Shining City, by Conor McPherson, recently received an excellent staging by Main Stage West in Sebastopol. Directed by MSW Executive Director Beth Craven, the xxx play by one of Ireland’s best-known playwrights may disappoint those who were so enthralled by MSW’s earlier production of McPherson’s The Weir. Both plays display the playwright’s extraordinary gift for dialogue, but whereas The Weir is a true play, i.e., things happen, conflicts abound, situations evolve, etc., Shining City just sits there. One actor hogs the set with a spectacularly long tale of hallucinatory grief, while three others stand by to do their annotations to the central theme. Which is? Strangely, one-night stands.
Ever since it premiered in London30 years ago, “Les Misérables” has seen numerous revivals across the world, mostly by professional companies because of its enormous demands, both musical and otherwise.
Undaunted, the ambitious but non-professional Broadway By the Bay in Redwood City has risen to the challenge and has met it wonderfully.
Based on Victor Hugo’s French novel, “Les Misérables,” or “Les Miz,” is a sprawling story covering more than 17 years and dealing with the rampant poverty and oppression endured by many people.
The central character is Jean Valjean (Adam S. Campbell), paroled in 1815 after serving 19 years in prison for stealing bread for his sister’s starving child. Breaking his parole, he assumes a new identity, becoming a businessman and community leader.
When one of his fired factory workers, Fantine (Mia Fryvecind Gimenez), dies in 1823, he assumes guardianship of her young daughter. Nine years later inParis, talk of revolution is brewing among university students.
Their talk becomes armed resistance, which is quickly squelched by the authorities, led by Javert (Anthony Bernal), who has pursued Valjean for more than 17 years.
With its soaring music by Claude-Michel Schönberg and quasi-operatic style, “Les Miz” needs outstanding singers for the principal and the many secondary characters. The BBB cast is equal to the task, with outstanding contributions by Campbell as Valjean and Bernal as Javert.
Other fine principals are Jason Rehklau as Marius, one of the students; Erin Ashe as Eponine, whose love for him is unrequited; and Samantha Cardenas as the adult Cosette, who captures Marius’s heart.
In secondary roles are Melissa Reinertson and Joseph Hudelson as the Thénardiers, unscrupulous innkeepers; Matthew Thomas Provencal as Enjolras as the students’ leader; and Gimenez as Fantine.
Numerous other people in this 33-member cast have their moments in the spotlight as soloists and in the ensemble. Music director Sean Kana elicits fine contributions from all of the singers as well as the 16-member orchestra.
Some of the more memorable songs include “At the End of the Day,” “Master of the House,” “A Heart Full of Love,” “One Day More,” “Bring Him Home” and “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables.”
Kudos to director Jasen Jeffrey, assisted by Maureen Duffey Frentz, and choreographer Devon LaRussa for keeping the action moving almost seamlessly amidst all the scene changes.
The set by Kelly James Tighe is part of this process, as are projections by Erik Scanlon.
Running about three hours with one intermission, this BBB production is one of the company’s most ambitious and successful undertakings in recent years. It’s a must-see.
Unfortunately it runs only through March 22 at the Fox Theatre, 2215 Broadway St., Redwood City. For tickets and information, call (650) 579-5565 or visit www.broadwaybythebay.org.
For those who don’t see it in Redwood City, it’s worth a trip to see it when it travels to the Golden State Theatre in Monterey from March 28 to April 5. Call (831) 649-1070 or visit www.goldenstatetheatre.org.
“Proof” playwright David Auburn has given his drama at least two meanings, one mathematical, the other more personal or psychological.
Presented by Hillbarn Theatre, “Proof” takes place in a Chicago backyard in September. Robert (Steve Lambert), the father of 25-year-old Catherine (Ali Marie Gangi), died five days earlier. She had been taking care of the once-brilliant mathematician andUniversityofChicagoprofessor because he was mentally ill for the past five years.
It’s the day before his funeral. She has allowed Hal (Brad Satterwhite), Robert’s former doctoral student, now a math professor, to go through his hundreds of notebooks in case they hold something important rather than gibberish.
They are joined by Claire (Cynthia Lagodzinski), Catherine’s older sister, a currency analyst in New York.
As Catherine and Hal become attracted to each other, she allows him to see one more notebook. It contains what Hal believes to be a profoundly important, even revolutionary mathematical proof.
Catherine has had relatively little formal mathematical training (she dropped out of Northwestern to care for Robert). Therefore, Hal challenges her to prove her contention that she developed it. There’s also an implication of sexism — that a woman couldn’t have accomplished such a feat.
Because Catherine has suffered from bouts of depression, she fears she might have inherited Robert’s mental illness. Claire is worried about her, too, for she urges Catherine to join her in New York.
“Proof” won both the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for drama and the Tony Award for best play after its premiere in 2000. Auburnhas created an absorbing plot and intriguing relationships between his characters.
Hillbarn director Greg Fritsch has hit the mark with three of his actors, but he has allowed Gangi too many shrill, over-the-top moments when Catherine becomes angry, which is fairly often.
Satterwhite’s Hal and Lambert’s Robert (seen in flashbacks) provide needed moments of calm to offset her. Lagodzinski’s Claire is both controlling and condescending, two hallmarks of the character.
Because the play opened on March 13, the eve of Pi Day on March 14, or 3.14.15, the refreshment stand featured pie. The number pi, 3.1415 to infinity, has major significance in math because a circle’s circumference is slightly more than three times longer than its diameter.
Steve Nyberg’s homey backyard set features the Greek letter pi spotlighted overhead (lighting by David Gotlieb). The sound is by artistic director Dan Demers. Costumes are by Mae Matos. Lagodzinski does double duty as hair and makeup consultant.
This well-written two-act play runs about two hours with one intermission.
“Proof” will continue through March 29 at Hillbarn Theatre, 1285 E. Hillsdale Blvd., Foster City. For tickets, call (650) 349-6411 or visit www.hillbarntheatre.org.
[Woody’s [rating: 3]
Ensemble cast of “A Month in the Country” includes (left to right) Kim Bromley as Anna, Robyn Wiley as Lizaveta, Mark Shepard as Herr Schaaf, Ben Orega as Michel and Shannon Veon Kase as Natalya. Photo by Robin Jackson.
- Shannon Veon Kase stars as Natalya, and Tom Hudgens portrays Arkady, in Ivan Turgenev’s classic comedy “A Month in the Country.” Photo by Robin Jackson.
- Zach Stewart (Alexsey) and Emily Ludlow (Vera) toy with kite in “A Month on the Country.” Photo by Robin Jackson.
Sophisticated Natalya, 29, is having a premature midlife crisis.
So she flits between rage and passion.
She ignores the steady, boring love of her husband, Arkady, and the fawning adoration of a friend/wannabe lover, Michel, only to fall for Alexsey, her young son’s naïve 21-year-old tutor.
That’s the heart of “A Month in the Country,” a lightweight comedy of manners weighed down by a touch of the mustiness I should have expected from a play penned in the mid-1800s by Ivan Turgenev, Russian novelist famed for “Fathers and Sons.”
Yet the ensemble cast of Ross Valley Players largely keeps things effervescent and, through its professionalism, overcomes the sluggish pacing the playwright built in.
Not to mention his repetition.
The dozen community theater thespians were good enough, however, to ward off my sporadic desire to snooze.
I admired, too, other elements of the play adapted in 1992 by Irish dramatist Brian Friel (a Tony Award-winner for “Dancing at Lughnasa”):
• Friel’s updated language (“I’m not one of his college sluts”).
• Costume designer Michael A. Berg’s fetching women’s attire (a calculated contrast with his unexciting men’s formal ware).
• The artistic accomplishments of Ken Rowland, who’s created more than 100 extraordinary set designs for the company since 1982 but out-extraordinaried himself with this show’s elegant ebony-and-rose vision of a posh country estate (universal enough to have been located in the Hamptons as easily as Russia).
• Director James Nelson’s brave choice to absent anticipated Russian accents while not limiting actor Ben Ortega’s Hispanic inflections in the role of Michel — and then including comedic German dialect by Mark Shepard as Herr Schaaf (a character with a penchant for malapropisms such as calling himself “a lecher” when he means archer).
Unusual, besides, is the use of offstage actors mouthing interior musings for several characters.
Particularly outstanding performances are turned in by Shannon Veon Kase as Natalya; Wood Lockhart, the veteran workhorse of the RVR troupe as Dr. Shpigelsky, a “bitter, angry peasant” hanger-on who prefers being a matchmaker; and Ortega.
Despite the farcical facets of “A Month in the Country,” Turgenev’s pre-Chekhovian thesis might be summarized by one character declaring “I’m afraid all love is a catastrophe” and another proclaiming “when you find yourself enslaved by love…you’ll know what real suffering is.”
Cynical? Perhaps.
Snarky?
Without doubt.
But great fodder for what advance publicity tells us “A Month in the Country” does — let us laugh at our own foibles (and sometimes misguided appetites).
And yes, the 150-minute period piece is long, as well as long-in-the-tooth.
But that having been said, it’s ultimately as cheery as the recorded bird sounds played before the show starts.
“A Month in the Country” plays at The Barn Theatre, Marin Art & Garden Center, 30 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Ross, through April 12. Evening performances, Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Thursdays, 7:30 p.m. Matinees, Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $14 to $29. Information: (415) 456-9555 or www.rossvalleyplayers.com.
Contact Woody Weingarten at voodee@sbcglobal.net or www.vitalitypress.com
[Woody’s [rating: 4]
Ron Tobin in “My Mother’s Italian, My Father’s Jewish & I’m in Therapy!” Photo by Rudy Lens.
Actor-comic Ron Tobin has mastered, I’d guess, at least 17 voices and 42 verbal sound effects.
Or maybe it’s the other way around.
Plus, give or take, 28 accents.
He can instantly change faces — and identities — by distorting his mouth or brow and scrunching up or widening his eyes.
His elastic body and swinging hands can conjure up hysterically dysfunctional and hysterically funny men, women, dogs and a cat.
During a one-man show at the Del Valle Theater — “My Mother’s Italian, My Father’s Jewish & I’m in Therapy!” — Tobin portrayed, in quick succession (and with exquisite comedic timing) a nasal stewardess, a cabbie from a Middle East country, a guru from India, an 83-year-old Jamaican gated community guard, a phlegm-ish uncle — as well as the constantly bickering title characters based on writer-comic Steve Solomon’s ethnically divided parents.
I’m normally a tough audience for comedians. But Tobin made me laugh out loud repeatedly.
The show isn’t seamless, though.
It’s uneven, and may lean too heavily on potty humor.
It also becomes fleetingly awkward when a singular poignant grandma moment unexpectedly interferes with the cresting comedy.
And some of its gags and situations are older than Moses.
Like the clichéd notion of his wife loving sex — until the second they wed.
Promotional materials call the monologue “one part lasagna, one part kreplach and two parts Prozac,” and say it’s really all about leaving dinner “with heartburn and a headache.”
But I’m pleased to report “My Mother’s Italian” is much funnier than its publicity.
I couldn’t begin to count all the one-liners crammed into the two-act, 100-minute show that ran for two years in New York City and has toured internationally in more than 200 cites since.
What absolutely worked for me were the numerous set-ups about the aging process — especially hearing loss (maybe you had to be there, but mom hears “Lebanese” instead of “lesbian”) and bodily non-functions.
And the obvious ethnic jibes (“What are genitals?” “Those are the people who aren’t Jewish”).
Most of the jokes, such as those, play vastly better on stage than they read in a review. And the laughter they provoke is appropriately contagious.
A guy behind me saw the show in San Diego with Solomon and found it side-splitting enough to see again with Tobin.
He couldn’t stop laughing the second time around.
The cackles of several women near him were so raucous they nearly drowned out the next three punch-lines.
Tobin had learned his script well. But he also inserted an amusing smidgeon of reality. In a five-minute encore, he riffed about having gotten lost while trying to find the Walnut Creek theater where I saw him perform — after I, too, got lost.
“Tell your friends,” he mockingly pleaded, “not just about the show — about how to get here.”
“My Mother’s Italian, My Father’s Jewish & I’m in Therapy!” will run through March 29 at the Del Valle Theater, 1963 Tice Valley Road, Walnut Creek. Evening performances, Wednesdays and Thursdays, 7 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 6 p.m. Matinees, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $45 to $65. Information: www.LesherARTScenter.org or 1-925-943-7469.
Contact Woody Weingarten at voodee@sbcglobal.net or at www.vitalitypress.com/
Long-held family secrets and resentments surface in Rajiv Joseph’s “The Lake Effect,” presented by TheatreWorks.
Anyone who has spent a winter east or southeast of a Great Lake knows about the lake effect. It’s heavy snowfall resulting from cold wind blowing over the warmer water and picking up moisture, which becomes snow. In the play, lake effect also has an allegorical meaning, which becomes clear near the end.
The action takes place during the winter in a dingy, now-closed Indian restaurant in Cleveland, along the Lake Erie shoreline. Because its longtime immigrant owner is ailing, his estranged son, Vijay (Adam Poss), goes there for the first time in 15 years.
While Vijay reviews his father’s financial records, Bernard (Jason Bowen), a black man, comes in. He says that he always has lunch there and that the father, Vinnie (not seen), is his good friend. That’s when the first secret comes to light. The ever-frugal Vinnie has taken to betting on pro football. As his bookie (Bernard denies that status, says he just place bets for Vinnie), Bernard wants to give him his latest winnings.
Vijay is dismayed when Bernard tells him that Vinnie never mentioned a son but that he often talked about his daughter. Soon Vijay’s younger sister, Priya (Nilanjana Bose), arrives. Sibling rivalry is evident. Even more conflicts arise after Vinnie’s death.
All three characters have their own issues and problems, but Bernard copes more effectively in part because of his optimism. That attitude gradually affects the siblings and allows the three to form a quasi-family.
Set designer Wilson Chin (with lighting by Matthew Johns) recreates the lake effect with several inches of snow piled on a car parked outside the restaurant as more snow falls. Sound by Brendan Aanes evokes the cold, blustery weather every time the door opens and a bundled-up character enters (costumes by Jill Bowers).
Although the emotions can run high, the tension is often leavened with humor. Sensitive direction by Giovanna Sardelli capitalizes on this ebb and flow.
All three actors do well, but Bowen as Bernard has perhaps the deepest role and mines it well.
This intriguing play runs just under 90 minutes without intermission.
“The Lake Effect” will continue through March 29 at the Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto. For tickets and information, call (650) 463-1960 or visit www.theatreworks.org.
[Woody’s [rating: 3.5]
John Fisher (kneeling) directs himself (as gay scientist Alan Turing) and Heren Patel (as his young Greek lover, Nikos) in “Breaking the Code.” Photo by David Wilson.
- The real Alan Turing.
One plus one can add up to more than one might expect.
Having seen the film “The Imitation Game,” I suspected I’d find “Breaking the Code,” a parallel play about math and men, merely a re-run since it leaned on the same biographical source — the real life of Alan Turing.
My computations were wrong.
“Code” adds considerable depth by emphasizing Turing’s homosexuality and humanness (as opposed to the hit movie’s slicker, dramatic focus on the gay scientist’s breaking a Nazi code).
Indeed, John Fisher doesn’t portray Turing. He instead inhabits the character’s body and makes him astoundingly authentic.
A mental giant and “an old poof” to whom “possessions per se mean very little.”
Powerful yet pathetic.
Fisher adroitly incorporates the atheist mathematician’s quirkiness without turning him into a caricature — his OCD-like insistence on lining up chairs and tables with exactitude (on an almost bare, pliable set); his fussy straightening of clothing; his recurrent fingernail-biting; and his childlike climbing into a fetal position in chairs.
The director also slyly prods the plot through a recording of “Someday My Prince Will Come” from the Disney cartoon classic, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”
Both play, which is surprisingly not devoid of humor, and film are well worth seeing.
And, happily, still catchable.
The former, presented by Theatre Rhinoceros, runs through March 21 at the Eureka Theatre in San Francisco; the latter can yet be found in various Bay Area movie houses.
I, for one, was glad I saw the movie first — it made the jerky backward-and-forward time shifts of the play simpler to discern.
Turing was an unlikeable, often neurotic, sometimes dysfunctional gay scientist who — despite odds of “50,000 to 1 against” —broke the Enigma code.
His work, which resulted in his pioneering the computer and artificial intelligence, helped win World War II because it enabled the Allied forces to pinpoint Nazi U-boat movements.
Turing, ironically a devotee of logic, nevertheless was convicted of being a homosexual.
He was sentenced to undergo hormone treatments that left him so physically and mentally bereft he, after two years of persecution, committed suicide at age 41.
That tragedy, apparently a historic inevitability, might well slice through a theatergoer’s emotional armor.
“Breaking the Code,” by Emmy award-winning playwright Hugh Whitemore, was based on Andrew Hodges’ book. It was originally produced in London and on Broadway in the late ‘80s.
But the playwright apparently took some liberties with the truth.
For instance, Turning, who was protected by Winston Churchill (and posthumously pardoned by Queen Elizabeth in December 2013), had been thoroughly investigated by police.
He didn’t accidentally blurt out his sexual preferences to a cop.
Accurately depicted, however, was the scientist’s fascination-flirtation with a schoolmate, Christopher Morcom, whose premature death haunted him all his life — and an awkward, non-sexual, short-lived entanglement with a female co-worker who worshipped him.
Not only is Fisher, the Rhino’s executive artistic director since 2002, brilliant in his acting, his direction is equally luminous.
He makes the play’s two hours race by, he ensures everyone’s British accent is consistent and easy to penetrate, and he draws the best possible performances from Celia Maurice as Turing’s doting but unenlightened mother, Sarah; Val Hendrickson as Dillwyn Knox, his supportive boss who personally doesn’t care if Turing goes “to bed with choir boys or cocker spaniels” but frets about what the authorities will think; Kirsten Peacock as his infatuated coworker friend Pat Green; and Justin Lucas as Ron Miller, Turning’s lover-user-betrayer.
Like most, I knew zilch about Turing before the publicity bandwagon gassed up for “Imitation Game” and Benedict Cumberbatch’s starring role.
I feel richer for having been informed.
“Breaking the Code” will play at the Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson St. (at Front and Battery streets), San Francisco, through March 21. Evening performances, Sundays, 7 p.m.; Wednesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m. Matinees, Saturdays, 3 p.m. Tickets: $10 to $30 (subject to change). Information: 1-800-838-3006 or www.TheRhino.org
Contact Woody Weingarten at voodee@sbcglobal.net or check out his blog at www.vitalitypress.com/
African Drama in Troubled Times, Troubled Places
For its first production of the new year, Marin Theatre Company is presenting “The Convert,” a Bay Area premiere by Zimbabwean-American playwright and actress, Danai Gurira. The play is important for its originality. It’s an African period piece and a dual-language script set in the present Zimbabwe — Rhodesia in 1896 — at a time when native Africans had begun to strike out against the British colonists and other Africans who sided with them. It’s also another culture’s views of family loyalty.
The play opens with Jekesai, half naked, fleeing with her cousin Tamba from her forced marriage to a much-married older man. This flight will enrage her uncle, who was waiting to collect his “bride price.” Tamba takes her to a safe house, the home of Chilford, a young Catholic clergyman, not yet ordained, where Mai Tamba, Jekesai’s aunt, is housekeeper. The home is furnished with a few pieces of Victorian-style furniture and a small altar on one side of the room. The only other ornamentation is a large, wall-mounted crucifix that startles the young Shona girl. Before Chilford arrives, Mai Tamba throws a concealing, shapeless gown over her niece, then introduces her as a new student and convert. His claim to have the power of God with him will keep Jekesai safe from her enraged uncle. And because Chilford needs converts to improve his status with the Jesuits, he accepts the protege and changes her name to Ester.
Mai Tamba keeps the house in order, but keeps her beliefs to herself. She recites her prayers as required: “Hail, Mary, full of ghosts,” but privately scatters unknown herbs around the home and later upbraids her niece for not going to the family ceremony to honor the dead.
Others come to the home. Chancellor, a friend of Chilford, affects British dress and language because he wants to be part of the winning team. The two friends speak an ornamented kind of English together, while Chancellor’s fiance, Prudence, presents herself as more British than Queen Victoria.
The play’s accents, bilingualism and length make huge demands on both cast and director. MTC’s Jasson Minadakis has assembled a superb, all-Equity cast from locals and imports. Both Katherine Renee Turner (Jekesai/Ester) and Jefferson A. Russell (Chancellor) were together in MTC’s recent production, “Fetch Clay, Make Man.” L. Peter Callender (Uncle) and Omoze Idehenre (Prudence) have made many appearances in the Bay Area, including in Marin Theatre Co’s “Seven Guitars.” Elizabeth Carter (Mai Tamba) has multiple acting credits locally, while both Jabari Brisport (Chilford) and JaBen Early (Tamba) are making their Marin debuts in this play.
Excellent actors and direction will be necessary for “The Convert” to continue in production at other theatres. Ms. Gurira’s script is almost three hours long and burdened with lengthy speeches. “Wordy,” was a remark overheard at the first of two intermissions. Further, the accents can sometimes overcome the dialogue and make it hard to understand — especially during the speeches. This script will need a tune-up if it’s going to get “legs,” but meanwhile, Marin Theatre Company has given “The Convert” a fine introduction to the west coast.
“The Convert” will play at the Marin Theatre Company in Mill Valley Tuesdays through Sundays till March 15. Sunday matinees are at 2p.m. All evening shows begin at 7p.m. Ticket prices range from $20 — $58, with discounts available for seniors and military. For additional information, see the website, marintheatre.org, or call the box office, (415) 388-5208.
Reviewed by Suzanne and Greg Angeo
Members, San Francisco Bay Are Theatre Critics Circle
Photos courtesy of Main Stage West
John Craven, Nick Sholley
Ghosts of the Soul
Modern Irish playwright Conor McPherson is known for crafting stories with elements of the paranormal. His 2004 play “Shining City” was first performed in London’s West End and saw its Broadway debut in 2006. It was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play.
This is a ghost story that’s about more than just floating bits of protoplasm. It’s about haunted people who carry their ghosts around with them. The tale unrolls like an interesting fabric with frayed edges purposely left undone. Set in contemporary Dublin, “Shining City” is spooky drama leavened with wry humor. Taking place entirely in a dingy therapist’s office, it was written to flow seamlessly over five scenes without intermission. At Main Stage West, there is one, and the dynamics remain intact.
The play opens with John (John Craven) arriving at the appointed time. He is jittery and jumpy, as if wired to an electric current. His wife died in a car crash a few months back, and now he’s seeing her spirit in the house they shared. Positive he’s coming unhinged by grief and guilt over his past failures as a husband, he’s visiting a therapist to unload. His therapist Ian (Nick Sholley), an ex-priest, has his own inner ghosts to exorcise. John is his very first patient, and he’s unsure how to proceed. His relationship with his fiancé Neasa (Ilana Niernberger) has hit a rocky patch. For mysterious reasons, he has estranged himself from her and their baby, and she shows up at the office later and demands to know why. Finally, an enigmatic drifter named Laurence (John Browning) appears, summoned by Ian for what he hopes will be a moment of self-discovery.
Ilana Niernberger, Nick Sholley
The expressions “on your own”, “on my own”, “on her own” are used over and over again. This suggests not independence, but loneliness and isolation, a sense of being alone in the company of others. “Frightening” is also repeated a number of times, as if to drive home the terror of aloneness. A number of cathartic monologues delivered by Craven are sheer, spellbinding magic.
The dialogue flows very naturally including those long, awkward conversational gaps where the silence says more than the words ever could. All four performances, as an ensemble, are courageous, creative and spot-on. As the tormented John, Craven’s unease is palpable. Sholley’s Ian conveys the sense of a great listener, assured on the surface with turmoil just beneath. Niernberger gives a notable performance in showing Neasa’s frantic attempt to understand Ian and salvage what’s left of what they once had. And Browning is restrained and insightful as Laurence in his single, surprising scene with Sholley.
Beth Craven’s sensitive and perceptive direction lends just the right touch, enhancing the unique situation of each scene. “Shining City” is quietly moving and provocative at the same time, with an eerie conclusion that raises more questions than it answers. More than just the story, the words pull you along, a mastery of wordcraft over stagecraft.
John Browning, Nick Sholley
When: Now through March 15, 2015
8:00 p.m Thursdays, Fridays & Saturdays
5:00 p.m. Sundays
Tickets $15 to $27 (Thursdays are “pay what you will” at the door only)
Where: Main Stage West
104 North Main Street
Sebastopol, CA 95472
(707) 823-0177
Frankie (Juan Amador) listens to Beth (Jessi Campbell) as Baylor (Robert Parsons) looks on.(Photo by Jennifer Reiley)
A Lie of the Mind: Drama. By Sam Shepard. Directed by Loretta Greco. Magic Theatre, Building D, Fort Mason Center, S.F. Two hours 50 minutes. (415) 441-8822 or www.magictheatre.org
A Lie of the Mind is a long night’s journey at the Magic Theatre [rating:3]
Extended through March 14, 2015
Once again 24 hours separated an evening of fun and an evening of intense drama with nary a separation of two miles between the two theatres. Wednesday the national tour of the musical Newsies at the Orpheum left the audience with warm feelings as they gave the production a standing ovation. The next night an exceptionally fine staging of Magic Theatre’s local production of Sam Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind led some of the audience to leave at intermission. It was not an unexpected situation at the Magic that seems to stage plays involving dysfunctional families.
Sam Shepard who honed his art as playwright-in-residence for 10 years (1974-1984) at the Magic is known for his portrayal of dysfunctional families. In doing so he has earned honors heaped on honors with his plays and Buried Child earned the 1978 Pulitzer Prize. That play has received stunning staging by A.C.T and the Magic. The present production of Lie of the Mind has never been produced in the Bay Area and can be recommended for its historical relationship to the Shepard’s development as a writer and as an example of Lorretta Greco’s directorial skills. It has been suggested it is the final chapter of Curse of the Starving Class (1976), Buried Child (1979), True West (1980), and Fool for Love (1983) that are semi-autobiographical with the male characters dominating. Although the action of the male characters In A Lie of the Mind are the causation of events, his female characters take center stage and are given almost equal status as the males.
The story involves two dysfunctional families, separated by miles but tied together by marriage. Jake, his brother Frankie, sister Sally and their mother Lorraine live in a Western State. Jake’s wife Beth is from a North Dakota family that includes a mother Meg, a father Baylor and a brother Mike. Their abstruse relationships are gradually defined though Shepard’s mastery of dialog and action creating fully rounded individuals but ends with more questions than answers.
The play begins and ends with violence and is filled with intense situations that are gut-wrenching but at times somehow garner stifled laughs from the audience. Those moments are few. What can one expect when the opening scene is a telephone call between brothers Jake and Frankie where hyper-manic Jake is confessing his near fatal beating of his wife Beth and a second hospital scene of brain-damaged Beth being consoled by her brother Mike?
Shepard is a master at developing bits of information combined with physicality to create fully rounded characters but he is not above using exposition in the guise of ordinary conversation to unravel past actions that defines personality. A specific scene that defines the true relationship between the manic Jake and his deceased drunken father is one of those lapses in the plays construction. This may be due to the fact that he gives those specific lines to Jakes young sister Sally (Elaina Garrity) and it does not carry the horrific nature of a past event that leads to a momentous decision by mother Lorraine (a marvelous Catherine Castellanos) and Sally to abandon the family home.
Jessi Campbell gives a Tony Award winning type of performance as the brain damaged Beth and you will find yourself trying to help her find the words buried in the prison of her mind. Sean San Jose gives a histrionic patina to his performance as Jake just as Shepard has suggested in his stage directions. (Shepard directed the original production). You can feel the mental and physical pain tinged with loyalty of Jake’s younger brother Frankie in Juan Amador’s performance. James Wagner’s transition as Beth’s concerned and protective brother Mike to an unbalanced deer hunter seems artificial even if Shepard had intended the dichotomy. Robert Parsons and Julia McNeal as the parents of Beth and Mike do a superbly believable job of displaying the attributes written into their characters.
This three act play as suggested by the author has complicated scene changes and may be one reason it has not had many productions. Director Greco has wisely simplified the staging and the scenes flow smoothly even when the action is hectic. Original music written and performed by Nicholas Aives and Jason Cirimele is used as bridges between scenes, underscores monologs and opens and closes each act. Running time 2 hours and 50 minutes with one intermission.
CAST: Juan Amador (Frankie); Jessi Campbell (Beth); Catherine Castellanos (Lorraine); Julia McNeal (Meg); Robert Parsons (Baylor); Sean San Jose (Jake); James Wagner (Mike); Elaina Garrity (Sally).
CREATIVE TEAM: Director, Loretta Greco; Set Design, Robert Brill; Costume Design, Alex Jaeger; Lighting Design, Burke Brown; Sound Design, Sara Huddleston; Stage Manager, Karen Szpaller; Dramaturg, Jane Ann Crum; Vocal Coach, Deborah Sussel; Fight Director, Dave Maier; Director of Production, Sara Huddleston; Technical Director, Dave Gardner; Props Design, Jacquelyn Scott; Local Casting,Dori Jacob and Ryan Guzzo Purcell; Original Music Composed and Played by Nicholas Aives and Jason Cirimele
Kedar K. Adour, MD
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