Humble Boy OUR LADY OF 121ST STREET A PERFECT GANESH

The Ross Valley Players are currently staging HUMBLE BOY by Charlotte Jones. To borrow from an unsubstantiated stereotype, it is rare that the artistic, liberal arts’ mind attains sufficient knowledge of the hard sciences to weave physics into the fabric of a novel or a play. Thomas Pynchon, author of GRAVITY’S RAINBOW, is one noteworthy exception. Charlotte Jones may well be another. Miss Jones, to her credit, seems not only well versed on relativity and quantum mechanics, she knows enough about string theory to use it as a metaphor in this intricate, complex, symmetrical and airtight play. Imagine the Discovery Channel’s THE ELEGANT UNIVERSE being wrought into a stage drama, without being dry nor irrelevant. This play, as the film majors are want to say, “works on so many levels.”

Humble Boy is a sophisticated, erudite comedy about abrogated vows, waning hopes and the rustic joys of bee keeping. Felix Humble, played by Matthew Purdon, is a Cambridge astrophysicist in search of the unified field theory. His father, an entomologist has recently died, ironically of anaphylactic shock brought on by a bee sting. Felix has returned to his parents’ home in the Cotswolds, ostensibly to attend his father’s memorial service.

Flora Humble, played Robyn Wiley, chooses to announce her engagement before the canopic jar, containing the cremated remains of her husband, has cooled. As in HAMLET, the grieving son is not eager for his widowed mother to marry into stultifying mediocrity: videlicet: George Pye (superbly played by Simon Boddington). While resisting his mother’s nuptial vision, Felix is brought into a confrontation with his own unfinished past.

The humming of missing bees, brings Felix closer to the humming of the basic building blocks of the universe, i.e. strings, and to the elusive Unified Field Theory. On another level, an eponymous bee, unites Flora Humble, in spirit, with her polar opposite: her deceased husband.

The set, designed by Benicia Martinez, is worthy of Noel Coward’s HAY FEVER. It combines the simple beauty of nature with the refined elegance of intelligent living. Watching the play, which is set in balmy August, reminds the audience that if winter rain is pelting the roof of the Marin Gardens’ Barn, then summer weather is less than 10 months away.

For tickets to a thoroughly enjoyable evening and a glimpse of summer, call the RVP Box Office at 415 456-9555.

The San Francisco Playhouse is currently staging the hilarious, yet thoughtful, Stephen Adly Guirgis opus: OUR LADY OF 121ST STREET.

The characters that Stephen Adly Guirgis populates his plays with are reminiscent of Sharon Stone’s line from BASIC INSTINCT: when questioned why she likes to use block ice and an ice pick, rather than cubes, she replies, “I like rough edges.” To his credit, all of Stephen Guirgis’ characters have interesting rough edges. These rough edges are NOT due to any flaw, or lack of development, in his writing. The rough edges are the battle scars and gritty urban survival mechanisms manifested in his Harlem denizens.

As the Buddhists are quick to point out, the most fetid conditions: the rankest humus, yields the most beautiful lotus blossoms. Like cactus fruit, his characters are both prickly on the outside and sweetly, not saccharinely, sensitive on the inside. Having been educated in a parochial school in Harlem and having spent five years as a Violence Prevention Counselor in juvenile facilities and such hardball places as Riker’s Island, Guirgis, knows his characters well and develops them equally well.

The plays namesake, also known as Sister Rose, devoted her life to educating, disciplining and rescuing her Harlem students, if not herself, from the imperfect lives into which they were tossed. Strangely, perhaps miraculously, her last opportunity to serve her community comes after she has died. Just hours before her funeral is scheduled her body is mysteriously discovered missing from her casket. To the people who came to pay their respects at the memorial service, the delay resulting from the search for Sister Rose’s body gives them necessary time to revisit and work on the issues that have arrested their movement through time.

By the time at least a portion of Sister Rose’s corpse is found for burial, the protracted wake and visiting hours have performed the essential alchemy on the lives of her former students. Momentarily at least, the environs of 121st street are rife with recognitions, reflections, reconciliations, epiphanies and acceptance of what was, is and will be. The message of Sister Rose becomes as clear as the chapel bells.

The rude and crude language may not be appropriate for all ages, although we all know what the little darlings hear and say in school. None-the-less, the message clearly redeems and lifts the play above its PG13 language standards. The play is not only uplifting but it serves as a good lens with which to examine the possible baggage we may be uselessly schlepping or mooring ourselves to.

This play will make you laugh and melt the San Francisco frostbite on your nose, toes and heart. For tickets contact the San Francisco Playhouse box office via www.sfplayhouse.org or call 415-677-9596.

Reviewed by Jeffrey R Smith of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle

The Free Range Theatre Company is currently performing Terrence McNally’s A PERFECT GANESH at the Phoenix Theater in San Francisco.

Before you go scrambling for your Yiddish dictionary, Ganesh is not Yiddish.

You are probably thinking of “a perfect mentsh” which is Yiddish: a term deriving from the German word “mensch” for person.

Therefore the idiom “a perfect mentsh” basically translates into “a very good person.”

On the other hand “Ganesh” is an Indian deity, who according to Indian mythology (or religion: which ever conceit you choose) was the son of the goddess Parvati (no relation to Luciano Pavarotti).

Ganesh, a.k.a. Ganesa, was the sentry at his mother’s gate.

One day in his zeal, Ganesh attempted to prevent the ingress of the god Siva.

Gargantuan mistake.

The petulant Siva cut off the head of Ganesh.

Later as a conciliatory gesture, Siva has the head of an elephant attached to the decapitated body of Ganesh in order to resurrect him.

The resultant interspecies hybrid was Ganesh: the god of prosperity and success in every undertaking.

As a talisman, banks and businesses in India house statues of Ganesh, much like Chinese businesses in America house statues of the “ching ching” cash cats.

Many of the Judeo-Christian credo claim that all goodness comes from their monotheistic God.

In the Hindu pantheon, there is a differentiation of qualities or goodness: the qualities of prosperity and success in an undertaking are attributable to Ganesh.

Furthermore, it is the divine essence or spirit of Ganesh that pervades the consciousness of any person who is assisting another mortal in an undertaking.

If you stop to ask for directions, the person who provides you with the correct directions was, momentarily at least, imbued with the essence of Ganesh when he or she gave you the necessary guidance.

Now that the exegesis of Ganesh is out of the way: on to the play.

Two middle-aged women, ostensibly friends, who had traditionally spent their self indulgent holidays hedonistically languishing, shopping and sipping Mai Tais in the Shangri-las and Xanadus of the tropics, decide they are ready for the big one: Mother India.

Their arrival at the airport of embarkation with 7 pieces of luggage serves as a metaphor for the psychological baggage each is toting at the onset of their excursus.

At check-in time, when they discover their reservations have been lost, Ganesh is there, in the form of an Air India ticketing agent, to provide them with a free upgrade from their expropriated seats in business class, to their broad reclining seats in first class.

Their travel around the subcontinent is a form of psychotherapy: an unwinding of a sari to reveal the naked truths of life, to themselves and to each other.

Rather than remaining mere tourists, they become pilgrims on a Journey to the East and acolytes of Ganesh.

Ultimately they gain clarity, compassion and the ability to accept who they are and where they have been.

The process is subtle yet profound, and every step of it is invisibly guided by Ganesh.

When the trip is over and their lives resume in Connecticut, they are find themselves prepared to live authentically: experiencing, rejoicing, embracing and exalting in the miracle of life and
consciousness itself.

This is a very uplifting play.

If you are contemplating lathering up with SPF-40 sunscreen for Spring Break in Cancun, or a gaming hadj to the kitsch casinos of Las Vegas, or an opiating escape to some tropical pleasure dome, this play can be extremely useful in assaying the merits of your impending trip.

Four equity actors give this script the quality performance it deserves.

To reserve tickets, visit www.freerangetheatre.com or call the box office at (415) 383-5472.
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Jeffrey R Smith -- member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle