"Partition" at Indra's Net Theater

Indra's Net photo

Well, I thought I had written my last theater piece of the year, but last night we sneaked over to see Partition by Ira Hauptman at Indra's Net Theater. We always enjoy the shows that Indra's Net chooses, as they tend to sit at the intersection of science and philosophy and some of the bigger issues of life.

The play this time is about mathematics, but also about cultures and religions and where they all overlap at times.

The Play

The principal character in Partition is Srinivasa Ramanujan, a largely self-educated mathematical prodigy from India. He had been kicked out of college for basically refusing to study anything other than math, so as a result he had little formal training or even understanding of the standard academic approach to the subject. What he had was a deep and unique appreciation for numbers and number theory. Working alone in Madras, he produced volumes of theorems, but lacked the techniques to prove them in standard terms.

Thwarted in his attempts to study further in India, Ramanujan sent samples of his work to some of the great theorists of the day, and one, G.H. Hardy of Cambridge, invited him to come work with him. This play then largely deals with Ramanujan as a fish out of water in Cambridge, and the difficult Hardy's attempts to work with Ramanujan without destroying him.

In addition to the two mathematicians, there are three other characters in the show: Alfred Billington, a classicist at Cambridge and long-time friend of Hardy, the ghost of Pierre de Fermat, the great French number theorist,  and Namagiri of Namakkal, a Hindu Goddess. Billington serves as sort of a buffer between Hardy and Ramanujan, trying to temper Hardy's actions and appealing to his conscience. Namagiri is the inspiration for Ramanujan, the source of his theorems. And Fermat...well, Fermat is enigmatic and egotistical, even in death, but he and his theorems play an important role in the plot.

Overall it's quite an interesting script, delving into the sources of inspiration and validation, trying to reconcile Eastern and Western standards of both academics and ethical behavior.

The Production

There are elements of the production that are quite excellent. Namagiri (Aparna Krishnamoorthy in our performance) sings, chants, and dances wonderfully with the background of Indian music. She establishes the world of Ramanujan (Heren Patel) in Madras, and follows him to Cambridge via dreams. Hardy (Alan Coyne) and Billington (David Boyll) have an excellent rapport, albeit with a stylized formality. And Fermat (Marco Aponte) is a delightful figure, though a bit difficult to understand at times.

Unfortunately, this is one of the few times I felt Indra's Net failed to adapt adequately to the unique constraints of the theater at the Berkeley City Club. In particular, the space where Hardy and Billington sit and talk is set up in such a way that approximately half the audience will just see the  backs of both of their heads, always. Although there is some attempt made to adapt to this, it's really quite a glaring deficiency in the stage design and direction.

Similarly, there are times when Ramanujan is directly addressing Namagiri at her shrine where he will inexplicably spin around and talk in a different direction. It appears to be an attempt to let some of the rest of the room see the actor's face, but it comes across as just bizarre behavior. Director Bruce Coughran has generally come up with better solutions than this in previous productions in this space. I should note that it's also noticeably difficult for the actors to navigate around the set pieces in the small stage space. The pieces covered with mathematical notation are attractive, but seem unnecessarily bulky as placed. Audience members had some difficulty getting around them to get seated; same for some of the actors.

But on the whole, the actors managed to do a credible job of getting across the key bits of the script, sometimes in spite of their surroundings.

Bottom Line

I think the play itself has a lot of interesting stuff, and for the most part the actors did a pretty good job of cutting through distractions and portraying their characters. I don't think the staging and direction were nearly as successful, however.

On the whole, I'm glad I saw the show, and feel like there is enough there to make it worthwhile. It makes me wish I had seen the original production, at Aurora Theatre Company, some years back. I wasn't tuned into Aurora back then, apparently.

In any case, it's a good play with some good acting performances. I think you can get by the staging issues and get some value out of seeing the play.

Partition runs through January 14 at the Berkeley City Club.

"The Black Rider" at Shotgun Players

Shotgun Players photo by Cheshire Isaacs

Somewhere at the intersection of patriarchy and gun culture ("at the crossroads," you might even say), there is an old German story about a star-crossed couple of young lovers, the need to shoot a gun (and the inability to do so), and the choice to make a deal with the devil to solve this problem. The Black Rider is a modern derivative of that story, filtered through some very interesting minds.

The Play

The play itself has a history that's actually more intriguing to me than the story itself. Avant-garde theater and opera director Robert Wilson approached musician Tom Waits about creating the piece, and somehow they both got the notion to ask Beat writer William S. Burroughs to write the book for the show, and for some reason, he agreed.

The story involves Wilhelm (Grace Ng), a young file clerk who has fallen in love with Kätchen (Noelle Viñas), the daughter of the legendary hunter Bertram (Steven Hess), who forbids the marriage because Wilhelm cannot shoot or hunt. He prefers her to marry Robert (El Beh), a manly man like him. As Wilhelm despairs, hope appears in the form of magic bullets, proffered by Pegleg (the spectacular Rotimi Agbabiaka). The bullets will always hit their target, though Pegleg reserves one of the bullets for his choice. Wilhelm accepts, becomes a successful hunter, wins the hand of his beloved, and all goes well until....

At the risk of the obvious spoiler, Pegleg's bullet doesn't hit the target, it kills Kätchen instead. Wilhelm goes mad and joins cosmic freak show that Pegleg oversees.

One of the punch lines is that William S. Burroughs accidentally shot and killed his second wife while apparently trying to shoot an apple off her head. Presumably, alcohol and/or other substances were involved. But it does seem odd that he would later agree to write a play about such a similar event. Or not. It's Burroughs, after all.

I have now seen two versions of this play, one at ACT many years ago, and now this Shotgun production (plus a mini version put on by RADIX Troupe a few years back). I still can't say that the play itself speaks to me, particularly. I get that we're responsible for our choices and we shouldn't make deals with the devil and all that. But really, I don't see the appeal of the story.

The Production

It's really quite spectacular. The sideshow/freak show motif mixed in with the dismal, barren woods is quite striking in a set designed by Sean Riley. The colors and the art by R. Black (who does all the Shotgun posters and murals) are really great. The sound design by Matt Stines and live direction by Anton Hedman are exceptional and the live band under the direction of David Möschler all combine to make a complete soundscape, intricately synchronized with the lights (by Allen Willner) and the actions devised by Director Mark Jackson. Wrap this all in the outrageous costumes by Christine Crook, and the whole thing is a sensory masterpiece. It's all really stunning, except the story.

Special attention should go to Grace Ng, whose wonderful physical skills combine clownish miming and acrobatic gymnastics to create a wonderfully bumbling, befuddled Wilhelm. And El Beh proves to be marvelously masculine as Wilhelm's rival, Robert, and thrills with her singing voice as well. Casting women in both of those roles is really quite brilliant, since Wilhelm is supposed to be the least manly man imaginable to this village, one who can't shoot. And Robert is clearly insecure in his manhood as well.

And I should add a mention of Kevin Clarke (Old Uncle), whose role as sideshow barker/narrator/chorus hands him a megaphone to go with his outrageous hair. Elizabeth Carter is the final cast member, playing Anne, Bertram's wife. As befits a patriarchal fairy tale, her role is probably the least memorable. She's fine, but Anne is just not very important to the story.

Anyway, it's all a rather overwhelming feast for the senses, but I walked away feeling pretty unsatisfied, dazzled but not convinced.

Bottom Line

This is a spectacular theater piece. And it obviously speaks to some people, because it's selling like crazy and has been extended multiple times. It's certainly worth seeing (and it runs through January 21) if you're inclined, or if you just want to see the freak show. I wouldn't go looking for enlightenment, but you never know. We all walk into the sideshow knowing we're not going to get what we're promised, but we go anyway. It's our choice.

On some level, I guess you can see it as a commentary on gun culture, and how toxic that is, but really, that's not it. And some people see it as Burroughs trying to talk about the dangers of addiction, but I don't really see that. Pressure, conformity, toxic masculinity, gun worship, hero worship, avoidance of responsibility...yeah, they're all in there. But really, if I have to work this hard to sift out the meaning in the play, it seems like something's amiss. The cast and crew and designers put all this work into making something spectacular, so I feel like I should be clearer on why.

But it is really spectacular.

"Shakespeare in Love" at Marin Theatre Company

Marin Theatre Company photo by Kevin Berne

OK, we already know I like Shakespeare in Love. I saw it last summer at Ashland, so I won't go into great detail about the play itself. But I was quite looking forward to seeing it again, both because I liked it the first time, and because several of my friends and favorite local actors were cast in this production. I was also interested to go back to Marin for the first time since all the fuss raised by their Thomas and Sally last fall.

The Play

Seeing the stage version again made me more conscious of some of the differences between the stage adaptation by Lee Hall and the movie. In the movie, for example, Shakespeare's writer's block is a huge issue throughout, but in the play it comes across less as an inability to write than as either unwillingness or lack of interest, a habitual juggling of creditors. It's just a difference in emphasis, but it sticks with me.

Otherwise, it's still Shakespeare in Love. It's still the witty riff on Shakespeare that reflects the influence of the original screenplay by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard. What's not to like?

The Production

There is a lot to like in this production. One thing that delighted me was the casting. The actors in the lead roles are the right age, where I thought Ashland's were a bit too mature. This production finds plenty of meaty roles for veteran local actors, too, but the key roles such as Will Shakespeare (Adam Magill), Viola/Thomas (Megan Trout), and Marlowe (Kenny Toll) need to be younger actors.

I have to give particular praise for the casting of Megan Trout. In addition to being just a tremendously talented actor, her experience last year playing a full season in Shotgun's Hamlet "Roulette", meaning she had a ton of recent experience performing Shakespeare's words in both male and female characters, which seems like the ideal lead-in to playing Viola/Thomas. And as I anticipated, she was brilliant in the role.

The supporting cast was also very strong, ranging from Bay Area stalwarts such as Stacy Ross (as the Nurse and Queen Elizabeth), Robert Sicular (Henslowe and De Lesseps), and L. Peter Callender (Burbage and the Boatman) to a host of younger mainstays such as Lance Gardner, Ben Euphrat, and Thomas Gorrebeeck. And a bit with a (very cute) dog.

The overall chemistry among the cast seemed quite strong. Not only did Magill and Trout work well as the leading couple, but Magill and Toll worked well as a pair of young men getting into trouble and helping each other out.

I thought the notion of having the ensemble play musical instruments on the periphery might be a bit distracting, but it turned out to be fine, and the music was mostly very good, though occasionally someone would burst out in a rendition of a sonnet for no apparent reason. But overall I thought it fit in nicely with the general chaos of an Elizabethan theater production. And I quite liked the way the set design by Kat Conley managed to separate onstage and backstage, and Jasson Minadakis's direction let those switch back and forth quite seamlessly. Nicely done, that.

Bottom Line

This is a fine alternative to the usual, treacly holiday programming. I mean, someone's always going to be doing A Christmas Carol or some other sentimental holiday thing. I appreciate a theater just going all out and doing a good, solid production of a real play that works as a fun holiday outing without being trite.

Unfortunately, I saw the show about a week before it closed, and then managed not to write this up until it had already closed. So although I would love to recommend that you see it, it's too late. On the other hand, it was also sold out, so I doubt it made much difference. But it was a very good show.

"Annie" at Berkeley Playhouse

Berkeley Playhouse photo

We went to see Berkeley Playhouse's production of the musical Annie last week, in part because we like to support this theater, in part because our daughter was having a reunion there with much of the cast of last summer's Teen Stage production of Assassins, and in part because we know the actress who was scheduled to play the lead role that night. Unfortunately, cold-and-flu-season knocked out our preferred actor, but one of the other actors was on site and stepped right into the role.

The Play

Remarkably, though I remember when this show first came out in the 1980s, I never saw it. I certainly heard the big musical number ("Tomorrow") enough times to feel like I had. Based on the "Little Orphan Annie" comic strip characters, the play follows the titular character from Miss Hannigan's orphanage to the home of wealthy Oliver Warbucks, with plenty of visits from the president and various low-lifes.

Unlike all the other orphans in the orphanage, Annie holds out hope that she's not actually an orphan, just a kid that was left by her parents (with a note saying how much they loved her) temporarily until they could come back to pick her up. And they left her with half of a broken pendant that she always wears, knowing her parents will return with the other half, thereby identifying themselves. Of course, she was left as an infant, and is now 11 years old. In the middle of the Great Depression.

But Annie has an unconquerable positive attitude. You know: "The sun will come out tomorrow," etc. So she keeps trying to escape the orphanage to find her parents. She does get out one night, and visits a Hooverville shanty town where she claims a stray dog who would otherwise be taken to the pound and put to sleep. But she's soon rounded up and returned to the orphanage, where she manages to sneak the dog in somehow.

So things aren't going so great, but we get some song and dance numbers out it anyway. Then unannounced, billionaire Warbucks' secretary arrives at the orphanage to sort of borrow an orphan for a couple of weeks at Christmastime. Because Annie happens to be in the room at the time, she charms her way into being selected, and off she goes to spend a couple of weeks in the lap of luxury, stopping off for new clothes at a fancy boutique to get new clothes on the way.

Next stop, Oliver Warbucks' home, with a large staff and all the trimmings. Warbucks seems oddly nonplussed by the presence of the orphan he apparently recruits every year. Or maybe this is just the first time he's done this. Anyway, it's no more implausible than the rest, so just go with it. Because you need to save some suspension of disbelief for our visit to the Oval Office where an incessantly positive outlook turns out to be just what the president and his cabinet were lacking in their efforts to tackle the depression.

By various twists, Annie ends up on a hugely popular national radio show, telling the story of how her parents are missing, and suddenly hundreds are lined up outside Warbucks' home to claim her (and the $50,000 reward he has offered). Unsurprisingly, none of them know about the locket thing, and are pretty quickly turned away. But of course Miss Hannigan's brother, the con man, senses a chance to snag the reward, so goes to claim her, armed with the inside info from Miss Hannigan.

I'll just stop before I spoil the mega-happy ending, OK?

Suffice it to say that I find the plot of this show, while rather fascinating, somewhat less plausible than most, and that's saying a lot. But it has some catchy tunes and is relentlessly upbeat, even when it seems like it shouldn't be. So how could it fail to be popular?

The Production

I appreciate the quality of the productions put on at Berkeley Playhouse. They always seem to have imaginative and appropriate sets and costumes. For example, the New York City scenes are pretty much cartoon skyscrapers. Similarly, Warbucks' house looks like it came right off the comics page, right down to the portrait of him over the mantel. The evocation of the show's comic-strip origins is quite effective.

Before I go farther, I also have to give full appreciation to Miranda Long, the actor who had to fill in as Annie at the last moment. For the lead role, Playhouse had cast three actors (Long, Josie Dooley, and Sophia Gilbert) who work in a scheduled rotation. So it's not as if they had an unprepared understudy step in. But still, finding out literally minutes before curtain that you're going on stage has to be a bit daunting, but Long was terrific. We were disappointed not to get to see Dooley, but we were not disappointed in the quality of the performance overall.

And I will add that in addition to rotating three Annies, they also have two sets of orphans who alternate as well. We saw the "Park Avenue" group, and were impressed with them all. They have a lot of stage time, songs, dances, and individual lines, and they were all well up to the task. And bonus points for not being phased when the dog playing Sandy (Gaston) decided to...er..."sing" along with one of their numbers. Quite impressive.

The adults did a good job, too. Michael RJ Campbell, the only union actor in the cast, carries Warbucks quite well, and Melinda Meeng as his secretary, Grace Farrell, is charming and warm. Billy Raphael as Drake, the butler, brought a lot of personality to what could be a quite dry role. My only qualm was with the framing narrative that takes the form of a radio show. The host, Bert Healy (Ted Zoldan), manages to be a bit over the top, even by the standards of this comic strip on stage.

But on the whole the production values are solid. I quite appreciated the livery costumes on the Warbucks house staff, and the singing Boylan Sisters (Andrea Dennison-Laufer, Megan McGrath, and Ashley Garlick) look and sound sharp.

Bottom Line

For a small, relatively new (ten years now) theater company, Berkeley Playhouse manages to put together really high-quality productions. The fact that they are able to integrate so many young members of the local community is a tribute both to the organization as a whole and to the conservatory program they run that trains children and teens, obviously producing actors who are quite capable of taking part in a professional production.

As you'll have gathered from my comments, I think the show is a bit silly, even by the standards of musical theater. On the other hand, it's fun to watch and it clearly appeals to a broad audience. There were lots of children in the mostly-full house for the night we saw the show, and that's a great thing.

Annie runs through January 23rd, so you still have a few chances to see it.

"Watch on the Rhine" at Berkeley Rep

Berkeley Rep photo by Kevin Berne

Timely revivals of older plays are often even better than new plays, because it's often helpful to know that prior generations have stumbled on some of the same rocks we find in our path now, and their insights can help us navigate, or at least understand. One example of such a revival is Berkeley Rep's current offering of Lillian Hellman's Watch on the Rhine, a 1941 play about resisting fascism. It's a play that is fundamentally about getting out of one's comfortable bubble and realizing that fascism can be right in the house, unsuspected.

The Play

Set in a wealthy home outside Washington, DC, in the spring of 1940, we first see members of the Farrelly family anticipating the arrival of a long-absent member. Daughter Sara married a German engineer and has been living abroad with him and their three children. Mother Fanny is quite distracted in anticipation. Her son, David, is rather hard to read, but he misses his sister. So Fanny antagonizes Anise, the live-in French secretary, and Joseph the butler. The long-term house guests, the De Brancovises (whose presence is never fully explained), are minor Romanian nobility, down on their luck (and their finances).

So Sara and her family arrive earlier than expected, looking a bit threadbare and scruffy. It's clear they've not been living high on the hog, and have in fact been missing a lot of meals and staying cheaply as they move around a lot. Soon we learn that Kurt (Sara's husband) is no longer working as an engineer, but working as an antifascist, opposing the rise and spread of fascism all over Europe. As the discussion turns to European politics, we find that De Brancovis has pro-fascist sympathies and many German connections, and a scheme evolves to turn in Kurt to the Germans in exchange for money.

But maybe he could be bought out of that option, with the Farrelly family helping to buy his silence.

So we have the tension of family loyalties, the awakening of the awareness of how world affairs affect all, including the isolated American family, and of course the pro- and antifascist agents. It all blows up at the end, of course. Amidst all the political intrigue, we see some quite tender and difficult bits as it becomes clear that Kurt has brought his family to stay with the Farrellys while he must return to Europe to continue his dangerous fight. Hellman does a terrific job of juxtaposing the personal and the global, as well as bringing out hidden depths in seemingly fairly superficial characters such as Fanny and David.

All in all, the play is a solid piece of writing, and holds up well, although the early pacing is a bit slow. Eventually all the pieces fall into place, and you realize it's a cleverly crafted work.

The Production

Terrific looking set, I have to say. One advantage to a play that all takes place in one room is that the designers can really go to town on the details. So the room looks really good, nicely lighted, etc. I had a few issues with the sound and with audibility of some of the dialogue, even though we were seated pretty close to the stage, though on the side. I've never encountered acoustical issues in the Roda Theater before, so I doubt that's the problem. But mostly it was fine.

The acting was solid, mostly unspectacular. The key standouts were Elijah Alexander as Kurt Muller and Sarah Agnew as Sara Muller. And both stood out for the subtlety of their non-spoken parts. When Sara first enters the home she hasn't visited in 20 years, there is a palpable tension in her nervous movements, between the joy and comfort of being home and the anticipation of the unknown reception they will receive when her family meets her husband and children for the first time.

But the real winner is Alexander's Kurt. Soft-spoken and serious throughout, he evinces a tremendous strength of character and restraint, with a tenderness for his family that belies his hatred of the Nazis and all they represent. I found him utterly convincing throughout the show.

Caitlin O'Connell showed flashes of brilliance as Fanny, though a bit overplayed at times. And James Detmar's Joseph, the butler, showed some good comic touches. All the child actors playing Kurt and Sara's children were exceptional, particularly given how much stage time they all had. I found their portrayals a bit too forthcoming for children who have supposedly been on the run for essentially their whole lives--a bit too naive and trusting for who they really ought to be. I'm not sure whether the fault there lies in the text or in the direction of it, but still the performances are impressive.

Bottom Line

There is nothing flashy about this play. It's meant to convey the conflict and turmoil that underlies the denial in a quiet, normal life in a world about to melt down. And director Lisa Peterson's approach captures that well. Indeed, the tizzy about the arrival of family members is, for most of the play, the biggest disruption of daily life. The incursion of outside conflict is quiet and almost goes without notice until it can't any longer.

All in all, it's a very good production of a truly good play. Berkeley Rep has resisted the temptation to sensationalize the material, making its message all the more powerful.

The play runs through January 14, so there is still plenty of time to catch this one, and it's worth doing so.

"Olga: A Farewell Concert" at Aurora Theatre Company

Aurora photo by Scot Goodman

This is another show that's kind of hard to categorize. It's not a play, really, though it's more of a play than the Hundred Days show we saw the previous weekend in New York. Olga was a special, limited-run production as the first commissioned piece through Aurora's "Originate + Generate" (O+G) program for developing new works.

The Show

Presented in cabaret style, the show actually begins when the doors open and patrons start to find their seats. Olga (Beth Wilmurt) is already seated at the piano, playing softly and singing to herself. Olga is based on the character Olga Sergeyevna Prozorova, the eldest of the eponymous three sisters in Chekhov's play. As we learn early in this performance, the other two sisters are gone (one dead, one moved), leaving Olga alone and feeling reflective.

The reflections take the form of rather anachronistic musical selections. Olga would have been singing about a hundred years ago, but the musical selections performed by Wilmurt and her band are all distinctly more modern, from opening with Harry Nilsson's "Wasting My Time" through Phil Ochs and Brian Wilson tunes into adaptations of songs by such diverse artists as Jimmy Cliff, Los Lobos, Kirsty McColl, Gloria Deluxe, and Johnny Cash, among others.

The mood shifts from wistful to mildly celebratory, ironic and reflective, but never gets morose. There is a minimum of chatter between tunes; just enough to provide a bit of flow from one to the next. So the overall effect is pretty much just continuous music, but a bit of a story line makes itself felt through the music and the interactions on stage.

The Performance

Wilmurt has a lovely voice, being as much a musician and music teacher as a theater performer. And she has an easy rapport with her band (Sam Barnum on guitar, Gabe Maxson on harmonica, and Olive Mitra on bass and percussion). The band rolls into the room after a few minutes, wearing their Russian army uniforms, but quickly make themselves at home on the chairs and couches on stage. Olga fetches them beers, and with a bit of wine for herself, continues the show.

The overall show therefore has the informal, playing and singing with old friends vibe that suggests familiarity and shared experience, but there is a definite order to the show, rather than the impromptu feel of a jam session. Olga definitely has a plan for the evening, a journey she wants us to share. And the little nods to Chekhov's play give a context, yet don't conflict with the apparently contemporary setting of the piece.

I was most impressed with the way Wilmurt has arranged such diverse musical pieces into a style that makes them all feel like they fit together, and some are rather dramatically different than the original performances (notably Wilson's "In My Room," which is much more sprightly here than the familiar Beach Boys recording). Unlike so many current musical assemblages, where story lines warp to fit the lyrics and tempos of existing songs, Olga manages to select and manipulate the songs to fit the narrative arc of her evening.

Bottom Line

Olga is a pleasant evening of music. I suspect it helps to be of a certain middle-ish age to recognize and appreciate the songs assembled, as well as to fully appreciate the reflective ambiance of the show. It's a really solid show, not in a knock-your-socks-off sort of way, but rather in a kind of sly, subtle way. Olga seems intent on holding back, not setting our expectations, and then manages to reveal lots of interesting bits with her choices of songs and styles.

Unfortunately, the show only ran for ten days, and closed last weekend, so there aren't any more options for seeing it just now. However, I suspect the show will reappear in some form down the road.

And the next O+G production will be next spring, with a show called Eureka Day by Jonathan Spector on the Aurora main stage. It's always interesting to see new works, so I hope the O+G program will be successful.

"Hundred Days" at New York Theatre Workshop

I don't have a lot to say about the third and last show we saw on our NYC trip. Hundred Days is not a play, per se, but more of a musical performance piece. We saw it in part because it had originated from the Bay Area, commissioned at Z Space in San Francisco, and it features at least one former Bay Area artist.

The Show

This is not a play. It mostly takes the form of a musical performance, with a band on stage with their instruments. There is a kind of loose narrative as the lead singer leads the audience through a story that serves mostly to link the various songs together.

We begin with a vague description of something very traumatic that happened to the lead singer as a teenager. This event (which is never explicitly described) is followed by The Dream, which involves meeting the love of her life and then losing him after 100 days.

What happens eventually is that she does, indeed, meet the right guy, in much the way described in the dream (and he turns out to be the guitar player standing next to her on stage here). Together they face the uncertainty of dealing with the fear of the rest of the dream coming true, too.

In between we have a lot of reasonably related songs, though there are some fairly long bits of spoken words.

I guess the closest comparison I can come up with, stylistically, would be something like Stew's Passing Strange, where the artist tells a story about his own life, illustrated with songs. This show's narrative is not nearly as strong, however.

The book for this show is written by The Bengsons (Abigail and Shaun, who happen to be the lead singer and her husband, the guitar player) and Sarah Gancher. The Bengsons also wrote all the music and lyrics. The show seems to be based on real events that actually happened to the Bengsons. I'm told the original show at Z Space included more material that was a fictional story that takes off from the real background. So it's a bit unclear to be how much of Hundred Days is meant to be taken as real, and how much is made up.

The Performance

This is clearly a talented group of musicians. The Bengsons and their back-up band are terrific musicians. The music and the singing are quite good. I was particularly impressed with drummer Dani Markham (though as a former drummer, I may have a bias here). And the room in the theater was quite nice, though the building itself is unassuming. But the acoustics were very good, and the design with hanging lights was nice (though they moved in some odd and distracting ways during the show).

The show is fundamentally a love story between Abigail and Shaun, which is nice, and it seems to be quite genuine. I have to say that some of the talky material later in the show just seemed a bit self-indulgent, though. And there is a definite feeling of something missing. I'm not sure whether that reflects the changes made from the original version in San Francisco or whether the piece just doesn't quite end. But I distinctly felt unsatisfied at the end of the show. Not displeased, really, but I didn't feel like I'd gotten anything out of it beyond some entertainment and a sense that these folks felt the need to tell us all how much they loved each other.

Bottom Line

It was a pleasant evening, but not really what I go to New York to see on stage. I would have been happier had the show had a bit more to say to me about my world or my life, rather than just focusing on the one couple and their story.

But there is definite talent here, and good music. I'd just like to see a bit more or deeper story incorporated into the show.

"The Play That Goes Wrong" at Lyceum Theatre

Production photo by Jeremy Daniel

We were looking for something new and fun on our recent trip to New York, and I saw references to The Play That Goes Wrong. Having recently seen Noises Off! at SF Playhouse, the notion of another play about a play going horribly off the tracks seemed amusing. It was.

The Play

Let's just get this out up front here: This is an extremely silly play. It has no great intellectual underpinning, hidden message, or anything like that. It is just a very, very silly play. The premise is that a college theater troupe ("The Cornley University Drama Society") is putting on a murder mystery called "The Murder at Haversham Manor." From the start of the curtain speech by the student director, it is clear that the society has ongoing issues with their play productions, but they have high hopes for this one.

But really, even before that, they've had some issues, as the stage crew keeps coming out on stage before the curtain, adjusting, fixing, etc. It's clear that there are issues and will continue to be.

So we have a "whodunit" staged by the inept, in a theater that seems to hate them. And we will send up every convention of the country house murder mystery, with lots of slapstick, malapropism, pratfalls, sight gags, and just general goofiness.

I should mention that the play won the Olivier Award a couple of years ago as Best New Play, so it has some credentials, and it's currently playing on Broadway, in London, and on at least one UK tour, with a US national tour coming next year. People like this play. And really, that's fine. It's not mean-spirited or anything. It's just very, very, very silly. And funny. And fun.

The Production

The Broadway production is quite slick. The set is elaborate (and needs to be, as it goes through a lot, with things falling all the time, entrances and exits happening in odd places, and so on. Also, the booth for the lighting and sound operator ("Trevor," played by Akron Watson) is located in one of the boxes on the mezzanine, so we can see what he's up to (because he's part of the play). He is also a huge fan of Duran Duran, and yes, that is a plot point.

Aside from the clever staging, I was most impressed with the physical comedy and timing of the cast. Despite having an understudy (Preston Boyd as "Dennis") in one of the important roles, things went brilliantly. I have not laughed this hard at a play in a long time. I thought they went a bit overboard on a few things, such as having Trevor climbing through the mezzanine before the show in search of a missing dog. On the other hand, I quite enjoyed several of the actors coming out to the lobby bar at intermission until the "student director" shooed them away, shouting that they would "spoil the illusion."

So all very over-the-top, melodramatic, and overdone. It was fun.

The Bottom Line

This is not great literature or brilliant drama, but it does not aspire to be. What it is, though, is clever and tightly designed and executed. I can't say that I'm a better person for having seen it, but I did have a rollicking good time, and I look forward to seeing it again when it comes through town on its national tour.

Check it out. You'll laugh.

"Downtown Race Riot" at The New Group

So excited to be back in New York City to see a few shows. The trip is a quick one this time, so only three plays over the weekend.

We started off with Downtown Race Riot, by Seth Zvi Rosenfeld last night. It was not an auspicious start to the weekend.

The Play

Set in Greenwich Village in 1976, the play depicts a struggling family: Mary, a flower-child junkie, and her two children, Jimmy the high-school dropout with some rather questionable views on other people, and Joyce, a nominal lesbian who flirts incessantly with her brother's best friend. Said best friend, Marcel, is a black Haitian immigrant who seems to have a fair amount going on, although his life's goal seems to be graffiti artist.

The thing is, there is about to be a race riot in nearby Washington Square Park aimed at driving out the blacks and Puerto Ricans. Jimmy wants to participate, but his mother doesn't approve. Marcel wants to participate, too, which is more complicated, being as everyone views him as black, though he insists he is part of the neighborhood.

So there is some conflict set up. Personal and group loyalty come into conflict, of course. Marcel's story turns out to be perhaps the most interesting, his family not only having been chased out of Haiti, but also out of Harlem, since they weren't African American, so didn't fit in with the American blacks. So he's eager to join a riot to drive out blacks, essentially as retribution. But he can't see that he will be just as much a target.

There are other complications involving gangs/mobs and a coked-up lawyer Mary has hired to try to scam some money out of the city. So there seems to be a lot going on. Except there isn't. Jimmy keeps trying to make people hamburgers, but they get ruined. The dialog is heavy on exposition and short on any actual interest. It's just not a terribly interesting play. For one thing, it's all building up to the climax of the riot, but the play ends just as it's about to happen, so we never see that or its after effects.

The Production

The set was actually quite cool. It's a fixed set for three rooms in the apartment, all quite authentically decked out in mid-70s style. There was obviously a lot of detail work put into that. Similarly, the soundtrack feels authentic, and the lighting is used effectively to move the focus from one room to another (though there is sometimes interesting stuff going on in the rooms away from the focus). So that part is fine.

Then there is the acting. The big name in the cast is Chloe Sevigny, a movie and TV star who plays Mary. She's OK, but really not carrying the show. The biggest share of the lines go to Jimmy (David Levi), who has a rather limited range of sulks, punctuated by violent outbursts. More interesting is Marcel (Moise Morancy), who at least shows some range as he interacts with different characters. Joyce (Sadie Scott) made no sense to me. I mean, the character as written doesn't make sense, but as performed there is just no connection or appeal. Her big confrontation with Mary is delivered with kind of a flat, wooden affect that drains any emotion right out of the scene.

Of the other characters, Jay 114 (Daniel Sovich) provides kind of a menacing presence without a lot of lines. And Josh Pais as Bob Gilman, the lawyer, provides some humor to a pretty dismal scenario, but he only comes in late in the play and doesn't really resolve anything. But it's fun to watch a self-justifying coke-head from the 70s with a contemporary perspective.

I will add that this is the first time I'd been in this theater, the Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre. We sat in the mezzanine, which gave us a really nice overview of the apartment spread across the stage. I thought the acoustics were good, as were the sight lines.

None of the characters really creates much interest, except maybe Marcel. Instead of going offstage, characters often just go into other rooms, where you might or might not see them doing things in dimmed light, such as Mary shooting up while nominally watching her soap operas. Joyce wanders off to her room, partly disrobes, and then just lies on the bed. At least, that's all I noticed, as I was focused elsewhere. During another scene, Jimmy just sits at the table and mopes over one of his hamburgers, not eating or anything else I could discern. It's quite distracting to feel the need to look all around the stage to make sure you're not missing something. Perhaps this is some avant garde technique, but for me it just seemed like lazy direction.

Bottom Line

There just isn't much appeal in this play.I suspect that with stronger acting or some more clever direction, it could be better, but the script still doesn't provide much of interest. At best there is some mildly interesting character sketching, but none of the characters are actually very deep or compelling, and certainly not enough to atone for the lack of plot advancement.

Ultimately, the play just seems to give up. It leads us up to a big decision (will Jimmy and Marcel actually go to the riot?), but doesn't show us any of the repercussions of that. If the outcome is as cut-and-dried as the lead-up makes us believe, then are there actually any meaningful repercussions to the decision?

And the sad thing is, I find that I left not really caring. None of the characters seemed important enough to me, either as individuals or as symbols of some larger social faction, for me to derive any meaningful lesson about either the historical period or the current one. If there was some deeper meaning intended, it didn't make it across.

I had hoped for more, both in content and execution. I'd give this one a pass.