Chad Jones’ Theater Dogs

(opened Feb. 12, 2007)
Jackson, actors commit American $uicide at Thick House
three stars Zesty satire

If “American Idol” ended each episode with a bullet instead of wild applause, some of us might stop watching. And some of us might start.

We love our reality TV in this country, and, truth be told, we love our violence. So far, the two haven’t collided much (discounting “Fear Factor” if only because “Fear Factor” should always be discounted).

That’s where director/writer Mark Jackson comes in. He’s still on a hot streak that began last fall with his Salome at the Aurora Theatre Company and continued through The Forest War with Shotgun Players.

With American $uicide, now at the Thick House in San Francisco, Jackson gives us something completely different: an ultra-contemporary twist on a banned Russian play.

While researching his brilliant The Death of Meyerhold, Jackson came across Nikolai Erdman, a writer whose second play was the biting comedy The Suicide. Finished in 1928, the play was a hot property, with multiple theater companies competing to produce it. But the Soviet government banned it for its supposed anti-government content. Stalin himself called the play “empty and even harmful.” Erdman was reportedly exiled to Siberia several years later and never wrote another play.

With the support of Encore Theatre Company and Z Plays, Jackson picks up where Erdman left off and gives us a wickedly funny, wonderfully warped mish-mash of human desperation, celebrity lust and good old American zeal.

As a writer, Jackson sets his action in the present day, but he’s clearly working in a 1930s stage comedy style with rapid-fire, exaggerated delivery and over-the-top characters. As a director, he takes that style to the next logical step: ’40s-style screwball comedy complete with pratfalls, broken dishes and zany costumes (by Raquel Barreto).

At the center of the story is a sincere sad sack named Sam Small (the incredibly funny Jud Williford, pictured above). He’s unemployed and ashamed that he has to rely on his waitress wife’s “greasy tips” and stolen sausages to survive.

His hardworking wife, Mary (Beth Wilmurt, a comedienne of the highest order), wants to help her husband out of his depression, so when he finally admits his secret desire to be an actor, she does her darndest to be a good cheerleader.

With the help of his across-the-hall neighbor, Albert (Marty Pistone), and his girlfriend Margaret (Denise Balthrop Cassidy), who make money on eBay and with their very own porn site, Sam makes his tentative way into show business.

This is when the personalities start to leap off the stage. We get a desperate, overly tan film director (Michael Patrick Gaffney) and a 22-year-old starlet (Jody Flader) _ the next big thing who’s also making a comeback. But best of all, we get Gigi Bolt, a former director at the National Endowment for the Arts and the current executive director of the Theatre Communications Group.

Bolt is a real person, but her presence here — in the divine form of Delia MacDougall, left, at her most Carol Burnett-ish — is sort of an inside joke. What’s funny for anyone who knows Bolt or not is the character’s grand dame theatricality. “Life is projected, transmitted and downloaded but no longer LIVED!” she intones.

Once Sam meets all these characters, he gets bamboozled into an outrageous scheme that has him committing suicide on live TV, with viewers bidding astounding sums to have him die in their name or in the name of their cause.

Sam agrees to do this because it will ensure his wife won’t have to work anymore. Gigi wants him to die in the name of American theater. The starlet wants him to die out of love for her in the hope that the attention might revive her career. And so on.

Going into intermission, which occurs just after MacDougall’s big scene, I was thinking “American $uicide” was just about the funniest thing I’d seen since Hunter Gatherers last summer.

But Act 2 disappoints if only because the build-up to the actual suicide — which takes place in a high N-R-G dance club (sturdy, flexible set by James Faerron) — results in an almost inevitable anti-climax. By this point we have Middle Eastern operatives and government baddies in the mix (all ably played by Liam Vincent), but Jackson’s sharpness dulls.

The play is so frenzied and fun that I wanted all the darker currents to amount to more. I had hoped that while we were having a great time watching the show, Jackson’s satirical saber was slicing into us more than we realized.

That doesn’t quite happen, but American $uicide, in all its grandly theatrical glory, remains a comedy to die for.

For information about American $uicide, visit www.zspace.org.

Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s Hunter Gatherers is the 2006 winner of the Will Glickman Playwrights Award.

The annual award — given to the author of the best play to make its world premiere in the Bay Area — comes with a $4,000 check.

An esteemed group of theater critics _ including me, naturally _ met to discuss the merits of some 200 new plays that took a bow last year. And, as they say, cream rises to the top. The critical contingent, which also includes Karen D’Souza of the San Jose Mercury News, Robert Hurwitt of the San Francisco Chronicle, Robert Avila of the SF Bay Guardian and Chloe Veltman of the SF Weekly, wasted no time in selecting Nachtrieb’s dark comedy as the best of 2006.

The first full-length play by San Francisco sketch comedy troupe Killing My Lobster, Hunter Gatherers ran last summer (and ran and ran) at the Thick House. The show was by turns hilarious, sexy and a little scary. It’s the story of two young Bay Area couples and their IKEA-cozy lives. One night, after the slaughter of a lamb for a dinner party, things fall apart, and everyone gives in to their most primal urges. Here’s what I said about the play when I included it in my Top 10 list:

Of all this year’s comedies, Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s world premiere for sketch troupe Killing My Lobster was the meatiest. Maybe it had something to do with the onstage slaughter of a lamb at the play’s start. Or maybe it was the huge chunk of roasted meat that factors into the play’s bloody end. Whatever, this was an aggressively funny play about our primal, cave-man impulses, man’s need to hump (or kill) everything in sight and woman’s need for chocolate.

The Glickman award, named for the late comedy writer and playwright Will Glickman, has been bestowed since 1984 and is administered by the Will Glickman Foundation and Theatre Bay Area. The award was created to encourage the development of new work. Previous Glickman winners have included last year’s winner, The People’s Temple by Leigh Fondakowski and her team of writers, Liz Duffy Adams’ Dog Act , Denis Johnson’s Soul of a Whore and Tony Kushner’s Angels in America.

For information about Peter Sinn Nachtrieb, visit his Web site at www.petersinnnactrieb.com.

Earlier this month, I sat down with the stars of San Francisco’s Jersey Boys, the quartet driving audiences into a frenzy every night as Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. You can read the story here.

Here are some tidbits that didn’t make it into the newspaper. If this were a DVD, we’d be in the “special features” section right now.

The players are (pictured above from left) Deven May (Tommy DeVito), Michael Ingersoll (Nick Massi), Christopher Kale Jones (Frankie Valli) and Erich Bergen (Bob Gaudio), and we’re in a suite at the Hotel Diva, across Geary Street from the Curran Theatre, where Jersey Boys is running seemingly until it’s not running anymore.

A discussion about how audience members react with such personal connections to the Four Seasons music leads Bergen to say: “My dad listened to this music. His style was more Motown and doo-wop, but the Four Seasons were definitely in there, and I heard it growing up. That’s one of the reasons I was so excited to be doing this show rather than an old traditional book musical.”

May interjects: “Isn’t this a book musical? I don’t know…”

After some discussion, the actors determine that Rick Elice and Marshall Brickman’s book is indeed one of the key factors in their show’s success. The way the script incorporates Four Seasons songs into the framework of a tightly written play does make it a traditional, indeed, very well written, book musical.

Says Bergen: “OK. Write this: Erich Bergen is wrong. Three out of four seasons say Erich Bergen is wrong.”

Cue much laughter and more discussion about why Jersey Boys works so darn well. After much praise is heaped on director Des McAnuff and the creative team, Ingersoll theorizes that people are drawn in by the true story of these New Jersey guys and their rough lives, which involved prison stretches for Massi and DeVito. Later, after fame struck, life didn’t necessarily get any easier.

“One of the points of the show,” Ingersoll says, “is that in life, you never reach a point where everything’s good — no matter how much success, money or fame you have. There’s always another side to the coin. Think about us. We’re on the road, away from home for a year. I’m away from my wife for a year. She visits, and this is a dream job for me. The guys would say the same thing. Nothing could be better in that way. But the fact remains I’m not seeing my wife for such a long time. There’s a price to pay. It’s never just: I’ve arrived! Everything’s great! This show thrives on showing the reality of that.”

The reality of the show is so convincing, in fact, that when audience members hang around the Curran stage door for a post-show chat, fans call the actors by their character names.

“We walk out that door and we’re still Bob, Frankie, Tommy and Nick,” Bergen says. “They’ll say things like, `When you wrote that song…’ And I have to remind them I’m just an actor. But they don’t want you to be an actor. They want you to be the real thing.”

The huge success of Jersey Boys in New York and now in San Francisco means more productions are forthcoming — probably London and another touring production (that might actually tour to places other than San Francisco). There’s been talk of a movie, of course. And Bergen theorizes that in 10 years, every high school in the country will be doing Jersey Boys.

Says May: “If you take all the profanity out of the show for the high school version, it’ll be 45 minutes long!”

Jones chimes in: “I cannot wait to see a high school guy singing in Frankie Valli’s voice. I think it might be easier to reach those notes when you’re still in puberty.”

And finally, here’s a fact you need to know about each of these actors.
Jones is a Rubik’s Cube expert. He can solve the puzzle in under three minutes.
Ingersoll has a black belt in Tai Kwon Do and may do some teaching while he’s here.
May is a professional photographer.
Bergen produces a podcast called Green Room Radio.

For information about Jersey Boys, visit www.shnsf.com.

The Aurora Theatre Company’s The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter has just been extended through March 11 in Berkeley. That’s good news for Pinter fans. It also gives us more time to figure out just what the heck that show is about.

To that end, and with her permission, I’d like to share with you an e-mail I received from Susan Dunn. She and her husband, Jeff, formulated a theory. Please note how well-written this missive is. And then play along. Contribute your own theory about what Pinter is up to with The Birthday Party. There are no wrong answers. Pinter himself says he doesn’t even know. Note: if you haven’t seen the show, there are spoilers ahead.

We saw the The Birthday Party last night and I think my husband nailed a great way to figure out the play — not that there is only one way. But you might see the genius in this play through his interpretation.

Stanley is everyman, and in act one, he is a child. He sleeps late, has no responsibilities, and is cared for by the couple as though he was their child. And he acts like a child, being wilful, demanding, mercurial, etc. Won’t even get up to get his breakfast plate. Meg can’t help but keep caring for him (since he is the child), but like many children, he drives her crazy. Also, in Act 1, when Lulu comes in, he is not yet sexually mature, so he shows a lot of interest in Lulu, but he doesn’t know how to get her (and maybe even what “get her” means at that stage). He is afraid of the two men, and we don’t know why, but when we realize what they are up to, we know why Stanley is afraid, and hides from them like a child. At the end of the first act, he gets his gift — a drum, and does what many spoiled kids do, uses it in a way that torments his parent (Meg).

In Act 2, Stanley starts to mature. The two men arrive, and he can’t escape them They represent growing up. Goldberg is the authoritative, confident and persuasive adult figure that represents a concept of “following the rules” and achieving success. His success is emphasized by McCann who is his henchman who pays “fealty” to Goldberg in many ways throughout the play, through deference, through blowing in his mouth (representing that a power person can make an underling do ANYTHING), through following orders no matter what. So the strangers are there to carry Stanley through to maturity. He resists, but he can’t escape. Stanley is dependent on his glasses, or he THINKS he is. But the glasses are really like a Blankie or a thumb. They are what he needs to stay a child. When McCann breaks the glasses, its because Stanley won’t be needing them anymore as an adult. During the birthday party, Stanley has his last moment of resistance, rebellion and victory when he finds Lulu in the dark and has sex with her on the table. His face at the end of that scene shows Goldberg that he has bested him…. for the moment.

In Act 3, which suffers because we don’t see much of Stanley, he is being educated (school?) by McCann who is upstairs in his room doing a lot of talking. This represents the brainwashing that we all go through to leave the careless world of childhood behind and assume tradition, responsibility, respectability, and in Pinter’s view, inanity. When Stanley emerges, he is a brainwashed zombie. Goldberg and McCann list all the wonderful things he will have in his new world, but in Pinter’s view, there is really a huge loss. He has lost his will and his soul. Goldberg asks him what he thinks, and his croaking response shows that now that he is brainwashed, he can’t really THINK anymore, although he can get through the mindless world of being a working adult (drone). When he puts on the glasses, they don’t illuminate anything for Stanley. They are only lenses now, not the artifacts of childhood, freedom and power which a child exerts on the adult world. That aspect of the glasses is lost forever. Petey’s last words underscore this view of the play when he says to Stanley “Don’t let them tell you what to do”. The irony of course is that its too late - both for Petey and for Stanley.

I found this a very satisfactory way to look at The Birthday Party, and it made more sense to me than thinking that the 2 men were the agents of death, which is another interpretation. What do you think?

Hot on the heels of their latest show (Big Death & Little Death, see below), Crowded Fire Theater Company has announced the departure of founding artistic director Rebecca Novick.

Erin Gilley’s press release stated that Novick has has announced her resignation after “10 years at the helm of one of San Francisco’s most notable small theater companies.”

Apparently Crowded Fire’s board of directors is now in the final stages of a search for Novick’s successor and expects to announce their selection soon.

Says Novick:

It’s been exactly 10 years since I stood in line at the Fringe Festival to sign up for what would turn out to be Crowded Fire’s first show. I’m enormously proud of what we’ve achieved in that time and thrilled that the company has grown into an institution that will continue without me.

In the 10 seasons under Novick’s leadership, Crowded Fire produced 23 shows including 10 world premieres, five of them Crowded Fire commissions.

Novick is reportedly leaving Crowded Fire to pursue freelance directing opportunities, with the eventual goal of serving as the artistic director of a larger institution. Upcoming projects for her include A Blessing on the Moon, a dance/theater piece based on Joseph Skibell’s novel about Holocaust Poland which she will workshop at Theater Emory’s Brave New Works Festival in Atlanta and a return to Crowded Fire to direct Lisa D’Amour’s Anna Bella Eema in June.

For more information about Crowded Fire, visit www.crowdedfire.org.

(opened Feb. 14, 2007)
ACT’s hip, sassy `Hedda’ starts strong, fades quickly
two stars Too cute ‘n’ casual

Theater, or so they say, is all about the communal experience. We breathe the same air as the actors and we commune with our fellow audience members.

On the way out of the theater after American Conservatory Theater’s Hedda Gabler on Wednesday night, a couple behind me compared notes on the production. “Tedious, tedious,” the woman said. “Well, it was better than A Doll’s House but they were both terrible,” the man said. “We should have watched `Infamous,’ ” the woman added.

I didn’t feel quite as strongly as my fellow audience members about this Hedda, but I was disappointed, especially because the show starts out so strongly.

Director Richard E.T. White reveals his stage in stages. First, we see a giant mural of a glacier on the back of the theater wall surrounded by scaffolding and a catwalk (set by Kent Dorsey). Then the walls of the Tesman home fly in, but, curiously, the walls of the house are made of rope — many thick strands of rope, which makes them rustic and see-through.

John Gromada’s original music — piano and a string or two — lends an unsettling air, and we jump right into Henrik Ibsen’s story of a most unpleasant woman making life a nightmare for just about everyone around her.

Hedda (played by ACT company member Rene Augesen) admits that one of her goals in life is to have power over someone’s destiny. Too bad that someone can’t be herself. This is a woman out of control.

Her new husband, Jorgen Tesman (Anthony Fusco) bores her silly, and his touch repulses her. She treats him with cold disdain, and he doesn’t even seem to notice.

He’s a scholar, and she’s the spoiled daughter of a celebrated general. She’s the upper crust, he the dusty crust. It’s a match made in heaven — if your idea of heaven is a play where everything that could go wrong does.

It doesn’t take long for intrigue to light a sinister spark in Hedda’s eye. Her old flame, Ejlert Lovborg (Stephen Barker Turner, left with Augesen), is back in town, and he is what Donna Summer used to call a “bad, bad, bad boy.” Apparently his new lady friend, Mrs. Elvsted (Finnerty Steeves), has helped him put his drinking and carousing days behind him.

Not for long. At least, not if Hedda has anything to say about it. This woman has pistols, and she’s not afraid to use them (or to get other people to use them on themselves).
If you’re going to see a play on Valentine’s Day, that play should be Hedda Gabler, the meanest and bloodiest romance around.

For a while, White’s production bubbles along in Paul Walsh’s recently revised translation. The language is hip, casual and extremely accessible. Maybe too accessible if such a thing is possible. This is, after all, a period drama from the late 19th century. Some formality might help define the rules by which these characters play.

But this Hedda comes across as quite the modern gal. She’s not about to be imprisoned by a loveless marriage, and if she can’t have her bad boy, then nobody can. At first Augesen’s Hedda is cold, contemptuous and sort of fun. But as her tension increases and her manipulations begin to tangle in themselves, Augesen retreats.

By Act 2 she has turned into Jennifer Aniston, all tics, mannerisms and cuteness. There’s no emotional pay-off to this Hedda. It’s not depressing, nor is it even upsetting. It’s nearly 2 1/2 hours of intermittently interesting drama.

Fusco’s Tesman is believably naive, and Sharon Lockwood as a fawning auntie dominates the stage whenever she’s on it.

Jack Willis as a booze-guzzling, lady-loving commissioner hits some resonant notes of corruption, but Turner seems miscast as the stormy Lovborg. He seems more bureaucrat than rake.

Who, ultimately, is the bad guy in Hedda Gabler? Is it a repressive society or is it a bored, petty woman with an inability to think of anyone other than herself? Based on this strangely bloodless production, I’d definitely go with the latter.

For information about ACT and “Hedda Gabler,” visit www.act-sf.org.

(Opened Feb. 10, 2007)

Magic whips up some erotica in Bilodeau’s Pleasure & Pain
Three stars More pleasure than pain

Sexual heat is too often absent from the stage, especially when the subject is sex.

Onstage sexiness can get really embarrassing really fast – embarrassing for everyone involved: the actors and the audience. The reason is that we know when something isn’t real, and usually that’s OK. But not when it comes to sex.

That doesn’t mean we want to see real, live sex onstage (there are places for that kind of thing, after all), but it does mean that when actors are pretending to be all hot and bothered, we generally don’t believe them. And, more to the point, we don’t feel the heat ourselves.

Chantal Bilodeau’s Pleasure & Pain, the first of this year’s Hot House trio of world-premiere plays at San Francisco’s Magic Theatre, traffics in erotica for much of its 90 minutes, and some of it sizzles.

We are thrust, as it were, straight into the dark, sexy daydreams of office worker Peggy (a game Jennifer Clare, above, in cage). She has written an erotic story about a man in a cage (Andrew Utter) willing to do Peggy’s bidding, and we see the story come to life in the author’s imagination.

Snapped out of her ribald reverie, Peggy resumes her rather ordinary life. She’s an assistant to an assistant in a university dean’s office, and she’s nearly engaged to a seemingly nice guy (Max Moore).

But Peggy has reached a point in her life where something’s not right. Her pleasant life isn’t fulfilling her, and, in her cheerful way, she wants to break through to something all-consuming and satisfying. She says she’s looking for “a piece of infinity where that distance between me and the world might disappear.’’ She wants to lose control and find the missing pieces of herself.

To this end, she smokes her first joint with old friend (and boss) Ruth (Catherine Smitko, below right with Clare), and the two exchange some experimental kisses. She encourages her boyfriend to be more adventurous (like maybe they should have sex on the couch). And then there are the racy stories, which accidentally fall into the hands of the dean (Robert Parsons), who takes an interest in them and in Peggy.

In many ways, Pleasure & Pain is a coming-out story. Rather than the usual “hey, I’m gay!’’ variety, Peggy’s is more of a “hey, I think I dig BDSM (bondage-discipline, sadomasochism)!’’ story. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Written with clarity and humor, Bilodeau’s heartfelt tale finds masterful direction from Jessica Heidt, who wastes no time with extraneous details. The focus is trained tightly on Peggy — to the detriment of the other characters, actually — but Clare’s performance is so gutsy and exposed that we don’t care much about anyone else.

A whole lot of Pleasure & Pain is about breaking free of the confines proscribed by our neat and tidy lives. This is beautifully reflected in Matt McAddon’s set, which is bordered by a tall, whitewashed wood fence, and the set pieces are quite literally compartmentalized, with elements of the office and home revealed in the opening of cabinet doors.

Peggy’s road to sexual liberation means risking the stability of her life, but as the intensity of her fantasy life increases, it’s a risk she’s more and more willing to take. Those awkward sex scenes early in the play give way to more intense – much more intense – forays into controlling and being controlled. There’s bondage, blindfolding and the dripping of hot wax on bare skin. Later on there’s even a cat o’ nine tails. Clearly this is not family night at the Magic.

Our fantasies or needs may not be the same as Peggy, but her longing to be more completely herself and to find fulfillment on her own terms is something we can all understand. We can only hope it’s true that, as one of Peggy’s masters tells her, “for every bit of pain, pleasure is multiplied by thousands of times.’’

For information about Pleasure & Pain, visit www.magictheatre.org. Photos by Nick Shoob.

(opened Feb. 10, 2007)

Crowded Fire blazes forth with bleak, funny Death
three stars Apocalypse soon

When the first scene of a play involves dead puppies, you can be sure you’re not headed into the usual dramatic territory.

Such is the case with Crowded Fire Theater Company’s Big Death & Little Death, a 2005 play by Mickey Birnbaum that foretells the end of the world as we know it — and Birnbaum feels fine.

Sort of Donnie Darko mashed up with “DeGrassi High” with a little American Beauty cynicism thrown in for good measure, this dark comedy, which opened Saturday at San Francisco’s Traveling Jewish Theatre, is angry about three things: U.S. war-making in the Middle East, American suburbia and everything else.

Imagine a heavy-metal sitcom full of doom, gloom and laughs, and you’ll get a sense of Big Death, the story of high schooler Gary (the superb Carter Chastain, an actual high school student at Los Lomas High School in Walnut Creek) and his wretched home life.

His father (Lawrence Radecker) has just returned from the first Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm, and he’s damaged and angry, though he’s able to tell his kids he loves them nonstop.

Something terrible happened to Gary’s adulterous mom (Michele Leavy) during the family’s road trip from hell (at one point the car was flying — don’t ask), leaving him and his sister (Mandy Goldstone) to pretty much fend for themselves.

Gary takes refuge in heavy metal bands — his favorites include Septic Wound and My Autopsy — and his earphones are never further from his ears than around his neck. Sister Kristi finds her escape in a photo album compiled by her father of gruesome fatal car accidents.

At school, Gary doesn’t get a whole lot of support from his nerdy friend Harley (Ben Freeman), who turns into a neurotic mess whenever Kristi’s around. And the school’s career counselor (Tonya Glanz) doesn’t provide much counseling, but she does have sex with Gary and enjoy his drugs — including a bag of mysterious red pills called “bub.”

Sean Daniels, the former associate artistic director of the California Shakespeare Theater, guides the chaos of Birnbaum’s play through 2 1/2 off-beat hours that skirt the usual sitcom rhythms and find deeper, more troubling places, especially in Act 2.

The play devolves into surreality — cue Mick Mize as the giant pit bull puppy and Michael Barr as the dead uncle calling from the afterlife — as Chloe Short’s suburban kitchen set falls apart to reveal a night full of stars.

Performances are pumped-up and funny throughout, with stellar work coming from the grounded Chastain, whose believable Gary is as humorous as he is heartbreaking. Goldstone is also a believable teen, though her character remains disappointingly under-developed.

With the universe imploding around them, the teenagers finally calm down, and Big Death & Little Death, as its fatalistic title implies, finishes the equation it sets up in Act 1: human + time = dust.

Bleak but undeniable — and somehow strangely entertaining.

For information about Crowded Fire and Big Death & Little Death visit www.crowdedfire.org.

Now this is what you call bad television.

“Grease: You’re the One That I Want” is two hours of “reality” television at its worst. I know television networks have no shame, but NBC can’t be proud of this lame attempt to spin some “American Idol” luchre their way. We finally get through the monotonous preliminaries to the talent portion of this casting contest, and the producers bring back two surprise cry-baby contestants, Ashley and Matt (left), just to spice things up. Then, when America (and by America we mean a very, very small percentage of Americans) votes, the judges ignore the will of the people and off the two “surprise” cry-babies who shouldn’t have been brought back in the first place.

Ridiculous. And Sunday night’s two-hour episode (watched in a much more digestible 45 minutes — thank you, TiVo) was not at all helped by the presence of Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber, who presided over the Sandy candidates bombasting their way through his songbook, while the Dannys, inexplicably, attempted to over-choreograph their supposedly “sexy” songs.

I’m done. I can’t devote precious Sunday-night time to this anymore (especially as Ricky Gervais’ brilliant “Extras” is coming to a close on HBO). I’ll check in online and see who gets dumped in future weeks, but my attempt to digest a fatty, gristle-ridden chunk of reality TV — only because of the Broadway bent — is tabled … at least until the return of “Project Runway.”

TheatreFirst stirs up Middle East drama in compelling Nathan the Wise
three 1/2 stars Wise and wonderful
(opened Feb. 9, 2007)

At the close of Friday’s opening-night performance of Nathan the Wise, TheatreFirst artistic director Clive Chafer thanked his audience for coming and, with some hesitation, mentioned that his 13-year-old company is facing some dire financial difficulties. Any help, he added, would be greatly appreciated.

Now, small theater companies are almost always facing dire financial difficulties, but this one sounds serious, and that is distressing, particularly in the wake of such an astute production of Nathan the Wise, a play that nobody but TheatreFirst would tackle.

With a mission to produce international drama and “throw light on the art and culture of diverse nations, while providing our patrons with high quality entertainment,” TheatreFirst, which performs in a vacant storefront space called the Old Oakland Theatre, fills a theatrical niche in the Bay Area. Rather than mindless entertainment, TheatreFirst is mindful, quite often provocative and almost always fascinating _ on a global scale.

Nathan the Wise is the perfect example of the company at its best. Here’s a 1729 play by German writer Gotthold Ephraim Lessing that explores the relationships between Jews, Christians and Muslims in 12th-century Jerusalem.

The original German version ran upward of 4 1/2 hours, but Chafer here uses Edward Kemp’s 2003 adaptation, which runs a much more manageable 2 1/2 hours.

So much time has gone by since the play was written (let alone when it was set), and so little has changed. One of the characters marvels at the Middle East _ where everyone in the world is thrown together.

War, money and religious intolerance all take their positions in the plot, but what makes Nathan the Wise really interesting is, as the title suggests, its wisdom. Lessing’s objective here seems to be a desire to rise above the squabbling and the deep-seated differences and think about humanity in a more open-minded, all-encompassing way.

Over here we have Nathan (Will Huddleston), a wealthy Jewish man who trades exotic goods and loans money. Then we have Saladin (Terry Lamb), the sultan, a Muslim, who needs money to finance his wars. And then we have a Knight Templar (Christopher Maikish), a Christian soldier, who falls in love with Nathan’s daughter, Rachel (Megan Briggs).

To successfully navigate all the Shakespearean twists and turns of the plot _ the convoluted ending is even goofier than anything Shakespeare could have dreamed up _ Lessing must keep his preaching for religious tolerance prominent in each scene.

That’s what keeps the play from stumbling on the melodrama of its plot. For instance, Nathan and the Knight Templar have a fascinating discussion about religious differences that peaks when Nathan says: “It is enough to be a man.”

And then, in the central scene of the play, when the sultan has summoned Nathan in an attempt to trick the man out of his money, comes a fascinating parable.

Saladin asks Nathan: “Which faith have you found most enlightening?” Thinking that among Judaism, Muslim and Christianity there can be no right answer, Saladin has all but stuffed is hands into Nathan’s pockets. But this man is not called “the Wise” for nothing and responds with the story of a father, his three sons and three rings that is astonishing in its power and clarity.

Director Soren Oliver works with a strong cast _ which also includes Jessica Powell, Clive Worsley (right, with Huddleston) and Sandra Schlechter _ to present Lessing’s play in as brisk and as straightforward a manner as possible. This allows the play’s intellect to flourish.

Nathan the Wise is a fascinating play that has lost none of its power over the centuries. To be without TheatreFirst or this kind of first-rate, thought-provoking theater would be a tremendous loss to the Bay Area.

For information about TheatreFirst and Nathan the Wise, visit www.theatrefirst.com.