Disconnected in the Connected Age
New Caryl Churchill play breaks in ACT’s shiny new Strand Theater. Read my review on KQED Arts.
The last time I’d been in the Strand was 25 years ago, back when it was a grimy old movie theater, attending the Rocky Horror Picture Show because I was dating somebody in the live cast at the time. It looks a whole lot different now.
Life, the Proletariat, and Everything
Tony Kushner’s latest takes a long time to say, and even longer to watch. My review of The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures at Berkeley Rep is on KQED Arts.
Political Sniping
We’ve seen a number of dramas about soldiers having trouble adjusting after coming home from the war—such as Julie Marie Myatt’s Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter, which TheatreFIRST did a couple years ago—and still more about the desensitizing effect that war has on the psyche, like Bill Cain’s 9 Circles at Marin Theatre Company a few years back. Now Canadian playwright George F. Walker mines the subject not for pathos—though there’s certainly some of that as well—but for dark comedy in the world premiere of Dead Metaphor at American Conservatory Theater.
Play’s the Thing
The announcement late last year that American Conservatory Theater would be staging Samuel Beckett’s Endgame and Play this season in lieu of the previously scheduled Twelfth Night was great news on several counts: It would feature the return of world-class physical comic Bill Irwin to the ACT stage, it would be another always-welcome opportunity to savor the challenging texts of the modernist pioneer, and after artistic director Carey Perloff’s lackluster productions of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest and John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore I hadn’t been looking forward to her staging of Shakespeare’s popular comedy.
Let’s Talk About Race
David Mamet’s play Race is a fine example of truth in advertising. It’s a play about race, and pretty much nothing but race. A powerful old white businessman has been accused of raping a young black woman, and he’s looking to switch law firms to represent him because one of the partners at the new firm is black. Pretty much all the conversation among the lawyers—a white male partner, a black male partner, and a young African-American woman who’s some sort of junior associate or otherwise new hire at the firm—about whether to take the case or how to defend the client comes down to second-guessing racial preconceptions.
Female Shavianism
From Mrs. Warren to Joan of Arc, George Bernard Shaw adored his strong women characters, and was fierce in his condemnation of the gender inequality in Victorian society. His 1895 play Candida takes an interesting approach to this concern, using the situation of one man in love with another man’s wife to explore which gender really holds the power in a traditional married household.
Fathers and Sons
Even if they’ve never read Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, a lot of people have at least heard some variant of the opening sentence: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The characters in Harold Pinter’s 1965 play The Homecoming are unhappy in the most vicious ways possible. “They’re very warm people, really,” the eldest son Teddy says to his wife before she meets his father and brothers. “They’re my family. They’re not ogres.” It’s a funny line because by the time he says it we’ve already met his family and know perfect well that’s not true.
Reworking the Classics
I have not one but two reviews in today’s Marin Independent Journal: the cheeky Raisin in the Sun companion piece Clybourne Park at ACT and the new translation of Chekhov’s Seagull at Marin Theatre Company. You can follow the links in the last sentence to read all about ’em.
New Review Zoo
I reviewed both ACT and AlterTheater’s new shows for today’s Marin Independent Journal, so you can check out my Round and Round the Garden review here and my Owners review here. Or pick up a copy if you’re in the North Bay, because it looks way better in print.
Chalked up to Experience
Director John Doyle previously came to American Conservatory Theater to kick off the national tour of his acclaimed stripped-down Broadway staging of Sweeney Todd, in which all the instruments were played by the actors. Now he’s back at ACT taking a similar tack with the core acting company and a few ACT MFA students on Bertolt Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle, in a new translation by local actress Domenique Lozano.
