{"id":9886,"date":"2014-01-31T17:34:12","date_gmt":"2014-02-01T01:34:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forallevents.com\/reviews\/?p=9886"},"modified":"2014-01-31T17:36:50","modified_gmt":"2014-02-01T01:36:50","slug":"pain-and-itch-is-funny-flaying-of-liberal-family-values","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forallevents.com\/reviews\/pain-and-itch-is-funny-flaying-of-liberal-family-values\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Pain and Itch\u2019 is funny flaying of liberal family values"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Woody’s [rating:3]<\/span><\/p>\n

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Clay (Justin Gillman) consoles his wife, Kelly (Karen Offereins), in \u201cThe Pain and the Itch.\u201d Photo by Jay Yamada.<\/p>\n

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Kelly (Karen Offereins, right), Kalina (Eden Neuendorf, center) and Carol (Jean Forsman) cling to each other and distorted family values in \u201cThe Pain and the Itch.\u201d Photo by Jay Yamada.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

I feel like a nine-year-old boy who\u2019s found a crisp new $100 bill on the sidewalk.<\/p>\n

Reveling in discovery.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never been to the Gough St. Playhouse before, but I\u2019ve obviously missed out on a lot if \u201cThe Pain and the Itch\u201d is a typical example of what the CustomMade Theatre Company produces there.<\/p>\n

\u201cPain,\u201d a mega-black comedy by Bruce Norris, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer of \u201cClaybourne Park,\u201d proffers a Thanksgiving meal piled high with biting insights into faux family values, racism, hypocrisy, wealth, dementia, a negligent death and, maybe, pedophilia.<\/p>\n

When a financially comfortable, liberal, ultra-judgmental and phony family gathers for a Thanksgiving meal in New York, its members and hangers-on munch on Brussels sprouts and long festering resentments.<\/p>\n

Norris unhurriedly peels the skin off the family\u2019s smugness as adroitly as if he were wielding a paring knife and onion.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s skillful in warding off an audience\u2019s tears but doesn\u2019t avoid the cringe factor as his characters attack each other in overt, sometimes cruel ways.<\/p>\n

Sometimes \u201cPain\u201d is shockingly funny.<\/p>\n

Sometimes not so much, like when the wife forces the husband to euthanize a cat to create a hypoallergenic situation for a second child.<\/p>\n

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Norris\u2019 main tool is flashback \u2014 an effective freeze-frame device for the most part, but occasionally jarring and confusing.<\/p>\n

Both the playwright and director Dale Albright make good use of Mr. Hadid (Dorian Lockett), an African American cab driver, an observer\/participant who usually sits on one sideline or another but sometimes asks seemingly oblique questions about the cost of things.<\/p>\n

The play centers on the hysteria of Clay (Justin Gillman), a golf-playing, porn-addicted, emasculated house-husband whose young daughter, Kayla (Gabriella Jarvie), has a major genital rash of unknown but possibly creepy origin.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s preoccupied by an unseen entity that\u2019s been gnawing at the family avocados.<\/p>\n

Clay lives in a world of hyperbole (\u201cWhy don\u2019t I just move out? Why don\u2019t I go upstairs and hang myself?\u201d).<\/p>\n

His wife, Kelly (Karen Offereins), a standoffish lawyer who tries to hide her own pain behind a cloak of intellectuality, continually puts him down.<\/p>\n

Her excuse?<\/p>\n

She feels she\u2019s been abused \u2014 by \u201csarcasm\u201d and \u201cneglect.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cash (Peter Townley), Clay\u2019s self-centered plastic surgeon brother, the black sheep of the family because he\u2019s a Republican, is involved with a bigoted, coarsely sexual 23-year-old \u00e9migr\u00e9, Kalina (Eden Neuendorf), who\u2019d been repeatedly raped in her native Eastern European country.<\/p>\n

The brothers\u2019 condescending, saccharine, baby-talking mother, Carol (Jean Forsman), is a socialist on the brink of dementia.<\/p>\n

With the possible exception of Neuendorf, whose accent is so thick it makes some phrases impossible to make out, all the performers acquit themselves rather well. Especially considering that Norris\u2019 words are so barbed and that the actors are asked to talk over each other with great frequency and volume.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Pain\u201d isn\u2019t quite as polished as \u201cClaybourne Park,\u201d which it pre-dated by six years. The nastiness in \u201cPain\u201d verges, in fact, on mean-spirited and vicious.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the play shows that Norris (himself Caucasian) is slightly obsessed with ridiculing the hypocrisy of rich, white folk.<\/p>\n

Still, the show\u2019s absolutely worth a look-see.<\/p>\n

And so is the almost hidden CustomMade troupe, ensconced in a bright but intimate black-box theater with exceptionally comfy seats and dedicated to \u201cproducing plays that awaken our social conscience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Opening night, more than a few of those 55 seats were empty. That\u2019s a crime: They certainly deserve to be filled for the entire run of the two-hour show.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Pain and the Itch\u201d plays at the Gough St. Playhouse, 1620 Gough St. (in the basement of the Trinity Episcopal Church, at Bush), San Francisco, through Feb. 16. Performances Thursday through Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 7 p.m. Tickets: $22 to $35. Information: (415) 798-2682 or www.custommade.org.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Woody’s [rating:3] I feel like a nine-year-old boy who\u2019s found a crisp new $100 bill on the sidewalk. Reveling in discovery. I\u2019ve never been to the Gough St. Playhouse before,…<\/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-9886","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":"