By WOODY WEINGARTEN

Rape.

That should be as offensive as any other four-letter word in the English language today, despite many of our society’s males consistently downplaying it.

Still, it was a tad worse 400 years ago.

At least that’s what’s displayed in It’s True, It’s True, It’s True, a dramatic polemic of sorts that runs at the Marin Theatre through May 4.

The play does focus on a positive theme — 15-year-old Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi using her paints and canvas to display her anger and pain and to get a taste of revenge for being sexually assaulted.

It’s a true tale.

Playwrights Ellice Stevens and Billy Barrett — and especially director Rebecca Wear — have mainly through exaggeration inserted just enough humor to keep the women in the audience in their seats instead of jumping up and screaming demands of female empowerment.

Rock music loud enough to obscure virtually all lyrics pops up at various times, played and sung at top decibels by the all-female Actors Equity cast of four. That, along with costumes by Pamela Rodriguez Montero that merge 1612 courtroom attire and 2025 black leather-and-glitz punk band garb, makes some moments jagged because the two timeframes don’t fit together seamlessly.

About a third of the script — a reenactment of a real-life he-said, she-said courtroom drama — stems from verbatim records, translated into modern English that might be spewed by street people in Berkeley, that had been preserved (though the final pages were lost).

Emily Anderson plays Artemisia Gentileschi, the victim, one moment her face flashing rage at being raped, the next flaunting a satirical exuberance from a male perspective. Clearly, she can be demure or filled with piss and vinegar.

Anderson is exceptionally potent when she becomes part of living tableaus depicting two of the Baroque artist’s paintings (“Judith Slaying Holofernes” and “Susanna and the Elders”). In those moments, she’s aided significantly by the astonishing lighting of Mikiko Uesugi and resounding sound effects by Matt Stines.

Anderson is superb, too, in a scene where she, totally frustrated, poignantly repeats the phrase “It’s true,” dozens of times.

Maggie Mason, in the gender-bending role of Renaissance Italian painter Agostino Tassi, is appropriately lecherous, cocky, and snarky — and is as apt to slyly insert into his testimony his credentials as staff artist for the Pope as he is to deny any culpability as a rapist.

As the black-robed judge, another male part, Alicia M.P. Nelson is pointedly personality-less, a sharp contrast to when she shows her acting range in several minor roles and her energy as the band’s lead singer.

The hour and a quarter show dissolves the century gap to reveal a plotline reflecting how gender equality is absent, how biased judges can allow victims to become de facto defendants, and how repeated lies can erase truth. Do those concepts replicate today’s headlines? Yes.

The performance also reveals not only how enemies are enemies but how so-called friends may not be trustworthy either. Keko Shimosato Carreiro portrays Donna Tuzia, supposed confidante to Artemisia, who wavers on the stand trying to gain favor with both sides. She flails her arms a lot.

It’s True, It’s True, It’s True is a flawed but fascinating experimental effort filled with content that some folks may dislike: the applying of thumb screws to Artemisia;; the grisly display of beheading and sex scenes (oral, anal, and self); the close-up look at naked breasts.

But those eager for something different, those willing to check out this story about the first woman to enter the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence in spite of having been slut-shamed and having had to battle gender inequality again and again, will appreciate having their brain massaged.

Even if the actors occasionally drop lines, and the set is practically non-existent.

Think rape. Think the #MeToo movement. Think a world of alternative facts. Think of yourself or your sister or your daughter. Think. Then shudder.

It’s True, It’s True, It’s True runs in the 99-seat Lieberman Theater in the Marin Theater, 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley, through May 4. Tickets: $10 to $81 (plus $6 handling fee per total order). Info: https://www.marintheatre.org or 415-388-5208.

Sherwood “Woody” Weingarten, a longtime member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle and the author of four books, can be contacted by email at voodee@sbcglobal.net or on his websites, https://woodyweingarten.com and https://vitalitypress.com.

 

 

By WOODY WEINGARTEN

Spirituality, grace, energy.

Those elements have since 1958 been trademarks of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre but never more so than now.

The company’s entire three-part Program C, which Cal Performances staged last week at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley, leaned more heavily on spirituality than usual — but in no way to the detriment of the other two components.

The program ended with “Revelations,’ the glorious signature piece that closes so many Ailey shows and is, of course, based on a series of Negro spirituals. But “Sacred Songs” (the emotional, sometimes frenzied opener) and “Many Angels” (danced lusciously with traditional dance movements to the solemn music of Gustav Mahler) both also provided a sense of connection to something greater than ordinary men and women.

In the first and third parts particularly, the dancers were so limber, so fluid, that it appeared they might be minus some bones.

And never did theatergoers need be sure their interpretation of the wonderment on stage (including verbal injections of Jesus, the Lord, and Elijah) were correct; it was sufficient to appreciate the seemingly flawless skill of the performers,

The audience was so enthusiastic it frequently interjected bursts of loud applause topped off with spasmodic cheering.

“Sacred Songs,” a Bay Area premiere whose diverse elements were a cornucopia of energy, fluttering wrists and fingers, and a reaching up to the heavens, featured several scenes so riveting they appeared to last only seconds before a blackout.

Its music — by DuBois AKeen — ranged from extreme softness in “Be Still” to frenzied jazz; garments were rapidly switched from jeans and mesh tops for men to pristine, loose-fitting white for both sexes, but their muted impact was immediately overshadowed by the wild energy, unadulterated smoothness, and synchronicity of the dancers’ movements.

Its choreography by Mathew Rushing ensured the whole stage was used superlatively — so well, in fact, it was impossible for human eyes to take it all in at once. Quickly changing focus from one dancer to another became a necessity, as if one were watching a three-ring circus filled with ballet pros.

One segment of the piece opened with a dancer’s hands moving as if she were playing bongo drums — so realistically you could almost see the instrument that wasn’t there.

“Many Angels,” also a Bay Area premiere, began with dancers on the floor in front of a noteworthy backdrop of clouds with light streaming through them. Both music and dance were a sharp contrast in tone to the rest of the performance. Choreography by Lars Lubovich, who also was responsible for the scenic design, flowed as smoothly as angels’ wings might flap in a celestial breeze.

This segment drew polite clapping and commentary about its soft, pale beauty as opposed to the unbridled tribute-yelling earned by “Revelations,” which brought applause from repeat viewers before the curtain rose.

“Revelations,” a 1960 creation choreographed by Ailey himself and colorfully costumed by Ves Harper, was so spirited that what felt like a third of the audience applauded rhythmically in unison to several of its 10 parts, A multitude of ballet-lovers leapt to their feet to sway and clap during the last one, “Rocka My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham,” which showcased the entire company.

Raucous applause and shouts of joy reverberated earlier when Xavier Mack finished his solo, “I Wanna Be Ready.”

And ultimately the crowd gave an expected standing ovation as the concert concluded, hints of joyous music still resounding in the acoustically superb auditorium.

Dance will be featured in two upcoming shows at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley, through Cal Performances: from a Brazilian troupe, Grupo Corpo, which blends classical ballet with folk and popular dance, April 25 and 26, and the Mark Morris Dance Group’s tribute to the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” May 9-11. Info: 510-642-9988 or https://calperformances.org.

Sherwood “Woody” Weingarten, a longtime member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle and the author of four books, can be contacted by email at voodee@sbcglobal.net or on his websites, https://woodyweingarten.com and https://vitalitypress.com.