No equivocating: this is good theater
Marin Theatre Company's Equivocation is enormously enjoyable theater.
I liked Bill Cain's play last summer when I saw it at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, and I still like its muscular, hugely entertaining theatricality. The Marin production, directed by Artistic Director Jasson Minadakis, is more intimate but just as rewarding.
The cast boasts some of the Bay Area's finest – Anna Bullard (the lone woman in the cast), Lance Gardner, Andrew Hurteau, Craig Marker, Andy Murray, and Charles Shaw Robinson – as they crawl around J.B. Wilson's scaffolding set that reminds of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. Where else would you want to set a story of William Shakespeare, or Shagspeare as he's called in the play?
As Cain's play imagines Will attempting to write a piece of propaganda theater for bonny King James (and his henchman, Sir Robert Cecil) and discovering that what he writes has to be the truth or nothing, something very interesting happens. Cain's immense knowledge of Shakespeare's plays and British history coalesce into a drama that feels recognizably human yet epic in its scope and more than just a little bit contemporary.
Beach Blanket still defying gravity
There's no big anniversary, but there's still something to celebrate. Steve Silver's Beach Blanket Babylon is going on 36 years old and is brighter, fresher and funnier than ever. Members of the press were invited to come check out the show recently, and it's easy to see why producer/co-writer Jo SchumanSilver and director/co-writer Kenny Mazlow are eager to spread the word that the country's longest-running musical revue is in tip-top condition.
At this point, Beach Blanket is a reliable brand. You know you'll get a few things when you head to the Club Fugazi, nestled cozily in bustling North Beach. You'll get broad comedy (often delivered by comic broads), maniacally merry music from every era (Bill Keck is the musical director), fantastic (in every sense) costumes topped by towering hats and the precision popping of popular and political culture. As much as the show changes to accommodate current events and personalities, some things never change. Snow White looks for love and, in the end, turns into Madonna – complete with Jean-Paul Gaultier boob cones – and flies over the audience.
The current edition of Beach Blanket, in addition to some hilarious and timely skewering, finally lands on a way to make that Madonna makeover relevant.
Jesus and his extraordinary Mississippi moonwalk
On the theatrical spectrum, this is the exact opposite of the sitcom-ready Sunset and Margaritas now at TheatreWorks (read my review of that play in the Palo Alto Weekly here), which is to say this is challenging, thought-provoking material given the kind of sharply etched production that inspires curiosity and wonder. There's nothing easy about Moonwalks, and that's a good thing. Gardley, working with director Amy Mueller, weaves myth, folklore, American Civil War history, personal family history and musings on race in this country.
Truce is out of sight
You could describe Marilee Talkington in a number of ways, starting with the fact that she is going blind. She is partially sighted, visually impaired, visually handicapped, sensorily challenged; she has low vision or no vision. She has been called Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles and Helen Keller. And those are only a few of the descriptions that come up in Talkington's compelling 90-minute solo show Truce at San Francisco's Noh Space.
After seeing the show, other descriptions that come to mind: dynamic actor, intriguing writer and astonishingly deft performer.
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).