TheatreWorks’ slam-dunkin’ Donuts
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Leslie Martinson, director of Superior Donuts, should bring together such good actors. Martinson is also the company's casting director and has been with TheatreWorks for 26 years. Some directors say that casting is more than 50 percent of directing, and that's probably true for Martinson, though she's clearly a solid director (I loved her Theophilus North three years ago).
Howard Swain stars as donut shop owner Arthur Przybyszewski, an aging hippie who can't really be bothered by life, which he describes as "a derailment." He runs his shabby donut shop and doesn't much care that the new Starbucks across the street is killing his business. For him, the business has been dead for years. Swain conveys Arthur's detachment while making us care about him. Arthur has made some rough decisions in his life, and his troubled relationship with his now-dead father complicate his emotional life as well as his relationships with his own fractured family.
Duct tape and yuks: holding comedy hostage
How strange it is to see two wildly different comedies at two different theaters and find they have something in common: plot twists that involve the restraining of characters by tying them down with duct tape.Since when did that become an element of slapstick? Has someone alerted Abbott and Costello?At the SF Playhouse, more than half the cast spends the second act bound to chairs with duct tape and plastic wrap (with extra cling, no doubt) in Stephen Adley Guirgis’ Den of Thieves. And down in Palo Alto at the Lucie Stern Theatre, the TheatreWorks production of Sunsets and Margaritas by José Cruz González also hauls out the sturdy gray multi-use tape to restrain a major character. One more instance of this and we’d have ourselves a trend (apparently a trend only requires a trio of appearances).