Uncle Vanya (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

On a personal note, Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov is my favorite play by this author.  One might expect some negative reaction upon viewing an "adaptation" (by Neil LaBute) of this masterpiece.  However, to my own mind art is open to interpretation, must remain so.  Each time one produces a play, one ends up adapting it, not least in the choices each production brings forth--decisions by actors, directors, designers, and many more.  The real issue focuses upon the result.

City Garage's current production of Uncle Vanya offers what I most desire in such a thing--a reimagining that feel utterly true yet re-sets how I perceive the play.  What a gift, and I thank everyone involved from the depths of my heart!  

I know many regard Chekhov as a difficult playwright (true), full of subtleties (true), given to traps of falling into the presumed "mood" (also true).  Frankly I've seen plenty of productions fall over themselves, tripping into seeming traps of expectation.   Like the belief these are terribly serious dramas.  Chekhov himself called them comedies, which to our minds means a series of jokes.  But with Chekhov humor is simply part of the flavor, an equal blend of tragedy, pathos, hope, fear, melancholy, comfort, and yes at the same time comedy.  "No we are not ever going to be happy" in this context becomes funny.  Because what else is laughter for, save to cope with and ward away despair?

The title character (Troy Dunn) is a middle-aged man falling into old age and feels that fact in every cell of every bone.  He and his niece Sonya (Anabela Nguyen) run an estate in rural Russia sometime towards the end the 1800s.  We can call them the leads, not least because of the title--and of course no one else calls Vanya "uncle."  For decades they have been working, drawing out every single kopek they can to send to Sonya's father the Professor (Andy Kallok) who has been famous and esteemed.  Until now.  Forced into retirement by time and age, the Professor has come to the estate to try and live there.  Once a dazzling lecturer and author, now a frail old man full of complaints and demands.  With him has come his new, young, very beautiful wife Yelena (Angela Beyer). 

Together they proceed to disrupt this household in almost every way, without trying to do anything of the kind.  Vanya falls head over heels in love with Yelena, a fact she enjoys but does not like that she enjoys it.  She wants to be friends with Sonya, who cannot help but bewail her own lack of beauty, yet finds comfort as she learns her stepmother is unhappy.  Doctor Astrov (Taylor Lee Marr) , the well-learned but alcoholic local physician starts to visit more often.  He is Vanya's friend.  More, he is the unrequited target of romantic adoration by the lonely Sonya--who btw should be considered quite a catch, since she is kind and helpful, hardworking and technically owns this big estate.  But she is not beautiful.  Her surface does not attract.  Worse, Yelena's own beauty fiercely attracts Astrov!  Worse still--at least for Vanya and Sonya--she herself feels strong attraction to Astrov.  Too bad for him she absolutely will not violate her marriage vows.   

What an emotional patch of hard ground and entrenched weeds!

Hence we continue to see these plays, and especially I think Uncle Vanya.  It makes for a horror story, really, a catharsis for what we all fear life truly might be.  Full of despair and mistakes, missed chances, yet not that much cruelty when you think on it, just lots of foolishness.  One gets the impression these folks could get their lives together if they tried.  No one is evil.  In fact I found myself liking all the major characters, even the Professor for all of his curmudgeon ways.  All fools of course.  But aren't we all?  None are fools about everything, but they fail to support one another, almost as if they don't know how.  Alone, none of them really feels like enough, and together they never do more than enough to keep things functioning.  

I suspect the visit by the Professor and his wife might genuinely be the last chance for any of them.  They do not rise to that possibility, which proves equal parts heart-breaking and also understandable.  

All this works because the cast, directed by Frederique Michel (honestly this is one of the best things I've seen from her) without exception bring all these characters to surprising, bittersweet life.  Including Telegrin (Ralph Radebaugh) who hangs around the estate his family once owned, the elderly un-imaginative but competent maid Marina (Geraldine Fuentes), and finally Maria (Strawn Bovee) who is Vanya's mother yet dismisses all his pain and Sonya's amidst her worship of the Professor. She is the only character I did not like, incidentally.  

Uncle Vanya plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00pm, Sundays at 4:00pm through March 29, 2026 at the City Garage 2525 Michigan Ave. Building T1, Santa Monica, Ca. 90404.

  

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.

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.

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 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.

Endgame (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

City Garage re-emerges from Covid 19 with Endgame by the late, great (and controversial) Samuel Beckett.  Many agree this play, a weird exploration of the moments and process of ending, perhaps exceeds his more famous Waiting for Godot in power and poignancy.  Certainly it remains an easy play to misunderstand.

Regular readers might experience a bit of deja vu, but methinks it crucial the note this show--as is the case with most of City Garage's productions, is not intended as a story.  To be sure it has a story, or if you prefer a plot.  Its real nature emerges once an audience member understands what they are seeing and hearing is more or less a dream.  A dream given form.  A dream acting out with all the beautiful, terrifying, hilarious "logic" of an actual dream.  Do not look for a linear tale here, but an experience.  I call this the Theatre of Dreams.

Within that context, we are in world winding down to its end.  Four survivors hold on for a little while, much reduced from what they once were, within nothing to do but focus on trivia--trivial desires, trivial attempts at pleasure, trivial cruelties, even trivial enlightenments.  All four characters know they are circling the drain.  This is the end.  And knowing that, they play games.

Hence the title.  Clov (Troy Dunn) pretty much is the only active one in the bunch, obeying the orders of the feeble, blind Hamm (Bo Roberts) who sits in the middle of a room surrounded by nothing, demanding answers to questions he asked minutes before, insisting Clov look out the window and describe what he sees, or push his chair around the room as a meagre substitute for travel.  Off to the side are two large garbage cans, where live--or at least dwell--Hamm's parents, Nell (Martha Duncan) and Nagg (Andy Kollack).  If this all sounds bizarre, then you've latched onto a basic truth about the show!

Events such as they are do take place, however.  Struggles even, especially between Clov and Hamm.  One longs to leave but fears to.  The other longs for everything to simply end, yet desperately tries to fill his time, trying to impose meaning upon things that mean...well, nothing.  Or, everything, since there is nothing else.  

What results from all this, especially under the direction of Frederique Michel, ends up startlingly compelling as well as rather surprisingly funny.  Dark humor, yes, but then is not humor one of the best vaccines we have against despair?  Michel's direction coupled with this cast and the quiet, profound design (costumes by Josephine Poinot, set and lights by Charles Duncombe) pulls us into this metaphorical world, and in the end we recognize it--not because we've survived any kind of genuine apocalypse, but rather we've all gone through a thousand tiny ones.  The death of childhood.  An ending of love.  One chapter in life starts, only after the previous one dies.  Friendships fade away.  Places change and cease to be what once they were.  So do we.  From such microscopic and inevitable catastrophes we find a reason to laugh when an overworked servant keeps forgetting a ladder when he goes to use it.

In this play, that happens.  A lot.  And it remains funny.

Endgame plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 4pm until April 10, 2022, at City Garage, 2525 Michigan Ave, Building T1, Santa Monica CA 90404 (right across the street from the 26th Street/Bergamont Station train station).

Covid safety protocols will be observed.  Proof of vaccination required.  Masks must be worn inside the theatre.