{"id":10325,"date":"2014-02-20T12:04:59","date_gmt":"2014-02-20T20:04:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forallevents.com\/reviews\/?p=10325"},"modified":"2014-02-20T12:08:34","modified_gmt":"2014-02-20T20:08:34","slug":"funny-riveting-gender-bender-is-best-play-in-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forallevents.com\/reviews\/funny-riveting-gender-bender-is-best-play-in-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Funny, riveting gender-bender is \u2018best play\u2019 in years"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Amidst the massive clutter of their home and lives, transgender Max (Jax Jackson) and Paige (Nancy Opel), his mother, mirror one another in \u201cHir.\u201d Photo: Jennifer Reiley.\u00a0Woody’s [rating:5]<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0Woody’s [rating:5]<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHir,\u201d a gender-bending, tragicomic world premiere at the Magic Theatre, is the best Bay Area play I\u2019ve seen this season.<\/p>\n

In several seasons, in fact.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019ve attended more than a few magnificent shows during that timeframe.<\/p>\n

To call \u201cHir\u201d hilariously riveting would be to understate enormously the impact it had on the opening night San Francisco audience.<\/p>\n

Including me.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t have enough superlatives in my word-arsenal with which to praise the writing, direction, acting, set design and costumes.<\/p>\n

Describing what\u2019s what may make the play sound bizarre rather than funny. But playwright Taylor Mac keeps the laughter level extremely high.<\/p>\n

Niegel Smith is the perfect director for what Mac calls \u201cabsurd realism.\u201d Though every gag line draws a laugh, each stammer, brief pause or elongated silence also hits a dramatic bulls-eye.<\/p>\n

And Smith\u2019s pacing is spot on.<\/p>\n

Paige is the antithesis of the submissive mom that populates so much pop culture. Instead, she\u2019s a tear-down-the-established-routine demon who humiliates her husband with acts of comeuppance that include squirting water into his face as a trainer might to a disobedient kitten.<\/p>\n

Nancy Opel portrays her with all the requisite venom. A Tony-nominated actress, she is a comic delight, spewing Mac\u2019s acerbic words like ammo from a Gatling gun.<\/p>\n

She informs us the family\u2019s role now \u2014 30 years after building its \u201cstarter house\u201d \u2014 is to put on shadow-puppet shows and \u201cplay dress up.\u201d<\/p>\n

The playwright takes dysfunctionality to new heights. Or, perhaps, it might be more accurate to say new lows.<\/p>\n

The play, set in a central valley suburb similar to Stockton, where Mac grew up, makes the audience feel good because their fractured families can\u2019t possibly be that <\/em>screwed up.<\/p>\n

Jax Jackson adroitly plays Max, formerly Maxine \u2014 a 17-year-old \u201cgender-queer\u201d malcontent who\u2019s been homeschooled and makes Holden Caulfield\u2019s angst look as antiquated and simplistic as something out of a the old-time radio soap opera \u201cOne Man\u2019s Family.\u201d<\/p>\n

He no longer chooses to be a she or a he but a gender-neutral ze<\/em> (pronounced zay); in addition, he substitutes hir <\/em>(pronounced heer) for the pronouns him or her.<\/p>\n

A youth whose fantasy is to join an anarchist commune, Max finds his mind somewhere behind the curve of the hormone-triggered gender changes ze<\/em> has put hir<\/em> body through with self-medicating experimentation.<\/p>\n

He calls himself \u201ctransmasculine\u201d and \u201ca fag.\u201d He likes boys. He loves masturbating.<\/p>\n

And he thinks he\u2019s \u201callowed to be selfish because I\u2019m in transition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Max goes ballistic about the biblical story of Noah being \u201ctransphobic\u201d because only male and female animals were allowed aboard the ark \u2014 and because Leonardo da Vinci\u2019s transexuality and that of his self-portrait, the Mona Lisa, aren\u2019t acknowledged.<\/p>\n

Actually, it\u2019s not crucial for a theatergoer to \u201cget\u201d all the gender-based phrasing \u2014 or even the alphabet soup LGBT has evolved into, LGBTTSQQIAA.<\/p>\n

The gist becomes clear through context.<\/p>\n

Clear, too, is Mark Anderson Phillips\u2019s performance despite his character barely speaking.<\/p>\n

He skillfully portrays Arnold, the stroke-ridden ex-plumber, ex-abuser father who represents a disintegrating culture and who\u2019s typically plopped in front of the Lifetime Channel when Paige and Max go out.<\/p>\n

And Ben Euphrat is effectively transparent as Isaac, a Marine vet of the Afghanistan war dishonorably discharged after becoming a meth addict. He may have PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), and vomits profusely, the aftermath of his job of collecting body parts.<\/p>\n

Isaac comes back to unrecognizable home and family, and desperately wants to restore them \u2014 and himself \u2014 to the way everything was when he left.<\/p>\n

I missed \u201cThe Lily\u2019s Revenge,\u201d Mac\u2019s earlier allegorical play\/carnival at the Magic, thinking neither my brain nor my buttocks could handle five acts and five hours no matter how brilliant.<\/p>\n

Now I have regrets.<\/p>\n

Mac, not incidentally, is a triple threat: Although he\u2019s written 16 full-length plays, he also performs as an actor and singer-songwriter (his most recent outing was as co-star with Mandy Patinkin in an off-Broadway workshop of \u201cThe Last Two People on Earth: An Apocalyptic Vaudeville\u201d last December).<\/p>\n

While introducing his latest dark, darker, darkest humor showcase to the opening night audience, Loretta Greco, the Magic\u2019s producing artistic director, said, \u201cBuckle your seat belts. You\u2019re in for an incredible ride.\u201d<\/p>\n

She wasn\u2019t lying.<\/p>\n

\u201cHir\u201d plays at the Magic Theater, Building D, Fort Mason Center, San Francisco, through March 2. Performances: Sundays and Tuesdays, 7 p.m., Wednesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m.; matinees, Sundays and Wednesdays, 2:30 p.m. Tickets: $15 to $60. Information: (415) 441-8822 or www.magictheatre.org.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Woody’s [rating:5] \u201cHir,\u201d a gender-bending, tragicomic world premiere at the Magic Theatre, is the best Bay Area play I\u2019ve seen this season. In several seasons, in fact. And I\u2019ve attended…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"yasr_overall_rating":0,"yasr_post_is_review":"","yasr_auto_insert_disabled":"","yasr_review_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10325","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-woody-weingarten"},"yasr_visitor_votes":{"stars_attributes":{"read_only":true,"span_bottom":"