Chad Jones’ Theater Dogs

As a critic at the Oakland Tribune and its sister newspapers, one of my greatest pleasures was instituting a teen theater critic internship, and it was my luck to launch the program with Leslie Ribovich, who was then a senior at Albany High School. For much of her final year in high school, she would accompany me to shows and write her own reviews, which than ran in the newspaper or online (or both).

Well, Leslie has finished her freshman year at a prestigious New York college, and while she’s home this summer, I asked and she graciously accepted my offer to be a Theater Dogs guest critic. It is my pleasure to present her work. (For my review of the show, click here.) She remains an astute observer and a wonderful writer.

Aurora’s Busy World Provokes Thought of Biblical Proportions

By Leslie Ribovich

You could label The Busy World is Hushed, currently at Aurora Theatre Company, as a political play with a strong message about the Episcopal Church’s relationship with homosexuality, but the designation would be misleading. Yes, the characters grapple with God and predestination, and yes, two of them are homosexual, in a church no less, but playwright Keith Bunin presents the issues far too complexly to take sides.

In a political play, you look for the point of view. In this play, it’s fragmented. We see three different points of view and wonder with whom the playwright agrees.

Is it Hannah (Anne Darragh) who has the first and last line of the play (often an indicator of point of view)? Hannah is an Episcopalian minister and seminary professor who is amazed by the idea that an infant could be the most powerful being, but also refers to “doe-faced Jesus-freaks from the Midwest.”

Or Brandt (Chad Deverman), an excellent writer with a dying father who is unqualified for the job of synthesizing Hannah’s research on an unearthed gospel into writing?

What about Thomas (an incredibly charismatic James Wagner), Hannah’s son named for the apostle, who heard gospels instead of bedtime stories and believes his mother is, “fully informed and yet swallows her own Kool Aid”?

What if all three of them say things that make a lot of sense? And then say things that we couldn’t disagree with more?

We don’t walk away from this play knowing what political stance the playwright is taking. That makes good political theatre because these issues aren’t black and white. Religious affiliation and belief in God address a fundamental part of human existence. The play thrives in sticky territory that must be dealt with gracefully and honestly, which Bunin and director Robin Stanton do.

Without a political or religious agenda laid out for us, the audience must think about the issues. And what’s theatre good for if it doesn’t make you think at least a little?

Bunin’s play is also satisfying dramatically. Hannah hires Brandt despite his inadequacies, (a move that more scatter-brained professor types could benefit from following). His religious views are in flux: the Bible was the first piece of writing that he “truly and consciously loved” and yet he questions whether religion is a desperate attempt to make death more bearable. He tells Hannah upfront that as a gay man, he feels at best queasy when faced with the church’s attitude toward homosexuality.

Thomas enters the scene covered in animal blood and “dried crap” immediately after Hannah explains that she despises stained glass because it epitomizes the self-important nonsense of Christianity and makes a mockery of motherhood (one of Bunin’s many clever juxtapositions). Thomas is happy when he notices Brandt “looking his way.”

So we’ve got two characters hard at work on Hannah’s book and the mysterious history therein; a romantic relationship with too many psychological and practical barriers to produce anything less than one big fight; and a mother/ son relationship with expectations of biblical proportions.

The heat is raised on the drama in certain scenes, even visually at the end of Act 1 when light designer Kurt Landisman goes for a Godlike, transcendent quality. The effect highlights the production’s melodramatic elements more than creates a religious metaphor, but it certainly excites you for Act 2.

The set has elegant stained glass windows for Hannah to deconstruct, boxes of Thomas’ deceased father’s things, and enough piles of books that when Brandt comments, how innovative to have a library without shelves, we laugh.

A large window overlooks a slightly out-of-focus, black-and-white photograph of New York’s upper west side. Set designer Eric E. Sinkkonen’s choice might indicate that the discussions in the playing space are timeless; they are somewhat removed from the outside world. The text takes a while to identify where they are geographically, and we might in fact like to know less about the city outside the church. When Bunin mentions “The Strand” and “NYU,” we wonder if the characters aren’t believable enough to live in the more ambiguous, slightly out-of-focus world that Sinkkonen creates.

This is political theater where the specific represents the big picture, or at least gets us wondering about it. After all, the big picture is nothing if we don’t understand how it affects people we know or can relate to. In The Busy World is Hushed, we do.

The actors are all fabulous – they’ve figured out the emotional nuances of their characters to a tee. I must say: after a year in New York, Bay Area theatre still tops my list. Even a show like this that shouldn’t necessarily be the-best-thing-I’ve-seen-all-year, feels so much more organic than anything I saw in New York. Kudos to the Aurora for creating risky, thought-provoking theatre.

For information about The Busy World is Hushed visit www.auroratheatre.org

Opened June 19, 2008 at the Aurora Theatre Company, Berkeley

Anne Darragh (left) is an Episcopalian minister and Chad Deverman is her writing assistant in Keith Bunin’s The Busy World Is Hushed at the Aurora Theatre Company in Berkeley. Photos by David Allen

Thoughts on faith, love, family make noise in Hushed
««« ½

Aurora Theatre Company concludes its 16^th season with a thoughtful love story/dysfunctional family drama cloaked in theological robes.

Keith Bunin’s The Busy World Is Hushed has its soapy, melodramatic moments, but there’s much more to the play – musings on gays, God, getting lost and being found — that satisfies both intellectually and emotionally.

There aren’t that many plays around that address the notion of faith from both an organized religion standpoint and from a less structured spiritual place. Bunin’s play opens the conversation without preaching too hard or making anyone look foolish. That in itself makes the play worth seeing.

In addition to an intelligent discussion of God’s place in our modern lives, Busy World throws in a tortured mother-son relationship, a love story between two mid-20s men and a crisis of faith for a son slowly losing his father to a terminal illness. That’s a lot to stuff into two hours, but Bunin manages it, and director Robin Stanton (who did such wonderful work on the Aurora’s Permanent Collection) lends it a naturalism infused with realistic rhythms that pull the audience into the fraught conversations.

How appropriate that this tale is told simply – one set (by Eric E. Sinkkonen, complete with stained-glass windows above, and a regular window looking out onto a cold, gray New York) and a trinity of characters in various stages of belief.

Hannah (Anne Darragh) is an Episcopalian minister and seminary professor. She is a great believer in God – not the God depicted in stained-glass windows or trumped up Catholic mythology but the human Jesus who spoke and taught and performed miracles. She’s liberal in her beliefs but strict in her faith. She’s in the process of decoding a newly discovered gospel that could turn out to predate the existing gospels in the Bible, and if genuine, could be the closest thing to the true words of Christ.

To help her write the book on the gospels, she has hired an aspiring author, Brandt (Chad Deverman), whose own writing is blocked and needs a project to help him concentrate. Brandt’s father has been diagnosed with a brain tumor, and his belief in anything is severely shaken. “All religion,” Brandt says, “is an attempt to make death more bearable.”

And then there’s Hannah’s 26-year-old son, Thomas (James Wagner), who doesn’t believe in anything beyond running away. He has just returned from “getting lost,” a game he plays where he throws himself into someplace wild with few provisions then challenges himself to make it out alive. Damaged by his father’s death (and possible suicide) before he was even born, Thomas resents his mother’s immersion in faith and the fact that her relationship with Jesus is often stronger than her relationship with him.

Stanton’s actors are excellent, and this is one of those plays that benefits tremendously from the Aurora’s intimacy. There’s no escaping the passion of Thomas and Brandt’s budding romance just as there’s no turning away from the final confrontation between mother and son, with God, hypocrisy and loneliness wafting through the chasm between them. Bunin comes down hard on Hannah and Thomas, and their rift, full of harsh accusations and hard truths, is truly painful.

There’s not a lot of peace or resolution in this Busy World, which is best, but there’s a lot of common sense and even insight into the complexities of faith and the complexities of living outside faith. Hearts and souls are tangled and torn, God is abused and praised. And the audience is left in a state of contemplation.

The Busy World Is Hushed continues through July 20 at the Aurora Theatre Company, 2081 Addison St., Berkeley. Tickets are $40-$42. Call 510-843-4822 or visit www.auroratheatre.org for information.

The play’s title, by the way comes from the following benediction:

May the Lord support us all the day long,
Till the shades lengthen and the evening comes
and the busy world is hushed,
and the fever of life is over,
and our work is done.

Then in his mercy may he give us
a safe lodging
and a holy rest,
and peace at last.

As ever, so many interesting things going on in Bay Area theater:

- The Oakland East Bay Symphony is gearing up for a glittery concert production of Follies, May 16 and 18 at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland. The cast includes Val Diamond (Beach Blanket Babylon), Sharon McNight, Rita Moreno, Clark Sterling and the Berkeley Broadway Singers (among others). You won’t want to miss that (visit www.oebs.org for info). But before then, there’s going to be a “Forum on themes of Follies“ from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. Saturday, May 3 at the Veteran’s Memorial Building, 200 Grand Avenue, Oakland. Admission is free, and it’s sponsored by the OEBS and Stagebridge and the City of Oakland Life Enrichment Programs. The keynote speaker is Ted Chapin, author of Everything was Possible: The Birth of the Musical Follies (a fantastic book and must reading for anyone who cares about musical theater) and the president and executive director of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization. Panelists include Lucha Corpi, Bill Bell, Bonnie Bell, Glen Pearson and Barbara Oliver. John Kendall Bailey serves as moderator, and there will be performances and live music.

- The Eugene O’Neill Foundation, Tao House (the wonderful national park on the grounds of the Danville home O’Neill shared with his wife Carlotta around the time he was writing, among others, Long Day’s Journey Into Night – if you’ve never been to this park, you owe it to yourself to make a visit and take a tour) is launching the 2008 Playwrights Theatre series. Opening the series is a new work by San Francisco writer/director/actor Jeffrey Hartgraves: Blood Mirage, the story of three adult sisters called together by their aging mother to attend a funeral and experience some shocking revelations. Blood Mirage is at 3 p.m. Sunday, May 4 in the Old Barn at Tao House. Also on the May 4 bill is Revelations, a series of scenes from O’Neill plays in which women are the principal characters. Local actor Karen Grassle (of “Little House on the Prairie” fame) is featured.
O’Neill’s Welded is at 3 p.m. Sunday, May 18. The play was written in 1922-23 and concerns a successful playwright and his wife, each seeking comfort in another relationship (he with a prostitute, she with a family friend). O’Neill wrote about the play: “I feel that I’m getting back as far as it is possible in modern times to get back, to the religious in the theater. The only way we can get religion back is through an exultation over the truth, through an exultant acceptance of life.”
Tickets are $25 (price includes transportation from Danville to Tao House — there’s no parking in the park). Call 925-820-1818 or visit www.eugeneoneill.org for information.

- Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre Company holds its annual fundraiser, Aurora Borealis, on Monday, May 5 at The Pavilion at Scott’s Seafood Restaurant in Oakland’s Jack London Square. Tickets (from $216 to $316) include cocktails, a three-course dinner and live entertainment by Maureen McVerry and Billy Philadelphia (co-stars in the Aurora’s recent musical romp Sex). The live auction includes a December holiday trip to Puerto Vallarta, lunch with San Francisco Chronicle columnist Leah Garchik, a week in New York, a private cabaret night with Philadelphia and his singer wife Meg Mackay. Funds raised at the event support mainstage productions, education programs and the Global Age Project new works program.
Call 510-843-4042 ext. 378 or visit www.auroratheatre.org for information.

Opened April 10, 2008 at the Aurora Theatre, Berkeley

Carla Spindt (left) is Hecuba, queen of fallen Troy, and Sepideh Makabi is a member of the Greek Chorus in the Aurora Theatre’s production of The Trojan Women. Photos by David Allen

Aurora resurrects timely, wrenching Trojan Women
3 ½ stars War in pieces

Watching Barbara Oliver’s production of The Trojan Women at Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre Company, there’s every indication that this will be an intelligent, sharply directed version of Euripides’ Greek classic about the ravages of war.

Using Ellen McLaughlin’s hour-long adaptation (which was “inspired” by Euripides), with its crisp, direct dialogue, Oliver and her cast present a stylized version of the Trojan War’s devastating end – devastating to the women of Troy, most certainly. There’s something rather placid about the production, with its lovely choral dancing (choreography by MaryBeth Cavanaugh) and its striking but bizarre setting: designer John Iacovelli has placed the Trojan women in the middle of the Vaillancourt Fountain in Justin Herman Plaza along San Francisco’s Embarcadero.

It’s an interesting choice to be sure, and the square tubes (minus the water, just like the real fountain so often is) afford some interesting, echo-y sound opportunities for sound designer Chris Houston. The sculptural structure also looks great under Jim Cave’s lights.

But the production, at its start, has that remove of “we’re performing a vital piece of dramatic history with relevance today,” interesting but less involving than the Aurora’s previous Oliver-McLaughlin collaboration, The Persians, in 2004.

Then the dramatic artifice begins to be stripped away. First it’s the entrance of Helen (Nora el Samahy, above right, with Spindt), the kidnapped woman over whom a thousand ships were launched and for whom the Greeks destroyed the city of Troy. She enters wearing a black fur coat and vibrant red dress. She’s bejeweled and with every hair in place (costumes by Anna Oliver).

The beleaguered Trojan women loathe Helen, understandably, especially the fallen Queen of Troy, Hecuba (Carla Spindt). “What have you ever borne other than a lover’s weight?” the queen hisses at Helen. “The contempt of the world,” Helen shoots back.

The women spar verbally as Helen attempts to equate her servitude as a kidnapped woman in Troy and the pain of this “remorseless noon light” of “endless visibility” with the women’s new position as the spoils of war, or “baggage,” to the Greek soldiers.

There’s no reasoning with any of the women, and the Trojans fall on Helen and basically rip her to shreds (fight choreography by Gwen Loeb).

It’s a savage, defiling moment, and the play comes to life in ways that have nothing to do with history or intellect. From this point on, it’s all passion and pain.

It’s hard to imagine a moment more devastating than the one involving Andromache (Emilie Talbot, below, center) and her infant son whose father, Hector, was killed by Achilles in battle. Andromache has now been promised as so much chattel to Achilles’ son, and her attitude is astounding. She’s sad and angry but resolute. She realizes she has been blessed to have been given life and she will not waste it. She vows to keep the memory of her slain husband alive through her infant son. And for a moment, hope comes to the women of Troy.

Then a Greek soldier (Matthew Purdon) arrives with instructions to throw the infant from the parapets of Troy. There’s no artifice in Talbot’s reaction. We feel every jagged shard of anguish in Andromache’s soul when that baby is ripped from her. It’s an astonishing moment, and it’s exactly the kind of moment you hope for in watching a play more than 2,000 years old when time ceases to matter and human emotion and connection is the one thing in the universe that matters.

The consequences of war — their human cost — are what linger after The Trojan Women. Any kind of war play, new or old, can’t help but bring to mind current conflicts and what we’re not thinking about beyond the headlines and the constant stream of bad news. There must be women in Iraq who loved Baghdad before it was, as Hecuba calls Troy, “the end of memory…loss beyond comprehension.”

Of course there’s a play to be written – The Iraqi Women of the Afghanistani Women – but until then, a line from McLaughlin’s The Trojan Women echoes: “Another war is ended. When will the next begin?”

The Trojan Women continues through May 11 at the Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison St., Berkeley. Tickets are $40-$42. Call 510-843-4822 or visit www.auroratheatre.org for information.

Aurora Theatre Company artistic director Tom Ross has announced his company’s 17th season, opening with what is being touted as an “American Trilogy,” presenting three views of the U.S. at different times in history.
Here’s the season at a glance:

The Best Man by Gore Vidal (Aug. 22-Sept. 28) — Ross directs Vidal’s political thriller set at a national political convention as two viable candidates sling mud at one another. Hmmm. Sounds timely. Vidal wrote the play in 1960, the same year he ran for Congress.

The Devil’s Disciple by George Bernard Shaw (Oct. 31-Dec. 7) — Barbara Oliver, an Aurora founder and something of a Shaw expert, is at the helm of this comedy set in a New England town during the Revolutionary War. Shaw pokes fun at religious piety and political arrogance.

Betrayed by George Packer (Jan. 23-March 1, 2009) — Currently a hit off-Broadway, this is a theatrical adaptation of Packer’s New Yorker magazine article about three Iraqi translators who risk their lives to aid the American war effort. Director is tba.

Miss Julie by Henrik Ibsen (April 3-May 10, 2009) — Mark Jackson, one of the Bay Area’s most exciting directors, returns to the Aurora (his Salome was quite memorable) returns to another classic theater diva. What’s next, Lulu?

Jack Goes Boating by Bob Glaudini (June 12-July 19, 2009) — Joy Carlin (another Bay Area treasure) directs a quirky romantic comedy about a slacker who enlists his friends to help him woo the girl of his dreams by cooking a gourmet meal to impress and learning how to swim so he can take her for a boat ride in Central Park. Let’s just say that in addressing this plan, obstacles mount.

Season tickets range from $130 to $210. The Aurora is at 2081 Addison St., Berkeley. Call 510-343-4822 or visit www.auroratheatre.org for information.

Opened Jan. 31, 2008 at the Aurora Theatre Company

Crowded orbit mars Son’s Satellites
Two stars (Needs space and time)

The really interesting thing about plays, movies or TV shows that attempt to depict the real-world diversity of this country is that, when you get right down to it, our shared humanity prevails. And it’s always messy.

Diana Son’s Satellites at Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre Company is an ambitious jumble of a play. It’s a one-act that crams so many issues into about 100 minutes of stage time that the result is like two sitcoms and a serial drama mashed into one intermittently engaging evening.

Curiously, Son’s play, along with Danny Hoch’s Taking Over at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, is the second play on Addison Street to be dealing with, in part, the gentrification of Brooklyn. Hoch’s play is much more convincing, while Son’s is aiming for something more personal and less overtly political.

Her protagonists are Miles (Michael Gene Sullivan, above), an African-American man, and his wife, Nina (Julie Oda, above), a Korean-American woman. They have a 6-week-old daughter and a new run-down four-story brownstone in Brooklyn.

Nina’s architectural office — and partner, Kit (Ayla Yarkut) — are in the basement, and a mysterious (and wholly unnecessary to the play) tenant (Samuel Raskin) lives on the fourth floor.

With walls crumbling and the living room strewn with moving boxes, the transition to Brooklyn is rough. Miles’ brother, Eric (Darren Bridgett, above, pants down), comes home from a long international trip and gets mugged on his way from the airport. Then someone lobs a rock through the front window. And a burly black neighbor, Reggie (Michael J. Asberry), a native of the block, ambles into the house and makes his presence known.

Everything in the play is complicated. There’s not really a plot, but there’s plenty of complication. Miles, a preemie born to a heroin addict, was adopted into a white family, so the brothers are black and white.

Nina has guilt about not being Korean enough, so she hires a Korean nanny, Mrs. Chae (Lisa Kang), to speak Korean to her infant. And Nina’s commitment to her architecture projects is wavering because she’s devoting so much time to her family and the establishment of their new home.

Throw in a budding romance between Kit and Eric, the threat of theft from Reggie (who’s a whole lot smarter and more sensitive than the average sitcom would allow), the lurking (and ridiculous) tenant, and you’ve got a mess.

That seems to be part of Son’s point – life is a mess, and everything we bring to the table, be it race, culture, age, insecurity, ego – only adds to the complication. The formula for Son’s play is: set-up, chaos, yelling, tears, moment of grace.

The moment of grace that comes out of nowhere at the end (and awkwardly gives the play’s title its meaning) doesn’t feel earned, nor is it believable. But the end is certainly welcome.

Director Kent Nicholson stages Son’s quick-cut scenes efficiently, and Melpomene Katakalos’ realistic set allows the action to switch effortlessly from floor to floor of the brownstone.

There are some terrific moments amid the chaos. Bridgett oozes charm as Eric, and his flirtation with Yarkut’s Kit gives the play some much needed spark. Kang (above) as the nanny ends up spoon feeding soup to an over-burdened Nina (who has mother issues) in the play’s most provocative scene.

But the overall impression of the play, which tries to do too much in too little time, is a shrill slice of life that feels more scripted than real and more TV than theater.

Satellites continues through March 2 at the Aurora Theatre Company, 2081 Addison St., Berkeley. Tickets are $40-$42. Call 510-843-4822 or visit www.auroratheatre.org.

I’ve already offered up my Top 10 list of 2007’s best Bay Area theater (see it here).

That’s all well and good, but there was way too much good stuff in 2007 to contain in a polite numbered list. What follows, in no apparent order, are some of the year’s most distinctive theater moments (mostly good, some not so much).

The shows in the Top 10 were really great shows, but so were these. This is my honorable mention roster:

– American Suicide, Encore Theatre Company and Z Plays
– Pillowman, Berkeley Repertory Theatre
– The Birthday Party, Aurora Theatre Company
– Pleasure & Pain, Magic Theatre’s Hot House ‘07
– After the War, American Conservatory Theater
– Heartbreak House, Berkeley Repertory Theatre
– Tings Dey Happen, Dan Hoyle and The Marsh
– Annie Get Your Gun, Broadway by the Bay
– Des Moines, Campo Santo, Intersection for the Arts
– Richard III, California Shakespeare Theater

Favorite scene: Didn’t even have to think twice about this one. The dinner scene in Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s adaptation of To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. Director Les Waters, working from Adele Edling Shank’s script, fashioned a multilayered scene that would have made Woolf herself proud. A boisterous family dinner, warmly illuminated by candles, allows us into the head of each of the diners without ever losing track of the dinner conversation. Extraordinary and beautiful — and vocally choreographed like a piece of complex music.

Greatest guilty pleasure: Legally Blonde, The Musical, had its pre-Broadway run early in 2007 at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Theatre, and though it had its problems, it was a heck of a lot of fun. The best number was the lengthy “What You Want” in which sorority gal Elle Woods (Laura Bell Bundy) decides to apply to Harvard. In true musical fashion, the number sweeps through time and space, coursing through months of effort and from Southern California to the hallowed halls of Harvard. Jerry Mitchell’s choreography incorporates a frat party, the Harvard selection committee and a marching band.

Favorite image:The green girl in Berkeley Rep’s The Pillowman.

Favorite couple: Francis Jue as Mr. Oji and Delia MacDougall as Olga Mikhoels in Philip Kan Gotanda’s After the War at ACT. The sweetest romance was also the most surprising: a shy Japanese man and a recent Russian immigrant, neither of whom speaks much English.

Speaking of MacDougall: It was a good year for the actress (seen at right with the fur and tiara), who died memorably in Cal Shakes’ King Lear and ended 2007 with a superb, hip-swiveling, lip-pursing performance in Sex by Mae West at the Aurora.

Favorite tryout: Joan Rivers is more than a red carpet personality and an experiment in plastic surgery. An avowed theater lover, Rivers got down to some serious (and seriously funny) business in The Joan Rivers Theatre Project at the Magic. She combined stand-up with drama as she told an autobiographical tale of growing old in show business. The play was far from perfect, but she gets an A for effort.

Best ensemble: Behind every good show is a good ensemble, in front of and behind the scenes. But the one that comes to mind that, together, elevated the play was the fine crew in TheatreWorks’ Theophilus North (left) directed by Leslie Martinson.

Biggest disappointments: There were a few of them. I adore Kiki and Herb (Justin Bond and Kenny Melman), but their summer gig at ACT was in desperate need of a director. Berkeley Rep hosted Neil Bartlett’s adaptation of Oliver Twist, and while it was good, it didn’t reach anything approaching the heights of David Edgar’s Nicholas Nickleby. I complained about this in the review, and I’ll complain about it again: In ACT’s The Rainmaker, when the rain falls at the end, the actors should get wet. That’s the whole point of the play. In this version, the rain fell from above, but the actors were behind it and only pretended — acted if you will — the wetness. Lame.

Most gratuitous nudity: Actors bare all emotionally _ it’s what they do. But this year saw some unnecessary flesh, most notably in ‘Bot at the Magic, Private Jokes, Public Places at the Aurora and Two Boys in Bed on a Cold Winter Night. Costumes are a good thing.

Favorite quote of the year: It was uttered by the food critic Anton Ego (and written by Brad Bird) in the brilliant Pixar/Disney movie Ratatouille. As a critic (or what’s left of one), the words really hit home. And they’re true.

Here’s a taste: “In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new.”

Happy New Year. May your stages in 2008 be full of the discovery of the new.

I can’t really review the Aurora Theatre Company’s production of Sex, a 1926 play by the delectable Mae West. One of my best friends is in the cast (he’s brilliant, by the way), so I have what they call in the ethics business a “conflict of interest.”

So, knowing my bias, here’s what I enjoyed about the production, directed by Tom Ross, the Aurora’s artistic director.

This is unlike any show I’ve seen in 10 years of going to the Aurora. First of all, it’s a musical (under the terrific musical direction of Billy Philadelphia, who tickles the ivories, and when pressed into acting service, looks sharp in an officer’s uniform). The second act of West’s play takes place in Trinidad, and it’s mostly an excuse to sing a lot of songs. Philadelpia has written three new songs to add to the Sex-y song list, and they’re terrific. The best one is “At the Cafe Port au Prince,” expertly performed by Danny Wolohan in an afro wig. It’s a funny, catchy number, and Philadelphia’s other new tunes, “Under the Red Light” and “Goin’ Down Under,” make me think that perhaps it’s time for Philadelphia to seriously consider writing a jazzy musical (and his wife, Meg Mackay, could star because it’s been too long since we’ve seen her onstage).

To be perfectly honest, Sex is a fairly lousy play. There are some very funny lines, and West wrote herself an interesting role in Margy LaMont, a Montreal prostitute who attempts to go straight and gets involved with a naive society boy. But the dialogue is stiff and dated, and as for plot, well, nothing really kicks in until Act 3 when the past and present clash in an amusing way.

What makes Sex interesting now is, of course, West herself. She wrote this piece before she had fully developed her trademark Mae West persona, so we get her intelligence, humor and strength with less of the robotic waxwork mechanisms she later created for herself.

Ross’ supporting ensemble — Robert Brewer, Steve Irish, Craig Jessup, Maureen McVerry, Kristin Stokes, Philadelphia and Wolohan — does a whole lot to keep the play from dragging (in lesser hands, boy would it drag). But the star here is Delia MacDougall as Margy.

MacDougall has always been a smart, reliable actor, and she knows that simply doing a Mae West impersonation for 2 1/2 hours isn’t going to cut it. So we get glimpses of Mae — especially when MacDougall struts and sings “Sweet Man” and “Shake That Thing” (a great ensemble number) — but what we really get is Margy, a worldly broad desperate to make something of her life. She doesn’t exactly have a heart of gold, but she has a brain and good instincts. And perhaps most happily of all, she has a raging libido, and she owns it. Could this be where the expression “You go, girl!” comes from?

MacDougall is marvelous (and she looks fantastic in Cassandra Carpenter’s ’20s dresses). Her performance alone should make you eager to dive headlong into Sex.

For information about Sex, visit www.auroratheatre.org.

Here’s a trailer for West’s movie I’m No Angel from 1933 with Cary Grant.

This month, if you’re looking for good Sex, you may need to head for Berkeley.

This week, the Aurora Theatre Company opens Mae West’s 1926 show Sex starring Delia MacDougall as Margy LaMont, the role West originated herself.

MacDougall, a familiar face to Bay Area audiences (she most recently died onstage in California Shakespeare Theater’s King Lear), grew up in Mountain view and remembers her mother taking her to Palo Alto’s Stanford Theatre to see old movies.

“My mom was a big fan of Mae West’s and would quote her all the time,” MacDougall says from her San Francisco home. “I loved all those sexy pre-Code 1930s ladies. I think Mae West had something to her that was more powerful than any of them — more sexual but not very sexy. She was a powerful, sexual woman.”

Of course young Delia didn’t necessarily know what West was talking about.

“It still takes me a while to catch on — she makes innuendo out of everything.”
Even before MacDougall was approached by Aurora artistic director Tom Ross about playing West’s role in Sex, the busy actor/director was something of a West aficionado.

“I saw her films then started reading the biographies. I was impressed by the paths she cut,” MacDougall says.

After an audition for another Aurora show, MacDougall was sensing she didn’t get the part when Ross handed her the Sex script. The first few pages had MacDougall hooked, and she knew she wanted to do the show.

“The character, Margy LaMont, is clearly a prostitute, and that’s what was so upsetting to people at the time,” MacDougall explains. “She’s very real, which is a funny thing to associate with Mae West. In the ’20s, prostitutes onstage had to suffer and die at the end. Audiences had to believe there was good in them somewhere. But with Margy, it’s not like that.”

Sex got bad reviews when it opened, but, as you might imagine, audiences adored it. It ran for a year before the City of New York sent the police in to shut it down. West was arrested on a morals charge and served eight days in prison (though legend has it she was allowed to wear her silk underwear in jail).

Of course, being the Madonna of her day, West turned all the publicity to her advantage, wrote more plays (most of which were shut down or forced out of town) and made her way to Hollywood.

Because Sex emerged before the West persona was set in curvy stone, the character of Margy is, as MacDougall puts it, “more man- and society-angry than later West characters. Mae had a better sense of humor than Margy.”

Consequently, MacDougall does not have to do an out-and-out West imitation, though she is working on her shimmy.

“I think it’s a good play — it’s not Inherit the Wind but it moves quickly, you don’t know where it’s going and it has characters you love,” MacDougall says. “And Mae always wrote that Margy is in a clinch, so I love playing the part because I’m always in the arms of some guy.”

This will be the year MacDougall chose Sex over Christmas (the sex jokes just never end with a title like that). She was all set to go back into American Conservatory Theater’s annual A Christmas Carol, but decided to opt for West’s play.

“I don’t know how many more years I can be in a play called Sex,” she says.
If you’d like to sample a little of West at her best before you head to Sex, which is directed by Ross and features Maureen McVerry, Danny Wolohan, Steve Irish, Robert Brewer, Kristin Stokes and Craig Jessup, MacDougall recommends West’s first movie, Night After Night, in which a hat-check girl says to West, “Goodness, what lovely diamonds.” To which West replies, “Dearie, goodness had nothing to do with it.”

MacDougall also recommends listening to West’s song “A Guy What Takes His Time.”

The Aurora’s Sex continues through Dec. 9 at the Aurora Theatre Company, 2081 Addison St., Berkeley. Tickets are $40 to $42. Call 510-843-4822 or visit www.auroratheatre.org.

Opened Thursday, April 12, 2007, Aurora Theatre Company

Aurora exposes laughs, drama in Public Places
Two [1/2] stars Sturdy laughs

Building a play about architecture is a tricky business.

Certainly architecture is something that affects each of us every day, even though we probably don’t think about it much beyond, doors, walls and windows.

Playwright Oren Safdie, son of famed architect Moshe Safdie, received his MFA degree in architecture from Columbia but ended up constructing a play about architecture for his wife, actress/playwright M.J. Kang.

The play, Private Jokes, Public Places, opened Thursday at Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre Company starring Kang as Margaret, a grad student at the National School of Architecture making her thesis presentation to a panel of three judges.

There’s a twitchy Brit (Charles Dean), an ego-brandishing German (Robert Parsons) and a milquetoast American (Max Gordon Moore), who also happens to have a little crush on Margaret.

The 80-minute play transpires in real time, and we in the audience are far from impassive. We’re fellow grad students and guests observing the judging process.

More entertaining for its flashes of satirical humor than for its insights into the world of design, director Barbara Damashek’s production is slick but lacking in punch.

The tone varies from the broadly comic to the deadly serious, and that variation creates a wobbly foundation.

Dean and Parsons seem to relish creating broad caricatures of their snooty Euro designers. The Brit is the “dinosaur,’’ a sniffy traditionalist in little round glasses, a bow tie and argyle socks (costumes by Brandin Baron), while the German is the black-clad post-post-modern windbag who bandies about phrases like “protean trajectories.’’
In full-on blowhard mode, both actors generate big laughs. For instance, Parsons, defending an avant-garde project of his, stammers: “It’s not a bridge to nowhere. It’s a bridge to contemplate where it leads.’’

There’s also some well-executed physical comedy, as when Moore, frightened by his European compatriots, comes running into the room, plops himself in a folding chair and promptly falls flat onto his back.

In the midst of such lively buffoonery, we have Kang’s Margaret, an earnest, intelligent young woman with little patience for her judges’ self-inflated pronouncements and exhortations. Her design project is for an impressive public swimming pool that is thoughtful, progressive and highly functional.

Such practicality, even though it’s well designed, doesn’t sit well with the judges, who care more about ideas than people. This angers Margaret, and at one point she shouts back at a judge: “What has modernism done for the people?’’

We’re expected to accept that Margaret’s journey from the beginning of her presentation to its stormy, soul- (and body-) baring conclusion is not the stuff of comedy, but genuine, reality-based drama.

It’s a difficult leap to make, especially when the play turns into what amounts to a trial, with Margaret on the defensive and the German judge, once he stops talking about the “power of the Gestalt,’’ is her self-appointed prosecutor.

In form, the play is lovely – Kate Boyd’s clean, white classroom set comes complete with architecturally appropriate beams crossing the airspace over the stage – and the performances are energetic, especially Kang’s when she gets worked up into a righteous lather about architecture’s true function in the world.

As a complete unit, however, the pieces of Private Jokes, Public Places don’t quite come together.

For information about “Private Jokes, Public Places,’’ visit www.auroratheatre.org.