THEATRE REVIEW:
KPBS
AIRDATE: November 5, 2004
A killer, a
dreamer and a goat-lover. Take your pick; it's a wild week of high-tension
drama -- on the theatrical as well as political stage.
The murderer
is "Macbeth," that megalomaniacal Thane who, with his malignant wife,
kills a passel of people in order to fulfill the kingly prophesies of the
cackling, cauldron-stirring Weird Sisters. The Poor Players' bare-bones
production trims the Shakespearean masterwork down to one single, intense act.
The cuts work well, and though there are some uneven performances, the central
characters are chilling. As Lady Macbeth, blonde beauty Beth Everhart maintains
a deadly smile and then goes marvelously, obsessively mad. But it's her Lord
who really rivets the attention. Director Richard Baird is mesmerizing as a
brutal, abusive warrior who loses his spouse, his mind and ultimately his life,
due to hubris and extreme ambition. His performance is stunning.
If you like your theater more abstract
and less linear, you'll high-tail it over to Sledgehammer Theatre for their
visually thrilling ensemble production of "A Dream Play." In his
groundbreaking 1901 drama, August Strindberg tried to capture the illusory,
ever-changing quality of nighttime reveries. At the outset, the daughter of the
Hindu god Indra comes down to earth see how humans are faring. What she finds
is a whole lot of misery (and repetition!) -- frustrations, disappointments,
loveless marriages, wilting flowers. The play cynically confronts matters of
morality, religion, philosophy and sexuality. Death, in Strindberg's worldview,
is deliverance. But with a snappy new translation by SDSU professor
Anne-Charlotte Harvey, choreographically-precise direction by Kirsten Brandt,
an ingenious design team and a crackerjack ensemble, the play brims with
imagination and life.
When it comes
to wild imagination, no one goes as far out on a limb to provoke, titillate and
shock as the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Edward Albee. His most recent
Tony Award winner for Best Play, "The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?" is a
tragedy wrapped in the cloak of a dark comedy. It's a silly-sounding, but
disturbing story of a happily married, highly prized architect who falls
hopelessly in love with a goat. The play really isn't about bestiality, though.
It's about tolerance, the meaning and limits of love, what remaining taboos we
have, what lines we draw that cannot be crossed. The humor is brutal, the
family destruction complete. But the San Diego Repertory Theatre production
ignores the gravitas and goes for the belly-laughs. This play is really serious
business, but here it's treated and played like a sitcom. There's insufficient
nuance in the performances; we get the anger but little of the pain. This should
be gut-wrenching, devastating theater; it comes off as a sad, sick joke. You'll
just have to get your tragedy from Shakespeare -- or the election results.
©2004 Patté
Productions Inc.