Department of Dreams (review)

Spoilers Ahoy!

Some forms of art take time for the mind and soul to digest.  Department of Dreams by Jeton Neziraj (translated by Alexandra Channer) proves one of these. Set in a vaguely European nation under the rule of an unspecified dictator, the play follows the story of one Dan (John Logan) a recent employee at the title government office.

Exactly what is said Department of Dreams?  It functions as a depository of dreams, their analysis and sometimes their recycling.  Citizens turn in dreams and the interpreters decide if the dream is important or trivial.  Important dreams can reveal vital intelligence, such as plots against the government or the identity of traitors.  An Official (David E. Frank) takes Dan on a brief tour, along the way introducing Dreambuilder (Aaron Bray) who can dream others' dreams if he tortures himself enough.  He does that a lot.  Eventually he starts wandering on stage as dream versions of famous people--since his superiors want him to learn the secrets of the rich and powerful.  One wonders at a certain point whether his dreams are real any more.  It never becomes totally clear.

Nothing in the Department of Dreams is clear.  One can become lost, very easily.  The rooms may shift.  Doors may appear out of seeming nowhere.  Everything in the Department is underground, in all seven floors.  No one wants to go to the Sixth Floor.  No one.  There, citizens are cleansed.  A few go to the seventh floor.  No one ever returns from there. 

The Department of course functions as a tool of repression, as well as a bureaucracy of those obsessed with their own position such as The Master (Bo Roberts) who is only answerable to The Boss (who may or may not be the President of this unknown nation).  The Master, revered above all others in the Department, proves a weak and venal old man long past his prime.  If indeed he ever had one.  As with all things dream-like, clarity remains rare.  The first person we meet , interestingly, is named Night (Angela Beyer)--seemingly haunting these halls, in a sustained state of fear.  Yet as the story begins, she remains an actress whose odd dream about two eggs puzzled Dan enough to request her interview.  He falls in love with her, to his surprise.  Is the play a flashback then?  A premonition?  Both and neither?  Either/or?  Why does the vanished Dream Interpreter Shortleg (Gifford Irvine) keep showing up after he should be dead? 

What one (or at least this one) comes away with is the consequences of seeing our imagination as the last thing remaining to be taken over by the State.  One the one hand, such seems one of the cruelest of all possible slaveries--to control and weaponize our very dreams, the whirling mass as emotions and weird realities below/under/behind our conscious minds.  A place where anything is possible.  Chaos in other words.  Maybe even Hell.  Or turned into a workable version of it.  A vision we must take and interpret as we see fit, through the lens of our own consciousness, our own history and perceptions.

Just like dreams.

Just like all art when you think on it.  The characters at times even seem to recognize they are in a stage play--until we learn that part, i.e. them perceiving the truth--turns out to be part of a dream.  Not that most care about anything existential, not when that very dream could be used as evidence to destroy a rival.

The cast entire does the fine job I frankly have come to expect from City Garage, with Frederique Michel's direction showing wonderful insight, most of all in terms of casting, while an extra nod should go to Gaston Vinas' graphic animations (you'll have to see the show to see what I mean).

Department of Dreams plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 3pm until December 8, 2019 at the City Garage, Bergamot, T1 Space, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica, CA 90404.

Never is Now (review)

Just a quick note/moment of boasting--Night Tinted Glasses has been declared one of the "Top Thirty Theatre Blogs."  You can check this out for yourself at the link to the top right!  Woo hoo!

Spoilers ahoy!

The subject matter of Never Is Now by Wendy Kout can almost not not work.  Recounting in chronological order the lives of young people who survived the Holocaust nearly seven decades ago needs only basic competence to strike the heart.  Such remains the nature of that atrocity--or, more accurately, that cascade of atrocities.  Who cannot find themselves moved?

So in a way, the subject matter makes things easier.  As does the format, reader's theatre, in which there's little overall story but an almost documentary-style presentation of events.

Make no mistake--it works.  It works due to a simple fact--these real lives harrow us, just by the sharing.  Such truths lash out, making audiences wince and often weep.  I certainly did.  Which remains the whole point.  If we let ourselves feel, then the experience of such memories shared changes us.

The readers' theatre format is an almost too-easy way to approach the subject matter--which, to be sure, I've experienced dramatically with much greater power and pathos many times--but seems almost perfect for its avowed audience.  Never Is Now existed first as something to perform at schools, exposing very young people to this slice of genuine horror out of history.  It need not be superlative, only good.  Which it succeeds at, very well.  In fact, technically the production co-directed by Tony Abatemarco and Celia Mandela Rivera proves almost a "how to" for shows with many, many sets and constantly changing locations and times.  Someone like myself who sees theatre a lot can savor the raw, seemingly effortless (not it isn't but it looks that way) flow of story amid the constant change which in so many productions stops the action dead in its tracks.

So the basics are good.  Given the subject matter, good means heart-piercing.

It goes one better--by creating a sense of the players themselves reacting to the material.  One of the most powerful saw Sarah Tubert realization that she, as someone deaf, would have been targeted and early on.  She captures the helpless rage of looking back a vicious injustice, one that would have included her, the retroactive fear and longing to change things, which of course cannot be.  That story is written.  It cannot be undone.  All we can do is learn from it.

Likewise this "framing" delves into current events, with Eliza Blair for example noting how she has now become weary and afraid in the face of rampant, resurgent hatred.  Like so many in the Reich, she feels a desire to wait out the troubles, hoping to survive.  A bit more complex is Michael Kaczkowski as the only cast member who admits to voting for Trump, spewing sincere concerns that sound so utterly shallow--and Adam Foster Ballard calls him on it with his own story as one of those already targeted under Trump.  But to be honest, this framing doesn't always work. Maybe it cannot, given how little time we are given to know the players (or the versions of the players the piece calls for).

Still, it remains good.  It does more than tug at the heart strings, actually beating on one's heart like a drum.  Playing "Taps" most likely, for the dead and the vanished in their still-uncounted numbers (no one can ever know the exact death toll, still less the measure of pain involved).

The show ends with a simple coda, the faces of  real survivors whose stories have been told.  Faux writer Evie Abat and director Joey Millin spring this "change" on the cast, just as they feel exhausted not only from the play but their explored reactions to it.  So it ends on a note of melancholy hope.  Which again, is good.  It moves us, as it should.  As it must.  As it will--and if it does not frankly that seems like a problem if it does not.

Never Is Now plays Fridays at 8:30pm, Saturdays at 4pm and 8:30pm, plus Sundays at 2pm until October 27, 2019 at the Skylight Theatre (north of Hollywood Blvd), 1816 1/2 North Vermont, Los Angeles CA 90027.

The Manitou House (review)

Just a quick note/moment of boasting--Night Tinted Glasses has been declared one of the "Top Thirty Theatre Blogs."  You can check this out for yourself at the link to the top right!  Woo hoo!

Spoilers ahoy!

Just in time for Halloween, The Manitou House comes out from the Culver City Public Theatre.  Written and directed by Trace Oakley, essentially the show is an homage to a certain type of made for t.v. horror/thriller movie churned out in the 1970s.  Since these were indeed my own teen years, I totally 'got' what he intended to both spoof, honor, and emulate.

Let me be very clear.  As an idea this seems fine.  During the performance, plenty of times spooky events genuinely felt spooky.  One of my favorite types of "horror" might better be called "meeting the uncanny" and this play fits that bill!

Novelist Martin Hale (James J. Cox) returns to the small Colorado town where he grew looking for inspiration.  A little eerily just to start, the town's name turns out to be Manitou Hills.  But the eerie details start to mount, as the house where Martin grew up turns out to have been vacated days previously, available for rent at a ridiculously low price.

And the eerie mounts.  His cell phone won't work in the house.  The landline sometimes works, sometimes does not.  People come to see the former owners, baffled as to why they'd leave.  For that matter there's the townsfolk, who seem just plain odd.  Plus someone he used to know way back when gives him the strangest looks when Martin mentions where he is now living.

Then he finds out the realtor who rented him the house died years ago.

Now doesn't this sound cool?  Nicely creepy?  A good Halloween show?  Well, it is.  Sometimes,  Sometimes it is not.  Frankly I think the author didn't have enough time to transfer his idea with complete success to the live stage instead of film (it began as a screenplay).  Many scenes are much too short, and don't really contribute smoothly to the overall feel and rhythm.  Yet sometimes they hit it out of the park.  Cannot say how much I liked the scenes when Martin sat down to watch one of his favorite movies as a kid, while we see Young Martin (Jack Heath) and his equally young sister Simone (Maggie McKissick) watching the same movie with their easily terrified babysitter Luch Rish (Lauren Bruniges).  In fact, these scenes prove vital to figuring out What Is Going On Here.

I could easily name half a dozen things wrong with this show, including a set that doesn't quite work for all it is supposed to do, and a denoument I don't quite understand.  Yet there remains something here that works, something that makes me hope the show gets good audiences and eventually a second production after some re-writes.  It also makes for a refreshing change from classic ghost stories in weird old mansions, usually in New (or olde) England.  The cast deserves praise as well--Nicola Henry, Jeremy Lima, Michael Clark, Robertha Mallmann, Chelsea Smith, Stusan Stangl, John David Wallis, with voices by Grace O'Neill, Sharon Grambo, Bom Grochau, Brian DeGracia, Margery Whalen, and Dave Parks.  A cast this size usually includes some duds, but not this one.  More, while I myself was not as thrilled as I'd hoped, the rest of the audience seemed to have a great time (instead of my own just "good" time).

The Manitou House runs Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, through October 26, 2019 at the Dorie Theatre in the Complex, 6476 Santa Monica Blvd, Hollywood CA 90038.