Blood, love, adolescence flow in Berkeley Rep’s Right One

Posted on May 25, 2023 by Chad Jones

ABOVE: Noah Lamanna is Eli in the West Coast premiere of the National Theatre of Scotland production of Let the Right One In. BELOW: Diego Lucano (left) as Oskar and Lamanna as Eli. Photos by Kevin Berne

Let the right one in
Let the old dreams die
Let the wrong ones go
They do not
They do not
They do not see what you want them to
– Morrissey, “Let the Right One Slip In,” 1992

Horror on stage is a tricky, bloody business. I can only think of maybe twice when I have been truly chilled in my theater seat, and one of them came from the team behind Let the Right One In now on stage at Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Roda Theatre, though not in this show. Writer Jack Thorne, movement director Steven Hoggett and director John Tiffany were also involved with Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which achieves some gleefully chilling moments involving Dementors and time warps.

But their work on Let the Right One In, an adolescent love story involving vampires and bullies, pre-dates that (and their work on the altogether warmer and more musical stage adaptation of Once). This show, which is based on the 2008 Swedish movie and 2004 novel of the same name (both written by John Ajvide Lindqvist), debuted at the National Theatre of Scotland in 2013 and has since played London and New York. Now, with an American cast, the show makes its West Coast premiere with a chilly, chilling production in Berkeley.

It’s not exactly scary, but it is utterly compelling, and the frozen beauty of the original film has been realized theatrically with a spectacular winter forest (set design by Christine Jones) that seems to be in the perpetual blue night of the late Chahine Yavroyan’s shadowy lighting design.

Specifically, it’s the ’80s in a Stockholm suburb on stage, but really it’s the desolate wilderness of adolescence that we’re witnessing. Oskar (Diego Lucano) is bullied to the point of physical injury at school and tormented at home by an often drunk mother and a father who lives elsewhere with other concerns. After a particularly brutal day at school, Oskar is in the woods outside his apartment complex sparring with trees and imagining himself to be the world’s greatest knife fighter. That’s when he meets Eli (Noah Lamanna), who has recently moved into the complex accompanied by a parent? a guardian? a guy whom we’ve just seen stringing up some poor lug in the woods and slitting his throat?

Perpetually alone and isolated in his misery, Oskar sparks to the notion of a friend, even a weird one that smells like wet dog or infected bandage. But the worldly Eli is quick to state that they will not be friends, though the rules of storytelling – horror story, love story or otherwise – dictate that their loneliness will join them and alter their lives.

What is never stated explicitly here is that Oskar is 12 and Eli is a 200+ year-old vampire (a world you will not hear in the show’s two-plus hours). But we get it. Thorne’s script is spare on details but long on mood (and, thanks largely to the wonderfully youthful Locano, winsome humor). Act 1 really sets the mood, makes the connections and sets the plot in motion. Act 2 picks up speed and conjures up some wild imagery (the superb special effects are designed by Jeremy Chernick) all the while underscoring that while this human-scale monster tale is really a coming-of-age story that blossoms (thornily) into a love story.

There’s a fair amount of blood, naturally, but Tiffany and Hoggett are more interested in the emotions here. We get a sense of the town through the constant shuffle of people through the woods (though there are only nine actors in the cast) and various interludes of dance that sometimes feel natural and sometimes kind of silly. The adults tend to overact and overreact, so the heart of the story easily becomes Oskar and Eli and the fantastic performances by Lucano and Lamanna as they convey the awkwardness and intensity of young love. Even though one is 12 and one has been alive since the 18th century.

There are echoes of Stephen King’s Carrie here with the potent cocktail of teen angst (or tween, to be exact), aggressive bullying, encounter with the supernatural and revenge tragedy (at one point Oskar is reading a book that looked like a King novel, but my eyes couldn’t be certain). The details are different, of course, but there’s that universal recognition of the horror that is high school, the torture of rejection by the mainstream and finding the power to make your own way. It’s not exactly a happy ending, but the right ones do find one another, and the wrong ones do go away.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
The National Theatre of Scotland’s Let the Right One In continues through June 25 at Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St., Berkeley. Running time is 2 plus a 15-minute intermission. Tickets are $43-$119 (subject to change). Call 510-647-2949 or visit berkeleyrep.org.

Poor Yella Rednecks: Second time is a little more charming

Posted on April 13, 2023 by Chad Jones

ABOVE: Christine Jamlig and Will Dao in Qui Nguyen’s Poor Yella Rednecks running through May 7 at ACT’s Strand Theater. BELOW: Jenny Nguyen Nelson and Jamlig play daughter and mother in this continuation of the story that began with Vietgone. Photos by Kevin Berne

The sequel, they say, is never the equal of the original. In the case of Poor Yella Rednecks: Vietgone 2, the second time around is a little more satisfying, although it suffers from what made the first one hard to love. (I reviewed Vietgone for Theatermania, and you can read that review here and know that pretty much everything in there applies the sequel.)

Local audiences saw Qui Nguyen’s Vietgone a little more than five years ago when American Conservatory Theater produced it at The Strand. The story followed refugees from the Vietnam War as they made their way to a refugee camp in Arkansas, had adventures, met new people, fell in love and embarked on a new life in America.

Like that story, the sequel begins with an actor playing Nguyen coming out to tell us what we’re going to see. Instead of interviewing his father, like he did in the last play, he interviews his mother about her experience of starting over as a non-English speaker in the deep American South. The action takes us back to 1975 but then quickly scoots forward six years, with Nguyen, a young boy played by a puppet, and his parents (Jenny Nguyen Nelson as Tong and Hyunmin Rhee as Quang) and his grandmother (Christine Jamlig) living in a trailer and scraping by.

The terrific set design by Tanya Orellana covers the stage in flashy lights but reserves the center elevated part of the stage for a set within the set – a framed picture-like slice of life in the mobile home – cramped and crowded, but a safe place to live.

When the play focuses on the what the family is facing both economically and culturally, the cast shines and Nguyen’s writing comes to life. But like the first play, this immigrant story is told with whiz-bang fantasy, silliness, rap numbers and jagged storytelling that feels like it should be much bolder, louder and more confident.

Director Jaime Castañeda, who helmed ACT’s Vietgone, is back with a production that feels like a carbon copy of the last one in the way it bobbles the various tonal shifts and lurches into uncomfortable hip-hop interludes (one of which directly shouts out Hamilton – not a good idea) that are meant to be empowering but, because of the actors’ varying degrees of comfort in the medium, are not.

One of the best things about the first play ends up being one of the best things about the second play, and that is Jomar Tagatac, who plays the playwright and a number of other roles (including the British narrator, a goes-nowhere bit of silliness). He, like the rest of the cast, has some great moments of humor and connection amid the chaos.

Where Poor Yella Rednecks fares better than its predecessor is in the warmth with which it tells the story of a family, and specifically the rocky love story of a mother and a father who clash and make mistakes but end up stronger together. They’re also allowed to be sexual beings – an element that is too often ignored in parental love stories related by children. This love story is also specifically an immigrant love story, so you have to add in the horrors of racism and xenophobia to make its survival that much more deeply felt.

And by the end of this two-plus-hour show, you do feel the impact of this family’s experience. You may even have come to love the puppet boy (designed and directed by James Ortiz, performed by Will Dao), especially in a surprisingly moving scene where he is sitting by himself, playing with his Spider-Man and Star Wars toys.

Poor Yella Rednecks is a strange show by design, but what’s best about it – the complicated core of a family in motion – isn’t strange at all.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Qui Nguyen’s Poor Yella Rednecks continues through May 7 at American Conservatory Theater’s The Strand, 1127 Market St., San Francisco. Running time is about 2 hours (including one 15-minute intermission). Tickets are $25-$60 (subject to change). Call 415-749-2228 or visit act-sf.org.

Speaking the language of life in Berkeley Rep’s English

Posted on April 7, 2023 by Chad Jones

ABOVE: The cast of Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s English includes (from left) Sarah Nina Hayon as Roya, Christine Mirzayan as Goli and Mehry Eslaminia as Elham. BELOW: Sahar Bibiyan is Marjan, the instructor, and Amir Malaklou is Omid, one of her best students. Photos by Alessandra Mello

It’s so interesting that in Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s English, your ears have to become accustomed to hearing English. Playwright Sanaz Toossi’s sensitive comedy/drama is set entirely in a classroom in Karaj, Iran circa 2008. The instructor and her four students are engaged in English lessons leading up to the exam known as the TOEFL or Test of English as a Foreign Language. The play is (almost) entirely in English, so when the characters are speaking their native Farsi, they speak in unaccented, colloquial English. When they are communicating in English, we hear varying degrees of accents and grammatical skills, depending on the level of the speaker.

It’s a clever way to fall into the cadence of toggling between two languages without having to use sub/surtitles. There’s more engagement with the characters and their various states of mind, and it’s fascinating to contrast the levels of confidence some of the characters display when speaking their own language compared to the personality transformation that can happen when they are attempting to speak in a language that is not coming easily to them.

Director Mina Morita lets this one-act play unfold slowly as we get to know Marjan (Sahar Bibiyan), the instructor who lived, for a time, in England and still enjoys watching British rom-coms to keep her English skills sharp, and her small class. The biggest personality among them is Elham (Mehry Eslaminia), who has failed all past attempts at the TOEFL and struggles with everything about English. She’s under pressure to pass the exam because she’ll soon be starting medical school in Australia. Goli (Christine Mirzayan) is much more enthusiastic, and it’s one of the play’s many pleasures to see this youthful student gaining confidence in her language skills. Omid (Amir Malaklou) catches Marjan’s eye, and not just because he’s such a strong English speaker, and Roya (Sarah Nina Hayon) is, essentially, being forced to learn English by her son, who is now living in Canada and doesn’t want his child speaking Farsi with anyone.

In about two dozen scenes, we see the ups and downs of the students, perhaps a romance and some minor drama (speaking strictly in dramatic terms). But within these very recognizable rhythms are lives in motion and the push and pull of family, career, culture, politics. We’re only seeing these people across six weeks or so and only during their classes, so we experience slivers of their lives even while they are creating the community that can happen in a classroom (complete with bonds and battles).

What comes through so remarkably in this intimate, often quite hilarious play is how oblivious we can be to the importance of language in expressing our identity. The idea of belonging or being an outsider based on how you speak is explored, as is the joy of being able to express yourself in a new way or to make someone laugh in a different language. Can a new language be an escape? A salvation? A personal revolution? Or maybe even a shortcut to an appreciation of your own native tongue? Playwright Toossi keeps her scope narrow, but she allows the weight of the world to press in on this little group.

Morita’s wonderful cast works in shades of nuanced reality that allow us to feel like we’re really getting to know these characters. Even when Toossi’s script can be a little too placid, a little too subdued, there’s abundant warmth and humor that keeps us deeply invested in these people’s lives.

There’s always going to be something funny in someone mangling language – not in a jeering way but in appreciation of the bravery required to even make the attempt – and that is certainly a big part of the laughs in English, but even more, the humor bonds us. When we laugh together (in real life and in the theater) we’re acknowledging the depth of communication – our shared humanity, our empathy, our awareness. We may not all speak English, but in English, especially in those moments of comedy, we’re all speaking the same language.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Sanaz Toossi’s English continues through May 7 at Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Peet’s Theatre, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley. Tickets are $43-119. Running time: 1 hour and 40 minutes (no intermission). Call 510-647-2949 or visit berkeleyrep.org.

Nightmare or revelation? It’s Cambodian Rock Band, and it rocks

Posted on March 2, 2023 by Chad Jones

ABOVE: The cast of Lauren Yee’s Cambodian Rock Band at Berkeley Repertory Theatre includes (from left) Joseph Ngo, Abraham Kim, Geena Quintos and Moses Villarama. BELOW: Ngo and Francis Jue. Photos by Lynn Lane/Berkeley Rep

Cambodian Rock Band is such a unique show that it’s hard to describe. It’s the most uplifting story about human atrocities you can imagine. You could say it’s a play with music, but the music – performed live by the cast – is such an integral part of the story (and the emotion of it all), that you could call it a concert with play. There’s genocide and the uplift of great live music.

Whatever it is, it’s powerful and moving and a joy (and, truth be told, a terror) to behold on stage at Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Roda Theatre. The exuberant cast keeps up with every tonal shift, time shift and musical cue in playwright Lauren Yee’s compelling story, and the experience slams the audience this way and that in the best possible way.

The roots of Cambodian Rock Band go back to 2016 and to Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor new works program. From there, the show has been produced in a lot of places – Oregon Shakespeare Festival, South Coast Rep, off Broadway to name a few – and it’s that off-Broadway production from the Signature Theatre that is making the rounds of major regional theaters, including Berkeley Rep.

Director Chay Yew dexterously blends all the disparate elements of Yee’s script into something wholly original. The show begins as a rock concert circa 1975 in Phnom Penh. The five-piece band is Cyclos, and they’re caught up in the excitement of recording their first album. Then everything changes. The Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot comes to power, launching a horrifying reign that ultimately led to the death of an estimated 2 million Cambodians. Amid the totalitarian terror, education, music and art were outlawed, and those who practiced such dangerous trades were systematically dispatched.

From the opening concert, we bounce to Phnom Penh in 2008 and the first war crimes trial related to the Pol Pot regime. A young Cambodian-American woman, Neary (Geena Quintos) is part of the legal team bringing Commrade Duch to justice after his stint as director of the infamous S-21 prison, which is estimated to have slaughtered 20,000 people. When the prison was liberated in 1979, only seven people appeared to have survived. But, as Neary discovers, there is a possible eighth survivor, and she needs to locate him so he can testify.

Just as her trial is about to begin, Neary’s father, Chum (Joe Ngo) shows up and wants to bring her back to the U.S. He fled the Khmer regime and doesn’t want his daughter mired in all that horror from 30 years before. But she is insistent, and the father-daughter struggle will delve into some tangled family history that is played out in flashbacks.

To say that Ngo as Chum is extraordinary really isn’t saying enough. He is called upon to sing and play guitar in the band, play the young Chum navigating the nightmare of the Khmer Rouge and play the older Chum, a husband and father and American who would rather not re-live his Cambodian past. By turns funny, sympathetic and devastatingly dramatic, Ngo brings an astonishing level of energy and depth to his character’s remarkable journey.

Quintos as Neary is a defiant but sympathetic daughter following her own quest for justice, but she’s also a powerhouse singer in the band. Moses Villarama plays characters in both of the play’s eras and plucks a mean bass, while Abraham Kim wallops the drums (and some smaller roles) and Jane Lui tackles the keys (and prisoners at S-21).

Former Bay Area resident (but still Bay Area favorite) Francis Jue interrupts the opening concert to act as a sort of host for the evening and to guide us back and forth in time until he becomes a major player in the drama. Nobody can convey more charm or more menace than Jue, who is truly masterful in this show. And not for nothing, he plays a mean cowbell.

Unlike something like Life Is Beautiful the warmhearted(?) Roberto Benigni comedy(?) about the Holocaust, Cambodian Rock Band is not sappy or easy. Yee isn’t softening Pol Pot’s genocide in any way. The use of music – something the Khmer Rouge considered so dangerous they banned it – and specifically rock music (originals by the band Dengue Fever plus some vintage Cambodian surf songs and other period tunes) emphasizes the raging glory of humanity – and the human connection that art creates – even in the face of humanity at its very worst. An evening that begins as a concert ends as a transcendent event that feels enormous and full of hope.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Lauren Yee’s Cambodian Rock Band continues through April 2 at Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St., Berkeley. Running time: 2 1/2 hours (including a 15-minute intermission). Tickets are $21-$122 (subject to change). Call 510-647-2949 or visit berkeleyrep.org.

Murder, family meld in Chen’s Headlands at ACT

Posted on February 16, 2023 by Chad Jones

ABOVE: Johnny M. Wu as George (left), Phil Wong as Henry (center) and Erin Mei-Ling Stuart as Leena in the West Coast premiere of Christopher Chen’s The Headlands, running at ACT’s Toni Rembe Theater through March 5. BELOW: Charles Shaw Robinson (left) is Detective, Wong (center) is Henry and Sam Jackson is Jess. Photos by Kevin Berne

San Francisco playwright Christopher Chen seems to revel in puzzle, enigma and truth quests. His fascinating body of work is rich with mystery and unconventional theatricality. He’s one of the most interesting and intelligent playwrights working today, and he’s one of those artists who, when you see his name attached to something, you immediately check it out.

This is quite true of Chen’s The Headlands, now receiving its West Coast premiere (after being at Lincoln Center Theatre in early 2020 right before lockdown) at American Conservatory Theater’s Toni Rembe Theater. This one-act drama is a murder mystery and a complex family drama all rolled into one compelling package.

The less revealed about the plot the better, so I’ll just say that this is the story of Henry Wong, a San Francisco native and resident of the Sunset. As played by Phil Wong, Henry is distractingly charming. He speaks directly to the audience and lets us know that he’s an amateur sleuth with a penchant for solving cold cases. There’s one particular 20-year-old case that intrigues him. It involves a murder (or was it?) in his neighborhood. Not just in his neighborhood but in his house. OK. It was his dad. His dad was the victim, and Henry was only 10 years old.

Henry is what you call an unreliable narrator, but then again, how many 10-year-olds make reliable witnesses? His charm and easygoing manner pull us into his quest, but in true Chen fashion, the excitement of a whodunit soon gives way to some serious family complexities that make The Headlands more of an emotional puzzle than a criminal one.

That’s not to say we don’t care about what really happened to Henry’s dad and who may or may not have killed him. We absolutely do, and director Pam MacKinnon creates a propulsive but still deeply emotional production that plays with the idea of creating a film noir for the stage without sacrificing content to genre.

The set by Alexander V. Nichols really is another character here because it contains the whole world of Henry’s story – his past and present, his memories, his misconceptions. The basic structure comprises the plain gray walls of Henry’s family’s Sunset – two stories, a staircase, a kitchen, a window looking out onto the street. The set gracefully rotates, with walls that slide in and out, and all of it serves to hold Nichols’ vivid projections. They’re mostly of San Francisco and environs – Chinatown, the Sunset, Land’s End, the Marin Headlands, Coit Tower, SFPD’s Taraval Station, Lucca Deli (which practically got a round of applause) – but we also get moody images of fingers hitting piano keys, glass breaking, an IV drip. As Henry delves deeper into his family’s secrets, the projections are a kind of stream of consciousness that envelops everyone and wraps them in the beauty and moodiness of San Francisco.

I’m not usually a fan of abundant projections in live theater (why not just make a movie?), but MacKinnon and Nichols use them so artfully and effectively I was completely mesmerized. When the story reaches intriguing places, the projections fade so the focus can be on the characters. There’s only one scene, to my mind, when the projections overstep and briefly (but still ineffectively) take over the storytelling.

The actors never get overwhelmed by the production primarily because they’re all so good. Beginning with Wong’s increasingly complex Henry, the cast does service to the murder mystery tropes but has no problem digging in to the demands of the family drama. Sam Jackson as Jess, Henry’s girlfriend, helps us navigate what we can and cannot trust in Henry’s storytelling, and Keiko Shimosato Carreiro adds whole new chapters to stories Henry thought he knew.

The invaluable Charles Shaw Robinson turns up twice and manages to fascinate both times (and reveal how casual racism can have drastic results). But it’s the trio of Jomar Tagatac, Erin Mei-Ling Stuart and Johnny M. Wu that carries the biggest dramatic load. Their stories involve elements of mystery (of course), rom-com, immigrant saga, soap opera and Greek drama, and the actors make it all feel real and vital.

The Headlands is seductive in the way that murder mysteries can be, but its cold case fever gives way to greater depths as one man wrestles with his family – their ghosts, their mistakes and their love for him. It’s a captivating experience that feels deeply rooted in San Francisco, not just as a location but as a state of mind – a head land, you might say.

[Bonus Chen!]
Last year, Christopher Chen dropped an Audible Original called The Podcaster, a 92-minute audio play that messes with the whole notion of podcasts. Of course there’s a mystery involved, and it’s a blast. Get more info here.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Christopher Chen’s The Headlands continues through March 5 at American Conservatory Theater’s Toni Rembe Theater, 415 Geary St., San Francisco. Running time: 100 minutes (no intermission). Tickets are $25-$110. Call 415-749-2228 or visit act-sf.org.

Pain and strife sandwiched by laughs in Berkeley Rep’s Clyde’s

Posted on January 26, 2023 by Chad Jones

ABOVE: Cyndii Johnson is Letitia and Wesley Guimarães is Rafael in Lynn Nottage’s Tony Award-nominated play Clyde’s, at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. BELOW: (from left) Louis Reyes McWilliams is Jason, Harold Surratt is Montrellous and April Nixon is Clyde. Photos by Muriel Steinke/Berkeley Rep

It’s easy to see why Lynn Nottage’s Clyde’s is this country’s most produced play. Like other works in the Nottage canon, this one is about real things, hard things – violence, poverty, addiction, rehabilitation, homelessness and a system of so much inequity that too many don’t even have a chance. But Clyde’s is also a comedy. It’s heartfelt and hopeful, with laughs to leaven what might, in less skilled hands, become mawkish or sentimental.

Audiences and theater companies are understandably attracted to this show: it’s about 90 minutes with five diverse actors, one set (a working kitchen at a truck-stop diner) and a take on contemporary life that doesn’t ignore harsh realities but allows humor, connectivity and grace to warm a cold place.

The Bay Area premiere of Clyde’s comes in an engaging co-production from Berkeley Repertory Theatre, where the play opened Wednesday night in the Peet’s Theatre, and Boston’s Huntington Theatre Company. There are lots of laughs in director Taylor Reynolds’ production, but underneath the sitcom veneer – think “Alice” by way of “The Bear” and “Orange Is the New Black” – what really shines through are the relationships that become powerful enough to change the characters’ lives – even the bad ones.

The reputation of Clyde’s, a Pennsylvania roadside sandwich joint favored by truckers, is that the sandwiches and burgers are pretty tasty. What diners may not know is that owner Clyde (April Nixon) has, as she puts it, sold her soul to keep this place open. Her kitchen staff has always comprised formerly incarcerated people who have trouble finding gainful employment anywhere else. While Clyde could be seen as a savior of sorts, she’s really more of a bully, even physically abusing some of the crew (and they have the bruises to prove it). She doesn’t want to hear their woeful stories, and she definitely doesn’t want to taste their inventive new sandwiches. Her needs are simple: show up on time and do the work (and maybe don’t crumble under her rather ferocious management style).

The center of the kitchen crew is Montrellous (Harold Surratt), an older Black man who is the epitome of mindfulness and consideration. He doesn’t view sandwiches as food as much as democracy. He does things with care and intention and love. He tries to instill this sense of presence and purpose in his co-workers, Rafael (Wesley Guimarães), a Latino man who tried to rob a bank with a BB rifle, and Leticia (Cyndii Johnson), a Black mom who robbed a pharmacy to get meds for her special-needs child and then, in her words, got greedy grabbing a few things to sell on the side.

Both Rafael and Tish, as she’s known, are fully under Montrellous’ spell and are trying, in their ways, to be better and do better. Their productive kitchen trio is upended with the arrival of Jason (Louis Reyes McWilliams), a newly released white guy covered in racist gang tats – something that doesn’t exactly endear him to Tish. His presence ups the tension in the kitchen, but, in short order, he falls into the workaday rhythm and begins, like the others, to revere Montrellous and to take his work (and himself) seriously. The environs may be dingy (the set by Wilson Chin is perfection), but the work and the people occasionally operate at reverential, life-changing levels.

Two-time Pulitzer winner Nottage uses Clyde to keep things sharp, but she’s not afraid to introduce a burgeoning love story for Tish and Rafael, which could be sappy but is absolutely endearing (especially in the marvelous, warmhearted performances from Johnson and Guimarães). Nearly every time Clyde comes into the kitchen, she’s wearing a different wig and another expensive, flashy outfit (costumes by Karen Perry). Nixon’s performance could use more menace, but we get the idea. Clyde, who also has a prison stint in her past, is this purgatory’s resident demon, and to escape, her prisoners will have to rely on one another to find strength, motivation and the right moment.

What’s interesting is the way Nottage brings everyone in the play more clearly into focus as it moves along – everyone but Clyde. You actually begin to care about all the characters (but Clyde), and the notion that she is just an end to a more just means begins to sink in. Society has let down everyone here, but the alchemy of Clyde’s kitchen (and her penchant for meanness and humiliation) forges a crucible for change. For Montrellous, Tish, Rafael and Jason, sandwiches are a step toward self-actualization and Clyde is a devil they’ll leave in their past.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Clyde’s by Lynn Nottage continues through Feb. 26 at Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Peet’s Theatre, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley. Running time: 90+ minutes (no intermission). Tickets are $30-$135 (subject to change). Call 510-647-2949 or visit berkeleyrep.org.

Chilling winds blow through thrilling Wuthering Heights

Posted on November 23, 2022 by Chad Jones

ABOVE: Leah Brotherhead is Catherine and Liam Tamne is Heathcliff in the West Coast premiere of Wise Children’s Wuthering Heights at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. BELOW: (from left) Brotherhead is Catherine, Jordan Laviniere is the Leader of the Yorkshire Moors, Katy Ellis is Isabella Linton and Sam Archer is Edgar Linton. Photo by Kevin Berne.
Photos by Kevin Berne.

Judging from Kate Bush’s thrilling song “Wuthering Heights,” my only reference to the Emily Brontë book of the same name, I thought the subject matter at hand was a ghostly love story. “Heathcliff, it’s me. I’m Cathy. I’ve come home. I’m so cold. Let me in your window.” I could just imagine the lovelorn ghost tapping on the window in the West Yorkshire moors and shivered those good tragic romance shivers.

When I finally got around to reading the 1847 novel (which was much later than it should have been), I discovered that there was a ghostly romance aspect to the book, but it was much darker, creepier and more violent than I had imagined. Revenge, cruelty and madness pervade the story. The cycles of abuse and racism that Brontë describes feel, sadly, very 21st century.

There have been many adaptations of Wuthering Heights – movies, series, literary take-offs – and now we have the West Coast premiere of a new stage version from the mind of the brilliant Emma Rice, whose previous work as a writer/director in the Bay Area includes Brief Encounter at American Conservatory Theater and The Wild Bride at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Rice’s theater tends to be incredibly dynamic and raw – exuberant, striking and beautiful.

Her Wuthering Heights, now at Berkeley Rep after runs in London and New York, is all of the above. This is not a romantic take on this story, although there are several love stories. Rather, Rice concentrates on bigger issues like the oft-repeated refrain, “Be careful what you seed,” meaning the hatred and violence you perpetrate now will have repercussions for years to come in the form of death, division and more violence, among other awful things.

Watching this three-hour epic, I was struck over and over again by how this story and Romeo and Juliet are really about breaking that cycle.

It all starts with what seems an act of kindness when Mr. Earnshaw (Lloyd Gorman rescues a boy (of unknown origin, but darker and more foreign than people in the North of England) from the streets of Liverpool and brings him home to meet his children, Catherine (Leah Brotherhead) and Hindley (Tama Phethean). The Earnshaw children have different reactions to the newly christened Heathcliff (Liam Tamne), their new sibling. Catherine immediately adores him (and he, her), but Hindley resents his father’s new son and embarks on what wil be years of abuse and degradation.

There’s a wildness to the personalities of these moor-dwelling folk, and when more proper society intrudes (as it does with the Linton family), it tends to feel silly and out of place. These moors are distinctive in many ways, and Rice actually brings them to life in the form of a Greek chorus headed by the dynamic Jordan Laviniere. There’s also a giant screen at the back of the Roda Theatre stage that exists to show us the Yorkshire skies, most often brooding and stormy, with flocks of silhouetted birds often fluttering by (set by Vicki Mortimer, video design by Simon Baker).

Rice’s storytelling is rough and tumble in the best way. Houses are represented by windows and doors on wheels. Piles of chairs represent various furnishings, and books on the ends of sticks are birds. It all feels very contemporary and period at the same time, which is difficult to do. When a punk-fueled Catherine grabs a microphone to offer a song of rage before being forced to reject Heathcliff and marry someone else, it feels exactly right.

The three-member on-stage band, often augmented by members of the cast (like the cello-playing doctor, and the many songs (most folk-y and tender) add an element of energy and life that help counter just how bleak this story is.

Rice’s troupe tackles the story with gusto, and it’s quite amusing how often they acknowledge just how confusing the characters can be because there are so many repeated names from generation to generation. Rice calls Catherine, Heathcliff and Hareton (the son of Hindley, played by the same actor) forces of Chaos, Revenge and Hope, and the actors Brotherhead, Tamne and Phethean are all phenomenal as they embody and enliven those messy human elements.

There’s not exactly a happy ending here, but there is a glimmer of hope. It’s well earned and powerful – the kind of thrill that only superb live theater can create and make feel 100% real.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Wise Children’s Wuthering Heights, adapted and directed by Emma Rice from Emily Brontë’s novel, continues through Jan. 1 at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, 2015 Addison St., Berkeley. Running Time: Three hours (including intermission). Tickets are $19.50-$124. Call 510-647-2949 or visit berkeleyrep.org

Bill Irwin clowns around with Beckett

Posted on October 20, 2022 by Chad Jones

Bill Irwin dives into the work of a favorite writer in On Beckett, part of the American Conservatory Theater at the Toni Rembe Theater. Photo by Craig Schwartz

About five years ago, the great Bill Irwin brought his solo show On Beckett to The Strand Theater as part of the American Conservatory Theater season. I described this journey into the work of Samuel Beckett as a lecture demonstration, but “you’d have to rank it among the best imaginable lecture demonstrations.” I still stand behind that review (read it here), but now that Irwin has brought the show back – to ACT’s big stage, the Toni Rembe Theater, this time – I feel like it’s even more enjoyable as a one-man play. It simply bursts with joy, and Irwin is really good at joy.

The show is ostensibly Irwin talking about why he loves Beckett and his draw-you-in, push-you-away energy that makes him so fascinating and so confounding. Irwin spends the better part of 90 minutes explaining why Beckett’s work is inexplicable. Being the superb actor he is, his discussion includes generous helpings of performance – from Texts for Nothing, The Unnamable, Watt, and, most delicious of all, Waiting for Godot (how you pronounce that depends on where you fall on what Irwin calls a “great culture divide”).

As enjoyable as it is to see Irwin inhabit Beckett, the evening’s greatest pleasure is Irwin himself. This is a show about loving art. Irwin loves Beckett and has devoted a good portion of his creative energy to going deeper and deeper into the work. Irwin also loves clowning because, in addition to being a fine actor, he is a clown to his bones, and this show gives him a glorious showcase to share his intellect (along with his high-wattage charm) and his black bowler, baggy trousers and red nose.

Irwin is well aware that Beckett is not to everybody’s taste, so, as creator, director and performer of this piece, he explicates the Beckett oeuvre just enough to make the show feel smarty pants before he puts on an even bigger pair of baggy pants (“industrial!”) and does another clown routine that makes you fully question that he was born in 1950, the same year Beckett published Texts for Nothing.

The section on Godot is especially good because Irwin has so much to say about the play and about the myriad choices actors and directors have to make when producing it. It would be an absolute shame if Irwin doesn’t direct a production one day.

This is a criminally short run for On Beckett, which is not only a thoroughly entertaining and edifying experience but also the only show in town that will point you toward the almost equally rewarding beckittns, a genius pairing of kitten photos and Beckett quotes.

Courtesy of beckittns

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Bill Irwin’s On Beckett continues through Oct 23 at American Conservatory Theater’s Toni Rembe Theater, 415 Geary St., San Francisco. Running time: 90 minutes. Tickets are $25-$110. Call 415-749-2228 or visit act-sf.org.

Brian Copeland zeroes in on single parenting in Grandma & Me

Posted on October 10, 2022 by Chad Jones

ABOVE: The Marsh presents Brian Copeland’s Grandma & Me: An Ode to Single Parents, the new solo show by the award-winning playwright and performer. Photo by Marcus L. Jackson Photography BELOW: Copeland and his grandmother, Lena Mae Arbee. Photo by Sherry Kamhi

You’d think that after the gargantuan success of his previous solo show, Not a Genuine Black Man (the longest-running solo show in San Francisco history), and his very personal The Waiting Period, that Brian Copeland might not have more life story to mine.

That would be an incorrect assumption.

The ever-appealing Copeland has a new biographical solo show running at The Marsh San Francisco. Grandma & Me: An Ode to Single Parents runs parallel tracks in Copeland’s life, both about the pressures of single parenting. The first is from Copeland’s childhood. His mother died when he was 15, leaving him and his four younger sisters (the youngest was a year old) in the care of their grandmother, who had been like a co-parent with his mother after his father’s departure when Copeland was young.

The other track involves Copeland and his own three kids (elementary and middle school age) and how he became a single parent when he and his wife divorced in 2001. Suddenly, he found a whole new awareness of what it cost his grandmother – emotionally, physically, financially – to raise five children by herself.

The best parts of this nearly two-hour show are when Copeland, working again with director David Ford, really digs deep into the heavy, unrelenting and often thankless responsibility of single parenting. Copeland admits that as a 15-year-old, he was an asshole and treated his grandmother shabbily, just as his oldest child follows suit in his teen years, but younger and older Brian come to a deep appreciation of everything Lena Mae Arbee, who grew up in Jim Crow Alabama, did for him and his sisters.

That’s what’s moving about this show, and something that Copeland does really well is express his gratitude for not only his grandmother and mother but also for the people in his own life who proved pivotal in his own (eventually) successful transition to single parenthood (many of them were in attendance at the show’s Saturday opening night performance).

There’s also a sitcom smoothness to this show that keeps it from being as emotionally rewarding as it might be. Copeland, who has also worked as a stand-up comic, leans heavily into dad joke territory, and his foot-stomping, tantrum-throwing teenage re-creations grow wearying (just as they do in real life). In a way, Copeland is giving us too much information. He’s so eager to tell the two big stories of his childhood and his adulthood that the light he’s shining is so bright it washes out the people and the relationships. His audience is more capable than he realizes of making connections and sitting with the heavier elements of his story.

There are moments when Grandma & Me verges on the sentimental or sappy, but Copeland and director Ford mostly skirt them, and in the end this is a show that overflows with love. Every parent should be so lucky to have a child who pays such beautiful tribute as Copeland does for his grandmother.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Brian Copeland’s Grandma & Me: An Ode to Single Parents continues an extended run through Nov. 19 at The Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia St., San Francisco. Tickets are on a sliding scale $25-$35 or $50 and $100 reserved. Running time: about 2 hours (with a 10-minute intermission). Call 415-282-3044 or visit themarsh.org.

Mockingbird can still soar in stage revision

Posted on September 16, 2022 by Chad Jones

ABOVE: Richard Thomas (left) is Atticus Finch and Yaegel T. Welch is Tom Robinson in Aaron Sorkin’s stage adaptation of the Harper Lee novel To Kill a Mockingbird at the Golden Gate Theatre as part of the BroadwaySF season. BELOW: (from left) Justin Mark is Jem Finch, Thomas is Atticus Finch, Melanie Moore is Scout Finch and Steven Lee Johnson is Dill Harris. Photos by Julieta Cervantes

It would be impossible – some might even call it a sin – to kill To Kill a Mockingbird. Like it or not, Harper Lee’s 1960 novel has become our American story – a novel we revere and teach to children, a movie we idolize, a work of art that we feel pushing us to do the right thing. The book has been banned, debated, cast off as white-savior hokum and generally accepted as a way we address the deeply complicated history of race in America as mainstream entertainment.

And being part of the mainstream, theater has not been left out of the Mockingbird nest. For the last 50 years or so, there had been a serviceable stage adaptation of the novel that was faithfully performed around the world (thank you for your service, Christopher Sergel). That version was essentially erased when Aaron Sorkin, of “The West Wing”/A Few Good Men/The Social Network fame, decided to get into the Mockingbird game with an all-new stage adaptation, which opened on Broadway in 2018.

That’s the version of To Kill a Mockingbird that is now on tour and making its Bay Area premiere at the Golden Gate Theatre as part of the BroadwaySF season. If you are already a fan of Sorkin’s work as either a writer or director, you know you’ll love his attempt to pull Lee’s novel into a post-George Floyd world where it seems every bigoted, violent, closed-minded townsperson from the story makes up nearly half of our American electorate and its halls of power.

If you’re a Mockingbird loyalist, you may not be as thrilled with Sorkin’s changes, especially the way he pulls Atticus Finch down off his pedestal and makes him more of a flesh-and-blood human being. He also makes Atticus more of the play’s focal point than his young daughter, Scout, who is the narrator of the novel. But if you know Sorkin, you know how much sense that makes. Sorkin loves a trial (see A Few Good Men and The Trial of the Chicago 7) – it is theater and religion rolled into one – and rather than leave the pivotal trial in Mockingbird to the end, he starts there and then cannily shifts back and forth through time as he ratchets up tension leading to the jury’s verdict.

There’s so much that’s just plain smart about Sorkin’s approach. He has streamlined the plot (for instance, there’s no Aunt Alexandra, Atticus’ sister) and tried to give the Black characters, like the Finch maid Calpurnia, more weight in the story. In fact, it’s Calpurnia who has some of the show’s most trenchant lines and makes the greatest effort to show Atticus that his optimism, respect and faith that there’s good in everyone could be blinding him to reality and actually causing damage.

In this version, Atticus does not remain unruffled. He feels like he knows about his fellow townsfolk to know that they’ll ultimately do the right thing, and if you just imagine being in the skin of those with whom you disagree, you’ll be less prone to hate and more inclined to understanding and neighborly love. But then the catastrophic trial in which he’s involved as a defender grows more and more intense, and he can’t quite feel solid ground under his idealism.

That would be an interesting exploration in the 1930s, when the story takes place, in the 1960s, when Lee shared her story and now, when animosity and lies, especially around issues of race, divide the country as powerfully as they ever have.

Sorkin’s restructuring of the story works well for Atticus, and when he gives the character (played on tour by the superb Richard Thomas) doubt and anger and optimism, the mix is emotional and quite visceral. The element of the story that works less well on stage involves the children – Atticus’ kids, Scout (Melanie Moore) and Jem (Justin Mark), and their summer friend Dill (Steven Lee Johnson). Usually I have an aversion to adults playing children, but here, the performers are good enough to keep the cloying cuteness at bay. But their part of the story, especially as the show winds down with an act of violence and an act of courage, doesn’t have the same weight because the best parts of the show don’t really involve them. Still, it’s essential that Lee’s story involve the opening of a child’s eyes to the reality of the world – especially these children, who are living in segregated Alabama. And it’s vital that the kids infuse her story with the hope that children are going to be better and do better than their parents.

That all still comes across in director Bartlett Sher’s fluid, beautifully textured production, but it’s just not as powerful. The racial inequality, the stupid power of mob rule and the failure of the judicial system are vivid and gut wrenching here. But it seems that in the more realistic world of this Mockingbird, optimism and hope will suffer the law of diminishing returns.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird continues through Oct. 9 at the Golden Gate Theatre, 1 Taylor St., San Francisco as part of the BroadwaySF season. Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes with one intermission. Tickets are $56-$256. Call 888-746-1799 or visit broadwaysf.com.

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