Aurora finds rapture in Boise

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Pauline (Gwen Loeb, center) resolves a conflict between Hobby Lobby employees Leroy (Patrick Russell, left) and Will (Robert Parsons) in Aurora Theatre Company’s A Bright New Boise by Samuel D. Hunter. Below: Alex (Daniel Petzold) reads some of his work to Parsons’ Will. Photos by David Allen

For a second time this fall theater season, a play is dealing with the Rapture, that moment when believers will ascend and everyone else…doesn’t. First it was the young gay actor in the San Jose Repertory Theatre production of Geoffrey Nauffts’ Next Fall (read my review here). He worried that as a believer, he would spend eternity without the comfort of his boyfriend, a non-believer, and the boyfriend kind of rolled his eyes and dismissed the whole Rapture thing as nonsense.

Now we have Samuel D. Hunter’s A Bright New Boise at Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre Company in which a staunch believer has his faith shaken by a terrible event at his northern Idaho church enclave (cult?) and attempts to make a fresh start in the bustling metropolis of Boise.

Like the plays of Annie Baker, Hunter’s drama unfolds against he bleak backdrops of modern life. For Baker it’s places like a rec room or a yard behind a cafe next to a Dumpster. In Hunter’s Boise it’s the break room of big-box hobby supply store and a parking lot. These aren’t places we usually see on stage, and Hunter’s characters aren’t those we’re don’t usually get to know in a theater. That’s what makes Boise such an interesting play, and director Tom Ross’ production heightens that interest with richly detailed, heartfelt performances from each of his five actors.

Want to know what it’s like to be a success in the big-box world? Look no further than Gwen Loeb’s stunning turn as Pauline, the manager of the Hobby Lobby and the person who turned it from a chaotic mess into a profit maker. The folks at corporate are mightily pleased. But Pauline’s recipe for success is unusual, a mix of foul language, quick temper and genuine motherly concern.

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Among her staff are a painfully shy girl with a troubled home life and precious few retail skills (Megan Trout as Anna) and a hothead who expresses his disdain for his job through T-shirt art (Patrick Russell as Leroy). Then there’s the new guy, Will (Robert Parsons) who just moved to town. We know he’s escaping a tragic scandal at his church, but he’d rather nobody knows about that — or that he’s living in his car. He’s also there, we quickly learn, to reconnect with his son, Alex (Daniel Petzold), a high-schooler who also works at the store. Will gave up the baby for adoption and has had no contact since. As part of his fresh start in Boise, he wants to be the father he never was. But Alex, who demonstrates a rather tenuous hold on his young life, is not going to embrace this sudden father with anything but belligerence, hostility and only mild curiosity. The power struggle between these two, with Alex taking the reigns much of the time, is so painfully intimate it’s almost hard to watch at times.

Though the scenes between Parsons and Petzold crackle with resentment, desperation and the soul-deep need to connect, the scenes that really come to life are between Parsons and Trout. Unlikely friends, Will and Anna both have reasons for sneaking back into the store late at night. Trout’s Anna would rather read a book than do anything else, so when she makes an effort to talk to Will, it seems as if everything she says pains her. If she’s not apologizing, she’s berating herself for being stupid. Anna a fascinating character and Trout offers a beguiling performance.

There’s a lot of interest among the characters about what Will believes. Does he really believe in the Rapture? After all he’s been through, does he still believe in God? Those are big questions, and Hunter’s play isn’t afraid to wrestle with them. His ending goes for thought provoking but ends up being more frustrating, which is only disappointing because for two hours, the play gives such vital voice to people whose lives don’t seem to amount to much, but who are, in reality, battling demons and desperately searching for the meaning of their lives.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Samuel D. Hunter’s A Bright New Boise continues through Dec. 8 at the Aurora Theatre Company, 2081 Addison St., Berkeley. Tickets are $32-$50. Call 510-843-482 or visit www.auroratheatre.org.

Personal is political in Aurora’s fiery Revolution

EXTENDED THROUGH OCT. 6
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Rolf Saxon is Ben Joseph and Jessica Bates is Emma Joseph in Aurora Theatre Company’s production of After the Revolution by Amy Herzog and directed by Joy Carlin. Below: Bates’ Emma is comforted by Adrian Anchondo’s Miguel. Photos by David Allen

Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre Company opens its 22nd season with Amy Herzog’s smart, moving drama After the Revolution, an ambitious play that juggles American history, the cost of political idealism and how one generation affects another – for good and ill – in a tight-knit family.

This is the same Herzog whose 4000 Miles was so good at American Conservatory Theater earlier this year (read my review here), and this play, which predates 4000 Miles, also features the character of Vera Joseph (who is based on Herzog’s own grandmother). Vera is the widow of Joe Joseph, a member of the Communist party and a blacklisted victim of the McCarthy witch hunts in the 1950s, and though she’s younger in this play (by about a decade), she’s just as irascible – a crusty, Leftie granny with lots of bite left in her.

But Vera isn’t the focus here. The spotlight belongs to Vera’s granddaughter, Emma Joseph (Jessica Bates), a brilliant, recently graduated lawyer who runs the Joe Joseph Fund, a nonprofit aiming to release Mumia Abu-Jamal, the former Black Panther who was given the death sentence for the murder of a Philadelphia policeman. The year is 1999 (before Mumia’s sentence was commuted to life in prison), and Emma and her group feel that Mumia, because of his outspoken political views and the fact that he’s black, led to a farce of a trial and an overly harsh, even racist sentence. In other words, Emma feels she is carrying on her grandfather’s legacy by not giving in to governmental abuse of power.

Emma is the pride and joy of her family. Her dad, Ben (Rolf Saxon) can barely contain the tears when he toasts his daughter, who is so proudly carrying the banner for the family’s history and politics. Ben’s brother, Leo (Victor Talmadge) is equally proud and somewhat chagrined that his own three children, whom he calls “jocks,” don’t care at all about politics, blacklists or Communists. And then there’s Vera (Ellen Ratner), who is disappointed that all of her grandchildren, except Emma, have so little political intelligence or ambition.

When a deep, dark secret from decades past emerges, as such secrets often do, the Joseph family splinters. Emma suffers the most from the news, and everyone is left to deal with her implosion. It seems Joe wasn’t exactly the stand-up-and-fight-the-power Commie Emma thought he was. He was the “share government secrets with the Soviets during World War II” kind of Commie, and to Emma, that is dishonest and dishonorable. Vera sees it differently, that Joe was working for Stalin, in whom he believed more than Roosevelt, and it was before we knew everything we later knew about what Stalin was actually doing in Russia.

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Whatever, this revelation makes Emma question everything about her choices in life, especially the work she’s doing in her grandfather’s name. The revelation also threatens to destroy Emma’s relationship with her father, whom she revered as an inspiring Marxist public school teacher. Not a liar who kept vital information from her and arguably let her take money from donors to the Fund under somewhat false pretenses.

When it comes right down it, After the Revolution is really a father-daughter drama, and a bracingly good one. As Emma retreats from the world and wallows in self-pity and seems incapable of showing any shred of compassion for anyone (especially her father), Ben keeps trying to reach out to her and heal their rupture. The scene when they finally do meet, each prepared as if for a lecture demonstration, is alive with humor, regret, deep sadness and even deeper love. It’s a marvelous scene, beautifully played by Bates and Saxon. We never doubt Ben’s love for his daughter or his torment over not sharing the truth about his father sooner. But the scene allows Bates’ Emma to show that she has grown and expanded as a human, that she is capable of compassion.

Perhaps because that scene is so emotionally rich and rewarding, it’s disappointing, then, that the play shifts attention away from Emma, who is the protagonist, and to Vera, who is but a key supporting player. Vera makes an important point about Emma’s choices as they relate to her grandfather, but the play suffers from the shift in focus.

Director Joy Carlin navigates these tricky dramatic waters with aplomb and sensitivity. Politics are important here, but they never overtake the emotional lives and connections of the characters. The excellent supporting cast includes Adrian Anchondo as Emma’s boyfriend, who also works at the Fund; Pamela Gaye Walker as Ben’s wife (who has one of the play’s best scenes in a late-night phone call to a suffering Emma); Peter Kybart as a wise (and loaded) donor to Emma’s Fund; and Sarah Mitchell as Emma’s sister, who is fresh from another round of rehab.

Herzog creates a broad canvas here that allows money, history, truth and family to ratchet up the stakes and provide the ultimate reward. After the Revolution
isn’t exactly revolutionary, but as a family drama it surges with power and heart.

[bonus interview]

I talked to After the Revolution director Joy Carlin for a story in the San Francisco Chronicle. Read the feature here.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Amy Herzog’s After the Revolution continues an extended run through Oct. 6 at Aurora Theatre Company, 2081 Addison St., San Francisco. Tickets are $32-$50. Call 510-843-4822 or visit www.auroratheatre.org.

Feeling the heat at Aurora’s Arsonists

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Firefighters (front left to right, Tristan Cunningham and Kevin Clark) observe as a policeman (Michael Uy Kelly, right) pays a surprise visit to the attic of Mr. Biedermann (Dan Hiatt, center), while the arsonists (Tim Kniffin, far left, and Michael Ray Wisely) play innocent in front of the drums full of gasoline in the Aurora Theatre Company production of The Arsonists. Below: Babette (Gwen Loeb, right) and Anna (Dina Percia, left) can’t bear to watch as Mr. Biedermann (Dan Hiatt, seated at table) plays a game with the arsonists (Tim Kniffin, kneeling) and Michael Ray Wisely (standing on chair) during a tense dinner party. Photos by David Allen

My first encounter with Swiss playwright Max Frisch was in college when my Drama as Literature class read his Biedermann and the Firebugs, a 1953 radio play that was expanded into a stage play in 1958. The subtitle of that version was the clunky “a learning-play without a lesson.” Alistair Beaton delivered a new translation to London’s Royal Court Theatre in 2007 with the much zippier title – The Arsonists – and a subtitle: “a moral play without a moral.” Happily, that’s the version now on stage at Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre Company under the customarily energetic direction of Mark Jackson.

The time is now, and Frisch’s take on the wishy-washy morals of the privileged middle class is as astute as ever. Dan Hiatt is Biedermann, a successful businessman and purveyor of a hair rejuvenator that gives baldies nothing but false hope. He lives a lovely life in a lovely home (the sleek and elegant set is by Nina Ball and has more than a few menacing surprises tucked away in its loveliness) with his lovely wife, Babette (Gwen Loeb sounding like Lovey Howell from “Gilligan’s Island”) and hardworking maid, Anna (Dina Percia).

There’s tension in the air because the city is besieged by arsonists who randomly burn down chunks of neighborhoods for no apparent reason. “Hang the lot of ’em,” the fired-up Biedermann says. He looks and talks the part of a man of conscience, but when push comes to blazing shove, he doesn’t have much moral character at all. Possessing such a thing, it seems, might jeopardize one’s standing in the community, which might adversely affect one’s business and might decimate the lovely life by degrees.

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So when the sweet-talking arsonists come a-calling, Biedermann isn’t exactly a righteous force of defiance. First comes Schmitz, a former circus wrestler (Michael Ray Wisely with wild hair and flashing eyes) who insinuates himself into the household while demonstrating his affection for a good Beaujolais, ementall cheese and a 3 ½-minute egg. Once firmly ensconced in Biedermann’s attic, Schmitz invites his comrade, Eisenring (Tin Kniffin) to join him, much to the dismay of the sputtering Biedermann.

Biedermann willfully believes these men NOT to be arsonists, despite the warnings of a deadpan Greek chorus dressed as firefighters (Kevin Clarke, Tristan Cunningham and Michael Uy Kelly), that’s where the comedy comes from. Here’s a stand-up member of society who wants to believe he’s not aiding and abetting arsonists and yet he is. He knows he is and still he tries to be Mr. Nice Guy, protecting his image and not causing a stir. At the apex of the play’s biting absurdity, the arsonist’s find themselves without a match, so Biedermann gives them a whole box.

Jackson’s swift, 85-minute production punches the laughs without ever losing Frisch’s sharp edges. Hiatt is a riot as a man so caught up in appearances and mores that he can’t behave as a moral human being, even though that’s exactly what he thinks he is. Being good, he well knows, is very different than being good natured, but that’s about as far as he’s willing to go. Kniffin and Wisely are deliciously demented as the firebugs who do what they do for no other reason than they like it. They are terrorists without affiliation, and that, amid all the chuckles and middle-class bashing, is truly terrifying. Maintaining the status quo can have dire moral consequences, not to mention mortal explosions.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Mark Jackson’s The Arsonists continues through May 12 at the Aurora Theatre Company, 2081 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley. Tickets are $32-$50. Call 510-843-4822 or visit www.auroratheatre.org.

Aurora’s Heaven falls well short

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The women of Anthony Clarvoe’s Our Practical Heaven are (from left) Joy Carlin as Vera, Lauren Spencer as Magz, Julia Brothers as Willa, Blythe Foster as Suze, Anne Darragh as Sasha and Adrienne Walters as Leez. Below: Willa shows granddaughter Leez that she’s the “bird of the day” in the Aurora Theatre Company production. Photos by David Allen

There’s a lot to like in the world premiere of Anthony Clarvoe’s family drama Our Practical Heaven at Aurora Theatre Company. Laughs come frequently, the production itself – full of light and space – is lovely and the six women in the cast are all quite interesting.

Many of the funniest lines come from the character Willa, a ruthless titan of business who has a thorny relationship with her 20something daughter, Magz. Willa is caught between being the warm and thoughtful person she wants to be and the cold, heartless businessperson she is forced to be much of the time. That internal conflict makes the character crackle, and it helps things considerably that she’s played by the always reliable Julia Brothers.

When asked how she could possibly like a certain person, Willa answers, “She makes me laugh,” to which her questioner says, “You’re not laughing.” “I’m in hysterics,” Willa rejoins. “I’m also very sad. This is the net result.”

If only there were more of that snap, both dark and comic, in Clarvoe’s play. Clearly he’s after a Chekhovian mood as he gathers family members – some related by blood, others by choice – at the nearly seaside home of Vera, the matriarch of a large clan who is grieving the loss of her husband.

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Joy Carlin as Vera has some very funny moments – especially when she defies her children’s expectations by not only not tumbling over a box left on the floor but kicking it across the room – but like most of the characters here, she doesn’t have enough to do, enough complexity to play. Vera doesn’t seem to have much of a relationship with any of the women in her house, not daughter Sasha (Anne Darragh), not honorary daughter Willa, nor with granddaughters Leez (Adrienne Walters) and Suze (Blythe Foster) or honorary granddaughter Magz (Lauren Spencer).

The one defining element of Vera, other than occasional flashes of sass, is that she is a birder and has made bird watching a mandatory activity for the entire family. Why? “You’ve got to have something,” Vera says. “Some families drink.” After a while, you kinda wish this family imbibed a few more cocktails.

It’s easy to see why Vera isn’t connected to these women because aside from Willa, who has a tangible life beyond the country house, none of these women feels real. They come off rather like stiff characters in a play who are asked to be disagreeable much of the time.

Director Allen McKelvey’s production feels forced, as if he and his actors were pushing hard to squeeze more out of Clarvoe’s play than is actually there. When the end of Act 1 comes, for instance, it’s quite a surprise because nothing has really happened. We haven’t earned an intermission, yet here it is. Act 2 throws in a few more complications but no real drama.

The end of the play feels a lot like the end of Act 1: seriously? It’s over? I felt like I wanted to have some empathy, some connection to this family but I just didn’t. There’s a lot of huffing and puffing about the modern world and its abundant means of communication and its actual dearth of communicating. Our Practical Heaven, with its projected text messages, surly teenagers and cranky adults, feels like one more message zipping through the airwaves without enough to say.

[bonus interview]
I talked to playwright Anthony Clarvoe about creating Our Practical Heaven for the San Francisco Chronicle. Read the story here.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Anthony Clarvoe’s Our Practical Heaven continues through March 3 at the Auorra Theatre, 2081 Addison St., Berkeley. Tickets are $32-$50. Call 510-843-4822 or visit www.auroratheatre.org.

2012 flasback: 10 to remember

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James Carpenter and Stacy Ross in Magic Theatre’s Any Given Day by Linda MacLean, the best play of the year. Photo by Jennifer Reiley Below: the cast of Marin Theatre Company’s Circle Mirror Transformation by Annie Baker, another highlight of the Bay Area theater year. Photo by Kevin Berne.

One of the things I love about Bay Area theater is that picking a Top 10 list is usually a breeze. My surefire test of a great show is one I can remember without having to look at anything to remind me about it. The entire list below was composed in about five minutes, then I had to go look through my reviews to make sure they were all really this year. They were, and it was a really good year.

10. “The Happy Journey from Trenton to Camden” by Thornton Wilder, part of Wilder Times, Aurora Theatre Company

9. The White Snake by Mary Zimmerman, Berkeley Repertory Theatre

8. Tenderloin by Annie Elias with Tristan Cunningham, Siobhan Doherty, Rebecca Frank, Michael Kelly, Leigh Shaw, David Sinaiko and David Westley Skillman, Cutting Ball Theater

7. The Scottsboro Boys by John Kander, Fred Ebb and David Thompson, American Conservatory Theater

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6. The Aliens by Annie Baker, San Francisco Playhouse

5. The Hundred Flowers Project by Christopher Chen, Crowded Fire and Playwrights Foundation

4. Spunk by Zora Neale Hurston, adapted by George C. Wolfe, California Shakespeare Theater

3. Circle Mirror Transformation by Annie Baker, Marin Theatre Company

2. The Normal Heart by Larry Kramer, American Conservatory Theater

1. Any Given Day by Linda MacLean, Magic Theatre

Playwright Annie Baker appears twice on this list and could have appeared a third time for Aurora’s Body Awareness. This was the year of Annie Baker in the Bay Area – the first time her work was done here, and with any luck, not her last.

The most valuable player award in this list goes to Stacy Ross, who was extraordinary in #1 (Any Given Day) and #10 (“The Happy Journey from Trenton to Camden”). In Any Given Day, she appeared opposite James Carpenter, another valuable player, and to see two of the Bay Area’s best actors work opposite each other in a remarkable play was sheer theatrical joy.

Three of the shows on this list – The Normal Heart, The Scottsboro Boys and The White Snake – all originated at other places, but that doesn’t make them any less brilliant or make ACT or Berkeley Rep any less canny for having the wherewithal and smarts to present them to local audiences.

Another name that is on this list twice is George C. Wolfe, represented as the adapter of Zora Neale Hurston’s Spunk, seen in a joyous production at Cal Shakes, and as director of the riveting and emotionally intense The Normal Heart at ACT.

There are two new plays here (#5, Christopher Chen’s The Hundred Flowers Project and #8, Cutting Ball’s ensemble-created Tenderloin). They couldn’t have been more different, but they were both illuminating and exciting and felt a whole lot bigger than the small spaces in which they were taking place (in scope and importance, not in size).

As ever, thank you for reading Theater Dogs. This is a labor of love, and it would be silly for me to be here without you.

Happy New Year.

Thornton, a Wilder and crazy (wonderful) guy

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The family (from left, Stacy Ross, Patrick Russell, Heather Gordon) reads the billboards they pass as father (Søren Oliver) drives them through Trenton and Camden in “The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden,” part of Aurora Theatre Company’s Wilder Times. Below: Infants Tommy (Patrick Russell, left) and Moe (Brian Trybom, right) discuss life in “Infancy,” the first play in the Wilder Times quartet. Photos by Jessica Palopoli

Of the four short Thornton Wilder plays that comprise Aurora Theatre Company’s Wilder Times, one is grating, one is darkly funny, one is poignant and one is so brilliant, so moving it almost erases the memory of the other three.

To begin with, these four one-acts were not written to be performed together, but director Barbara Oliver and her Aurora crew saw links between the first two, “Infancy” and “Childhood,” written in 1962, and “The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden” and “The Long Christmas Dinner,” both written in 1931. Together, they form a sort of piquant portrait of human lives, beginning to end, with special attention given to family dynamics. It’s interesting that the plays more concerned with death and time were written first, and the plays dealing with our most formative years were written 30 years later.

“Infancy,” whose most notable feature is two man babies in giant prams, is the most outright comic piece of the evening, but it’s also grating in canny way. These babies (Patrick Russell and Brian Trybom are frustrated and upset, as babies often are. They can’t communicate properly with their mothers, so they break into loud, tough-talking brutes to get their message across.

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Wilder’s dip into childhood grows murkier, and therefore more interesting, in “Childhood,” as the eldest of three siblings (Marcia Pizzo) concocts elaborate games for her younger siblings (Heather Gordon and Russell), the most involved being the one where they’re orphans after the accidental deaths of their parents. What begins as child’s play evolves into a dark dream in which mother (Stacy Ross) and father (Trybom) become actors in the death fantasies of their children. Kind of creepy, but really interesting.

Act 2 features Wilder’s two most famous short plays, and they’re full of the same kind of seemingly sentimental but actually quite trenchant and profound musings on human existence that make Our Town one of the best American plays ever written. In “The Long Christmas Dinner,” we watch one ever-changing, ever-evolving family sit down to Christmas dinner over 90 years in about 30 minutes. It’s a dazzling piece of writing full of life and death and grief and getting by. Children age from infancy to dotage, stories are told and re-told, traditions come and go, all beautifully performed by Oliver’s cast.

The stand-out here is “The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden,” a simple story of a New Jersey mom, dad and two kids driving down state to see their married daughter/sister after an illness. That’s it for plot, but Wilder fills the play with stark emotion and powerful relationships. This apparently happy family has seen major loss, and there are raging currents of sadness running through their journey.

From the backseat, mom (Ross), keeps saying to her husband, (Søren Oliver) things like, “You know what’s best.” But no one in that car, including the son (Russell) and daughter (Gordon), believes that dad, sweet as he is, is the one who’s in charge. It’s all about mom. She loves this family of hers ferociously and is doing everything in her considerable powers to ensure their happiness, safety and general well being.

Ross’ performance is revelatory. This mother figure is as complicated and as admirable as any I’ve seen on stage. Even a small spat with the son ends up being a major emotional catharsis. And the reunion with the married daughter (an extraordinary turn by Pizzo) is fraught with grief and comfort and release.

Wilder demonstrates so powerfully that length matters far less than emotionally charged, expertly sculpted content. We can experience nearly a century of life and death in a half an hour and the full breadth and complexity of a flawed, functional, loving family in one quick road trip. It’s genius, and it’s great theater.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Thornton Wilder’s Wilder Times continues through Dec. 9 at the Aurora Theatre Company, 2081 Addison St., Berkeley. Tickets are $35-$50. Call 510-843-4822 or visit www.auroratheatre.org.

Aurora scores a smackdown with Chad Deity

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Chad Deity (Beethovan Oden, right) pummels The Bad Guy (Dave Maier) in the Bay Area Premiere of Kristoffer Diaz’s The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity. BELOW: Wrestling promoter EKO (Rod Gnapp, center) lays out his version of the American dream to VP (Nasser Khan, rear left) and The Mace (Tony Sancho). Photos by David Allen

In professional wrestling, we’re told, you can’t kick a guy’s ass without the help of the guy whose ass you’re kicking. Talk about a democracy! Perhaps there’s more to learn from the gaudy world of professional wrestling than we thought.

Playwright Kristoffer Diaz, a self-confessed fan of the fake-out body slams and outsize characters of the pro-wrestling world, seems to think there’s an allegorical relationship between that world and the United States, especially when it comes to racism and the exploitation of labor in the name of almighty capitalism. His play The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity opens the Aurora Theatre Company’s 21st season (or 21st “anniversary” season as the pre-show announcement puts it – why is 21 years an anniversary?).

There’s certainly truth in advertising with this play – it’s incredibly elaborate, and director Jon Tracy’s production is enormous. Imagine a wrestling ring (not regulation size), towering video screens and elaborate rock concert-style lighting surrounding the Aurora’s intimate 150-seat theater. Set designer Nina Ball, lighting designer Kurt Landisman and sound designer Cliff Caruthers have done a remarkable job re-creating the garish arena of fictional operation THE Wrestling in the dignified Aurora space. This is an immersive experience, and that’s part of the fun. Before the show, Dave Maier, the fight director and the guy who plays wrestlers The Bad Guy, Billy Heartland and Old Glory, comes out in his good ol’ buy Billy Heartland guise to train us theatrical types how to behave like wrestling types, which is to say we’re coached to boo the bad guy, chant “champ, champ, champ” whenever Chad Deity comes into the ring and salute and bark “sir, yes sir!” when Old Glory makes his dramatic entrance rappelling from the ceiling.

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Knowing what our role is, the play begins in earnest – and it is an earnest play with something to say about the corrosive power of stereotypes and the never-ending smackdown of the little man in corporate America. The central character is Macedonio “The Mace” Guerra (Tony Sancho), one of the most important guys in the wrestling world because he makes the superstars look good. He’s the character without the character, the highly trained and skilled acrobat/actor who makes it look like the inept big-name wrestlers (like Chad Deity, played with appropriate bluster and grit by Beethovan Oden) look like they know what they’re doing.

In his revealing monologues, beautifully delivered by the charming Sancho, Mace tells us he’s pretty happy with his lot in life. He has loved wrestling since he was kid watching it on Saturday morning TV, and he makes a good living, even if he is smarter, more articulate and more sensitive than most of the other guys in the room. He fully recognizes that pro-wrestling guru Everett K. “EKO” Olson (Rod Gnapp) utilizes racial stereotypes to rile up his audiences, but he bites his tongue and does what is asked of him.

When Mace hears about a Brooklyn hip-hop kid of Indian descent who talks a good game, his mind starts spinning with possibilities and introduces the kid, Vigneshwar “VP” Paduar (Nasser Khan) to his bosses. Promoter EKO immediately sees possibilities in the new kid’s brown skin and turns him into “The Fundamentalist,” a bearded, Osama-like wrestler (who, by the way, can’t even begin to wrestle), whose primary function is to enrage the audience and goad Chad Deity.

The play’s trajectory, which isn’t all that convincing, has Mace rising above skeeviest parts of the wrestling world. If the play’s conclusion lacks emotional heft, it sure is a lot of fun. The bulk of the actual wrestling happens in Act 2, and it’s fantastic to be able to watch it all so close up. The big noisy body slams and power bombs are great, but the most effective moments are actually those in slow motion (as when one of Maier’s wrestlers suffers one of The Fundamentalist’s super kicks known as “The Sleeper Cell”). All the flash of the production is fun, too, especially the video screens full of busty ladies in bikinis with wrestlers opening beer cans on their chests and the like (video design by Jim Gross).

This is a very different kind of show for the Aurora, and that’s fantastic. Some companies open their seasons with a bang (see Berkeley Rep’s Chinglish). The Aurora opens its season with a theatrical ass-whoopin’, but that’s OK. They have full permission from the smiling audience to whoop its collective ass.

[bonus interview]
I interviewed busy Bay Area fight director Dave Maier about his work on The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity for the San Francisco Chronicle. Read the story here.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Kristoffer Diaz’s The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity continues through Sept. 30 at Aurora Theatre Company, 2081 Addison St., Berkeley. Tickets are $32-$50. Call 510-843-4822 or visit www.auroratheatre.org.

Just Wilde over Aurora’s Salomania

EXTENDED THROUGH JULY 29
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Madeline H.D. Brown is Maud Allan (center) in the world premiere of Mark Jackson’s Salomania at the Aurora Theatre Company. Below: Brown as Allan observes the testimony of Lord Alfred Douglas (Liam Vincent, right) in the courtroom of Judge Darling (Kevin Clarke). Photos by David Allen

If only a 94-year-old scandal were sensational in ways we no longer understood, we could look back and wonder what all the fuss was about and why the media underestimated the taste of the general public and why the general public was so content to be constantly underestimated.

Alas, not much has changed since the early 20th century criminal libel suit that American dancer Maud Allan brought against British newspaper publisher Noel Pemberton-Billing after he described the interest in her dance piece Vision of Salomé as the “cult of the clitoris.” That was the headline he used in his paper, the Vigilante, to describe the moral reprobates who were attracted to Allan’s version of the play by Oscar Wilde, which had been banned since Wilde’s very public downfall.

What we learn in Mark Jackson’s fascinating and at moments electrifying new play Salomania is that the media, though their aims may be occasionally true, are a pawn in larger political games and panderers to public taste, which they help shape.

Allan, who spent her childhood in San Francisco, was a sensation in London, and as such, she became a prime target for Pemberton-Billing to goad her into filing a libel suit against him. He had apparently tried and tried to get the local politicos to do the same thing, but none of them took his bait. But Allan, with her past family scandal (her brother Theo murdered two girls in San Francisco) and her desire to be a self-made woman, wasn’t about to let a rabble-rouser tarnish her good name (though her actual name was Beulah Maude Durrant). So, at the height of World War I, Allan squared off against Pemberton-Billing at the Old Bailey, the same courthouse where Wilde had seen his world crumble 25 years earlier.

This is prime material for a drama, and Jackson is just the writer/director to bring it to interesting and finely detailed life. A trial is, of course, a kind of theater in and of itself, so there’s a scorching good drama already built in – especially when Wilde’s “Bosie,” Lord Alfred Douglas, took the stand as a witness for Pemberton-Billing and dredged up all the turmoil and name calling and closed mindedness from 25 years earlier.

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But Jackson takes a wider view beyond just the trial. He spends a good deal of time in the trenches of No Man’s Land, fighting alongside the British soldiers slogging through the mud of France. While we’re constantly reminded of how the British public was being distracted from the war by the sensation of the Allan trial, we see the soldiers completely captivated by scandal back home. One soldier even says the headlines, as they trickle in, are the only thing keeping him going.

Part of the irony in this complicated tale is that Pemberton-Billing wanted a sensational trial precisely so he could call attention to the failures of the British government and its weak peace plans and advocate for a swift and decisive end to the war. His theory, hatched with Harold Spencer, an American who served as a British secret agent, was that if they can bring attention to a German black book containing the names of 47,000 traitors to Her Majesty’s government, they could rally the troops, so to speak, infiltrate the vast German network of spies and accomplices and win the war for Britain.

That he wanted to do this by smearing the name of a dancer and aligning her with the same “moral perversity” nonsense that brought down Wilde is rather astonishing. But seeing how much traction this stunt got him is more than astonishing – it’s sickening.

Jackson is such an astute craftsman that he’s able to create a near-epic feel in the intimate Aurora. His cast of seven, all playing multiple roles except for Madeline H.D. Brown as Allan, makes a powerful impression as major historical figures, ordinary British citizens and beleaguered soldiers. Mark Anderson Phillips works up quite a froth as Pemberton-Billing, who represented himself in the libel case and apparently did so at very high volume. This man wanted to be heard, and he certainly was.

Brown’s Allan veers from being an ethereal presence, especially when she’s dancing (choreography by Chris Black) to an understandably tormented young woman who is far away from her damaged family and navigating the perils and pleasures of fame and notoriety on her own. As Judge Darling, the colorful presiding justice of the case, Kevin Clarke is having a marvelous time with the character’s eccentricity. Clarke also plays Wilde in an interesting if overlong scene toward the end of the play that could use more crackle.

Perhaps that particular scene suffers in comparison to an earlier scene, also set a table, between a soldier (Alex Moggridge) home in London on two days’ leave, and a war widow (Marilee Talkington) anxious to do her part and show the fighting men her appreciation. Jackson has two actors, both quite visible, on the floor rotating the platform on which the scene takes place (the fantastically utilitarian set is by Nina Ball). The effect is mesmerizing, and the scene is among the best in the 2 ½-hour play.

Liam Vincent is superb as Lord Alfred Douglas, with vestiges of his youthful brattiness still visible even has he fights to prove how much he has matured and changed since his association with Wilde. And Anthony Nemirovsky is great as Spencer, the American who’s on a crusade with Pemberton-Billing to change the course of the war. Watching Nemirovsky essay Spencer’s breakdown on the stand is absolutely thrilling (it’s a bit of a guilty pleasure to watch the blowhards, no matter how sincere, crumble).

Through it all, Jackson orchestrates the proceedings with lyrical moments of dance – not just Allan but also the soldiers in the trenches – and humor and horror. There’s a scene of a hanging that is so jarring it might as well have been real and not just a clever theatrical effect (with nods to lighting designer Heather Basarab and sound designer Matt Stines).

If Salomania is overstuffed with information and parallels to our own times, it’s completely understandable. This is rich, rewarding material, even if its observations about the third estate, wartime hysteria and the distraction of a good scandal are as alarming as they are entertaining

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Mark Jackson’s Salomania continues an extended run through July 29 at the Aurora Theatre Company, 2081 Addison St., Berkeley. Tickets are $30-$48. Call 510-843-4822 or visit www.auroratheatre.org.

The Annie Baker dead poets society

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Playwright Annie Baker is finally making a splash in the Bay Area. This year, three of her plays will have played in Berkeley, San Francisco and Marin. What took so darn long?


So far, playwright Annie Baker is two for two in the Bay Area. It took a while for the country’s hottest young playwright to make her mark locally, but she has done it now. Twice. And a third is yet to come later in the summer.

Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre Company was the first to produce Baker locally with Body Awareness (read my review here). Then SF Playhouse did The Aliens (running through May 5, read my review here). The Baker trilogy concludes (at least for now) in August when Marin Theatre Company and Encore Theatre Company partner on Circle Mirror Transformation.

There’s always a danger when a new playwright sizzles into popular consciousness that there will be a backlash, that the writer will be praised one day then smashed for being overrated the next. I don’t think that will happen with Baker, at least not here. Her writing is too interesting, too compassionate. So far the plays have just gotten better.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Baker via email for a San Francisco Chronicle story. She was even charming in cyberspace. Read the interview here.

Here’s my favorite part of our exchange:

Q: After Emily Dickinson, are you now the second-most famous writer to come from Amherst, Mass.?
A:
Ha ha ha. Definitely not. There’s Robert Frost, Chinua Achebe, Helen Hunt Jackson, Noah Webster, etc. But I love Emily Dickinson. I used to hang out at her grave when I was a kid and push pennies in the dirt so she’d have some spending money in heaven.

[bonus video]
Here’s a look at SF Playhouse’s production of The Aliens by Annie Baker.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

The Aliens continues through May 5 at SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter St., San Francisco. Tickets are $20-$70. Call 415-677-9596 or visit www.sfplayhouse.org.

Four hot bodies heat up Aurora’s Body Awareness

EXTENDED THROUGH MARCH 11!
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The cast of Aurora Theatre Company’s Body Awareness includes (from left) Howard Swain, Jeri Lynn Cohen, Amy Resnick and Patrick Russell. Below: Cohen and Swain prepare for a body awareness photo session. Photos by David Allen


Drama in the small college town of Shirley, Vermont, is much like it is anywhere: small, intimate and, for the people involved, earth shattering.

Playwright Annie Baker, one of the theater world’s most acclaimed and buzzed-about writers, has a particular skill in writing about the lives of ordinary people. She’s acutely aware of the comic absurdity and the fissures of sadness and anger that clash continually and cause tremors, both minor and majorly damaging.

Baker is a humane and very funny writer, and the Bay Area is finally getting a taste of her talent in the Aurora Theatre Company’s utterly delightful production of her Body Awareness. In true Aurora form, the production gives us a meaty play and performances by a quartet of Bay Area actors that defy you to find a false moment in this up-close and intimate space.

Baker is taking a sideways look at the essential and uniquely individual nature of family. She gives us a non-traditional family and quickly throws it into crisis.

Jeri Lynn Cohen is Joyce, a high school teacher and mom in her mid-50s whose son, Jared (Patrick Russell) is likely dealing with Asperger’s Syndrome, but he’s never been diagnosed, let alone spent time with a psychologist. Joyce was married to Jared’s dad but has taken a different turn in middle age. She’s now partnered with Phyllis (Amy Resnick), a psychology professor at the local university.

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Phyllis is one of the organizers of the university’s Body Awareness Week (formerly Eating Disorder Awareness Week), and to “celebrate” and create dialogue and otherwise create all that activity that empowered academics so cherish, she and her organizing crew have invited an array of guests artists, from a Palestinian dance troupe to a puppet theater, to discuss all aspects of body awareness.

One of those visitors – not one of Phyllis’ choosing – is Frank (Howard Swain), a photographer who shoots nude women of all ages. Because it’s a small university, guests are housed at professors’ homes, and Frank is staying with Phyllis, Joyce and Jared. It’s the perfect storm as Jared fights his parental figures and Frank appears as an inspired artist to Joyce and a loathsome misogynist pervert to Phyllis.

Director Joy Carlin gets such delicious performances from her actors, it’s hard to know where to begin in praising them. Resnick’s ability to play reality and comedy at the same time makes her the perfect actor for a Baker script. Phyllis could so easily come off as a ridiculously pompous academic, but Resnick keeps her grounded and her intellectual foibles within the realm of (very funny) reality.

Cohen is a superb foil for Resnick. She’s part pragmatist and part yearning earth mother. When she gets it in her head that she’d like Frank to photograph her, Phyllis is so repelled she threatens to end the relationship. Cohen’s reaction as Joyce is a wonder – surprise, hurt, defiance and a yearning to make everything right without sacrificing what she thinks is right for her.

It’s wonderfully complex, all of it, and these actors handle it with ease. Swain is downright goofy in a role that could easily be crass and repellent. His Frank has warmth occasionally cooled by ego but also genuine concern fueled by compassion.

And Russell, an ACT Master of Fine Arts graduate, is astonishing as he conveys Jared’s tortured interior life. He’s a young man smart enough to know not everything is right with him but afraid to do anything with that knowledge. His flashes of anger toward his mother are jolting but understandable. This is a sensitive, highly PC household, so flashes of unrestrained anger have a certain welcome appeal.

Carlin deftly keeps the action lively for the play’s 90 minutes and never lets the rhythms fall into predictable, sitcom beats. She keeps the humor at the forefront, which only makes the real-life drama of it that much more pronounced, especially at the end, when Baker allows the notion of family to define itself.

Body Awareness traffics in jealousy and devotion, maturity and folly, pomposity and true love. In its low-key brilliance, the play serves to heighten awareness – body and otherwise.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Annie Baker’s Body Awareness continues an extended run through March 11 as part of the Aurora Theatre Company’s Global Age Project. 2081 Addison St., Berkeley. Tickets are $30-$48. Call 510-843-4822 or visit www.auroratheatre.org.