SAN DIEGO THEATRE SCENE
"CURTAIN CALLS"
By Pat Launer
09/22/04
This week was a fairly mathematical
one:
2 Rooms, 3 Oranges and a Raisin in the
Sun.
RAISIN' HELL…
In his poem, "A Dream
Deferred," Langston Hughes wondered whether dreams forgotten or postponed
"dry up like a raisin in the sun… or …explode."
And that's precisely the theme of
Lorraine Hansberry's groundbreaking classic, "A Raisin in the Sun." It was the first play by an African American
woman to be produced on Broadway, and it won the New York Drama Critics Circle
Award for Best Play 1958-9.
The powerful drama focuses on the
Youngers, a black, working-class family in 1950s Chicago, striving to realize
their individual and collective dreams of education, prosperity, and a better
life. It's a deeply satisfying examination of the struggle for integrity and
legacy in the face of inner turmoil and societal racism.
Until it was revived last year on
Broadway (starring Phylicia Rashad, Audra McDonald and Sean "P.
Diddy" Combs), it was often considered dated, outmoded. Perhaps the
kitchen-sink style is a bit frayed, but the substance is ripped right out of
today's news. And the wattage of the play is undimmed.
Besides issues of higher education for
African Americans, and the role of males in its matriarchal society, there are
questions of pride, wealth, legacy, feminism, Civil Rights, abortion and
housing discrimination. Hansberry was way ahead of her time. And given her
themes, it makes excellent sense that the new Ion Theatre and Common Ground
Theatre have hooked up with the Fair Housing Council of San Diego for this
production.
Inside the theater, we're confronting
the elusive American Dream. Outside, in the lobby, the presenters have posted stats
on the percentage of minority populations who are currently discriminated
against in their attempts at obtaining
housing: from 22% of cases for African Americans to 28% for Native
Americans. Hispanics and Asian/Pacific Islanders are not far behind.
But the play is not inherently political or pedantic. It's a potent
story of the internal and external pressures bearing down on one family.
Ultimately, it's about the power of love. And everyone's need for enough room
to nurture a dream. A financial windfall,
$10,000 in insurance money, is in the mail following the death of the father of
the family. Each person has a private plan for the money -- a house in a white
neighborhood, a med school education, a business venture. Fate, luck and family
loyalty play a prominent role, too.
"Mama," the playwright wrote to her mother during a
tryout run in New Haven before the Broadway opening, "it is a play that
tells the truth about people, Negroes and life, and I think it will help a lot
of people to understand how we are just as complicated as they are -- and just
as mixed up -- but above all, that we have among our miserable and downtrodden
ranks people who are the very essence of human dignity."
The brilliant, energetic Hansberry died of cancer in 1965, at age 34.
but her sister was present at opening night of the San Diego production. It was
a thrilling capper to a marvelous evening, watching this beautiful relative of
a world-changing writer come up onstage and celebrate with local audiences.
Under the deft direction of Claudio Raygoza, one of San Diego's
finest talents, these characters become fully realized, multi-dimensional and
thoroughly recognizable. The performances are finely nuanced and entirely
credible.
Sylvia M'Lafi Thompson, too rarely seen on local stages, is a
powerhouse, a force of nature, a pillar of dignity and strength as the
matriarch of the family. As her son, a broken man who loses his dream but gains
his self-respect, Shaun T. Evans rides an emotional roller-caster from rage to
despair. We’re carried along on his rocky journey, and he nearly breaks our
hearts. P. Shekinah Perkins is stalwart and affecting as his long-suffering
wife, and Khalil Reed-Blevins is cute and solid as their young son. Monique
Gaffney is a terrific blast of sass, energy, effusiveness and anger as the
rebellious sister who's open to change and changing the world. Elzie Billops is attractive and sensitive as
her African beau, and Dominic Jones is aptly self-righteous and smarmy as her
upper-class suitor. Dale Marris is chilling as the uptight white man who makes
the family an ugly offer.
Raygoza also designed the set, a South
Side living room and working kitchen (running water, functional stovetop), with
a bedroom upstage behind a scrim. The lighting (Mitchell Simkovsky) may have
given the rundown house too rosy a glow, but the costumes (Dana La'Nae Roberts)
are spot-on.
Hansberry wrote her prescient
"Raisin" before the before the end of segregation in America, before
the civil rights movement gained momentum, before feminism kicked in. In some
domains, we've changed enormously in the nearly half-century since her
Broadway debut; in others, not at all. But despite its high
drama and moments of despair, the play is infused with humor (nicely mined by
Raygoza et al.) and hope. And this production is cause for celebration.
At the Lyceum Theatre., through October
3.
COUNTING OUR BLESSINGS
It seems like Blessing-time in San
Diego. Diversionary is presenting Lee Blessing's "Thief River," the
La Jolla Playhouse has commissioned a new work, "The Scottish
Play" and "Two Rooms"
(originally commissioned by the Playhouse in 1988) is getting an excellent
local revival courtesy of Stone Soup Theatre. Blessing likes to tug at the zeitgeist. "Two
Rooms" is one of three La Jolla Playhouse commissions in which he
positions media as a contemporary battleground, in terms of nuclear issues (the
multiple award-winning "A Walk in the Woods," 1987), serial killers
("Down the Road," 1989), and terrorists and hostages in "Two Rooms." He always manages to
make the political personal.
Here,
we meet an American captive held by Lebanese terrorists -- lying blindfolded,
handcuffed, ragged, filthy and uncertain of his whereabouts, writing imaginary
letters to his wife. She, meanwhile, waits at home, in a stark, bare, lightless
room she's created to commune with her husband. She has tried every means to
secure his release, and she's pulled at, perhaps manipulated, by two opposing
forces -- the U.S. government (a functionary who wants her to maintain silence)
and the Media (a reporter who wants her to speak out). Both might seem
to care for the agitated, frustrated Lainie more than they really do. Each has
a distinct agenda: protect the President and his foreign policy -- or expose
its lack of action and concern for the victims and their families.
Stone
Soup Theatre made their debut -- and their mark -- with politically charged
plays such as "Death and the Maiden" (2001) and last year's "Boy
Gets Girl." This fifth production is as searing and gripping as its
predecessors. Like her Stone Soup co-founders, director Therese Schneck is an
alumna of SDSU. Her first La Jolla directing gig (she has credits at the
American Dramatic Academy in Oxford, England) is a spare, forceful production
of this disturbing play. Against an austere backdrop of a (blood?)-spattered
wall, scrawled with Arabic graffiti, there's a mat on the floor. Keep it
simple; that's how it is in Michael's bleak cell and in Lainie's self-imposed,
self-created prison cubicle. This keeps all the focus on the emotion, the
uncertainties, the deceptions and power-struggles. Occasionally, slide projections illustrate something in the text:
photos of smiling, gun-toting child-terrorists, or pictures of Michael and
Lainie in happier times. As in Blessing's non-linear "Thief River,"
the cross-fading short scenes sometimes become tiring. And perhaps the play
could have been done in 90 intermissionless minutes. But this is a quibble; the
piece is so timely and the cast so competent, that we're caught up in the fear,
the loathing and the depressing repetition of history.
Paul
Morgavo is a thoughtful teacher-type as Michael, who wonders why he took at job
at the American University of Beirut to begin with, putting himself and his
wife in danger. His reports of suffering, torture, losing track of time are
gut-wrenching. Rebecca Johannsen mines the depths of Lainie's despair and
devotion. Julie Sachs makes Ellen Van Oss an officious governmental
functionary, with unconvincing attempts at heart, an organ obviously lost long
ago in the line of duty. Landon Vaughn makes the enigmatic Walker a sympathetic
character. In the text, it's not clear if he really does care for Lainie…
whether he's cultivating a relationship with her -- or just doggedly going
after a story by whatever means necessary. In Vaughn's hands and under
Schneck's direction, he's calculating but concerned -- perhaps beyond
journalistic bounds, but credibly so.
The
scenes where Michael and Lainie are together, at first not making eye contact,
later touching and interacting -- are poignant, heartbreaking. Stone Soup has
mounted another thought-provoking winner. Catch it if you can. (see below for
special added performance).
At the Firehouse in La Jolla, through
the weekend (9/26). A special performance has just been added for November 1
(the night before the election) at SDSU. The post-show forum will feature
professors, foreign affairs experts -- and perhaps even playwright Lee
Blessing.
FRUIT FLAVORED
"The Love of Three Oranges" continues the New Vaudeville tradition established by Des McAnuff
at the La Jolla Playhouse -- in performances by the likes of Bill Irwin, The
Flying Karamozov Brothers and others. In this one, Mump and Smoot meet the
Teletubbies in Oz.
Based on Carlo Gozzi's 1761 scenario
(that is, a mere plot outline encouraging extensive actor improvisation), the
play later inspired Prokofiev to write an off-the-wall opera ( 1921). Now the
young Romanian director, Nona Ciobanu,
has "freely adapted" the piece, which has been further tweaked for
American sensibilities by James Magruder, former literary manager at the
Playhouse (1990-1991).
Gozzi's original was a "dramatic
fable," populated by the stock characters of the 16th century
commedia dell'arte. His farcical story was partly political; the play was
written to show the enduring potential of the old forms (like commedia) and to
ridicule their adversary, playwright Carlo Goldoni, who created a new
"comedy of character," in the style of the 17th century
French farceur, Molière.
In 1996, the La Jolla playhouse brought
us the Theatre for a New Audience production of Gozzi's “The Green Bird,”
directed and co-designed by that theatrical wizard, Julie Taymor. "The
Love of Three Oranges" has some of its own charm and inventiveness, but it
doesn't have the eye-popping, jaw-dropping magic of that coming-of-age story.
This tale also has a depressed central
character (there a king, here a prince). The doleful Tartaglia is suffering
from "incurable hypochondria," which looks a lot like crippling
melancholy and lethargy. He can only be
cured by an overdose of laughter, but no one, not even his hyper-agile,
hyperactive clown/sidekick Truffaldino, can help him. His father, King Silvio,
is becoming impatient; he wants to pass the mantle. (But why he wears shoes on
his hands and pulls himself around, legless, like a seal, is beyond me).
Meanwhile, the prime minister Leandro
and the king's niece, Clarice, are plotting to grab the throne. They are
protected and abetted by the dread, though sometimes bumbling witch, Fata
Morgana (here played as a blundering drag-queen). Somehow (in the opera, it's
by exposing her shriveled backside; here, the cause is less clear), Morgana
sends the Prince into peals of laughter. Infuriated, s/he puts a curse on the
Prince, forcing him to fall in love with three oranges, which he must traverse
the globe to find. He doesn't yet know it, but inside each orange is a
princess. One of them he'll wed; the other two are quickly dispatched and die
of thirst, when the somewhat unreliable Truffaldino breaks them open to get
himself a drink. So much for them. The last orange becomes the lovable but
vapid princess Ninetta, who is transformed by Smeraldina, slave to Morgana. In
the opera, Ninetta is turned into a rat; here, a dove (oddly enough, a large
blue-green puppet bird, highly reminiscent of the life-size Taymor creations
for "The Green Bird"). Okay, so, after a few more twists and turns,
Smeraldina rebels against Morgana, the pretenders to the throne are banished,
and the prince and princess wed. whew!
Ciobanu has wrapped her production
around an endlessly elastic fabric that stretches up-down-and-across the stage
as backdrop, mountain, water, ogre, you name it. This orange-tinted (what
else?) curtain becomes a character in its own right -- giving birth to the
prince at the outset and hiding all manner of good- and evil-doers throughout.
The costumes are all ultra-stretch, too, and look like footless, baby-jammy
sleepers. The "Ridiculous People" of the opera become kvetchy courtiers
who whine in high-pitched nonsense noises that sound like a cross between the
meaningless squeals of the Teletubbies and the invented linguistic legerdemain
of Mump and Smoot (you knew I'd get back to them some time, right??). And the
journey to confront the ogre-behind-the curtain (who harbors the oranges) is
like a disaster-strewn yellow (orange?) brick road.
The shenanigans and local/topical
references are silly at times, and the zaniness wears thin. But some of the
images are quite striking. And all the nine players (three of whom are
third-year MFA acting students at UCSD) are chameleon-like shapeshifters,
portraying some 33 characters. Most of the action is precisely choreographed by
very adept peformers. Especially agile are John Altieri as the athletic Truffaldino
and Jim Parsons as the goofy, big-balloon-bellied Tartaglia.
Perhaps this Orange Odyssey could have
been made a bit more… fruitful. It all seemed so jejune and pointless. But the
opening night audience laughed its collective head off. So maybe it's just me.
If you love this kind of madcap, nonsensical mayhem, have yourself a ball… er,
orange.
At La Jolla Playhouse, through October
17.
If you've never tried "Trolley
Dances," you are in for a serious, sensuous, whimsical treat. For the 6th year, Jean
Isaacs' San Diego Dance Theater presents its moveable feast of site-specific
dance. Last year's presentations were breathtaking. This year's tour begins at
the County Administration Center (1600 Pacific Highway), where audiences meet
their Trolley Tour Guide and view a Jean Isaacs dance that features music by
the Monarch School's Steel Band. Then, you board the trolley and you're off --
for dances choreographed by: Faith Jensen-Ismay, using a mixed-ability cast in
Little Italy; San Diego newcomer Gabriel Masson, whose piece will be at the
downtown Museum of Contemporary Art; New Yorker Monica Bill-Barnes; and Grace
Shinhae Jun, who's created an eclectic blend of hip-hop and modern dance. The
trip culminates at the new Omni Hotel, where Alison Dietterle-Smith and Jean
Isaacs collaborate on something guaranteed to be wild and wonderful. The event
takes place on two Saturdays -- September 25 and October 2 -- and one Sunday --
October 3. Tours leave every 45 minutes from 10:00-3:00. Tickets are $12-18
(free for those in wheelchairs and children 6 and under).
www.sandiegodancetheater.org.
SHAKESPEARE, ACT III, Sonnet 1
Fourteen lines of fabulousness. Come
hear local celebs present their poetic favorites at the San Diego Shakespeare
Society's 3rd annual Celebration of the Sonnet on Monday,
October 4 at 7pm at the Old Globe Theatre. I'll be the emcee… happily
introducing celebrity sonneteers like Jonathan McMurtry, Jack Montgomery and
Antonio "TJ" Johnson, the Opera's Nic Reveles, word-maven Richard
Lederer, City Schools Superintendent Alan Bersin, playwright Stephen Metcalfe
and his 13 year-old daughter. Queen Elizabeth will be there; why shouldn't you?
Tix are $15 and include strolling Elizabethan musicians and a sonnet for every
season.
WEEKEND WALK… (last chance!!)
Celebrate 15 years of a
wonder-walk…Join Melissa Supera Fernandes and Manny Fernandes (and John and me
and other theaterfolk and regular people) at AIDS Walk 2004, this
Sunday, September 26 in Balboa Park. Be part of San Diego’s largest one-day HIV/AIDS fundraiser. It only costs
$25, you know it's a good cause….and it's really a lot of fun.. To sign
up, go to: http://www.kintera.org/faf/home/default.asp?ievent=45685
and select the Time Warner Team. If that link doesn’t work, try www.aidswalksd.org.
Join us for a worthy event and a great day in the Park. Hope to seeya there!
BRAGGING RIGHTS
Some of you may have seen "Trial
by Fire: The Making of a Theater Professional," the documentary I
wrote, hosted and co-produced with San Diego City TV, about the
Design-Performance Jury at SDSU. Well, we just won 1st place in
Performing Arts at the National Government Programming Awards. Woohoo! Our City TV has twice been named Best
Government Channel in the Nation. Just one more reason to be proud of local
presentations.
AND NOW, FOR THIS WEEK'S 'DON'T MISS'
PRODUCTIONS:
"Two Rooms" -- tense, gripping drama about terrorists' hostages -- and the
families who are left behind. An aptly spare; excellent production. Stone Soup
Theatre at the La Jolla Firehouse; through September 26. A special performance
will be held Nov. 1 (the night before the election), at SDSU with a post-show
discussion.
"A Raisin in the Sun" -- terrific production of a ground-breaking classic that's still
timely and touching. Ion Theatre in association with Common Ground Theatre and
the San Diego Council for Fair Housing. At the Lyceum, through October 3.
"Remains" -- the world premiere of Seema Sueko's semi-autobiographical play,
and her new Mo'olelo Theatre. Searing drama that tells the MidEast story from a
fresh perspective. Excellently directed and acted. At ARK Theatre, through
October 3.
"Thief River" -- taut production, sad story … of homophobia (and intolerance) in
small-town America. At Diversionary
Theatre, through October 2.
"The Chosen" -- North Coast Repertory Theatre artistic director David Ellenstein
has poured his heart and soul into this lovely, touching reworking of Chaim
Potok's acclaimed novel. A marvelous ensemble and a glorious production. At
North Coast Rep, extended through October 31.
"Art" -- a lovely pas de trois from a trio of Lamb's favorites, in an
intelligent, thought-provoking play. At Lamb's Players Theatre, extended
through September 19.
"Two Noble Kinsmen" – director Darko Tresnjak offers us a beautiful production of a
less-than-perfect, partly-Shakespearean tragicomedy. Not all the cast is up to
the task, but the creative team does stellar work, and even rarely-seen
Shakespeare is worth seeing. Outdoors at the Globe, in repertory with “As You
Like It” and “Antony and Cleopatra.” Last “Kinsmen” performance Sept. 24.
"As You Like It" -- Karen Carpenter's farewell to the Globe is her best work
yet. Light and breezy, adorable if not deep. Outdoors at the Globe, in
repertory with “Antony and Cleopatra” and “Two Noble Kinsmen.” Last “As You”
performance October 1.
"Antony and Cleopatra" -- The queen rules! In Darko Tresnjak's beautiful-looking
production, neither Antony nor Caesar can hold a candle to the Egyptian
monarch… but Enobarbus is up to the task… and the whole is lovely to look at.
Outdoors at the Globe, in repertory with “As You Like It” and “Antony and Cleopatra.”
Last “A&C” performance October 3.
Autumn has begun -- so Fall into the theater!
©2004
Patté Productions Inc.