Wine leads to the release of some inner Big Scary Animals at the Masquers Playhouse. From left are Kim Saunders (Rhonda), Joseph Walters (Donald), David Zubiria (Clark), and Duane Lawrence (Marcus). Photo by Mike Padua.
By WOODY WEINGARTEN
It’s easy to forget that human beings are critters — unless you’re seated in the Masquers Playhouse in Point Richmond watching Big, Scary Animals. Then you can’t ignore our baser behaviors and instincts.
If you have any sense of humor at all, you’re apt to spend much of the 90-minute comic drama by Matt Lyle laughing out loud at the dialogue and feral antics of four Homo sapiens, Until the playwright’s “truth bombs” abruptly smack you between the eyes.
The hidden biases and contradictions of each character either ooze or explode in unexpected ways at unexpected moments.
The plotline is simplistic and predictable: A middle-aged, straight white couple relocates to Dallas in 2015, “a simpler time,” to be closer to their granddaughter. But they’ve unintentionally bought into a “gayborhood.”.
Midway through, all hell breaks loose when a polite dinner conversation with their gay black and Latino next-door neighbors deep dive into sensitive subjects — race, sex, sanity, the N- and C- words, and gun control, among others. Director Gabriel A. Ross milks all the bathos possible while ensuring that no potential laugh-line is downplayed.
The entire ensemble cast is superlative, with Kim Saunders standing out as Rhonda, a naïve Christian “cracker” whose inner big, scary animal can be triggered by a single action and a single glass of wine, and David Zbiria as Clark, a flaming, hysterically funny, Latino homosexual whose common sense eventually erases his emotional spasms. Duane Lawrence inhabits the character of Marcus, a serious black college professor whose secrets are bursting to be revealed, paralleling the inner angst and problematic memories of Joseph Walters as Donald, whose wife repeatedly labels him as stupid.
Consoling Joseph Walters (Donald, center) are Kim Saunders (Rhonda) and Tristan Rodriguez (Ronnie). Photo by Mike Padua.
Two others — Natalie Ford as Sophia, a 20ish black “slut” who tries to use her psych-major tools at inappropriate times, and Tristan Rodriguez as Ronnie, the straight couple’s “troubled” son who’s gently being seduced by Sophia — do the most with under-developed roles.
The audience at a Sunday matinee rocked the small theater with laughter and expressed its consummate pleasure during a 30-minute Talk-Back session afterward. One theatergoer summed up the show this way: “It was heavy butreally funny.” Another said, “My eyes are still wet.”
The director, meanwhile, said he thought one takeaway from the provocative show should be, “There’s a good chance that you have something in common with the person you despise.”
Big, Scary Animals will run at the Masquers Playhouse, 105 Park Place, Point Richmond, through Sept. 28. Tickets: $30 to $35. Information: 510-232-3888 or info@masquers.org.
Sherwood “Woody” Weingarten, a longtime voting 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.
