It’s easy to see Dan Hoyle in Talk to Your People. It’s easy to hear him. But it’s virtually impossible to absorb everything he says.
The one-man, multiple-character show, which runs at The Marsh Berkeley through March 11, is incredibly deep and dense — so dense, in fact, that it could take a second (or third) viewing to get it all.
It’s certainly more opaque than his last show, Border People, which focused on tribes different from his own liberal Caucasian cultural backdrop.
Hoyle, Talk to Your People
Hoyle, a consummate performer, here in his seventh show continues his documentary-style outings that stem from interviewing countless people, a methodology he calls “the journalism of hanging out.” In this case, those people were mainly in Oakland, where he lives, and its hills.
But also, apparently, as far away as West Marin.
And, like the protesters on the street and the young girl splashing in the beach water or scootering on the concrete, all of whom appear in videos on a screen before and behind Hoyle, his agenda is straightforward: He wants the audience to deep-dive with him into complicated concepts such as systemic racism, culture-canceling, and White privilege — especially that last item.
His well-honed tools are his way with words (which ranges from simple and coarse to complex and eloquent), his skill with physical comedy and exaggeration, and, unlike his previous outings, a talent for utilizing rap and other genres of music to sneak-ease the viewer into digesting his messages.
Hoyle’s updated work is masterful, as are his playwriting abilities. The only thing missing, just like in previous creations, is a close-up depiction of females. They’re a second-hand presence, materializing only through the lips of the males.
Hoyle, Talk to Your People
To its credit, Talk to Your People, which had a mid-pandemic run in San Francisco a year ago, explores not only how society got to the current apparent low point it’s at but how it can move forward, using heart instead of brains.
The performance, developed and directed by Charlie Varon, an exquisite one-man show artist himself, spotlights Hoyle’s mash-up that spotlights, among others, a still-arrogant White corporate burn-out who in a former life was a combo hippie jock, a guy with “the soul of an activist” who isn’t anymore, an Argentine Marxist techie fidgeting because he’s discovered he’s an elite, and a Jewish PhD who’d been forced to read Dante’s Inferno when he was seven, who’d spent years as a White jazz musician, and who proclaims he’s “as neurotic and sensitive as anyone.”
Hoyle mouth-meanders in heartfelt, often poignant ways about filling in application boxes for ethnicity, “crypto versus cash,” defunding the police, unemployment, Black Lives Matter, Airbnbs, and being bi-racial.
He sprinkles Talk to Your People with descriptions of a guy bemoaning another who only has “one type of wine glass,” the idea that “people are beginning to live in their emotion,” and the notion that we all “should go back to middle school” to re-learn how to get along with each other.
It’s not all introspection, polemic, or talk about re-segregation, though. The show contains extraordinary moments of tenderness — for instance, when Hoyle portrays a father who often interrupts his conversation with a compadre to help his toddler take an invisible rocket to the moon.
Yes, there is some blurring that happens in Hoyle’s panoramic, 75-minute delivery, and an audience member needs to be forgiven if he or she or they doesn’t immediate grok who’s who onstage (even with the simple, effective costume changes that instantly change him from bare-chested beachgoer with beer in hand to, let’s say, a character whose shiny white sneakers distract).
If theatergoers want him to tie everything up with a neat multi-racial ribbon, they’ll be disappointed. Some may be put off, too, by lots of run-on sentences or casual swearing.
On the other hand, those who seek out tour de force solo performances and aren’t nettled by a smattering of flaws will be grateful he and his muses finished the piece.
Talk to Your People runs at the Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way through March 11. Tickets, $25 to $100. Info: https://themarsh.org or (425) 641-0235.
Woody Weingarten, a longtime member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle, can be contacted by email at voodee@sbcglobal.net or on his websites, https://woodyweingarten.com and https://vitality press.com.
