"Two Trains Running" at Marin Theatre Company

 Well, this is late. The holidays and vacations and such caught up with me, and I got way behind on blogging the limited shows we went to see. But this one was very good, and deserves mention.

The Play

As I've noted elsewhere, I'm a fan of August Wilson's work. I haven't yet seen all of his ten-play cycle representing African-American life in Pittsburgh during each decade of the 20th century, but I'm working on it. In this case it was a repeat, as we'd seen Two Trains Running at Ashland in 2013.

Set in a run-down restaurant in 1969, the subject at hand is urban renewal. The owner of the restaurant, Memphis, wants to sell his restaurant before it is torn down, but worries that the city will not meet his price. Meanwhile, local mortician and entrepreneur West offers to buy it from him. Meanwhile, Wolf is running numbers on the restaurant pay phone, Holloway is dispensing philosophy and playing chess, while the recently-released-from-prison Sterling is scheming ways to get ahead (and get with the restaurant's sole employee, Risa). And then there is Hambone, who appears to be mentally challenged, feeling aggrieved about a promised ham that he has never received.

As with most of Wilson's cycle, the play is an ensemble piece that highlights the characters who seem both timeless and very much of their time.

The Production

This was really nicely done: well cast and directed, the ensemble works well together to transport us to 1969. Director Dawn Monique Williams keeps the pace moving without rushing it. Within the very strong cast, Lamont Thompson as Memphis stands out with a nuanced portrayal of a man who seems a bit detached from everyone else while focusing on his own crusade, but who actually keeps a close eye on all in the circle of the restaurant. Eddie Ewell as Sterling and Khary L. Moye as West play two sides of a very similar role, both always on the lookout for any angle to get ahead, but currently in very different circumstances.

The whole group does a great job of making the production feel authentic.

Bottom Line

Having recently seen Wilson's The Piano Lesson in New York with a cast of well-known stars, it was refreshing to see again how well Wilson's plays work without the star power. The words and settings are always believable, and the scripts are rich with opportunities for any actor. Marin has done a fine job with this one. Unfortunately, it closed on December 18, so no further opportunities to see it. But a very solid offering.

"Dunsinane" at Marin Theatre Company

This one sneaked up on us, so we went on a whim. I have to admit that lately I only venture over to Marin Theatre Company if there is a play or a performer I particularly want to see. I was intrigued by the concept and the playwright this week, so off we went to Mill Valley.

The Play

Superficially, the play is a kind of sequel to Shakespeare's "Scottish Play," Macbeth. It begins as English forces supporting the exiled Malcolm return to Scotland, disguising themselves using greenery from Great Burnham Wood to cover their charge on the castle at Dunsinane. The "tyrant" (i.e., Macbeth) is vanquished by Macduff, Malcolm assumes the throne. And now the fun begins. Because Scotland is not a nation at peace. It remains a collection of rival tribes with shifting alliances and much distrust of both leaders and outside forces. Add a couple of twists now: Queen Gruach (who we would know better as Lady Macbeth) is still alive, and represents a significant threat to Malcolm's rule.

And now we settle into an uneasy peacemaking/occupation/negotiation, as the English just want to settle the situation so it is not a threat to their northern border, and various factions in Scotland want to assume or retain control. The English, represented by General Siward, and the English Army, just want to pacify the situation and go home. But Siward won't leave in defeat--whatever that means to him--and presses onward.

And so we enact on stage the futility of bringing peace to a region using outside military force. Playwright David Grieg (a Scot, if you hadn't guessed) has adopted the British intervention in Scotland in ancient times to stand in for (take your pick) the current relationship of Scotland to the UK, The U.S. interventions in Afghanistan and/or Iraq, almost any situation in the modern Middle East, etc.

The play does get a bit bogged down (only a slight pun intended here), and could probably be trimmed a bit (it runs over 2.5 hours). But hey, that's kind of the point: this is what happens to outside forces trying to impose peace on rival tribes and clans. It's actually a pretty good illustration, and covers both the futility and the effects on both internal and external groups. It's not Shakespeare, and it's not meant to be. It's a contemporary play about current-but-also-timeless issues, and it's rather well written.

The Production

Marin Theatre Company produces this show in partnership with the Conservatory Theatre Ensemble at nearby Tamalpais High School. As a result, there are high school student both acting some of the parts on stage and apprenticing on the creative and production teams. In some ways this works very well. The young actors portraying both members of the invading English Army and young Scots bring a sense of authenticity to those roles. On the other hand, even at their best these teens can't really keep up with the professional actors, and the scenes where they have extensive lines tend to be the parts that drag the most.

That said, the professional cast is top-notch. Aldo Billingslea (Siward) is always strong, and his experience teaching and directing young actors definitely buoys the scenes he shares with the teens, especially early on. Josh Odsess-Rubin (Malcolm) and Michael Ray Wisely (Macduff) are really solid in their roles, and Daniel Duque-Estrada (Egham/Luss) has to cover more ground, but does so admirably. But the real stand-out is Lisa Anne Porter as Gruach. Whenever the queen is onstage, you know it, and you know she is up to something. She has a lot of nuance in her performance, and she brings out the best in those around her, particularly Billingslea.

The set itself is quite simple, which probably helps with a cast that is constantly flipping between specific roles and ensemble parts. And they probably could have found a more effective means of delineating scene changes than simply thumping a spear on the stage each time.

Bottom Line

I will admit that I was a bit befuddled by the time we got to intermission, but a bit of conversation with my friends gave me the insight that I was being a bit too literal and specific in my interpretation of the play. It's sort of mildly interesting as an examination of Scottish history, but once the light goes on and you start to see the situation as representative of other scenarios, including contemporary ones, the richness of the material starts to shine through. So perhaps a bit better job of widening the audience's view early on would help. But overall, I think they play is a good one.

The production definitely has some flaws--I wasn't really expecting to see a hybrid professional/student play when I arrived. I suppose a little more research would have cleared that up for me. I'm sure I would still have gone to see it, but might have had somewhat different expectations.

All in all, I like the play, and I think the production is worth seeing, as long as you recognize going in that this is not going to be a fully-professional show, and that it's probably best enjoyed with an eye toward it being something more/other than a sequel to Shakespeare's Scottish play. So I give it a provisional thumbs-up. Look beyond the amateurish bits and the pros have a lot to say here.

Revisiting an Old Friend

 I know.

I don't do this anymore. I got tired of the effort it took to produce even a modest-length "review" of the plays I saw, when very few people were even reading the results. I felt bad because I knew a few people, at least, had come to expect my posts, and in truth, I missed writing them.

And then came The Plague, and the Master of the Revels closed all the theaters. In fairness, I had stopped blogging about theater well before COVID-19 was even a twinkle in some Chinese bat's eye. But it soon became clear that not only was my attempt at "Too Much Theater" impossible, but we would all get to experience "Not Nearly Enough Theater" for far too long.

And now things are opening up again, and we're seeing shows in person (the less said about the lessons we learned with online performances, the better, though maybe I'll blog about that someday). But that's not what brought me back here. It was rereading a play.

Searching for a Reading

Last summer, when it appeared theaters were going to get to reopen for real, and we were all vaccinated and excited about life again, my wife and I got to be guinea pigs. A few years earlier at the Shotgun Players' annual gala we had bought the rights to host a private, staged reading, and the reading itself was scheduled for late April of 2020. Obviously, that didn't happen. We had planned to use the beautiful set that Nina Ball had designed for Shotgun's production of Henry V that was supposed to open right as COVID shutdowns hit--they were in tech rehearsals, and never got to open. It was terribly sad for the artists, of course, but I also took it personally as I'd been allowed to sit in on quite a number of their rehearsals, and really felt like a small part of the gang. Plus I really wanted to use that set!

My thinking had been that we ought to do a reading that would take advantage of Nina's brilliant little interpretation of Shakespeare's Globe Theater inside the Ashby Stage, and the play that came to mind was Bill Cain's Equivocation. We'd seen its world premiere at Ashland in 2009 and also when it played at Marin Theatre Company the following year. Terrific play, partly taking place in the Globe: Perfect!

But as the pandemic wore on, that play felt less pertinent in the moment, and we ultimately settled on a reading of Lauren Gunderson's wonderful play, The Book of Will. We had seen it twice in Ashland in 2018, and had been looking forward to it playing at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley in the summer of 2020 before it got canceled. So it was both a chance to give that play a deserved shot in the Bay Area, and also a celebration of the role theater plays in our hearts during difficult times. It was kind of the ideal show to use to reopen the theater after more than a year away, and it, too, is largely set on the stage of the Globe.

So that's all good, but also not the reason I'm writing this.

Old Play, New Context

When we were planning the reading of Equivocation for 2020, I read through the script for the first time in several years. (I have two copies: the OSF script used for the premiere and also the published version--I really like this play!) The play revolves around the premise that in 1605, while Shakespeare was working on his new play about King Lear, the government tries to hire him to write a new "history" play, but this time about current history, specifically the Gunpowder Plot.

This leaves our playwright in a quandary. The king is, after all, the patron of his theater company, and with theaters having been closed by outbreaks of the plague for several years, a commissioned work would be welcome revenue. But the company is divided over whether to accept the task. The play will have to delicately balance the official government line with portrayals of the conspirators and their views. The playwright struggles both with his company and with the government, all while the story of the Plot is still coming to light. Art, truth, and expediency all seem to conflict. Can he write a play that is true and still get it approved? Are we being manipulated? Is he being manipulated?

A Little History Lesson: A House Divided

The years 1605-6 were busy ones in England, but really, for several centuries the whole country had been in nearly constant upheaval. Must of that period is familiar to theater-goers through Shakespeare's "history plays" that cover the period from the early 1300s to the mid-1500s. Throughout those years, England was wracked by questions of succession, usurpation, and the legitimacy of its kings. Even when the Tudor era put an end to the Wars of the Roses, religion came to the fore, and for several generations the country ping-ponged between Catholicism and the Church of England.

Despite a fair degree of adherence to actual history, Shakespeare's history plays both bend history to fit dramatic needs, and also carefully select themes that will pass the approval of his contemporary censors. Not only does Shakespeare have to craft his plays so his audience will enjoy them, but he also needs to make sure the current monarchs will permit the plays to go on.

With the death of Elizabeth I in 1603 and the succession of James I (brokered by Sir Robert Cecil, the Secretary of State), Protestantism seemed well established in England, though there remained devoted, mostly closeted, Catholics (and indeed, Shakespeare may have been one). Jesuit priests were officially banned from the country, for example. And the Protestant King James was not universally loved, both because he was Scottish and because he was deemed a bit of a lightweight in the ruling department, perhaps more interested in the trappings of the office than the job itself. So in November of 1605, a group of English Catholics conspired to blow up the House of Lords (and the king) during the opening of Parliament, an event known as the Gunpowder Plot. Though the plot failed, the event was used to justify further restrictions on Catholics, and to this day the anniversary is commemorated as Bonfire Night.

So, then: a deeply divided nation, tenuous leadership, and a scandalous attempt to overthrow the government. And even in the aftermath, conspiracy theories that agents of the crown might have aided the plot, knowing they could exploit the event for political gain.

The Play, Then and Now

Cain originally wrote Equivocation in the aftermath of 9/11 and the ongoing Iraq War, and the themes of government coercion and propaganda, lies, torture, and conspiracy theories all resonated strongly. Exploiting a national tragedy to unite divisive factions, even if the story doesn't quite ring true, was a big theme of the play.

The parallels with 9/11 were quite clear at the time, with a big, violent event used to pull the nation and the world together, with threats of further terror used to justify curtailing travel, increasing surveillance, and eventually, invading foreign countries. One can easily equate the incidents and the responses to them--that was certainly palpable when I saw the play in 2009-10.

So in late 2019 I re-read the play to make sure it would still feel timely a decade later. And boy, was I surprised to find that it resonated in whole new ways! The play hadn't changed, but the social context for the audience was very different.

In pre-pandemic America, the notion that the government might be trying to rewrite (or even, pre-write) history was all too credible in the land of "alternative facts" and "fake news". An unqualified new head of state, pulling the levers of the Deep State, manipulating stories and perhaps even staging them--all terribly familiar in the Time of Trump. Cain's exploration of the role of Truth is even more fascinating that it had been a decade earlier, and honestly, the ambivalence of the answers are even more poignant in the current environment.

It was truly eye-opening to see how a play that had been so rich and timely when it first came out was in many ways even more on-point in a dramatically different world ten years down the road.

And that was all before January 6, 2021. I mean, how much more pertinent can we get? An actual insurrection attempting to overturn the results of a presidential election is right up there with putting gunpowder in a tunnel under the Parliament. And the spin doctors casting doubt on everything and everyone--motives, actions, words--everything is up for grabs.

All I can say is that I continue to be amazed at how prescient Cain was in his writing. But really what that means is that he wrote something really good: a piece of work so deep and complex and real that it provides a framework for gaining insights into future conditions that change over time.

Nerdy Shakespeare Notes

Aside from the deep issues addressed in Equivocation, there is a whole layer of "inside baseball" material for the Shakespeare enthusiast. On top of his background as a Jesuit, playwright Cain has strong credentials from his work with Shakespeare's plays: founder and artistic director of the Boston Shakespeare Company, he has also directed Shakespeare plays from coast to coast. So this play is full of playful nuggets that appeal to Shakespeare nerds.

In addition to the delightful digs about Shakespeare's acting ability and his penchant for killing off his characters (and particularly, kings), Cain intertwines history with his own story in at least three different ways. One obvious one is the character of his daughter, Judith. There is no evidence of them having anything like the relationship depicted here. A second is the family rivalry with the Cecils. Although scholars have long linked Robert Cecil's father, William, to the character Polonius in Hamlet, I believe Cain's linkage of the younger Cecil to the Scottish Play is entirely novel. In any case, the snarky digs and clever creations make Equivocation a treasure trove for a Shakespeare nerd.

Why Do We Do This?

I will admit that a few bits of the play seem less timely, or at least less urgent, than they did before. The debate over torture and its use and abuse as a tool of investigation is no longer front-page news, for example. But the bigger dynamics at play--government versus private interests, art as a tool for finding (or obscuring) truth, artistic integrity, fathers and daughters, entrenched dynasties--all still work delightfully.

And ultimately, this is what all literature, all stories, all art should be about--holding up a mirror to our current selves so that we can investigate who we are and what we think, feel, and believe. And that's not a one-time offer. Revisiting a book or a play or an artwork isn't just a way to reinforce something already known or have the same experience again. To paraphrase Heraclitus, you can't step into the same story twice. It's reopening the learning. It might reinforce, but it might replace or adjust or augment what came before. There is always value in revisiting stories.

My first viewing of Equivocation was a milestone for me--both the play and the production were eye-opening, and it's been a touchstone subsequently as I think about plays and the theater. Reading it, and hopefully seeing it again lets me both re-evaluate what I recall I got from it the first time and experience new reactions as well. Even if it's the same story, I'm not the same person, and this is not the same world, and there will be new thoughts to think.

Of course, not every piece of art deserves all this much attention. Part of the ongoing reimagining of theater today deals with pruning some works from the canon and introducing new and different ones. I'm all for new works and new voices, but it's important to remember why some of the classics are genuinely classic, and why some modern works are better than others. Some repay ongoing study with rich rewards, and I'm pleased to find that Equivocation seems to fall in that category.

"The Wolves" at Marin Theatre Company

Marin Theatre Company photo by Kevin Berne

On a whim, we ran over to Mill Valley on Easter Sunday to see the current production of The Wolves, by Sarah DeLappe. It's a play about the members of a fairly elite, suburban, teenage girls' soccer team called the Wolves. As a parent of a teen daughter (who does not play soccer), I was interested to see what the play had to say about the lives of these teens.

The Play

This is an interesting play, in that it doesn't have a narrative line per se, though there is a timeline and there is action and plot development, but it's decidedly episodic. Also, considering it's about a soccer team, we mostly see warmups, rather than any actual game situations. So we get glimpses of the girls interacting with one another, from which we interpolate facts about their lives.

The technique is pretty effective, in that it leaves each of us to draw our inferences about what's happening, then later corroborates or refutes our surmises with further information. That part is pretty cleverly handled.

Initially the chaos of multiple conversations going on among a shifting grouping of girls doing stretches and warm-up exercises is a bit confusing, but ultimately the brain catches up, and it is a pretty accurate portrayal of the shifting, multi-threaded conversations that teens partake in.

I found it a bit odd that the players almost never use each other's names, but refer to each other by number. That works as a device in the script, but seems entirely unlike any teen girls I have ever known. This is particularly striking because most of these girls have played together for many years.

Also, the coaching deficiency is rather striking. I can understand having to hire a coach the team isn't thrilled with, but the degree of dereliction in this coach would never be tolerated on this kind of serious team.

But as a result of all this, we have a sort of artificially isolated group of girls which only occasionally devolves into some kind of "Lord of the Flies" scenario of youthful self-rule. Eventually the personalities and life circumstances of the individual girls seep through the numeric-uniform impersonality to give us a feel for who these girls are and what they're up to, individually and collectively.

The Performance

By setting the play in an indoor soccer league, we can justify having a smaller number of players (there are nine in the cast, plus a brief, late appearance by a soccer mom) and the small, bleak, artificially-turfed stage that passes for the indoor stadium. I thought they could have done a little more to dress up the set, but it functions.

The actors are all young women who can pretty much pass for older high-school students (they are supposed to be juniors). The only one who affirmatively seems "too old" for her role is the goalie (Betsy Norton), but she's quite good and one fairly quickly suspends disbelief on that score.

As one might expect, there are a range of skills and personalities portrayed among the team, and the actors do an effective job of establishing their individual personas as well as blending into the team. It's a little difficult to say with any certainty which little quirks might be acting deficiencies and which might be intentional acting choices, so in that sense I just go with the flow and decide that it's all acting and direction.

As it's really an ensemble piece, the individuals don't really particularly stand out (which is why I'm not calling any out by name). The device of having the Soccer Mom (Liz Sklar) arrive toward the end, although important to the plot, didn't seem to work very well. Her interactions with the team didn't seem authentic from either side.

Bottom Line

This is a good show. I wouldn't say it's an especially compelling piece of writing, though it is clever and skillful at times. And the acting isn't (and doesn't need to be) brilliant or showy. As noted, this is an ensemble piece that is about individuals playing as part of a team, not about any particular prima donna(s).

I thought it was all quite effective and interesting, if sometimes a bit contrived. Well worth seeing, especially if you want to know a bit of what the kids are up to these days.

The show runs for two more weekends, through April 15th.

"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.

"Thomas and Sally" at Marin Theatre Company

Marin Theatre Company photo by Kevin Berne

Well, everybody else is talking about this play this week. Turns out this is the right time for me to have seen it! It is highly unusual to encounter protesters trying to talk you out of going into a theater to see a play. But that was our introduction to Thomas and Sally on Saturday night at Marin Theatre Company. I had initially been indifferent to seeing this show, but my wife wanted to see it, so we did. After we bought our tickets a friend went and left at the first intermission (yes, there are two) because he didn't care for the play, which he summed up in three uncomplimentary adjectives (about the writing, not about the production).

Then today I was skimming Twitter and learned that a group of local theater artists, mostly African American, had written an open letter to Marin Theatre Company expressing their belief that this production "is an irresponsible, deeply harmful project with no accountability to black women and girls." Since I am neither a black theater artist nor affiliated with MTC, I won't get in the middle of that. But it is worth reading. I know quite a number of the writers and signers of that letter, and I respect their views.

What follows is my own thinking, based on my experience of the play, though obviously at least somewhat informed by the dialogue going on around me. It's probably safe to say this isn't the same post I would have written had I done so immediately upon coming home (which is probably good, because it was very late!), but I think most of the ideas are pretty similar.

The Play

Thomas and Sally is a very ambitious undertaking. It's a world premiere play, commissioned by MTC and written by Thomas Bradshaw. Artistic Director Jasson Minadakis (who also directed the play) hails from Virginia and has a passion for American history and particularly Jefferson and his relationship with the Hemings family, and he was really taken with Bradshaw's writing, so collaborating on this play made sense.

If you've been living under a rock (and if Minadakis is to be believed, a fair portion of his audience has been), you might not know about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. The short version is that plantation owner Jefferson had a "relationship" with Hemings, who was one of his slaves. It's a fairly big topic in historical circles.

Jefferson (Mark Anderson Phillips) was one of the "founding fathers" of the United States, primary author of the Declaration of  Independence, first Secretary of State, third president, provider of the initial stock for the Library of Congress, and so on. He was also a wealthy Virginia plantation owner, and among his possessions were over 600 slaves, including the Hemings family, including Sally. Nothing unusual there in colonial America, really. The kicker being that Jefferson had inherited the Hemings family on the death of his father-in-law, John Wayles (Robert Sicular). OK so far. But after the death of Wayles' third wife, he had taken a fancy to one of his slaves, Betty Hemings (Charlette Speigner), and fathered a number of children (eight, IIRC). Some of those children, including Sally Hemings (Tara Pacheco) survive and pass down to Jefferson. So Sally Hemings was the half-sister of Jefferson's wife, Martha (Ella Dershowitz). So even by the standards of the day, to adopt modern parlance, it's complicated.

This means Jefferson has a group of "special" slaves that his father-in-law has told him to treat well, keep out of the fields, etc. But they're still slaves, and can't be freed because then they would have to leave Virginia, among other things (it's the law; that's complicated, too). Among other things, some of the new Hemings slaves displace other slaves, such as Jefferson's long-time valet, Jupiter (played brilliantly by L. Peter Callender). That act of casual cruelty is one of the more realistic scenes in the play. And the overseer (Scott Coopwood) foresees that it will be difficult having some slaves treated almost as free servants while others slave in the fields. There is a lot going on.

Keep in mind that we have to go through the entirety of Act I to get all this. From what Minadakis explained in the after-play Q&A session, the first draft of that act was about 80 pages long, or nearly what a full play often covers. Though it has been edited considerably, it has to move at a quick clip, but it does so rather awkwardly.

But the play has three acts, and we're just getting started. Heck, we haven't even met Sally yet. As Act I turns into Act II, the recently-widowed Jefferson has been named minister to France, so he and his daughter, Patsy (normally Rosie Hallett, but read by someone else on Saturday--sorry I missed the name), and James Hemings (William Hodgson) head for Paris, where James apprentices as a chef (because...it's complicated). Later they are joined by younger daughter Polly (Dershowitz), who is accompanied by Sally Hemings.

So now lonely, widowed Thomas, much like his late father-in-law, finds himself alone, but with "needs" that can be met by...one of his slaves! So he slides into a sexual relationship with Sally, being at least somewhat discreet, at least at first. Needless to say, it's complicated. There is sex. There is seeming affection, and eventually, the inevitable pregnancy, right about the time the French Revolution breaks out, and the Jefferson/Hemings party needs to head back to Virginia. Somewhere in here we've had a super-awkward intermission break, because it happens while Thomas and Sally are in bed, and though the lights drop and the bed turns around, the actors are still visibly in it, so it doesn't really feel like one should leave. Stage hands eventually roll the bed off, but wow...uncomfortable moment.

Act III covers the (complicated, of course) decision about who goes home and when. James wants to stay in Paris where he can be free and a great chef. Thomas wants him to return to Virginia and "pay back" his apprenticeship. Sally really wants her child(ren) to be free, which pretty much means staying in France, but she also wants to be with her family, and maybe with Thomas. But with a few twists and turns, everybody ends up going home to Virginia, amidst promises of freedom for some, eventually, sort of.

The Frame Story

What I've left out here is the frame story. The play opens in a modern college dorm room, occupied by two young women, Simone and Karen (Dershowitz and Hallett-or-her-reader, respectively). Karenis writing a paper about slavery or Thomas Jefferson or something. It didn't seem that critical, so I forgot exactly what the topic was. Simone conveniently turns out to be a descendant of Jefferson and Sally Hemings, and proceeds to launch into a (three acts worth!) retelling of her family history, all the way back to the Wayles family refusing to sell Betty Hemings back to the captain (Coopwood) who fathered her on the voyage over from Africa (yes, really, three generations of these complications). All punctuated by several admonitions that "I'm not a historian." Because what this complicated story desperately needed was an unreliable narrator.

And to tie things up at the end, the two students have a little discussion about slaves and agency and love and such. Simone is quite adamant that slaves exercised all they agency they possibly could, all the time. Karen is non-committal about where she's going to come down on all this; she'll think it over. And she promises to do research to verify all the stories Simone has told her.

The Production

As with most MTC productions, the quality is high. The actors are capable, the sets well-designed and -built, good lighting, costumes, and so on. I don't have many complaints here. The bed, mentioned earlier, where Jefferson and Hemings ... er ... "sleep" is upright. As in they are standing up against an upright "bed" with bedding draped around them like a curtain. It looks really strange. It's especially awkward when Jefferson is lying in bed, having taken ill, and James comes in to talk to him, standing next to the bed. Combine that with the way Act II ends in the bed, and it's just way too weird. All the other beds (and there are a number of them, from the dorm room to Wayles' home to Monticello, to the rest of the time in Paris when Jefferson an Hemings aren't doing it) are horizontal, and we get along quite fine there.

And for some reason, the scene changes are done quite abruptly and loudly, with rumbling, sliding and squeaking and actors shove things relatively short distances. This seemed often unnecessary and quite distracting.

The play, and especially the first act, is too long. 2:45 with two intermissions. I think it actually ran long, in addition to starting late. I suspect the late start was due to whatever kept one of the actors from performing. The understudy/replacement sat in a chair off to one side of the stage and read the lines from a script. She did it pretty well, but it definitely detracted from the overall performance. I'm sure there was a good reason for all this, but it made the start of the long evening just that much odder.

And then there is the sex. Obviously, sex is an important part of the story, because if it weren't for the three generations of masters impregnating their slaves, we don't have a story at all. Fine, we get that. But the opening scene starts with a discussion of a missing/borrowed dildo and then we get a fair amount of rather juvenile taunting about penis size and then way too much detail about the highly implausible first encounter between Thomas and Sally. The last got a lot of feedback in the post-show discussion, but it was clear there was never any notion of cutting or changing that scene, though they thought of ending it a little bit sooner.

The Problems

Clearly, I have some issues with this play and production. And it's a bit hard to separate whether my issues are actually with the play as written or with the play as produced, because I haven't read it. And since this is the world premiere of a work that was commissioned and developed by this theater and this cast and creative team, it's hard to say that a problem lies on one side or the other. I take it as given that this crew knows and expresses the wishes of the playwright pretty closely.

Any writing about Jefferson and Hemings suffers from the tremendous imbalance of available information on the two subjects. Jefferson is extremely well-known and well-documented. About Hemings, very little is actually known directly. So virtually everything said or done by or about Jefferson we can weigh against what we know or believe. But with Hemings we don't have that luxury. Everything here is either an invention or an interpretation by Bradshaw, but we don't have a way to evaluate its validity.

In this story as related by Simone, we see and hear Jefferson do things that are clearly not correct. For example, there is a scene where Ben Franklin and John Adams essentially abdicate the job of writing the Declaration of Independence onto an unwilling Jefferson. But anyone who knows much about Jefferson knows that is completely out of character, and that he proudly drafted the Declaration. And in dialogue we hear him declare himself to be "the foremost abolitionist of his day." Is this Simone putting words in his mouth ironically? Or is this the family lore, that Jefferson desperately wanted abolition, but wasn't able to free his slaves because...take your pick of various reasons. Lots of signalling here that we can't take any of this at face value: Fine. But at no point does Bradshaw ever come down on any side at all. And indeed, he leaves us with Karen saying she'll think it all over before writing her college paper.

That's it? Three hours of play to leave us with "decide for yourselves"? Or, you can take Simone's strident defense of slaves acting with all they agency they could whenever they could, and take her Act III romantic scene at face value, that Sally and Thomas loved each other, that he couldn't free her because she would have to leave Virginia and basically go underground, or she would have to leave him (for example, staying in Paris during the revolution). Sure, it's complicated. But that's not a very effective message to express.

Furthermore, Jefferson was famously able to hold and profess at least two or three contrary positions on the question of slavery. So the fact that the play portrays those contradictions doesn't really do much to assist the audience is reaching any conclusion.

And then there is the language, particularly of Act I. I don't know if it's just the amount of editing that had to be done, or whether the playwright or the director really intend for all the historical characters in that act to come across as caricatures, but that is largely (yet not entirely) what happens. Are we supposed to take this as the playwright being ironic, signaling that he knows we know these are just simplistic expressions of complicated ideas? Or does the awkwardness and anachronism derive from the interpretations of the young college student (who is not, not, not a historian!). And if we don't believe the caricatures, does that mean we're supposed to believe the characters when they become more realistic in Act II?

Ultimately, the play tries to do too much, and ends up doing too little. By trying to condense the vast amount of information that is actually known about Jefferson, supplemented with all the cool research on The Wayles and Hemings families and the creative writing about Sally, and surrounding it with a fictitious frame story, Bradshaw seems to have lost track of what story he actually wanted to tell, and instead of telling a story just presents a lot of bits and pieces that never tie together. That's pretty unsatisfying.

The Q&A

I would be remiss not to talk about the Q&A session that followed the play. Director Jasson Minadakis came out on stage and took questions from the audience for a long time, and we learned a lot about the play, the development process, and some of the controversy that has surrounded the production. A lot of his stories were interesting and instructive, but ultimately not very satisfying. It doesn't feel like he's quite understanding what all the fuss is about. I was pleasantly surprised with the number of people who stayed to talk, and both the quantity and quality of questions they raised.

As with the curtain speech before the show (which was delivered by someone else), Minadakis was pretty dismissive of the protesters outside, saying they haven't seen the show, so their view is invalid. I was impressed when one African-American woman spoke up to say she had basically been deputized by her reading group to come and see what this was all about. And she had some pretty damning comments about the production that really hit home. I kind of wish she hadn't framed it as "fake news," since that term is pretty overloaded at the moment. But I think it's fair to summarize at least part of her point as being that the story as presented, whether you want to classify it as seduction or mutual attraction and affection or whatever, cannot be true. I haven't even talked about the vast age difference between Thomas and Sally when they first "hook up," never mind the vast difference in power and influence (an oh, yeah, the whole owner/property thing), but the essence of the message was that any portrayal of a relationship between a master and slave that suggests the two are even remotely in a consensual relationship is deluded. Again, my words here.

One question I asked related to the unreliable narrator, and why hand the story over to her if it's not going to result in a modern interpretation of the situation. The answer, such as it was, dealt with Bradshaw's musings over how to explain the situation to his own mixed-race children. Not very illuminating. Perhaps more disturbing was Minadakis' insistence that Bradshaw doesn't want to give us a conclusion, that he's presented us with enough clear examples to reach our own conclusions. Indeed, from the program notes from the dramaturg and an online interview with Bradshaw, the recurring message is that there is no message, that it's an exploration, that we can never really know the truth.

That feels like a serious cop out. Even if we can't reach absolute metaphysical certainty, we can certainly draw some meaningful conclusions. Or we can explore different avenues and see where they lead. But this play doesn't do that. It just presents, without comment or evaluation, a quite implausible scenario. And it has certainly irritated a lot of people, so I guess if that's what one means by "provocative," it has certainly provoked. But to what end?

The Inevitable Comparison

Here's the thing: I've already seen this "exploration" done much more provocatively, and much more effectively. Last season at Berkeley Rep, we saw An Octoroon, by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. I won't rehash it here, since you can just click over to my earlier comments. But the point is that Jacobs-Jenkins masterfully manipulates his audience, doing things that are outlandishly offensive (and thus, "provocative"), and then stepping back and examining how that works. Time and again we got pulled into a point of view, only to have it invalidated. And the thing is, it deals with the love between a white slave owner and a woman he nominally owns. It's complicated, too, but Jacobs-Jenkins doesn't let that get in the way of really making his audience face up to the questions presented.

If I hadn't already seen An Octoroon, I might have been more impressed with Thomas and Sally. But having seen a production that not only "explores," but genuinely examines issues, taboos, and prejudices, I know that it's not enough to just present some (im)possible scenario and let people think about it. The playwright's job is to take us somewhere, and if the playwright doesn't have a point, he really doesn't have a play, he just has a bunch of people watching a show.

No wonder people get upset. There are some clear and obvious lessons one can learn from giving even cursory analysis to a situation like this. To simply ignore that and say "this isn't what I believe, it's just something to think about" is insulting to the audience and even more insulting to those whose views, agency, and very personhood are denied by the scenario presented.

The Bottom Line

It seems only reasonable to ask what the point of this endeavor really is. If the playwright and director don't want to have a point of view, why are they producing this play? I suppose the answer might lie in my initial statement about this being an ambitious undertaking. MTC saw an opportunity to raise its profile by commissioning a work from a hot New York writer, and everyone perhaps took their eyes off the finish line in the excitement of working together. There's plenty of interesting material here, but it seems irresponsible to merely stir things up if you have no actual reason for doing so, and no way to help resolve the inevitable frustrations of those who see the play and those who feel they are hurt by the presentation.

Talk-backs after the show help. Indeed, I don't know that I've ever seen a show that needed a talk-back afterward like this one did. But if you find that you have to talk people down after every show, perhaps that's a sign that you should have incorporated some of that into the show itself. And I do give Minadakis full credit for sitting up there on stage taking questions from all comers. He made it pretty clear that he was there as long as people wanted to ask. discuss, vent, or what have you. That's not easy, and he did it with equanimity. Still, I have to think that a bit of awareness earlier in the process could have saved a lot of the current angst.

Originally scheduled to end this past weekend, it appears MTC has extended the run another week, through October 29. I wish I could endorse going to see this show, as it has some good talent and some interesting bits. But on the whole, I didn't find the show itself particularly interesting. I admit that I'm glad I saw it, as it gives me better insight into the controversy. But as far as theatrical productions, I'd give it a pass. There are plenty of shows out there that are more worth your time.

"August: Osage County" at Marin Theatre Company

Marin Theatre Company photo by Kevin Berne

I have been looking forward to this production ever since Marin Theatre Company announced its season. "August: Osage County" by Tracy Letts is a terrific play, and one my family and I enjoyed very much when it was at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2011. It's always tough to live up to a comparison like that, but I think I've got an open mind on the subject.

Quick summary of my reaction: I think they did a terrific job. It's a really strong start to their season, and a solid production all around. The show looks great--wonderful design work. And the cast does a good job. I have a few issues with some of the directorial choices, but overall, I quite liked the show.

Quick Roundup

"August: Osage County" was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2003, and has been a very popular play ever since. It's a story about a dysfunctional family headed by an alcoholic and a pill-popper, so you know it's going to be a wild ride. Will Marchetti as Beverly gets the play off to a very strong start with his opening scene, filling us in on the dynamics of his marriage with frequent references to his favorite poets. Beverly is a poet himself, as we shall see later in the play.

As we gradually meet the family, Beverly's wife, Violet, and her sister, Mattie Fae (really well played by Anne Darragh) and her husband, Charlie, then the Weston Girls (the three daughters of Beverly and Violet) and their men, we come to see the dysfunction that is the center of the play. And there is plenty of that to go around. Between substance abuse, emotional distance and neediness, and a good helping of small-town life, pretty much everyone has something demonstrably wrong with them, and the interactions take off.

Setting the Stage

Before I comment on the play, I need to enlarge on my earlier comment about the design work. I really like the way they've set this play. All the action takes place in the Weston family house, and I was interested to see how Marin would create this setting in their fairly intimate theater. The answer is that the entire stage is a house: you see the framing of the whole thing, which is quite brilliant. The centerpiece of the house is a huge, slanted table, where everyone will eventually sit for a big dinner. Given that the theater isn't very high, nor the seats raked steeply, the designers have cleverly made the whole table visible by making it the steep slope, and seating the actors accordingly. It's a wonderful way to make the whole family visible to the audience.

And I should add that when you enter the theater, you smell the wood, which helps the house to dominate the environment. In many ways the house is a big character in the play.

Similarly, because the stage is static and without a curtain, lighting is critical, and the lighting design and execution are really good. Characters kind of appear out of the dark as needed, and background characters often appear as silhouettes against various shaded back lights. It's an intricate and well done system that creates the ambiance nicely.

A Few Nits to Pick

I do have a few issues with the production. I remember the play as being funnier. I'm not clear whether it was a conscious choice by the director or perhaps just a really unresponsive audience this afternoon, but I wasn't getting a lot of the humor that is in the text. Admittedly, the family situation is bleak, but the humor (ranging from some just mildly ironic lines to some outright surreal stuff) really helps to both relieve the otherwise unrelenting awfulness of many of the events and characters, and perhaps more importantly, it humanizes and rounds the characters. I gather the movie version of this show (which I did not see) was almost entirely humorless. This production has some, but definitely not as much as I remember. Even when the audience laughs, you get the feeling the characters either can't or won't, and it seems a bit wrong.

The other bit that struck me as a bit off is a little harder to put my finger on. Ultimately, I think most of the characters just seem a bit too well. For all the years of emotional and substance abuse, everyone seems outwardly pretty OK, and that feels wrong, especially when it comes to Violet. She sort of bounces inexplicably between a pill-induced stupor and perfect lucidity. I'm OK with the character having those extremes, but Sherman Fracher's portrayal of Violet mostly seems too vigorous, and her daughters, for all their issues, seem a bit too healthy throughout.

Go See It

Even with those little caveats, it's a strong production of a good piece of writing, and well worth seeing. It's an excellent example of good stagecraft, and there are some very good performances.

"The Invisible Hand" at Marin Theatre Company

I've been looking forward to seeing "The Invisible Hand" since it was announced a year or more ago. We had seen Ayad Akhtar's "Disgraced" in New York earlier, and saw it again this season at Berkeley Rep. The writing is terrific, and he's tackling issues that seem really timely. So knowing nothing about this play, I really wanted to see it.

Quick Summary

As the name suggests, the play treats on economics and market forces, and chooses a rather unique point of entry to that. An American banker is kidnapped in Pakistan, held by a group of locals for a significant ransom. Unable to raise the amount they want, the banker contrives an idea to essentially teach his captors the techniques he uses in business to parlay the amount he has into the amount they want to set him free.

I have to say, this premise is a bit far-fetched, but once you buy into it, it's a pretty interesting setup, and it plays out well.

Once we get into the trading and arbitrage, we get to see some new aspects of all the characters, as ideals and pragmatism come smack up against greed, corruption, and suspicion. Eventually it all plays out more like a spy-vs-spy mystery-thriller, where everyone's motivations and actions come into question and no one knows who to trust.

Stuff I Liked

This category could go on a while. The writing is tight, and the acting is quite good. I was really looking forward to seeing Craig Marker as the banker after so recently seeing him in MTC's "Anne Boleyn" as two different English kings. Very different role here, obviously, but he handles it well. And Pomme Koch as one of the captors gives quite a good performance as a fluent English speaker (for reasons explained). All four actors were quite good.

And again, the set design was quite striking. Where so recently we'd been in English castles, the theater is here transformed into a tiny prison cell, somewhere in Pakistan. It's very effective as a small, cramped space. The cell itself becomes something of a character in the play. Nice design, well implemented.

Takeaways

One of the signs of a good play is that when you leave the theater, you're still thinking about and discussing the play and its issues, and in that regard, this one was strong: We discussed it all the way back to the East Bay. Topics ranged from religion to economics, to the plausibility of some of the "fundraising" techniques employed. In truth, most of the play seems a lot less plausible when examined afterward, but the fact that it kept us all pretty much enthralled during the show suggests that it is effective, and the weaknesses we discussed later were not serious flaws in the play.

I was impressed with how well Akhtar kept us all guessing about where allegiances really lay, both by having it a topic of dialogue in the play and by having characters betray their words. Although I was fairly certain from the outset what the ultimate outcome for the captive would be, the play kept me interested and reexamining my views throughout.

In short, a good play, well produced and acted. Can't ask for much more than that out of an evening at the theater.