Running currently in the East Bay Community are three quite disparate shows which serve to highlight what the theater can offer the paying public as both balm for its wounds & education for its sensibilities.  The choice remains up to the individual.

HOMEBODY/KABUL, Tony Kushner’s much anticipated latest play—actually two plays back to back—has been extended yet again through July 14. Presented on the old thrust stage at Berkeley Repertory Theatre (for those who don’t know, there used only to be one performance space:  see below for the current production at the new Roda Theatre next door.) H/K is ambitious to a fault, but no one familiar with Kushner expected anything less.  The surprise to me is that the pieces might be considered to have been workshopped and polished, which is not to say that the performances are not deft & assured.  This is to say that ‘ambitious’ seems to be synonymous with ‘long’.  On opening night we were informed that actor Michelle Morain, playing ‘The Homebody’, had broken her foot and so was necessarily using a cane & restricting her movements until such time as she will have healed.  She then proceeded to do an entire one-act play from her armchair.  My partner, who loves the combination of politics & theater unavoidable in Kushner’s work, fell asleep 30 or 40 minutes in.  How is it possible that Tony Kushner can work a piece with a director or two or three directors & not come to appreciate how long an audience can pay attention to a person sitting in a chair for 75 minutes? She’s sitting, we’re sitting, it’s bright where she is, dark around us;  unless she’s got one hell of a range, naps will be taken.  So we got the idea already, now let’s move on.

On the proscenium portion of the stage the scrim rises & KABUL, which starts at the end of  HOMEBODY, wakes us up.  Then we gotta wait through intermission to proceed.  I was struck by the irony of seeing Harsh Nayyar, who played the unenviable role of Gandhi’s assassin in the Ben Kingsley epic, in the flesh.  As Mondanabosh, whimsical poet & purveyor of Esperanto & from a distance & with a beard, one forgets the piercing, haunted quality of his face as so briefly seen in the film.  There are many characters in KABUL, but the evening belongs to Jacqueline Antaramian.  Amongst the smudged memories I have of three hours and forty minutes of this intense drama, the sound of Mahala’s voice & the impression of agony in her body are crystal.  If someone could slap Tony around a bit & get him to control himself, these plays could end up pretty good someday.

I had the good luck to see  Caryl Churchill’s CLOUD 9 not so long ago at NCTC in San Francisco in a much smaller house. By me, the cast kicked butt,  however during the opening night festivities my partner as well as other folk were still raving about the original Eureka production with Luis Oropeza as Joshua/Cathy.  Strong first casts are tough to beat, but since I didn’t see that one, I had come fresh to the experience. Now through July  28  CLOUD 9 plays at the Roda. This time, I was the one to impress. My sense is that there is flash point amongst the actors in an ensemble like this & if lacking, it isn’t found & corrected pronto, then the production reaches a level that it would take a miracle to surpass.  All it takes is one or two missteps in casting or concept & the magic just ain’t there.  The element of surprise is already gone for those familiar with the work, so I suppose it’s an unfair burden on the cast is not only to jazz it up for the newbies, but create it again for us Churchill groupies.  But there it is:  plays that are destined to be classics have got that nasty strength that can elude the best intentions.  And what intention was there in switching roles about so that Joshua/Cathy ends up Joshua/Edward and Clive/Edward ends up Clive/Cathy?  It muddies up the connection between Joshua’s Act I ending gunshot & the lunatic gun-toting Act II Cathy and effectively erases the link between Act I Father Clive and Act II Son Edward, not to speak of the other relationships it alters.  But give me a year between productions & I will still get fooled by Lin/Ms. Saunders Act I.  I love it.

South to San Leandro & California Conservatory Theatre, a petite space for such a grand name with Equity waivers to boot.  Unfortunately its current production of Agatha Christie’s THE UNEXPECTED GUEST through June 30 has a serious case of malaise that seems insurmountable.  My own internal barometer for success of a venture is sent immediately into the Danger Zone when the lead Brit has so tenuous a hold on his nationality that it induces a queasy feeling throughout.  Like a mold that refuses to be eradicated with treatment, it spreads ill-will & makes much seem to lack the health that one would prefer.  Much as the cast might wish it otherwise, the audience ends up comatose.  Some happier bits can be attributed to fine touches by Leon Goertzen as the ‘boy’ Jan Warwick and John Anthony Nolan whose expressive face says so much with economy of style & wit as Sergeant Cadwallader.

By contrast, an evening at the Dean Lesher Regional Center seeing the Act Now! offering of the old chestnut HEAVEN CAN WAIT  is well spent.  Eric Moore as the edgy Joe Pendleton wannabe Champ, jumps right into the ring & keeps punching til lights out.  His scenes with Bill Clemente as a baffled Max the Champ’s trainer & manager are suffused with warmth & fun.  Director Irv Siegal wanted to get that old feeling from the movie back & he has succeeded, but I gotta say, when I heard the theme for Gillette, I saw the little black & white TV, not Madison Square Garden.  There might have been something out there to evoke an earlier time…my quibble for the day.  A perky Jane Ayles lent some lovely variety to both gender & accent in this ‘American’ tale.  More seriously, some ill advised cartoony characterization could be toned down, but it’s because Moore’s Joe is so well grounded & real that one finds the other style intrusive.  Small issues when overall the effect is one of ease & connection between cast members who seem clearly to be engaged with the storytelling at hand.  Makes for a satisfying visit whatever your take on the afterlife.

 © 2002 Claudine Jones

..

All articles are archived on this site.
To access the Archives .

© 2002 Aviar-DKA Ltd. All rights reserved (including authors’ and individual copyrights as indicated). No
part of this material may be reproduced, translated, transmitted, framed or stored in a retrieval system for
public or private use without the written permission of the publisher and the individual copyright holder.
For permissions, contact publisher@scene4.com

.