"black odyssey" at California Shakespeare Theatre

Cal Shakes photo by Kevin Berne

I suppose it's pretty rare to see two wildly different productions, both based on the same story, so close together. On the other hand, the classic stories get retold and repurposed, so having seen The Odyssey at Ashland earlier in the summer, it was extra interesting to see Marcus Gardley's black odyssey this week at Cal Shakes.

I've been so impressed with the first two productions of the 2017 season at Cal Shakes, I was really looking forward to this one. And on top of that, I'd been quite disappointed in Eric Ting's direction of Othello last season, so I was intrigued to see what he would do this time.

The Play

Unlike the Ashland production, which was a pretty straight adaptation of the Homeric epic to the stage, Gardley takes a different path, adapting the well-known tale to tell a similar, but different, story of a man lost and found again. This time, Ulysses Lincoln (J. Alphonse Nicholson) is a contemporary U.S. soldier trying to find his way home from the wars in the Middle East, but he has angered the sea god, Paw Sidin (Aldo Billingslea), who is in turn in conflict with both his brother, Deus (Lamont Thompson), and Deus's daughter Aunt Tina (Margo Hall). Tina tries to protect her nephew Ulysses, while Paw Sidin wants to kill him, or at least keep him lost. But Ulysses wants to get home to Oakland, where he left his wife Nella P. (Omoze Idehenre) and unborn son Malachai (Michael Curry). Over the sixteen years it takes Ulysses to come home, Nella will lose some of her faith in him, tempted by a suitor who is really Paw Sidin.

Along the way, Ulysses faces the temptations you would expect, sirens, enchantresses, etc. But there is always another meaning. Because Ulysses is not just a soldier lost in the war, he is a black man who has lost his way, lost his faith in himself. So his odyssey is not just about coming home, but really the struggle to find himself and his place in history.

Adapted a bit for the local staging, the script is full of references to local landmarks and icons. This is very much a show about here. At times the local color seems a bit overdone, trying to be just a bit too cute. But overall it does a good job of grounding the play in the here and now, especially because the content, being an odyssey, is so unmoored from time and place. Gardley handles that part quite masterfully: it is remarkably clear what is happening, and though the connection to the original epic is a helpful reference for those who know it, the story as told stands on its own as well. It's a remarkable and powerful piece of writing.

The Production

In addition to some localization of the story to the east bay, Cal Shakes has provided two composer/directors, Linda Tillery and Molly Holm, who weave African-American spiritual songs into the tapestry of the play, providing a strong undercurrent of culture drawing Ulysses along his path. Along with the interventions of Aunt Tina, who drops her immortality to aid her nephew, Ulysses manages to eventually move along to his proper path, meeting important guides along the way.

I haven't even gotten to mention the rest of the ensemble players, Safiya Fredericks, Michael Gene Sullivan, and Dawn L. Troupe. The whole group is extremely strong, both as character actors and musicians. In fact, the entire cast is one of the most solid, balanced groups of its size I've seen locally in quite a while.

The design of the production is good, though not spectacular. Michael Locher's scenic design seems rather familiar, like I've seen it or things rather similar on this stage before. [Can I say I'm getting a little tired of the framed doors that move on and off stage? It was a useful idea, but is getting a bit overdone.] And the staging doesn't really take full advantage of the expanse of the stage. The action is largely focused in the middle of the stage, which makes the whole thing feel just a bit less, well, epic.

But truly, it's a high-quality production, masterfully acted by all. If I have to call out the truly outstanding performances, I would probably point to Hall, whose physical presence can dominate scenes in multiple ways, and Billingslea, who ranges from comical to threatening with almost no visible transition, really embodying the vagaries of a powerful but rather immature god.

Bottom Line

I liked this show a lot. I wish I'd been able to see it earlier in the run so that I could perhaps direct more people to see it. On the other hand, most of the run has been completely sold out, including the remaining shows this weekend before it closes. And that is well deserved. This is the third straight excellent production in the 2017 season for Cal Shakes. And I am pleased to say I thought Ting's direction of this one was spot-on.

In his role as Artistic Director, Ting has clearly made a commitment to improving the diversity on the Cal Shakes stage. This is the second consecutive show with a full cast of people of color. And this one (though Glass Menagerie, too, in a different way) really shows the power of adapting a classic tale to present the story of a different culture. One might initially think a Greek epic would be an odd vehicle for a story of a modern African-American in search of his personal and racial identity. But Gardley's adaptation of Homer is really strong here. It's clever, often funny, decidedly poignant, musical, and impactful. The crowd seemed almost reluctant to leave, and the discussions I overheard on the way out were varied but almost all focused on aspects of the play. And that's one mark of a successful production.

Good stuff. Good luck getting a ticket to one of the last two shows!

Reading: "The Niceties" at Shotgun Players

For a variety of personal reasons, I was not in the mood to go to the theater this week, but by the same token, it was a chance to see friends and be in the warm embrace of a show, so I decided to go to the latest installment of the Shotgun Champagne Reading Series.

As usual, the cast had very limited time to prepare. This time, three days of rehearsal instead of the usual four. Luckily, there are only two actors in the play, and it has only one set, so it's not too complex in that regard. The material, however, is complicated, so they had plenty to work on.

The Play

The reading this time around was The Niceties by Eleanor Burgess, whose work I was not familiar with. The scene is a professor's office, with an undergraduate student coming to office hours to discuss a draft of a History paper. Sounds thrilling, no?

We start with some nitpicking about punctuation and grammar and parallelism and some little cutesy bits about words we like and why, etc. But then the discussion turns to the substance of the paper, and things rather quickly unravel. The professor takes issue with the thesis of the paper and the types of evidence used to support it, and things spiral into a discussion of racism and privilege and micro-aggressions and the whole gamut of topics that, depending on your perspective, fall under either the category of Social Justice or Political Correctness.

Ultimately the topic under discussion, though, is power: who has it, why, and how do they exercise it? In the give and take of the struggle over the paper, the legitimacy of academia, the university, tenure, professorship, grading, and academic disciplines all come under the microscope. So do personal goals and security, ethics, and basic questions about the purposes of life, education, and career. It's a big grab.

So clearly this play is ambitious. In many ways it's up to the task. There are some very clever passages and exchanges on both sides of the dialogue. But it's also, particularly in the first act, rather long, repetitive, and more of a rant than a discussion. The student, particularly, seems to have a lot of awfully well-rehearsed responses to just about everything the professor says, making it all feel like kind of a set-up, which is quite at odds with the way the relationship presents at the outset. If the student is so tuned in to all the issues as we come to see, then it's rather implausible that she stumbled into the situation in the first place.

But these are matters that could be addressed with some solid editing.

The Reading

First off, terrific casting. Zoe, the student, is played by Leigh Rondon-Davis, who passes easily for an undergrad, though she kind of slipped out of her teenage naivete rather too soon and too rapidly. With more time to rehearse, I think Zoe could have modulated her tone a bit more at times, adding to the give-and-take of the dialogue. Veteran actor Anne Darragh portrayed Janine, the professor. with a mixture of studied disdain, genuine befuddlement, and exasperation. She also seemed a little unclear which character she ultimately wanted to play, as her early presentation is a little dotty, suggesting that either she is already uncomfortable about the encounter (which doesn't seem right for the script) or not quite the academic powerhouse she later claims to be. Again, that just seems to be a product of short rehearsal schedules, but it makes it a little tougher for the audience to get its bearings in the melee.

Under the direction of Lisa Marie Rollins, the overall play unfolds at a good clip. The small office on the mostly open stage feels constraining, forcing the characters to persist; there's nowhere else to go. So when they do get up to move, it's pretty effective. At over two hours in length (with an intermission), the play feels a little long, but again, that's more about the length of some of the rants, rather than the setting. The office just always seems plausible.

Bottom Line

I can't quite decide whether the play is just trying to do too much all at once, or whether a more practiced, nuanced production would be able to pick out the different threads and make them more discernible. The dialogue certainly hits on lots of timely issues, but in fact tries just a bit to hard to pin down the exact moment in time, which doesn't seem necessary. It really doesn't matter whether it's 2016 or 2017, for example, but a few bits of dialogue seem to rather gratuitously pin it on one side of the 2016 presidential election.

There are also just a few too many shortcuts taken in the script. Janine, particularly, seems to let several really questionable points just go by with assertions by Zoe that just seem entirely unfounded, and that doesn't do justice to either side. A play that is essentially a dialogue like this needs to be scrupulously fair to both parties, and it feels like this script needs a bit more work in that regard.

But ultimately it's a truly interesting effort, and probably merits more work and another look. I'm sure a lot of the elements of the play would be more clearly portrayed in a full production, and some work on the script could make it truly excellent, rather than merely provocative.

But as usual, a really interesting evening from a Shotgun staged reading.