THE MOUNTAIN PLAY: HAIR THE UNDERPANTS examined by a theatre critic A.C.T. performs David Harrower's BLACKBIRD
HAIR
Reviewed by Jeffrey R Smith of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle
Director James Dunn has correctly chosen HAIR for the Mountain Play this year.
As anyone with a sense of history or plugged into the local media would know, this is the 40th anniversary of the San Francisco Summer of Love.
Without sounding like an anthropologist or sociologist, let us say that that the first shoes to be thrown into the gear train of the Vietnam War Machine were tossed from Golden Gate Park in 1967 when the lovers of Peace and Freedom kicked off their Penny Loafers and Pumps and donned sandals; and dropped their pants and trousers to don bell bottoms.
Herb Caen, quick to attach monikers and forge neologisms, called this 60s evolution of the 50s Beatniks: Hippies.
The Beach Boys and Jan and Dean had already turned America's youth culture toward California, so it was not long before clones of California Hippies began cropping up like dandelions in New York's Central Park.
The result was the East Coast Hippie, the eventual hardball radicalization of the gentle Hippie philosophy and the smash Broadway Hit: HAIR.
The show is set in 1967 and the anti-war movement, given the trepidation with which draft cards were burned in it, was only in its meek nascent stages.
Politically, HAIR was a long ways from the show down at Kent State, the SDS and the explosive Weathermen.
HAIR expresses a romantically arrogant belief that the cosmos is merely a calendar for civilization.
As Hipparchus first postulated circa 147 B.C.E. the earth's axis of rotation is precessing like a spinning top winding down.
One complete precession takes about 26,000 years, or one Platonic Year.
The progress or the precession can be tracked by observing either the current pole star or the sign of the Zodiac that occupies the zenith during on the night of the vernal equinox.
Given the rudimentary instruments of measurement and that the precession rate is only 1 degree every 71.6 years, one might wonder how Hipparchus recognized what was happening on such a grand, protracted time scale.
The basket weaver crowd likes to imagine we are presently basking in the Age of Aquarius.
Presently the vernal equinox is actually in the constellation Pisces, but it is slowly approaching Aquarius; hence the lyrics: "This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius."
Without looking at the night sky, we can be certain the peace has yet to begin to "rule the planet" nor that love has yet to "guide the stars."
Bush is in the Whitehouse; our country is being run by plutocrats, oligarchs and kleptocrats; not by cosmic revelation nor mystic intuition.
The influence of petroleum is presently trumping any inputs from love, harmony or peace.
Eventually, when the vernal equinox does hit Aquarius standby for utopia, because according to astrological mysticism and related hokum there will be unusual harmony and understanding in the world.
Perhaps then we will be able to understand the tax code and the meaning of parking signs in San Francisco.
While the astrologers may argue otherwise, it seems unlikely that the political and social climate of the planet will ever be influenced by such irrelevancies as which sign of the Zodiac dominates the vernal equinox.
Regardless of whether we were being influenced by stars or quality Marijuana seeping through the borders, the Summer of Love in 1967 is not to be forgotten.
One of the finest pieces of writing ever tapped out by Hunter S. Thompson acknowledges the very special aura created by Flower Power in San Francisco.
To quote from FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS: "San Francisco in the middle 60s was a very special time and place to be a part of. But no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time in the world, whatever it meant. There was madness in any direction; at any hour you could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right; that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle: That sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense—we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum. We were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west. And with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark: that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
If you were alive and well in the late 1960s, whether you were stoned or straight, against the war or apathetic, part of the silent majority or the vocal minority, you need to revisit those special times via HAIR.
Prior to the show you need to abandon two hopes.
Firstly, that there will be nudity: James Dunn has prudishly bowdlerized the play.
HAIR is now fit for the hormone driven under-18 crowd and the pacemaker driven over-60 crowd.
You have been warned: do not attempt to have the price of your ticket refunded because you did not get to see sufficient T and A.
Secondly, do not expect the songs to sound like they do on vinyl, your 8-tract, your reel to reel or your CDs.
There are however some exceptional voices in the show: Susan Zehinsky being the most noteworthy.
For a delightful afternoon of nostalgia and sylvan gaiety, call the box office at 415-383-1100 or type in www.MountainPlay.org.
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THE UNDERPANTS
Reviewed by Jeffrey R Smith of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle
What started out in 1910 as a German farce, if you'll excuse what seems to be a contradiction in terms, has ended up on the stage of the Ross Valley Players nearly a century later.
Along the way, or himmel as the Teutonics would say, several things happened to Carl Sternheim's original play: THE UNDERPANTS.
One, Steve Martin adapted it for American stages and American funny bones.
And two, one of Marin County's finest directors, videlicet Robert "Bob" Currier, made it a heck of a lot funnier than anyone remembers it being.
While some directors tend to be a little stuffy and huffy, Robert Currier seems to be sui generic or a rara avis in the director's chair.
Rather than establishing a steep authority gradient within the playhouse, Robert applies the latest theories on human resource management: Bob listens to actors when they suggest improvements for a show.
Not only is a mark of a confident director, it is taking advantage of the simple fact that actors, in addition to directors, know what makes a show funny.
Humor is added to a show one gag at a time.
And Bob is not afraid to integrate ideas from the cast into his shows.
Robert's augmentation of a script fleshes it out so much that the original script seems virtually skeletal by comparison.
If you attend THE UNDERPANTS which is now running through June 17 th, you will be watching it through the tracks of your tears: tears of laughter.
It is unconditionally and absolutely hilarious!
If you are facing gum transplants, another foreclosure, a fourth divorce, the rabies series, 14 weeks of boot camp, a weekend in the garden, a twelve step therapy, elective psycho surgery, changing faucet washers or a two week vacation with your ex-in-laws and you want to get your mind off such niggling and nagging future events, this show is for you.
If humor is the best medicine, then this show can cure milkmaid's knee, baker's itch, pre-solstice depression, dropsy and perineal itch.
Perhaps the greatest contribution of visual humor comes from Philip Goleman who plays Benjamin Cohen.
Philip operates in the stratospheric comedic tradition occupied by Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Ben Turpin, Peter Sellers and Steve Martin himself.
One can only assume that this show gets funnier with each performance.
If you enjoy gut retching laughter, this is your show.
If you are dating someone and he or she suggests you are too serious, too dour, too morose, too suicidal, bring him or her to this show and they will witness another side of you: the Dionysian you.
For laughter therapy, can the box office at 415-456-9555 or visit the Ross Valley Players web site at www.rossvalleyplayers.com.
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BLACKBIRD
Reviewed by Jeffrey R Smith of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle
A.C.T. of San Francisco is currently performing BLACKBIRD.
Written by David Harrower and directed by Loretta Greco, the play is a moral hybrid vacillating somewhere between the blithely passionate innocence of Shakespeare's ROMEO AND JULIET and the obsessive delirium of Nabokov's LOLITA.
In the vernacular of England, the title is the equivalent of our word jailbird.
The jailbird in this case is a fifty something ex-convict who did time following his conviction for having had an affair with a twelve-year-old girl when he was forty.
Despite his efforts to take on a new identity and start a new life, his victim finds him.
While the script is captivating and extremely well crafted, it seems that its intent is to produce both ambiguity or ambivalence.
If one limits oneself to the essential facts i.e. a 40-year-old man has had sex with 12-year-old girl, then it is easy to pass judgment.
The problem is that once one ventures beyond the letter and the spirit of the law, one quickly loses ones moral bearings in a blurry morass of relativism and mitigating circumstances.
Should our outrage be focused on the age at which the young girl was illegally ushered in to premature womanhood?
Let us remember that Juliet's mother was 12 when she married and Juliet had just turned 13 when she married her Romeo and yet Shakespeare's play has swooned romantic audiences for centuries.
Remember too that Italian director Franco Zeffirelli stunned the screen world making ROMEO AND JULIET.
His daring opus immediately became a film classic that would garner a host of international film awards, earn four Academy Award nominations, become one of the most popular motion pictures of all time and it contained a nude scene with Olivia Hussey cast as a thirteen-year-old child bride on her wedding night.
Perhaps age is not the factor; maybe it is the age difference that is the real chaffing point?
How many women has Donald Trump courted and/or married that were 30 years his junior?
And what about Paul McCartney?
His rapacious ex-wife was more than 30 years his junior.
The titillating edge on most Hollywood tabloid love stories derives from the age differences.
Remember too that a significant age difference is not only implicit to the term trophy wife, it is sine qua non.
While no one is expected to pardon the blackbird for his egregious offenses, Harrower's play does pose the question: "From whence does the psychological damage derive?"
Was it during the man and girl's early infatuation period?
Was it during their first and only sexual encounter?
Was it when the police, against the 12-year-old's will, drugged her and pried her legs apart to swab for evidence?
Was it when the defense attorney directed the accused to say that he planned to abandon the girl immediately after the consummation; predicting that the prevarication, while devastating the girl, would earn a lighter sentence than the truth: that he planned to marry her some day?
Was it the girl's parents who refused to relocate from the area in which the scandal took place thereby baiting the inevitable ostracism that the victim would face?
Was it the girl's parent who blamed the victim rather than the convicted?
As the artistic director of A.C.T. remarks, the play is wrought with "eloquence and startling reversals."
Therein lies the irony of the play: if it is eloquent then wherein lies the ambiguity and if it is about the ultimate crime of a sexual predator wherein is the opportunity for a reversal?
The pre-opening night hype consistently claimed that the play was disturbing; that is an understatement.
Actors Steven Culp and Jessi Campbell really pull the control rods on this one.
When Una hoists her skirt and is reclining on a table in the employee cafeteria inviting Peter to revisit the scene of the crime, the audience is panting when they know they should not be.
If you are ready for a little cognitive turmoil, contradiction and moral effacement, then this play is for you.
It will leave you thinking, or perhaps fantasizing, for days.
For tickets call the box office at 415.749.2250 and leave moral pretense and preconceived judgments at home, otherwise, they could get damaged or broken.
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