Maybe I’m Just Too Behanding
Bay Area audiences have become familiar with the devilish and often bloody-minded wit of Martin McDonagh over the last decade or two, largely thanks to excellent productions of the London-born Irish playwright’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane, The Pillowman and The Lieutenant of Inishmore at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. But Berkeley Rep’s had no monopoly on McDonagh by any means, as his plays have been staged by Magic Theatre, TheatreWorks, Wilde Irish and Cal Performances, among others. Now SF Playhouse gets into the act with the regional premiere of A Behanding in Spokane, which debuted on Broadway two years ago.
Playing Against the House
Everybody in Nobody Move is on the move. More specifically, they’re on the run. Gambler Jimmy Luntz is in hiding because he panicked and shot the thug who came to lean on him for bad debts. Booze-soaked Anita has been framed to take the fall for her recent ex-husband’s embezzlement scheme. The two of them meet on the road, and from then on they wait together for their respective trouble to catch up with them.
Ruination and Redemption
Suddenly there’s a small Lynn Nottage festival going on in the Bay Area, with two of the acclaimed contemporary playwright’s works running simultaneously on two sides of the bay: Ruined at Berkeley Repertory Theatre and the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre’s production of Fabulation, or The Re-Education of Undine at Fort Mason’s Southside Theater (across the hall from, and formerly part of, Magic Theatre).
Shining Mirrors
When you walk into Intersection for the Arts to see Mirrors on Every Corner, the new play by 25-year-old playwright Oakland native Chinaka Hodge, it looks more like a gallery exhibit than a stage set. Evan Bissell’s art installation and set design run together, with a mural on the rear wall of one Mission family and a side wall of framed portraits and short ruminations on race and identity from other families around the neighborhood. The seats are obscured by two rolling dividers displaying large photos of the flattened Nimitz Freeway right after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and what looks like the shiny new Mandela Gateway apartment complex across the street from West Oakland BART. A card table with hands dealt sits in the middle of the room, and a baby bassinet hangs low from the ceiling in the corner.
