ROCK 'N' ROLL, A STOPPARD GRAND SLAM REVIEW OF TAMING OF THE SHREW MOONLIGHT & MAGNOLIAS MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING Reviewed CALS SHAKES DOES VANYA
ROCK 'N' ROLL
Reviewed by Jeff Smith of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle
Before we wade deep into the superficial waters of theatrical criticism, let it be known, that if you see only one play on the west coast, it should be Tom Stoppard's, a.k.a. Tomas Straussler's, ROCK 'N' ROLL.
And, you should probably see it a minimum of twice: Stoppard is profound, complex and, like a good college professor, the pace of his delivery is merciless: there is a lot of material you might miss some of it on the first go around.
Stoppard, much like former President Bill Clinton, argues that "We have to begin again with the ordinary meaning of words."
While Clinton argued that we had to establish "what the definition of 'is' is" and what the exact meaning of "sex" is; Stoppard explores the precise definitions and nuances of a more politically charged lexicon like: liberation, occupation, patriotism, cleansing, art, and solidarity.
Clinton's depth as a linguist is found analogously in Stoppard's superficial character: the Cambridge firebrand: Candida.
Candida recalls her revolution of 1968; it was an endocrinal upheaval when she took to the streets and sheets (mostly the sheets) with drugs, alcohol, protest music and casual but intense and politically meaningful sex.
As she prattles on, fueled by wine and bourgeois self-absorption, her listeners, émigrés from Czechoslovakia, vividly remember their attempted revolution of 1968, i.e. Prague Spring: when the Soviet Tanks took up all the good parking places around Prague and any Czech with half a brain or an ounce of individualism was swept off the streets and toted to re-education centers for cultural "cleansing," forced community service or worse.
Candida on the other hand, blurrily and nostalgically remembers her turgid, turbulent sexual rebellion for her own sartorial courage i.e. the Sergeant Pepper Jacket that she so militantly wore to rock concerts: against the will of her feckless parents.
While rock and roll was a social lubricant for the decadent west and provided the back beat for pelvic gyrations (both on and off the dance floor); it was a social and political adhesive for the oppressed within the Warsaw Pact and its overlord, the Soviet Union.
In addition to listening to rock music from the west, the politically disenfranchised of Czechoslovakia listened to their homegrown (albeit cloned) underground music: principally the Plastic People of the Universe.
The Plastic People got started within weeks of the appearance of Soviet tanks in Prague.
While the Plastic People maintained that they were "outside of politics," in the upside down, paranoid world of perverted Marxism, announcing one's total indifference to politics is an "in your face" political statement.
Not satisfied with total political and economic control, the commie swine targeted musicians in order to gain absolute psychological control over their political prisoners i.e. everyone within the eastern bloc.
Just listening to rock and rolls music, domestic or imported, could get your subsidized toilet paper ration curtailed from three rolls per year to none: not a good thing in a land where laundry detergent is so scarce.
Stoppard's Max is a diehard armchair Commie-Pinko and a fatuous apologist for Lenin and Stalin.
Max valiantly fought the cold war from the University podium at Cambridge: spouting mind-numbing hollow Marxist rhetoric to British ruling class rubes while sipping Clarets on the verdant portico of his limestone villa gratuitously on loan to him by a trusting University.
Amazingly enough, amongst Max's students was one earnest expatriate of Czechoslovakia: Jan.
Upon hearing of the Soviet invasion of Prague in '68, Jan packed up is record albums and mobilized to Prague.
Jan, a Pollyanna, raised beyond the pale of the brutal Soviet Army, entertains the myth that the liberalization process started by the ousted Alexander Dubcek, will resume under the Russian stooge Gustav Husak, once the number of Soviet tanks falls below the number of parking spaces in Prague.
Thanks to a no-knock policy that spares neither the door hinges nor the welcome mat, Jan finds himself in prison for listening to naughty seditious contraband rock and rock music.
Max arrives in Prague to bail Jan out; swapping tepid third rate intelligence tripe for Jan's freedom.
In world where ratting out your neighbor for humming the words to a Bob Dylan tune will earn you an extra roll of toilet paper; the government has ample incentives to run on useless intelligence.
The snitch pretends he has important national security information, the government goon pretends it's hot stuff and so on up the chain of command: everyone gets an extra roll of toilette paper for the month and the senior apparatchik gets a pack of American cigarettes: presumably Marlboros.
Stoppard's play ends happily with the poet Vaclav Havel rhapsodizing at the Czech helm and the Plastic People of the Universe heading off to the very vortex of western decadence i.e. America, to become rich rock stars; hopefully with coteries of mindless groupies.
After all what is the best we can hope for after the Iron Curtain has rusted away?
One final ironic note: as the fabric curtain comes down on a performance of ROCK 'N' ROLL at A.C.T., the Rolling Stone's START ME UP is playing at a volume level suitable for middle age tympanums, ironically the version played has been Bowdlerized, self censorship prevents me from telling you what has been deleted.
You figure it out.
For a thought provoking evening that is sure to exacerbate your existential angst, get thee to the American Conservatory Theater.
For tickets surf to www.act-sf.org or call 415-749-2ACT.
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THE TAMING OF THE SHREW
Reviewed by Jeff Smith of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle.
The Off Broadway West Theatre Company is presently performing THE TAMING OF THE SHREW at the Phoenix Theatre in San Francisco.
Contrary to the much paraphrased Hippocrates, "Desperate times do NOT always call for desperate measures."
An unraveling economy may provoke many of us to hunker down materially speaking, yet our culture is far from bankrupt nor is it slipping into a recession: it remains opulently rich, thanks to people like Shakespeare and the people who continue to trot him out on to stage.
We may lack the lucre to fill up our behemoth SUVs with high test, yet our culture carries with it a textured richness: a nectar gathered from the world's greatest minds.
We may have lost some poems of Sappho, some plays of Sophocles and the entire Library at Alexandria, but now our cultural wealth travels intact: safe and accessible.
"Ars gratia artis," the professed credo of M.G.M., is even more applicable to the dedicated theater company founded by Richard Harder and Barbara Michelson-Harder.
Art, after all, is the flower of the mind: it is the sublime activity that we were intended for after we have procured the mundane logistics of life: food, clothing and shelter.
Off Broadway West's stated goal is "to awaken audiences to new ideas."
And while "truth" may be scarce in an election year, their mission is to "expand excellence and truth in the arts," if not in the political domain.
This production is every bit as elevating as it is hilariously entertaining.
For those not au courant in Elizabethan English, visual and physical comedy clarifies, augments and reinforces the poetic, bawdy, erudite, ironic and refined humor of Shakespeare.
Director Joyce Henderson has graced her show with some amazing people, true bohemians: all of who are entirely devoted to the performing arts.
Ben Fisher--who plays Petruchio: suitor to Katherina--is bold and brash; with swagger and arrogant confidence he carries off Petruchio's antic to "fight fire with fire" with convincing effectiveness: surpassing the irascible Katherina at her own shrewish game and winning her reluctant yet ardent love.
Jocelyn Stringer--an endearing Katherine--so sharply defines her truculent surly character that one inwardly hopes that Petruchio might overstep the reigns of the script to stealthy take the highroad: safely out of town.
Miss Stringer's well crafted Kate is not the kind of woman around whom you would openly make disparaging remarks about Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton nor Nancy Pelosi.
Like many that have gone before her, MS Henderson has "freely adapted and directed" Shakespeare's finest romantic comedy.
Included in MS Henderson's revised script are new characters such as Lil' Billie ( played by the delightful Sandy Rouge ), a ludicrous Bible Salesman ( played by Steven Spohn), the Russian Guy ( played by débuting Fred Tabsharani ), and a very scintillating and sintering Hostess ( torridly played by Tabitha Lentle ).
The perennial nature of TAMING OF THE SHREW--written in 1594 depending on your source--is confirmed by its many recent adaptations.
Cole Porter set it to music and re-titled it KISS ME KATE.
Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles starred in the Hollywood version: TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU, set in a contemporary high school.
Don't sit at home drearily focusing on the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Indy Mac, Freddy Mac, AIG, your trust fund, your stock portfolio and your arches.
The essence of our humanity is to be an artist and to partake of the arts.
Get thee to the Phoenix Theatre at 414 Mason Street where the curtain goes up on THE TAMING OF THE SHREW every Thursday, Friday and Saturday evening at 8:00 until October 18.
For more info or tickets surf on over to www.offbroadwaywest.org or unfurl the cell phone to call 800-838-3006 ( but not while you're driving ).
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MOONLIGHT & MAGNOLIAS
Reviewed by Jeff Smith of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle.
Now through October 12th, The Ross Valley Players are staging Ron Hutchinson's MOONLIGHT & MAGNOLIAS.
Robert Wilson directs this hilarious, frantically paced historical piece about the Herculean task of transitioning Margaret Mitchell's tome: GONE WITH THE WIND, from the printed page to the silver screen.
The play is faithful both to the character of David O. Selznick and certainly to the spirit with which the final draft of the screenplay was written.
Hollywood director George Cukor, a perfectionist and an artist in his own eyes, was a dawdler in the budgetary eyes of David O. Selznick.
Cukor had the first crack at making the movie using a script prepared by Sidney Howard.
The honor did not last long: Selznick quickly grew restless and lost confidence in Cukor.
To justify supplanting Cukor with Victor Fleming, Selznick argued, "I think the biggest black mark against our management to date is the Cukor situation and we can no longer be sentimental about it.... We are a business concern and not patrons of the arts."
Selznick's justification for cashiering Cukor is ironic: MGM studios, for whom Selznick made the film, to date, opens every movie with its logo and the motto: "Ars Gratia Artis" which was bungled Latin for "ars artis gratia" meaning "art for art sake."
Sidney Howard had agreed to write one of many proposed screenplays.
When David O. Selznick, traveled to Bermuda in September 1938 in a futile effort to finalize the script, he carried along four suitcases full of drafts.
Many other writers contributed to the final script, with the final sum paid to every one of them being $126,000.
The task was considered so daunting that even F. Scott Fitzgerald was invited to participate in the writing, and at one point in the film's juddering evolution, Alfred Hitchcock was invited to direct.
When Victor Fleming was assigned to the movie February 1939, he rejected Howard's script.
Shooting was suspended for 17 days while the script was rewritten: principally by Ben Hecht.
Hecht acknowledged that Howard's screenplay was "superb," thus the final draft so closely adhered to Howard's script that the film's closing credits name Sidney Howard, exclusively, as the screenwriter.
MOONLIGHT & MAGNOLIAS nostalgically revisits this frantic period when production had stopped while the cast and crew were languishing on the payroll clock.
Perhaps to compress the plot and to escalate of the sense of pressure, playwright Ron Hutchinson whittles the 17-day hiatus down to 5-day one.
Stephen Dietz plays Ben Hecht for the Ross Valley Players.
Dietz credibly comes across as a capable genius; who could forsake showers, shaving, bed rest, conjugal visits and real food for five days while he hunkered over a manual Smith-Corona, locked and loaded with flimsies and carbon paper, to tap out the greatest screenplay ever.
Russell E. Lessig is cast as Victor Fleming.
Being the only gentile, Lessig's Fleming, is reminiscent of Camus' OUTSIDER, sequestered in Selznick's office with Selznick and Hecht.
David Kester is David O. Selznick: talking faster than most people can read; perhaps even listen.
Kester is a marvel on stage: his bearing, movements, posturing and delivery capture the Titanic ambition of Selznick.
The subtext of the play revisits the nagging anti-Semitism that has prevailed within the United States and elsewhere since the fall of Judea.
The basis for such a bias was ostensibly because of religious inanities; more likely it is due to coveting the financial successes of the more cosmopolitan culture.
Today this same anti-Semitism, because of the secularization of the U.S. culture and the absurdity of any religious arguments against the Jewish people, has transmogrified or reinvented itself, under a weak political ruse, as anti-Zionism or an anti-Israeli bend.
The play is funny and complex and it has a capable cast to make it all work.
No one said that serious drama cannot be funny: this is.
For tickets surf on over to www.rossvalleyplayers.com or unfold the cell and call—when the CHP are not a factor—the box office at 415-456-9555.
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MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
Reviewed by Jeff Smith of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle.
Now through September 28th, the Marin Shakespeare Company is crowning its 19th season by staging MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING at the Forest Meadows Amphitheatre in San Rafael.
While the action or the plot-line centers on the saga of the cruelly maligned and slandered Hero (played by Khamara Pettus) and her tragically duped suitor Claudio (played by Christopher Maikish), this play clearly orbits about the reluctant, resistive, involuntary lovers: Beatrice (Cat Thompson) and Benedick (Darren Bridgett).
The play does contain a little transitory pathos, but at its core are the hilarious machinations by which Eros, friends, comrades, fate and hormones deliver Beatrice and Benedick to that slippery slope leading to wedding cakes and the propagation of the species.
Despite the best efforts of their scathing wits, combative egos, bruising bantering and trenchant reluctance, love is ultimately victorious.
Cat Thompson plays a fiery Beatrice—no intentional reference to her beautifully coifed hair—too intelligent and too heavily armed with cynicism to willingly step into the snares of love.
Beatrice fends off any and all romantic overtures and seductive assaults of even the most well-intentioned suitors; excepting the gallant and charming Benedick.
Thompson creates a Beatrice so dazzling that even the most prudent suitor would forget to sign his portion of the pre-nuptial contract.
Darren Bridgett who has practically grown up on Marin Stages—as an actor that is—gets measurably better every season: he stands straddling the stage: one foot in comedy and one foot in acting; and he does remarkably well in both domains.
Darren's delivery—highly animated, densely punctuated with comic facial expressions and physical comedy—brings the audience to an understanding of the richness of Shakespeare's humor regardless of the degree of fluency one enjoys in Elizabethan English.
Darren is arguably the best comedian north of the Golden Gate and south of Prince Rupert Island.
Looking at the polish of this production, it is hard to believe that Shakespeare survives on a shoestring.
The secret is resourcefulness: artistic directors Robert and Lesley Currier are magnets for earnest talent.
Michael Berg—the costume designer—is one of the more conspicuous talents in the crew: Michael also does costumes for Center Rep in Walnut Creek, the Ross Valley Players and for the Mountain play.
In this production, he has gussied up the Italian soldiers—Benedict, Don Pedro, Don John and Claudio—so well, it looks almost as if these Italians dandies could actually win a war; if not then perhaps a battle, or a skirmish, or better yet a board game like Backgammon or Parcheesi.
If you are thinking about a convincing costume for a Masquerade Ball, a Halloween Soiree or a Bank Heist, Michael Berg should be your point of contact.
The Set Design, by Bruce Lackovic, is befitting the opulent Italian Villa it portrays: then too, it is rugged enough to double as a Jungle Jim: half the cast has the opportunity to climb on his Rose Pergola; Darren Bridgett swings inverted by one foot from this Pergola, and yet—to everyone's relief—its budges nary an inch.
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING is quality entertainment that is both edifying and hilarious; you will not find such a winning combination anywhere: the ballet, an opera, the drag races, kickboxing nor a tractor pull.
So drop the TV remote and bring the kids out for audience friendly Shakespeare that the whole family will enjoy.
Bring a picnic dinner and a six-pack of your favorite wine; if you sit in the orchestra section Darren Bridgett will join you during the play, so have an extra glass of chilled Pinot Grigio waiting for him.
For tickets to a most enjoyable and enchanting evening, call the box office at 415-499-4488.
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The California Shakespeare production of UNCLE VANYA, by Anton Chekhov, was unquestionably the theatrical zenith of the 2008 summer season.
VANYA has come roaring back into modernity again as our host planet wishes it could do something to rid itself of the ungrateful parasites who work tirelessly to destroy it by transforming Eden into a raped denuded landscape, with warming acrid vapors and fetid waters.
The dying Chekhov--he suffered an early demise: age 44, due to tuberculosis--was optimistic that the planet would ultimately be rescued from mankind's willingness to follow an unsustainable trajectory into ecological ruin.
The mavens of Chekhov might argue that UNCLE VANYA is the final adaptation of an earlier draft titled THE WOOD-DEMON.
With the exception of Vanya formerly being George, Astrov having been Khrushchov, and Telegin having been Dyadin, the two cast of characters are pretty much symmetric.
Depending on which Chekhov scholar you believe, VANYA came off the quill as late as 1896, long after THE WOOD-DEMON had already been staged in Moscow in December of 1889.
UNCLE VANYA is unequivocally one of the great masterpieces of world theatre, while THE WOOD-DEMON languishes in VANYA's shadow: "unjustly neglected."
Since few women read this section of Critics' World, there is little need for political correctness, self-censorship or mincing one's opinion.
Let us be blunt: VANYA is a man's play.
Yes, yes Sonya does suffer miserably from unrequited love, but hey that's her chosen leitmotiv; move on as the couples therapists would say.
This critic had a thing for skater Michelle Qwan and all he ever got from it was more restraining orders: so don't preach to us about unrequited love.
At its core is a "siren" or as the California Shakespeare script calls Yelena, "a mermaid."
Helen, Elena, Yelena . . . depending on whose translation you pick up . . . is a Nereid, a Siren, a Vixen, a Vampire: the kind of a woman you marry without a pre-nuptial contract.
Yelena, because of her passive hollow beauty alone, destroys men's lives.
Both Astrov and Vanya come to complete arrestment when they gaze upon the disturbing destructive beauty of Yelena.
Doctor Astrov ignores his country patients, preferring furtive opportunities to look upon Yelena through the rising steam of tea from the samovar by indolent days or through the rising fumes of vodka by torpid evenings.
Vanya, who had sacrificed himself for the mere imitation of art: muscling hay into the barn and working beside the peasants, dropps his hay fork to squander his days: tormenting himself with idolatrous and adulterous lust for Yelena.
Like the sailors of yore who dashed their ships on the shoals trying to get a better look at the topless sirens--we've all been there: Santorini, Mykonos, Taormina, Positano, Pismo Beach--neither Astrov nor Vanya will stray from the home of Serebryakov for fear of interrupting their view of Yelena.
Vanya lets the hay mildew in the fields, while Astrov lets his patients moan in their sick beds.
Chekhov wrote VANYA as a comedy.
Unfortunately, Konstantin Stanislavsky of the Moscow Art Theatre saw VANYA as drama.
Chekhov's characters were "conceived in the spirit of the vaudevilles:" the play was first performed in the provinces much the way Moliere staged his: rustic and rowdy and devoid of sentimentality or pity.
Fortunately California Shakespeare remains closer to the comic spirit of Chekhov rather than the maudlin mood of Stanislavsky.
Dan Hiat (Vanya), Andy Murray (Astrov) and Howard Swain (Telegin) all provide a full measure of comedy to their characters.
If you didn't find VANYA funny, you were trying too hard to understand the absurdities of life in the Russian countryside.
Don't make the same mistake on THE CHERRY ORCHARD.
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