Blue Kiss (review)

 Spoilers ahoy! 

I am running behind on my reviews for a variety of reasons (including an eye infection) and I want to apologize to the Ruskin Group for this failure.

Blue Kiss by Stephen Fife is not a play with which I was familiar.  So I sought to learn as little as possible going 'in' because I prefer zero expectations of any kind.  Went in a little nervous because 2026 has so far been an amazing year with every single production so far turning out somewhere between "very good" to "excellent in every way."  The pattern had to break sooner or later, right?

This show did not disappoint.  Was not the exception.  Continued the pattern.

Blue Kiss (the title refers to a nickname for someone--which spoils absolutely nothing) is a "two hander," which means it consists of an entire cast of exactly two actors--in this case  Susan Carolina Rodriguez and Todd Casey Morris.  Did not recognize either of their names (no surprise in a city this size) but am mightily impressed by their performances.  A "two hander" puts the overwhelming weight of a play onto two artists, and neither one gets any real moment to relax.  Nobody leaves stage for more than one minute or so, and given this remains life not filmed no camera ever pans way or cuts to the other character.  Both are in the room with us, practically every single moment.  The challenge--which these two meet with grace and power--is to remain absolutely in the present, in the moment for every single second.

The entire play takes place in an apartment wherein Todd's character gets ready to start tutoring Susan's on her upcoming SAT essays.  Clearly there's a lot of tension from the moment the lights rise as the tutor engages in a somewhat fraught conversation the phone.  Nothing overt, just a hint of pressure, patience, judgment, and a whole brew of very natural dynamics between individuals.  We get a sense of someone complex, with many a hidden issue.  When the student arrives, we instantly get more tension as these two very, very different people try to engage with each other from an obvious range of different patterns, values, habits, and (more subtly) pains.

By now of course I figured out what many of the audience no doubt had already--these two have some as-yet-unrevealed connection waiting to pretty much explode.

Director Mike Reilly deserves a lot of credit for keeping this show on course.  The explosion happens, not in a single atomic blast but more like a few firecrackers, then a grenade or two, ending up with an intense series of artillery barrages!  Kudos to the writer for creating such an intricate emotional mine field here, including the fact both these people react to the world in wildly varying ways.  Both are full of wounds, full of scars.  Some still open and bleeding, or ready to open again.  Neither has anywhere near the right answers, although both believe they do.  But their complexity, brought to life by these two performers, makes every shock both startling yet feel absolutely inevitable.

And I felt for them both.  So much.  Both are right, both are wrong.  And after getting to know them as well as I did, my reaction was (among other things) to forgive.  Not in some generic sentiment, but reacting to what I now know--which, incidentally, includes hardly a single point of similarity between their issues and soul-scars and my own.  It did not matter.

Hopefully, I've conveyed a little of how powerfully the script, direction, and performances moved me.

Blue Kiss plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 2pm until May 17, 2026 at the Ruskin Group Theatre 2800 Airport Ave. Santa Monica, CA 90405.

Death of a Salesman (review)

Spoilers ahoy! 

As it happens, this year has been one full of excellent productions of classics. Latest is Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, by A Noise Within.  My own theory, for whatever it might be worth, focuses on the times in which we are living.  Art comments, questions, examines LIFE.  When we do the same we find art speaks more to us, so we pay more attention. 

Especially the classics, and most especially the ones who address issues of our own times.

Arthur Miller's most famous play is slightly autobiographical (a lot of them are), but what really makes it resonate remains the fact it feels autobiographical for someone we know.  To some extent, also, for ourselves.  

Willy Loman (Geoff Elliott) walks on stage looking exhausted beyond words.  Not just physically, but down into the soul.  His wife Linda (Deborah Strang) does her best to listen, to comfort, to basically help as much as she can.  Along the way we soon learn this couple's two sons are staying with them for a bit.  Happy (Ian Littleworth) is the son who has his own apartment but decided to visit for a day or so.  Biff (David Kepner), the older son and clearly the favorite, arrived from Texas after years of farming, wandering, trying to find...something.  

Clearly, this family has problems.  Problems with a capital P that rhymes with C that stands for Capitalism.  Willy in particular loses himself in memories, focusing on past and present hopes, ideas, fears and frustrations, his prejudices and strange blind spots.  Almost immediately we get a sense of him as a man lost, a man who increasingly seems never ever to have found himself, never learned the things he desperately believes he needed.  Now in his sixties, tired and confused, his career as a salesman dwindling by any metric, the man visibly is coming apart at the seams--not least his demands from others while proving himself all but incapable of listening to others.

That we don't hate this man is one of Miller's major achievements.  Instead, we ache for him.

As well we should.  Willy Loman is us, after all.  Trapped in a world he did not choose, bereft of good options (at least any he can perceive and/or accept), without the personal resources to be more than desperate.  Far too close for all our lives for comfort--and hence fascinating in way like a slow motion train wreck.  Except we weep instead of gawk.

Miller wanted a play without scene breaks, and the action of the play--including memories and dreams--pretty much flow without interruption, at least in the first act.  The scale feels intimate and somehow vastly deep.  Unlike in classical tragedy, Willy did not make anyone personal mistake--his errors, while real, seem all very understandable,  entirely human.  Devastating, though.  Because for all his preening about his friends and how esteemed he says he is, all the support others offer remains meager.  Not individually, but cumulatively.  He walks a lonely road, even when holding a wife in his arms, gazing at sons he adores who likewise adore him.  Because they aren't enough.  Life is bigger than any one family, no matter how close--even were they flawless and these folks show off just how human every single one of them are.

We watch a play which poses several questions, which sooner or later mostly do get answers.  Exactly why is Willy in this situation?  How did Biff's life fall apart so totally, and what did Willy have to do with that?  Is there a way out for Willy, for Biff, for Happ or for Linda?  Out of a stifling, shallow present of short-term hopes and concerns which threaten to overwhelm?  

Director Julia Rodriquez-Elliott gives us an astounding theatrical experience, not least because with Scenic Designer Frederica Nascimento the "look" and "feel" of this production comes across as slightly less naturalistic, leaning more towards the dreamlike or mythic.  Frankly, I will always applaud this, not least because it leans into live theatre's strengths rather than attempting to copy film or television.  Likewise I want to herald the uniformly fine cast, including Kasey Mahaffy, Cassandra Marie Murphy, Bert Emmett, David Nevell, Michael Uribes, Jacob Cherry, Dominique Razon, and Rachel K. Han.  From literally the very first moment when the play begins until the very final moment, I felt totally sucked in, soul and mind.

Death of a Salesman plays Thursdays, Fridays & Saturdays @ 7:30 p.m., Saturdays & Sundays @ 2 p.m. until April 29, 2026 (no matiness on March 28) at A Noise Within,  3352 E Foothill Blvd. Pasadena, CA 91107 (Free parking available directly behind the theater at the Sierra Madre Villa Metro parking structure, 149 N. Halstead St.

I Want a Country (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

A quick apology--I have been over-worked and over-stressed otherwise this and other reviews would have already appeared.  My bad.  

I Want a Country by Andreas Flourakis proves a startling, even haunting piece of theatre.  The text reads frankly like an extremely long, if cogent, poem about current events--although written from a Greek perspective about the multiple crises facing Greece in years past.  Today, of course, in the United States its power translates into the the consequences of our most recent election, and the tsunami of disasters that continue to follow.  Yet what makes this performance so enthralling (and for the record, I was enthralled) is its staging.

Director Frederique Michel along with her cast brought what doesn't seem like it should be very dramatic to a fiercely vivid life.  City Garage (a company that has never disappointed me) uses its backwall to show projections of a what seems like a dreamscape as a group of people wander on stage.  Dark birds fly amid clouds behind them, as a group specific persons make their way together to...where?  The answer is unclear.  A place of waiting.  Evidently on or near a coast.  They are in effect wannabe refugees, horrified at how unlivable, chaotic, emotionally barren yet frightening their home has become.  They want somewhere new, somewhere fresh, somewhere better.

Sound familiar?

The backdrop changes, turning into unforgiving sunlight, into a storm clouds pouring rain, into dark birds amid clouds again, going through a cycle.  And the people, these individuals try to figure out what it is they want, or at least what they don't want, from a "new" country.  At first they seem to be waiting for a boat to come and take them...somewhere.  So they fantasize about what that somewhere will be (or might be, or should be) like.

Andy Kallok is a single crotchety old man longing for a past he seems to only half recall with any details. David E. Frank and Lenka Janischova Shockley are a seemingly affluent couple, affectionate and full of idealism about what maybe can be built from the ashes.  Martha Duncan and Bo Roberts are another couple, more terrified and upset, one fueled by anger and the other by a bewildered set of emotions about events.  Angela Beyer and Alyssa Frey are another couple, clearly affectionate and supporting, but disagreeing about the past and future and presumably the present. Likewise the rest of the ensemble--Alyssa Ross, Daniel Strausman, Liam Galaz Howard, and Shane Weikel--together make up a whole spectrum of age, class, ideology, relationship status, etc.  All pass their time, amid the shifting cycles of weather amid luggage and holding umbrellas, talking and sharing thoughts in between attempts at rest.  

It comes across more than anything as akin to a dance, a simple but profound dance amid hopes, fears, rages, and attempts to make sense of it all--a collection of human beings living through disaster with no end nor rescue in sight.  What else is there to do but wait, endure, and try to understand? 

Again, sound familiar?

But amid all these speeches and mini-arguments, it all feels very familiar indeed.  Which kept my attention and engaged my heart.

I Want a Country (translated by Eleni Drivas) runs Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 4pm until March 16, 2025 at Bergamot Station Arts Center, 2525 Michigan Ave. T1, Santa Monica, Ca, 90404.

If I Needed Someone (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

For those of you who don't know, a "two hander" in theatre parlance is a play with only two characters who pretty much share the stage for the entire performance.  If this sounds hard, it is.  Very hard.  Especially in a full ninety-minute play.  Even more when the play is one long scene.

If I Needed Someone by Neil LaBute is just such a play--demanding an enormous concentration without letup for almost two hours.  

Jules (Devin Davis-Lorton) is an animator who's invited Jim (Adam Langsam) back to her apartment during a part.  She is quite drunk and with this setup one might expect a work of horror a la Ira Levin.  Instead, we are witness to a wildly awkward dance between two people trying to connect--all the while each creates an obstacle course of their personal issues.  Which can be funny!  And sometimes, is!  More, it can be heart-breaking.  Again, it sometimes is.  Just as it is sometimes simply educative, sometimes touching, sometimes deeply uncomfortable (for so very many reasons) and sometimes very hope-ful.

These actors accomplish a Olympic level effort, not only in terms of bringing truth to their every word (no small feat) but in listening to each other (sometimes), allowing themselves to change (eventually).  In the process we learn to know them, learn a lot of their individual hopes and pains.  More, we even reach that special point when sooner or later we say quietly to ourselves "that is me."

Because the two person cast--while proving themselves capable of this acting marathon--have a very good script with which to breathe life into a fictional tale on stage.  It feels remarkable complete in its portrait of these two people, living as we do, in a time of change and not really sure precisely how to navigate their own time.  Again, like us.  Each ultimately wants very much to reach out, and each ultimately navigates those obstacle courses mentioned earlier.  From a slightly slow start, the script gives us a powerful series of moments and revelations between people who want to connect, want to understand each other, want someone to not give up (while of course not being a predator, a liar, a psycho or creep of some kind).  The conclusion, simple in some ways while intensely complex in others,  reminds us we can indeed connect.  Loneliness is not incurable.  We may be doomed to die, but we are not doomed to live totally alone.

Or we don't have to be.

Kudos to everyone involved, including of course director Frederique Michel! 

If I Needed Someone plays  Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays at 8pm, and Sundays 4pm until Sunday, September 22, 2024 at the City Garage, 2525 Michigan Ave. Building T1, Santa Monica, CA 90404  

Girl from the North Country (review)

 
Spoilers ahoy!

There is this thing called an "album show" in which the songs of a popular musical artist are woven together to create a musical.

Nothing wrong with that, of course.  But it does tend to carry the whiff of something fairly feel good, to the point of very little depth.

Not Girl from the North Country, based on the songs of Bob Dylan, starting of course with the title. I cannot call myself a big afficianado of Dylan, and I personally did not recognize most of the tunes within this full length drama.  But I found it all profoundly moving.

For now, let me note the music did not sound very much like Dylan, given it was re-arranged with a far more blues-style.  The story focuses on a boarding house in Duluth, Minnesota during the depths of the Great Depression.  Atop a cliff looming over Lake Superior, a collection of people in various degrees of desperation as well as hope gather against the cold.  Now and then, they break into song--but not to further the plot or say something to each other in a heightened fashion.  No, these songs more than anything give a poetic expression to how they feel and what situation they are experiencing right this moment.  Like Tori Amos, Dylan's lyrics are not so much about this one specific moment and its details.  Rather, they are about what it is like to be here, to feel this, and hear that, while wondering or hoping or fearing a dozen other things.

For example, when a certain character dies, and we learn this character is dead, suddenly they appear on stage to sing something akin to a spiritual, with the entire cast acting as backup.  Until the song ends, and we settle in to deal with devastating emotional aftermaths.

After the show, when I told someone working with the tour about my feelings, my real pleasure and fundamental reactions to what I'd just seen, they asked about my favorite moment or aspect.  She began asking about specific songs and tunes and lyrics.

But I didn't recognize which songs she meant.  My answer, after pondering for almost a full minute was "I found myself forgiving all the characters."

This is not a sentimental show.  It does not try to answer issues and terrors with platitudes.  It never dumbs itself down.  Neither does it pull its dramatic punches.

Yet I found myself forgiving all these foolish, dangerous, deceitful, hurting people trying so hard to be wise, kind, honest and happy. 

No small feat. 

Girl from the North Country has at the time of this writing closed at the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles.  It will play however in Las Vegas NV June 4-9 at the Smith Center, Salt Lake City, UT June 11-16 at the Eccles Center, Portland, OR. June 18-23, 2024 at the Keller Auditorium,  Seattle, WA. June 25-30, at the Paramount Theatre, and an Francisco, CA. July 30 - August 18, at the Golden Gate Theatre, and so one through October 2024.  I highly recommend it.

Fatherland (review)

Spoilers ahoy! 

 The whole idea behind the new show at the Fountain Theatre is one of vast promise.  Conceived and directed by Stephen Sachs, and titled Fatherland, it recounts a true story using nothing but court records and public statements.  It focuses upon a Son (Patrick Keleher) who feels the need to turn in his own Father (Ron Bottitta) to the FBI for taking part in the January 6 Insurrection.  

No one needs to guess at the amount of drama inherent in this.  A fear lingered, that the play would just be a polemic, preaching to me for things I already knew or agreed with, or simply giving me some extra data regarding this bit of recent history.

But my fear of just getting a lecture proved totally unfounded.  The focus here remained utterly and precisely on the human and humane parts of this tragedy.  Imagine the personal devastation of such a thing.  We're not talking about someone who belonged to the KKK, promoting conspiracy theories 24/7, and/or taking his family to some kind of survivalist cult camp flying a red, white, and blue swastika.  Just as that stereotype does not fit the vast majority of those screaming "Stop The Steal" and treating a con-man who inherited millions as some kind of messiah/genius.  

No, this man and his son (the performances are nothing less than stellar) are people who reacted to a downturn in their lives with very different ways.  We see the human trajectory take place, to mutually tragic ends as each hold on to a world view that makes demands on them.  Each meet those demands--and it rips both of them open, down to the bone and soul.  We see the love they have for each other, even as things spiral beyond any point of no return.  

Except, "no return" does not mean eternal schism, does not preclude healing and forgiveness.  What happens on stage proves genuinely horrible, recreated unflinchingly by the entire cast including those playing the US Attorney (Anna Khaja) prosecuting the case against the Father, and the Defense Attorney (Larry Poindexter) who deftly does his duty to defend his client by emotionally eviscerating the man's Son on the witness stand.  Yet, again, in the end we don't see anyone as a monster.  Everyone does their duty as they see it.  The play has a point of view, one with which I personally heartily agree, but instead of hammer those ideas into our heads, instead it invites us to feel the wounds as every person on stage hurts someone else.  Because they have to.  

Fatherland is currently scheduled to play Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 2pm until March 30, 2024.  However, I spoke to members of the amazing cast and learned the show will almost certainly be extended.  Note:  It has been extended, to May 26, 2024!  Performances take place at the Fountain Theatre at 5060 Fountain Ave. (at Normandie)  Los Angeles CA 90029

The Turn of the Screw (review)

Photo credit: Kelly Frisch

Spoilers ahoy!

Henry James' novella is arguably one of the absolute top tier ghost stories of all time (most would probably make it along with The Haunting of Hill House and The Shining as something of a haunting trilogy).  

The Sierra Madre Playhouse now hosts a new adaptation, The Turn of the Screw by Jeffrey Hatcher.  Like some other versions, this boils down a medium-sized cast of characters to a duel of actors -- Shayna Gabrielle as the unnamed governess who is by far the central character, and Michael Mullen as everyone else, including a wealthy but callow gentleman, a ghost, the housekeeper at a manor house, and a little boy named Miles.  Essentially the plot centers around a sheltered young woman, a clergyman's daughter, seeking employment as a governess.  The position she finds has been rejected by many others, not least because her employer--who has become the reluctant guardian of his young niece and nephew following their parents' deaths--wants to be left alone.  He is not to be contacted ever or at all, no matter what the circumstances.  

The fact she accepts this position, her first, actually hints at much.  Herein lies the key to the story's great appeal.  Hints abound, which even when explicit seem less than crystal.  She learns her predecessor committed suicide following a wildly passionate affair with another servant which resulted in pregnancy.  He killed himself soon after.  But...the governess begins to see them.  Even hear them.  She becomes convinced the manor house is indeed haunted and the ghosts are targeting the two children.

Gabrielle and Mullen bring all this amazingly to life.  The latter must readily and often play a wide variety of roles, each with a strong personality.  Yet the former literally contains the meat of the ninety-minute play.  We soon realize that whether the ghosts are real or not (and they may not be), the spanking new governess has some profound issues which now distort every moment of her life.  Her imagination clearly reshapes reality more or less nonstop.  By the end of her interview with the children's uncle, for example, in which he demands never to hear from her ever again, she is imagining herself as his wife.  In her eyes the two children are perfect, must be perfect, so if they do anything im-perfect there must be literally demonic forces at work. Increasingly she sinks into a labyrinth of fierce, protective paranoia.  

At last the results of course prove tragic.  More, under the direction of Jeramiah Peay these two actors weave a spell of imagination equal in power to this repressed governess' wildest fantasies.  "Compelling" is almost the least way to describe the performance.  Quite literally, I was on the edge of my seat and gripping the arms of my chair within twenty minutes!  Almost every word and gesture, every single silence and look did indeed turn the screw a little tighter.  That we in the end don't know the final answer to almost anything makes up part of the horror.  More, the cast by never for a moment letting up on living these moments, terror and hope and ambiguities intact, brought the story to life.

As of this writing, The Turn of the Screw has three remaining performances.  Friday July 28 and Saturday July 28 at 8pm, with a 2pm matinee on Sunday July 30, 2023 at the Sierra Madre Playhouse, 87 West Sierra Madre Blvd, Sierra Madre, CA 91024.

Sherlock Holmes The Last Act

 Spoilers ahoy!

Having been a Sherlockian since around 1970, and having written my own Holmes murder mystery (watch this space for details), I eagerly planned to see Sherlock Holmes the Last Act.  Wasn't quite sure what to expect.

In truth this proved a solo show in which an aging Holmes has just returned from the funeral of Dr. John Watson, his one true friend.  Holmes (Nigel Miles-Thomas) at this point seems very much the powerful mind and piercing figure he has always been.  But not so, not really.  He finds himself diving, or perhaps falling into memories of his days as the Great Consulting Detective.  Again and again he recreates the moment he met Watson.  ("I perceive you have been to Afghanistan")  Eventually his memories take him further and deeper.  Into un-charted territory, or at least un-chronicled.  Things Watson never knew...

Writer David Stuart Davies does a very fine job of weaving the Holmes we know with what we don't know, but might have been.  Much of what he comes up with accounts for several patterns in the Great Detective's life, not least perhaps his need for stimulation, his distrust of women coupled with his strong desire to protect them, his craving for what he called "excitement" but comes across (in this work, anyway) as distraction, his willingness to let certain criminals simply go free.  

More, and this is praise for both actor and writer as well as director Gareth Armstrong, all this emerges in a way I don't think anyone needs much familiarity with the books and stories to appreciate the story.  Lacking the time that folks like Benedict Cumberbatch, Jeremy Brett, Basil Rathbone (to name a very, very few) had to work with the character, Miles-Thomas admirably bring Holmes to life.  More, I get nice glimpses of the other people in his life, including Watson (of course) and his father.

I do think the pacing feels a bit rushed, but then the Fringe only gave this show a 60 minute slot (in practice this means more like 55 minutes or less).  I feel it probably needs 65, maybe 70 full minutes to let everything sink in.  

Sherlock Homes The Last Act plays at the Broadwater Second Stage, 6320 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90038 three more shows as of this writing:

• Wednesday June 21 2023, 8:00 PM
• Friday June 23 2023, 9:00 PM 
• Saturday June 24 2023, 7:00 PM

Measure4Measure (review)

 Spoilers ahoy!

I have seen William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure at least five times, including the production in which I played a tiny role lo these many year past. 

City Garage's Measure4Measure is not quite that play, although the vast majority of it consists of Shakespeare's writings.  Still, I'm stating outright this is the best production of this "problem play" I have ever seen.

Love getting to write those words.

To start, five of the many, many characters in this rather sprawling "comedy" (back in the day, this word was applied loosely to any play that did not end in massive deaths and devastation, i.e. tragedies) have specific actors assigned to them.  Everyone else is played by two other actors, which not only provides a chance for Kat Johnson and Angela Beyer to really show off their skills, it adds to some laughs to some rather more serious moments and (more importantly) gives these two--as well as Lucio, played/danced brilliantly by Courtney Brechemin (they nearly steal the show, for reals) to sometimes comment on events.

Because, as we hear up front, this is a "problem play."  Which means what?  Essentially, a play by Shakespeare that seems a bit weird, like Cymbeline with a plot so complicated even the title character at one point says "Wait, stop, I'm confused."  Or the deeply dark, cynical love story that crashes, falls over, and burns then starts a minor plague in Troilus and Cressida.  This one has a plot that, frankly, seems more disturbing every single moment one thinks about it.  That three of the performers actually do takes or feel outraged over the supposed hero's actions--i.e. the Duke played with a perfect blend of ruthless myopia by Troy Dunn--really brings this out.  It doesn't take much time out of the main action, just a commentary not unlike (albeit far more pointed) contemporary jokes included in other productions.  

In fact, it is hard in context not to see Shakespeare as exploring some really nasty parts of his own world, as well as ours, sometimes and especially in this play.  In my opinion.

The Duke of Verona decides to go abroad for a bit, leaving his lieutenants, the elderly but kind Escalus (Andy Kallok) and the supremely strict Angelo (Nathan Dana Aldrich or Anthony Sannazzaro depending on the performance) in charge.  He explicitly does this because for the past nineteen years he's been lax on a lot of very strict laws on the books.  As a result, vice is awash.  He pretty clearly intends Angelo especially to crack the whip, then when the Duke returns he will reform matters--thus letting the city blame Angelo for the change, and praise the Duke for making things right.

Richard III had lessons to learn from this guy, who promptly sneaks back into the city in disguise to see how things are going.

Apart from the brothels being closed down and burned, the employees therein punished, etc. there's also the case of a young man named Claudio who has gotten his fiancee Juliet pregnant.  Now, one of the few details we know about Shakespeare's life is that this is precisely how he came to marry his own wife.  Just sayin'  Lucio, our wonderful narrator, goes to see if Claudio's sister Isabel (Naomi Helen Weissberg)--in a subtle pun about to become a sister in a convent--might try and intervene on her brothers' behalf.  She is totally willing, and pleads for mercy as well as Portia ever did.  But...what she does, by her obvious piety and virtue, is inflame Angelo's seemingly-feeble lust, which roars into life a la Frollo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.  He eventually, and with difficulty since she seemingly does not and/or refuses to understand his meaning, demands a quid pro quo of her body for Claudio's life.

When the Duke finds out about this, he comes up with a very weird and convoluted plot to rescue Claudio and yet spare Isabel--a solution which is all kinds of problematical, as our cast very vocally notes with their reaction!  In fact, apart from a love of scheming, the Duke seems to believe Isabel but also cannot quite bring himself to believe her at the same time.  Which honestly seems the most realistic moment in the whole play, if one has been paying attention to the real world.

This all gets very complicated, which is in and of itself part of the fun, not least when Angelo orders Claudio put to death anyway and the Duke has to juggle even more balls (or words) to save the young man.  Which he could do so much more easily, it must be said.  Lord this man loves his drama!  More than he loves his justice, certainly.  In fact the entire climax of the play comes across as needlessly cruel and manipulative, a fact most productions try to mitigate against as much as possible.  At the very end--and here I cannot praise Charles A. Duncombe's editing nor Frederique Michel's direction enough--what seems like the perfect ending in terms of theatrical formula lies naked in its exploitation and deceit and casual sadism.  

So...wow.  

Measure4Measure plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 4pm until July 9, 2023 at City Garage, 2525 Michigan Avenue, Building T1, Santa Monica, CA 90404.

The Lifespan of a Fact (review)

Photo by Jenny Graham

Spoilers ahoy!

How do we make sense of the world in which we live?  Especially those parts in which we are not directly involved?  Sounds like a heavy subject, doesn't it?  Well, yeah.

All the more reason to turn it into a comedy, am I right?  I cannot remember offhand if Oscar Wilde or G.B.Shaw said "if you tell the truth, make sure you make people laugh, or they will kill you."

The Lifespan of a Fact is long (circa 80 min) one act comedy about this issue.  Written by Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell and Gordon Farrell  based on a nonfiction book by  John D’Agata and Jim Fingal, it follows the misadventures of when an intern Fingal (Jonah Robinson) for a magazine is tasked to do the final fact check on an essay about the suicide of a young man in Las Vegas.  He takes the job very seriously.  I think few would doubt he goes too far.  I mean, who cares if the moon is closer to a quarter than half full?  If that detail made a difference, sure, but it boggles the mind how that detail might.  The exact color of some bricks?  Exactly how many strip clubs are in Las Vegas on a given date?  

He even ends up flying to Las Vegas and meets the famous author of the essay, John D'Agata (Ron Bottitta), which goes rather worse and better than one might expect.  Not least because Fingal drew up charts to show a traffic jam one witness described could not be possible with the numbers described.

All this about an essay, not an article.  In fact D'Agata seethes in anger when anyone calls what he wrote an article.  

D'Agata calls up Fingal's editor, Emily Primrose (Inger Tudor), who in turn ends up flying out to Las Vegas from New York, just in time to find D'Agata's hands around Fingal's throat.  If this sounds like the stuff of comedy, you have hit a bullseye.  All this is extremely funny, not least the inherent conflict with this frankly entitled but honest and intelligent young man and a weathered, deservedly-renowned writer a long way from being young in almost any way.  They rub each other the wrong way, and their mutual arrogance smooths over exactly nothing.  

Yet, as Primrose stares agog at Fingal's 130+ pages of spread sheets to fact check a 15 page essay, she also spots some genuine problems.  Things that are inaccurate in ways that do matter, which D'Agata resists.  Adding to the conflict, which gets increasingly serious, increasingly passionate and confusing, is one consensus shared--namely, here is an essay of great power about modern life and the human condition.

The deadline looms, one that cannot be changed under any circumstances, and they continue to debate, passionately.  Will nitpickers descend upon the piece, insisting the exact number of cancer deaths that day must be precisely correct or else every word D'Agata wrote is worthless?  Fingal eventually becomes so frustrated he notes there's no real proof the young man in question is actually dead--his body was smashed by jumping off a building and there was no DNA test on the remains.  Likewise, he continues to make a strong point that facts are indeed truth, which means dismissing them corrodes trust as well as judgment.  Well, does he not have a point?  

While Fingal flails around, facing an existential crisis about his most dearly held beliefs, D'Agata finds himself having to defend himself in ways he perhaps never has, and in truth he clearly is in the wrong sometimes.  While Primrose, who must make the final decision, listens to both and fends off both sometimes fighting dirty (at least emotionally).  

It makes for very good comedy, but even better drama.  

The Lifespan of a Fact plays through April 2: Fridays, Saturdays & Mondays @ 8 p.m. / Sundays @ 2 p.m. (dark Monday, Feb. 20 & Monday, March 13) The Fountain Theatre, 5060 Fountain Ave. Los Angeles CA 90029 (Fountain at Normandie). Patrons required to wear masks throughout the performance.

The Birthday Party (review)

 Spoilers ahoy! 

Way back in the 1980s, as a theatre arts major at my University, I was cast in a production of The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter.  My advisor felt this was a good experience for us all, doing such a challenging play, stretching out creative muscles.  To this day I believe she was absolutely right!

Still when I learned City Garage was doing the same play I eagerly anticipated seeing it done right, but folks better than a clutch of talented twenty-somethings with little real experience.

Yep.  I was right.  This production knocked it out of the park.  Pinter can be a strange writer, and it isn't immediately clear to some what his plays are about.  This one focuses on an older married couple--Meg (Peggy Flood) and Petey (Andy Kallok)--who run a tiny boarding house in a seaside town.  They have one boarder, Stanley (Isaac Strackonis), a surly young man whom Meg clearly has something of a crush upon, a fact he uses in some mean but hardly psychopathic or even very extreme ways.  He's the big mystery at the beginning.  Why is he here?  Where is he from?  And why, oh why, does he react so strongly to the random gossip of someone asking about some gentlemen asking about letting the other room?  He ends up denying such men exist, could exist, evidently in his mind they dare not exist so they must not!

Why?

Under the direction of Frederique Michel, all this set up wonderfully brings out that sense of mystery, that sense that Stanley does not belong here, that his behavior does not match this situation.  The pretty neighbor/visitor Lulu (Savannah Schakett), for example.  Something about the way she flirts with him, or more accurately the way he responds, feels very off.  Something about the whole situation feels as there's a missing piece, some secret that might explain it all.

Then, the gentlemen do arrive.  Goldberg (Troy Dunn) and McCann (Gifford Irvine) show up while everyone else is out.  Is this the place?  Yes.  This job is a little different.  Still Goldberg assures McCann he personally chose him.  There'll be no trouble.  Not really.  McCann feels jittery but says he'll calm down once they begin.  Goldberg it seems has a certain "position."  All rather vague, with hints of...well, an organization of some kind, a job that must be done.  Pretty soon we start to believe these are not their real names at all, but rather aliases.  That sense grows as the story proceeds.

Stanley's reaction upon seeing them confirms something we already suspect--one way or another, the "job" is Him.  He doesn't come to pieces, cry, beg, or even run.  Rather, he tries to bluff and/or negotiate, even insisting there's been some kind of misunderstanding.  But neither Goldberg nor McCann rise to any of this.

Meg of course welcomes them with open arms when she gets home.  Goldberg proves a charmer in the presence of a woman.  Stanley goes back to his room, while the Gentlemen persuade Meg that Stanley's birthday is nigh and they need to throw him a party.

Hence the title.

And ultimately what almost surreal, deeply uncomfortable on many levels the build up and then the actual events of that birthday party prove to be.  Anytime these men are alone with Stanley, they grind on him in a variety of strange and ultimately distracting ways.  They clearly mean him no good.  He recognizes who they are, or at least who they represent, and is terrified.  Yet no one actually reveals any details.  Ever.  I felt certain the actors had some precise idea of what lay behind all this, but it is never quite revealed.  A hint or two about Ireland, but that might be misdirection.

Because this entire play focuses on fear.  Fear in many if not all its many avatars.  Of death or revenge or punishment of some kind.  Of failure.  Of living on the edge with nothing but luck and personal wits to keep from falling.  Of aging and making mistakes.  In one case, fear of learning too much, of having some illusions stripped away, losing a kind of innocence as it were.  Terror of one little mistake, and maybe someone noticing it.  An aching fear of realizing something unsuspected, against which one is impotent.  Fear of all things malign and inevitable, from decay and time to consequences from the past.

Ultimately how does it matter exactly who Goldberg and McCann are, in their terrifying reality, each of them also afraid not that it matters to their victims?  What was it Lulu learned that night with Goldberg?  Details are hardly important, just what we see of her the next morning, self-righteously trying to blame others for a glimpse she got of herself (although, to be sure, she too was a victim).  For that matter, it cannot matter what Stanley did.  He knows.  He reacts to it, to his situation, and crumbles under the weight.  That is what we see, made all the more vivid because the context remains hidden.  In the best horror stories the monsters stays in the shadows after all.  

The entire cast escorts us through a maze of monsters, expertly making our skins crawl without once needing any masked killer to spring out with a plastic set of claws.  By stirring our imaginations, the terror ends up being very personal--and thus, fascinating.

The Birthday Party plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 4pm until Saturday July 23, 2022 at City Garage, 2525 Michigan Avenue. Building T1, Santa Monica CA 90404.

My Audio Play!

 

As some of you may know, I am also both a director and a playwright.  Donning both hats, I have directed and produced my audio adaptation of a gothic classic which will premiere March 1, 2022 at 7pm.

Carmilla (the radio play) is not simply an edit of an earlier adaptation of this work.  Rather it is and remains totally new, re-shaped into what I hope is a layered and compelling story.

Today, Saturday, February 19 at 5pm PST myself and the play's leads, Stepy Kamei and Brittney De Leon, will be interviewed by Anthropomantic Fiend.  Link is below.  Hope you listen.  Hope you tune in for the actual show about teh first lesbian vampire in English literature.

https://youtu.be/gCY4oMBxRCw

Gruesome Playground Injuries (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

As readers of this blog may have gathered, many are the actual theatrical productions in which I've taken part.  Actor, director, playwright, stage manager, costume designer, sound/lights operator, usher, etc.  I mention this not to toot my own horn (well, not only that...) but as a segue to a problem with the script of the Gruesome Playground Injuries by Rajiv Joseph.  Technical, not artistic.

Let me make this excessively clear -- I mention this  as a means of praising the production.  You'll understand in a moment.

Essentially, the play deals with two people -- Kayleen (Sara Rae Foster) and Doug (Jeff Ward).  They meet as children (in a playground) and we see the course of their relationship over the next three decades.  Herein lies the first technical problem.  Given everyone has to make costume and makeup changes between each scene, the action most likely would simply stop between scenes.  Frankly such a problem plagues a lot of otherwise very good shows.

Credit: Ed Krieger

But -- the action didn't stop!  We never 'left' the emotional lives of Kayleen and Doug.  Partially this lies in the playwright's lovely choice of not strictly sticking to linear time.  Yeah, the first scene chronologically comes first and the very last scene does happen last, but other wise we jump around with them.  That helps make it feel more real, because it feels like memories.

Technically the production helped out by filling the moments in between.  Designers (Dustin Reno, Chris Moscatiello, J.R. Brude, Leigh Allen and A. Jeffery Sheonberg) gave us a simple set, easily shifted to lots of different locations.  More, projections on screens of images (with music) invoked a sense of time's passage, without actually becoming referential at all.  No small trick!  Initially I found myself thinking the pictures and footage shared should have had more to do with the plot, but that reaction soon evaporated totally.  I sank into the feel, the ebb and flow given.  Plus the actors never left stage!  They simply stepped upstage into the less-lit areas and changed clothes, maintaining an emotional connection, carrying we the viewers to the next scene!

Credit: Ed Krieger

And the result!  Gruesome Playground Injuries frankly is a subtle work, almost a dramatic poem about these two people who find each other.  Help each other.  Love each other, perhaps in a romantic way but always as deep devoted friends.  Never having to start up the action once more allowed the cast (and director John Hindman) to keep the delicacy of it.

Kayleen and Doug, as the title suggests, suffer injuries.  Most of Doug's are on his body, one way or another.  Most of Kayleen's end up on her soul.  Mostly.  For both of them.  At times it seems creepy, or tragic.  Other times the whole thing seems funny ("Struck by LIGHTNING?").  But from the very most basic start, when the two are just children at Catholic School, we sense the connection. We may not understand it.  They almost certainly do not.  But these two actors show it, breathe it, live it for those ninety minutes.  Childhood to middle age.  Optimism to despair and back again. Fearlessness and desperate endurance, rage and gratitude, denial as well as terrified truth-telling.  It hurt to watch.  And felt wonderful.  More, I at least could not look away.

Gruesome Playground Injuries plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 3pm until June 26, 2016 at the Hudson Backstage Theatre, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles, CA  90038

A Gulag Mouse (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

The word "Gulag" refers to the brutal forced labor prison camps of Siberia used by the former Soviet Union. Under the circumstances one might expect a play titled A Gulag Mouse to be quite grim. Nor would you be wrong!  Playwright Arthur M. Jolly took one of the worse places human beings can exist and crafted an extraordinary story from that place. A tale of five women trapped, desperate, hungry, angry, terrified and also terribly alone--even when surrounded by others in the same situation.

Anastasia (Emily Goss) has had a relatively privileged life.  Note that word "relatively."  Because at the end of the second world war, faced with her war hero husband entering her life once more, she killed him.

Sentenced to the Gulag, she soon meets the other prisoners in a windy wooden shack.  Masha (Kimberly Atkinson), big and tough and perfectly willing to hurt others out of spite--who weirdly (or not) feels she belongs here. Lubov (Heather L. Tyler), once much prettier than she is now but with enough looks to degrade herself with an officer, thus suffering less in some ways--an unforgivable offense in some eyes.  Svetlana (Crystal Keith) has seemingly turned all her emotions 'off' in order to survive. No malice there, but no compassion.  Or is there?  Then there is Prushka (Dana DeRuyck), sentenced to ten years for telling a joke she refuses to repeat, who has the nickname "Mouse."

There's a clue there if you pick up on it.  I did not.  I usually do.

But picking up clues rapidly give way as the story unfolds, as the fierce, unofficial but merciless rules the Gulag play themselves out.  There is never enough food.  Weakness brings instant attention. They are trapped in a frozen wilderness dozens of miles from shelter, surrounded by guards and dogs.  Only the strong survive here to be released.  Few prove that strong.

And yet--what is strength?  How do you measure power when everything conspires to keep you weak? How far might anyone go? How much will they risk?

I will frankly say this play surprised me throughout--which remains one of my favorite experiences in theatre.  Everything made sense, though.  As time went on, and new surprises emerged, the importance of so many tiny details became increasingly vivid. But the script is dead words without the actor.  Every single person in the show proved a marvelous actor, up to and including Brandon Bales in the double role of Evgeny and Ivanov, both small yet utterly vital.  Director Danielle Ozymandias likewise achieved marvels.  First and foremost she cast the play!  I know from experience that is three quarters of the job and she did that part magnificently!

But more--and this oddly enough is where many directors do sometimes fall--she clearly kept the pace right.  Rhythm is weirdly important in life as well as art, and even the business of maintaining tension amid silence forms a huge part of that.  It engages us on a visceral level, breathing life into what is frankly a truly extraordinary set of words strung together.  This is a performance that will remain with you, I promise.

A Gulag Mouse plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm through May 21, 2016.  Extra performances are Thursday April 28 at 8pm, Sundays May 8 and 15 at 7pm at the new Sacred Fools Theater Black Box, 6322 Santa Monica Blvd. (at Lillian).

Love Sucks! (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

Love Sucks, the latest entry from the True Focus Theater, proves to have a slightly misleading title. Appropriate, completely so, but given the tenor of our times maybe we expect a harsh condemnation of how relationships go wrong.

This proves to have nowhere near so narrow a focus.

Directed by Vanessa Cate and Angie Hoover, Love Sucks turns out to be a series of vignettes in different forms -- scenes, poetry, pantomime, dance, even a ten minute play by Cate I'd seen before (one of the perhaps three plays such length I've ever thought genuinely good).  The choreography in various pieces from Natalie Hyde and Cheryl Doyle showed a real power, and in the former's case (whose dancing I've seen for years now) an impressive pushing at boundaries.

Photo credit: Vanessa Cate

Sometimes what we saw was hilarious, for one reason or another. I'm still trying to figure out what special chemistry made Tucker Matthews singing a pop song (straight--he did nothing overtly funny) so very funny.

Another particularly hilarious bit had not a word of dialogue, but told the simple (okay not simple but incredibely perverse) story of a blind date that seems like one of those instant moments of clicking between two people.

Other moments were sweet, at times very sad.

Yet other moments, scenes and things shared with us other--sometimes very strange--aspects of this compulsion we seem to have, to find someone with whom to share the loneliness, to taste the days and nights together. Why do we do that, one might wonder? Is it really so instrinsic to human nature that we seek out someone, looking for that perfect companion, that other side of our wounded soul?

Photo credit: Vanessa Cate

This play doesn't seek to answer that question. It rather explores the beautiful foolishness, the silly and horrible mistakes, the hunger we keep trying to fulfill one way or another. We see a breakup so terrible and humiliating we want to crawl under our chairs--yet we laugh. How very human.

Remembrances of love gone away, for one reason or another. Unrequited love creating a seemingly hopeless triangle, which then becomes something...well, crazy. Maybe. But it might work. We'll never know.

It all seems very familiar, though. At least it did to me. Because even though my life has not had nearly as much romance as I'd've liked, this all rang true. Very nearly too much at time. The experience I find most powerful in any form of drama is recognition of myself. A promiscuous lesbian, a loser lying about having crabs, a young man kept as a slave, a married woman yearning for the girl she left behind, a gay man hopelessly in love with a straight one -- what Love Sucks made me feel was how each of these were me. Each of them were all of us, if only we'd admit it.

Love Sucks plays Sundays at 7:30pm at Zombie Joe's Underground Theater, 4850 Lankershim Blvd (just south of the NoHo sign)., North Hollywood, CA 91601 until August 30, 2015.  Tickets are $15 and in my opinion well worth it.

Kamikaze (review)

Spoilers ahoy!.... kinda/sorta

Full disclosure. Kamikaze is a one woman show performed by Vanessa Cate and directed by Zombie Joe. I know both these folks and consider them friends. More, I've enjoyed every single thing either one of them has done. Genuinely. One reason for this remains the fact I got to know their work first, then the people. But I'm not uncritical of either one.

Zombie actually called me "ruthless" once. I think he meant it as a compliment.

But to the show!

Kamikaze makes an excellent example of Performance Art--a tricky form because it nearly always comes from a highly intuitive place. Elements juxtapose in a way that make little or no literal sense but somehow "fit." Dance, mime and words blend, along with singing or interactive activities with the audience. Absolute reality and precision go hand-in-hand with the bizarre, the deliberately vague, the nonsensical. Frankly, most attempts at it crash and burn. It takes an unusual focus coupled with particularly strong performance skills to pull off.

This one does indeed work. I went in with as few expectations as I could manage. Still, the show did surprise, startle, fascinate. Almost immediately, as the lights rose, the one thing very few performers or performances offer at the very start appeared.

Photo Credit: Zombie Joe's Underground

Stillness. Following by slow, precise movement. Frankly, this shouldn't have worked. But it did. One reason remains the intimacy of the space (Zombie Joe's is not a large venue). More importantly, Vanessa Cate remains an actress of great stage presence. A difficult thing to define, that, but almost impossible to miss when revealed. When darkness fell once more, we in the audience heard singing, in this case the so-called "Ophelia Song" by William Shakespeare (Cate had several roles in ZJU's wonderful Hamlet last year, but not interestingly Ophelia). The lights rose, and we all laughed. We were watching Cate simply...shop. Something about the smile, the way she picked up items and put them in the imaginary basket, moved around the store... To be sure, a fine example of mime, but one cannot quite put your finger on what it might actually mean.

And that is kinda the point. Language is wonderful. I myself love words and the potential they offer, the insights and messages to which they give shape. But part of this show revels in the subtleties of experience for which we have no words. Language not with sound or symbol, but experience.

The same applies to when the lights shifted and we got a genuinely hilarious bit of Cate simply driving. Why was it so funny? And why did it seem something else was going on? Likewise, how come these odd images and movements connect in the way they feel as if they do? Ditto the next segment that intercut three wildly different scenarios (the program listed this part as "So Fine"/Fish/Hell and that actually does make plenty of sense as far as titles go).

When performance art works, it often feels as if one has just visited another person's dream. And such was precisely my reaction to this one woman

Photo Credit: Zombie Joe's Underground

show. The skits and pieces that make it up rattle around my heart still. Like a therapist, my inclination is to interpret the dream. So I look at a major clue, the title of the show. The program helps, as it gives a definition:

ka-mi-ka-ze (noun) 1. Japanese "divine wind" (from the legendary name of a typhoon that in 1281 saved Japan by destroying the Mongol navy): kami divine + kaze wind 2. A Japanese pilot trained in World War II to make a suicidal crash attack, especially upon a ship. 3. Slang - An extremely reckless person who seems to court death.

Of course, Vanessa Cate, as a veteran of Urban Death at ZJU, could mean far more than the death of the body. Interestingly, she also made a point of saying in the program how the Kamikaze was viewed as a legendary salvation.

What I got out of this work was the odyssey of a woman's soul, from trying to understand the world, to enjoying/experiencing what it has to offer, to feeling the pleasures and tortures of life, then coming to some very personal answers. We see her delve into madness, into nightmare, clearly finding great pleasure in things (an actress I know in the audience opening night had a very pleasing surprise at one point) but also emerging from trauma.

One of the most clear-cut, most "linear" parts of the piece was simply titled Tracy.  This one frankly comes across as a mini-play in and of itself, an

Photo Credit: Zombie Joe's Underground

autobiographical account of a friendship. Cate, wearing a floral dress and matching glasses (!) stood prim and enthusiastic, telling of her friend Tracy. How they were girls together. How they grew apart, without our narrator seemingly noticing--a bad sign. At first the story is funny, very much so. Yet Cate's character, like nearly all founts of real comedy, is tragic. Here there's something marvelously subtle I feel the need to praise. This monologue is not written in great prose. It doesn't create fantastic word pictures nor do the words invoke the essence of what's happening with the precision of a haiku. Because that would not be this character's vocabulary. Rather, Cate's performance does all that. Standing almost perfectly still, with almost the same expression throughout, her voice bled this character's soul all over the stage. First a drop or two, then a trickle, then a vein opened up. A tour-de-force and that one section alone would be worth the price of admission!

But that did not complete the night's journey. No, Cate went on with several more pieces, including her poem "I Am Raw" and a monologue lifted from a decades-old movie, equal parts cheesy, awesome, beautiful (in no small part because Cate herself is), insightful and just a bit disturbing. A nice comment on art, that, and to be expected really from the author of Fragments of Oscar Wilde. Art, even pop art, lives because it says something true. Don't such things provide individual building blocks of our psyches, our souls? Sharing them, sometimes, takes courage. This segment does take that, on several levels. But by then we rather expect it.

And when it ends with martial arts, that seems very right as well.

Kamikaze plays at Zombie Joe's Underground Theatre Fridays and Saturdays at 8:30pm from Sept. 20 to October 5, 2013. You can find the venue at 4850 Lankershim Blvd. (across from KFC) North Hollywood 91601. You can make reservations by calling (818) 202-4120