Tag Archives: arts

Comedy of Terrors: “Exit the King” at City Garage

Natasha St. Clair Johnson and Troy Dunn in “Exit the King” at City Garage
Photo courtesy of Paul Rubenstein

If the death of one man is a tragedy and a million a statistic, where does Everyman‘s death fall? So asks Ionesco as his infinitely mutable Bérenger rages against mortality in “Exit the King,” just opened at City Garage. This was one of the plays that introduced me to small theatre, that distinct art form with which I’ve had an on-again, off-again relationship ever since. I didn’t know what to make of Ionesco when I first encountered him. It was late 1993 and the Independent Theatre Company (ITC) had staged “Exit” at their tiny House of Candles Theatre on Stanton Street in the lower East Side of New York City. I had heard of the absurdists, knew they were “important,” and that this play along with “Rhinoceros” were considered essential by those who knew about such things. I don’t remember anything specific about the production apart from walking out with more questions than answers and yet willing to try the playwright again.

Chief Garagistes Frédérique Michel and Charles Duncombe have crafted their own translaptation of the now well-known story – a petulant, arrogant, self-absorbed bigamist struldbrugg of a King Bérenger the First (Troy Dunn) is fading after four hundred years and doesn’t want to go, gently or otherwise, into that good night. He pouts, sulks, screams, and tantrums through the five stages of grief as his two wives and small retinue, emblems of his body and the body politic, try to ease what’s left of his mind. Only the second wife, the keening Queen Marie (Lindsay Plake) shares his belief in the unfairness and tragedy of it all. The rest try to prepare him for the inevitable, each according to his or her means.

Michel preserves the one act structure and plays up the comedic elements for most of it while not overplaying the house style. Other than the Doctor’s (Anthony Sannazzaro) Pythonesque silly walk, the movement work is kept in check in favor of the text. There is not much extraneous business and Duncombe’s set supports the action unobtrusively. (The Actors Gang staged “Exit” 20 years ago, turning a tragicomic romp into a two act slog. That, my second encounter with the work, did not survive the merciful intermission.) We begin to suspect that the King really isn’t and that we’re seeing the end of Everyman Bérenger, majestic in mind only, with other characters representing parts of his failing kingdom-cum-body. The Doctor and Guard (David E. Frank) quietly back off the stage leaving him defenseless. Much put-upon Maid Juliette (Kat Johnston in a fine, understated turn) leaves and the myriad autonomous functions of the body, life, and living leave with her.

To the question is this a one character or a six character play, the answer of course, is two. It’s a bit of a setup but the comedy is a sweet headfake to the denouement between Bérenger and his first wife, the imperious, practical, and sensible Queen Marguerite. The final scene between the resonant Dunn and cool, elegant, swan-necked Natasha St. Clair Johnson is the slow, terrifying, inevitable waltz that’s on all of our dance cards. When that end comes, we know, life goes on without us. Johnson has been appearing frequently in recent productions but is exceptionally well-matched to this role and this moment, the only truly regal presence. The stage, unencumbered by videos or effects, smoothly darkens as he ascends his throne for the last time with a single spot closing over his alternately tortured, frightened, desperate, pleading face. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper. It is one of those theatrical moments that can leave audiences holding their collective breath before a well-deserved exhale and wild applause. Or it could have had it not been for the goober taking cellphone photos at intervals throughout the evening doing so at this juncture. The flash came on in the dying light and to top it off, he began clapping before the fadeout to which the production had been building for the preceding 99 minutes.

Despite Bérenger’s resemblance to 45 (or vice-versa), “Exit” is not the overt political call-to-arms that is “Rhinoceros” and certainly not the out-and-out political comedy that is “La Leçon/The Lesson” which Liz Pocock knocked into orbit in 2004 at the company’s old Promenade location. Even if it were that call, the world is voting the other way these days and by and large, the world doesn’t go to see plays. “Exit”‘s scope is smaller in respects, grander in others but this strong production is certainly worth a visit to Bergamot Station between now and 14 July.

Exit the King
by Eugène Ionesco, translated and adapted by Frédérique Michel and Charles Duncombe
Directed by Frédérique Michel

Running through 14 July 2019 at City Garage
Building T1, Bergamot Station
2525 Michigan Ave.
Santa Monica, CA 90404

Fridays, Saturdays 8:00pm;
Sundays, 4pm

Admission: $25; Students w/ID & Seniors (65+): $20; Sundays “Pay-What-You-Can” (at the door only)
Box Office: 310-453-9939
Online ticketing through Brown Paper Tickets

And here’s King Louis the First with Steely Queen Keely with their take on the final curtain.

Youtube Channel: Attila F.

(Link to video updated 5/25/2022)

Caveat Lector: “Anna in the Tropics” at Open Fist

On the surface Nilo Cruz resets Tolstoy in 1920s Tampa where workers in a family-run cigar factory explore life, love, and everything with the man brought in to read to them during their rolling sessions. Director Jon Lawrence Rivera marshals a fine cast complemented by Open Fist’s traditionally strong stagecraft but the Pulitzer winning script disappoints with a bang. The women we see, two sisters, their mother, and a silent factotum are taken metaphorically by both the Lector and ‘Anna Karenina,’ his choice of reading material. The men are unsurprisingly less so. As the action unfolds, one of the sisters is taken quite literally by yon Lector while her equally unfaithful husband stews and belatedly asks for tips on how to rock her like a hurricane. The aspiring half-brother of the factory owner, having lost his own wife to another Lector, isn’t any happier with this one’s presence. It all strives to be dreamy, lyrical, mysterious, philosophical, and evocative but just plods along steadily and soapily and ends dangling in the air – one might say like a languid coruscating puff of bluish-white cigar smoke in the fading sunlight. For it is that kind of play. It may make sense to fans of the book. Others beware.

Despite all the overt references to Tolstoy all the Moscow-longing, the clash between modernism and tradition, the general inertia of the characters, and a last-act gun suggest an homage to theatre’s favorite (albeit overblown, overpraised, and overdone) Russian.

Anna in the Tropics
by Nilo Cruz
Directed by Jon Lawrence Rivera for the Open Fist Theatre Company

Running through 8 June 2019 at:
Atwater Village Theatre
3269 Casitas Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90039
(FREE parking in the Atwater Xing lot one block south of the theater)

Performances on selected Mondays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 4pm
See the website for performance dates and prices

Online ticketing: Open Fist’s secure site

Calling out Ritchie Rich: Robert Hooks exposes the scam

It’s always good when degreaser is sprayed on oily charlatans. Emphases added:

Q: Is there a great theater company specifically for African American actors, like Alvin Ailey is for dancers?

A: The closest thing to a black theater company that is able to survive and sustain itself is the St. Louis Black Rep. And theater companies — let’s just take Los Angeles, for example — the Los Angeles Music Center downtown and Mark Taper Forum and all the people that run those companies are getting the grants from the foundations I couldn’t get because they did one black play in their season. The black theater producers, the people who are in the community need the grants, and they can’t get them because the established theaters downtown are taking advantage of those grants.

— Robert Hooks; Washington Post 26 October 2018

WYSIWYG: ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead’ at A Noise Within

“What’s it about?”
“It’s about to make me very rich”
— attr. Tom Stoppard to a friend’s question about ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead’

Mortality, predestination, and free-will are beloved literary fodder. Tom Stoppard‘s ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead‘ has for some reason been held up for fifty years as an exemplar of how to bring all those themes to the stage and is a surefire draw at midsized theatres. It is the kind of work that audiences seek when they want to be challenged and Stoppard accomplishes that in spades. Clocking in at nearly three hours, he constantly tests their attention, patience, and good will. One hopes that a live performance by a reputable, classically-trained ensemble can bring some structure and coherence to a dense, difficult, often self-indulgent script. A Noise Within’s current staging stays true to the text but regrettably offers little beyond it.

R&G may have been a refreshing hipper, youthful, comedic antidote to Beckett in the mid-1960s but time has taken its toll. The tale told by and through two idiots is frustratingly digressive and the once-fresh ploys and devices now commonplace. The protagonists – bewildered by probability, abused by nobility, and manipulated by artists – are irreversibly yoked to fate. Fragments of the play-surrounding-the-play take place between lengthy philosophizing and repeated doses of forced humor containing mostly empty calories.

Stoppard perhaps intentionally left it all open to interpretation with all the smugness that only the modern artist can muster. Director Geoff Elliott estimates he has read the play over thirty times, finding ever-deeper undercurrents of the human experience each time. This is highly encouraging since there is ample room for directorial opinion. Unfortunately, that license is lacking in this faithful and respectful production. Rafael Goldstein’s contemplative Guildenstern fares far better than Kasey Mahaffey’s nitwit Rosencrantz. What’s frustrating are the tantalizing glimpses of a through line, some sign of a trail through the dense overgrowth of insufferable look-at-me cleverness that infests so much of Stoppard. This is solely thanks to Wesley Mann’s virtuoso turn as The Player, an apt name that has taken on different connotations in the intervening decades. Mann imbues the pivotal role with subtle, growing menace masked by a thinning veneer of humor. This hangdog Charon knows more and is capable of far more than he lets on – he is Twain’s Mysterious Stranger, Bulgakov’s Mysterious Traveler, the link among the many worlds within the play and the world outside watching it. Sadly, no sooner does momentum and interest build than the character goes off stage for a while, taking the energy with him.

The production is typically handsome in the ANW house style with stronger leads than the wan 2016 ‘Arcadia’ which, for all that, has aged somewhat better as a play. The words are all there, the stage directions are followed, everyone yells, sulks, rails, and brawls with precision and Opening night was technically flawless. Stoppard is about as far from an idiot as one can get but all this sound and fury may not, in fact, signify anything.

[Note: Minor rewordings made on 15 October 2018]

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
by Tom Stoppard
Directed by Geoff Elliott
in repertory through 18 November 2018

A Noise Within Theatre
3352 E. Foothill Blvd.
Pasadena, CA 91107
Tickets available online
or through the Box Office: (626)356-3100

Shaw on the golden rule

This little bit of truth is left out of the couple of professional adaptations and the 1941 Gabriel Pascal film of ‘Major Barbara’ available in the usual online sources. Having despaired of Youtube, Vimeo, and even Dailymotion, the answer was close to home. LA Theatre Works‘s 2007 adaptation, recorded live at the Skirball, keeps it and it flies. Upper class twit Stephen Undershaft (Hamish Linklater) attempts to lecture his plutocrat arms-maker father Andrew (Roger Rees) and gets dropkicked in the yodelay-he-hos for his troubles. Dakin Matthews‘s production is available at prx.org . Click on the image to open a new tab and listen at the site (the media player cannot be embedded here). Hop to 1 hr 06 min and 30 seconds by clicking within the wave pattern. Or, listen to the whole thing why not?

LA Theatre Works’s Production of “Major Barbara” via PRX. Click the image to listen at prx.org

Of course, GBS, were he alive, would probably approve of 45.

STEPHEN [springing up again] I am sorry, sir, that you force me to forget the respect due to you as my father. I am an Englishman; and I will not hear the Government of my country insulted. [He thrusts his hands in his pockets, and walks angrily across to the window].

UNDERSHAFT [with a touch of brutality] The government of your country! _I_ am the government of your country: I, and Lazarus.Do you suppose that you and half a dozen amateurs like you, sitting in a row in that foolish gabble shop, can govern Undershaft and Lazarus? No, my friend: you will do what pays US. You will make war when it suits us, and keep peace when it doesn’t. You will find out that trade requires certain measures when we have decided on those measures. When I want anything to keep my dividends up, you will discover that my want is a national need. When other people want something to keep my dividends down, you will call out the police and military. And in return you shall have the support and applause of my newspapers, and the delight of imagining that you are a great statesman. Government of your country! Be off with you, my boy, and play with your caucuses and leading articles and historic parties and great leaders and burning questions and the rest of your toys. _I_ am going back to my counting house to pay the piper and call the tune.

— Shaw, Major Barbara (Act III, Scene I)

(Minor update to the audio file timestamp on 5/25/22)

Eight Songs for a Mad King

I don’t like vocal music and I don’t particularly like this all that much. But, what a right proper anthem as the U.S. continues its descent into savagery with an unstable, unchecked Mephisto at the helm.

Eight Songs for a Mad King by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies.

Performed by The Psappha Ensemble:

with Kelvin Thomas, soloist
Conrad Marshall – flute
Dov Goldberg – clarinet
Richard Casey – piano
Tim Williams – percussion / cimbalom
Benedict Holland – violin
Jennifer Langridge – cello

Youtube Channel: The Psappha Ensemble

Expectation Values: ‘St. Joan’ at The Broad Stage

Taken by itself, Bedlam’s production of Shaw’s ‘St. Joan’ was well-performed and well-received. Four performers gave it their all and the audience acknowledged them enthusiastically at the end of the three hour evening. Unfortunately it suffers when compared to director Eric Tucker’s 2005 effort in the SFV. Fallible memory is part of the problem. It is too easy to add details to an enjoyable evening – details that creep into memory even though they may not have occurred. At more pressing issue is the misfit between the production’s ambitions and the venue. The Broad Stage seats 499 in relative comfort, a far cry from the tiny warehouse off of Vineland with bleacher seating moved in-show by the cast. The conventional proscenium stage dilutes the impact of the performances with every passing row. Those of us who selected the “on stage” option were seated in the back of the hall for the first and third acts and brought on stage only for the second. The website stated that the audience would be onstage for one or two acts, not being clear which production (‘Hamlet’ runs in rep) would have which.

The 2005 production had Tucker, David Neher, and Eloise Ayala performing the twenty-plus non-Joan roles to better effect than the three performers who divided the tasks here, playing from the aisles and seats as the show progressed – common festival approach that feels oddly out-of-place indoors. It is hard to see subtle character shifts from a long distance and the uneven accent work didn’t help matters. The second act allowed those onstage to see and hear up close the back-room dealings and intrigue that make so much of this play. There is something about the maid, though. Aundria Brown is a compelling Joan, elevating the production whenever she’s on. We get Shaw didactic, Shaw political, Shaw polemical, Shaw militant, and Shaw comical in spades. The payoff is when imprisoned, tortured, and bullied Joan recants her confession in a marvelous third act speech preferring death to dungeon life away from her land, her animals, and her soldiers. For this seldom seen Shaw pastoral (‘Village Wooing’ being a notable exception), we are again in the back of beyond with the impact correspondingly blunted. It would have made more sense to have the audience on stage for this than the courtly intrigue although it would have required a major rethinking of the staging and stagecraft. This production does include the final dream sequence where the characters reassemble and wrap things up in a sweet epilogue.

It would have been nice to see the Bighead/Bedlam minimalist aesthetic continue in Los Angeles but no one can blame Tucker for heading back east. Grapes may grow best in stony soil but arts organizations need more arable land. This ‘St. Joan’ ultimately has to compete against its younger, poorer, fearless, and reckless self. It’s fighting a fond memory and there are few tougher opponents.

Hamlet and St. Joan
Bedlam Theatre Co.
in repertory at The Broad Stage
5 April to 15 April 2018
1310 11th Street
Santa Monica, CA 90401
Tickets: Box Office: 310 434 3200 and online at The Broad’s website

Bedlam in Santa Monica: Hamlet and St. Joan at The Broad Stage

7 April 2018 Update: Post-performance notes available here

Photo courtesy C. King Photography

It’s just bedlam, I tell ya… I don’t normally pay attention to Santa Monica’s The Broad Stage but their recent postcard was a grabber. Eric Tucker and his Bedlam Theatre are bringing their minimalist Shakes and Shav to town as part of a national tour. Before Bedlam, there was Bighead Theatricalities where Tucker’s kinetic stage sculptures played to very enthusiastic yet typically tiny LA audiences in a San Fernando Valley industrial park. We few, the happy few, would not forget what we saw.

Fast forward a few years, Tucker is the toast of New York and returns to Southern California, albeit briefly, with a new cast but to all accounts the same approach. No one can know whether the magic will strike again, whether a production for 4 patrons will scale to 499, or if it will blend as the young people say. It could be fun to find out. Details, including the Program Guide, are available at The Broad’s website where Tucker’s bio says nothing about his LA stay and success – also sadly typical.

Double-take: ‘Rhinoceros’ at PRT

Courtesy Pacific Resident Theatre

The November 8th tragedy and the ascendance of the mephistocracy guaranteed the revival of Ionesco’s ‘Rhinoceros.‘ The play’s well-known humanist and anti-fascist themes make it an obvious, almost reflexive choice, guaranteed to please progressive audiences but this simple explanation does not do justice to the crackling rendition recently opened on Pacific Resident Theatre’s main stage.

Director Guillermo Cienfuegos, a skilled cast, and a top-notch production team deftly imbue subtlety and nuance while staying faithful to a brash, repetitive, and yes, absurd text in Derek Prouse‘s translation. Weak-willed alcoholic everyman Berenger sees his provincial town replete with its well-dressed residents, charming bistros, and local businesses overrun step-by-step and inch-by-inch by rhinos. His friends and neighbors are first alarmed, then intrigued, and ultimately co-opted. When the movement spreads worldwide he is left alone to declare his resistance in a final act of defiance.

Sweet coincidence had Ionesco releasing the play the same year that Rod Serling began ‘The Twilight Zone’ on American television. Berenger’s (Keith Stevenson) transformation from milquetoast to man begins with a thorough scolding and airing of his shortcomings from putative friend Jean (Alex Fernandez who looks suspiciously like Cienfuegos). A stampeding animal, unseen but definitely heard, interrupts this cafe intervention and draws the notice of all including local costermongers, residents, a logician, and a busking mime. The slapstick first act concerns itself with disbelief and some humorous attempts at analysis. Academics are funny and mimes are annoying in any era and in any circumstance.

Ionesco’s purposefully repetitive and clichéd dialogue can tire even a focussed reader. Fortunately, the cast delivers the needed dimension and shade bringing the words to vigorous life. Characters speak to and not at one another, conversations ebb and flow while pulling the viewer purposefully to a destination. Not all productions of absurdist material can manage this. Themes of desire and transformation are on par with the conventionally political. The long play does take time to find its feet and explodes in a riveting second of three acts. Berenger goes to Jean’s apartment to make amends for their quarrel only to watch his friend mutate before his eyes. Fernande-fuegos towers over Stevenson physically and vocally, bringing palpable rage to several minutes of sustained, mesmerizing terror. Later, Dudard (Jeff Lorch), Berenger’s rival in love and for advancement stands tall on the sidelines rationalizing the rhino onslaught, until Daisy (Carole Weyers) chooses against him. A simple slouch, a growl, and he too is off.

PRT’s mainstage is not large by any means and it would have been understandable had this been a minimalist, black-box affair, striking while the political iron was still hot. The company however committed to twelve performers, costumes (Christine Cover Ferro), lights (Justin Preston), full sets (David Maurer), and an evocative soundscape (Christopher Mosciatello). Several wildly clever stage transformations in the tight space rightly drew loud applause on opening night.

It would have been easy to map current faces onto Ionesco’s lecherous bosses, armchair socialists, deplorables, ladder climbers, and wonks. Cienfuegos wisely does not take the bait and manifest these to make any particular topical statement. It is also very easy to see the play as a blow for a pluralist, inclusive, and heterogeneous society against the reactionary. In actuality, the excellent but decidedly monochrome characters and cast are under concerted attack by dark, malevolent Asiatic and African forces. Nudge nudge, wink wink. Look back at the grisly campaign and grislier aftermath, a large segment of the US and the world views itself as stalwart Berenger refusing to capitulate to the invading other. There are many of them, they vote, and the division is not going away. That this ‘Rhinoceros’ speaks across the spectrum including both extremes is its triumph.

'Rhinoceros'
by Eugène Ionesco
Directed by Guillermo Cienfuegos

Pacific Resident Theatre - Mainstage
13 July to 10 September 2017
703 Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291

Thursday – Saturday 8pm;
Sunday 3pm
Tickets $25 to $34
Purchase online or through the Box Office:  310-822-8392

Space Music: Paul Novros accompanies the universe

The documentaries below were made in the 1970s by Lester Novros, then a professor at the USC film school where his students included George Lucas. The understated elegance of these films is nicely framed by Paul Novros‘s music. The younger Novros is a professor of jazz at CalArts. I asked him whether he had any soundtracks available. He was pleasantly surprised to be reminded of the work but has no separate recordings or scores.

Lester Novros and his Graphic Films studio had a major albeit little-known influence on Stanley Kubrick and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Special effects legend Douglas Trumbull worked with him in Los Angeles but ultimately moved to work directly with Kubrick in England. Barbara Miller’s article “Graphic Films and the Inception of 2001: A Space Odyssey” is good reading.

via the U.S. National Archives Youtube Channel

via the Department of Defense channel at the Internet Archive

via the National Archives and Records Administration at the Internet Archive

(links to videos 2 and 3 updated 3/22/19 following the deletion of Jeff Quitney’s Youtube Channel)