"The Birthday Party" at ACT

ACT photo by Kevin Berne

I have this strange sense of deja vu after seeing Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party at ACT last night. The last Pinter play I saw was No Man's Land at Berkeley Rep a few summers ago, when they brought in Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen to play the two roles in the show, and they were absolutely incredible. McKellen gave perhaps the most impressive performance I've ever seen on stage. And yet I remember almost nothing about the play itself. Amazing, well-played characters, and no actual plot to get in the way.

You probably see where this is going.

ACT Artistic Director Carey Perloff is stepping down after 25 years on the job, and her final directorial endeavor with the company (at least under her artistic direction) is this Pinter piece she directed elsewhere before coming to ACT. I guess she's something of a Pinter specialist. I am not. Be forewarned.

The Play

Set in a small beachside boarding house in England, run by an aging couple (Meg and Petey), we initially find that they have one and only one boarder, Stanley. They have a rather odd relationship with him, but everything is exceedingly routine. Stanley is a bit of a shut-in, but apparently he pays his rent, so all is well, though we can tell from the moment he comes downstairs that he is upset, depressed, or...something.

Then two men show up out of the blue for a brief seaside vacation. Goldberg is a sharp-dressed, smooth-talking charmer. McCann is a rather large, surly Irishman. They are something of an odd couple, to be sure, though Goldberg is clearly the one in charge. The only other character we meet is Lulu, a young woman in the town who drops by now and again.

Stanley is not pleased that two men are suddenly showing up, and he tries to avoid them, which is tough in a tiny boarding house. When they do meet up, it's clear that he either knows them or knows who they are, and feels threatened by them for unstated reasons. When Meg and Petey are away, Goldberg and McCann interrogate and threaten Stanley.

Meanwhile, Meg has decided that it's Stanley's birthday (though he insists it is not), and throws the eponymous birthday party, inviting the newly-arrived guests and Lulu. Goldberg supplies the liquor (roughly a bottle per person--yikes!).

The party is odd--uncomfortable, but then, so is pretty much every interaction in the show. By the end, all in attendance are well and truly drunk, and Stanley seems to have snapped.

Next thing we see, it's morning. We see the aftermath of the party. People go away. Nothing is actually resolved. Pinter play.

The Performance

The acting is really very good. Meg (Judith Ivey) is convincingly senile. Petey (Dan Hiatt) is rather bizarrely unconcerned with any of the odd behavior going on. He and Meg obviously have a well-established routine (tea, corn flakes, friend bread, newspaper) that works for them. Stanley (Firdous Bamji) seems nearly catatonic, though apparently when he arrived he was quite the piano player. It's unclear why he stopped playing and now just holes up in the boarding house. He is clearly not happy being there, and Meg's dotty ministrations obviously annoy him. It's all very mysterious.

Goldberg (Scott Wentworth) is terrific, just a smooth, convincing con man, which offsets MaCann (Marco Barricelli), who is pretty much his mirror opposite: a looming presence, more likely to grunt than speak. The two of them are most effective. And Lulu (Julie Adamo) is sort of a harmless bystander, sucked into the vortex of whatever it is that's happening at the boarding house.

All the portrayals are quite effective, and the characterizations are pretty interesting, but since the script doesn't actually go anywhere, we are sort of stuck in this purgatory with all the characters: clearly uncomfortable, struggling to hold power over each other, with no way out. Pinter play.

Nina Ball's set is very effective: a tiny, claustrophobic house (of which we really only see one room) on the big Geary Theater stage, with sand dunes and beach chairs surrounding, providing a buffer zone from the rest of the world. It's almost like there is nowhere else to go.

The Bottom Line

I don't really know what else to say about the show. It's well done, but doesn't go anywhere. So it seems to be a high-quality rendition of the play, but the play is basically just Pinter's message that the characters are just stuck in some kind of Sisyphean power struggle with each other. Everybody is either ordering people around or adamantly refusing to submit. It's very tiring. I'm sure that's the point.

So I'm afraid I don't have a great appreciation for this Pinter thing. Others obviously like it a lot, but it doesn't do much for me. So, good stagecraft, excellent acting, but for me, that was it. Your mileage may vary, obviously.

The show runs for a couple more weeks, through February 4th. If it's your kind of play, you should like it.

"In Event of Moon Disaster" at Mugwumpin

Mugwumpin photo by Battista Remati

OK. New stuff for a new year. New theater company (for me), Mugwumpin. I've known about them for quite a while, loved the name, and only recently figured out that several people I know are involved in the group. When I heard that they were doing this cool-sounding show about space and the moon and such, I thought I should finally check them out. The fact that it was already getting good reviews didn't hurt, either!

This is definitely not a traditional play. It's interestingly experimental, quite innovative, and very thought-provoking. We went with a couple of friends, and we all enjoyed it, though we all had trouble putting into words what we had seen and why we liked it. Nevertheless, here I go.

The Play

The title of the work derives from a never-delivered speech written for President Nixon by William Safire. It was a contingency speech in case the Apollo 11 astronauts were not able to return to Earth. Since all went well, the worst-case scenario plan was archived and largely forgotten.

But someone discovered it, and it inspired some of the Mugwumpin folks to explore themes about ambition, ambiguity, success, failure, loss, and "our place in the universe." The whole things is a mix of somewhat traditional theater, immersive performance art, dance, multimedia, and just some goofy stuff.

Roughly speaking, we have a group of five astronauts, two of whom have gone as an advance team to the moon, to be followed by the other three. Something has gone wrong, and the advance astronauts are...lost, somewhere. Maybe it's the dark side of the moon. Maybe it's somewhere else, or nowhere else. The whole time and space thing is a little fuzzy, but intentionally so. This is very much a show about coming to grips with ambiguity.

One bit that gets repeated a few times is the notion that one's reaction to discovering some kind of extraterrestrial intelligence would initially be disbelief (it's described in much more detail). Even when presented with incontrovertible proof, it seems almost inevitable that one would first say "no way!"

The play, decidedly (and intentionally!) non-linear, eventually gives us the background of the characters, their motivations for becoming astronauts and explorers, which in turn provides color to help understand their reactions to this disturbing development as their plans go awry.

The Production

It's hard to separate the play from the production here, not only because the performers have collaborated in creating both the play and its expression, but also because it's entirely possible that one could tell the same story in a very different way. And indeed, given the interactions with the audience and the space, it's quite possible that things differ at each show. But one could envision another rendition of the story that doesn't use so much dance and motion, or doesn't plunk the audience on stools in the middle of the room, doesn't surround the audience with a mix of live and recorded video, maybe doesn't even have a character who is the Moon.

There are definitely surreal elements (such as the moon-headed character who might not be a character, or even the Moon). There are silly elements, such as "Bucky," the bucket carried for most of the show by the character Delta, whose name happens to be the cue for audience members to throw the ping-pong balls they are given on entry. Why? Art!

Yet all these elements, and some effective use of light, sound, and video, combine to form a quite moving and thought-provoking exploration of themes such as the drive to explore, to be a hero, to pair up, and the need to let go. Facing uncertainty, how do we act? How do we drill to deal with inevitable problems? And how do we react when things go terribly, irrevocably wrong?

Each character answers all of these in different ways, and the show doesn't try to evaluate which are good or better or anything. It just is, ambiguities and all. And in a normal play, I would probably find such an unclear ending annoying and something of a cop-out. But I have to say that in this case it is very clearly done with intention and a lot of thought, so it's at least guided, mindful ambiguity. And in the context of the whole production, such an ending is both entirely appropriate and probably required.

The Bottom Line

The show was quite unlike anything I've ever seen before, and though it certainly has some rough bits, there is a lot of clever, thoughtful work here. I came in with little in the way of expectations, just wanting to support my creative friends. But I left with a lot of thoughts that have been percolating all day, and I'm still thinking there are more lessons for me to pick out of the memories.

So I have to say that although this is hardly my usual sort of theater production, I quite enjoyed it, and recommend it highly if you're at all curious about such an innovative and creative endeavor. Or if you just like clever people in space suits.

The show runs for another week. It was largely sold out a couple of weeks ago, but you might still be able to sneak it. They did add at least a couple of extra performances to handle the demand. So sometime between now and January 28, I recommend checking it out at Z Below in the Potrero Hill neighborhood of San Francisco.

Reading: "Collective Rage: A Play in Five Betties" at Shotgun Players

This is one of the stranger theater pieces I've seen in a while. As usual, Shotgun puts up a remarkable production of a staged reading in extremely short time (four days of rehearsals, then two readings). We caught the second of the two (sold out!) nights last night.

The Play

Written by Jen Silverman (who wrote The Roommate, which we saw last season at SF Playhouse), this is yet another exploration of queer gender roles, though this one is set in the somewhat likelier locale of New York City, rather than Iowa. And the level of familiarity and comfort that Silverman shows with the setting and the characters makes for a much livelier and more credible show. Where The Roommate struggled at the outset to seem plausible, Collective Rage grabs you from the opening lines and never lets go. All five Betties (yes, the five characters in the story are all named Betty).

In various groupings (and occasionally alone), the Betties explore their lives, their orientations, and their various insecurities. Although they are self-consciously caricatures of the archetypes they represent, all five Betties are well-developed and represent recognizable attributes.

It's really quite fun and funny, and in the course of the reading I heard consistent laughter from all over the audience. Not always at the same scenes or at the same lines, but there was something that tickled just about everyone, regardless of gender or orientation, etc.

I will just add that they play should perhaps carry a trigger warning for men named "Richard." Betty 1 is pretty harsh every time she mentions her husband by name, which is early and often.

One element of the story that really worked was the play-within-a-play inspired by Betty 3 going on a date to the "thea-tuh"  and seeing "Summer's Midnight Dream" and being inspired to become an actor, director, producer, etc. The little riffs on the cobbling together of a rough "Pyramus and Thisbe" is both hilarious and very effectively done.

The Production

Insert the usual disclaimer here that anything that is not pure disaster is quite a triumph for one of these readings, given the limited time and resources allotted to each. Still, this production exceeding whatever limited expectations I had by a huge margin. Aside from the slight distraction of the actors carrying scripts and a few minor blocking and prop-positioning issues, this felt like a production ready to roll. Director Brady Brophy-Hilton (assisted by Quinci Waller) deserves credit for pulling the cast together and making sure a few really key aspects of each character and some shared affectations of the whole crew came through, which is really tough for a reading such as this.

The cast was uniformly terrific. In addition to the fact that all five actors were clearly excellent choices for their particular Betties, each had a terrific persona and stage presence that evolved over the course of the reading and played well off the others. I think it's pleasantly telling that I don't feel the need to single out any of the actors--all were good, and each had at least a few really good moments where their particular characterization shone through. Again, really unexpected in a reading like this.

I guess I will call out the actors, because they all brought something to their roles. Elissa Beth Stebbins (Betty 1, and the only one of the cast I recall seeing at Shotgun before) managed to be remarkably sharp and consistent with her rage toward the aforementioned "Richard." I have to admit, hers was the only Betty from whom I felt real rage. Ayelet Firstenberg (Betty 2) managed to be both kind of ditzy and schizophrenic (complete with pantomimed hand puppet). Livia Gomes Demarchi (Betty 3) undergoes probably the most dramatic (pun slightly intended) change, though perhaps the one that makes the least sense. Rinabeth Apostol (Betty 4) achieves kind of a tough goofiness, which is a difficult combination, and still gets to be vulnerable. Lea Robinson (Betty 5) has a wonderfully understated presence, combining the self-assurance of a martial arts instructor with the shyness of a gender-queer person of color trying to get along in a complex world.

Probably the highest praise you can give for a staged reading is a great ovation at the end. I can't recall the last time I saw an audience keep up their applause so long and loud that the actors for a reading had to come back out for another bow, but our group demanded it. It was well deserved.

Bottom Line

Everyone I talked to after the show expressed delight at having seen it, and many mentioned that they would like to see it again. High praise, indeed, for a reading. Although several people mentioned that it would be fun to see it again as a full production, the more we talked about it, the more we thought it might in some ways work better as a less polished, rougher reading.

I suspect that a fully-developed production would be able to tease out even more ideas and laughs from the script, and the interactions of the characters might develop more depth. This is definitely a complex and rich script, and it would probably benefit from a fairly minimalist production. Somewhere between the staged reading with three chairs as props and a full-on staging, there might be a sweet spot for this.

It's a pretty rare combination to find a truly funny play that also has real, interesting messages worked through it. The combination of clever theatrical riffs and genuine insight into a group of characters should be a real winner.

I look forward to seeing this play produced somewhere before too long.

Best of 2017

I've been told that one of the requirements, now that I do a Theater Blog, is that I must commemorate the end of the year by doing a "Best Of" post to say what was best this year. Since 2017 was my first full year of Theater Blogging (Yep...we started in May of 2016!), this will be the first time I can really look back over a year of posts and opine on what really stuck with me, which is my criterion for "Best Of". Unless I decide it isn't. Stay tuned.

I will preface this with a side note that on the whole, 2017 was not a good year for me at all. Personally and professionally, this year has actually kind of sucked, and even my frequent respite at the ballpark was not its usual pick-me-up. But for the most part, theater--and particularly theater people--has truly kept me going. On the whole, the friends I have made through going to the theater and being involved with theater are some of the most positive, supportive people I have ever known. You know who you are, and thanks for being there for me.

Now then, theater stuff...

Best Plays/Productions

These are the plays that really stuck with me, for one reason or another. I'll list them in the order I saw them. No other ranking is implied unless I say so. I will include links to my original postings for each of them, in case you missed my musings the first time or just want to see if I lost my mind in between or something.

If I can find a theme to my "best" list, it's mostly that they almost all manage to tackle an issue that is pertinent to the day and explore it in a non-obvious way. 

"Hamlet" at Shotgun Players

Fortunately, the repertory portion of Shotgun's 2016-2017 season ended in January, and much of what I saw in January was more Hamlet. I believe I ended up seeing it about 18 times, with only one repeat casting. The shuffling of actors was amazing to watch and very educational. I learned a great deal about Hamlet and about theater from watching these shows, and my only regret is that I didn't manage to go more often. The seven actors plus one understudy deserve medals for performing in this show. And extra medals for the fact they were also performing in at least one additional repertory show each. It was just an extraordinary experience, the likes of which we are not likely to see on a Bay Area stage again any time soon.

"John" at ACT

This was the first show I felt really showed off the value of ACT's new second stage at the Strand Theater. The show was quirky, but it really kept me thinking about it for quite some time, and that's what good theater is about.

"Leni" at Aurora

Once again showing my fondness for the intimacy of small theater spaces, this little show in Aurora's second space really showcased the talents of actors Stacy Ross and Martha Brigham and brought some history to life in a thoughtful and timely way. It was an innovative and thought-provoking show, well directed by Jon Tracy.

"Sisters Matsumoto" at Center Rep

This was a very powerful and beautifully staged performance of a story that really resonated. Particularly having just seen TheaterFIRST's Beneath The Tall Tree, which also dealt with Japanese American internment, it was moving and thought-provoking and made me aware of aspects of that period and its aftermath that I hadn't been aware of.

"The Events" at Shotgun Players

My buddies at Shotgun really kind of went off the rails on some things these past couple of years. Staging The Events requires a different community choir on stage for each performance. As such, it was informative to see the play more than once (and I did). Not only did this help cement for me the value of seeing plays more than once (I also saw Hamilton for the second time around the same point), but it made me appreciate both the difficulty of incorporating different outside groups into a play and what that actually means to this particular show. This is a tough but important and certainly timely play about the resilience of both individuals and communities to sudden, shocking events.

 "As You Like It" at CalShakes

As the only comedy on the list, this seems a little odd (note that I have a separate section for comedies later). But I was moved and surprised by this CalShakes production. I usually don't expect much thought to ensue from a Shakespearean comedy, but Desdemona Chiang's interpretation of this play of mistaken identity broadened the issue to cover personal and gender identity, and did so smoothly in a fine production. This was also the start of a very strong season for CalShakes.

"Grandeur" at The Magic Theater

I went into this play knowing almost nothing about it, and left absolutely stupefied. Carl Lumbly exceeded even the lofty expectations I have of him, and the play was riveting. It's not earth-shakingly important, but it shows just how effective a small play can be. I was extremely fortunate to be sitting in the front row, in the seat closest to the chair where Lumbly sat for much of the play, so I got to watch him up close, and it was amazing.

"Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles" at Oregon Shakespeare Festival

I would normally expect at least a couple of plays from our summer jaunts to Ashland to land on the "Best Of" list for a year, but this year wasn't overall that impressive up there. But Mojada was a knockout. The adaptation of the well-worn story of Medea is almost obvious in retrospect. The portrayal of undocumented immigrants trying to assimilate (or not) and the consequences for them personally and socially is excruciating, but very effective.

"An Octoroon" at Berkeley Rep

Everybody's trying to push your buttons this year, but this time Berkeley Rep got it right. It's a super complex script, as you might expect from a hotshot playwright who has won just about every award imaginable. What I didn't expect was that Berkeley Rep would find the right director and cast, and that that director would be Eric Ting, who had previously disimpressed me with his direction of Othello at CalShakes. This production was pretty much spot-on. We're still talking about it, almost six months later.

"black odyssey" at CalShakes

I would never have guessed at the start of the year that Eric Ting would direct even one, let alone two, of my favorite productions. But here he was, coming right off the triumph that was An Octoroon, directing local playwright Marcus Gardley's wonderful adaptation of "The Odyssey" into a story of African American life. And it packed the Bruns Amphitheater every show, bringing in rafts of people who do not normally make the trek to Orinda to see a play. This was terrific storytelling.

"The Farm" at TheatreFIRST

Another artist making his second appearance on the list is Jon Tracy. Having directed Leni for Aurora earlier in the year, he also re-adapted his adaptation of Orwell's "Animal Farm" for TheatreFIRST, and the result was delightful and moving. This modest production reminded us that we don't have to be big and fancy to tell an important story. The reboot of TheatreFIRST is having sort of uneven results, but The Farm was definitely a sign of what a dedicated bunch of theater artists can do with limited resources.

Comic Relief

Most of the plays that really stuck with me this year were dramas. Maybe it fit the rhythm of my own life, which had way too much drama in it this year. But there were funny plays that made an impression on me, and they deserve some recognition, even if they weren't overall the "best" things I saw this year.

"Noises Off!" at SF Playhouse

This is one of those kind of classic plays that I had always heard of by never seen. I love the intricacy of the plotting and staging, and felt that for once, the rotating stage at SF Playhouse really was an asset. And the play is just screamingly funny, both because of all the theater in-jokes and because of some real character development. I liked both the play and the production here very well.

"The Play That Goes Wrong " at Lyceum Theatre (NYC)

This play isn't nearly as deep as Noises Off!, but the production we saw in New York this fall was absolutely the funniest thing I've seen on stage in a long, long time. The comedic timing and the convoluted set design were truly impressive. I needed a good laugh, and this provided it.

Spectacles

This is a category I just made up to salute the shows that just make you drop your jaw a bit at the stagecraft. There were some pretty over-the-top productions out there, even if they weren't among the shows that I deemed "best" overall.

"Needles and Opium" at ACT
"Monsoon Wedding" at Berkeley Rep
"A Thousand Splendid Suns" at ACT
"The Black Rider" at Shotgun Players

I won't go into them in detail again. Suffice it to say that in each case I was less than delighted with the play, the message, the storytelling, or something. But in each case the stagecraft, design, music, dancing, lights, and so on were dazzling and worth recognizing.

Musicals

I saw a fair number of musicals this year, but none that really rose to the level of "best"-ness required to make the big list. But I thought I should mention the ones that stood out, because musicals can be special in their own right, and if they are your thing, this is important.

"Good Night, Good Night, Construction Site" at Bay Area Children's Theater
"Hamilton" (touring) at SHN San Francisco
"La Cage Aux Folles" at SF Playhouse

Other

I can't think of a category it really fits into, but Taylor Mac's A 24-Decade History of Popular Music at the Curran was like nothing I have ever seen before. I realize now that I never got around to writing up the portions of the show that I saw (I saw only the first two 6-hour segments, so didn't feel I could really comment on the show as a whole). This mash-up of musical theater, cabaret, drag show, and history lesson amazed me on a bunch of different levels. The subversive way Taylor Mac gets into the heads and under the skins of the audience while knocking out a really impressive array of popular tunes in ways probably never seen or conceived before just boggles the mind.

I truly have no words to describe the whole experience, and in any strict definition, it's not really "theater" per se, but it is, too. And it probably stuck with me more than any other performance I saw this year, so it needed to be included here.

Personal Bests

If you'll allow me to conclude with a moment of self-indulgence, there were two other productions that were particularly meaningful to me personally this year, so I just get to put them in the "Best Of" post as kind of a footnote.

My Professional Stage Debut

Yes, those loons at the Shotgun Players not only allow me to sit on their board, they also offered me a tiny role in their staged reading of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead last January. And hey, we sold out and got extended, so I had three glorious nights on stage with a bunch of real, professional actors, and I have the check to prove it.

This makes the list not because I was any great revelation on stage or because it changed my life or anything like that. But there were two important takeaways from  the experience: One, I got to see firsthand, close-up, just how real theater artists work. Rehearsing, dressing, blocking, designing and redesigning--all of it. It was glorious. And it gives me all the more respect for the work these people do, day in and day out, to produce these plays that I enjoy so much. But just as important, two, after seeing me onstage, my daughter said, "Well if Dad can do that, I can do that." And promptly signed up for her first real staged play.

Which obviously leads me to...

"Assassins" at Berkeley Playhouse Teen Stage

About six months after my little dalliance on stage, there was my daughter, singing and dancing and trying (futilely) to shoot Gerald Ford on the stage in the Julia Morgan Theater. It's still not one of my favorite plays ever, but she got out of it exactly what I hoped: she found a wonderful community of like-minded, creative, accepting people who share a love of making theater and support each other while they do it. She's now working on her second show, already signed up for another, and planning one more for the summer.

Which just goes to show, we can always handle more theater, so we obviously haven't reached the mythical "Too Much Theater" yet, and the quest must continue.