ENCINAL PERFORMS FOOTLOOSE OUR TOWN AS PERFORMED BY THE ROSS VALLEY PLAYERS Off Broadway West does FICTION by Steven Dietz THE BIRTHDAY PARTY
FOOTLOOSE
Reviewed by Jeffrey R Smith of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle
A musical is ideally suited to a high school cast when it is an archetypal tale of teenage rock rebellion and it provides the most opportunities to greatest number students to showcase their respective stage talents. FOOTLOOSE provides exactly these opportunities and the cast of Encinal students more than lives up to challenges presented by the well crafted script, the bubbly musical score and the strenuous choreography.
This musical is set in what used to be called the Bible-Belt and is now called a Red State. A Red State, by definition, is any state where the number of registered Republicans exceeds the number of people who can either: read, eat with silverware, drink beer from a glass or believe in evolution.
As with any small town in the Bible-Belt, some covert variant of the Baptist church emerges and ultimately scores a decisive victory in the battle between hypocrisy and the coalition forces of liberalism, secular humanism, women's rights and the Democratic Party. Like any well intentioned Ayatollah or Mullah the good pastor in this story, Reverend Moore (played by the seasoned thespian Cory Kahane) just wants to dry up all the Dionysian sources of fun including, or we should say especially, dancing. Reverend Moore has firmly established a theocracy and stanched "the proliferation" of "obscene rock and roll music, with its gospel of easy sexuality and relaxed morality."
But the Reverend's Pyrrhic victory over the forces of revelry, adolescent hormones and hedonism is living on borrowed time once the hip sophisticated cosmopolitan: Ren McCormick (played by Ian Merrifield) rolls into town from decadent Chicago. As with nearly every show produced at Encinal in the last three years Ian Merrifield continues to be the star and he continues to be Encinal's best candidate for eventually winning a Grammy, a Tony, an Oscar or an Emmy. His critics, if he has any, might argue that he is a young man whose confidence on stage borders on hubris. His many fans would counter that Ian Merrifield is Encinal's home-grown version of David Bowie: he sings wonderfully, he acts convincingly, he dances somewhere between Michael Jackson and Fred Astair, and his guitar licks, to use the words of Cameron Crowe, "are incendiary." While Encinal Drama Teacher Bob Moorhead may be the director of FOOTLOOSE, Ian is clearly the student leader.
Ren's mother: Ethel McCormick is superbly played by the lovely and talented Roma Estandian. As Ethel, Roma gets to showcase her mellifluous voice, do some fine acting and manages to do more costume changes than anyone else in the cast. Does Roma have a changing room or a costume trailer?
On of the best surprises in the show is Naomi Grunditz who plays the Preacher's wife: Vi Moore. Not only is Naomi a National Merit Scholarship Finalist in her daytime job, but, this scholastically outstanding senior applies her same standards of excellence to her singing: technical precision and melodious tonal quality: it is truly a pleasure to hear her sing. Simone Rodrigues, who plays Ariel Moore, is one of the most daring voices in the entire show. And, in an era of AUSD budget cuts, MS Rodrigues needs no microphone: this lady is her own amplifier and speaker system. As a recent arrival on the Encinal stage, this lady has never heard of stage fright: she is not afraid to take risks in front of an audience: she sings loudly, she sings boldly and she seems to effortlessly achieve the required range. While some high school singers have the audience inwardly praying that they will finish the song with minimal embarrassment, Simone exudes such confidence and competency in her vocals that the audience can sit back, relax and enjoy her marvelous singing.
Given her performance, MS Rodrigues is a conspicuous candidate for the Alameda Civic Light Opera. Hopefully Encinal Drama will afford her many more opportunities for continued development of her prodigious talent.
Good supporting actors include Leon Deleon as the obsequious Wes Warnicker. As the expression goes, "there are no small parts, only small actors." Leon's warm, expansive, effusive personality is clearly evidenced on stage.
Every small town has a Jeter; Encinal has a Jeter. He is the last guy to forsake shorts and to start wearing trousers to school. Jeter is the last guy to realize that his school is a coed institution. Jeter only quits wearing a hat surmounted by a pinwheel because he outgrows his and can't find a replacement in his size. At Encinal such a character as Jeter, could only be properly cast by the smiley-faced ninth grader: Jose Montes.
Alameda's recent Miss Teen Glamour Winner: Roxanne Angeles makes a delightful cameo appearance as country singer in Irene's Band. The ever radiant Bersabel Tadesse is the smiling face that lights up the entire FOOTLOOSE chorus line which is so professionally choreographed by Amy Moorhead.
FOOTLOOSE continues through the weekend of March 24th. To restore your confidence in public education and in the younger generation, and for a delightful evening of singing and dancing get thee to FOOTLOOSE at Encinal High School. The curtain goes up at 7:30 on Friday and Saturday.
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OUR TOWN
Reviewed by Jeffrey R Smith of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle
A most enjoyable and elevating production of OUR TOWN by Thorton Wilder, directed by Robert Wilson, is currently being staged by the Ross Valley Players of Marin.
When people think of OUR TOWN, they immediately flash back to high school English. Too bad that there is that ever-expanding chasm of time between high school and the present: the message of Wilder is too important to be relegated to nostalgia infrequently dredged up from our adolescent years.
OUR TOWN is an important piece of theatrical Americana: it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1943 and for good, nearly cosmic reasons: Wilder seems to have grasped the Tao and to have reached the Zen awakening.
Regrettably OUR TOWN is taken for granted: "been there; seen that" is the usual response to Wilder. The reaction is ironic because the play is stern warning about taking life for granted. If ever there were a source of profound regret in life, it would be from postponing our recognition of the miracle of existence and not reveling in our ability to perceive the cosmos: we are the sense organs of the universe. We should be ecstatic. This is the warning Wilder sets forth so clearly in OUR TOWN: discover, while you are among the living, the magic contained in even the smallest details of life.
Grover's Corners, the setting of OUR TOWN, an indistinct New England hamlet is Voltaire's Eldorado. The citizens of Grover's Corners are gods as Shakespeare divined: "What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! . . . this quintessence of dust . . ."
As Jonathan Lethem wrote in this February's HARPER'S, "The surrealists believed that objects in the world possess a certain but unspecifiable intensity that has been dulled by everyday use and utility. They (the surrealists) meant to reanimate this dormant intensity." The anesthetizing effects of habit, trifling petty thoughts, the quest for security and life in the comfort zone all serve to blind us to the dazzling coruscations of life.
Just as Agamemnon observed from the Stygian depths, "Tis better to be a swain's swain that to hold sway over all these dead souls." Emily Webb, wonderfully played by Vivian Kane, discovers too late that the perennial urgings and admonitions of saints and poets were correct and could not be overstated. Wilder saw his play as "an attempt to find a value, above all price for the smallest events of our daily life."
Wood Lockhart, as the Stage Manager, narrates the show, weaving himself in and out of the story and rightfully exalting every mundane detail of life at Grover's Corners. As Whitman, ecstatically implores us THE SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD, "Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopen'd!" so too does OUR TOWN exhort us to embrace all of life and being.
If you have forgotten the insights you gained from your acid trips, or if you have not had a profound epiphany in years, or if you fail to appreciate the miracle of being, then OUR TOWN could be the wake up call you need.
For tickets call the Ross Valley Players box office at 415 897-7772.
U.S. Naval Aviator and Lieutenant Commander Retired
Math Teacher at Encinal High School A.U.S.D.
San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle
Sidewalk Politician and Arm Chair Liberal
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FICTION
Reviewed by Jeffrey R Smith of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle
The Off Broadway West Theatre Company is presently staging FICTION by Steven Dietz.
If you ever secretly suspected you lacked a first language, had an attention deficit disorder or had an audio processing deficiency, this play is for you. It will hold you riveted from the time the klieg lights begin to glow until the cast has taken their final bows or curtsies.
Dietz makes excellent use of language: like a marine mammal trainer at Sea World, Dietz gets English to jump through flaming hoops. If you enjoy intelligent dialogue, Dietz is your playwright.
The play involves a married couple, both of who are successful writers. Two writers, two Thesauruses and one writers' camp. Realistically, would we want to listen in on their conversations only to learn they communicate in Pigeon or Cracker English using People Magazine for conversational grist? Would we expect them to leave their participles dangling from Formica crowned tables in fast food bistros?
If you enjoyed the erudite bantering and verbal sparing performed by William Powell and Myrna Loy in W.S. Van Dyke's THE THIN MAN, then again: this play is your cup of sassafras. The play relies almost exclusively on dialogue; there is little action and yet Director Richard Harder, to his credit, gives the play the fast pace feel one would ordinarily expect from an action adventure: kind of an Indiana Jones in the drawing room.
The plot synopsis in a filbert nutshell would run roughly like the following: Serendipitously, two American writers go to the same Paris café: it is lunch hour and so naturally there is only one remaining chair and one table available. (Oh those French, they are such romantics: one might wonder: "Where do they hide all the empty chairs?")
The play fast-forwards to the female writer's miss-diagnosis for terminal cancer. When she learns the dire prognosis, she has less than two weeks to live. To ensure that all her journal writing has not been in vain, she insists that her husband read nearly every journal she has filled: all of them except the one journal with the really alarming stuff.
Naturally, when wife offers up her journals for her husband's perusal, she expects reciprocity. The husband hesitates and of course the demand for reciprocity becomes more clarion. What a way to spend one's final days: coming to terms with all the things a good healthy denial mechanism would have ordinarily protected and comfortably insulated you from.
In a sense there is a reciprocal death: the husband, as imagined by the wife, dies when her illusions of him are spattered by the truth documented in his steamy journals. She on the other is slated for a death more literal than journal entries would precipitate.
Given the facile urgency with which Dietz bumps off the female lead, one would assume he was raised under the tutelage of Ernest Hemingway. While there is no Harry's Bar in the play, there is that cozy little bistro, café or lunch wagon in Paris; as Bogey would say, "We'll always have Paris."
Dietz has crafted a superlative play and the Off Broadway West Theatre Company has given it the intimacy and quality performance it deserves. For a most enjoyable evening, at 414 Mason Street, contact the ticket office at 415 440-6163.
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THE BIRTHDAY PARTY embraces many ideas. Whether such ideas were borrowed directly from other sources or they were part of the collective consciousness in which Pinter was immersed is up to the pundits, mavens, scholars and high school English teachers to decide.
Two thugs, Goldberg (played by Julian Lopez-Morillas) and McCann (played by Michael Ray Wisely), were admittedly patterned after Hemingway’s murderers in his short story: THE KILLERS. Meg and Stanley were derived from Pinter’s seminal, salad, or halcyon days as an actor in 1954. Pinter had obviously made that bold precarious leap of faith or arrogance that few actors dare: he gave up his daytime job for the stage. For his hubris, he was holed up in Eastbourne boarding house with an overbearing landlady (is there any other type?) and her solitary lodger. The Eastbourne landlady was reincarnated into Pinter’s Meg (played by Phoebe Moyer). Meg is a middle aged woman, who has cast aside moral pretenses and is trying desperately, trysting with Stanley no less, to muster a modicum of joie de vivre—not easy considering she is entrenched in a perfectly wretched life married to Petey (played by Chris Ayes). Petey is an arranger and leasing agent for deck chairs. The solitary lodger of the Eastbourne flophouse, a concert pianist, who no longer played the piano, serves as the raw material for Pinter’s character Stanley (played by James Carpenter).
Much of Pinter’s past is tossed into THE BIRTHDAY PARTY. Pinter lived through the London Blitz: each night he sat in total darkness awaiting new craters to be formed in the London landscape by Dorniers, Heinkels and Junkers. To pass the time in the blackout Pinter played Blind Man’s Bluff: a sexually charged game of suspense in inky darkness. Pinter recreates the excitement of the darkness at Stanley’s birthday party.
Pinter is a master of suspense achieved by subtlety and ambiguity. Stanley in many ways is similar to Kafka’s Josef K, who, for reasons purposely left uncertain, is pursued by two men. The men, rather than abducting Stanley immediately, throw a bizarre birthday party for him. Stanley’s sin is to have left some hazy organization, abandoned some mission in his past much like Jonah did when he abrogated his responsibility to Nineveh. Perhaps Pinter is revisiting the decision he made in 1948 to dodge National Service during the Berlin Airlift and apply for conscientious objector status. Pinter points to one line in THE BIRTHDAY PARTY as the crux of the play: “Stan, don’t let them tell you what to do!” The admonition is a call for personal autonomy above all. We may never know what club Pinter alludes to when he tells a critic that his play is about, “ . . . the socio-religious monster (that) arrives to effect alteration and censure upon a member of the club who has discarded responsibility . . . “ but it is interesting to speculate.
If you eschew prosaic linearity and the strictures of literality, then this play is for you: it provides room to breath, space to reflect and leaves the jury i.e. the audience, in endless deliberation. As a British Critic with foresight predicted nearly 50 years ago, THE BIRTHDAY PARTY is “wonderful and would be heard from for years to come.” For tickets, call the Aurora Box Office at 510 843-4822 or visit www.auroratheatre.org and enjoy.
Jeffrey R Smith
U.S. Naval Aviator and Lieutenant Commander Retired
Math Teacher at Encinal High School A.U.S.D.
San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle
Sidewalk Politician and Arm Chair Liberal