The Spy Who Went Into Rehab (review)

 Spoilers ahoy!

Parody is a tricky thing.  When the form of a parody is to essentially use the target as an excuse for jokes, essentially we are making fun of not only a genre but its fans.  Not so when the jokes are coming from a place of at least affection, if not love.  These parodies, in my view, stand the test of time a la Young Frankenstein or Galaxy Quest.

The Spy Who Went Into Rehab falls into the the latter category.  Gregg Ostrin wrote this clearly with a lot of knowledge about James Bond, Matt Helm, etc.  This shows up in the fact everything is so very fun! The play literally begins with Cross, Simon Cross (Satiar Pourvasei) tied up wearing a white dinner jacket, eyebrow arched and challenging his unseen captors to do their worst.  When they start asking about his medical insurance, the horror hits home.  He is in rehab.

Why?  Well, he claims to have been engaging in a high speed chase with some professional assassins.  In fact, he was drunk out of his brain while attacking an Uber.  A phone call to his boss Z (director Cyndy Fujikawa) confirms he really is stuck in a rehab facility for the next thirty days.  No guns.  No six to nine vodka martinis every day.  No sex.  No smoking.  Oh, and group therapy.

At this point we could spend the entire time making fun of Simon and everyone around him, and in fact the play does exactly that.  But what makes it better than that is when he begins to change.  He starts to recognize he is an addict, and it probably--as he explains to fellow patients--something to do with his father beating him all through childhood.  Simon proves a fascinating person, with lots of great stories to tell--a fact the therapist Stella (Jill Renner) finds frustrating.  Yet the spy does listen to others.  He offers an ear to listen and arm to walk with to Pixie (Alondra Andrade), a pep talk to the insecure Gary (Stuart W. Howard), actually bonds a bit with Yvonne (Rachel Townsend).  And he starts to grow, realizing some facts about his life.

Which is also funny, especially when his arch-enemy shows up and cannot fathom what Simon is even talking about now!  In the end, a lovely series of plot twists spirals up the laughter and makes increasingly clear Simon really did need this therapy.  He's become a better man.  Not coincidentally, he's also now a better secret agent, capable of helping his fellows.

Honestly, the timing of the show (on opening night, let us be fair) was slightly off but that is a nuance, one I suspect will simply correct itself as performances in front of a live audience continue.  

The Spy Who Went Into Rehab plays 8pm Fridays and Saturdays, 3pm Sundays until July 7, 2024 at the Pacific Resident Theatre, 703 Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291

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.

American Mariachi (review)

 Spoilers Ahoy!

A friend and I passed through Hollywood and saw a high school named "Bernstein" which given its location must surely have a large number of its students hispanic (this whole area used to be part of Mexico after all).  The high school's mascot was visible from the highway--a chinese dragon.

I cannot imagine anything more American.

American Mariachi by José Cruz González now playing at LATC downtown gave me the same feeling.  This was a story I knew nothing about, not just in terms of the individual characters, but what was happening amid the 1970s with men, women, and Mariachi.  In fact, I hardly knew what Mariachi was.

I know a lot more now, which probably creates the wrong impression.  Here is no somber examination of changing gender roles in the world of music.  Rather it is a heart-felt, delightful, funny, melancholy, as well as exultant revelation.  

Under the direction of José Luis Valenzuela, the ensemble tells a story that seems on one level almost a bit sitcom-esque, yet also tragic.  A broken family consists of father and daughter trying their best to take care of a mother sick, presumably with Alzheimers or something similar.  She isn't "all there" and the fleeting glimpses we get of the past indicates just how vibrantly alive she had been.  One of the few things that can bring her eyes alive and a smile to her lips is music, especially a mysterious song the father will not allow to be played.  

So we are presented with a mystery, and a goal.  What is the story of this song?  And how will the daughter organize a Mariachi to play that music for her, at a time when women were absolutely not allowed to do anything of the kind?

Adding to this lurks the spectre of a memory, of a female mariachi who was the mother's friend when a child, who wanders unseen save by a very few amid ghosts of music, of misunderstandings, of regrets--almost a Greek Chorus but not, because she is absolutely and totally Mexican.  Not a commentary to be heard and understood, not even in poetic form.  Rather she is a sensation to be felt, a thrill of hope and sadness to be heard with one's soul.  Uniquely theatrical, never really explained nor needing to be.  

Like the story.  Yes, people learn things (and we the audience do as well), and they say words that need saying.  But the whole show is really about what if feels like to hear the music, to know some semblance of its meaning (I speak barely a word of Spanish--and never once needed to), to experience seeing these people we know create that music.

With some laughs, none very expensive, along the way.

The very fine ensemble consists of Esperanza America, Vaneza Mari Calderon, Alicia Coca, Fidel Gomez, Crissy Guerrero, Ruth Livier, Sal Lopez, Geoffrey Rivas, Elia Saldana, and Yalitza "Yaya" Vasquez-Lopez.  I am so tempted to call the show a rich tapestry, or an immersive ensemble, or a heightened slice of life.  All these are true, but not enough.  Not a sufficient description.  Like all truly good and wonderful theatre, it really should be experienced.

American Mariachi plays Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 4pm until Sunday June 9, 2024 at the Los Angeles at 514 S. Spring Street, Los Angeles CA 90013 (two blocks from Pershing Square).

The Bald Soprano (review)

Spoilers ahoy! 

I told some folks the title of the play I was going to see--The Bald Soprano by Eugene Ionesco.  Most had not heard of it and seemed baffled by the image.

One friend, though, perked up and asked with an incredulous grin "CityGarage is doing that?"

Which actually says rather a lot, right there.  My own reaction echoes theirs pretty perfectly.

Charles Duncombe, manager of CityGarage in Santa Monica welcomed the audience on opening night, describing the play as like Monty Python.  I would have added "but French."  Which could serve as a review, almost.

Ionesco himself called this an "anti-play" in that it has no story, even though it almost succeeds in pretending it does, deliberately.  In fact it makes for a hilarious and savage comment on pettiness and how much of our lives, our expectations, our assumptions don't really make a lot of sense.  Reacting as it was to the theatre scene of a specific time and place, does that make it dated?  Yes.  And yet also makes it timeless.  Because life--that is to say, we mere mortals--remain absurd.

Now, to continue with a simile, Monty Python as a genre (ditto Theatre of the Absurd) has some tricky if subtle demands.  This production, with a bevy of CityGarage regulars, threads most of the needles and as a result gets a lot of laughs.  As well it should!  Nothing makes very much sense, of course.  That is the point! 

In fact describing anything like a "plot" seems almost meaningless!  Rather the performances themselves simply exist amid a weird melee of musings, assertions, questions, revelations, confessions, arguments, accusations, and ramblings--which somehow feel familiar.  Which is also the point!

Insomuch as there is a point.

Standouts in the cast almost entirely focus on the female characters.  Make of that what you will.  Angela Byer and Bo Roberts play a married couple (or are they?) visiting some friends while suffering from a strong bout of amnesia.  The couple they are visiting (or just maybe really are) consist of Andy Kallok and David E. Frank, the latter playing the wife (again, the female characters stand out--or are they female--I'm not sure), while Courtney Brechemin portrays the Maid who tells us all sorts of wonderful weird things.  A fire chief played by Clifford Irvine rounds up the cast--he visits looking for fires, which is his job after all.  That bit almost makes sense. Almost.

That "almost" is one reason the whole thing is so funny.  It makes for a deliciously weird joke, with extra layers of "WTF?" and "Waitaminute" and "Whhhhaaaat?" on top.  

Imagine the story-telling equivalent of Merry-Go-Round after taking a tiny hit of acid, in France and that suggests a little bit of zany humor direct Frederique Michel achieves with this cast.  Imagine if you will Monty Python and the Holy Grail crossovered with a 1950s sitcom of your choice, minus children.  Then stir in very acid humor about the bourgeoisie.  That sounds like a mere formula, doesn't it?  And yet the only "formula" here is silliness, the arch type of silliness of which we all may well be guilty.

Oh, who am I kidding?  We ARE guilty of such.  Sooner or later.  

So come and have a laugh.

The Bald Soprano plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 4pm until June 2, 2024 at City Garage, Bergamot Station, T1 Space, 2525 Michigan Ave, Santa Monica, CA 90404.