I reviewed Marin Theatre Company’s production of What the Butler Saw by Joe Orton as my first reviewing assignment for the Marin Independent Journal.
You can read the review here. The show has been extended through July 5.
Stacy Ross is Mrs. Prentice and Andy Murray is Dr. Rance in the Marin Theatre Company production of What the Butler Saw by Joe Orton. Photo by Ed Smith
EXTEDNED THROUGH DEC. 14
The cast of Marin Theatre Company’s The Seafarer by Conor McPherson includes (from left) Julian Lopez-Morillas as Richard, Andrew Hurteau as Ivan, Andy Murray as Sharky, John Flanagan as Nicky and Robert Sicular as Mr. Lockhart. Photos by Ed Smith
Bedeviled on Christmas Eve in McPherson’s `Seafarer’
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The first holiday show of the season is upon us, and it’s overflowing with booze, poker and a visit from ol’ Satan himself.
Yes, it’s just another Irish Christmas by way of Conor McPherson’s rollicking The Seafarer which opened Tuesday night at Marin Theatre Company in Mill Valley.
It’s a fantastic production of a play that ranks among McPherson’s best, which is saying something. The author of The Weir, Dublin Carol and others is one of Ireland’s foremost playwrights and one of those assured voices that has a touch of magic to them. If you require more evidence, we’re in the midst of a minor McPherson festival. Aside from The Seafarer in Marin, SF Playhouse is winding up its scarily good production of McPherson’s Shining City.
Both Seafarer and Shining City take otherworldly routes to darkly human places. They’re fantastic in every sense but squarely grounded in the alcohol-soaked, muck-ravaged lives of people who’ve seen the good life pass by.
The past weighs heavily in The Seafarer. It’s Christmas Eve in Baldoyle, Ireland, and Sharky (Andy Murray) has returned home to care for his blind older brother, Richard (Julian Lopez-Morillas). Sharky is hardly a saint, though he’s not too shabby as a caretaker. Richard is not a kindly patient – he’s cantankerous, ornery, voluble and prone to the drink.
Sharky is, at the moment, taking a break from alcohol. He’s two days dry, and if he can just get through Christmas, he’ll be OK.
But being back in the bosom of family is enough to drive anybody to drink.
Set designer J.B.Wilson literally sets the brothers’ home in a dank Irish cave. There’s a recognizable house in there – though the brothers have basically turned it into a junk heap littered alcoholic refuse – but the overall impression is that of a dark, chilly underground lair.
How fitting, then, that as the brothers welcome some friends – Andrew Hurteau as Ivan and John Flanagan as Nicky — over for holiday cheer 
and a friendly poker game, that the devil, in the suave form of Mr. Lockhart (Robert Sicular, right in overcoat with Hurteau), shows up as well to claim a soul that was promised to him about 25 years earlier.
This deal-with-the-devil scenario is hardly Damn Yankees and this Christmas tale is hardly of the Carol variety, though there are certainly elements of both here.
There’s guilt, regret, drunk and disorderly conduct, hidden passions and maybe even a little redemption in this long Christmas night of the soul, but there’s also a whole lot of laughter.
Lopez-Morillas’ Richard is highly memorable – the kind of character you love to watch on stage but would never want to know (or smell) in real life. Loud and emotional, Richard is the exact opposite of his brother, a bruised (literally) man tired of being beaten by life. Murray’s great skill as an actor allows us glimpses of the man Sharky is trying to hard to be but can never quite make that breakthrough.
Sicular is devilishly good with his keenly focused gazes and his seen-it-all worldliness. His is not a sly devil – more like a drunk one who makes no bones about why he’s there and who he’s after.
The final card game, one that could result in the reclaiming of a soul, is beautifully directed by MTC artistic director Jasson Minadakis, who never lets this seemingly lumpy play out of his tight control. There’s careful orchestration at work here, and Minadakis executes McPherson’s verbal score like a master.
Hurteau as Ivan is a sad sack bundle of misery – a lousy father and husband but a good friend with a wide streak of decency in him, while Flanagan’s Nicky is a good-time guy who never met a bottle of beer he couldn’t best.
It’s a veritable full house of great actors, and they’re a joy to watch in this disarming tale of deep, dark nights, hopeful day breaks and, yes, maybe even a little genuine (and genuinely sozzled) Christmas cheer.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
The Seafarer continues through Dec. 14 at Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley. Tickets are $31-$51. Call 415-388-5208 or visit www.marintheatre.org.
Alex Morf (left) is Viola disguised as Cesario and Stephen Barker Turner is Count Orsino in the California Shakespeare Theater’s season-ending production of Twelfth Night. Photos by Kevin Berne
Director’s vision weighs heavily on Cal Shakes’ `Twelfth Night’
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It’s not often you leave a Shakespeare play and feel like you need to take a shower.
That’s sort of the overwhelming sensation that emanates from California Shakespeare Theater’s season-ending production of Twelfth Night.
What is usually one of Shakespeare’s most moving romantic comedies becomes, in the hands of director Mark Rucker, a bizarre mess of a play that feels like the painful morning after a 12-day bender. Give the director credit for bringing something new to an oft-produced play, but his oppressive directorial vision often gets in the way of the storytelling.
Unlike TheatreWorks’ ’60s hippie version of Twelfth Night last year, Rucker’s production is hardly cute. It takes place in some sort of giant Studio 54 vault (set by David Zinn) with disco balls strewn amid the ultra-mod, abused furniture (you don’t even want to know what’s been happening on those grimy couches). There’s a tacky beach scene photo mural in one corner and a man wearing a bunny suit confined to a cage in another. The lights (by Thom Weaver) range from neon to fluorescent to trance-y-dance-y.
Clint Ramos’ costumes evoke the late ’70s, early ’80s (with the men in tights fighting their own version of the Battle of the Bulge), and the general mood is one of debauched days and degenerate nights – a party that has lasted too long and no one is very happy about it.
This is a heavy layer to impose on Twelfth Night, but Rucker goes even further to complicate matters by having one actor – a game Alex Morf – play both Viola and Sebastian, twins who are separated in a storm-wracked shipwreck. Each thinks the other is dead, and their presence in the kingdom of Ilyria leads to confusion and, ultimately, what is supposed to be an emotional reunion.
The play’s primary focus is on Viola, who, to protect herself in a foreign land, disguises herself as a boy named Cesario and begins working for Count Orsino (Stephen Barker Turner). She falls in love with him, but in this production it’s hard to see why because he’s a miserable, melancholy drunk with no apparent redeeming qualities (though he does sport a nice white tux at play’s end).
Cesario is sent as an emissary of love on the Duke’s behalf to woo the Countess Olivia (Dana Green), who is deep in mourning over her dead brother. Cesario’s wooing is too effective, and she falls in love with a person she thinks is a clever young man.
Olivia’s court is a mess. Her drunken cousin, Sir Toby Belch (Andy Murray) and his idiotic cohort, Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Dan Hiatt), do nothing but drink, carouse and cause trouble. They are aided by the jester Feste (Danny Scheie, adorable in a dress), maid Maria (Catherine Castellanos) and the bunny-suited Fabian (Liam Vincent).
The target of their sozzled wrath is Olivia’s right-hand man, Malvolio, played here with gender-bending mirth by Sharon Lockwood. There has likely never been a Malvolio who looked more ridiculous in yellow stockings and cross-laced garters.
The malicious high jinks practiced by Sir Toby et al come across as particularly mean in this production and its aura of chilly dissoluteness.
There are elements of Rucker’s production that work well – Andre Pluess’ music, for one, though he doesn’t adhere to the ‘70s-‘80s theme much. Scheie’s vocal performance on several songs is mesmerizing, and it’s amusing when Sir Toby begins to sing, and the tune is borrowed from “Now I’m a Believer.” One of the evening’s highlights, in fact, comes in the pre-show number performed by the cast, thanking the production’s sponsors with a tune borrowed from Madonna’s “Like a Prayer.”
Morf is actually very good as Viola and Sebastian – he’s got pluck and passion — but he needed a director with a stronger conception to see him through. All through the nearly three-hour play I was worried about how Rucker would stage the twins’ reunion at the end. Alas, he cheats, and there’s nothing even enjoyably theatrical about it.
In 2001 Cal Shakes artistic director Jonathan Moscone directed a beautiful, moving Twelfth Night that, it turns out, was the exact opposite of this one. It’s fascinating to see how one play can be so diametrically opposed to itself in the hands of different directors.
Moscone directed a play I felt a deep connection to and admiration for, and Rucker directed a play I’m not even sure I really like.
Twelfth Night continues through Oct. 5 at the Bruns Amphitheater, just off the Shakespeare Festival/Gateway exit on Highway 24, one mile east of the Caldecott Tunnel in Orinda. There’s a free shuttle to and from the theater and the Orinda BART station. Tickets are $32-$62. Call 510-548-9666 or visit www.calshakes.org.
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