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.

  

Border Crisis (review)

Spoilers ahoy!  

Regular followers of this blog will know how much I admire City Garage as one of the best theatre companies in the greater Los Angeles are (technically the company's home lies in Santa Monica).  I have never felt disappointed even by the least impressive pieces performed here

That has not changed.

Border Crisis is, as stated on the poster, an absurdist comedy by Charles A. Duncombe based on The House on the Border by Polish writer Stawomir Mrozek.  As per usual it remains very topical, especially portraying an increasingly authoritarian situation which overwhelms a seemingly very ordinary family, literally turning their home into a multizone militarized area, with armed guards demanding paperwork for leaving or entering pretty much any room, or part of a room.

At its best, this polemic works very well.  The Father (Bo Roberts) and The Mother (Martha Duncan) oversee a rebellious Son (Justin Parrish) and mediaphile Daugher (Hilary Kang Oglesby) while a grumpy Grandfather (Andy Kallock) and kindly optimistic Grandmother (Geraldine Fuentes) comment about goings on.  Things seem normal enough.  The Father celebrates how the whole family is together, and how they'll all be fine as long as they don't get involved in anything.  At all.  Ever.

Everything changes--as of course it must--as the government Representatives arrive, first demanding the use of this house for unspecific but wildly important negotiations.  Once completed, the Leader (offstage) gives a rousing speech to a large crowd outside, rambling about the evil of outsiders, followed by the arrival of Guards who explain there are New Rules--but not much about what these rules might be.  The Grandmother is almost immediately dragged off, since she is an alien--the numbers on her arm from last time prove it.  No reprieve.  She ends up in a some sweltering camp, with no idea as to her location.  Soon food becomes increasingly scarce.  The Son and Daughter manage to escape.  He eventually ends up joining a government-sponsored militia whose job it is to beat up and harass whoever looks as if they don't belong.  She, the seemingly least likely one, actually does join the Resistance--a secret but utterly impotent group more concerned with their own factions than getting anything at all done.  The Father and Mother try to simply endure, while Grandfather is literally dragged off for treason, being solemnly told rights and due process are not for criminals.  In the end, as the married couple sit alone in what was once a nice home, they take comfort with each other--until the sound of warfare, tanks and soldiers, approach.  The Mother realizes they are about to die, while the Father exults that the Leader's Golden Age is about to arrive!  

All this good stuff.  I should mention here all the government officials, from the almost cartoon "Diplomats" to the scary Agents in suits and sunglasses to the incompetent Guards are portrayed by the same two actors--Angela Beyer and Gifford Irvine.  They steal every single moment they are on stage, not only because their characters represent genuine threats, but their own presences which gives them so much power.  Both actors have shared scenes  before many times at City Garage and it shows.

Herein lies my caveat.  The Family ultimately don't elicit much sympathy.  One feels bad for them, but one's heart does not break.  Quite simply, they as the protagonists are not as interesting as the antagonists.  While some might argue they aren't supposed to be extraordinary, my own view is the ordinary can be interesting, can and should feel very real, very individual, and should engage our emotions--especially as they begin to suffer.  This barely happens.  It does happen, and the ending in particular delivers a gut punch.  But it feels abstract.  The message comes through, vividly, but not as powerfully as it could.  

Which is a nuance, because the whole point of this play is the Message.  Which is indeed delivered, enough I actually flinched.  Nor was I the only one in the audience to my certain knowledge.

And that nuance is my only real criticism, so bravo/brava to everyone including Director Frederique Michel.

Border Crisis plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 4pm until December 13, 2025 at the Bergamot T1 Space, 2525 Michigan Ave. 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.

Betrayal (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

Harold Pinter won the Nobel Prize in literature, which is way impressive.  As a writer he managed to write silences into his plays which were filled with meaning, and forced actors to plumb the text for meanings by having them say the same lines several times.  It makes for quite a challenge--one met magnificently by the latest production of Betrayal by Santa Monica's CityGarage.

Frankly, been looking forward to this ever since they announced it on the schedule and even more when I read the cast.

Essentially, the play tells the story of an affair.  Emma (Angela Beyer) is married to book publisher Robert (David E. Frank) but had/has had a long term affair with his best friend Jerry (Troy Dunn).  If this sounds a little too straightforward, even mundane for Pinter, never you worry.  What follows is a sometimes scorching, sometimes hilarious, always intriguing exploration of human relations.  Aiding in all this is how the scenes generally (but not quite always) proceed in reverse chronological order, namely starting with a meeting years after the affair has ended and ending with the scene in which that new relationship was truly born.  Helping all this is a a character known simply as the Waiter (Gifford Irving) who wanders around the scenes in which his character does not appear simply to tell the audience when what follows happens.

This last is a tiny addition from director Frederique Michel.  Personally, even though I understood the chronology (did the role of Waiter at my University), this helped me keep track.

But what really grabs our attention and hearts are the performances.  Again, Pinter masterfully forces actors to examine what the words coming out of their mouths really mean.  In the hands of these actors, the results often astound.  The meaning of the word "squash" for example changes dramatically as events proceed.  All too often current styles of acting consist of treating lines casually--which in theatre at least nearly always turns out to be a dreadful error.  In Betrayal every word matters, and given its author so too nearly every single silence, i.e. the words not said.  Maybe never even considered for speaking.  

One result of this is a constant state of surprise.  Predicting what is about to happen simply doesn't work.  Oh, we know some of the results already.  The play began at the ending after all!  But the play isn't about the plot, but about the human relationships--the thousand thousand tiny moments, the words said or stammered or whispered or spat.  Every question asked, and answered (or not) assumes enormous weight--the weight of lives and hopes and disappointments.  Even the tiny, meaningless lies.  Or the tiny, seemingly meaningless details.  Whose kitchen was it when Jerry did that thing?  Where did Robert go in Venice, and how?  When did Emma tell her husband that secret?  

Trivial and momentous at the same time and for the same reason.

Betrayal plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 4pm until March 17, 2024 at Bergamot T1 Space, 2525 Michigan Ave, Santa Monica, CA 90404.

Insulted, Belarus (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

Until I saw this play, I don't think the name Lukashenko had ever registered with me.  He is a dictator in the land-locked country of Belarus, near Romania.  Playwright Andrei Kureichik was smuggled out of that country after the dictator cracked down on the country and all dissent in a big, big way.  Weirdly (in light of what has been going on in the USA), he held a sham election and this time people tried to call him out on that.  His reaction was brutal violence.

Insulted, Belarus (translated by John Freedman) tells the tale, Reader's Theatre style, of that election and its horrific aftermath.  But more than that, it portrayed the hopes of those who thought maybe this time they could topple a dictator by the rules he said he was going to obey (but never, ever had).  This was the real thing, played with chilling, shallow malice (Randall Wulff).  A optimist election witness (Devin Davis-Lorton), a candidate (Angela Beyer) seeking to unseat the dictator, a hooligan/protestor (Anthony M. Sannazzaro), they all wanted to change things.  Just as a storm-trooper (Andrew Loviska), and a school principal (Juliet Morrison) want things to stay the same, and don't care who gets hurt, maimed, violated, or even killed.  Not at first.

Add to the mix the dictator's youngest son (Courtney Brechemin) exactly as shallow and selfish as his father, but with the excuse of childhood.  A kind of weird mirror/echo to the dictator.

Powerful stuff.  And topical.  Performed by one of the best theatre companies in the Los Angeles area.  More, this play works in stirring up emotions.  The performances are all good.  As expected with this company!

It is also less good that what I've come to expect.  Nowhere near bad, or even average.  In fact it remains a very worthwhile piece of theatre!  But...less excellent than expected.  And I think the reason lies in the whole Readers' Theatre format, which forces pretty much the entire cast to directly interact with the audience for most of the performance.  This is hard.  Honestly, the audience can almost never give anything to the actors in this situation.  It is as if the cast are stuck doing ninety minutes of very intense monologues.  It is very hard  And lacking the dynamic energy that an entire cast usually feeds to one another--and which I've seen nearly all this cast participate with/create in the past--well, it suffers.  Some.  Not a lot.  Barely enough to mention.  Just enough to mention, in fact.

The play is still powerful.  Still dramatic.  Still intense and worth the price of a ticket, not least for us to think about nations who are not in the forefront of the news reports right now, but still suffer.  

I am not "damning with faint praise" but rather "praising with faint damnation."  Saying "not quite as good as City Garage usually fares" is a little like saying "not the tallest skyscraper in Manhattan."  Because it remains an impactful work of living art, opening one's eyes and heart to the unknown, yet somehow recognizable as absolutely true.  The characters and their fates (for so many of them are acted upon most of all) haunted me long after I left the theatre.  Honestly, given the track record of this theatre company, had my soul not been so haunted I would be shocked.

Insulted, Belarus plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 4pm until December 17, 2023 at the City Garage, Bergamot T1 Space, 2525 Michigan Ave Santa Monica, CA 90404.