Writing to Type
I have such mixed feelings about Seminar, the play now wrapping up its run at San Francisco Playhouse. On the one hand, it’s a new play by Theresa Rebeck, who gave us the sharp dark comedy
The Scene and the marvelously tangled crime caper Mauritius (as well as more flimsy endeavors such as the workplace sexism satire What We’re Up Against). What’s more, it’s directed by Amy Glazer, who introduced Rebeck to the Bay Area with The Scene at SF Playhouse, which she later directed as the feature film Seducing Charlie Barker, and who clearly has a great affinity for the playwright’s work. And as a satire of fiction writers’ workshops, Seminar is pretty sharp and funny and biting in its own right. Read more
Country Matters
Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors, Texas-style? Sure, why not? My review of Marin Shakespeare Company’s broad-as-a-barn C&W adaptation is up on the Marin Independent Journal‘s snazzy new website. Hie thee hence to check it out.
Hey, Nice Face
Neil LaBute writes a lot about cruelty. His 1992 play In the Company of Men showed two businessmen conspiring to break the heart of a deaf female coworker, 2001’s The Shape of Things depicted a shy young man completely redesigned by a new girlfriend as an experiment, and his 2004 play Fat Pig has a budding romance nipped in the bud because a guy’s friends keep giving him a hard time about how overweight his new girlfriend is. His work often leaves him open to charges of misanthropy. I first saw the 1997 film of Company of Men on a video double bill with I Know What You Did Last Summer, which was by far the kinder movie of the two.
Time Passes
I know he’s a fellow Berkeley High alum and all, but I could never get into Thornton Wilder. I’ve seen polished professional productions of Our Town and I’ve seen shakier community ones, but never one that I didn’t find mawkish. It’s just not my thing. So I’m maybe not the best audience for Wilder Times, Aurora Theatre Company’s assemblage of four short plays by Wilder, two from 1962 and two from 1931, but because it has a fabulous cast I decided to check it out anyway. I’m pleased to report that I found myself pleasantly surprised by two of the plays, even if the other two left me cold.
The Empathic Duo
Before the opening of the Bay Area premiere of Becky Shaw, SF Playhouse artistic director Bill English gave a stirring speech about theater as a gym for compassion, for developing the muscle of empathy. The sentiment rings true, but it’s also ironic going into a comedy about people who either lack compassion for anyone outside of their chosen circle or whose empathy draws them into trouble. Whether or not you empathize with these characters, you’re such to be entertained by them in this tantalizing first local glimpse of playwright Gina Gionfriddo’s work, thanks to an excellent cast and director Amy Glazer’s sharply paced staging.
Stages of Grief
It’s hard enough dealing with grief when you understand what happened, and why and how it happened, but when what’s happening to someone you love is completely incomprehensible, it’s mighty hard to get your mind around it and resign yourself to anything. For whatever reason, plays all over Berkeley depict families dealing with highly unconventional versions of loss.
The Right Kind of Trouble
Alice Childress’s play Trouble in Mind feels both very much of its time and ahead of it. First presented off-Broadway in 1955, a month before Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, it’s full of the energy of the early days of the Civil Rights Movement, the sense that something has to change.
