Gamers roll good theater in Dice and Men
Nerd-on-nerd love is something to behold.
It's sweet, it's smart, it's funny – at least it is in Cameron McNary's sharply etched play Of Dice and Men, receiving its Bay Area premiere courtesy of Berkeley's Impact Theatre. McNary boldly goes where no dramatist has gone before him (at least none I've ever seen). He takes his audiences into the world of Dungeons and Dragons, the role-playing game involving elves, fairies, wizards and the like – exactly the kind of game that gets kids beaten up in high school.
One of the wonderful things about McNary's play is that you don't have to know anything about D&D to enjoy it.
Country-fried Bear offers finger-lickin’-good comedy
Falling in love with a playwright whose work you're experiencing for the first time feels like Christmas morning at age 6 – giddy excitement, new toys, wonder and sugar high all wrapped up in a nice holiday package. That's what it felt like the other night at the Boxcar Playhouse watching Crowded Fire Theater Company's production of Exit, Pursued by a Bear, a new play by Lauren Gunderson, a Georgia native who now lives and works in San Francisco.
Taking her cue from the most famous stage direction in all of Shakespeare (The Winter's Tale, Act III, scene iii), Gunderson returns to the hills of Northern Georgia for a crispy revenge drama served up with salty laughs and the kind of clever attention to detail that signals the arrival of a writer to whom you should pay attention. When writers say they're going to tackle a serious subject from a comic angle, they're really just marketing a heavy drama that maybe has a laugh or two but really it just makes you want to kill yourself.
Gunderson really does just that.
Seven Guitars, ably played
Marin Theatre Company's beautiful production of August Wilson's Seven Guitars is the third I've seen, and it amazes me how similar and how different those productions have been. The first was in 1995 when American Conservatory Theater hosted the Broadway-bound version of the show as part of its season. The distinctive thing about that night of theater was the overwhelming wash of lyrical language that poured from the stage. For 3 ½ hours. I called it "indulgent" and "overly long" in my review for the Bay Area Reporter, but I also called the writing "lucid and full of gorgeous natural rhythms." Of Viola Davis' performance as Vera, of whom I wrote, "One of the play's best scenes occurs early in the first act when Vera gives Floyd every reason she can think of why she won't take him back. She does take him back, of course, but her aching, shattering litany – brilliantly delivered by Davis – is probably the truest torch song that was never sung on stage."
The Lorraine Hansberry Theatre produced Seven Guitars in 2003 under the direction of the late Stanley Williams, and by then the show had been trimmed to a more manageable three hours, and in my review for the Oakand Tribune, I commended the ensemble (seven characters, hence the title) when they were able to "revel in the beats and rhythms of Wilson's almost-musical writing."
And now Marin Theatre Company, tackling its first August Wilson play, enters the fray with special attention to the music.
Smile, you’re on Candida camera
A beautiful night at the Bruns Amphitheater is made even more so by something marvelous on stage.
That would be George Bernard Shaw’s Candida, a sharp early play (1894) that is concise, funny and, in this incisive production directed by California Shakespeare Theater Artistic Director Jonathan Moscone, surprisingly moving.
Moscone’s six actors inhabit the levels of Shaw’s play with dexterity. The broad, satirical comedy generates some hearty laughs as we delve into the emotional heart of London parsonage, home of the Rev. James Morell and his wife, Candida.
Shaw has everyone, from the main characters to the lively supporting crew of assistants and family members, tripping over their attitudes toward one another and the world at large.
Tell 'em that it's human Nature
If only the actual apocalypse were going to be so enjoyable.
Hand it to playwright JC Lee for making the end of the world – and after – so lyrical, so funny and so, well, human. That's one of the things I loved about Into the Clear Blue Sky, Part Two of the This World and After trilogy, which kicked off almost exactly a year ago with This World Is Good. There may be monstrous things happening in the world, things that would require millions of dollars worth of CGI to represent on a screen, but Lee's focus is essentially human and relatable.
And that's only appropriate when the topic at hand is the very survival of the human race. In each of his three plays, Lee creates a stage full of seekers, and for his final chapter, they are seeking the future, which is in clear jeopardy. In The Nature Line, Part Three of the trilogy, neither sex nor any human contact of any kind is allowed anymore. Women's wombs have become unable to handle the stress of pregnancy, so that duty now belongs to scientists who help the process along. “Aren’t you relieved to see a corporate model can survive the apocalypse?” asks a crisply dressed fertility nurse.
Taking (Rosen)Stock of comic Tigers and musical Night
In a recent email chat with playwright Kim Rosenstock (see full interview below), I asked her what Bay Area theatergoers might learn about her if they see both of her shows now on local stages – Tigers Be Still at the SF Playhouse and the musical Fly By Night at TheatreWorks. Her response: "It's probably better that I don't know the answer to this question."
So I will take it upon myself to answer the question for her.
First the easy answer: Rosenstock is smart and funny, and she's a talented, quirky writer. Based on the two shows available – her first in the Bay Area – she is interested in the lives of women in crisis and making choices to climb out of that crisis.
M M M My Verona: Rockin’ at Cal Shakes
Let it be known that the world premiere of California Shakespeare Theater's The Verona Project is a hell of a lot more fun than The Two Gentlemen of Verona, the Shakespeare play on which it's based. In fact, I can think of several Shakespeare plays I'd like to see turned into original rock concerts. Troilus and Cressida the Musical, anyone?
Amanda Dehnert has essentially reinvented Two Gents, which is thought to be Shakespeare's very first play, and actually made it interesting. She is the director, writer and composer of a high-concept show that takes elements of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, GrooveLily's Striking 12 and Berkeley Rep'sGirlfriend to become a presentational musical/rock concert with some story thrown in.
The result is a lovable, enjoyable if not always successful show whose rough patches actually add to the charm. There's nothing overly slick or polished about The Verona Project, and that's a good thing. The central idea is that a band called The Verona Project has created a concept album based on Two Gents and they're going to treat us to a concert performance of that album.
Mouse tales live again
About nine years ago, Trevor Allen lifted the veil on an operation so shrouded in secrecy and intrigue that the merest glimpse inside set people salivating. He revealed what it was actually like to be inside a costumed character in Disneyland.Oh, yes, This is deeply inside stuff. And sweaty. And hilarious. It's what you call a theatrical experience bursting with character.Allen's autobiographical solo show, Working for the Mouse, premiered at Berkeley's Impact Theatre in 2002 then transferred to San Francisco. Now Allen is reviving the show for Impact and his own Black Box Theatre at La Val's Subterranean.
A creature features in Aurora’s stunning Metamorphosis
You've heard that old trope about intense pressure turning a lump of coal into a diamond. Well what if that kind of pressure is applied to a human being? In Franz Kafka's opinion, the pressure of modern society will turn a person into, well, something horrific. Perhaps a cockroach or some other loathsome vermin, but a monster nonetheless. It's a sad and scary vision, one that is realized to its fullest potential in the Aurora Theatre Company production of Kafka's Metamorphosis.
Director Mark Jackson is something of a name brand in the Bay Area. You know his shows are going to be original, compelling and rigorously produced. He's a writer/director (occasionally actor) whose work you simply do not miss. The world of Kafka would seem to be a playground for Jackson's mighty theatrical imagination, and it's true. Jackson's Metamorphosis is as unsettling as it is poignant, as beautifully performed as it is fun to watch.
Titus serves up revenge, blood rare and steaming hot
Director Joel Sass has such a strong, infectious sense of storytelling that he even makes Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, proclaimed to be the Bard’s bloodiest play, enjoyable.
It’s not that the play, which has a single issue on its gory mind – the futility and waste of revenge – isn’t interesting. It’s compelling and hideous at the same time.
But what Sass does for the California Shakespeare Theater’s season-opening production of Titus – the first in Cal Shakes’ 37-year history – is heighten the theatricality of the tale, elevate it to grand and glorious storytelling rather than an endlessly horrific parade of one bloody special effect after another.
This is a muscular production of a tough play, mean in spirit and humor. If Shakespeare’s goal is to illuminate the way ego-driven revenge turns life into a cesspit for everyone involved, he certainly succeeds.
Tiny but terrifying: Go ask Alice
The legend of Tiny Alice looms large. Edward Albee’s notorious 1964 follow-up to his monster Broadway smash Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf baffled critics and continued to cause kerfuffles for years to come (especially when William Ball, in the early days of American Conservatory Theater played fast and loose with the script).
This is not one of Albee’s frequently produced scripts, and after seeing Marin Theatre Company’s riveting production, it’s easy to see why. This play is a monster. It’s not like Albee hasn’t created monsters before (he loves to rile the beasts in many ways), but this one is especially weighty.
But this is a challenging play to say the least. Act 1 is familiar territory as Albee introduces his players, his zest for zingers and a juicy central mystery. In Act 2, the ground begins to wobble, and by Act 3, the ground has given way altogether. The monster, perhaps literally speaking, is loose.
Short sweet frolic on the PlayGround
In the spirit of PlayGround's annual 10-minute play festival, I'm going to attempt to write a 10-minute review.
The time is 10:40am. Start the clock.
The joy of a short play festival is the utter diversity in style, tone and voice. You can have what amounts to a sketch comedy bumping up against muscular drama, an intriguing fragment or a surprising burst of poetry. All of that happens and more in Best of Playground 15: A Festival of New Writers & New Plays at the Thick House. The seven plays presented represent the cream of the PlayGround playwriting process, which runs from October through March. A pool of 36 writers is given a topic and then asked to write a 10-minute play on a chosen theme. The best of those plays are given staged readings, and then the best of that bunch makes it to this festival.
Of the seven shows now on display, I can tell you my three clear favorites.
Feeling the Passion of Sarah Ruhl
What an interesting Sarah Ruhl moment we’re having.
Ruhl’s new version of Chekhov’s Three Sisters is getting a moving and lovely production at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. And her 2005 triptych Passion Play receives its local premiere courtesy of Actors Ensemble of Berkeley, a community theater producing shows in Berkeley since 1957.
Both productions allow Ruhl to explore, in her lyrical, passionate and quirky ways, what happens to people when dreams and reality, identity and illusion are at odds.
What’s up, glitter Lily?
Sitting at the computer, hands on the keyboard, I’ve been staring at the screen wondering where to begin describing and opining about The Lily’s Revenge at the Magic Theatre.
Adjectives don’t quite do it justice – much the way that a photograph of an oil painting never really captures the essence and vibrancy of the original work. And the usual critical jabber – Don’t miss it! Theater event of the spring! Unforgettably unique! – seem paltry as well.
It’s not that Lily, the brainchild of writer/performer Taylor Mac, is a landmark work in the canon of Western theater or the reinvention of the art form as we know it. But it’s something really special – a completely absorbing communal experience that turns out to be more than the sum of its abundant parts.
Of pleasures and Eccentricities
Oh, Alma Winemiller. If you had been able to shuck off the burden of having an insane mother and a stern Episcopalian priest for a father, you might have become the woman you were meant to be: Lady Gaga.
OK, that's an exaggeration, but poor Alma is just a heap of talent and emotion and expression aching for release in Tennessee Williams' Eccentricities of a Nightingale, a play with a convoluted history in the Tennessee Williams canon. The Aurora Theatre Company production of the play, directed with finesse and warmth by Artistic Director Tom Ross, makes a case for the play being if not alongside siblings like A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, then at least in an honorable spot somewhere just below.
Moon strikes up a triumphant Band
I've seen a lot of 42nd Street Moon shows over the years, but I've rarely seen one as exuberant, funny, beautifully sung and as hugely enjoyable as Strike Up the Band. Everything about Zack Thomas Wilde's production is top notch, from the extraordinarily sharp book by George S. Kaufman and the immediately appealing score by George and Ira Gershwin to the terrific cast and the gorgeous late '20s costumes (by Scarlett Kellum).
42nd Street Moon is less in the business of presenting musty, dusty lost musicals and more in the realm of offering polished if modestly produced professional productions.
And this Band benefits tremendously from the smaller scale. More attention is focused on the satirical book (the original 1927 Kaufman script, not the Morrie Ryskind rewrite from 1930) and on the Gershwins' songs (especially on Ira's incisively wonderful lyrics).
Without the proverbial cast of thousands, we get a clearer look at just what a gem Strike Up the Band really is, and its snarky attitude about how it's commerce – not politics or even morality – that get us into war couldn't be more timely. Alas.
Apocalypse wow! Clear Blue Sky captivates
There are cannibals in Hackensack. A tsunami swallowed South America live on TV. And there are dogs the size of Chevys ransacking libraries.
Welcome to, as the producers put it, "your friendly neighborhood apocalypse." Playwright JC Lee is in the midst of unfurling his world-premiere trilogy This World and After, and he's getting some big-time help from Sleepwalkers Theatre, the company that produced Part One, The World Is Good and is now unveiling Part Two, Into the Clear Blue Sky.
If this is what post-apocalyptic life looks like, I don't think I'll mind so much when everything goes to hell. Not that life isn't wretched. In addition to the horrors mentioned above, there are sea beasts to contend with, not to mention the fact that, due to acceleration of global warming, the very shape of the earth is changing and you can now, for reasons more poetic than scientific, find your way through the ocean to the moon.
But in Lee's ravaged world, human beings are, mercifully, still human beings. His play, directed with flair by Ben Randle, is full of horror and wonder, but it's all on a human scale. Lee has a graphic novelist's flair imaginative drama and a playwright's love of the poetic. He can be comic-geek funny one moment and Gabriel Garcia Marquez beautiful the next. As I said, human scale.
Something Fuddy going on here
The world of David Lindsay-Abaire is askew. From his earliest wacky comedies to his later, more serious award-winning work, Lindsay-Abaire’s “askewniverse” (to borrow a word from Kevin Smith’s oeuvre) is filled with people on the outside of perceived normal life, people who are, for whatever reason, struggling just to make themselves understood.
In Shrek the Musical it’s a green ogre who takes a while to figure out that even though he’s not a handsome prince, he’s actually a hero. In the Pulitzer Prize-winning Rabbit Hole it’s a mother numbed by grief slowly rebuilding a life and marriage after the death of her young son.
And in Fuddy Meers, Lindsay-Abaire’s first produced play (written while he was still in grad school at Juilliard), it’s an exceedingly cheerful woman named Claire who suffers from psychogenic amnesia.
Marin Theatre Company’s production of Fuddy Meers has the great advantage of having Mollie Stickney in the role of Claire. In the play’s nearly two hours, Claire’s blank slate becomes surprisingly full, and every revelation, recovered memory, moment of joy or pain registers on Stickney’s wonderfully expressive face.
Young Jean Lee’s fire-breathing Dragons
Race shmace. Let's do plays about explosions – exploding race, exploding narrative, exploding audience brains.
That's sort of what Young Jean Lee's Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven is like. This co-production of Asian American Theater Company and Crowded Fire Theater Company is filled with intelligence, talent and 70 minutes of utterly compelling theater. But the whole effect is somewhat like being too near an explosion. Afterward, you ears ring, your head pounds and your equilibrium's a little off.
But that's a good thing, right?
Playwright Lee, who dropped out of UC Berkeley's English PhD program after six years, said something really interesting in an interview with American Theatre magazine last fall. "It's a destructive impulse – I want to destroy the show: make it so bad that it just eats itself, eating away at its own clichés until it becomes complicated and fraught enough to resemble truth."
By the end of Dragons, I couldn't tell you exactly what it was about or even what it was I had just seen. But I would say it was original, outrageous and absolutely honest in its intention to entertain and eviscerate.
By hooker by crook in The Oldest Profession
By focusing in on some of the oldest practitioners of the world’s oldest profession, playwright Paula Vogel finds a lot to say about the way the world views senior citizens. Even more than sexuality, Vogel’s charming and sad The Oldest Profession takes an insightful look into the power of bonding – especially among women.
Staged upstairs in Brava Theater’s cozy Studio Theater, Oldest Profession is an immensely enjoyable, if somewhat heartbreaking experience. Director Evren Odcikin calibrates the evening just about perfectly, guiding his quartet of actors plus one rollicking good piano player through Vogel’s poignant, but laugh-filled landscape.
With the feel of a plush bawdy house parlor, the Studio Theater creates an enticing environment for the play.