"Hooded, or Being Black for Dummies" at Custom Made Theatre Company

Custom Made Theatre Company photo

I wasn't entirely sure what to expect from this show. It struck me as one that could be super powerful, or it could go in various either silly or preachy ways and really fall over. On the whole I was impressed that both playwright Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm and director Lisa Marie Rollins  kept things on a pretty middle path.

I was also intrigued by the similarity in title to a book I've heard of, but not read: "How to Be Black," by Baratunde Thurston. That one is a humorous and at least somewhat autobiographical look at the role of a young African American man coming of age in this country.

The Play

Hooded is the story of two fourteen-year-old African American boys: Marquis, who lives with his adopted white family in the suburbs and attends a prestigious prep school where he is essentially the token black, and Tru, from inner-city Baltimore. The two meet in a jail holding cell. Marquis was caught trespassing in a cemetary where he and a couple of his white friends from school were taking pictures to post online. Tru's charges are more nebulous, amounting to loitering and not much more.

The opening scene between them is pretty amusing, as Tru tries to wrap his head around what the naive Marquis was actually doing, and Marquis tries to figure out why Tru thinks it's so bizarre. It eventually becomes clear that Tru is pretty much accustomed to being detained essentially for being black, and Marquis doesn't quite grasp that there is a reason why he, and neither of his white friends, was pursued and detained.

We soon meet Officer Borzoi, himself African American, but quite thoroughly in the service of the white power structure. Tru has a lot of opinions about Borzoi (and a lot of knowledge about his eponymous dog breed). Next into the scene is Marquis's adoptive mother, a rather obvious strawman representing the do-gooder white savior who not only gets her son released, but also springs Tru for pretty much all the wrong assumed reasons.

Next we arrive at school where we meet Marquis's two friends, Hunter and Fielder, and three girls: Meadow, Prairie, and Clementine. It becomes pretty clear that the boys' friendship is rather an odd one, and definitely not reciprocal. The girls are pretty humorously stereotypical teens, always taking selfies and talking about boys, and which ones they like.

As it turns out, there is some mutual attraction between Marquis and Clementine, which leads to some interesting scenes. Meanwhile, Marquis's mom has decided to sponsor Tru into the prep school, too, so he shows up determined to teach Marquis to be black, to the point of writing a book for him, called "Being Black for Dummies." Marquis finds this rather insulting and refuses the book. Hunter picks it up unbeknownst to the other boys, and starts studying up on how to be black.

So where I largely expected this play to be about Tru schooling Marquis (and there is certainly some of that), there is also a good chunk of what happens when a very white white boy decides to follow the lessons and become black.

At this point the dynamics among the kids become pretty interesting, and much more nuanced than I had anticipated or been led to expect from the early scenes. So I'm impressed with Chisholm's writing here.

I'm not going to go into the details of the later interactions, but let's just say things get out of hand in a couple of different directions, and everyone learns some lessons about being black. Oh, and there is some intervention by Apollo and Dionysus, which is a little weird, but why not?

The Production

As usual with Custom Made productions, the staging can't be too intricate, as there just isn't much space on or off stage. But the actors manage to make the most out of what they've got. Costumes are pretty easy, as most of the kids are wearing their prep school uniforms most of the time. The lack of sets and props in general keeps the focus on the actors, and they are the interesting part of the show anyway.

On the acting front, Tre'Vonne Bell as Tru stands out as very smooth and natural. Jesse Franklin Charles Vaughn as Marquis never seems quite comfortable in his skin, and I had a hard time telling whether that was an intentional portrayal of Marquis or just discomfort with the role. Either way, it was pretty effective. Rebecca Hodges as Clementine seemed particularly good among the teen girls.

I have to say on the whole that the girls were much more effective as passing as 14-year-olds than the boys were. They definitely had the mannerisms and speech patterns down. Neither Bell nor Vaughn was able to really convince me that they were fourteen. I might have bought sixteen or seventeen, but they definitely didn't have the raw adolescent feel that the parts really call for.

Even before the first scene starts, BE Rivers comes out as Officer Borzoi and gives a fairly unique curtain speech, instructing us to turn ON our cell phones and to answer them if we get calls. He then drew attention to the two LAUGH lights above the stage, informing us that we were to laugh when they come one, and not laugh when they do not. If you laugh without the lights, you're racist. That part was sort of cute, but the execution of it was poor--the timing of the lights was distracting, and we all eventually ignored them (and I think they just stopped using them, but I don't guarantee that). But it sets the tone for the show: this is going to be uncomfortable, and we don't make the rules. Good lessons about being black.

For the other roles, Peter Alexander impressed with his versatility as the very white Hunter who decides to become black, and then later as the school administrator who dresses down Marquis at the end. I wasn't quite what to make of Max Seijas as Fielder. He seemed more comfortable when he was playing Dionysus. Ari Lagomarsino as Meadow makes an interesting counterpart to Hunter's transition, though that part of her role is pretty short.

Overall, the acting manages to overcome the deficiencies in the staging, and the writing stands up to the devices like the LAUGH signs. We ultimately get a pretty human story with some good laughs along the way, and just enough discomfort to keep one from just laughing it all off.

Bottom Line

I was pleasantly surprised with this play overall. The staging mostly managed not to get in the way of the play and the acting, so we could focus on the people and the issues. There was nothing really earth-shaking here for those who have been paying attention. I was pretty acutely aware of some of my black friends growing up in a relatively white world and the fact that their path, even when near mine, was very different. But it's been a long time since I had to focus on that for an extended period such as this, so 100 minutes of immersion in that world is a good reminder that my life is very different from even those of some people quite close to me.

So I'm pleased to say that Custom Made has a winner with this one. My expectations for them aren't all that high, as I've had kind of mixed results from the plays I've seen there. But this one is good, and worth seeing. The play alone is quite good, and the production is fine.

The good news is they've been extended through April 7th, so you still have two weekends to go see this show, and I recommend that you do so if you can.

"Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again." at Crowded Fire Theater

Crowded Fire photo by Alessandra Mello

I've been meaning to go to a show at Crowded Fire Theater for some time now, but it kept not quite making it to the top of my list. The Artistic Director, Mina Morita, is a friend and has some really great ideas about theater, so I've been really wanting to see what it's turning into.

This is Crowded Fire's twentieth anniversary season (a season they have dubbed their "Fuck the Patriarchy" season). It starts with a production of Alice Birch's play Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. The title sort of tells you what to expect. Sort of.

The Play

The play starts off sort of normal enough, with a sketch about a couple coming home and discussing their plans for the evening. It quickly slides into a series of little digressions on the nuances of language and how they affect expectations and/or serve as microaggressions. Communication on a seemingly innocuous level turns out to be extremely problematic. Just for example, the distinction between "making love to" and "making love with" someone is a part of the discussion.

OK, a step back. This play was prompted by the Royal Shakespeare Company asking four women to write plays in response to the statement that "well-behaved women seldom make history." Birch got quite angry about the "well-behaved" bit and set out on a three-day writing binge with no sleep, and the result was kind of an illustration of women refusing to behave, revolting against love, work, relationships, family, social structure and conventions...you name it. The revolutions just keep on coming.

The play is a series of loosely-related scenes, all of which start off relatively normally, but none end up where you (or the participants) expect. Such is the nature of revolution.

So we see things like a manager talking to an employee who has informed him she won't work on Mondays anymore, and he keeps plugging along, trying to mollify her, when really there is nothing he can do. She just wants to sleep more and walk her dog through the woods. His exasperation becomes quite visible, particularly since he is sitting on an exercise ball throughout.

Or we get two flabbergasted grocery clerks trying to deal with a customer who has removed her clothing and is making something of a mess in one of the store aisles. They keep trying to frame it as a customer behavior issue, and she's having none of it--it's all about her boundaries (or the intentional lack thereof).

In all the scenes, women maintain control, and it drives the folks around them rather nutty. And all the while the structure in the background (a big wall of blocks) keeps coming down, in a vivid metaphor. And watermelons don't get treated very well throughout.

Eventually the play itself kind of spirals out of control. I sort of picture the playwright coming to the end of her 72-hour marathon, losing steam and coherence, and indeed, the play becomes a bit mystifying after a while. But that's kind of satisfying. A revolution that ends in a predictable, tidy outcome isn't much of a revolution at all.

The Performance

It's a bit hard to evaluate this show on the terms that one normally does with a play. Being a set of vignettes and little disconnected scenes, one can't really evaluate actors and their characters on the whole. The ensemble cast (Karla Acosta, Gabriel Christian, Cat Leudtke, Leigh Rondon-Davis, Soren Santos, and Elissa Beth Stebbins) all do great jobs, individually and collectively. Stebbins and Santos set the scene with the opening bit about the couple coming home. And as the chaise longue they've been hopping on and off of gets carried off, we see revolutionary graffiti on the underside.

Indeed, everything that turns over turns out to have yet another exhortation to revolt against something, to the point that it almost loses its effectiveness. Ultimately, I suppose, an ongoing revolution stops feeling "revolutionary" and just becomes the new norm. But things sure get messy along the way.

Some of the mess is quite literal. As Stebbins grills her estranged mother (Leudtke) about her past, the mother refuses to answer, and ultimately seals the deal with a decidedly bloody act. A later scene where a police investigator is literally dancing around the issue of whether he believes a sexual assault has taken place, the victim breaks a packet of stage blood in the crotch of her jeans, and in a #MeToo moment is joined by all the other women on stage, who finish the show all dripping blood.

There's a huge range of moments among the scenes, ranging from humorous to bizarre to extremely touching. A nearby audience member was sobbing through a couple of scenes; clearly she could identify with some of these women who needed to revolt.

Bottom Line

As a man, I feel supremely unqualified to judge the effectiveness of this show. I enjoyed parts and was moved by much of it, and certainly felt the repeated need expressed throughout the show to revolt against convention. So it definitely makes a statement. How effective it is, I have a hard time saying. Much of the time I felt like we were the choir being preached to, but there were certainly issues raised that I hadn't really considered before, so in that sense I suppose it works for me.

I still think as it devolves toward the end, it gets a bit heavy-handed and incoherent. And some of that, at least, is obviously intentional. I'm just not sure how effective it is.

But it's interesting and different, and as long as you don't mind some violent portrayals and a lot of blood and watermelon mayhem, it's a good show. I will definitely have to come back and see what else Crowded Fire has in store for the patriarchy this season.

Revolt runs through the coming weekend, so four more performances.

"Ragtime" at Berkeley Playhouse

Berkeley Playhouse photo by Ben Krantz Studio

I know I've raved about the youth programs at Berkeley Playhouse, but I've also been pretty impressed with their professional musical productions. Much as I mentioned with Central Works earlier this week, going to Berkeley Playhouse is an architectural treat. Berkeley Playhouse's home is a wonderful former church also designed by Julia Morgan. So it's a great space. The lobby is really small, though, because it's meant for a church. Similar to the setup at the Shotgun Players' Ashby Stage, another converted church.

Anyway, this is about the theater, and I was eager to see the production of Ragtime. I'd never seen it onstage (nor have I read the novel by E.L. Doctorow). But I liked the movie version, and thought it ought to make a compelling stage play. Plus, I really like ragtime music, so what could be bad?

The Play

Set in the early years of the 20th century in greater New York, we have three distinct groups of characters: a nameless, wealthy white family in New Rochelle, a struggling group of African Americans in Harlem, and a motley crew of new immigrants in the tenements of the lower East Side. The groups interact in a few, somewhat improbable ways, but hey, it's a play.

The main thread of the plot line runs through a black ragtime piano player named Coalhouse Walker Jr. Walker abandoned his girlfriend, Sarah, not knowing she was pregnant. Sarah, working as a laundress, abandons and buries the baby in the yard of the family in New Rochelle, where the mother of the family discovers it, still alive. Mother chooses to take in both baby and Sarah, who take up residence in the attic. Walker has a change of heart and seeks out Sarah, learns of the baby, and woos her back. They reunite. Unfortunately, some racists vandalize Walker's car, leading Walker to start a campaign of retaliatory terror.

Meanwhile, one of the Latvian immigrants, an artist, is struggling to make ends meet making silhouettes on the street but stumbles onto making moving picture books, which leads him into directing movies (because of course it does). He crosses paths a couple of times with the New Rochelle mother, and eventually they get in cahoots.

Taken on its face, this story doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense, but between Doctorow's original story and the adaptation, it just works. It's a pretty pleasing and engaging story (or really, set of interlocked stories) that carries you through to the end.

The Production

This is where it gets interesting, really. Ragtime is a rather large and complicated story, and it requires a lot of people and a fair number of sets to pull off. The cast for this show is about 40 people, which is a big ask for a moderate size theater such as Berkeley Playhouse, and the stage is not huge, so the ensemble numbers take a particular degree of finesse to pull off.

And they do it. The opening production number, in fact, is quite brilliantly staged, with the three groups of characters kind of moving around the stage in clumps, coming up against one of the others they don't mingle with, and then shifting around to a different combination. It's a really complex bit of choreography that actually gives a solid introduction to the conflicts that underlie the story--a good visual start to the show.

Berkeley Playhouse also occupies a kind of never-never-land middle ground between community theaters on one hand and the larger, more established professional theaters on the other. This is a professional stage, and they can attract some pretty good actors, but they can't give the exposure or draw the crowds that a larger theater can. On the other hand, they are packing audiences into the theater, and attracting a high caliber of actor, too. Some I recognize from smaller theaters, such as CCCT and Custom Made Theatre Company (and indeed, previous shows at Berkeley Playhouse). Reading through the program credits shows a considerable level of experience in a variety of theaters. But undeniably, the leading actors are very much up to the task, and no one in the cast, including the children and teens (largely recruited from Berkeley Playhouse's own conservatory program) is noticeably lagging or inappropriately cast.

Standouts in the cast include Dave J. Abrams as Coalhouse Walker Jr. and Marissa Rudd as Sarah. Abrams has tremendous charisma and sings and dances quite well. Rudd has an amazing and moving voice, and carries the emotional journey of Sarah a long way. Mischa Stevens as Tateh, the Latvian entrepreneur, has a super solid voice and a wonderful personality that comes across both when dealing with his daughter and later with Mother and others. And Mother, played by Mindy Lym, has a wonderful voice, though her acting seems a bit more limited than some of the other leads. Special shout-outs go to Elijah Cooper as the prescient Little Boy in the New Rochelle clan who has to open and close the play, and to Jessica Coker as Emma Goldman, who carries something of a narrative role very well.

Bottom Line

Once again Berkeley Playhouse has managed to exceed even my rising expectations. This is a challenging piece even for a big company with a lot of resources, but Berkeley Playhouse pulls it off with aplomb and a good bit of cleverness. Somehow they manage to make a 40-member cast seem intimate, even in the generous space of the Julia Morgan Theater.

I wish I could recommend that you go see the show. Unfortunately, it largely sold out before it closed last weekend. We barely squeaked in on Friday night, and Saturday and Sunday were already long sold. But there are still a couple more shows left in their current season: James and the Giant Peach (about which I know nothing) in the spring and Grease in the summer. This theater is attracting a lot of stage talent and a lot of customers--they're definitely doing something right.

"Vietgone" at ACT

ACT photo by Kevin Berne

This is a show I really liked in the 2016 season when it played at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. So I've been looking forward to seeing it again at ACT this year. The Strand Theater presents some interesting options and challenges for staging the show, though.

The Play

I just went back and read my description from Ashland, and I think it covers it pretty well. The play itself seems pretty much the same, but there are definite differences in the staging and directorial approach.

The Production

The relatively small stage at the Strand presents a challenge for staging this play, primarily because there have to be frequent changes of scene. Ashland handled this by staging the show in their black-box theater and just designating different floor spaces to represent different scenes. But the Strand has a traditional proscenium stage, so they used two adaptations: a rotating turntable that enabled relatively quick switches of scene and a minimal second story that bridged over the stage below, letting some transient scenes take place in a neutral space.

I thought that was pretty clever, but with some reservations about the implementation. From our perspective in the third row of seats, it was a bit of an effort to crane our necks up to watch the scenes above. And the frequency of scene changes necessitated a lot of rotation of the turntable, which I found distracting. But overall, I thought it was probably the best one could do in this space.

The acting was mostly strong. James Seol as Quang and Jenelle Chu as Tong are both solid, though Chu didn't seem very comfortable with the rapping portions of her role. All three of the other actors have to cover a fairly wide range of characters, particularly Jomar Tagatac, who excels in a particularly challenging swath. Stephen Hu does a nice job in the second-banana roles, and Cindy Im is mostly good, but I found her unconvincing (and too young-seeming) when portraying Tong's mother.

Differences

For those who saw the production in Ashland, there are several stylistic differences in this production. Perhaps most noticeable is that the comic-bookish, superhero style is missing. That was a conscious choice in the Oregon premiere, and I didn't really miss it. In Ashland the rap interludes seemed to come out of nowhere, but here they seem to integrate more smoothly into the flow of the play. I definitely felt like the motorcycle road trip, though using very similar bike props, suffered from the lack of space on the stage.

Overall

I still like the play a lot. In the current social climate, a play about the experience of refugees trying to adjust to a new country while missing their old home and family is particularly pertinent. One of my big takeaways from the play both times has been the expression of how differently the South Vietnamese and Americans viewed (and still view) the war in Vietnam. The poignancy of the final scene between Quang and his son, playwright Qui Nguyen, is wonderful.

The play runs through April 22, so there are still plenty of opportunities to catch it. It's far from a perfect production, but still very enjoyable.

"Bamboozled" at Central Works

Central Works photo by Jim Norrena

It's always something of a treat to go to Central Works plays. For one thing, their theater is a rather small room on the first floor of the Berkeley City Club, which is both a beautiful landmark building designed by Julia Morgan and also the place where my grandmother used to go swimming when I was a kid. So it's just a cool place. And on top of that, Central Works produces four plays a year, all of them world premiers, mostly by local playwrights. And they get lots of terrific local actors, and you get to see them in a really intimate space. What's not to like?

Anyway, the current offering, Bamboozled by resident playwright Patricia Milton, is precisely the sort of play Central Works does well. It's a small cast tackling a meaningful issue on both the substantive/policy level and the personal level as well.

The Play

Abby is a young antiques appraiser who specializes in American Civil War artifacts. Valuing Confederate artifacts is a little dicey for her because she is African American. She is also interested in researching her family history. As we meet her in the opening scene, these two aspects of her life both come into play. She is trying to convince Savannah, who works at a research center for just such  matters, to open her resources to help her find her twice-great grandmother, for whom Abby was named. It turns out Savannah is also working in the law office of the lawyers who are going to defend Abby in a civil lawsuit, in a case brought by some locals who believe Abby cheated them out of the value of their family Civil War mementos.

Basically, Abby was brought it to value these artifacts at the request of a boyfriend, whose family had heirlooms. Abby valued them for a rather low number, but they subsequently sold to a state museum for a cool million dollars, and the family wants the money, believing Abby has it. The boyfriend is a co-defendant, but they cases are being tried separately.

So we find ourselves in a law office in Shelby County, Tennessee. The lead partner in the firm is...indisposed, so Abby will be working with Rochelle, the hard-charging, attention-seeking lesbian lawyer who seems to have a track record of advancing her own career at the expense of some of her clients. This is a bone of contention with Savannah, in part because Savannah is a lawyer whose license got suspended as a result of Rochelle's hijinks, meaning she is currently reduced to clerical work in the office. Oh, and by the way the KKK is currently rallying outside the building to protest the impending removal of a Civil War memorial statue. There's a lot going on.

Things are already going a bit poorly when Opal Anne, the aunt of Abby's boyfriend, and the plaintiff in the case, suddenly appears and announces that she is representing herself. Opal Anne represents the Old South, the dedication to the Lost Cause, and so on.

I won't try to unravel all the fun that ensues. Suffice it to say that the plot is fairly intricate, with multiple characters in conflict with each other, even when they also need to pull together. And the script is also genuinely funny, with twists and turns that ratchet up both the drama and the humor in the script. Ultimately all four characters prove to be pretty interesting, which is a rare treat.

The Production

The time and space available for the show necessarily limit what the team can do, but within those constraints, they've come up with a pretty compelling set-up. We're in a conference room in the law office, with various people being sent out at times, often for prolonged periods, and often to their chagrin. Abby (Jeunée Simon) manages to remain remarkably calm in light of the lawsuit hanging over her head. Much is made of the racist temperament of the town, and Rochelle (Stacy Ross) hopes to create a situation that will produce a change of venue to someplace more sympathetic to Abby and her case.

One might expect Savannah (Chelsea Bearce) to be more of an ally to Abby, as she is also African American, but she has issues both with the Californian Abby and her treatment by Rochelle. Bearce manages to keep us guessing much of the time with sly, nuanced body language and facial expressions. She is, in many ways, the star of the show. And the unfashionable, atavistic Opal Anne (Susan Jackson) brings a whole new dynamic, as she gets to personally represent all the Civil War re-enactors and pretty much every racist, Southern stereotype you might want to throw out there. But she handles the load with aplomb.

Indeed, the casting is terrific all around. Watching Ross close up like this is a real treat. She was terrific in the big-stage production of Shakespeare in Love last year at Marin, but this is more like watching her in Aurora's Leni last year, as her personality can really fill up the small theater space. And yet, despite playing the character who seeks the limelight, she manages not to upstage the rest of the cast. Indeed, they all hold their own quite well--it's a very strong ensemble.

Technically, there's not much to the show. The lights and sound are pretty much limited by the setting in a single office space, with the occasional sound to remind us of the Klan rally outside. But this is definitely a show that lives and dies with the actors, and they come through.

Bottom Line

This is a really good play. It manages to be clever without being too full of itself, poignant at times without being cloying, and balances humor and drama pretty seamlessly. It's a treat to see the strong acting up close, though the configuration of the room necessarily makes it hard to see some bits if you sit toward the middle. But even with that, it's terrific.

The show we saw last Sunday was not just sold out, but oversold, so they added folding chairs and got everyone in. That enabled some of us to be even closer to the action than anticipated, but again, it's great.

The show has been extended a week, through March 25, so there are still opportunities to see it, and if it's still sold out, you can probably convince them to give you a folding chair. You won't be sorry.

"Office Hour" at Berkeley Rep

Berkeley Rep photo by Kevin Berne

Julia Cho is a very talented playwright. Her play Aubergine a couple of years ago at Berkeley Rep was a real revelation, and The Language Archive remains a favorite that I could see over and over. So I had pretty high expectations going into the latest effort between Cho and Berkeley Rep, Office Hour.

The show is quite timely, both because of the general theme of young males who feel ostracized by society and respond with violence and threats and because of recent events involving school shootings. And to make it all hit home even more, I have a friend who teaches college in the bay area who has described a student remarkably like the one portrayed in this play. So I really want to see what's up here.

The Play

The play opens with three faculty members talking, somewhere on or near the college campus. Two have already had experiences with Dennis, a particularly difficult student, and the third, Gina, is about to embark on a semester with him. Dennis basically doesn't speak, just sits sullenly in the back of the classroom wearing a hooded coat and sunglasses. He does all the assigned work, but his writing is just foul-mouthed, violent, disturbing screeds. He intimidates his teachers, his classmates, and apparently, the school administration, since they refuse to take any action against him. Meanwhile, other students quit the classes he is in, but the faculty can't get out of it that easily.

Thus forearmed with the experiences of her colleagues and the somewhat inexplicable statement from them that perhaps she will do better with him "because, you know..." (meaning, both teacher and student are Asian Americans), Gina summons Dennis to her office hour under the ruse that it is required of all students.

The remainder of the play is essentially a tug of war between Gina and Dennis, her trying to draw him out and defuse the threat, and him trying to resist and sometimes fighting back.

Dramatically, it takes place in a series of spiraling escalations, all ending badly, only to kick us back a few minutes to learn that's not what really happened, and the actual scene went another way. We're left to decode whether we're just reading the characters' fears and expectations, or perhaps something else. But we see repeated attempts, sometimes making progress, but always somehow going astray.

Late in the play, David, one of the faculty who had warned Gina, and who had tried to take administrative action against Dennis, interrupts the office hour, and we get a rapid-fire view of a whole bunch of different scenarios where things can go wrong.

Parts of the dialogue are absolutely brilliantly written, and some manage to be amazingly funny. But much of the play is just head-scratchingly implausible, starting right from the opening scene. The trio of teachers, meeting somewhere outdoors, apparently, discussing matters that clearly are not appropriate for public consumption, is just weird. Especially when the whole stage is set up as...a teacher's office! And the notion that this student is in his third year in the department and that somehow he hasn't come to the attention of the entire faculty is similarly befuddling. I'm willing to suspend some disbelief, but there are some pretty tough stretches required here.

The Production

As befits a play with such a fluctuating attention to detail, the production is similarly kind of hit-and-miss. When they are really struggling with/against one another, Gina (Jackie Chung) and Dennis (Daniel Chung) are really good. But Gina's body language, in particular, is all over the map. She goes from stolid and persistent to all of a sudden being flustered and wandering all over the office. I guess she and director Lisa Peterson are shooting for some variety, but what they mostly do is break the tension and distract from the flow of the story in ways that make the characters less credible. It just felt sloppy.

I felt kind of sorry for the two "extra" faculty actors (Jeremy Kahn and Kerry Warren). Aside from the fact that they are off stage for nearly the entire show, their characters add almost nothing to the play. At least Kahn's David gets to come back at the end for the violent montage. Warren's Genevieve disappears completely, although Warren herself gets to come back, though in a non-speaking role.

That montage (I won't say too much, as I don't want to spoil anything) is extremely cleverly and intricately staged, and it's super well done. I wish as much attention had been paid to the rest of the production. This kind of play needs to be played very precisely, but Jackie Chung in particular keeps finding ways to undercut her character.

Bottom Line

I can't write this off as a lost cause--there are elements of the play that are, in fact, excellent, both in the writing and in the performance. But I can't help feeling that this is a case where someone wanted to write a play about a really important issue, but without having a coherent message to deliver. Yes, we get the terror and tension and fear. Yes, we get that this is super difficult to deal with. But we all knew that coming in.

By removing all the real dynamics of the situation (the support and assistance of any outside people, for example), Cho precludes any actual investigation of a real solution. Gina decides on her own, apparently without consulting any other faculty, administrators, or mental health professionals, to invite the problem student into her office with no support at all, then starts poking the lion with a stick in various ways. It's no wonder she and the audience are envisioning just about every possible bad outcome. But none of it feels terribly real or meaningful, either.

So that leaves us with a pretty clever piece of drama that doesn't actually do anything to advance the discussion of anomie among youth. There is some element of race injected (as noted above). And at least some of the actual dialogue between Gina and Dennis digs into that, including a hilarious (though I can't help but feel it was somewhat inappropriate as well as out-of-place) fake phone call from Mom that Dennis inexplicably plays along with. I don't pretend to be an expert on racial issues, but it wasn't clear to me that this actually had anything to offer to the bigger discussion.

Ultimately, I thought it was pretty good play, but not nearly as good as I would have expected from Julia Cho. We need to have discussion of these issues--they are near and dear to the hearts of everyone in education, at least. But just dramatizing a situation without offering real insight doesn't really serve the audience.

The show runs through March 25, so you still have time to see for yourself. But if you're looking for a brilliant insight, I don't think it's hiding here.

"Widower's Houses" at Aurora Theatre Company

Aurora Theatre Company photo

I'm afraid life has been getting in the way of blogging, and I'm a bit behind. We caught Aurora's Widower's Houses just before it closed, and then a couple of weeks have passed, so I'm afraid it's not a show you can catch. As such, I might be a bit briefer than usual.

I really wanted to see this show, in part because I quite like the work of the playwright, George Bernard Shaw, and also because it featured a couple of my favorite local actors. So we had to scramble to pick up tickets for one of the last shows in the extended run.

The Play

Widower's Houses was Shaw's first foray into playwriting, and though it's not quite as well developed as some of his later works, it still has the cutting social satire that was his hallmark. Originally started as a collaboration with another writer, the play was meant to be a light comedy, pleasant diversion for a Victorian audience not seeking to be challenged. But seeing the subversive text that Shaw wrote for the first couple of acts, the shocked collaborator quit the project. Some seven years later, Shaw completed the work on his own and it got produced.

The play revolves around a couple of traveling Englishmen of the upper class, Dr. Trench and his companion Cokane. Cokane has to keep coaching Trench to behave like a proper gentleman. They encounter a wealthy family on their travels, a Mr. Sartorius and his daughter, Blanche. Trench and Blanche immediately hit it off, and Trench proposes marriage. But Sartorius puts conditions on the match, insisting he will only approve if Trench contacts his family and gets their assurance that they will accept Blanche as one of their own.

The dark secret in Sartorius's closet is that he's not a gentleman, though he is quite wealthy. But he was born poor and earned his money himself, including (we later learn) by managing investments from Trench and his family. The real problem is that his business isn't all that respectable: he is a tenement slumlord, and quite a strict and uncompromising one at that.

Only after Trench receives the acceptances of his gentle relatives does he learn the truth of Sartorius's business and fortune, and he resolves that he won't take any of it or allow Blanche to do so either. But Blanche does not want to live on the meager income Trench receives, and Sartorius does not approve of his treatment of Trench's high-minded attitude about his business or his treatment of his employees.

Which brings us to the best-named character, Sartorius's collection agent, Mr. Lickcheese. Lickcheese does the dirty work of twisting the arms of the impoverished occupants of the Sartorius tenements. But he and the boss have a falling out, and Lickcheese is sacked. But he will return, gloriously, with Cokane in tow, for the culmination of the plot.

The play is really wonderfully timed, as you can easily sense the desperation in Sartorius to be accepted by proper society, despite his rather unsavory business. And his thoughtful, articulate defense of his means and achievements are really thought-provoking in our modern age of homelessness and precarious living amongst great wealth. Though the start is a bit slow, it builds well, and the second and third acts are really quite excellent writing.

The Production

Lots of terrific acting here. Warren David Keith as Sartorius is quite wonderful, without overplaying at all. His studied intensity is really effective in the close confines of Aurora's thrust stage configuration. Megan Trout as his very refined, yet rather clueless and vain daughter Blanche, brings to mind certain other children of wealth and privilege who presume the mantle of respectability that their parents crave, but know they don't quite deserve. The setting in Victorian England makes the class distinction a bit clearer than it might be in a modern play.

The always-strong Michael Gene Sullivan manages to bring out the ridiculousness of Cokane's upper-class obsessions without resorting to clowning. Dan Hoyle as Trench was a bit stiff in what should have been his comfortable bits early on, goofing around to annoy Cokane. But his delivery wasn't comfortable there. His later acting, and particularly some of his non-verbal work later with Trout, was outstanding, though.

Howard Swain as Lickcheese was extremely effective. A bit hard to pick up with his thick Cockney drawl at first, but the subtlety with which he defers to Sartorius and wheedles Trench are marvelous bits. When he later turns up as quite a different-seeming man, the gloating is wonderful.

And a final word for Sarah Mitchell who gets the dual serving roles as the German waiter in the opening act and the English maid back home. In both she manages to be both comical and poignant, interacting with the wealthy swells who basically care not a whit for the serving class. The indignant reactions of the waiter combined with his German precision make for some great moments. And the poor, trodden maid just can't win. When she closed the play mouthing an obscenity at the departed homeowner, the person sitting next to me whispered to her seatmate, "That just made the whole play!" The broad comic strokes of the working class made a nice counterpoint to the word play and thought-provoking dialogue of the rest of the play. Kudos to director Joy Carlin for letting Mitchell run free with the non-verbal parts of her roles.

The Bottom Line

I really like this script, and the acting was first-rate, almost throughout. The staging was fairly uninspired, though. Aurora usually goes a bit more for atmosphere, and this set was pretty spare. My favorite touch was the revealing of Sartorius's library behind the panels of the beer garden during the first intermission set change. But really, it was up to the cast and the script to carry the evening, and both were up to the task.

I wish I could still recommend that you go see the show, because it was well worth it. The frank discussion of why we can't provide "decent" housing for the poor is clearly an issue that affluent societies have long struggled with. Shaw gives a strong voice to both sides, and keeps the interest up in what is otherwise a fairly talky play.

Overall, really good.