Think Inside the Box
The cool thing about Stuck Elevator, the latest world premiere at American Conservatory Theater, is that it’s a sung-through musical about a Chinese delivery guy getting stuck in the elevator of a Bronx apartment building for 81 hours without food or water. That’s also the problematic thing about it. The show’s based on a true story, and while the fact of this guy getting stuck in an elevator is fascinating, actually watching someone stuck in an elevator gets tedious after a while. The creators of the play have to work very, very hard to keep things interesting, and the strain shows.
The Empower Ring
The two world premieres opening and closing last week at Berkeley Repertory Theatre turn out to be near-perfect companion pieces to each other. On the older, smaller Thrust Stage, Dael Orlandersmith’s solo show Black n Blue Boys/Broken Men, which closed Sunday, offered a series of grim portraits of abused young boys and the men they become. Opening last Friday next door on the spacious Roda Stage was the latest play by Eve Ensler, author of the ubiquitous Vagina Monologues. This one, Emotional Creature, is an ensemble piece for six young women exploring the plight of teenage girls all over the world, from American girls desperate to fit in with the in crowd to African girls taken as sex slaves by soldiers in the Congo, to girls making American consumer products in Chinese sweat shops. It’s an odd mix of powerful, gut-wrenching monologues and peppy inspirational songs like something out of Up with People or a children’s TV program.
