THEATRE REVIEW:
KPBS
AIRDATE: November 21, 2003
It's theatrical chiaroscuro; love
looked at through dark shadows and filtered through dappled, sunny light. Two
vastly different plays, playwrights, countries, eras. But a similar question
arises in both: Do you love me for the right reasons? Would you still marry me
if I were a carpenter and you were a lady? Love is put to the test in an 18th
century French farce by Marivaux, "The Game of Love and Chance,” and in
Arthur Miller's throbbing 1955 drama, "A View from the Bridge." One
play is buoyant and whimsical, with a gentle undertone of gravity. The other,
an American classic, is a dark exploration of love in its many forms: familial,
incestuous, cultural, marital. The depth and shadows are occasionally permeated
with humor.
Both plays transport and inspire us, in
magnificent local productions.
It's always Miller-time in the theater.
The plays of the American master are rooted in a particular time, place and
political situation, but they remain eternally relevant. In "A View from
the Bridge," Arthur Miller confronts issues that could have been ripped
off the front page of the paper: homophobia, incest, betrayal, illegal
immigrants. The structure harks back to the dramatic traditions of classical
Greek tragedy, with the audience knowing the outcome at the outset, with a
chorus of sorts, in the form of a lawyer who's both inside and out of the
action, telling us what's coming and how inexorable, inevitable, the ending is.
The main character, Brooklyn longshoreman Eddie Carbone, has the requisite
tragic flaws that will cause his downfall. This is deep, delicious drama, full
of human insight and emotion, and acted to perfection. Renaissance Theatre's
director George Flint has assembled an outstanding cast that makes every
high-tension moment palpable and visceral. It's a wonderful, gut-wrenching, thought-provoking
play in a stirring and spellbinding production.
On the lighter side, there's Moonlight
Stage Production's "Game of Love and Chance," a French farce in a
new, updated translation with a definite relevance to modern courtship,
romance, and the search for true love. Thanks to designer Mike Buckley, the
stage looks like a dreamy Watteau painting, framed in ornate gold. Gilded
angels fly overhead. With its marble statuary and formal greenery, the setting
is a romantic idyll where all sorts of shenanigans take place. The objects of
an arranged, upper-class marriage check each other out by secretly trading
places with their servants. Everyone falls for a seemingly unacceptable mate,
but after a high-octane comedy of errors, replete with deception, innuendo and
mistaken identity, all's well that ends well.
A master of comic timing, director Jimmy Saba leads his splendid cast
through a side-splitting series of missed connections, tinged by wit, wisdom
and a few lessons in love. So, get a laugh, and get into "The Game."
©2003
Patté Productions Inc.