Theater Review

Tiny Kushner at the Berkeley Rep

By Emmanuel Hapsis | Nov 07, 2009

I am not a theater-goer. And, judging by the predominantly silver-haired audience at the Berkeley Rep last week, neither are a lot of younger folk. In a culture dominated by the immediacy of Youtube and Tivo, the patience and concentration required for an intelligent night at the theater has all but vanished. But there is hope for revival in plays like Tony Kushner's Tiny Kushner.

The cheeky title refers to the format of the show: in direct opposition to the lengthy, epic works of his past (the 6 hour Angels in America being the best example), Kushner has decided to put on five distinct one-act plays. What the viewer gets is a little over 2 hours of variety, talent, and sheer genius.

Tony Kushner has a habit of appropriating historical figures (often subversive ones) and injecting them into his fictional creations. And he keeps with this tradition with the first play of this set entitled "Flip Flop Fly!" The piece takes place on the moon (naturally) and revolves around two polar opposites, Lucia Pamela (Valeri Mudek) and Geraldine, Queen of Albania (Kate Eifrig).

Lucia Pamela was an eccentric, dangerously chipper American entertainer in the '60s and '70s who had an interesting relationship with reality. She claimed to know 10,000 songs by heart, to be the first person to appear on television, and, best of all, to have traveled to the moon where she recorded her 1969 cult classic album Into Outer Space with Lucia Pamela. On the other end of the spectrum, Geraldine, Queen of Albania was a proud, hardened woman who spent much of her life dealing with harsh realities. Being the child of a Hungarian count and an American heiress, Geraldine was rocked out of her fairy tale existence by the death of her father which caused the family to go into debt. She later recovered by marrying King Zog of Albania (Hitler bought them a Mercedes as a wedding gift), only to be exiled after Italy invaded Albania. You can see why Tony Kushner revels in history books; the gems found there sometimes beat anything a writer could dream up.

The result of these two women sharing an afterlife on the moon is pure hilarity. Lucia Pamela revels in her relentless American optimism, while Geraldine rants about escaping the invading Italians by crossing the mountains into Greece while bleeding from childbirth. After much comical banter and endless miscommunication, Lucia finally cracks Geraldine's hard shell and the two women engage in an impromptu song and dance to one of the songs off of Pamela's album. The performance had the audience in stitches and was the perfect gateway into the succession of plays to come.

Another stand-out is the more or less one man act executed expertly by Jim Lichtscheidl called "East Coast Ode to Howard Jarvis: a little teleplay in tiny monologues." The subject at hand is Howard Jarvis, a controversial anti-tax and anti-government activist, and a tax scam plot involving NYC city employees that was unconvered in the late '90s. Lichtscheidl jumps into the skin of different characters at break-neck speed, from an Italian detective to an African American "B girl" to Bill Clinton and Rudy Giuliani. The marathon of impersonations ran a little long, but the audience ate it up and couldn't stop discussing it during intermission.

But the true pièce de resistance had to be the last act titled "Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy." Never one to shy away from the controversial, Kushner has placed Laura Bush in an imagined classroom, reading to...dead Iraqi children. Oh no he didn't! I'm so glad he did! Kate Eifrig (who is simply amazing and the reason to see this production) really shines in her guarded, but vulnerable depiction of the former First Lady. She begins tightly wound and avoidant of the reality at hand (she jokes about how great the student-to-teacher ratio is in the afterlife), but soon comes undone and snaps out of her perfectly coiffed, wooden pose. For a brief moment, the audience is given a window inside a wounded woman trapped by her marriage, her religion, and her guilty conscience. It's an uncomfortable sight (the truth often is), but one the public should see more often. If you can't make it to the show, I urge you to read the act here.

Unlike the empty Hollywood fare out there these days, the culturally-interpretive Tiny Kushner has something one doesn't get very often: brilliant writing and the power to make a long-lasting, non-superficial impact on an audience. In conversation with Tad Simons of Mpls/St. Paul Magazine, Tony Kushner says, "When these people come see a play and it gets them thinking, it changes them, which in turn changes the way they behave, which changes the way they engage in politics and the rest of the world. It's hard to say how much of an effect you have, but I think one can have an important effect." And, boy, does he ever.

Tiny Kushner plays through November 29, 2009 at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre. For tickets and information, visit berkeleyrep.org