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"content": "\u003cp>Kit Wilder’s adaptation of \u003cb>The Three Musketeers\u003c/b>, now through April 19, 2009 at City Lights Theater Company in San Jose, has lots of swordfights, mountains of heaving cleavage and so much self-conscious, fourth-wall-shattering irony that the entire undertaking teeters on the smug. It’s a noisy affair that delights in its ability to send great masses of saber-wielding actors, clad in big boots, funny hats and poofy costumes, sprinting to all four corners of the theater to fight each other with swords, knives and fists. There’s even a rope swing to help speed the action along. In short, \u003cb>The Three Musketeers\u003c/b> is the stage equivalent of your basic Hollywood popcorn movie, except without the popcorn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Along the way, some rather fine acting manages to cut through the cartoonish bluster and fighting as highpoints of the Alexandre Dumas classic are briefly touched upon. Would that Wilder had budgeted more time for his actors and the story they are trying to tell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The play opens with great fanfare and ceremony. As the entire cast assembles itself before us on the stage, the imperious Duke of Buckingham (Charles McKeithan) proclaims the wonders that we are about to enjoy. There’s just one problem: The lead actor is drunk and has not yet arrived. “The show must go on!” cries one gung-ho thespian. “Oh please,” growls another in disgust. Before we know it, a stagehand in contemporary street clothes (Thomas Gorrebeeck) is recruited to perform the role of young D’Artagnan of Gascony, the future fourth Musketeer. Before he knows it, he’s traded his 21st-century shoes for 17th-century boots, a sword is strapped to his body and a script is thrust into his hands. He reads: “A tavern on the road to Paris.” And with that, our hero has his first scrape with his eye-patched nemesis, Comte de Rochefort (Ron Talbot).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This should be great fun, and it often is, but Wilder overplays the gimmick, especially in the first act, when even the actors appear to grow impatient with the rookie in their midst by shouting out, often in unison, page numbers in the script for Gorrebeeck/D’Artagnan to turn to. For his part, Gorrebeeck does a good job of juggling the script and his “real” props, but his character is not given much acting to do. For far too long, he careens through the play as its victim, and the attempts to give D’Artagnan the opportunity to evolve are mostly limited to his costume, which, in a nice touch, improves throughout the first act until he is fully costumed by the second.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wilder’s conceit of a fish out of water (country bumpkin D’Artagnan in Paris) played by a fish out of water (the recruited stagehand) is tiresome not just because so much of the action on stage is calculated to call our attention to it, over and over again. No, the problem is that the time all this repetition consumes comes at the expense of the story. For example, in the first act there is little hint that the hard-drinking Musketeer Athos (played by Wilder himself) has any connection at all to the wicked Milady de Winter (Vera Sloan). About the only times we encounter de Winter are when she’s loitering around Cardinal Richelieu’s (Michael J. West) office. But the second act largely belongs to the tale of Athos and de Winter, so the lack of cleverly disguised foreshadowing seems like a missed opportunity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The attention lavished on Gorrebeeck’s twin personas and the time spent on the seemingly endless swordfights also comes at the expense of character development. The only Musketeer with any depth is the one Wilder plays, Athos. Putting away the swords and prop-script device for a moment, Wilder revisits the scene made famous by Oliver Reed in the 1973 film version of the story, in which Athos tells D’Artagnan the haunting tale of his past relationship with a woman who was so duplicitous that he felt he had no choice but to kill her. So that’s why he drinks, we think. It would have been nice to get to know Porthos (a hilarious John Romano) and Aramis (meticulously played by George Psarras) just as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All that said, \u003cb>The Three Musketeers\u003c/b> has its moments, and the large cast practically ensures that at least a few of the standout performances will come from unexpected places. George S. Gemette’s turn as the leering and lustful landlord Bonacieux is especially good. Sam Krow-Lucal makes the most of his scenes as D’Artagnan’s servant, Planchet. And Joshua Marx surprises us when his Felton, a pious servant to Buckingham, all but steals his scene with Sloan, who cleverly uses the lad’s religious backbone to seduce him. For her part, Sloan shines like a polished poison apple throughout the second act, and Lucinda Dobson as Kitty, de Winter’s conflicted lady in waiting, is the perfect guileless counterpart to her conniving mistress. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>The Three Musketeers\u003c/b> runs through April 19, 2009 at City Lights Theater Company in San Jose. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.cltc.org\">tickets and information\u003c/a>, visit cltc.org.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Kit Wilder’s adaptation of \u003cb>The Three Musketeers\u003c/b>, now through April 19, 2009 at City Lights Theater Company in San Jose, has lots of swordfights, mountains of heaving cleavage and so much self-conscious, fourth-wall-shattering irony that the entire undertaking teeters on the smug. It’s a noisy affair that delights in its ability to send great masses of saber-wielding actors, clad in big boots, funny hats and poofy costumes, sprinting to all four corners of the theater to fight each other with swords, knives and fists. There’s even a rope swing to help speed the action along. In short, \u003cb>The Three Musketeers\u003c/b> is the stage equivalent of your basic Hollywood popcorn movie, except without the popcorn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Along the way, some rather fine acting manages to cut through the cartoonish bluster and fighting as highpoints of the Alexandre Dumas classic are briefly touched upon. Would that Wilder had budgeted more time for his actors and the story they are trying to tell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The play opens with great fanfare and ceremony. As the entire cast assembles itself before us on the stage, the imperious Duke of Buckingham (Charles McKeithan) proclaims the wonders that we are about to enjoy. There’s just one problem: The lead actor is drunk and has not yet arrived. “The show must go on!” cries one gung-ho thespian. “Oh please,” growls another in disgust. Before we know it, a stagehand in contemporary street clothes (Thomas Gorrebeeck) is recruited to perform the role of young D’Artagnan of Gascony, the future fourth Musketeer. Before he knows it, he’s traded his 21st-century shoes for 17th-century boots, a sword is strapped to his body and a script is thrust into his hands. He reads: “A tavern on the road to Paris.” And with that, our hero has his first scrape with his eye-patched nemesis, Comte de Rochefort (Ron Talbot).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This should be great fun, and it often is, but Wilder overplays the gimmick, especially in the first act, when even the actors appear to grow impatient with the rookie in their midst by shouting out, often in unison, page numbers in the script for Gorrebeeck/D’Artagnan to turn to. For his part, Gorrebeeck does a good job of juggling the script and his “real” props, but his character is not given much acting to do. For far too long, he careens through the play as its victim, and the attempts to give D’Artagnan the opportunity to evolve are mostly limited to his costume, which, in a nice touch, improves throughout the first act until he is fully costumed by the second.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wilder’s conceit of a fish out of water (country bumpkin D’Artagnan in Paris) played by a fish out of water (the recruited stagehand) is tiresome not just because so much of the action on stage is calculated to call our attention to it, over and over again. No, the problem is that the time all this repetition consumes comes at the expense of the story. For example, in the first act there is little hint that the hard-drinking Musketeer Athos (played by Wilder himself) has any connection at all to the wicked Milady de Winter (Vera Sloan). About the only times we encounter de Winter are when she’s loitering around Cardinal Richelieu’s (Michael J. West) office. But the second act largely belongs to the tale of Athos and de Winter, so the lack of cleverly disguised foreshadowing seems like a missed opportunity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The attention lavished on Gorrebeeck’s twin personas and the time spent on the seemingly endless swordfights also comes at the expense of character development. The only Musketeer with any depth is the one Wilder plays, Athos. Putting away the swords and prop-script device for a moment, Wilder revisits the scene made famous by Oliver Reed in the 1973 film version of the story, in which Athos tells D’Artagnan the haunting tale of his past relationship with a woman who was so duplicitous that he felt he had no choice but to kill her. So that’s why he drinks, we think. It would have been nice to get to know Porthos (a hilarious John Romano) and Aramis (meticulously played by George Psarras) just as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All that said, \u003cb>The Three Musketeers\u003c/b> has its moments, and the large cast practically ensures that at least a few of the standout performances will come from unexpected places. George S. Gemette’s turn as the leering and lustful landlord Bonacieux is especially good. Sam Krow-Lucal makes the most of his scenes as D’Artagnan’s servant, Planchet. And Joshua Marx surprises us when his Felton, a pious servant to Buckingham, all but steals his scene with Sloan, who cleverly uses the lad’s religious backbone to seduce him. For her part, Sloan shines like a polished poison apple throughout the second act, and Lucinda Dobson as Kitty, de Winter’s conflicted lady in waiting, is the perfect guileless counterpart to her conniving mistress. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>The Three Musketeers\u003c/b> runs through April 19, 2009 at City Lights Theater Company in San Jose. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.cltc.org\">tickets and information\u003c/a>, visit cltc.org.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Once upon a time, way back in 1980, there was no World Wide Web, no Nintendo Wii, no GTA of any Roman numeral. State-of-the-art software was chained to primitive, constraining hardware, and video games were so archaic that you had to actually type in written commands to do something as rudimentary as opening a door. Today’s weapons-laden avatars have only to stand before a virtual door armed with the correct, hard-won key, and the thing will magically swing open for them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anthony Clarvoe’s \u003cb>Pick Up Ax\u003c/b>, now through March 15, 2009 at Pear Avenue Theatre in Mountain View, is set in the Silicon Valley of that ancient era. Thanks to the smart direction of Ray Renati, a clever set by Ron Gasparinetti and very strong performances by all three actors, \u003cb>Pick Up Ax\u003c/b> is the best play I’ve seen this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the play opens to the heroic power chords of “Foreplay/Long Time” by Boston, Brian (Ben Fisher) and Keith (Alan Kaiser) are crowded into Brian’s toy- and computer-crammed office. Keith has taken up residence there because he’s filled his office with junk. Keith is the company’s resident savant, the “franchise” as Brian calls him, who can commune all day long with ones and zeros but wilts in the face of contact with other human beings. Brian, who discovered Keith one day in a video-game arcade racking up insanely high scores, is the company’s president. As the stage lights come up he’s on the phone, screaming at a chip supplier who inexplicably refuses to take his money.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The situation that Clarvoe presents to us, as well as much of the subsequent plot that unwinds throughout the rest of the play, mirrors the historical events of those days, when big-time suppliers of key components made sweetheart deals with preferred customers to effectively squeeze smaller players out of business. Indeed, the care Clarvoe has taken to get his facts right is one of the many pleasures of \u003cb>Pick Up Ax\u003c/b>, but his play goes far beyond documentary. Despite all the spot-on references to chips and sensors and software, this is a play about how humans work rather than how machines do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We know Brian, we’ve met lots of people like him before. He’s the guy who had the smarts, skills and personality to rise pretty far in his world, but not all the way to the top. His problem? He cares. He was drawn to Keith not only for his value as a potential meal ticket but also for Keith’s humanity. Somehow, despite being a good guy with laudable instincts, the company that he and Keith founded on a shoestring now employs scores of workers, which is one of the main reasons why Fisher’s Brian is desperate to save their company. It sounds odd to say this at a moment in history when the world’s economies are shuddering from the effects of wanton greed, but you get the feeling that if only Brian had exhibited a bit more self-interest, his company would not be in this predicament. Fisher beautifully captures this toxic mix of healthy ambition and good intentions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Keith is less familiar to us. We’ve heard about people like this, we may have even worked in the same cube farm with them, but we probably never got very close. Keith is the kind of guy who is simply not wired to let a lot of people into his private world. Brian is his only friend, the only person he really trusts to reveal his burden of genius. And what a glimpse of genius we get. Kaiser’s Keith is a gangly man-child, all elbows and knees, whose social skills are near zero. His appetite for absorbing data and cranking out code is close to infinite. When he’s hot, he can type faster than he can tell you what he’s doing. When he’s blocked, he retreats to pot and \u003cb>Dungeons and Dragons\u003c/b>. Keith may be the brains of the outfit, he may even, as Brian remarks, “run a mean dungeon,” but Brian holds his reigns, and that relationship seems to suit each party just fine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Into their world enters Mick, a fast-talking, old-school smoothy who has been following their company’s misfortunes in the press. After a hilarious brainstorming session (though a drama, \u003cb>Pick Up Ax\u003c/b> is often very funny), Mick suggests some novel business strategies of the offer-they-can’t-refuse variety. Brian, whose board of directors is breathing down his neck as the company’s chip crisis deepens, makes his deal with the devil and agrees to let Mick “talk” to his stubborn supplier. Champlin’s street-smart Mick is all confidence and patience (Brian, and especially Keith, would have been turned off if all Mick had to offer them was smarm), with flashes of anger that suggest a deep reservoir of menace below his impeccably tailored surface. This, we think, is not going to turn out well for our boys.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beyond the tight plot and its numerous twists, the insider nerd-speak and terrific dialogue — \u003ci>Brian: Extortion is technically speaking illegal. Mick: A hostile person could give it that construction\u003c/i> — one of the most effective aspects of this production is the way in which the characters evolve during the two hours we spend with them. In particular, I was impressed by the way Kaiser managed to give his character an arc without changing the nature of who Keith is. He lets Keith be Keith, unafraid to appear childish and vulnerable even as his insatiable brain is processing the swarm of new data known as Mick. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Pick Up Ax\u003c/b> runs through March 15, 2009. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.thepear.org\">tickets and information\u003c/a>, visit thepear.org.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Once upon a time, way back in 1980, there was no World Wide Web, no Nintendo Wii, no GTA of any Roman numeral. State-of-the-art software was chained to primitive, constraining hardware, and video games were so archaic that you had to actually type in written commands to do something as rudimentary as opening a door. Today’s weapons-laden avatars have only to stand before a virtual door armed with the correct, hard-won key, and the thing will magically swing open for them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anthony Clarvoe’s \u003cb>Pick Up Ax\u003c/b>, now through March 15, 2009 at Pear Avenue Theatre in Mountain View, is set in the Silicon Valley of that ancient era. Thanks to the smart direction of Ray Renati, a clever set by Ron Gasparinetti and very strong performances by all three actors, \u003cb>Pick Up Ax\u003c/b> is the best play I’ve seen this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the play opens to the heroic power chords of “Foreplay/Long Time” by Boston, Brian (Ben Fisher) and Keith (Alan Kaiser) are crowded into Brian’s toy- and computer-crammed office. Keith has taken up residence there because he’s filled his office with junk. Keith is the company’s resident savant, the “franchise” as Brian calls him, who can commune all day long with ones and zeros but wilts in the face of contact with other human beings. Brian, who discovered Keith one day in a video-game arcade racking up insanely high scores, is the company’s president. As the stage lights come up he’s on the phone, screaming at a chip supplier who inexplicably refuses to take his money.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The situation that Clarvoe presents to us, as well as much of the subsequent plot that unwinds throughout the rest of the play, mirrors the historical events of those days, when big-time suppliers of key components made sweetheart deals with preferred customers to effectively squeeze smaller players out of business. Indeed, the care Clarvoe has taken to get his facts right is one of the many pleasures of \u003cb>Pick Up Ax\u003c/b>, but his play goes far beyond documentary. Despite all the spot-on references to chips and sensors and software, this is a play about how humans work rather than how machines do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We know Brian, we’ve met lots of people like him before. He’s the guy who had the smarts, skills and personality to rise pretty far in his world, but not all the way to the top. His problem? He cares. He was drawn to Keith not only for his value as a potential meal ticket but also for Keith’s humanity. Somehow, despite being a good guy with laudable instincts, the company that he and Keith founded on a shoestring now employs scores of workers, which is one of the main reasons why Fisher’s Brian is desperate to save their company. It sounds odd to say this at a moment in history when the world’s economies are shuddering from the effects of wanton greed, but you get the feeling that if only Brian had exhibited a bit more self-interest, his company would not be in this predicament. Fisher beautifully captures this toxic mix of healthy ambition and good intentions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Keith is less familiar to us. We’ve heard about people like this, we may have even worked in the same cube farm with them, but we probably never got very close. Keith is the kind of guy who is simply not wired to let a lot of people into his private world. Brian is his only friend, the only person he really trusts to reveal his burden of genius. And what a glimpse of genius we get. Kaiser’s Keith is a gangly man-child, all elbows and knees, whose social skills are near zero. His appetite for absorbing data and cranking out code is close to infinite. When he’s hot, he can type faster than he can tell you what he’s doing. When he’s blocked, he retreats to pot and \u003cb>Dungeons and Dragons\u003c/b>. Keith may be the brains of the outfit, he may even, as Brian remarks, “run a mean dungeon,” but Brian holds his reigns, and that relationship seems to suit each party just fine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Into their world enters Mick, a fast-talking, old-school smoothy who has been following their company’s misfortunes in the press. After a hilarious brainstorming session (though a drama, \u003cb>Pick Up Ax\u003c/b> is often very funny), Mick suggests some novel business strategies of the offer-they-can’t-refuse variety. Brian, whose board of directors is breathing down his neck as the company’s chip crisis deepens, makes his deal with the devil and agrees to let Mick “talk” to his stubborn supplier. Champlin’s street-smart Mick is all confidence and patience (Brian, and especially Keith, would have been turned off if all Mick had to offer them was smarm), with flashes of anger that suggest a deep reservoir of menace below his impeccably tailored surface. This, we think, is not going to turn out well for our boys.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beyond the tight plot and its numerous twists, the insider nerd-speak and terrific dialogue — \u003ci>Brian: Extortion is technically speaking illegal. Mick: A hostile person could give it that construction\u003c/i> — one of the most effective aspects of this production is the way in which the characters evolve during the two hours we spend with them. In particular, I was impressed by the way Kaiser managed to give his character an arc without changing the nature of who Keith is. He lets Keith be Keith, unafraid to appear childish and vulnerable even as his insatiable brain is processing the swarm of new data known as Mick. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Pick Up Ax\u003c/b> runs through March 15, 2009. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.thepear.org\">tickets and information\u003c/a>, visit thepear.org.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Dr. Givings (Paul Niebanck) is a no-nonsense man of science, a skilled technician who, like a Michael Palin character in a Monty Python sketch, stands rigid and erect, his face an idiotic mask of formality, as he pleasures a female patient with an electric vibrator until she cries out in ecstasy for deliverance from above. Catherine (Hannah Cabell), his wife, is a new mother who’s guided by a loopy logic that bubbles uncontrollably from her lips pretty much whenever she opens her mouth. He is all restraint and control; she is all impulse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The good doctor and his wife are the most richly drawn characters in Sarah Ruhl’s \u003cb>In the Next Room (or the vibrator play)\u003c/b>, now playing at Berkeley Rep, but that, alas, is not saying much. Like the rest of the play’s characters who mechanically enter and exit the two-room set, Givings and his wife are tired clichés, which makes their eventual catharses and epiphanies about life, love and the virtues of being connected to each other in an honest and human way so implausible. Where, we wonder, could their insights have possibly come from?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ruhl’s play is set in the United States at the dawn of the electric age. Like the Givings’ newborn daughter, the 20th century is barely in its infancy. For privileged people like Catherine, her doctor husband and his patients, the world is a place of endless social constraints and unlimited technological possibilities. In addition to bringing light to homes once illuminated by fire, electricity has spawned a number of crackerjack new inventions, including electric vibrators, which are used by male doctors to treat women (mostly) whom they have diagnosed with hysteria. The cure involves bringing these women to orgasm so that the fluids putting pressure on their wombs can be released. What they need, in other words, is a good lay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Or at least that’s how Samantha on \u003cb>Sex and the City\u003c/b> might explain it to Carrie today. But as I watched these uptight Victorians in their gorgeous costumes (hats off to David Zinn) busy themselves in scene after scene, I wondered if perhaps Ruhl’s decision to set her play about marriage and intimacy in this particular era mired it needlessly in the anachronistic. Sure I was drawn to her source material: \u003cb>The Technology of Orgasm: Hysteria, the Vibrator, and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction\u003c/b> by Rachel P. Maines sounds like a terrific read. I’m not sure, though, that it makes a terrific play. I concede that sexual intimacy remains confusing terrain for a great many couples, even in “a time when pornography is mainstream,” as Ruhl puts it. But like the emotional and sexual repression of the Victorian era, pornography is an extreme. A more accurate picture of the “mainstream” are the millions of younger potential theater-goers who have grown up with \u003cb>American Pie\u003c/b>, \u003cb>The 40-Year-Old Virgin\u003c/b> and \u003cb>Juno\u003c/b>. For them, I fear, Ruhl’s play is going to seem like so much whining by so many confused old people, who probably shouldn’t be thinking so much about sex in the first place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Worse than the cartoon personalities of the lead actors is the relationship between the play’s white female characters and its solitary black one. Consider this on-stage geometry: In one corner is Catherine, who recently bore a child but cannot produce any milk. Sitting next to her is her husband’s female patient, Sabrina Daldry (Maria Dizzia), who cannot bear a child. Opposite them is Elizabeth (Melle Powers), Sabrina’s black housekeeper who a) has just lost a baby so has plenty of milk to spare for Catherine’s daughter, b) manages to hold down a job despite her recent loss and two kids at home, c) has a loving husband who is not afraid to express himself emotionally and d) is the only one of the bunch who can recognize an orgasm when it’s described to her in dripping detail because she’s the only one of them who has actually had one during “relations” with her husband. In fact, she’s so clear-eyed that she even understands that when it comes to the performance of one’s marital duties with one’s husband, orgasms are not always a sure thing. No, these wealthy white chicks don’t stand a chance against this black earth mama, who’s wise beyond her station in life and class. I understand that Ruhl is using Elizabeth to make certain points, but the over-reaching near-deification of the character had a racial edge to it that made me squirm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Much has been written about Sarah Ruhl’s light touch, and how her lightness should not be misinterpreted as lightweight. Indeed Ruhl’s wordplay is often hilarious and sharp precisely because her ear for charming sentiments expressed with wit and simplicity is so keen. I won’t give away the set up, but I loved the way Cabell’s Catherine realized that she might not know what kind of person she is because she has never had to decide whether or not to carry an umbrella. The play has lots of that sort of thing but ultimately, \u003cb>In The Next Room (or the vibrator play)\u003c/b>, from its self-conscious title to its thinly drawn characters, feels as fluffy as one of the bustles in one of Catherine’s skirts. With the exception of Dr. Givings, the play’s male characters are mere props used by the women to move the plot along before they are tossed aside. Even the female players are relieved of their duties when deemed no longer of use. For example, just when we think we are going to get a moment of truth between the doctor’s assistant Annie (Stacy Ross) and Sabrina, Ruhl pulls the melodramatic we-must-never-see-each-other-again card, and that’s that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All of which made the illumination between the principals at the end feel so artificial, however lovely the staging or heartfelt the acting. I don’t believe for a second that the stiff doctor could turn on a dime from Monty Python stereotype to free sprit lying naked in the snow in the moonlight, and based on the character we spend some two hours with, I definitely don’t understand how Catherine could have been the one to lead him there. “I like plays that have revelations in the moment, where emotions transform almost inexplicably,” says Ruhl in the program. I like magical realism, or whatever you want to call it, too, but this play is so grounded in historical fact, time and setting that the dislocation at its end felt like the Plan B solution of an obviously gifted writer using the tricks of her trade to meet a tough deadline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>In the Next Room (or the vibrator play)\u003c/b> runs through March 15, 2009 at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. For \u003ca href=\"http://berkeleyrep.org/ticketing/calendar/index.aspx\">tickets and information\u003c/a>, visit berkeleyrep.org.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Dr. Givings (Paul Niebanck) is a no-nonsense man of science, a skilled technician who, like a Michael Palin character in a Monty Python sketch, stands rigid and erect, his face an idiotic mask of formality, as he pleasures a female patient with an electric vibrator until she cries out in ecstasy for deliverance from above. Catherine (Hannah Cabell), his wife, is a new mother who’s guided by a loopy logic that bubbles uncontrollably from her lips pretty much whenever she opens her mouth. He is all restraint and control; she is all impulse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The good doctor and his wife are the most richly drawn characters in Sarah Ruhl’s \u003cb>In the Next Room (or the vibrator play)\u003c/b>, now playing at Berkeley Rep, but that, alas, is not saying much. Like the rest of the play’s characters who mechanically enter and exit the two-room set, Givings and his wife are tired clichés, which makes their eventual catharses and epiphanies about life, love and the virtues of being connected to each other in an honest and human way so implausible. Where, we wonder, could their insights have possibly come from?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ruhl’s play is set in the United States at the dawn of the electric age. Like the Givings’ newborn daughter, the 20th century is barely in its infancy. For privileged people like Catherine, her doctor husband and his patients, the world is a place of endless social constraints and unlimited technological possibilities. In addition to bringing light to homes once illuminated by fire, electricity has spawned a number of crackerjack new inventions, including electric vibrators, which are used by male doctors to treat women (mostly) whom they have diagnosed with hysteria. The cure involves bringing these women to orgasm so that the fluids putting pressure on their wombs can be released. What they need, in other words, is a good lay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Or at least that’s how Samantha on \u003cb>Sex and the City\u003c/b> might explain it to Carrie today. But as I watched these uptight Victorians in their gorgeous costumes (hats off to David Zinn) busy themselves in scene after scene, I wondered if perhaps Ruhl’s decision to set her play about marriage and intimacy in this particular era mired it needlessly in the anachronistic. Sure I was drawn to her source material: \u003cb>The Technology of Orgasm: Hysteria, the Vibrator, and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction\u003c/b> by Rachel P. Maines sounds like a terrific read. I’m not sure, though, that it makes a terrific play. I concede that sexual intimacy remains confusing terrain for a great many couples, even in “a time when pornography is mainstream,” as Ruhl puts it. But like the emotional and sexual repression of the Victorian era, pornography is an extreme. A more accurate picture of the “mainstream” are the millions of younger potential theater-goers who have grown up with \u003cb>American Pie\u003c/b>, \u003cb>The 40-Year-Old Virgin\u003c/b> and \u003cb>Juno\u003c/b>. For them, I fear, Ruhl’s play is going to seem like so much whining by so many confused old people, who probably shouldn’t be thinking so much about sex in the first place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Worse than the cartoon personalities of the lead actors is the relationship between the play’s white female characters and its solitary black one. Consider this on-stage geometry: In one corner is Catherine, who recently bore a child but cannot produce any milk. Sitting next to her is her husband’s female patient, Sabrina Daldry (Maria Dizzia), who cannot bear a child. Opposite them is Elizabeth (Melle Powers), Sabrina’s black housekeeper who a) has just lost a baby so has plenty of milk to spare for Catherine’s daughter, b) manages to hold down a job despite her recent loss and two kids at home, c) has a loving husband who is not afraid to express himself emotionally and d) is the only one of the bunch who can recognize an orgasm when it’s described to her in dripping detail because she’s the only one of them who has actually had one during “relations” with her husband. In fact, she’s so clear-eyed that she even understands that when it comes to the performance of one’s marital duties with one’s husband, orgasms are not always a sure thing. No, these wealthy white chicks don’t stand a chance against this black earth mama, who’s wise beyond her station in life and class. I understand that Ruhl is using Elizabeth to make certain points, but the over-reaching near-deification of the character had a racial edge to it that made me squirm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Much has been written about Sarah Ruhl’s light touch, and how her lightness should not be misinterpreted as lightweight. Indeed Ruhl’s wordplay is often hilarious and sharp precisely because her ear for charming sentiments expressed with wit and simplicity is so keen. I won’t give away the set up, but I loved the way Cabell’s Catherine realized that she might not know what kind of person she is because she has never had to decide whether or not to carry an umbrella. The play has lots of that sort of thing but ultimately, \u003cb>In The Next Room (or the vibrator play)\u003c/b>, from its self-conscious title to its thinly drawn characters, feels as fluffy as one of the bustles in one of Catherine’s skirts. With the exception of Dr. Givings, the play’s male characters are mere props used by the women to move the plot along before they are tossed aside. Even the female players are relieved of their duties when deemed no longer of use. For example, just when we think we are going to get a moment of truth between the doctor’s assistant Annie (Stacy Ross) and Sabrina, Ruhl pulls the melodramatic we-must-never-see-each-other-again card, and that’s that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All of which made the illumination between the principals at the end feel so artificial, however lovely the staging or heartfelt the acting. I don’t believe for a second that the stiff doctor could turn on a dime from Monty Python stereotype to free sprit lying naked in the snow in the moonlight, and based on the character we spend some two hours with, I definitely don’t understand how Catherine could have been the one to lead him there. “I like plays that have revelations in the moment, where emotions transform almost inexplicably,” says Ruhl in the program. I like magical realism, or whatever you want to call it, too, but this play is so grounded in historical fact, time and setting that the dislocation at its end felt like the Plan B solution of an obviously gifted writer using the tricks of her trade to meet a tough deadline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Mary Zimmerman’s brilliant and hilarious \u003cb>The Arabian Nights\u003c/b>, now playing at the Berkeley Rep, is a terrific capper to a tumultuous political year. Iraq was explicitly on Zimmerman’s mind when the play was first performed in 1992. Back then, the callous boast of a US military official to bomb Iraq “back to the Stone Age” during the previous year’s Gulf War compelled Zimmerman to focus her piece on the humanity of an enemy that had been systematically dehumanized so that its suffering would be more palatable to a US audience watching the carnage on TV. Today, Iraq has receded into the background somewhat as people’s 401Ks have been decimated. But the prospect of the eventual removal of our troops from Iraq seems, at last, to give us permission to be moved by a beautiful piece of theater set in Baghdad, to laugh at its fart jokes, to gasp at the poetry of its passages lifted from the Qur’an.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The source for Zimmerman’s play is \u003cb>The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night\u003c/b>, translated in 1923 by Powys Mathers. Zimmerman borrows freely and subjectively from the stories contained therein, stories spun by the clever Scheherezade (Sofia Jean Gomez) to keep the gleaming knife of frozen-hearted King Shahryar (Ryan Artzberger) from slitting her virgin throat. Within this story of a woman who must tell stories to save her life are more stories still, some told by characters who must themselves tell tales to save their own necks (or, in the case of the four suitors of a jester’s adulterous wife, their balls).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Zimmerman tends to work with many of the same actors and technicians from show to show, which is why, I suspect, the audience feels so well cared for in this exceptionally staged and beautifully acted production. We are in extraordinarily capable hands. In scene after scene, story after story, cast and crew alike rise to the occasion, getting belly laughs when the moment requires it or stunning us into silence with prose poems of loss and love. You sense that the play works so well precisely because the demands on the actors and technicians are so high. For example, all of the actors play more than one part, even if it’s just to take ensemble duties for a scene or two. Without exception, they bring equal measures of passion and animation to their various roles, be they large or small.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beyond its emotional requirements, the play is physically demanding — at some moments the actors are writhing on the floor in choreographed love making, other times they assume the forms of pantomime beasts of burden to bear each other about the stage, and throughout the performance, cast members are called upon to muscle the numerous pieces of the portable set into position around the patchwork floor of rolled-out Persian rugs, without the assistance of formal scene changes and furtive stagehands scurrying about in the dark. Some play instruments, most sing. The result is magic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the demands don’t end there. On each night a different pair of actors is selected at random to improvise one scene. On the night I attended, Allen Gilmore (who was terrific last summer in \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/arts/performance/article.jsp?essid=23118\">\u003cb>Bach at Leipzig\u003c/b>\u003c/a> at Shakespeare Santa Cruz and is equally marvelous here as Scheherezade’s father, the aforementioned jester and numerous other parts) and Ari Brand (I especially liked him as the boy who literally goes blind when his love leaves his side) took turns describing the contents of a bag that they both claim to own. At times they were cracking up their colleagues on the stage, which did not feel at all unprofessional. Rather, it was a moment when actors and audience were entirely in synch, each enjoying the same spectacle and letting, if only for a bit, the barriers between seats and stage fall away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Creating such moments — be it through the serendipity of improvisation, the crafting of words that can be a child’s nursery rhyme one minute and the poetry of lovers the next, or the use of lanterns that descend from the ceiling over the audience, to include us, however symbolically, in the action — is what sets Zimmerman’s work apart from plays in which we are only expected to enjoy ourselves or be attentive. By all indications, the rapt audiences at the Rep are enjoying themselves immensely right now, but Zimmerman wants more: she wants us to connect with her characters, with the stories they are telling and the passions that are struggling to unleash from the depths of their souls. I for one am grateful that she’s crazy enough to believe that such things matter. Cynicism has had quite a ride over the last eight years. It’s high time for a new story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you have seen \u003cb>The Arabian Nights\u003c/b>, we’d like to hear from you. What did you think of the performance? Please let us know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>The Arabian Nights\u003c/b> runs through January 4, 2009 on Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Thrust Stage. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.berkeleyrep.org\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit berkeleyrep.org.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Mary Zimmerman’s brilliant and hilarious \u003cb>The Arabian Nights\u003c/b>, now playing at the Berkeley Rep, is a terrific capper to a tumultuous political year. Iraq was explicitly on Zimmerman’s mind when the play was first performed in 1992. Back then, the callous boast of a US military official to bomb Iraq “back to the Stone Age” during the previous year’s Gulf War compelled Zimmerman to focus her piece on the humanity of an enemy that had been systematically dehumanized so that its suffering would be more palatable to a US audience watching the carnage on TV. Today, Iraq has receded into the background somewhat as people’s 401Ks have been decimated. But the prospect of the eventual removal of our troops from Iraq seems, at last, to give us permission to be moved by a beautiful piece of theater set in Baghdad, to laugh at its fart jokes, to gasp at the poetry of its passages lifted from the Qur’an.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The source for Zimmerman’s play is \u003cb>The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night\u003c/b>, translated in 1923 by Powys Mathers. Zimmerman borrows freely and subjectively from the stories contained therein, stories spun by the clever Scheherezade (Sofia Jean Gomez) to keep the gleaming knife of frozen-hearted King Shahryar (Ryan Artzberger) from slitting her virgin throat. Within this story of a woman who must tell stories to save her life are more stories still, some told by characters who must themselves tell tales to save their own necks (or, in the case of the four suitors of a jester’s adulterous wife, their balls).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Zimmerman tends to work with many of the same actors and technicians from show to show, which is why, I suspect, the audience feels so well cared for in this exceptionally staged and beautifully acted production. We are in extraordinarily capable hands. In scene after scene, story after story, cast and crew alike rise to the occasion, getting belly laughs when the moment requires it or stunning us into silence with prose poems of loss and love. You sense that the play works so well precisely because the demands on the actors and technicians are so high. For example, all of the actors play more than one part, even if it’s just to take ensemble duties for a scene or two. Without exception, they bring equal measures of passion and animation to their various roles, be they large or small.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beyond its emotional requirements, the play is physically demanding — at some moments the actors are writhing on the floor in choreographed love making, other times they assume the forms of pantomime beasts of burden to bear each other about the stage, and throughout the performance, cast members are called upon to muscle the numerous pieces of the portable set into position around the patchwork floor of rolled-out Persian rugs, without the assistance of formal scene changes and furtive stagehands scurrying about in the dark. Some play instruments, most sing. The result is magic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the demands don’t end there. On each night a different pair of actors is selected at random to improvise one scene. On the night I attended, Allen Gilmore (who was terrific last summer in \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/arts/performance/article.jsp?essid=23118\">\u003cb>Bach at Leipzig\u003c/b>\u003c/a> at Shakespeare Santa Cruz and is equally marvelous here as Scheherezade’s father, the aforementioned jester and numerous other parts) and Ari Brand (I especially liked him as the boy who literally goes blind when his love leaves his side) took turns describing the contents of a bag that they both claim to own. At times they were cracking up their colleagues on the stage, which did not feel at all unprofessional. Rather, it was a moment when actors and audience were entirely in synch, each enjoying the same spectacle and letting, if only for a bit, the barriers between seats and stage fall away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Creating such moments — be it through the serendipity of improvisation, the crafting of words that can be a child’s nursery rhyme one minute and the poetry of lovers the next, or the use of lanterns that descend from the ceiling over the audience, to include us, however symbolically, in the action — is what sets Zimmerman’s work apart from plays in which we are only expected to enjoy ourselves or be attentive. By all indications, the rapt audiences at the Rep are enjoying themselves immensely right now, but Zimmerman wants more: she wants us to connect with her characters, with the stories they are telling and the passions that are struggling to unleash from the depths of their souls. I for one am grateful that she’s crazy enough to believe that such things matter. Cynicism has had quite a ride over the last eight years. It’s high time for a new story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you have seen \u003cb>The Arabian Nights\u003c/b>, we’d like to hear from you. What did you think of the performance? Please let us know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>The Arabian Nights\u003c/b> runs through January 4, 2009 on Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Thrust Stage. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.berkeleyrep.org\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit berkeleyrep.org.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Around this time of year, theater companies across the country dust off their favorite gothic dramas in hopes of filling a few seats with patrons, and then scaring the bejeebus out of them. San Jose Stage is doing its Halloween thing through November 2, 2008 with a fine production of \u003cb>The Turn of the Screw\u003c/b> by Henry James. Originally written as a newspaper serial before being turned into a novella in 1898, a Benjamin Brittan opera in 1954, and a movie in 1961 (Truman Capote co-wrote the script), James’s ghost story was adapted for the stage in 1996 by Jeffrey Hatcher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Hatcher’s hands, James’s fever dream is spare and unadorned, leaving almost as much to the imagination as if one were reading a book or being told a story round a campfire. Director Rick Singleton has adhered to the playwright’s instructions that there be no props or costume changes. He has, however, given his actors a single chair to sit on, as well as a couple of flights of stairs to climb and descend in order to punctuate the play’s various scene changes. He’s even snuck in a few sound cues, usually in the form of a disembodied voice intoning words like “footfall, footfall” instead of the sounds themselves. Again, our imagination is called upon to fill in the blanks, which only heightens our sense of dread as James’s creepy yarn unwinds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Equally frugal is the casting, which is limited to a single pair of actors. Chloë Bronzan plays “The Woman,” who has been hired by “The Man” (Michael C. Storm) to be the governess of his young niece Flora and nephew Miles (also played by Storm). We never see Flora, although Bronzan paints a fairly vivid picture of the urchin, as does Storm in his capacity as Mrs. Grose, the housekeeper at Bly House where the children have been sequestered by their uncle, the Man.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From the first scene, in which the all-powerful Man interviews the subservient Woman, we are given strong hints of sexual mischief between unequals. The Woman is here for a job that only the Man can bestow. She must do anything to get it, including not asking questions about those who have preceded her, not contacting him for any reason whatsoever once she arrives at Bly House, and being willing to get down on her knees to agree to his conditions with the words “I do.” “Success,” he purrs, “I have seduced you.” In fact, the Woman is perfectly happy to be seduced as marriage to her master is her secret, dare-not-speak-its-name desire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Storm does a wonderful job with his various parts, all performed in the same black suit that he’s wearing when we meet him. As Mrs. Grose, he pulls in one arm slightly, as a bird might do to protect an injured wing, and he walks with the subtle shuffle of someone who has done a lot of heavy lifting during her life, but whose body was probably not built for it. Storm gives Mrs. Grose’s voice a feminine lilt, but only to communicate to us that he has shifted characters, not to attempt a full-on female impersonation. His acting, in other words, is as functional and economical as the playwright’s vision for the piece itself. Smart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Miles, Storm stands erect. His manner is polite, but there’s a Stepford edge to his delivery, as if he knows exactly what to say to an adult to assure them that everything — whatever that everything might be — is okay. Such behavior in a 10-year-old can only be the product of some sort of premature self-knowledge, the contents of which becomes increasingly unnerving as we learn more and more about the boy and the demons that the governess believes are controlling his soul — it is not enough, apparently, that in their prior, mortal forms these ghosts irreparably corrupted and compromised the lad’s flesh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Which brings us back to Bronzan, who, unlike Storm, has only one persona to inhabit. Not to take anything away from Storm’s performance, but he has the luxury of being able to move from character to character as the play progresses and its story builds. Bronzan has the tougher task; as the play’s narrator, she must tell us a tale while convincing us that she is actually seeing spirits and specters. At the same time, and by design of the playwright, she must also behave in a way that suggests that she may just be a little bit nuts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hatcher did not want his audiences to conclude one way or the other that Bly House is or is not haunted by the pair of lovers and pedophiles who used to roam its halls and grounds. For the record, I’m generally impatient with authors who want to have it both ways in the name of art. We will eventually make up our minds, regardless of the playwright’s aims; why shouldn’t he be forced to show his cards, too?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bronzan only gets her character half right, which is not to say that her performance is a failure. Standing virtually alone on an essentially bare stage, she had me convinced that she was seeing ghosts, and several of her screams and expressions of fright caught me by surprise. Even the way she described the apparitions before her gave me goose flesh, and Storm’s Mrs. Grose lent even more credibility to the governess’s perception of reality when she dropped her mask of reserve and became a co-conspirator with the governess in the dirty little secrets of Bly House.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So I guess I didn’t notice the moment when Bronzan was supposed to transition from ghost chaser to lunatic, as the playwright would have it, because I figured that Bronzan was playing a governess who was simply going a little bit crazy because she had just seen a couple of ghosts with designs on the children she has been hired to protect. I suppose it would have been a neat trick to have pulled off the intended character arc, but I was more than satisfied by the treat of Bronzan’s performance. She had, as the Man so succinctly puts it, seduced me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>The Turn of the Screw\u003c/b> runs through November 2, 2008 at San Jose Stage. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.sanjose-stage.com/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">tickets and information\u003c/a>, visit sanjose-stage.com.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Around this time of year, theater companies across the country dust off their favorite gothic dramas in hopes of filling a few seats with patrons, and then scaring the bejeebus out of them. San Jose Stage is doing its Halloween thing through November 2, 2008 with a fine production of \u003cb>The Turn of the Screw\u003c/b> by Henry James. Originally written as a newspaper serial before being turned into a novella in 1898, a Benjamin Brittan opera in 1954, and a movie in 1961 (Truman Capote co-wrote the script), James’s ghost story was adapted for the stage in 1996 by Jeffrey Hatcher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Hatcher’s hands, James’s fever dream is spare and unadorned, leaving almost as much to the imagination as if one were reading a book or being told a story round a campfire. Director Rick Singleton has adhered to the playwright’s instructions that there be no props or costume changes. He has, however, given his actors a single chair to sit on, as well as a couple of flights of stairs to climb and descend in order to punctuate the play’s various scene changes. He’s even snuck in a few sound cues, usually in the form of a disembodied voice intoning words like “footfall, footfall” instead of the sounds themselves. Again, our imagination is called upon to fill in the blanks, which only heightens our sense of dread as James’s creepy yarn unwinds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Equally frugal is the casting, which is limited to a single pair of actors. Chloë Bronzan plays “The Woman,” who has been hired by “The Man” (Michael C. Storm) to be the governess of his young niece Flora and nephew Miles (also played by Storm). We never see Flora, although Bronzan paints a fairly vivid picture of the urchin, as does Storm in his capacity as Mrs. Grose, the housekeeper at Bly House where the children have been sequestered by their uncle, the Man.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From the first scene, in which the all-powerful Man interviews the subservient Woman, we are given strong hints of sexual mischief between unequals. The Woman is here for a job that only the Man can bestow. She must do anything to get it, including not asking questions about those who have preceded her, not contacting him for any reason whatsoever once she arrives at Bly House, and being willing to get down on her knees to agree to his conditions with the words “I do.” “Success,” he purrs, “I have seduced you.” In fact, the Woman is perfectly happy to be seduced as marriage to her master is her secret, dare-not-speak-its-name desire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Storm does a wonderful job with his various parts, all performed in the same black suit that he’s wearing when we meet him. As Mrs. Grose, he pulls in one arm slightly, as a bird might do to protect an injured wing, and he walks with the subtle shuffle of someone who has done a lot of heavy lifting during her life, but whose body was probably not built for it. Storm gives Mrs. Grose’s voice a feminine lilt, but only to communicate to us that he has shifted characters, not to attempt a full-on female impersonation. His acting, in other words, is as functional and economical as the playwright’s vision for the piece itself. Smart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Miles, Storm stands erect. His manner is polite, but there’s a Stepford edge to his delivery, as if he knows exactly what to say to an adult to assure them that everything — whatever that everything might be — is okay. Such behavior in a 10-year-old can only be the product of some sort of premature self-knowledge, the contents of which becomes increasingly unnerving as we learn more and more about the boy and the demons that the governess believes are controlling his soul — it is not enough, apparently, that in their prior, mortal forms these ghosts irreparably corrupted and compromised the lad’s flesh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Which brings us back to Bronzan, who, unlike Storm, has only one persona to inhabit. Not to take anything away from Storm’s performance, but he has the luxury of being able to move from character to character as the play progresses and its story builds. Bronzan has the tougher task; as the play’s narrator, she must tell us a tale while convincing us that she is actually seeing spirits and specters. At the same time, and by design of the playwright, she must also behave in a way that suggests that she may just be a little bit nuts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hatcher did not want his audiences to conclude one way or the other that Bly House is or is not haunted by the pair of lovers and pedophiles who used to roam its halls and grounds. For the record, I’m generally impatient with authors who want to have it both ways in the name of art. We will eventually make up our minds, regardless of the playwright’s aims; why shouldn’t he be forced to show his cards, too?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bronzan only gets her character half right, which is not to say that her performance is a failure. Standing virtually alone on an essentially bare stage, she had me convinced that she was seeing ghosts, and several of her screams and expressions of fright caught me by surprise. Even the way she described the apparitions before her gave me goose flesh, and Storm’s Mrs. Grose lent even more credibility to the governess’s perception of reality when she dropped her mask of reserve and became a co-conspirator with the governess in the dirty little secrets of Bly House.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So I guess I didn’t notice the moment when Bronzan was supposed to transition from ghost chaser to lunatic, as the playwright would have it, because I figured that Bronzan was playing a governess who was simply going a little bit crazy because she had just seen a couple of ghosts with designs on the children she has been hired to protect. I suppose it would have been a neat trick to have pulled off the intended character arc, but I was more than satisfied by the treat of Bronzan’s performance. She had, as the Man so succinctly puts it, seduced me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>With a running time of three hours including intermission, Tom Stoppard’s \u003cb>Rock ‘n’ Roll,\u003c/b> is as much of an endurance test as a Grateful Dead concert, albeit without the painfully late start and interminable set break.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Directed by A.C.T.’s artistic director, Carey Perloff, Stoppard’s characteristically funny and intelligent play is an exceedingly dense affair, even for him. It requires the audience to be steeped in the personalities and palace intrigues of Czechoslovakian politics between the years 1968 and 1990; to appreciate the creative genius of Syd Barrett, the pre-\u003cb>Dark Side of the Moon\u003c/b> founder of Pink Floyd; to know their way around the finer points of communism, both as conceived by Karl Marx and ruthlessly manipulated by Joseph Stalin; and to revel in the nuances of translation and meaning to be found in the ancient poems of Sappho. Did I mention that \u003cb>Rock ‘n’ Roll\u003c/b> is also a sentimental love story? Consider it mentioned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not that the play’s length and arcane subject matter is off-putting or exhausting. Far from it. The weaving together of so much political history, Greek poetry, and Stoppardian fiction — with a terrific soundtrack that careens from scruffy Rolling Stones to saccharine Beach Boys, early Syd Barrett to late Pink Floyd, mournful Velvet Underground to exuberantly sonic Plastic People of the Universe — is invigorating. After seeing the performance on opening night, I have been thinking about little else, and not just because I am obliged to type my meager observations into a computer. This is a play that stays with you, powerful despite its numerous faults.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stoppard’s fictional story begins in Cambridge in 1968. Real Russian tanks have just rolled through the streets of Prague, prompting a young Czech student named Jan (Manoel Felciano) to inform his Cambridge professor and mentor, an old-school Commie named Max (Jack Willis), that he is returning home. Max, who is defensive about the Red fist that has come out of the east to crush the Prague Spring, is furious with his protégé for failing to complete his studies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Or, at least, that’s what I think Max is angry about. Throughout the play, Max’s actions often come off as irrational, as if this man who claims to have only a biological machine between his ears, rather than a mind, might lack either. Only later, when we realize that Max has lots of desires but possibly not a heart, do we surmise the cause of Max’s seemingly random actions. I’m certain that I have not known as many Communist Cambridge professors as Stoppard has, but making Max a heartless blowhard who values the hive over the bees strikes me as an overwrought bit of stereotyping.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Equally suspicious is Stoppard’s decision to kill off Max’s wife, Eleanor (René Augesen), who you know won’t make it to the second act the moment she reveals her breast cancer early in the first. A renowned authority on Sappho, her awestruck female students timidly creep into her home for one-on-one (purely Platonic) lessons. Eleanor struck me as a far more intelligent and clear-eyed creation than poor idealistic Max, so I felt somewhat cheated not to get her perspective on the play’s events as they unfolded. Why do away with her? Keeping both her and Max alive would have made this long play even longer, but from where I sat, Stoppard got rid of the wrong character.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Max and Eleanor’s daughter, Esme (played as a young girl by Summer Serafin), who opens the play writhing on a table while smoking a joint, would like to give her father’s favorite pupil a parting gift — her virginity. Jan is clearly infatuated with this hippie vision of sweet-sixteen. But despite his relative youth, Jan is an old-world gentleman. So, he plucks one of Esme’s cherry LPs to add to his collection of Western auditory decadence and heads home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ostensibly he is going to Czechoslovakia to look in on his mom, but his real motives are not entirely clear. Even the interrogator (Anthony Fusco), who gives him a good Orwellian grilling at customs, can’t understand why he wants to return to Czechoslovakia when all the other intellectuals in the country have chosen to flee. The answer is that Jan must suffer to give Stoppard’s story its arc. As artificial as that may sound, at least the playwright does not have to make up what comes next, since he has just hurled this confused young man, whose sensibility is Eastern but whose musical tastes look to the West, into the real events of Russian-occupied Czechoslovakia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When we meet Jan, he’s a familiar, almost familial, guest at Max and Eleanor’s bourgeois Cambridge home, where the hyper-educated dine outdoors on a brick patio amid trellises and greenery. Jan’s flat in Prague is a far cry from that. His meagre journalist’s salary affords him an apartment that has the messy ambience of a student’s crash pad, only more run down. Sure, Jan dotes on his records and hi-fi (he is forever checking his precious collection of vinyl to make sure it is all in order and accounted for), but he cares so little for his furnishings that he repairs the broken foot of a beat-up couch with a stack of books. For Jan, literature is a cheaper commodity than furniture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This business of what Jan really cares about, indeed, what any of the characters really care about, is, I think, a key to the play, more even than the question of whether we are just collections of atoms or ethereal beings possessing unquantifiable souls. Having left Esme, who he never got the chance to properly care about or for, Jan is now on autopilot — a stranger in a strange land — doing what he must to get along.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Out of a sense of self-preservation more than ideology, Jan wants to believe the state propaganda that everything is okay, but he also wants to listen to his music and be left alone. That, it turns out, is a more radical proposition than any of the causes that his friend Ferdinand (Jud Williford) would like for him to take up. Jan derides Ferdinand’s endless protests as “moral exhibitionism.” It’s only when the police beat up fans of his favorite band, The Plastic People of the Universe, that Jan gets politically engaged enough to thrust a petition in Ferdinand’s face. Jan idolizes the Plastics precisely because they stand for nothing. They are the real agents of change, he says, because they are safe from the desire for recognition. As for the kids who were beat up by the police, they deserve support because, unlike traditional dissidents, who hurl Molotov cocktails and words alike at their oppressors, they had not asked for the fight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the payoffs of \u003cb>Rock ‘n’ Roll\u003c/b>‘s length is that we get a chance to hang out with Jan and Ferdinand long enough to watch their relationship evolve. These men, Felciano and Williford convince us, are good friends, for all their differences. Augesen and Serafin also make the most of the play’s deliberate pace. In the first act, Augesen plays Eleanor and Serafin plays her daughter, Esme. In the second act, Augesen takes over the role of the adult Esme while Serafin plays Esme’s teenage daughter, Alice. Reading the program before the curtain went up, as \u003cb>It’s Only Rock and Roll\u003c/b> blared into the upper reaches of the Geary Theater, I wondered if these two could pull it off. But Serafin convinces us that she is two very different women — Esme, a dreamer who is more interested in the mantra “make love not war” than her father’s “the workers shall own the means of production,” and Alice, whose possession of her grandparents’ school-smarts gene has gotten her into Cambridge a full year early.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for Augesen, she is a revelation. I loved her as Eleanor in the first act — from her flashes of anger to the way she would regain her poise to the patience she showed her childish and naïve husband. But as the adult Esme, struggling to fit into a world filled with people, her daughter included, who will always be light years smarter than she could ever dream, her anxieties creep out quietly, revealing themselves in the littlest things. This is a wonderful, smart performance; I could not take my eyes off of her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If there is one unforgivably sour note to this production it is the set, which takes its inspiration from a photograph of a view up the light well in a Prague apartment building. Like the building’s walls in the photograph, the walls in the set rise away from us, upstage in forced perspective, so that windows and masonry flank either side of the stage, the ceiling above it, and the stage itself. The effect is rather like standing in an M.C. Escher etching, adding a layer of surrealism that is, I would suggest, entirely at odds with Stoppard’s play. We expect playwrights to be indulgent enough to occasionally undermine their own work, but it makes us squirm when a theater company appears to take similar liberties in the name, presumably, of its need for self expression. Max and Eleanor would not have been pleased.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rock ‘n’ Roll\u003c/b> runs through October 18, 2008 at A.C.T. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.act-sf.org\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit act-sf.org.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "With a running time of three hours including intermission, Tom Stoppard's \u003cb>Rock 'n' Roll,\u003c/b> is as much of an endurance test as a Grateful Dead concert, albeit without the painfully late start and interminable set break.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>With a running time of three hours including intermission, Tom Stoppard’s \u003cb>Rock ‘n’ Roll,\u003c/b> is as much of an endurance test as a Grateful Dead concert, albeit without the painfully late start and interminable set break.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Directed by A.C.T.’s artistic director, Carey Perloff, Stoppard’s characteristically funny and intelligent play is an exceedingly dense affair, even for him. It requires the audience to be steeped in the personalities and palace intrigues of Czechoslovakian politics between the years 1968 and 1990; to appreciate the creative genius of Syd Barrett, the pre-\u003cb>Dark Side of the Moon\u003c/b> founder of Pink Floyd; to know their way around the finer points of communism, both as conceived by Karl Marx and ruthlessly manipulated by Joseph Stalin; and to revel in the nuances of translation and meaning to be found in the ancient poems of Sappho. Did I mention that \u003cb>Rock ‘n’ Roll\u003c/b> is also a sentimental love story? Consider it mentioned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not that the play’s length and arcane subject matter is off-putting or exhausting. Far from it. The weaving together of so much political history, Greek poetry, and Stoppardian fiction — with a terrific soundtrack that careens from scruffy Rolling Stones to saccharine Beach Boys, early Syd Barrett to late Pink Floyd, mournful Velvet Underground to exuberantly sonic Plastic People of the Universe — is invigorating. After seeing the performance on opening night, I have been thinking about little else, and not just because I am obliged to type my meager observations into a computer. This is a play that stays with you, powerful despite its numerous faults.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stoppard’s fictional story begins in Cambridge in 1968. Real Russian tanks have just rolled through the streets of Prague, prompting a young Czech student named Jan (Manoel Felciano) to inform his Cambridge professor and mentor, an old-school Commie named Max (Jack Willis), that he is returning home. Max, who is defensive about the Red fist that has come out of the east to crush the Prague Spring, is furious with his protégé for failing to complete his studies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Or, at least, that’s what I think Max is angry about. Throughout the play, Max’s actions often come off as irrational, as if this man who claims to have only a biological machine between his ears, rather than a mind, might lack either. Only later, when we realize that Max has lots of desires but possibly not a heart, do we surmise the cause of Max’s seemingly random actions. I’m certain that I have not known as many Communist Cambridge professors as Stoppard has, but making Max a heartless blowhard who values the hive over the bees strikes me as an overwrought bit of stereotyping.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Equally suspicious is Stoppard’s decision to kill off Max’s wife, Eleanor (René Augesen), who you know won’t make it to the second act the moment she reveals her breast cancer early in the first. A renowned authority on Sappho, her awestruck female students timidly creep into her home for one-on-one (purely Platonic) lessons. Eleanor struck me as a far more intelligent and clear-eyed creation than poor idealistic Max, so I felt somewhat cheated not to get her perspective on the play’s events as they unfolded. Why do away with her? Keeping both her and Max alive would have made this long play even longer, but from where I sat, Stoppard got rid of the wrong character.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Max and Eleanor’s daughter, Esme (played as a young girl by Summer Serafin), who opens the play writhing on a table while smoking a joint, would like to give her father’s favorite pupil a parting gift — her virginity. Jan is clearly infatuated with this hippie vision of sweet-sixteen. But despite his relative youth, Jan is an old-world gentleman. So, he plucks one of Esme’s cherry LPs to add to his collection of Western auditory decadence and heads home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ostensibly he is going to Czechoslovakia to look in on his mom, but his real motives are not entirely clear. Even the interrogator (Anthony Fusco), who gives him a good Orwellian grilling at customs, can’t understand why he wants to return to Czechoslovakia when all the other intellectuals in the country have chosen to flee. The answer is that Jan must suffer to give Stoppard’s story its arc. As artificial as that may sound, at least the playwright does not have to make up what comes next, since he has just hurled this confused young man, whose sensibility is Eastern but whose musical tastes look to the West, into the real events of Russian-occupied Czechoslovakia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When we meet Jan, he’s a familiar, almost familial, guest at Max and Eleanor’s bourgeois Cambridge home, where the hyper-educated dine outdoors on a brick patio amid trellises and greenery. Jan’s flat in Prague is a far cry from that. His meagre journalist’s salary affords him an apartment that has the messy ambience of a student’s crash pad, only more run down. Sure, Jan dotes on his records and hi-fi (he is forever checking his precious collection of vinyl to make sure it is all in order and accounted for), but he cares so little for his furnishings that he repairs the broken foot of a beat-up couch with a stack of books. For Jan, literature is a cheaper commodity than furniture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This business of what Jan really cares about, indeed, what any of the characters really care about, is, I think, a key to the play, more even than the question of whether we are just collections of atoms or ethereal beings possessing unquantifiable souls. Having left Esme, who he never got the chance to properly care about or for, Jan is now on autopilot — a stranger in a strange land — doing what he must to get along.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Out of a sense of self-preservation more than ideology, Jan wants to believe the state propaganda that everything is okay, but he also wants to listen to his music and be left alone. That, it turns out, is a more radical proposition than any of the causes that his friend Ferdinand (Jud Williford) would like for him to take up. Jan derides Ferdinand’s endless protests as “moral exhibitionism.” It’s only when the police beat up fans of his favorite band, The Plastic People of the Universe, that Jan gets politically engaged enough to thrust a petition in Ferdinand’s face. Jan idolizes the Plastics precisely because they stand for nothing. They are the real agents of change, he says, because they are safe from the desire for recognition. As for the kids who were beat up by the police, they deserve support because, unlike traditional dissidents, who hurl Molotov cocktails and words alike at their oppressors, they had not asked for the fight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the payoffs of \u003cb>Rock ‘n’ Roll\u003c/b>‘s length is that we get a chance to hang out with Jan and Ferdinand long enough to watch their relationship evolve. These men, Felciano and Williford convince us, are good friends, for all their differences. Augesen and Serafin also make the most of the play’s deliberate pace. In the first act, Augesen plays Eleanor and Serafin plays her daughter, Esme. In the second act, Augesen takes over the role of the adult Esme while Serafin plays Esme’s teenage daughter, Alice. Reading the program before the curtain went up, as \u003cb>It’s Only Rock and Roll\u003c/b> blared into the upper reaches of the Geary Theater, I wondered if these two could pull it off. But Serafin convinces us that she is two very different women — Esme, a dreamer who is more interested in the mantra “make love not war” than her father’s “the workers shall own the means of production,” and Alice, whose possession of her grandparents’ school-smarts gene has gotten her into Cambridge a full year early.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for Augesen, she is a revelation. I loved her as Eleanor in the first act — from her flashes of anger to the way she would regain her poise to the patience she showed her childish and naïve husband. But as the adult Esme, struggling to fit into a world filled with people, her daughter included, who will always be light years smarter than she could ever dream, her anxieties creep out quietly, revealing themselves in the littlest things. This is a wonderful, smart performance; I could not take my eyes off of her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If there is one unforgivably sour note to this production it is the set, which takes its inspiration from a photograph of a view up the light well in a Prague apartment building. Like the building’s walls in the photograph, the walls in the set rise away from us, upstage in forced perspective, so that windows and masonry flank either side of the stage, the ceiling above it, and the stage itself. The effect is rather like standing in an M.C. Escher etching, adding a layer of surrealism that is, I would suggest, entirely at odds with Stoppard’s play. We expect playwrights to be indulgent enough to occasionally undermine their own work, but it makes us squirm when a theater company appears to take similar liberties in the name, presumably, of its need for self expression. Max and Eleanor would not have been pleased.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rock ‘n’ Roll\u003c/b> runs through October 18, 2008 at A.C.T. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.act-sf.org\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit act-sf.org.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Yellowjackets at Berkeley Rep",
"headTitle": "Yellowjackets at Berkeley Rep | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>One of the most laudable traits of high-school students is their ability to seize upon a compelling notion and run with it. A profound reverence for the truth, whatever they might perceive that truth to be, has yet to be beaten out of them by experience and exhaustion. Perspective is for the olds, a cheap trick employed by parents and other boring authority figures to keep them down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As most of us learn the hard way, ideals without perspective and values in a vacuum tend to isolate more than liberate, and they are no help when it comes to creating community. Which may explain why each of the characters in \u003cb>Yellowjackets\u003c/b>, a new play by Itamar Moses and the first production of the Berkeley Rep’s 2008-2009 season, appear to move through the play in his or her own bubble of truth, largely blinkered, until the end, to the problems and perspectives of one another.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The play is set at Berkeley High, whose mascot is the yellowjacket and which happens to sit just a few blocks from Berkeley Rep. Moses, now 30 and a resident of Brooklyn, attended high school there in the early 1990s, at a time when political correctness, as well as its predictable backlash, was in full force. The kids in \u003cb>Yellowjackets\u003c/b> are swimming in this PC soup, as they try to make sense of their racial, cultural, and socio-economic identities. The feeling of isolation that Moses creates is palpable, as students and teachers alike in this desegregated school self-segregate, becoming strangers in their own multicultural paradise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first half of the play’s first act introduces us to 23 students and faculty (played by 11 actors) in a series of rapid-fire, similarly isolated sketches. There’s Trevor (Craig Piaget), the terrified and frail freshman, enduring the taunts and threats of tough guy Guillem (Brian Rivera), who takes genuine pleasure in intimidating the easy-to-tease white kid he sits next to in ethnic conflict and cooperation class. We can tell we’ll want to keep an eye on these two, but should we also pay close attention to the comical Chinese mathematics teacher Mr. Ling (Kevin Hsieh), who can’t control his unruly class? Enjoy him while you can.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then there’s principal Franks (Alex Curtis), his arm in a sling after getting caught in the middle of the strobe-lit fight between a pair of rival gangs that opens the play. Don’t concern yourself too much with Franks, but remember Rashid (Lance Gardner), the hard-ass student “cop,” and especially his kid brother, Damian (Shoresh Alaudini), who is the object of principal Franks’s ire. Rashid is always saving his brother’s bacon for one reason or another, and Damian needs a lot of saving.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cut to Ms. Robbins (Jahmela Biggs), a stern faculty member who feels it is her duty to inform her class that their school paper, \u003ci>The Jacket\u003c/i>, has just published material that she believes to be racist. Next up is Mr. Behzad (Brian Rivera again), whose agenda includes pushing Alexa (Amaya Alonso Hallifax) to drum up publicity for his assembly on Latin American studies, which he believes to be critical to his students’ education even if the Spanish-speaking students in his class believe he’s wasting their time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At least Moses is now steering us in the direction of something, and that something would be \u003ci>The Jacket\u003c/i> (Alexa is the paper’s photo editor), where we meet the insufferably earnest Avi (Ben Freeman), who is finally getting his shot as editor, much to the consternation of Gwen (Adrienne Papp), who was passed over for the post despite having a more exquisitely ruthless mind. As Avi addresses his staff, nostalgically recalling the glory days of 1991, when the paper’s editor left the front page blank as a protest against the Gulf War, Sammy (Kevin Hsieh again) pays close attention out of a desire to turn his minor sports-writing gig into something significant. Other students heckle him, tossing balled up pieces of paper his way, while his best friend Ryan (Alex Curtis again) lays on his back, pipe in hand, and proceeds to get totally and awesomely baked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that’s not even everyone. One of my favorite bit players in \u003cb>Yellowjackets\u003c/b> is goth-girl Sarine (Erika Salazar), whose petite stature belies her anything-but-mousy spirit. Tamika (Jahmela Biggs again) is also a treat, especially in her scenes with Damian, who is even more of a source of frustration to her than the school administration, which, despite an agreement she had with a recently departed staff member, has informed her that she is one credit short of graduating. While some students are just trying to graduate, others like Gwen are preoccupied with Berkeley High’s most imposing neighbor, Cal — when her mock-trial partner James (Lance Gardner again) is accepted to UC before she is, the devastation and sense of injustice visibly flows from her, and we realize what a monkey Cal must be on the backs of at least some of Berkeley High’s students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although the rush of entrances and exits prevents us from getting to know most of the characters very well, a few performances stand out. Craig Piaget convinced me that Trevor was totally out of his element, the kid everybody picks on and who with each passing day descends deeper into a paralysis of paranoia and fear rather than becoming stronger for the experience. So convincing was his performance as Trevor that I could not quite believe that he also played the glib, self-absorbed Mr. Terrence, \u003ci>The Jacket’s\u003c/i> irresponsible faculty advisor. Brian Rivera also works hard, bouncing from tough Guillem to tougher Officer Sanchez to dogmatic and melodramatic Mr. Behzad. Shoresh Alaudini’s Damian is riveting, as is Adrienne Papp’s Gwen. Another character worthy of note is the high school itself, represented by Annie Smart’s fine set — its chain-link fence, mural wall, and modest-but-effective rows of lockers conjures a time and place that is both realistic and abstract.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By comparison, this young play (commissioned by Berkeley Rep) is still finding itself. At times the characters speak of their situations and stations in life — their perceptions of the truth — with eloquence, but too often Moses appears to suffer from the same ailment as his high schoolers, namely, the inability to see how these individual epiphanies fit into a larger whole. Unable to create a fictional resolution that might have improved upon his experiences at Berkeley High, Moses instead crafts his characters’ epiphanies so that they lead straight to, and only to, personal redemption, which by any measure seems too easy a solution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I don’t mean to suggest that I would have preferred to sit back and gawk as the lives of these characters, who we become quite fond of over the course of several hours, deteriorate just for the sake of gritty realism, but the truths that Moses has them grapple with (Guillem learns that everyone, even Trevor, has a right to his or her humanity; Avi finally realizes that mediating expression can be used as a club to keep people down; Damian goes all soft when he discovers that grace happens) feel pretty saccharine. If Moses is not careful, he may find himself fending off offers from Disney to turn his coming-of-age drama into their next high school musical.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yellowjackets\u003c/b> runs through October 10, 2008 at Berkeley Rep. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.berkeleyrep.org\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">tickets andinformation\u003c/a> visit berkeleyrep.org.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>One of the most laudable traits of high-school students is their ability to seize upon a compelling notion and run with it. A profound reverence for the truth, whatever they might perceive that truth to be, has yet to be beaten out of them by experience and exhaustion. Perspective is for the olds, a cheap trick employed by parents and other boring authority figures to keep them down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As most of us learn the hard way, ideals without perspective and values in a vacuum tend to isolate more than liberate, and they are no help when it comes to creating community. Which may explain why each of the characters in \u003cb>Yellowjackets\u003c/b>, a new play by Itamar Moses and the first production of the Berkeley Rep’s 2008-2009 season, appear to move through the play in his or her own bubble of truth, largely blinkered, until the end, to the problems and perspectives of one another.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The play is set at Berkeley High, whose mascot is the yellowjacket and which happens to sit just a few blocks from Berkeley Rep. Moses, now 30 and a resident of Brooklyn, attended high school there in the early 1990s, at a time when political correctness, as well as its predictable backlash, was in full force. The kids in \u003cb>Yellowjackets\u003c/b> are swimming in this PC soup, as they try to make sense of their racial, cultural, and socio-economic identities. The feeling of isolation that Moses creates is palpable, as students and teachers alike in this desegregated school self-segregate, becoming strangers in their own multicultural paradise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first half of the play’s first act introduces us to 23 students and faculty (played by 11 actors) in a series of rapid-fire, similarly isolated sketches. There’s Trevor (Craig Piaget), the terrified and frail freshman, enduring the taunts and threats of tough guy Guillem (Brian Rivera), who takes genuine pleasure in intimidating the easy-to-tease white kid he sits next to in ethnic conflict and cooperation class. We can tell we’ll want to keep an eye on these two, but should we also pay close attention to the comical Chinese mathematics teacher Mr. Ling (Kevin Hsieh), who can’t control his unruly class? Enjoy him while you can.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then there’s principal Franks (Alex Curtis), his arm in a sling after getting caught in the middle of the strobe-lit fight between a pair of rival gangs that opens the play. Don’t concern yourself too much with Franks, but remember Rashid (Lance Gardner), the hard-ass student “cop,” and especially his kid brother, Damian (Shoresh Alaudini), who is the object of principal Franks’s ire. Rashid is always saving his brother’s bacon for one reason or another, and Damian needs a lot of saving.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cut to Ms. Robbins (Jahmela Biggs), a stern faculty member who feels it is her duty to inform her class that their school paper, \u003ci>The Jacket\u003c/i>, has just published material that she believes to be racist. Next up is Mr. Behzad (Brian Rivera again), whose agenda includes pushing Alexa (Amaya Alonso Hallifax) to drum up publicity for his assembly on Latin American studies, which he believes to be critical to his students’ education even if the Spanish-speaking students in his class believe he’s wasting their time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At least Moses is now steering us in the direction of something, and that something would be \u003ci>The Jacket\u003c/i> (Alexa is the paper’s photo editor), where we meet the insufferably earnest Avi (Ben Freeman), who is finally getting his shot as editor, much to the consternation of Gwen (Adrienne Papp), who was passed over for the post despite having a more exquisitely ruthless mind. As Avi addresses his staff, nostalgically recalling the glory days of 1991, when the paper’s editor left the front page blank as a protest against the Gulf War, Sammy (Kevin Hsieh again) pays close attention out of a desire to turn his minor sports-writing gig into something significant. Other students heckle him, tossing balled up pieces of paper his way, while his best friend Ryan (Alex Curtis again) lays on his back, pipe in hand, and proceeds to get totally and awesomely baked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that’s not even everyone. One of my favorite bit players in \u003cb>Yellowjackets\u003c/b> is goth-girl Sarine (Erika Salazar), whose petite stature belies her anything-but-mousy spirit. Tamika (Jahmela Biggs again) is also a treat, especially in her scenes with Damian, who is even more of a source of frustration to her than the school administration, which, despite an agreement she had with a recently departed staff member, has informed her that she is one credit short of graduating. While some students are just trying to graduate, others like Gwen are preoccupied with Berkeley High’s most imposing neighbor, Cal — when her mock-trial partner James (Lance Gardner again) is accepted to UC before she is, the devastation and sense of injustice visibly flows from her, and we realize what a monkey Cal must be on the backs of at least some of Berkeley High’s students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although the rush of entrances and exits prevents us from getting to know most of the characters very well, a few performances stand out. Craig Piaget convinced me that Trevor was totally out of his element, the kid everybody picks on and who with each passing day descends deeper into a paralysis of paranoia and fear rather than becoming stronger for the experience. So convincing was his performance as Trevor that I could not quite believe that he also played the glib, self-absorbed Mr. Terrence, \u003ci>The Jacket’s\u003c/i> irresponsible faculty advisor. Brian Rivera also works hard, bouncing from tough Guillem to tougher Officer Sanchez to dogmatic and melodramatic Mr. Behzad. Shoresh Alaudini’s Damian is riveting, as is Adrienne Papp’s Gwen. Another character worthy of note is the high school itself, represented by Annie Smart’s fine set — its chain-link fence, mural wall, and modest-but-effective rows of lockers conjures a time and place that is both realistic and abstract.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By comparison, this young play (commissioned by Berkeley Rep) is still finding itself. At times the characters speak of their situations and stations in life — their perceptions of the truth — with eloquence, but too often Moses appears to suffer from the same ailment as his high schoolers, namely, the inability to see how these individual epiphanies fit into a larger whole. Unable to create a fictional resolution that might have improved upon his experiences at Berkeley High, Moses instead crafts his characters’ epiphanies so that they lead straight to, and only to, personal redemption, which by any measure seems too easy a solution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I don’t mean to suggest that I would have preferred to sit back and gawk as the lives of these characters, who we become quite fond of over the course of several hours, deteriorate just for the sake of gritty realism, but the truths that Moses has them grapple with (Guillem learns that everyone, even Trevor, has a right to his or her humanity; Avi finally realizes that mediating expression can be used as a club to keep people down; Damian goes all soft when he discovers that grace happens) feel pretty saccharine. If Moses is not careful, he may find himself fending off offers from Disney to turn his coming-of-age drama into their next high school musical.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Yellowjackets\u003c/b> runs through October 10, 2008 at Berkeley Rep. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.berkeleyrep.org\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">tickets andinformation\u003c/a> visit berkeleyrep.org.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"headTitle": "Altar Boyz is Flashy Fun and Not Much More | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Everything in \u003cb>Altar Boyz\u003c/b>, the hit off-Broadway musical now running at the San Jose Stage, is shiny. The giant sign that hangs over the stage, displaying “ALTAR BOYZ” in big dazzling letters, sparkles with the light of thousands of LEDs. The rhinestones in the faux-bling cross that hangs from bad boy Luke’s (Darrin Glesser) neck glint in the spotlight during his rap solo. Even the performers faces are shiny, glistening with sweat from singing and dancing for an hour and a half with almost no breaks. Let’s just say that I wouldn’t be surprised if they made Sean Patrick O’Connor, who plays Mark, mop the stage after every show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All that pizzazz does little, however, to hide the fact that there’s not much going on underneath. The musical is framed as the last performance of the Altar Boyz, a Christian boy band. Their world tour is coming to an end and, unbeknownst to the rest of the group, Catholic crooners Matthew (CJ Blankenship), Mark, Luke, and Latino Juan (Manuel Romero) have all signed separate, solo deals. In fact, the only group member who hasn’t signed a deal is Abraham, a Jew who wandered into a church one day and ended up being commanded by God to sing songs like “The Calling” (aka “Jesus Called me on my Cell Phone”) and “Church Rulez.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that’s about it for the plot. Other than a few skits and a short interlude about Juan’s parents, the rest of the musical is essentially just that — music. Thematically, each character does have some subtext: Abraham is Jewish and wondering what he’s doing in a Christian boy band, Luke spent time in rehab for “exhaustion,” Juan is an orphan, and Mark is totally gay for Matthew. However, the musical does not spend much time exploring any of those character traits. At one point, it seems as if Mark may admit to his sexual orientation, but he — and the show — ultimately shies away from the subject. Clearly, the creators of \u003cb>Altar Boyz\u003c/b> made a conscious decision to keep this show peppy and superficial, and that’s fine for an audience that just wants to be entertained. But anyone hoping for an in-depth examination of the intersection of lifestyle and religion will be disappointed by the musical.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That being said, the cast and crew of \u003cb>Altar Boyz\u003c/b> do a fantastic job of keeping the audience clapping and laughing. The guys fly over the small stage, doing box steps and ball-changes like they were the New Kids on the Block, and interact both with the four-piece band behind them and the audience seated mere feet in front of them. The show’s script calls for a double entendre, pop culture joke, or horrendous pun about every ten words, and though many of them fall flat, a few land solidly. Lights flash constantly, projector screens display some of the cheesiest animations you could imagine, and a “Soul Sensor” keeps track of the number of souls the Boyz have saved over the course of their show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All in all, \u003cb>Altar Boyz\u003c/b> is an incredibly energetic performance, featuring five young actors who leave it all on the stage, and who come out looking like stars for it. The play offers an hour and a half of pure fun unadulterated by anything that could provoke those pesky “thoughts.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Altar Boyz\u003c/b> runs through September 21, 2008 at the San Jose Stage, 490 First St., San Jose. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.sanjose-stage.com/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit sanjose-stage.com.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Everything in \u003cb>Altar Boyz\u003c/b>, the hit off-Broadway musical now running at the San Jose Stage, is shiny. The giant sign that hangs over the stage, displaying “ALTAR BOYZ” in big dazzling letters, sparkles with the light of thousands of LEDs. The rhinestones in the faux-bling cross that hangs from bad boy Luke’s (Darrin Glesser) neck glint in the spotlight during his rap solo. Even the performers faces are shiny, glistening with sweat from singing and dancing for an hour and a half with almost no breaks. Let’s just say that I wouldn’t be surprised if they made Sean Patrick O’Connor, who plays Mark, mop the stage after every show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All that pizzazz does little, however, to hide the fact that there’s not much going on underneath. The musical is framed as the last performance of the Altar Boyz, a Christian boy band. Their world tour is coming to an end and, unbeknownst to the rest of the group, Catholic crooners Matthew (CJ Blankenship), Mark, Luke, and Latino Juan (Manuel Romero) have all signed separate, solo deals. In fact, the only group member who hasn’t signed a deal is Abraham, a Jew who wandered into a church one day and ended up being commanded by God to sing songs like “The Calling” (aka “Jesus Called me on my Cell Phone”) and “Church Rulez.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that’s about it for the plot. Other than a few skits and a short interlude about Juan’s parents, the rest of the musical is essentially just that — music. Thematically, each character does have some subtext: Abraham is Jewish and wondering what he’s doing in a Christian boy band, Luke spent time in rehab for “exhaustion,” Juan is an orphan, and Mark is totally gay for Matthew. However, the musical does not spend much time exploring any of those character traits. At one point, it seems as if Mark may admit to his sexual orientation, but he — and the show — ultimately shies away from the subject. Clearly, the creators of \u003cb>Altar Boyz\u003c/b> made a conscious decision to keep this show peppy and superficial, and that’s fine for an audience that just wants to be entertained. But anyone hoping for an in-depth examination of the intersection of lifestyle and religion will be disappointed by the musical.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That being said, the cast and crew of \u003cb>Altar Boyz\u003c/b> do a fantastic job of keeping the audience clapping and laughing. The guys fly over the small stage, doing box steps and ball-changes like they were the New Kids on the Block, and interact both with the four-piece band behind them and the audience seated mere feet in front of them. The show’s script calls for a double entendre, pop culture joke, or horrendous pun about every ten words, and though many of them fall flat, a few land solidly. Lights flash constantly, projector screens display some of the cheesiest animations you could imagine, and a “Soul Sensor” keeps track of the number of souls the Boyz have saved over the course of their show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All in all, \u003cb>Altar Boyz\u003c/b> is an incredibly energetic performance, featuring five young actors who leave it all on the stage, and who come out looking like stars for it. The play offers an hour and a half of pure fun unadulterated by anything that could provoke those pesky “thoughts.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Last weekend I watched a futuristic story in which the junk-scavenging relics of humanity — left behind when humans abandoned trash-heaped Earth centuries before — encountered the slick, advanced scout sent to see what had become of their homeworld.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No, I didn’t go see \u003cb>WALL-E\u003c/b> again. What I saw was the premiere production of Liz Duffy Adams’s latest play, \u003cb>The Listener\u003c/b>, and what I experienced was a rare moment of storytelling in a discipline often sadly bereft of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, \u003cb>The Listener\u003c/b> shared more with \u003cb>WALL-E\u003c/b> than a premise and incentive moment. Both pieces bemoan the literal trashing of our geographical inheritance, while delighting in the beauty and functionality of the products of our commercial ingenuity. Both focus on Earth, the scene of the crime. Both film and play, consciously or not, present ritual as the anchor for healthy behaviors that may heal the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perhaps the most telling aspect of Crowded Fire’s premiere production of \u003cb>The Listener\u003c/b> is its use of materials for set and props. Shelters, doorways, clothing, furniture, decoration, restraints, and even weapons arise from some of our most common and eternal objects: grocery bags, bungee cords, compact discs, and, of course, plastic water containers. A square installation of half-liter bottles creates a window in one wall, and perhaps the production’s most visually sublime moment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This set represents Junk City, the only apparent surviving Earth settlement. Centuries ago, most of humanity fled to the terraformed Moon, re-named “New Earth,” leaving behind only those “unfit” to join them. After a recent public controversy a “Nearth” faction has sent a scout to evaluate the remaining Earthlings’ potential for repatriation amongst their fitter kin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This scout, an enthusiastically arrogant bleeding heart named John, naturally gets more than he bargained for from the ignorant savages he has come to save. Captured immediately by a finder couple (people whose “function” in this society is to scavenge useful objects from the junkpile), John’s cries for them to “Listen! Listen!” convinces them that he is calling for The Listener, one of their culture’s two most honored functions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Listener’s job is to stay permanently by a jerry-rigged radio, occasionally speaking into it and listening unremittingly for a response from other possible survivors on Earth. The Listener rejects John, an inhuman “it” to his captors because he does not have a recognized function in their society, and turns him over to the Namer, the other honored position, who identifies the names and functions of unknown objects, and who has his own secret agenda.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Listener’s initial refusal to listen to John’s story has deeper reasons behind it than is immediately apparent. Through oral histories recited by the Namer, we learn that Junk City views “lunatics” — humans who abandoned Earth for the Moon — as the worst kind of sinner, no longer human. That each group has something to learn from the other is obviously going to be this play’s moral, but Adams really has little interest in any lessons — beyond minor technological wizardries that, say, boost the power of jerry-rigged radios — the lunatics have to teach Junk Citizens. The fact that a projection of the moon over Junk City is withheld until the final scene underlines the point that the escapes offered by advanced technology do not overhang the struggle to make our world right again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The heart of the play is the original sin of not listening, and the tragedy that befalls the Listener is the result of more than one failure to listen, or to engage. This central inquiry is set off beautifully by the language the Junk Citizens use, which has no articles, invents or compounds new nouns and verbs, and falls utterly silent when it does not wish to speak. The strange words and unfamiliar rhythms of this language force the audience to pay especial attention to the dialogue, so as to not miss or misunderstand anything, making Listeners of us all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The production’s clunkers are not minor, however. In the Listener character’s Harajuku rice peasant costume and tai chi moves, \u003cb>The Listener\u003c/b> parallels another famous sci-fi movie, \u003cb>Star Wars\u003c/b>, in its shallow and inexplicable Asian fetishism. This stands out particularly starkly in a vague sea of self-explanatory western cultural references, and draws our attention to opportunities Adams or Crowded Fire may have missed to study the cultural syncretism survival necessitates. Junk City, evidently intended to be an Everycity, is resolutely American: the mythos created by its citizens melds US pop culture, Greco-roman mythology, and Christian structure and imagery…but then so does our real mythos. The junk shown here is American junk — a visit to \u003ca href=\"http://www.yelp.com/biz/ichiban-kan-san-francisco\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">J-town’s Ichiban Kan\u003c/a> would give you an idea of how different plastic junk can look on another continent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The performances, while functional, have none of the subtlety or seamlessness required to tease out all the possibilities of this flawed, but often exquisite, script. The difficult dialogue sonetimes sounds like the speakers have mouths full of marbles. The emotional climax fails its grip, owing both to a lack of bass in the performances and an abruptness in the narrative structure. And given Adams’s skillful ability to convey backstory through daily ritual and use, it’s remarkable that she spends so much first-act dialogue having her characters awkwardly TELL us history and premise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still — in spite of info-dumps, actor heavy-breathing, and things that make you go “hunh?” — \u003cb>The Listener\u003c/b> flows, entertains, and makes you ponder. The piece is a very welcome palate cleanser between continuing seasons of navel-gazing “drama” and unrevealing revivals. It’s more than just challenging: it’s fun, and I’m glad to know that film is not the only medium able to offer a ripping tale.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Crowded Fire Theater Company’s production of Liz Duffy Adams’s \u003cb>The Listener\u003c/b> runs Thursdays-Sundays through August 31, 2008 at The Ashby Stage in Berkeley. For \u003ca href=\"http://crowdedfire.org/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">tickets and information\u003c/a>, visit crowdedfire.org or call 415-433-1235.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Last weekend I watched a futuristic story in which the junk-scavenging relics of humanity — left behind when humans abandoned trash-heaped Earth centuries before — encountered the slick, advanced scout sent to see what had become of their homeworld.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No, I didn’t go see \u003cb>WALL-E\u003c/b> again. What I saw was the premiere production of Liz Duffy Adams’s latest play, \u003cb>The Listener\u003c/b>, and what I experienced was a rare moment of storytelling in a discipline often sadly bereft of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, \u003cb>The Listener\u003c/b> shared more with \u003cb>WALL-E\u003c/b> than a premise and incentive moment. Both pieces bemoan the literal trashing of our geographical inheritance, while delighting in the beauty and functionality of the products of our commercial ingenuity. Both focus on Earth, the scene of the crime. Both film and play, consciously or not, present ritual as the anchor for healthy behaviors that may heal the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perhaps the most telling aspect of Crowded Fire’s premiere production of \u003cb>The Listener\u003c/b> is its use of materials for set and props. Shelters, doorways, clothing, furniture, decoration, restraints, and even weapons arise from some of our most common and eternal objects: grocery bags, bungee cords, compact discs, and, of course, plastic water containers. A square installation of half-liter bottles creates a window in one wall, and perhaps the production’s most visually sublime moment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This set represents Junk City, the only apparent surviving Earth settlement. Centuries ago, most of humanity fled to the terraformed Moon, re-named “New Earth,” leaving behind only those “unfit” to join them. After a recent public controversy a “Nearth” faction has sent a scout to evaluate the remaining Earthlings’ potential for repatriation amongst their fitter kin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This scout, an enthusiastically arrogant bleeding heart named John, naturally gets more than he bargained for from the ignorant savages he has come to save. Captured immediately by a finder couple (people whose “function” in this society is to scavenge useful objects from the junkpile), John’s cries for them to “Listen! Listen!” convinces them that he is calling for The Listener, one of their culture’s two most honored functions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Listener’s job is to stay permanently by a jerry-rigged radio, occasionally speaking into it and listening unremittingly for a response from other possible survivors on Earth. The Listener rejects John, an inhuman “it” to his captors because he does not have a recognized function in their society, and turns him over to the Namer, the other honored position, who identifies the names and functions of unknown objects, and who has his own secret agenda.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Listener’s initial refusal to listen to John’s story has deeper reasons behind it than is immediately apparent. Through oral histories recited by the Namer, we learn that Junk City views “lunatics” — humans who abandoned Earth for the Moon — as the worst kind of sinner, no longer human. That each group has something to learn from the other is obviously going to be this play’s moral, but Adams really has little interest in any lessons — beyond minor technological wizardries that, say, boost the power of jerry-rigged radios — the lunatics have to teach Junk Citizens. The fact that a projection of the moon over Junk City is withheld until the final scene underlines the point that the escapes offered by advanced technology do not overhang the struggle to make our world right again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The heart of the play is the original sin of not listening, and the tragedy that befalls the Listener is the result of more than one failure to listen, or to engage. This central inquiry is set off beautifully by the language the Junk Citizens use, which has no articles, invents or compounds new nouns and verbs, and falls utterly silent when it does not wish to speak. The strange words and unfamiliar rhythms of this language force the audience to pay especial attention to the dialogue, so as to not miss or misunderstand anything, making Listeners of us all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The production’s clunkers are not minor, however. In the Listener character’s Harajuku rice peasant costume and tai chi moves, \u003cb>The Listener\u003c/b> parallels another famous sci-fi movie, \u003cb>Star Wars\u003c/b>, in its shallow and inexplicable Asian fetishism. This stands out particularly starkly in a vague sea of self-explanatory western cultural references, and draws our attention to opportunities Adams or Crowded Fire may have missed to study the cultural syncretism survival necessitates. Junk City, evidently intended to be an Everycity, is resolutely American: the mythos created by its citizens melds US pop culture, Greco-roman mythology, and Christian structure and imagery…but then so does our real mythos. The junk shown here is American junk — a visit to \u003ca href=\"http://www.yelp.com/biz/ichiban-kan-san-francisco\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">J-town’s Ichiban Kan\u003c/a> would give you an idea of how different plastic junk can look on another continent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The performances, while functional, have none of the subtlety or seamlessness required to tease out all the possibilities of this flawed, but often exquisite, script. The difficult dialogue sonetimes sounds like the speakers have mouths full of marbles. The emotional climax fails its grip, owing both to a lack of bass in the performances and an abruptness in the narrative structure. And given Adams’s skillful ability to convey backstory through daily ritual and use, it’s remarkable that she spends so much first-act dialogue having her characters awkwardly TELL us history and premise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still — in spite of info-dumps, actor heavy-breathing, and things that make you go “hunh?” — \u003cb>The Listener\u003c/b> flows, entertains, and makes you ponder. The piece is a very welcome palate cleanser between continuing seasons of navel-gazing “drama” and unrevealing revivals. It’s more than just challenging: it’s fun, and I’m glad to know that film is not the only medium able to offer a ripping tale.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Crowded Fire Theater Company’s production of Liz Duffy Adams’s \u003cb>The Listener\u003c/b> runs Thursdays-Sundays through August 31, 2008 at The Ashby Stage in Berkeley. For \u003ca href=\"http://crowdedfire.org/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">tickets and information\u003c/a>, visit crowdedfire.org or call 415-433-1235.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>The first press release for new theatre company Square MaMa Productions notes that if the group has its way, “recycling is going to be big in Bay Area theatre.” The release goes on to note how Broadway flops like \u003cb>One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest\u003c/b> and \u003cb>The Iceman Cometh\u003c/b> got second lives as off-Broadway revivals and became regarded as great American plays.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a fair and even compelling argument, but it doesn’t exactly apply to Tony-winner Terrence McNally’s \u003cb>Bad Habits\u003c/b>, with which Square MaMa co-directors Randy Warren and Suki O’Brien chose to make their company’s debut at Theatre Rhinocerose. Hardly overlooked, the play debuted off-Broadway in early 1974, then moved quickly to a five-month run at Broadway’s Booth Theatre while still retaining the necessary off-Broadway cred to garner an Obie award that year. McNally went on to fame with Broadway hits like \u003cb>Kiss of the Spider Woman\u003c/b> and \u003cb>Love! Valour! Compassion!\u003c/b> Meanwhile \u003cb>Bad Habits\u003c/b> stayed off the radar until its 1990 Broadway revival, which bombed despite the best efforts of stars like Nathan Lane and Kate Nelligan. Unfortunately, it also falls short in this revival, but not because of Square MaMa’s cast and crew.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The quarter-century since McNally wrote \u003cb>Bad Habits\u003c/b> have simply rendered its subject matter and script quaint. The play’s story is split between two high-end health resorts with different approaches: Act One’s Dunelawn, in which couples are encouraged to indulge in their excesses and Act Two’s Ravenswood, in which individuals are medicated out of their bad habits and into a lobotomized state. At Dunelawn, a guru-ish doctor spouts platitudes amidst a bickering Hollywood actor couple, a bewildered East Coast suburban couple and a resident neurotic gay couple. At Ravenswood, a largely mute presiding physician directs a dysfunctional pair of nurses to jab needles into an alcoholic, a wannabe cross-dresser, and an Italian who acts stereotypically Japanese.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sounds like it has some potential. But when judged as such, the “bad habits” to be treated extend to drinking, tobacco smoking and sex (the last mostly referenced with an abundance of winking corniness). This is presumably set in 1974 — well into the sex-and-drugs revolution, and no there’s not a trace of rock ‘n’ roll, either literal or figurative. In this era of rehab, online porn, and reality TV, \u003cb>Bad Habits\u003c/b> has near-zero realistic social edge, so the satire simply falls flat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But again, there’s no blaming the cast, each of whom play different characters in each act. For example, Sylvia Kratins shines as both half of Dunelawn’s cartoonishly vain actor couple and Ravenswood’s high-maintenance head nurse, while Tom Juarez shines as both a comically anxious homosexual at Dunelawn and a jaded inpatient loser at Ravenswood. The audience favorite, however, seemed to be the deadpanned 60-something Remi Barron, who plays an instinctively perverted butler at Dunelawn and a hilarious dipsomaniacal patient at Ravenswood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those actors, along with the rest of the cast and the audience, would have been far better served by a play that didn’t suffer from a cutesiness so archaic as to almost render it a period piece. Here’s hoping that Square MaMa come up with a more relevant piece next time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Bad Habits\u003c/b> runs through August 30, 2008 at Theatre Rhinoceros. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.therhino.org\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">tickets and information\u003c/a>, visit therhino.org or call 415-861-5079.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The first press release for new theatre company Square MaMa Productions notes that if the group has its way, “recycling is going to be big in Bay Area theatre.” The release goes on to note how Broadway flops like \u003cb>One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest\u003c/b> and \u003cb>The Iceman Cometh\u003c/b> got second lives as off-Broadway revivals and became regarded as great American plays.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a fair and even compelling argument, but it doesn’t exactly apply to Tony-winner Terrence McNally’s \u003cb>Bad Habits\u003c/b>, with which Square MaMa co-directors Randy Warren and Suki O’Brien chose to make their company’s debut at Theatre Rhinocerose. Hardly overlooked, the play debuted off-Broadway in early 1974, then moved quickly to a five-month run at Broadway’s Booth Theatre while still retaining the necessary off-Broadway cred to garner an Obie award that year. McNally went on to fame with Broadway hits like \u003cb>Kiss of the Spider Woman\u003c/b> and \u003cb>Love! Valour! Compassion!\u003c/b> Meanwhile \u003cb>Bad Habits\u003c/b> stayed off the radar until its 1990 Broadway revival, which bombed despite the best efforts of stars like Nathan Lane and Kate Nelligan. Unfortunately, it also falls short in this revival, but not because of Square MaMa’s cast and crew.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The quarter-century since McNally wrote \u003cb>Bad Habits\u003c/b> have simply rendered its subject matter and script quaint. The play’s story is split between two high-end health resorts with different approaches: Act One’s Dunelawn, in which couples are encouraged to indulge in their excesses and Act Two’s Ravenswood, in which individuals are medicated out of their bad habits and into a lobotomized state. At Dunelawn, a guru-ish doctor spouts platitudes amidst a bickering Hollywood actor couple, a bewildered East Coast suburban couple and a resident neurotic gay couple. At Ravenswood, a largely mute presiding physician directs a dysfunctional pair of nurses to jab needles into an alcoholic, a wannabe cross-dresser, and an Italian who acts stereotypically Japanese.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sounds like it has some potential. But when judged as such, the “bad habits” to be treated extend to drinking, tobacco smoking and sex (the last mostly referenced with an abundance of winking corniness). This is presumably set in 1974 — well into the sex-and-drugs revolution, and no there’s not a trace of rock ‘n’ roll, either literal or figurative. In this era of rehab, online porn, and reality TV, \u003cb>Bad Habits\u003c/b> has near-zero realistic social edge, so the satire simply falls flat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But again, there’s no blaming the cast, each of whom play different characters in each act. For example, Sylvia Kratins shines as both half of Dunelawn’s cartoonishly vain actor couple and Ravenswood’s high-maintenance head nurse, while Tom Juarez shines as both a comically anxious homosexual at Dunelawn and a jaded inpatient loser at Ravenswood. The audience favorite, however, seemed to be the deadpanned 60-something Remi Barron, who plays an instinctively perverted butler at Dunelawn and a hilarious dipsomaniacal patient at Ravenswood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those actors, along with the rest of the cast and the audience, would have been far better served by a play that didn’t suffer from a cutesiness so archaic as to almost render it a period piece. Here’s hoping that Square MaMa come up with a more relevant piece next time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Bad Habits\u003c/b> runs through August 30, 2008 at Theatre Rhinoceros. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.therhino.org\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">tickets and information\u003c/a>, visit therhino.org or call 415-861-5079.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cb>All’s Well That Ends Well,\u003c/b> now playing through August 31, 2008, at Shakespeare Santa Cruz, is not really a comedy, though it does have many funny moments. Nor is it a tragedy, thanks to its turn-on-dime ending in which all of the problems that the playwright has taken such pains to contrive are suddenly tossed aside. That’s probably why audiences sometimes leave performances of \u003cb>All’s Well\u003c/b> a little bit confused, maybe even let down. “It could have been funnier,” was a comment I heard from more than one person who had seen this current production.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But today, in an age when random is the new black, the play’s shaggy-dog story line and awkward transitions between humor and pathos don’t seem particularly jarring, especially since the performances are as engaging as the directing is inspired. Rachel Fowler captures both of these aspects in a fine, if somber, turn as Helena, a “gentlewoman” to Countess Rossillion (Beth Dixon). Having grown up in the house of Rossillion as the daughter of the recently deceased Count’s physician, she is like one of the family. Which is why her confession of love for Bertram (Erik Hellman), the young Count Rossillion, is at first too much for the Countess. But Dixon guides the Countess’s emotions ably. Indeed, watching Dixon struggle to reconcile her motherly love for her son with her even more layered love for Helena, whom she’d rather was a proper daughter-in-law than a mere ward, is one of this production’s many pleasures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With the Countess’s blessing, Helena sets off to heal the ailing King of France (a terrific Paul Vincent O’Connor), who is wasting away with every tick of the clock. Helena has been an observant enough daughter of her father’s healing arts that she’s willing to bet her life with the King for the chance to choose her husband, regardless of her low station in society. Naturally she succeeds, naturally she chooses the immature and emotionally barren Count to be her own, and just as naturally the boy spurns her sincere affections, tramping off to war with his walking id, Parolles (another fine performance this summer for Allen Gilmore, who shined in \u003cb>Bach at Leipzig\u003c/b>).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gilmore’s Parolles seems to draw the best from those he shares the stage with, particularly Fowler and Hellman. In one priceless scene early on, Helena parries Parolles’s arguments regarding the non-existent virtues of virginity (he views chastity an overrated commodity; she recognizes his opinion for the self-serving, randy bluster that it really is). Similarly, when Parolles convinces young Bertram to prove his manhood to himself by disobeying the King’s command not to go to war with the rest of the men, of which he is not yet one, Hellman finally trades his character’s sheepish devotion to duty for a pair of stones. Parolles also gives Mike Ryan an opportunity to captivate us as “the Interpreter” during the play’s famous interrogation scene. Ryan injects his character with just enough Niko Bellic from \u003cb>GTA IV\u003c/b> to convince us that Parolles might well believe that his interrogator means business, but Ryan’s accent is not so thick that his character is reduced to parody.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Weaving his way amid these fine performances is John Pribyl as Lavatch, a lecherous, comic trickster “in the household of the Countess.” Pribyl’s Lavatch is genius: Whether he’s shuffling into a scene to stir things up or simply standing on the catwalk above the stage to observe the mess unfolding before him, he serves as the conscience of the community, yet he never comes off as a moralist. Partly, of course, this is due to the fine material Pribyl has to work with, but Pribyl brings plenty to the table. Like a lot of people in the audience, I looked forward to and enjoyed every scene he was in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bertram, meanwhile, is determined to become a man by means other than killing. To this end, he pursues a Florence maiden named Diana (Caitlin FitzGerald), who with the help of her widow mother (Saundra McLain) tricks the boy into consummating his marriage with, and impregnating, Helena, thus unwittingly fulfilling his bitter promise to never recognize Helena as his wife until “thou canst get the ring upon my finger, which never shall come off, and show me a child begotten of thy body that I am father to.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Getting that ring off Bertram’s finger is this play’s variation of Birnam wood marching to Dunsinane in \u003cb>Macbeth.\u003c/b> While Bertram is slipping it to Helena, who he thinks is Diana, Helena is slipping a similar, but not identical, ring onto the lad’s finger (at Helena’s direction, Diana had made Bertram’s loan of his ring a condition of their midnight rendezvous). Conveniently, Helena has received this second ring earlier in the play from the King himself, for no other reason, we may reasonably suspect, than to satisfy the demands of this arbitrary plot twist. Indeed, Helena is only able to insinuate herself into the affairs of Diana and make them her own because she has been able to do what the entire Italian army has failed to accomplish, namely, track the French forces and her beloved to their safe haven amid Diana and her mother’s open-air laundromat. For someone whose entire life has been about serving a master, albeit a generous and compassionate one, Helena is surprisingly purposeful and strong-willed when it comes to going after what she wants. No wonder all Bertram can do, when confronted with the double whammy of imminent fatherhood and the return of his family jewel, is to resignedly stammer his love for victorious Helena. I didn’t believe him for a second.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Director Tim Ocel works this imperfect story and solid cast like a skilled painter at his easel. Assisted by the handsome costumes of B. Modern, whose between-the-wars suits and dresses were only topped by the \u003cb>For Whom The Bell Tolls\u003c/b> uniforms worn by the soldiers of France, Ocel creates painterly tableaus with his characters. We can, for example, immediately tell who the sycophants are in the King’s court because they are the ones in the matching dark suits, dark ties, and pressed white shirts. The women of Florence, in contrast, are a meadow of floral prints, whose very hems seem to soften the hard edges of the function-before-form set. Finally there are the aforementioned soldiers, outfitted in leather jackets, boots, and berets. It’s not complicated, and not at all random, just clear and effective theater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>All’s Well That Ends Well\u003c/b> runs through August 31, 2008, at the Sinsheimer-Stanley Festival Glen at UC Santa Cruz. Tickets are $12 to $44. For \u003ca href=\"https://www.santacruztickets.com/Online/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit santacruztickets.com or call 831-459-2159.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cb>All’s Well That Ends Well,\u003c/b> now playing through August 31, 2008, at Shakespeare Santa Cruz, is not really a comedy, though it does have many funny moments. Nor is it a tragedy, thanks to its turn-on-dime ending in which all of the problems that the playwright has taken such pains to contrive are suddenly tossed aside. That’s probably why audiences sometimes leave performances of \u003cb>All’s Well\u003c/b> a little bit confused, maybe even let down. “It could have been funnier,” was a comment I heard from more than one person who had seen this current production.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But today, in an age when random is the new black, the play’s shaggy-dog story line and awkward transitions between humor and pathos don’t seem particularly jarring, especially since the performances are as engaging as the directing is inspired. Rachel Fowler captures both of these aspects in a fine, if somber, turn as Helena, a “gentlewoman” to Countess Rossillion (Beth Dixon). Having grown up in the house of Rossillion as the daughter of the recently deceased Count’s physician, she is like one of the family. Which is why her confession of love for Bertram (Erik Hellman), the young Count Rossillion, is at first too much for the Countess. But Dixon guides the Countess’s emotions ably. Indeed, watching Dixon struggle to reconcile her motherly love for her son with her even more layered love for Helena, whom she’d rather was a proper daughter-in-law than a mere ward, is one of this production’s many pleasures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With the Countess’s blessing, Helena sets off to heal the ailing King of France (a terrific Paul Vincent O’Connor), who is wasting away with every tick of the clock. Helena has been an observant enough daughter of her father’s healing arts that she’s willing to bet her life with the King for the chance to choose her husband, regardless of her low station in society. Naturally she succeeds, naturally she chooses the immature and emotionally barren Count to be her own, and just as naturally the boy spurns her sincere affections, tramping off to war with his walking id, Parolles (another fine performance this summer for Allen Gilmore, who shined in \u003cb>Bach at Leipzig\u003c/b>).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gilmore’s Parolles seems to draw the best from those he shares the stage with, particularly Fowler and Hellman. In one priceless scene early on, Helena parries Parolles’s arguments regarding the non-existent virtues of virginity (he views chastity an overrated commodity; she recognizes his opinion for the self-serving, randy bluster that it really is). Similarly, when Parolles convinces young Bertram to prove his manhood to himself by disobeying the King’s command not to go to war with the rest of the men, of which he is not yet one, Hellman finally trades his character’s sheepish devotion to duty for a pair of stones. Parolles also gives Mike Ryan an opportunity to captivate us as “the Interpreter” during the play’s famous interrogation scene. Ryan injects his character with just enough Niko Bellic from \u003cb>GTA IV\u003c/b> to convince us that Parolles might well believe that his interrogator means business, but Ryan’s accent is not so thick that his character is reduced to parody.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Weaving his way amid these fine performances is John Pribyl as Lavatch, a lecherous, comic trickster “in the household of the Countess.” Pribyl’s Lavatch is genius: Whether he’s shuffling into a scene to stir things up or simply standing on the catwalk above the stage to observe the mess unfolding before him, he serves as the conscience of the community, yet he never comes off as a moralist. Partly, of course, this is due to the fine material Pribyl has to work with, but Pribyl brings plenty to the table. Like a lot of people in the audience, I looked forward to and enjoyed every scene he was in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bertram, meanwhile, is determined to become a man by means other than killing. To this end, he pursues a Florence maiden named Diana (Caitlin FitzGerald), who with the help of her widow mother (Saundra McLain) tricks the boy into consummating his marriage with, and impregnating, Helena, thus unwittingly fulfilling his bitter promise to never recognize Helena as his wife until “thou canst get the ring upon my finger, which never shall come off, and show me a child begotten of thy body that I am father to.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Getting that ring off Bertram’s finger is this play’s variation of Birnam wood marching to Dunsinane in \u003cb>Macbeth.\u003c/b> While Bertram is slipping it to Helena, who he thinks is Diana, Helena is slipping a similar, but not identical, ring onto the lad’s finger (at Helena’s direction, Diana had made Bertram’s loan of his ring a condition of their midnight rendezvous). Conveniently, Helena has received this second ring earlier in the play from the King himself, for no other reason, we may reasonably suspect, than to satisfy the demands of this arbitrary plot twist. Indeed, Helena is only able to insinuate herself into the affairs of Diana and make them her own because she has been able to do what the entire Italian army has failed to accomplish, namely, track the French forces and her beloved to their safe haven amid Diana and her mother’s open-air laundromat. For someone whose entire life has been about serving a master, albeit a generous and compassionate one, Helena is surprisingly purposeful and strong-willed when it comes to going after what she wants. No wonder all Bertram can do, when confronted with the double whammy of imminent fatherhood and the return of his family jewel, is to resignedly stammer his love for victorious Helena. I didn’t believe him for a second.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Director Tim Ocel works this imperfect story and solid cast like a skilled painter at his easel. Assisted by the handsome costumes of B. Modern, whose between-the-wars suits and dresses were only topped by the \u003cb>For Whom The Bell Tolls\u003c/b> uniforms worn by the soldiers of France, Ocel creates painterly tableaus with his characters. We can, for example, immediately tell who the sycophants are in the King’s court because they are the ones in the matching dark suits, dark ties, and pressed white shirts. The women of Florence, in contrast, are a meadow of floral prints, whose very hems seem to soften the hard edges of the function-before-form set. Finally there are the aforementioned soldiers, outfitted in leather jackets, boots, and berets. It’s not complicated, and not at all random, just clear and effective theater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>All’s Well That Ends Well\u003c/b> runs through August 31, 2008, at the Sinsheimer-Stanley Festival Glen at UC Santa Cruz. Tickets are $12 to $44. For \u003ca href=\"https://www.santacruztickets.com/Online/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit santacruztickets.com or call 831-459-2159.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>There’s something about the 1980s that just doesn’t sit well in the early 21st century. Try as we might to be nostalgic for the big shoulder pads, the moody British techno-pop, and all that Nicaragua-Contra cocaine that kept everyone partying till dawn at Studio 54, our affection for the decade is strained. As it began, it saw the final and irreversible commodification of art, a soul-sucking enterprise that compromised the spirits of all but the most independent-minded artists. As it progressed, a plague know as the “gay cancer” would be identified as AIDS, kill a matinee idol named Rock Hudson, and become an international health nightmare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both the commodification of art and the scourge of AIDS are more germane to a contemporary discussion of Lanford Wilson’s \u003cb>Burn This\u003c/b>, now through August 31, 2008, at Shakespeare Santa Cruz, than the company’s artistic director, Marco Barricelli, might have hoped. First performed in 1987, \u003cb>Burn This\u003c/b> amply covers the former in the person of one of the play’s two secondary characters, Burton (David Arrow), a rich kid turned richer screenwriter who is extremely clear-eyed about the value of his particular means of artistic expression. “Movies,” he says, “are some banker’s speculation about how the American adolescents want to see themselves that week. Period. They’re produced by whores, written by whores…”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At least Arrow’s self-absorbed Burton is aware of the cesspool he’s swimming in, which gives his shallow character context and, ironically, depth. Larry (Stephen Bel Davies), the play’s other secondary character, is a flamboyantly gay caricature who has no such advantage, at least based on the stereotype that Wilson created for our amusement. Back in 1987, when \u003cb>Burn This\u003c/b> was first performed, it was apparently enough to introduce an openly gay character like Larry to straight audiences. No doubt Wilson felt that he needed all the queen-like mannerisms and mock-salacious preoccupations with sex that he could get, lest the suits and evening gowns in the audience miss what was then something of an act of artistic bravery. Davies delivers this act expertly. But from the vantage point of 2008, the omission of any reference whatsoever to AIDS, to say nothing of the impact it unquestionably must have been having on the lives of Larry and his late gay roommate, Robbie, threatens the credibility of the subsequent drama between the play’s two principles. Why Barricelli thought this incomplete time capsule of a play would resonate with contemporary audiences is a mystery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At its core, \u003cb>Burn This\u003c/b> is the story of two opposites exploring their uneasy mutual attraction in the wake of a devastating shared loss. We meet Anna (Yvonne Woods) first. Even in 1987, this bohemian dancer with the rich boyfriend (that would be Burton) must have seemed a cliché, with all her speeches about the importance of her work and how her dedication to it has prevented her, until only recently, from realizing that her 32-year-old biological clock is ticking. Though it’s not said in so many words, part of her dismay and guilt over the loss of her and Larry’s dear friend and beloved roommate must be the realization that she’s chosen to spend a good deal of time hiding out in the company of men inclined to do little about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s more we learn about Anna before we meet her opposite number. She is supposed to be in shock from the death of Robbie, who has died in a freak boating accident. Yet somehow this tough artist, who with her sinewy exterior and lone-wolf individualism feels perfectly at home in her gritty industrial loft in pre-Giuliani lower Manhattan, can’t handle the familiar social conventions of Robbie’s funeral. The primary cause of her vexation, she tells us, is that Robbie’s relatives had never seen him dance, which for Anna is itself a kind of death. Sheltered from the reality of the young man’s sexuality, the family assumes that Anna must be Robbie’s girlfriend. This and a few other events combine to give Anna a full-on freak out session, which Woods’s Anna recounts with perverse glee. A bit of a drama queen, this one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Into her life bursts Pale (Gene Gillette), Robbie’s foul-mouthed, hard-drinking, gun-toting older brother. Pale and Anna, it would seem, have nothing in common. Even their mutual link to Robbie is imperfect: She lived and created art with Robbie for three intense and fulfilling years. Pale is 12 years older than Robbie, so he barely knew his younger brother. Yet Anna cannot help but feel a connection to Pale, and is undone by, among other things, the physical resemblance between the two.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Woods as Anna is good, using her dancer’s frame effectively, but Gillette’s Pale is the revelation of this show. Pale is no still water but he does run deeper than you’d expect. This is a guy who is literally burning up from the inside out. He’s forever taking off his shoes and shirts and opening the windows wide, even though there’s a New York winter outside. To look at him you’d think he was a fidgety, hair-trigger extra on \u003cb>The Sopranos\u003c/b>, but beneath his vulgar exterior is an artist of sorts, a man of culture who can cook, knows his Vivaldi, Puccini, and Shostakovich, and, to hear him tell it, likes getting laid and clean underwear in equal measure. None of which explains precisely why Burton, for all his success, wealth, and good looks, doesn’t have a chance against a head case like Pale. But then no one ever said the heart was a logical organ.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Naturally these two come together, and the story of how they do so and what happens next holds more than a few surprises. Throughout, the props and set-dressing details ring true, carefully signaling the time period in which the story takes place, which makes Wilson’s cultural and historical omissions all the more glaring. I suspect that at some point in the future it will be enough for this play to simply be a story of two unlikely people finding each other in difficult circumstances, without too much regard for the environment that alternately nurtures them and saps their will. Until then, \u003cb>Burn This\u003c/b> remains a vintage that would probably benefit from a bit more time in the bottle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Burn This\u003c/b> runs through August 31, 2008, at the Theatre Arts Mainstage at UC Santa Cruz. Tickets are $12 to $44. For \u003ca href=\"https://www.santacruztickets.com/Online/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit santacruztickets.com or call 831-459-2159.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>There’s something about the 1980s that just doesn’t sit well in the early 21st century. Try as we might to be nostalgic for the big shoulder pads, the moody British techno-pop, and all that Nicaragua-Contra cocaine that kept everyone partying till dawn at Studio 54, our affection for the decade is strained. As it began, it saw the final and irreversible commodification of art, a soul-sucking enterprise that compromised the spirits of all but the most independent-minded artists. As it progressed, a plague know as the “gay cancer” would be identified as AIDS, kill a matinee idol named Rock Hudson, and become an international health nightmare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both the commodification of art and the scourge of AIDS are more germane to a contemporary discussion of Lanford Wilson’s \u003cb>Burn This\u003c/b>, now through August 31, 2008, at Shakespeare Santa Cruz, than the company’s artistic director, Marco Barricelli, might have hoped. First performed in 1987, \u003cb>Burn This\u003c/b> amply covers the former in the person of one of the play’s two secondary characters, Burton (David Arrow), a rich kid turned richer screenwriter who is extremely clear-eyed about the value of his particular means of artistic expression. “Movies,” he says, “are some banker’s speculation about how the American adolescents want to see themselves that week. Period. They’re produced by whores, written by whores…”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At least Arrow’s self-absorbed Burton is aware of the cesspool he’s swimming in, which gives his shallow character context and, ironically, depth. Larry (Stephen Bel Davies), the play’s other secondary character, is a flamboyantly gay caricature who has no such advantage, at least based on the stereotype that Wilson created for our amusement. Back in 1987, when \u003cb>Burn This\u003c/b> was first performed, it was apparently enough to introduce an openly gay character like Larry to straight audiences. No doubt Wilson felt that he needed all the queen-like mannerisms and mock-salacious preoccupations with sex that he could get, lest the suits and evening gowns in the audience miss what was then something of an act of artistic bravery. Davies delivers this act expertly. But from the vantage point of 2008, the omission of any reference whatsoever to AIDS, to say nothing of the impact it unquestionably must have been having on the lives of Larry and his late gay roommate, Robbie, threatens the credibility of the subsequent drama between the play’s two principles. Why Barricelli thought this incomplete time capsule of a play would resonate with contemporary audiences is a mystery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At its core, \u003cb>Burn This\u003c/b> is the story of two opposites exploring their uneasy mutual attraction in the wake of a devastating shared loss. We meet Anna (Yvonne Woods) first. Even in 1987, this bohemian dancer with the rich boyfriend (that would be Burton) must have seemed a cliché, with all her speeches about the importance of her work and how her dedication to it has prevented her, until only recently, from realizing that her 32-year-old biological clock is ticking. Though it’s not said in so many words, part of her dismay and guilt over the loss of her and Larry’s dear friend and beloved roommate must be the realization that she’s chosen to spend a good deal of time hiding out in the company of men inclined to do little about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s more we learn about Anna before we meet her opposite number. She is supposed to be in shock from the death of Robbie, who has died in a freak boating accident. Yet somehow this tough artist, who with her sinewy exterior and lone-wolf individualism feels perfectly at home in her gritty industrial loft in pre-Giuliani lower Manhattan, can’t handle the familiar social conventions of Robbie’s funeral. The primary cause of her vexation, she tells us, is that Robbie’s relatives had never seen him dance, which for Anna is itself a kind of death. Sheltered from the reality of the young man’s sexuality, the family assumes that Anna must be Robbie’s girlfriend. This and a few other events combine to give Anna a full-on freak out session, which Woods’s Anna recounts with perverse glee. A bit of a drama queen, this one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Into her life bursts Pale (Gene Gillette), Robbie’s foul-mouthed, hard-drinking, gun-toting older brother. Pale and Anna, it would seem, have nothing in common. Even their mutual link to Robbie is imperfect: She lived and created art with Robbie for three intense and fulfilling years. Pale is 12 years older than Robbie, so he barely knew his younger brother. Yet Anna cannot help but feel a connection to Pale, and is undone by, among other things, the physical resemblance between the two.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Woods as Anna is good, using her dancer’s frame effectively, but Gillette’s Pale is the revelation of this show. Pale is no still water but he does run deeper than you’d expect. This is a guy who is literally burning up from the inside out. He’s forever taking off his shoes and shirts and opening the windows wide, even though there’s a New York winter outside. To look at him you’d think he was a fidgety, hair-trigger extra on \u003cb>The Sopranos\u003c/b>, but beneath his vulgar exterior is an artist of sorts, a man of culture who can cook, knows his Vivaldi, Puccini, and Shostakovich, and, to hear him tell it, likes getting laid and clean underwear in equal measure. None of which explains precisely why Burton, for all his success, wealth, and good looks, doesn’t have a chance against a head case like Pale. But then no one ever said the heart was a logical organ.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Naturally these two come together, and the story of how they do so and what happens next holds more than a few surprises. Throughout, the props and set-dressing details ring true, carefully signaling the time period in which the story takes place, which makes Wilson’s cultural and historical omissions all the more glaring. I suspect that at some point in the future it will be enough for this play to simply be a story of two unlikely people finding each other in difficult circumstances, without too much regard for the environment that alternately nurtures them and saps their will. Until then, \u003cb>Burn This\u003c/b> remains a vintage that would probably benefit from a bit more time in the bottle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/bbc-world-service",
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},
"californiareport": {
"id": "californiareport",
"title": "The California Report",
"tagline": "California, day by day",
"info": "KQED’s statewide radio news program providing daily coverage of issues, trends and public policy decisions.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareport",
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"order": 8
},
"link": "/californiareport",
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}
},
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"title": "The California Report Magazine",
"tagline": "Your state, your stories",
"info": "Every week, The California Report Magazine takes you on a road trip for the ears: to visit the places and meet the people who make California unique. The in-depth storytelling podcast from the California Report.",
"airtime": "FRI 4:30pm-5pm, 6:30pm-7pm, 11pm-11:30pm",
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"order": 10
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM3NjkwNjk1OTAz",
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},
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"info": "A one-hour radio program to hear celebrated writers, artists and thinkers address contemporary ideas and values, often discussing the creative process. Please note: tapes or transcripts are not available",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/05/cityartsandlecture-300x300.jpg",
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"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
"meta": {
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"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
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}
},
"closealltabs": {
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"order": 1
},
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"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"meta": {
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"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
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"freakonomics-radio": {
"id": "freakonomics-radio",
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"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/freakonomicsRadio.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
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},
"fresh-air": {
"id": "fresh-air",
"title": "Fresh Air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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},
"hidden-brain": {
"id": "hidden-brain",
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"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
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"how-i-built-this": {
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"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
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"order": 15
},
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},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"order": 18
},
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},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
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},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
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"source": "WaitWhat"
},
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"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
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"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "On Our Watch from NPR and KQED",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
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"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"subscribe": {
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510360/podcast.xml"
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},
"on-the-media": {
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"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
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"info": "One of public radio's most dynamic voices, Sam Sanders helped launch The NPR Politics Podcast and hosted NPR's hit show It's Been A Minute. Now, the award-winning host returns with something brand new, The Sam Sanders Show. Every week, Sam Sanders and friends dig into the culture that shapes our lives: what's driving the biggest trends, how artists really think, and even the memes you can't stop scrolling past. Sam is beloved for his way of unpacking the world and bringing you up close to fresh currents and engaging conversations. The Sam Sanders Show is smart, funny and always a good time.",
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