THE DEATH OF AYN RAND and A BED OF MY OWN
THE DEATH OF AYN RAND and A BED OF MY OWN
Reviewed by Jeffrey R Smith of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle
The Virago Theatre Company is presently performing two delightfully twisted comedies: THE DEATH OF AYN RAND and A BED OF MY OWN. This pair of plays might not be very daring for the haute noir and gritty leather crowd of the Exit Theater on Eddy Street in San Francisco, but for gilded gentry of the newly opened Rhythmix Cultural Works of Blanding Avenue in a staid Brigadoon like Alameda, these plays occupy the outer fringe of acceptability and taunt our prim sense of moral hypocrisy.
The first of this double header: THE DEATH OF AYN RAND, is a spoof on the driven genius of the late Russian Émigré: MS Ayn Rand. The play speculates on how novelist MS Rand might have written an NC-17 sex scene between Hank Reardon and Dagney Taggart: her lead characters from ATLAS SHRUGGED. Rather than write the scene to survive the censors' splicing shears, MS Rand concentrates on forcing erotic love to philosophically conform with the spirit of the book's overarching theme: Objectivism.
Although the setting for the play is the present and Any Rand died in 1982, there appears to be no contradiction: playwright John Byrd seems to be borrowing from the Dylan Thomas theme: "And death shall have no dominion." Really driven people, like the tireless Any Rand, Julia Morgan or Anna Nicole Smith, go on working, in a figurative sense at least, long after they have caught the night train to the Bardo plane or hopped the Styx River Ferry to beyond Rossmoor. Working beyond the grave is an interesting undercurrent for this particular play given that playwright John Byrd died, soon after writing it, from a helium overdose. (Yes children, if you are reading this, be warned: inhaling the gas from party balloons may make your voice sound high-pitched and eery but it may also preclude you from ever exiting the puberty tunnel or experiencing the dubious pleasures of the over 30 crowd.) John Byrd's work continues to unfurl, post mortem, on the stages of daring experimental theaters like this one at Rhythmix Cultural Works.
The second feature: A BED OF MY OWN is absolutely a riot. Playwright Robert Hamm has a rare gift for lampooning the sordid world and turning the kitsch low life of psycho-shut-ins into dark comedy. A BED OF MY OWN provides some much needed respite from the sappy sentimentality, misplaced sensitivity and the overweening, suffocating, stultifying brain harness of political correctness. Take for example the lead character: Rosie: Child Protective Services have rightfully out-sourced her children to her sister; Rosie runs on nicotine, alcohol, sexually released endorphins, and possibly some therapeutic methamphetamine; appropriately, Rosie lives life in her convenient ditch-and-don bathrobe. Rosie's neurons are totally fried and she so destitute that she has slumped down to serving cooking sherry to her guests. Those of us who occupy the cultural high ground may occasionally steam the label off a bottle of two-buck Chuck and replace it with one we've rescued from our neighbor's recycling bin, but at least we have not hit rock bottom by serving cooking sherry in plastic wine glasses. See, how cultural relativism works?
Life for Rosie has been reduced down to its simplest components: survival, cigarettes and sex. While at first glance it would seem that Rosie is everyman's dream, she does have an nervous edge and a downside: like many women who handcuff their men to the bed, Rosie has abandonment and anger management issues. For peace of mind, Rosie imprisons her men. No one is judging Rosie for her temper; furthermore imprisonment does not always have to be a bad thing. Rosie merely incarcerates her men psychologically so that they are afraid to crawl off her fetid, sheet-less, mottled mattress. To a man who has not reached his full potential in life, this restricted range of movement would be counted as a liability; but to men like her lap dog lovers, Stan and Reager, confinement to Rosie's stained mattress is an expanded horizon. So what if one of Rosie's cigarette butts ends up in your mushy, pasty white rice: eat around it and don't complain unless you want to detonate the hair-triggered Rosie.
So, take a walk on the wild side: check out the Virago website at www.ViragoTheatre.org or call the box office at 510-865-6237. Hurry before you miss Rosie: the show closes July 7, 2007.
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