"The Lion in Winter" at Custom Made Theatre Company

Custom Made Theatre photo by Jay Yamada

I really want to like this play. I truly appreciate the fact that Custom Made Theatre Company has the sense of humor and the guts to schedule The Lion in Winter as their holiday show because it is set at Christmas in the year 1183. And it's billed as “A Medieval Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?“-- that certainly seems like fun for the holidays!

It turned out that the most convenient time to see it was the weekend after Thanksgiving, at a matinee, and tickets were not exactly selling like hotcakes. But we decided to take the plunge and see what we got.

The Play

I think in the right hands, this could be a pretty interesting play. King Henry II has lost his favorite son (also named Henry) very young, and he's not terribly keen on any of his three remaining sons (Richard, Geoffrey, and John). Nor is he particularly fond anymore of his wife and queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who has been in prison for the last decade or so. He's quite fond of Alais, a French princess brought to his household by a treaty as a wife for Richard, though that hasn't happened yet. And Phillip, the young king of France, has come at Christmas to discuss that matter.

So Henry needs an heir, but hasn't named one. We get lots of political and family machinations around which of the sons should and will get the throne, along with a lot of verbal sparring between Henry and Eleanor, something they have clearly perfected over the years (and which draws the comparisons to Virginia Woolf).

There are plenty of twists and turns and such to keep one's interest, though the ending isn't all that satisfying (and isn't that what we want from a holiday show?).

The Production

The set is simple, which is good. It's clearly meant to be a medieval castle, or at least as muc of one as can fit on the small stage at Custom Made. But it's fine for the size of cast and amount of action. And the costumes, designed by Brooke Jennings, are excellent: not flashy, but evocative of royalty of the period. The sound, though, wasn't good. After intermission there is a small fire burning at center stage, and I heard pops and crackles coming from a speaker way off to the side, which was very distracting. And unfortunately, much of the sound design was overwhelmed by a buzzing from the lights or something overhead. So the production itself is kind of a mixed bag.

The acting covers quite a range, too. Eleanor (Catherine "Cat" Leudtke) is quite solid, and though he started our performance pretty flat, Henry (Steven Westdahl) managed to stay with her most of the way, though his range is more limited. Alais (Caitlin Evenson) started pretty strong, but kind of disappears later on. And the three competing sons don't seem to know they are in the same play. Richard (Elliot Lieberman) is stoic, yet angry. Geoffrey (Kalon Thibodeaux) is reserved and calculating. John (Luke Brady) is a whining, petulant child. Yet somehow I'm supposed to believe that they are fighting for the throne of the largest and most powerful empire in Europe.

Eleanor's favorite is Richard. Henry's (for inexplicable reasons) is John. There are valid political arguments complicating the case for either, but temperamentally, there is no question who ought to get the crown. (Hint: his nickname is "Lionheart".) In the hands of a different director, this might be an interesting struggle over geopolitics. But as staged by director Stuart Bousel, we see melodramatic arguments over important matters, but ultimately the question seems painfully obvious: Richard is suited to be a king, Geoffrey can be useful, and John is a ninny. Yet somehow we fight over whether to give John the crown, the princess, etc.

Bottom Line

This play ought to be more interesting than it is. Either a different cast or a different direction could probably take the script and turn it into something both fun and interesting. But this effort is only mildly fun or interesting. So I came away disappointed.

This isn't the holiday treat I was hoping for. It was a mildly diverting production marred by some inexplicable casting and directorial choices, plus some really bad tech in the sound department.

Still, there were a fair number of people in attendance today, and the show has been extended a week to December 9. So if you're looking for something a little different for the holidays, you have more chances to see The Lion in Winter. Just don't go in with your hopes too high.

"Small Mouth Sounds" at ACT

ACT photo by T Charles Erickson

ACT likes to use their newly-renovated Strand Theatre for smaller, more innovative productions that probably wouldn't work on the big stage in the cavernous Geary Theatre. Such is the case with Small Mouth Sounds, by Bess Wohl. As advertised (people meeting and interacting at a silent retreat), it doesn't sound like much of a play. But in fact, during much of the play there is the voice on an unseen teacher, so there is something of a narrative structure and words for the (mostly) silent characters to react to.

The Play

There's not a lot to say about the play itself beyond what I already said. A group of six people arrive at a silent retreat. Four are strangers, and two others are a couple, and we know really nothing about them except what we see. The unseen Teacher welcomes the guests and sets down some rules, at which point we really start to see various characters' personalities come out in their silent reactions. A key scene has everyone settling into their sleeping spaces, rolling out mats, undressing to one degree or another, etc. All along, little snippets of character come out.

And this goes on for five days. We get a few little interludes where people speak a bit, but that's about it. One character is permitted to ask a question, which is predictably lengthy and actually one of the most uncomfortable scenes in the play.

Ultimately, we don't learn all that much about any of the characters (though some more than others). We have essentially a character study with pretty strict limits on what the characters can reveal, and little or no plot for them to interact with. So in 100 minutes of uninterrupted performance, we get what we might get out of 15-20 minutes in a spoken play.

The difference being that you have to guess a lot more, and you end up filling in your own back stories and such. That's kind of interesting, but none of the reveals in the play are really enough to validate or invalidate much of one's speculations, so you're left with that. And I guess that's OK, but it's not really a play.

The Performance

The actors are all good, and expressive (as you might expect). Ned (Ben Beckley) ends up talking more than others (in part because of the aforementioned question scene), so we have a clearer picture of some of his issues and background. Joan (Socorro Santiago) and Judy (Cherene Snow) are the couple, so their interactions have more context, and we can interpret some of their back stories as well. Jan (Connor Barrett) has lost a child and is a magnet for mosquitoes.

Unfortunately, most of the characters are pretty one-dimensional. Rodney (Edward Chin-Lyn) is rather a show-off about his yoga and meditation practices,  but pretty self-absorbed. Alicia (Brenna Palughi) is a hot mess all around for no reason we ever discern. And the effort to insert a little personality into the unseen Teacher (Orville Mendoza) feel more like an effort to extend a scant "plot line" in the play, rather than a realistic effort to create a meaningful character of him or provide realistic prompts for the rest to react to.

In short, everyone does a good job with the material they are given. I thought Barrett and Snow and Chin-Lyn were particularly good and consistent with their portrayals. But really, there's not a lot of substance here. The "fill in your own story" aspect is kind of fun, but limited, and the one-dimensionality of the characters doesn't allow for very fulfilling stories at all.

Since it's kind of inevitable to make comparisons with other shows I've seen recently, it occurs to me that with a very similar-sized cast, Central Works' Strange Ladies managed to portray many more aspects of each character's life and personality. Admittedly, they used language, but that's kind of my point. If you're going to limit your characters to non-verbal communication, you (as writer or as director) had better provide them with more opportunities and tools for communicating. Otherwise you get flat, silent characters.

Bottom Line

It's an interesting exercise, but not a terribly fulfilling one. The actors are competent, and some manage to convey some really good, subtle emotions. I just wish there had been more to it. I'm not sure whether playwright Wohl and director Rachel Chavkin are concerned that audiences will be confused if the silent characters are more complex, or perhaps they just don't know how to do it. But for me, the main thing the show cried out (silently) for was more dimensions to the characters.

So I can't recommend it highly, but neither would I say to avoid it. The show runs through December 10 at the Strand Theatre, but there are probably better holiday shows out there.

"Strange Ladies" at Central Works

Central Works photo by J. Norrena

I hadn't been to Central Works for a while, so I was quite looking forward to seeing what this latest world premiere was all about. All I knew from reading blurbs on their website and in the paper was that Strange Ladies by Susan Sobeloff was about the American women who fought for women's suffrage, and that's a subject of great interest to me.

As always with these Central Works productions, they are world premieres, generally written by local playwrights, and they are often in somewhat raw form. In addition, the theater at the Berkeley City Club is really just a room with some seats around three sides, so the staging can't be too elaborate. On the other hand, they generally tackle issues of real interest, so even if the result isn't necessarily stellar, there is something worthwhile there.

And that's definitely the case here.

The Play

The play doesn't have a plot line per se, but rather follows a series of vignettes or episodes involving a group of six women joined together to fight for the right to vote. Some of the dialogue is a bit polemical, sounding more like they're giving each other their stump speeches than actually discussing issues or trying to persuade each other of tactics. But it's also a sort of shorthand that compresses our introductions to the characters and the issues.

So we first see the individuals, then send them off to recruit more, and then regroup together to plot a picket of the White House and President Wilson in the lead-up to the Great War. We get to see some splintering of the group over the war and how to advance (or not) their cause during it. And eventually we get to see some of the women arrested, imprisoned, and abused for demanding their rights.

Most effective in the script is the way it takes the six characters (although there are a few extras where someone fills a momentary role) with diverse backgrounds and priorities and manages to make them stand for the national coalition of women who came together over this particularly pressing matter.

Overall I thought the presentation was effective, and would probably be more so in a somewhat fancier theater with a bit fancier stage and light facilities. But on the whole, for a new work, it's quite effective.

The Production

Here again we have kind of a mixed bag. Of the six actors in the cast, three really stood out: Gwen Loeb as Rose, the New York union organizing veteran , Nicol Foster as Mary, the African American with a lot extra at stake, and Renee Rogoff as Alice, the organizer of the group. Each character has strong moments, but those actors really put something extra out there.

The costumes by Tammy Berlin are quite effective: Evocative of the era without being distractingly so. And the minimal props (by Debbie Shelley) and lights (by Gary Graves) manage to make the most out of the limited space. A "Votes for Women" banner held up represents the White House picket. A grid of dim light establishes that we are in prison. As a result, the production is pretty tight at just over an hour.

I should also call out the music, under the direction of Milissa Carey. The women frequently break into song, whether to break the monotony of picketing or to maintain their spirits in prison. It's one of the ways they bond, but also a way for the characters to establish themselves.

Again, they make the most of their limited space. The actors fairly frequently sat on the steps in the audience, making the setting all the more intimate.

Bottom Line

Strange Ladies is not, and need not, be a big play. Indeed, the small size of the cast and the stage effectively draws the audience into the already tight spaces and relationships of the characters. And we see in fair detail the efforts and the costs of the work these women undertook, the conflicts, the moments of doubt, and so on. It all seems very familiar to those who have worked on contemporary issues of social justice.

I appreciated getting some insight into the lives of the real women in the movement, although these particular women were fictionalized composites drawn from historical research. The result is quite moving as well as informative.

The play has been extended a week, and has three more performances this weekend. I'd say it's well worth going if you're in the area.

"Barbecue" at San Francisco Playhouse

SF Playhouse photo by Jessica Palopoli

This is a difficult play. I wish I had seen it a little earlier in its run, because there was a casting change for the last couple of weeks of the show, and it probably made a significant difference in the overall quality. But you go with what you got.

The play in question is Robert O'Hara's Barbecue, which takes place in a public park somewhere in Middle America around the present time. It's very clever in the way it does some things, but there are definitely some holes.

The Play

The play opens as a group of siblings begins to gather for a barbecue in the park, ostensibly as a celebration, but actually as a pretense to stage an intervention.  One of the siblings, Lillie Anne, has summoned the others (James T, Adlean, and Marie) to try to convince their sister Barbara to go into rehab. All of the siblings have issues, and many probably deserve to enter rehab themselves, but the opening scene establishes some of the background and relationships that have brought them to this stage.

As the first scene ends, the lights drop, and when they return we see exactly the same scenario, but all the actors have been replaced by doppelgangers. The obvious difference being that the first set of actors were all white, and the second all black.* The action continues as before, and we perhaps rethink some of our evaluations based on this change. Scenes alternate the two casts for the rest of the first act as we proceed into the actual intervention.

And then just as we get to the key moment at the end of the intervention (with the black family onstage), someone yells "Cut!" and everyone drops out of character, crew come onstage, and we realize that what we are seeing isn't what we thought we were seeing. We get to ponder that through intermission.

After intermission things change a bit, and we primarily see the two "Barbara" actresses interacting, starting with the white Barbara alone in the park, then joined by the black one. It becomes clear that the white Barbara is the "real" one, and the other is a famous actress who is evaluating whether to play Barbara in a film adaptation of Barbara's memoir, written in rehab.

[Spoilers here...look away if you must!] In the course of their discussion/negotiation, it becomes clear that Barbara's memoir is largely fictionalized, and was in fact inspired by reading a memoir while she was in rehab that inspired her recovery, but was also revealed to be fabricated. So we have layers on layers of fabrication and imitation and appropriation and ambition. Ultimately, everybody is trying to make a buck off of telling a story that might not be theirs, might not be true, and really, what does that matter?

I'd put this play in the trendy current genre of "gotcha" plays, where we are presented with a scenario that is ultimately revealed to be something entirely different, both within the play and to us. We've seen several plays like this over the last year or two, including Christopher Chen's Caught, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' An Octoroon. When done right, it can be brilliant, and really make the audience evaluate their thinking and prejudices. But timing and chemistry onstage are in many ways as important as the writing, as the audience really has to buy into the set-up in order for the "gotcha" to work.

The Production

Which brings us to the production. This casting is particularly tricky, as the play needs two complete, coherent families. For the most part, this works pretty well here. The characters of Adlean (Jennie Brick and Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe) and James T (Clive Worsley and Adrian Roberts) slip back and forth pretty seamlessly. The Maries (Teri Whipple and Kehinde Koyejo) seem to have somewhat different approaches to their character. Lillie Anne (Anne Darragh and Halili Knox) is more of a problem; though both are good performances, they don't feel like the same character at all, really.

And then there is Barbara (Sally Dana and Margo Hall). The white Barbara was originally Susi Damilano, an SF Playhouse founder, producing director, and frequent performer. Damilano is a dynamic and accomplished actress who probably matched up well with the veteran Hall. Not taking anything away from Dana, but she doesn't have either the big stage presence of Damilano or the chemistry with Hall that comes from developing the roles over the course of the run. I found a lot of the post-intermission scenes just lacking in coherence and fire that seemed to be called for. It just felt off. So that's why I say I wish I'd seen the play a bit earlier, with the original casting. It's a tough call for an actor to come into the cast for the last two weeks of a run and try to maintain the quality of the production. It's not bad, but it doesn't feel like it's all it should be.

Other than that, I thought the production was quite good. Bill English's set design works well, evoking a public park that has probably seen some better days. And Hall directs as well as performing, which works pretty well because most of her scenes either don't have a lot of lines, or they have lines, but not many other characters.

Bottom Line

There is a lot going on in this play, but because each of the actors only plays about half of it, it's kind of hard to really get into any of them. And as noted above, when we do finally get two characters developing and working with each other the particular casting of this last couple of weeks has taken some of the air out of the balloon.

Still, there is plenty to think about in the play, even if the very nature of it makes it difficult to really settle in and evaluate it. We get to look at how we feel about characters of different races with exactly the same issues, for example. And we get some class consciousness as the big movie star confronts the rehabbed addict on her home turf, as well as the pretenses of the star who thinks she can just dictate who she is and what her background is; never mind what "facts" you might have read about her. Those are all pretty interesting, but all get a bit muddled. The concluding scene just adds a few more with some digs at Hollywood and the film-going public and their attitudes about race.

Ultimately I have a little trouble trying to decide which of these are actually important to the playwright and which are just incidental details that go into telling the story. And that's probably my biggest issue with these "gotcha" plays: by their nature, they are complex, and they also consciously undercut their own characters, plots, and messages. It's great to have plays that leave us asking questions, but it's also helpful to make sure we know which questions the playwright actually thinks are important.

Barbecue runs through this weekend (closes Saturday the 11th). It's worth seeing.

*I'm sure I could come up with better descriptions of the cast change than "white" and "black," but that is the essence of what we're looking at. We have the same family with essentially the same dynamics, just a different race. I will use the "black" and "white" shorthand because it's late and I'm tired.