-stop spate of smart and witty dialogue, Shaw entertains with a proper measure of over-the-top high drama, flitting seamlessly in and out of impersonations of the half a dozen or so characters drawn from his celebrated novels.

A complement to Shaw's Wyke, Watkins' Tindle is the quintessential cool cucumber. Suave, intelligent, and continental in dress, speech, and manner, Watkins clearly oozes European chic. Still, his versatility is evident. Watkins is convincingly cunning and ruthless, yet when the play calls for physical comedy, Watkins has no problem playing strictly for laughs.

Overall, with the exception of a few flubbed lines, opening night was a near flawless production. Along with the always funky ambiance of the Actors Cabaret's Annex, theater-goers who love a good whodunit — and who aren't prone to heart attack due to loud, unexpected noises — should enjoy this entertaining flight of fancy with its plot twists and clever dialogue.

Painting Walls
Chang Ae Song's visions of time and space.
BY DAVID JOHNSON

In 1999, artist Chang Ae Song came to Corvallis from her hometown of Seoul, Korea, with her husband, Gi-ho, who is working on his Ph.D. in mycology at Oregon State University. She recalls those early days when she was a reluctant stranger in our strange land, driven by a passion and vision to paint every day.

"Compared to Korea, it was a hectic world," Song said in a recent interview in the Old World Cafe in downtown Corvallis. "I couldn't speak a word of English. I had no studio. I felt totally isolated."

Now, three prolific years later, her paintings will be on display at the White Lotus Gallery in Eugene beginning Sept. 20, with a reception for the artist on Sept. 27, 5-8:30 pm. "Impressions of Metropolitan Korea" runs Sept. 20 — Oct. 26 at the gallery.

In eloquent English, Song talks about her anxious emigration from a huge but cozy city with its friends, family, scholarly companions and mentors — all back in Korea, a land of lovely hills as living scrolls. "I didn't want to be a U.S. citizen," she said. "I thought my career wouldn't grow."

Not much chance of that. A glance at her resumé reveals that edging into her third decade, Song has made forceful strides toward a full-time profession on both sides of the Pacific. So what is it that has impressed judges, museum curators, gallery owners and art enthusiasts? Does this popular artist create exquisite portraits, brilliant abstracts, or ink and brush-stroke landscapes in the Asian tradition? Actually, she does all three in a thematic style that is breathtaking.

"I started my cityscapes in 1996," Song said, explaining her initial intrigue with a superficially mundane element of urban architecture. "I was doing combinations of human figures and photoscapes, but I was not content. I decided to seek a new artistic identity."

She found it downtown in the shape of what she called an "old but humane wall." This cracked, scored and pockmarked partition of ancient bricks and mortar struck her deeply as a metaphor for life itself. She went straight to her studio and painted the wall, she said. Then she went looking for more walls, and it became her mission to share the truth she found in back streets, alleys and courtyards.

"In the city, I lived most of my life surrounded by many walls. I think this distinguishes my life from others' [experiences]," Song said. "To me, the old, worn walls represent not only a concept of space but also a meaning of time. My life and my art represent an idea beyond spatial concepts."

Again and again, Song explores that idea, rendering everyday walls into darkly luminous creatures that loom against riven, brooding skies. There are light patches that could be windows, thin brush strokes that could be power lines, faded forms that may be fog banks or distant hills.

Most of her cityscapes are constructed by large brushes dipped in ground black ink and water, but there also bold swathes of texture — gray fractals as stark as rain-soaked, rocky hillsides; gorgeously tawny or muddy brown backdrops that are surprising to the expectant eye. She reveals, conspiratorially, that this textural component is created by a secret formula of glue and powder.

The blending of brushwork and texture that results is often literally in the gray area between abstract and impressionistic reality. It is her signature style, her life's work, to ardently search for and record the mysteries encoded in the glyphic scratches and wrinkles, creases and scribbles to be found on every aging wall.

Song's artistic journey began in high school when her grandfather observed her interest in painting and sketching. He let her use his big calligraphy brushes and gave her some scrap pieces of blueprint paper. After being in the same rooms with Van Gogh's Sunflowers and water lilies by Monet on a trip abroad, she experienced a stunning burst of energy that built her confidence as an artist.

In 1997, Song earned an MFA from Sookimyung Women's University. Since1996, her work has been exhibited in five group shows in Seoul and five solo exhibitions in both Seoul and Corvallis. In Corvallis, her paintings were displayed in "Soul of Seoul" at the Fairbanks gallery on OSU campus, and a few pieces are still on display at Pegasus Gallery in downtown Corvallis.

Song has won many awards, including the bronze prize at Korea's 1994 Art Colleges Festival and an award by Art World magazine in 1996. Her artwork was accepted for the 1997 National Museum of Contemporary Art's 16th Grand Exhibition. But she said she is proudest of her first prize in the Korea exhibit at the following year's Grand Exhibition. It made the papers!

Fuji Sunset
Smoke makes for spectacular evening skies.
BY JAMES JOHNSTON

After considerable research, I still don't know why there's a peak east of Oakridge in the Oregon Cascades with the same name as the tallest mountain in Japan (which also happens to be the most-climbed mountain in the world).

Our Mount Fuji looks nothing like its Japanese namesake, and it gets a lot less use. Viewed from the west, its blocky shape rises gently from the southeast to 7,100 feet and terminates abruptly in a sheer rock face. The edge of the cliff affords one of the best opportunities to contemplate the violent influence of fire and ice on the Cascade landscape.

SUNSET FROM MOUNT FUJI.

Directly to the west is the hump-backed shape of Bunchgrass Ridge, easily recognized by the charred forest of the Warner Creek Burn. To the south is Diamond Peak. To the north is Black Creek, flowing through a deep, glacier carved valley whose eastern canyon wall forms the southern shore of Waldo Lake.

Waldo Lake is the largest and deepest of the more than 500 lakes located in the Willamette National Forest. The lake occupies a tectonic basin created when the fault line that extends the length of the Cascades collided, shattered and dropped more than 400 feet. Outlets to the lake were blocked by lava flows between 5 million and a hundred thousand years ago. The cobalt blue waters of Waldo Lake are almost entirely devoid of biological activity, and scientists believe that the lake contains the purest water in the world.

The same fault lines that pushed the earth down to form Waldo Lake also pushed up. The Three Sisters are easily visible beyond the lake to the north.

Getting there: Take I-5 south from Eugene for approximately 3 miles. Take the Oakridge/Klamath Falls exit (Exit 188A). Stay to the left onto Hwy. 58. Drive east on 58 for about 35 miles through Oakridge. Thirteen miles east of Oakridge (between milepost 50 and 51) turn left onto Eagle Creek Road, just past the train trestle. Drive Eagle Creek Road (a fairly well maintained gravel surface) for almost 12 miles to the well-marked Mount Fuji trailhead (there are several turns that can be confusing — stay to the right).

The trailhead begins on the left side of the road in an old clear-cut. After a third of a mile the trail splits. The right turn takes you through an unspectacular forest for about a mile to another junction. The left turn at this junction will take you to the Island Lakes (awesome for summer swimming) and eventually on to Waldo Lake. But for Mount Fuji, stay to the left at the first junction. The trail climbs gradually uphill through small meadows and a pleasant alpine forest of Douglas fir, mountain hemlock and noble fir for a mile and quarter to the top of the mountain.

The first cliff viewpoint looks west towards Bunchgrass Ridge. Continue several hundred yards up the mountain to the taller cliff tops with views to the north, east and west. In addition to Waldo Lake, Davis Lake and others are easily visible to the east. You can scramble downhill to your left along the top of the cliff to a rocky outcropping (be careful!) with views south to Diamond Peak.

My recommendation is to bring a picnic and a flashlight and make the hike in the late afternoon or early evening and stay for the sunset. The forest fires burning throughout Oregon as of this writing have thrown a lot of small particulate matter into the atmosphere, making for some spectacular evening light

Don't walk off a cliff on your way back!

Sweet Soup & Sandwiches
Mini reviews of area dining spots.
BY MARINA TAYLOR

Hilda is at Hilyard!
The good word is Hilda Ward is back! Those who miss her little restaurant on the corner of 4th and Blair need mourn her loss no longer. She'll be coming out of retirement to make her South American cuisine magic at Humble Bagel on Hilyard Tuesdays through Saturdays for dinner only. Humble is leasing out the space to her in the evenings, starting this week, with a grand opening Oct. 1.

Pita Pit
1087 Willamette St., 485-5595

Fast food Eugene style, the Pita Pit provides quick and tasty snacks to those on the go. It is conveniently located right near the downtown bus station, next door to LCC's downtown branch. The place is colorful and loud inside; giant sandwich-themed murals compete with UO logos on the walls. Behind the counter, sandwiches are created, in the words of the workers, "Subway style." You choose from the list what you want, they slap it on. Day and night they work, making this the only place in town to order a pita sandwich at 3 am.

The sandwich list is internationally inclusive, from club sandwiches to souvlaki. Be warned they do something odd with their falafel mix: Instead of the traditional balls, they cook it like you would a scrambled egg. Every bite of your sandwich will have falafel on it, but it feels a little dry to me. Change, it's such a drag.

11 am-3 am M-W, 11 am-4 am TH-SA, noon-2 am SU. $.

OF GRAPE AND GRAIN.

Of Grape and Grain
49 W. 29th Ave. 686-9463

There is something quiet and peaceful about the cool open space in Of Grape and Grain. It feels somehow civilized. A cup of tea and a turkey lingonberry sandwich on buttermilk white bread? The fresh and reasonably priced sandwiches tend toward the traditional, as do the salads. Short round macaroni noodles, coleslaw, potato … However, if you want to explore a wider flavor spectrum beyond comfort foods, there are many choices. The chicken curry is exciting, and the Spicy Pecan Ebly is easy to eat, not too spicy but based on tender wheat grains that feel like orzo. The pastries are good, too, made by Delphinia's bakery. This place is great for the lunch crowd, many of whom order out. Of Grape and Grain also delivers, and you can even fax in your order at 485-0692.

The wine selection covers half the store, and wine tasting classes will soon be offered by Bob Sogge. There are actually two Of Grape and Grain locations — the other one is in the Reed and Cross store at 160 Oakway Rd., call 344-9463 for hours.

7 am-6 pm M-F, 8 am-6 pm SA, 8 am-4 pm SU. $.

French Horn Café & Bakery
1591 Willamette St. 343-7473

Many of my friends have moved away from Eugene, on to bigger and better places (most of them with employment options). When they come back to visit, we all end up at L & L Market. This warehouse-sized building is home to the French Horn Café and Bakery as well as the fabulous Long's Meat Market and Serrano's coffee shop, and even a little grocery store. What draws us more than anything is the atmosphere: Inside, it feels alive. It's loud, crowded, urban. The tables are all in the back, so a steady stream of people balancing omelettes and coffee and scones wander back scanning the crowd for a friendly face or an empty table.

The place echos with names, "Joe Shmo, your food is ready" and heaps of tasty potatoes with fresh veggies and your choice of cheeses appear, along with award-winning soups and fresh crusty breads. The nice thing is, you can order your food, stand in line for coffee while it cooks, and grab a pastry at the next counter on your way back to sit. There is also nice outdoor dining, though Willamette Street can be a little busy for dining.

6:45 am-6:30 pm M-F, 7 am-6 pm SA, 8 am-2 pm SU. $-$$.

A Call to Arms
Govinda's is closing! The building on the corner of 8th and Lincoln has been for sale for about a year. I thought perhaps it would never sell. Well, boom! FOOD for Lane County just bought it, and the businesses are out the door by the end of the month. Yes, that means that by Oct. 1, there will no longer be a Govinda's Vegetarian Buffet in Eugene! Al Something, owner and chef, says that at the moment he's ready to take a break, but possibly will reopen elsewhere at some point.

It's that "possibly" that gets to me. Go and tell him that Eugene isn't Eugene without him. Write him a polite note or a bit of culinary poetry to show him you care. What he does with food is simple and beautiful, and not to be lost without a fight. The mailing address is 270 W. 8th Ave., Eugene 97402.

$ — under seven dollars $$ — seven to 12 dollars $$$ — 12 to 17 dollars $$$$ — over 17 dollars

Morsels is a revolving feature that tries to capture the atmosphere as well as the cuisine of some of our favorite places to eat in and around Eugene, along with food news. Suggestions? Call Ben or Marina at 484-0519 or e-mail marina@eugeneweekly.com

Advantage: Tiburon
Hyundai's sports coupe aims to buff the Korean carmaker's image.
BY JIM MOTAVALLI

"Each new Hyundai vehicle must enhance Hyundai's brand image," says the company's president, Finbarr O'Neill. Of course, any president would say the same thing: Brand image is king. But in Hyundai's case the challenge is central, because people persist in the belief that Korean cars "aren't as good" as Japanese ones.

Hyundai's mission has been hurt by the failure of fellow Korean carmaker Daewoo Motor America, which filed for bankruptcy last May after selling 100,000 cars here since 1998. General Motors, which is acquiring Daewoo's assets, has been the target of lawsuits from Daewoo dealers who say they can't get parts support for customers' cars. One Daewoo owner was quoted as calling his new car "a throwaway," hardly the reputation you want when trying to establish the integrity of Korean cars. It's a big mess.

But when Packard went out of business, did people stop buying Buicks? Hyundai has worked mighty hard to build its reputation, and its cars are selling. In 2001, Hyundai's U.S. sales rose a whopping 41 percent. Hyundai is now the 11th biggest brand in the American market, up from 18th in 2000. And according to a report last spring from J.D. Power and Associates, the company's "initial quality" rating has improved 42 percent since 1997.

Speaking to the Detroit News, O'Neill said it wants to be a "tier one" brand name, and that to do so means moving ahead of such solid marques as Mazda and Mitsubishi. His goal, O'Neill said, "is to make it OK to have a Hyundai in your driveway."

Keeping the price low, especially when compared to comparable European or Japanese cars, is the key. Hyundai's affordable Elantra GT hatchback and Santa Fe sport-utility vehicle have been good sellers, and I'm confident that the company has another winner in the all-new 2003 Tiburon sports coupe.

For one thing, the Tiburon — a descendant of the HCD-1 and HCD-II concept cars — is very pretty, with flowing lines and plenty of dangerous curves. For another it's great fun to drive, particularly in GT V-6 form. This DOHC 2.7-liter, 180-horsepower engine has already been seen in the Sonata sedan and the Santa Fe SUV. In the GT version, you can marry the reasonably responsive power plant to a handling package that includes tuned suspension and 17-inch wheels. It can supposedly reach 132 miles per hour, but I can only vouch for 80 (under carefully controlled test conditions, of course). Base cars come with a two-liter, 140 horsepower four, mated to either a five-speed manual of four-speed auto.

I loved chucking my GT test car into corners, because it went around them nearly flat, and powered out like a Porsche. It's great off the line, too, with wonderful sporty noises. Fuel economy, with the V-6 and a five-speed, was 18 mpg in the city and 26 on the highway.

The Tiburon is well appointed. For $19,344 (as tested) the consumer gets such features as dual side airbags, four-wheel disc brakes, air, cruise control, keyless remote, a decent CD/cassette system, power doors and locks, and even heated mirrors.

The interior is sumptuous for this class of car. If the Tiburon has a flaw, it's in the minuscule rear-seat accommodations. The seat itself is not so bad — even for a six-footer — but even though the new car is two inches longer than the old one, rear legroom is still nearly non-existent. Storage under the big rear hatch is excellent, however, and the rear seat folds down neatly.

They should sell scads of Tiburons, improving the image of Korean cars in the U.S. by no small measure.