SAN DIEGO THEATRE SCENE

"CURTAIN CALLS"

By Pat Launer

08/19/05

There’s family feuding and lovers’ strife

In the Fritz Blitz and ‘Verona’ life,

But that’s nothing like being one’s own ‘Wife.’

TRANNY GRANNY

It was the most frustrating moment of my professional life. Seeing a performance of the caliber of Jefferson Mays’ in “I Am My Own Wife” and not being able to write about it, shout it from the rooftops, tell everyone I know to see it. When the show premiered in San Diego in 2001, it was a Page to Stage workshop production, so no reviews were allowed. But I was so smitten by the story, and by Jefferson’s tour de force portrayal, that the very least I could do was give him a Patté Award for Outstanding Performance. He was an alumnus of UCSD and I’d seen his “Hamlet” at the San Diego Rep. But nothing matched this bravura performance. Turned out, mine was the first of his many honors; when the show went to Broadway, it and Mays garnered just about every award imaginable including, of course, the Tony (Best Play and Best Performance) and the Pulitzer for Doug Wright’s provocative play.

It’s a true story, if ‘truth’ can be loosely applied. It was Wright’s journalist friend, John Marks, who first told the playwright about one Charlotte van Mahlsdorf, an East German transvestite. After years of live interviews, letters and phonecalls, Wright amassed some 500 pages of transcripts. He also acquired writer’s block. The story overwhelmed him, and when he finally got it down (well, some of it; when the play came to La Jolla, it didn’t yet have a second act), he wrote himself and his moral/literate quandaries into the piece.

Charlotte was charming, stately, sedate. In a calm, accented retelling, she related her birth as Lothar Berfelde in 1928, her early fascination with women’s clothes which was condoned by a lesbian aunt, who gave her a book about transvestites. In the waning days of the Nazi regime, she had a run-in with an SS officer, and was declared a deserter. She survived the Stasi, too, the communist secret police, continuing to conduct evening soirées for the gay and lesbian community east of Berlin. At the same time, she continued to amass a heap of late 19^th century antiques, particularly clocks, credenzas, records and gramophones, which she displayed in her home museum, and which she lovingly describes to us in the play.

Charlotte was given the German Medal of Honor for her preservation of historical artifacts. But then, after the Stasi files were made public, many of Charlotte’s stories were called into question. It became an international incident (magnificently portrayed in a dazzling theatrical moment of alternating rapid-fire questions tossed by journalists from every country imaginable; Mays never skips a beat).

So, did Charlotte really inform on her best friend, who spent the rest of his life in prison? Or could the documents have been manipulated to defame her? We’ll never know; Charlotte died in 2002.

Meanwhile, Jefferson Mays is very much alive, in a virtuoso performance. He shifts characters, accents and genders with the subtlest of turns, the sparest of changes in posture or stance. Clothed (by Janice Pytel) in a basic black dress, with sensible shoes and a single strand of pearls, he draws us, mesmerically, into this world of street-smarts, survival and secrets. The enigma trails behind the final curtain like a floral scent. Just like Wright, we’re never quite sure.

Remarkable, in terms of the writing, the acting and Moisés Kaufman’s flawless direction. The set (Derek McLane) is, like Charlotte herself, a marvel of light and shadows (wonderfully lit by David Lander), with scrims concealing and revealing – a hallway, another room, a floor-to-ceiling accumulation of collected furnishings. The sound design (Andre J. Pluess, Josh Bender Dubeil) underscores the tone and rhythm of the piece -- romantic, nostalgic, even dreamy. Hearing the voice of the real Charlotte at the end makes us realize just how pitch-perfect Mays’ performance is.

This is, by any definition, a dazzling piece of theater. Miss it at your own risk.

At the La Jolla Playhouse, through September 11.

TWO GENTS IN CARLSBAD

In his comedies, Shakespeare was in love with love – in all its ridiculous guises: ardent, fickle, ill-fated, mismatched, cruel, over-eager, undaunted, untamed, unrequited. In “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” one of his earliest romantic comedies, we get a big dose of amour. But the play poses the very contemporary questions of why these fabulous females would even want these two ungentlemanly ‘gentlemen.’ (On the night I was at the lovely, outdoor, New Village Arts production, when the wayward, dastardly Proteus asks for the ever-devoted Julia to take him back, women were yelling out, ‘Don’t do it!’ Perhaps the groundlings did the same 400+ years ago). But according to the tenets of courtly love, a virtuous woman is supposed to choose a man – however many or serious his faults – so she can ennoble him, despite those faults, and raise him up to something approaching her level. In this way, Julia is the forerunner of Portia (“The Merchant of Venice”) and Viola (“As You Like It”). Like Viola, Julia disguises herself as a man in order to follow her lover on his adventures (and ‘spy’ on some of his less savory acts). So accomplished are Shakespeare’s feisty heroines that they can embrace the social role of either sex and outshine men in their own realm. All the problems in this play reside with the men.

Valentine scoffs at his lovesick friend Proteus, and goes off with his father to Milan, where he enters the court of the Duke and instantly falls head over heels for Silvia, the Duke’s daughter. When Proteus arrives at the court and sees Silvia, he promptly forgets all about his protestations of undying love to Julia. He betrays his friend and plots to get Silvia for himself. His heinous, self-serving revelations cause his best friend to be banished. Valentine is captured by thieves and forced to join the outlaw band. Poor lovesick Julia disguises herself as a youth and goes to the court, where she watches Proteus relentlessly wooing Silvia, who only wants Valentine. When Silvia runs off to find him, she’s captured by the selfsame band of thieves. All are reunited and forgiven at the end, but Proteus sure doesn’t deserve mercy – or Julia. Valentine’s benevolence strikes a particularly discordant note. But this was an early (1594) romantic effort, and Shakespeare definitely refined his characters and recurrent themes over the ensuing years.

So, given its flightiness and flaws, co-directors Kristianne Kurner and Frances Gercke felt perfectly comfortable taking free license with the play. They kept it in Italy, but moved it to the 1950s, set to the tune of Dino Martino and Tony Benedetto – as well as Italian opera, beautifully sung by Kurner’s classically trained singer-sister, Susanna Kurner. The show opens with a “Funiculi, Funicula” full-cast singalong, and over the course of the high-spirited evening, we hear about pizzerias and tarantellas and of course, “That’s Amore.” There’s the ‘fuggeddaboudit’ moment and “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” theme. Gercke, as Valentine, makes his big Milan departure in a real ‘50s convertible. And, in her pre-performance curtain speech, Kurner, apologizing for the soccer game in the field next door, urged the audience to ‘imagine it’s Rome playing Sicily over there.”

It’s all in good fun, and everyone – participants and spectators alike – seems to be having a blast. And the directors make excellent use of the grounds of the Performing Arts Centre at La Costa Canyon High School.

The two couples are adorable; Gercke is his usual acrobatic self as the energetic Valentine, and Brandon Walker somehow manages to make Proteus seem like a nice guy, even though he’s a rat – as friend and lover. As the objects of their on again-off again affection, Jo Anne Glover is noble and dynamic as Silvia (source of that famous, Albee-borrowing line, ‘Who is Silvia? What is she, that all the swains commend her?’). As Julia, Rachael vanWormer is charming in both her male and female guises.

The rest of the choices are not always well-motivated, but they’re well-intentioned, given the general hijinks. Walter Murray plays the Duke as the Godfather; Tom Reusing plays his good-hearted courtier, Sir Eglamour, as an Eastwood (Good-Bad-Ugly) cowboy. Three women (June Gottlieb, Kathryn Herbuck, Laura Kurner) are the tri-partite Pantino (one’s Pan, one’s Ti, one’s No). Kristianne Kurner makes Julia’s maid, Lucetta, a lisping, bespectacled nerd. Grace Delaney is very funny as Valentine’s loquacious servant, Speed. Joshua Everett Johnson’s Launce, Proteus’ man, is a dog-toting, malaprop-spouting hoot (even if some of his funnier lines get swallowed up in his cockney dialect). Sean Hills sports the only Italian accent as Sir Thurio, the vain and unreasoning suitor of Silvia, who rightly despises him. There are singers and outlaws (among whom is 7 year-old Jonah Kurner; this is definitely a family affair!). The costumes (Mary Larson) are as wildly varied as the accents and acting styles. The word-play is luscious, and the language is generally handled quite well. You just have to unleash all expectations (of Shakespeare or anything else) and go with it. Stretch out under the stars and have yourself a ball.

FREE- at the Performing Arts Centre of La Costa Canyon High School, through August 21.

BLITZ OUT!

Okay, so what’s a “Smatchet?” In the word-drunk comedy by San Diegan Staci Truskosky, it’s defined as ‘a small, nasty person, or child.” This show, which alone comprised Week 2 of the Fritz Blitz of New Plays by California Writers, the adults are batty, and the child –- teenage, smartass, word-obsessed Jessie (Angela August) -- can be downright vicious. She lives with her single mom (solid, credible Julie Sachs) and is frequently visited by her antic aunt (hilarious Laura Bozanich), and a never-ending stream of ridiculous dates (funny turns by Len Irving, Tony Beville, John Rosen, and side-splitting Elvis-impersonator Brian Taraz). Each one’s a loser, or a nutcase, and nerves are getting frayed. But when Aunt Kat finally tells The Truth to Jessie, that she’s a selfish brat, the kid makes a slight shift in her behavior and there’s Possibility ahead.

It’s a clever, acerbic little one-act, amusingly directed by Fritz artistic director Duane Daniels, with an excellent cast that makes these one-note characters really comical, and mines the familiar situation for all it’s worth. Inter-scene music is provided by August, a singer-songwriter in her own right. The adolescent angst of her punk-rock wails just wasn’t to my taste. But August’s lively, alluring stage presence made her stock character aptly quick-witted, if not congenial. As her midday, hooky-playing love interest, Kevin Koppman-Gue was cute in a delightfully nervous-geeky way. The new play could use some tweaking, fleshing out the characters, and paying more attention to the high-falutin’ verbiage (e.g., any doctor would know ‘defenestrate’ – fenestration is a medical procedure). But Truskosky obviously has a love of words, facile humor and a quirky voice. Let’s hear more of it, soon.

In the Lyceum Space, through August 28.

LAST CHANCE

For the final weekend of “The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron?” (Sept. 1-4), the original actor/writer, Robert Dubac, will return to San Diego to cap off more than 250 performances of his semi-autobiographical piece. If you’ve never seen it, and you don’t know some of the seminal differences (word choice: intentional) between men and women, hie thee to the Theatre in Old Town.

At the Theatre in Old Town, through September 4.

THE LIFE THAT JACK BUILT

There was an equal proportion of love and tears at the memorial service for Jack Banning this week at the Globe. The event, introduced and organized by his long-time companion, Michele Nowak-Sharkey, was heartfelt and warm and uplifting. Jack was there (ashes in a “round-headed” urn), and when the balloons were sent up outside at the end (with some of the ashes within), they/he just didn’t want to up and leave. The 2^nd Avenue Klezmer group provided lively spirit and energy, and we all got noisemakers to ‘play’ along. The video, created by Terry Scheidt, was great, highlighting a lifetime of photos and clips, including an uproarious segment from an awful sci-fi movie, and Jack’s wacky turn with Jim Chovick in David Mamet’s ‘Duck Variations’ from last year’s Actors Festival (directed by Robert Dahey). The evening was an aptly bittersweet sendoff for Jack – equal parts laughter and tears.

NOW, FOR WHAT’S 'NOT TO BE MISSED!' (i.e., Critic’s Picks)

“I Am My Own Wife” – another opportunity to see Jefferson Mays’ dazzling performance as the German transvestite who was a survivor and an enigma. Provocative play, incredible acting. Don’t miss it this time. Or if you saw it before, see it again; it’s as stellar as the first time!

At the La Jolla Playhouse, through September 11.

“The Winter’s Tale” – beautifully designed and directed. Director Darko Tresnjak is a wonder, and he teases outstanding performances from his talented ensemble.

In repertory on the Globe’s Festival Stage, through October 2.

“Macbeth” – marvelous direction (Paul Mullins), costumes (Linda Cho) and truly spooky, chilling moments make this “MacB” a standout.

In repertory on the Globe’s Festival Stage, through October 2.

“The Comedy of Errors” – Director Darko Tresnjak shows his sillier side, with a farcical, slapstick production that’s precisely directed and humorously performed.

In repertory on the Globe’s Festival Stage, through October 2.

“42^nd Street” – glorious celebration of Bway’s glory days. Wonderful performances, outstanding choreography and dancing. Sheer delight!

At the Welk Resort Theatre, through August 28.

“The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron” – a fun date night, which shows both genders a few of their more amusing and infuriating foibles.

At the Theatre in Old Town, closing (after >250 performances), on September 4.

Don’t let the summer slip away – without visiting some theater you’ve never been to, or seeing a new play!