2013: The year’s best Bay Area theater

2013 (third try)

If you’re looking for the year’s best, you can shorten your search by heading directly to Word for Word, that ever-amazing group that turns short works of fiction into some of the most captivating theater we see around here. This year, we were graced with two outstanding Word for Word productions.

You Know When the Men Are Gone – Word for Word’s first show of the year was based on two excellent stories by Siobhan Fallon. We are a country at war, and as such, we can never be reminded too often about the sacrificed made not only by the men and women serving in harm’s way but also the families and friends they leave behind. These connected stories, masterfully directed by Joel Mullenix and Amy Kossow, created a direct, emotional through line into the heart of an experience we need to know more about. Read my review here.

In Friendship – A few months later, Word for Word returned to celebrate its 20th anniversary by casting the nine founding women in several stories by Zona Gale about small-town, Midwestern life. It was pleasure from start to finish, with the added emotional tug of watching the founders of this extraordinary company acting together for the first time. Read my review here.

Campo Santo, Intersection for the Arts and California Shakespeare Theater collaborated this year on an intimate epic about the Golden State we call home comprising three plays, art projects, symposia and all kinds of assorted projects. This kind of collaboration among companies is exactly the kind of thing we need to infuse the art form with new energy and perspectives. The best of the three theatrical offerings was the first.

The River – Playwright Richard Montoya authored the first two plays in this collaboration, and though the Cal Shakes-produced American Night was wild and enjoyable, Montoya’s The River, directed by Sean San José had the irresistible pull of a fast-moving current. A truly original work, the play was part comedy, part romance, part spiritual exploration. Read my review here.

Ideation – My favorite new play of the year is from local scribe Aaron Loeb because it was fresh, funny and a thriller that actually has some thrills. Part of San Francisco Playhouse’s Sandbox Series for new play development, Ideation is still in search of the perfect ending, but you can expect to hear much more about this taut drama of corporate intrigue and interpersonal nightmares. Read my review here.

The Pianist of Willesden Lane – The combination of heartbreaking personal history and heart-expanding piano music made this Berkeley Repertory Theatre presentation the year’s best solo show. Mona Golabek tells the story of her mother’s exit from Germany as part of the Kindertransport includes all the horror and sadness you’d expect from a Holocaust story, but her telling of it is underscored by her exquisite piano playing. Read my review here.

Other Desert CitiesTheatreWorks demonstrated the eternal appeal of a well-told family drama with this Jon Robin Baitz play about Palm Springs Republicans, their lefty-liberal children and the secrets they all keep. This one also happens to have the most beautiful set of the year as well (by Alexander Dodge). Read my review here.

The Fourth MessengerTanya Shaffer and Vienna Tang created a beguiling new musical (no easy feat) about Buddha (absolutely no easy feat). The show’s world premiere wasn’t perfect, but it was damn good. Expect big things from this show as it continues to grow into its greatness. Read my review here.

Good People – Any play starring Amy Resnick has a good chance of ending up on my year’s best list, but Resnick was beyond great in this David Lindsay Abaire drama at Marin Theatre Company. Her Margie was the complex center of this shifting, surprising story of old friends whose lives went in very different directions, only to reconnect at a key moment. Read my review here.

The Taming – One of the year’s smartest, slyest, most enjoyable evenings came from Crowded Fire Theatre and busy, busy local playwright Lauren Gunderson. This spin (inspired by The Taming of the Shrew) was madcap with a sharp, satiric edge and featured delicious comic performances by Kathryn Zdan, Marilee Talkington and Marilet Martinez. Read my review here.

Terminus – Oh so dark and oh so very strange, Mark O’Rowe’s return to the Magic Theatre found him exploring theatrical storytelling that encompassed everyday lie, mythic monsters and rhymed dialogue. Director Jon Tracy and his remarkable trio of actors (Stacy Ross, Marissa Keltie and Carl Lumbly) grabbed our attention and didn’t let it go for nearly two hours. Read my review here.

No Man’s Land – Seems a little unfair to include this production here if only because the can’t-miss team of Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Patrick Stewart would likely be a year’s best no matter where they were performing or what they were doing. In this case, they were headed to Broadway but stopped at Berkeley Rep to work on Harold Pinter’s enigmatic comic drama. Their work (along with that of Billy Crudup and Shuler Hensley) provided laughs and insight and complexity where you didn’t know any was possible. Pure master class from start to finish. Read my review here.

Breakout star of the year: Megan Trout. It was impossible not to be transfixed by Megan Trout not once but twice this year. She illuminated the stage as Bonnie Parker in the Mark Jackson-directed Bonnie and Clyde at Shotgun Players and then stole the show in the Aurora Theatre Company’s A Bright New Boise as a shy big-box store employee who is mightily intrigued by the new guy who also happens to have been involved with a now-defunct cult. Trout has that magnetic ability to compel attention and then deliver something utterly real and constantly surprising.

Great stories, theater and heart in Word for Word’s Men

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Ryan Tasker (left), Armando McClain (center) and Arwen Anderson in “Gold Star,” one of two short stories by Siobhan Fallon performed in Word for Word’s You Know When the Men Are Gone. Below: Marilet Martinez (left), McClain and Tasker in “The Last Stand.” Photos by Mark Leialoha

Sometimes it’s too easy to forget we’re a nation at war, and that’s not at all a good thing to be able to say. But it’s true, especially here in the Bay Area bubble, where the war seems especially far away. For that reason, among many others, Word for Word’s You Know When the Men Are Gone is a powerful and important piece of theater. Not to mention a moving and beautiful one.

It’s nice to see Word for Word, the extraordinary company that turns short fiction into fully staged works of theater without changing the original text, working in such a contemporary mode. The two stories that comprise this show, “The Last Stand” and “Gold Star,” are by Siobhan Fallon a military spouse who chronicles the lives of young soldiers and their families in her 2011 collection that gives this show its name. We don’t know the ages of all the characters we meet on stage, but the two main characters are 21 and 24, and it’s conceivable this entire show contains a crowd of people under 30, and that’s only one of the aspects of this show that makes it so interesting.

The first story, “The Last Stand,” has a universality about it that could apply to the story of a soldier from just about any war coming home to the life that has become so idealized in his head while he was away. Directed by Joel Mullennix, the story is told from the point of view of Kit Murphy (Chad Deverman), a young soldier seriously wounded in an IED explosion in Iraq. He was the only survivor in his vehicle when the body of his sergeant ended up providing a sort of shield from the flames.

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Now able to walk on crutches, his left foot still enclosed in a cast and a protective boot, Kit arrives, hoping to fall back into the arms of his wife, Helena (Roselyn Hallett), who, in her husband’s absence, has moved back home with her parents and started taking college classes. The reunion isn’t at all what Kit was hoping for, though Helena is hardly the bad guy in this sad scenario.

We meet Kit again in the second story, “Gold Star,” but he’s just a supporting player in this tale, directed by Amy Kossow. The focus here is on Josie, the widow of the sergeant who died in the explosion that wounded Kit. Josie (Arwen Anderson) is navigating the best she can through her grief, which is to say she’s not doing well at all. She suffers through the funeral (but avoids the memorial service), reluctantly accepts the company of soldiers who are assigned to watch over her and the other wives at Fort Hood who bring her casseroles she won’t eat.

When she gets a call from Kit saying he’d like to pay her a visit, she eagerly makes the date because unlike all her other visitors, Kit was with her husband in his final moments, and she craves that connection.

The selection of these two interconnected stories is rather brilliant because the evening ends up feeling like a two-act play. The emotional weight of the first story carries through to the second, making the ending all the more potent and emotionally wrenching. And like the stories themselves, the directors and actors are expert at sharing telling details about the experience of war on the front lines and on the civilian home front.

Even the set by Jacqueline Scott plays a part in those details. Built on a theme of stars and stripes, the front of the stage features big stars in the floor, while the stripes take the form of narrow white sheets hanging down from high above the stage. Those versatile sheets become bed dressing in a cheap motel, decorations for a strained homecoming celebration and tents in Iraq. Through the space between the sheets (and thanks to some beautiful lighting by Drew Yerys) we see glimpses of life in Iraq and sand dunes in the distance.

Like all Word for Word shows, the ensemble is vitally important, playing multitudes of roles and filling in all kinds of descriptive blanks. Marilet Martinez, Ryan Tasker and Armando McClain are fantastic as Army buddies, waitresses, officers, ghosts and bar bimbos. They create a believable world around the protagonists and also keep the stage lively. The inventive staging that so often marks a Word for Word show is alive and well in these stories but never distracts from the emotional core of the stories, which is the human cost of war beyond the casualties and the long, long process of healing wounds both visible and hidden away.

[bonus interviews]
I talked to author Siobhan Fallon and directors Amy Kossow and Joel Mullennix about You Know When the Men Are Gone for the San Francisco Chronicle. Read the story here.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Word for Word’s You Know When the Men Are Gone continues through Feb. 24 at Z Space, 450 Florida St., San Francisco. Tickets are $20-$55. Call 866-811-4111 or visit www.zspace.org.