The Piano Lesson (review)

 

Spoilers ahoy!

I bow to few in my admiration of August Wilson, who seems in my eyes to be America's William Shakespeare (just as Shakespeare seems to me Tudor England's August Wilson).

The Piano Lesson is the latest production by A Noise Within, part of their ongoing to stage every single one of Wilson's "Century Cycle." It centers around a piano jointly owned by a pair of siblings--Boy William (Kai A. Ealy) and his sister Berniece (Nija Okoro).  That piano is the center of the story, equal parts Sauron's Ring and Excalibur, an intrinsic part of this family's history for better, for worse as well as all points in between. Berniece lives in Pittsburgh with her daughter Maretha (Madison Keffer) and their uncle Doaker (Alex Morris).  In this house in 1930s Pittsburg stands The Piano--and the lesson it will teach will shape the lives of every single member of this family.  It all begins when Boy William arrives with his friend Lymon (Evan Lewis Smith).  The former has PLANS.  A man down south where Boy William works as a farmer died.  A man named Sutter has died under some strange circumstances.  Sutter's family owned this family way back before the Civil War.  What happened next is part of their family lore, tied up with The Piano.  But Sutter's heirs say they will sell Sutter's land to Boy William--the land where his ancestors literally slaved away for years--if he can meet the price.

He needs to sell that piano, and even considering for one moment that he needs Berniece's permission is Not Something He Wants To Do.  Not an evil or a particularly cruel person, certainly neither lazy nor stupid, he remains as narrow minded as a horse wearing blinders.  When the rest of his family starts seeing the ghost of Sutter, he gets angry anyone even listens to them.  He gets angry when anyone questions him, insisting if they do they are stupid.  Nor can he stand it when people thwart him in any way, point out anything he has ever done wrong (however slightly).  

Berniece stands firm about The Piano, and for a time we simply don't know if her choice is wise or not.  The Piano looms over events, people and history.  She is a skilled piano player but refuses to play it, noting how much of her family's blood has literally soaked into that wood.  Nor has she forgotten the part her brother and his friend had in her own brother's death.  In Wilson's plays, men often betray women and refuse to face even a hint of responsibility.  

All this culminates as Boy William attempts to simply take The Piano exactly as Berniece's suitor the Reverend Avery Brown (Jernard Burks) arrives to attempt an exorcism of the house, to banish the ghost of the (perhaps) murdered Sutter.  What happens next proves equal parts complex and powerful.  Yet again Wilson surprised me (by now I'm not often surprised by stories) as he nearly always does.  The most difficult part of the play, I believe this production only threaded the bare minimum of needles to make the climax work.  But, it does work.  Myth and ritual blend with what I can only call the most naturalistic of poetry in wood and deed.  With its elements of horror, The Piano Lesson might well have spiraled into a deep tragedy.  I expected as much. 

This is why I call Wilson America's Shakespeare.  He gives us in words a wide array of characters and situations which seem to show the whole range of humanity, over and over again.  With good actors like these, the individual character become living avatars of ideas, of archetypes, of habits as well as choices and yes, lessons.  For this play, that is even in the name.  The Truth emerges just as it did in Ancient Greece in festivals dedicated to Dionysus, or in the Middle Ages as glimpses of the Divine made manifest in mystery plays.  Wilson along with these performers, matched by designers and others in a collective ritual called Theatre give us a glimpse behind the curtain of the mundane, the ordinary.  A play literally calling itself a Lesson should reveal.  This one does.  A lot.  Enough to chill the blood and warm the soul.  No small feat.

The Piano Lesson plays Thursdays at 7:30pm, Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, Saturdays and Sundays at 2pm until November 10, 2024 at A Noise Within 3352 E Foothill Blvd. Pasadena, CA 91107.

Hughie (review)

 

Spoilers Ahoy! 

Eugene O'Neill as a playwright specialized in stories wherein the characters come face to face with the disturbing truth of who they are.  Such plays demand much of the cast, and perhaps most so in this, a two handed one act (i.e. a play with two characters running in this case approximately one hour). 

Most surprisingly--to me, not knowing much about the story before showing up--the central character we meet is not in fact Hughie at all.  

Instead we meet Erie Smith (Troy Dunn) a hustler whose best days--which were never great--seem behind him, living in a seedy hotel in 1928 New York.  He returns to the hotel after a bender to find a new night clerk named Charles Hughes (Gifford Irvine or David E. Frank depending on the date).  He is not the title character either, but rather shares by odd coincidence the same name as the previous night clerk, the one who'd been here at least as long as Erie himself.  Years and years and years.  His recent funeral had sent Erie on said bender.  Now, he returns to the nearest thing he has to a home, still missing his friend (though he won't admit any such thing) Hughie.

So he talks, not completely sober, very worried about events, and more troubled by a thousand other things which flow out his mouth like prophecy.  There is truth in wine, the saying goes, and Erie has had plenty of wine plus similar, stronger beverages.  He starts by trying to get to know the new guy, Hugh, and starts telling tales about himself plus the late, great Hughie.  The guy was a chump, a loser, patsy, certainly not a real friend.  But he goes on and on and on about this man.  About where he came from, how they met, what they talked about.

The new clerk barely listens, bored way beyond tears by a job he's done for far too long and just sometimes uttering some platitude.  Erie recognizes this, but continues.  He cannot stop.  He needs to say these words, and revealing in the process how protective he felt about Hughie, how this sucker actually had the power to disappoint, to hurt him.  

Erie falls deeper and deeper into the fact how lost he feels without Hughie.  He thinks of it as losing his luck.  Of course he hasn't lost any such thing.  Rather, he is without his only friend, his sole companion, the lone individual with whom he was not alone.

At least that is how it feels.  One wonders by the end how much of these stories are true, just how much he can refrain from hustling even himself?  Erie Smith is a liar and a con man, a boaster who dances between truth and delusion.  The direction of  Frédérique Michel of these fine actors brings all that to the surface, bubbling out like the stuff of an existential cauldron.  It feels tragic to watch, and hopeful, disorienting as well as sad.  In the end Dunn's Erie comes across as in some fundamental way...us.  You.  Them.  Me.  All of us.    

Hughie runs Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 4pm until Sunday, November 24, 2024 at the City Garage, Bergamot Station,  2525 Michigan Ave., Building T1 • Santa Monica, CA 90404.

I'll Be With You Shortly (review)

 

Spoilers ahoy!

Carrie (Alexis C. Martino) walks into an office, disoriented as the last thing she remembers is a car accident.  She rapidly figures out the most salient detail--she is dead.  What she doesn't know--her precise location now.  It looks like a reception room.  And a smiling lady (Rebecca O'Brien) who points her to a chair and says "Have a seat.  I'll be with you shortly."

So begins I'll Be With You Shortly by Michael Merton,  with the charming and appropriate tagline "Welcome to the Afterlife.  Take a number."

At this point you might have some idea of what kind of play-length sketch one might expect with this setup.  Most will be pleasantly surprised.  Because while Carrie has some time to wait--even after being told there is no Time--we do not remain with her.  Nor do we find out much about the rest of the Afterlife.  We learn a little.  Not much.  Mostly we get glimpses of what is still going on in this, the living world.  We meet a variety of interesting characters, about half of whom will be entering the same waiting room sooner rather than later.  Disease, murder, accident, and old age--they run the gamut of why.  Curiously, teh mystery that builds is why Carrie remains while everyone else is pointed to the escalators up or down.  She feels this unfair, very much so.  Even when the smiling lady points out the alternative to being here might be very, very unpleasant indeed.  Instead she's made to wait.  And wait.  And wait some more.

Carol Becker's direction feels spot on, as the gentle absurdity of everything manages to combine humor with some real pathos, some darkness, a bit of tragedy, some hope as well as some despair.  Frankly this play--which for the record is exactly my kind of jam--feels tricky.  But that is something which came to me later.  While watching and listening, taking in the moments offered by the cast and crew before me, I felt drawn in to every set of characters and each situation.  That is not easy.  But she and her people threaded those needles very well.

From a crazy old cat lady attempting to "fire" her son from being her son, to the straight guy at a gay wedding learning an important life lesson, the beleaguered but startlingly optimistic cop, and the hiring of a hit man which goes south in a borderline spectacular manner, the ensemble of Janet Hoskins, Debra Kay Lee, Jerry Weil, Jason Paul Evans, Patrick Thofson, Amanda Lynne, Alex De Rita, Nick Benson, Brittany De Leon, Andrea Sojo, Andrew Neaves, and Jessica Dowdeswell pull it all together into ninety minutes of laughs and sighs, of shocks plus a few grim thoughts here and there.  

For the record, the night I saw this show  Joan Kubicek went on, and I did not realize she was an understudy.  So brava!

I'll Be With You Shortly from the NeoEnsemble plays Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at 8 p.m. until November  7, 2024 at The Loft Ensemble Theatre, 11031 Camarillo St., North Hollywood, CA 91602.

Disclaimer:  I know and am friends with several persons involved in this production.