The Feast (review)

 Spoilers ahoy!  

Anyone who knows me probably can guess my reaction to the whole idea of a play in which the audience are guests at a dinner party thrown by Grendel's Mother.

For those who don't know, Grendel is the monster whose slaying is the central incident in Beowulf, the only remaining epic poem of Anglo-Saxon.  Feast by Megan Gogerty and directed by Laura Covelli, functions as a sequel of sorts, but with a strong commentary about today, this era, this year, even this hour.  Personally I love this sort of thing, have even written such myself, and last year had the great good fortune of seeing something similar comment on The Odyssey at City Garage.  I could at this moment go on and on about the subject of re-imagining forms of mythology...

But I won't.  You're welcome.

Instead allow me to hopefully stir your imagination about meeting of all creatures Grendel's mother, portrayed with nuance and skill by Erin Schlabach.  What is she?  Well, that is not really clear.  Not at all clear, not in the play nor the original poem nor the various adaptations of such.  She and Grendel are magical beings more or less bound/connected to the land in ways that echo trolls, ents, Yeti, and probably a dozen other mythological creatures.

Beowulf himself was the subject of the poem, and a fair amount of time ends up devoted to discussing him.  After all, he slew Grendel.  Why did he do that?  Ah, therein hangs a tale, and a central point.  Schlabach's character rightly asks that very question.  Did Grendel kill one of Beowulf's kinsman?  Did he stand in the way of a great project or hope for Beowulf's?  Had Grendel offered Beowulf some terrible insult or injury?  Was he threatening Beowulf?  

No.

From the answer to this question a cascade of issues and ideas as well as regrets pour forth.  Century after century of contemplations have brought forth this invitation, this dinner party, in which we the audience--and by that I mean the specific individuals in the room during each performance--are the guests.  Which implies another question--why has Grendel's mother invited us here?

The answer proves not only interesting, but compelling.  Not merely compelling but touching.  More than touching, in many ways profound.  

Being a one person show Feast sinks or swims based on the cast of one.  Schlabach does indeed carry it all the way to its end, in the process re-enacting who Grendel's mother has been, what she became, what she now desires, and more, what might follow.  Her status as a mythological creature, as a monster (at least in some eyes) has everything and nothing to do with all these revelations.  The performer faces a serious challenge, and in the case threads those needles straight into our hearts.  Well, my heart at least.  I doubt I am alone in that. 

Feast runs Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 5pm until April 6, 2025, at The Count’s Den, 1039 S. Olive Street, Los Angeles CA 90015.

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.

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.