A.C.T. performs RAINMAKER
THE RAINMAKER
Reviewed by Jeffrey R Smith of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle
The amazing advantage that live theater has over cinema is that theater nearly always comes off as fresh, contemporary and mysteriously relevant.
Cinema seems to take on the sepia tones of irrelevancy as soon as it is committed to VCR tape, converted to DVD format or siphoned into the cable network.
RAINMAKER, the current production at the A.C.T. in
Director Mark Rucker takes this plains state romantic drama, dusts it off and breathes new vibrant life into it.
NYT theater critic, Brooks Arkinson, once described RAINMAKER as "warm, simple and friendly."
The humor was described as "captivating" and the characters as "lovable and original."
The question is, did the play reflect the culture of the plains states or did it indirectly reveal the paranoid restraint the artist community exercised during the McCarthy era?
Simple, safe, wholesome
Actress Rene Augesen is the tent pole that lifts this entire production.
As an actress, MS Augesen is worth studying at charm school: without changing her hair, make-up, jewelry or costume, MS Augesen can transition from plain as a fence post to radiantly beautiful, just by altering her body language, posture, movements, speech patterns and facial expression.
When her character, Lizzie Curry, calls for her to feel wretched, like a chameleon, she turns wretched.
When her character is supposed to feel beautiful, MS Augesen sheds her pallid, dowdy, dodgy rustic skein and reveals the butterfly within.
Stage stalwart Rod Gnapp—who once played Artie Mitchell in XXX LOVE ACT—plays Sheriff Thomas with the bedrock stage competency that remains his hallmark on Bay Area stages.
If there was an age of innocence it passed through
Like psychiatrist Abraham Maslow, playwright N. Richard Nash seemed to understand that the struggle against the whims and vagaries of nature kept the demons of neurosis at bay; the simple life was nothing more abstract than family, friends, eking out a living and putting palatable meals on the table.
To experience the bucolic life that existed before farm subsidies invited the rapacious to the plains states and to see a stunning theatrical production get thee to A.C.T.'s RAINMAKER.
For tickets call the box office at 415-749-2228 or visit www.act-sf.org.