Student Affairs
On the surface, Julie and Valerie seem to have nothing in common. As played by Lauren English in Kenn Rabin’s play Reunion on SF Playhouse’s intimate Stage 2, Julie is fretful, earnest and painfully introverted, while Alexandra Creighton’s Valerie has an assured sexpot strut and an air of always posing, always performing, even in as close as she gets to normal conversation. The two of them went to the same high school, and were both in the drama program, though you don’t get the sense that they really knew each other. Val was the glamorous popular girl who took the lead in all the school plays, and Julie was too shy even to audition for them. Still, the two are inextricably linked, because they both had sex with their high school drama teacher.
Safety First
Safe House opens with a knife to the throat, a boy in a wheelchair threatening his mom in the woods. “Is this the end? Say yes,” he says, and although of course it’s only the beginning you can see immediately that its also the end. From there we can only go back to see how we got there.
