Masala Dabba (review)

Spoilers ahoy! 

 Here's a fun fact.  Trying to guess the meaning of this play's title, Masala Dabba, I was guessing it referred to an Indian recipe of some kind which becomes the focus of some inter-generational tension, probably played out in and around and about a restaurant.

I was almost totally wrong.

The title is much better than that, referring instead to a traditional Indian spice box. So rather than refer to a specific food, it calls back to the ingredients which make up those dishes you yourself choose to make or consume.

A far better metaphor.  Wendy Graf's play does indeed focus on a family--Nishi Byrd (Ansuya Nathan), her husband Charlie (Timylle Adams), their daughter Tina (Jon Joseph Gentry), and Nishi's mother Aditi Dashi (Nandina Minocha) who has come all the way from a small village in India to visit her daughter's family for the very first time in Berkeley.  You can probably guess already some secret strain vibrates between Nishi and Aditi.  It doesn't help when the latter makes some comments which could easily come across--and are interpreted as--racist about her African American son-in-law.

One might expect such a set-up to flow in a certain direction, a plot outline governing the shape and tenor of each scene.  I want to emphasize this play breaks those rules, a fact I found very refreshing.  The ebb and flow remains mostly subtle, albeit unmistakable.  Each scene ends on what clearly is supposed to feel like a tender cliffhanger, a hint of secrets to learn, pains to be understood.  And they are that.

Here comes my only real complaint.  The production falls into a series of traps, which altogether do not (I want to make that very clear--do NOT) unravel what the writer and actors are doing.  But there are hiccups.  Many scenes are quite brief, and between them are (rather short) set shifts that distracted.  The set included an elaborate window piece in the back, which gave a sense of what this home felt like but did nothing else.  More, since the stage had this glorious cyclorama directly behind the set, I longed for the colors there to change in reference to what was happening on stage.  Better yet--projections onto that surface (if that is feasible which I don't know).  

This is a fairly subtle complaint.  Yet the impact, while subtle, was felt and gave me some trouble entering into the tale.

Fortunately, I liked the characters and found the hints of mystery compelling, with a slow series of revelations which tugged at my heart.  Central to all this is Tina meeting her grandmother for the very first time, who finds startling bliss in getting to know her grandchild.  Tina, eager to learn about her mother's heritage, discovers something new and exciting, and the thrill of that feels very real, very moving.  Just as the resentments between mother and daughter never feel formulaic, but indeed very logical.  This play does not relate the coming of a storm, but a shifting of a tide.  And there is much beauty in that.  Beauty and sadness.  Anger and forgiveness.  Confession and, yes, cooking.

Central is the Masala Dabba brought from India which ends up an important talking point, not least because the stories associated with each spice.  Very intimate, very thought- and emotion-provoking.  

Masala Dabba plays Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 7:30pm, Sundays at 2pm until September 14, 2025 at the International City Theatre, 330 E. Seaside Way, Long Beach, CA 90802.

The Slippery Knot (review)

 Spoilers Ahoy! 

This marks (I think) the fourth production I've had the pleasure of seeing from Ballview Productions. 

The Slippery Knot by David Dickens and directed by Brandon Slezak is described in their press release as an "absurdist Dickensian dark comedy" which is accurate, and rarely I will urge you to pay attention to those adjectives.  All apply most acutely.

Let me be brutally frank--this play is hard to initially get "into."  The opening scenes are very busy and frantic, also so fast with characters speaking such odd things one has trouble following.  

Mind you, the scale (especially in cast size) and weird background make up a lot of the show's charm.  Dickensian, yes, but also a bit of Dr. Seus plus Lewis Carroll, soaked in absinthe and sprinkled with J.M.Barrie.  We never really get explanation of how Lord Montsume (Ian Michaels) ended up having to live/dwell in his School for Demeaning Boys, where his viciously loyal Colonel (Talin Vartanian) routinely degrades and punishes a band of children who've evidently never known anything else (or maybe have forgotten--evidently this place has been in operation for centuries).  Our entire story is a flashback, though.  One Robert Gardener (David Dickens) is missing and his wife Martha (Megan Colburn) has seemingly hired or at least become allied with The Inspector (Ayanda Dube) to find him, looking up the retired Mr. Skeams (Jay Rumor) to help figure out what they can.

It all goes back to when Robert was a demeaning boy named Speedy Gardener (Lauren Adlhoch) along with other boys/prisoners such as Pip (Fatima Camacho) and Poor Nicholas (Alex Rhind).

NOTE:  I am not at all sure I've got all the names right, simply because the cast of characters was so large.  Yet it is easy enough to recall the major characters.

When the once-in-a-century visit to the school of a circus occurs, a complex plot emerges to let Speedy escape.  Much of this depends upon the so-called wild girl Mental Martha (Natalia Ortega) who will one day grow up to be Martha Gardener.  Seems the Circus' Magician (Jayden Jack) vows revenge on his wife (Libby Rose) who is having an affair with Lord Montsume.  Urged by Mr. Skeams, he uses a magic door to free/hide young Speedy in what seems to be a pocket dimension or realm of some kind.  Other people are trapped there, most of them totally mad.  Once released, they go rampant.  Aided by the Circus' former owner Mr. Whistle (Alec Schiff) Mental Martha and Speedy steal the train which brought it to this location, along with the Emptiness Clown (Isaac Tipton-Snyder) and a former prisoner of the Circus called Mr. Plank (Max Zumstein).

The Lord and the Colonel are soon in pursuit, sparking a quest/chase in which some really odd aspects of life take weird shape.  I don't want to spoil the thought-provoking details, but the two act fever/opium dream really does embody what I sometimes like to call Theatre of Dreams.  Not so much a plot or story, really, as a dream mounted on stage, full of powerful images and meanings it will take time to digest and decide for yourself what it all might mean.

The Slippery Knot plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8:30 pm, Sundays at 4pm until April 30, 2023 at the Whitmore-Lindley Theatre Center, 11006 Magnolia Blvd, North Hollywood, CA 91601.

'Night Mother (review)

 Spoilers ahoy! 

What better way to spend Mother's Day than watching a friend star in a play about a woman telling her mother she's going to commit suicide?

Such makes the premise of 'Night Mother by Marsha Norman, a searing bit of human drama.  

Many plays in our time (and others) are presumed to have a "message" or "moral" to impart.  This play does not, at least not beyond awareness of suicide and depression.  Rather, it functions as an experience.  We are not supposed to get any pre-determined lesson.  Like history or simply life, you can get whatever you can from these two people and what we witness between them.

Jessie (Emily Asher Kellis) is a middle-aged divorcee living with her mother Thelma (Kimberly Demmary), and one evening as the two putter about with all the little tiny things making up their lives--gossip, what groceries are running low, etc.--Jessie tells Thelma her plan.  She's going to shoot herself later that evening, and doesn't want Thelma to be prepared. What follows is the mother trying desperately but not at all brilliantly to get Jessie to change her mind.  Along the way, much of this daughter's life and her mother's as well emerges.  Not all.  No, not at all.  Because how could it?

Naturally enough Thelma pulls all kinds of cards to play, including guilt and rage, propriety and ideas about hope.  But Jessie has been thinking about this for a long time, and planning it for months.  What one cannot quite grasp, and the other hopes she can (pretty much the only real hope she has left) is Why?  Thelma naturally enough is looking for a specific reason, for something concrete.  Jessie on the other says these brutally simple things.  She doesn't like living.  She dislikes her life and sees no way it can get any better.  There isn't anything she really likes, the way some folks love sports or blueberry scones.  She still loves her husband, that is crystal, but also that the marriage is over, even dead.  Her son, whom she says is so close to her in type, is a drug addict on a spiral she believes will end in prison at best.  But those are surface details.  Almost trivia.

Why does she do it?  It says much about the performances as well as the direction by Brian Robert Harris that I left their theatre both knowing and not knowing.  It hurt watching the sadness of these two women, but in my own heart the one I felt most akin to was Jessie.  More than once I heard her speak and the hopelessness, the emptiness was so naked it stirred something in me.  My heart broke, not just for Jessie (although, yes, for her) but for myself and for every depressed, sad individual I've known or heard of who roamed into these kinds of shadows.

But I did feel also for Thelma, feeling her own hopelessness and bafflement and fierce terror despair when Jessie finally says the title of the play.

I wept more than once.

'Night Mother is playing at the Elite Theatre Company, at a beautiful waterfront area at 2731 S Victoria Ave Oxnard, CA 93035 Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 2pm with a special performance at 8pm on Thursday May 19, 2022 until May 22, 2022.