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Your Connection To The Arts In San Diego
Funding for "Pat Launer, Center Stage", is provided by the Elaine Lipinsky Family Foundation.
Getting ahead – and getting a hand. Going for what you want – and appreciating what you’ve got one you’ve gotten it. Three different takes on a theme – musical, macabre and starkly dramatic.
The drama is a world premiere at the Old Globe: “The Recommendation,” by up-and-comer Jonathan Caren, and I’d give him my 5-star recommendation any day.
The intense, three-character story begins comically, with two disparate roommates at Brown University: a cocky, well-connected white kid, and a first-generation black student, whose father is from Ethiopia. Aaron Feldman is happy to use his expansive influence to help his friend rise, which both amazes and enrages Iskinder.
Recommendations get him into law school, and a job, but then he starts chafing at the strictures of loyalty and obligation. Meanwhile, Aaron has landed himself in jail, where the only person with power and connections is a criminal conman. Tables turn, promises are made, and the entanglements become ever-more compelling and unpredictable.
“The Recommendation” is about class and race, money and power, cultural ladder-climbing and limitations. But mostly, it’s about the tensile bonds of friendship. Tautly written, imaginatively directed and exquisitely acted, it’s a chilling, often thrilling piece of theater.
Bone-chilling might describe the work of Martin McDonagh. “A Behanding in Spokane,” the first play the Irish Brit set in the U.S., is as grisly as his previous creations. McDonagh finds comedy in morbidity.
In a stunning production at Cygnet Theatre, guns are drawn, gasoline is poured, racial epithets are spewed, and a pony-tailed nutcase confronts a one-handed mono-maniac. And we laugh. Did I mention the suitcase filled with severed hands?
Carmichael, an explosive Mama’s boy, is desperate to find the hand he lost to six “hillbillies” 27 years ago, and he doesn’t care who he has to off to reunite with his long-gone limb.
This is a tale from hell, enacted by a heavenly cast, directed by Lisa Berger, Mistress of the Macabre, starring Jeffrey Jones and Mike Sears as hilariously dueling whack-jobs, with stellar support from Kelly Iversen and Vimel as two kids on a con. You’ve gotta have the stomach for this sort of stuff – and the stamina for a war zone of F-bombs. You may be more puzzled than enlightened at the end, but you might just laugh yourself sick.
Now, if you prefer to travel in the middle of the road, get a lesson in “How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying” at the Welk Resort Theatre. It’s a protracted, amusing, well-sung, sometimes overacted production, under the high-spirited direction and choreography of Ray Limon. The principals are terrific, though you won’t exactly cozy up to these misogynistic men or husband-trapping women.
So choose your poison: venomous, melodious or incisive. You can’t go wrong this week.
“A Behanding In Spokane” runs through February 19 at Cygnet Theatre in Old Town.
“The Recommendation” plays through February 26 in the Old Globe’s White Theatre.
“How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying” continues through February 26 at the Welk Resort Theatre in Escondido.
© 2012 Pat Launer
As Tolstoy put it, “Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” So, family dysfunction looks different in every play, whether it’s a comedy, mystery or drama, whether it deals with inheritance battles, filial disconnection, or cold-blooded murder. And don’t these theatrical works always make YOUR family look a whole lot better?
Greed, class, entitlement and uncertainty drive the action in “Dividing the Estate,” the final creation of the esteemed late playwright Horton Foote. It’s all about, well, dividing the estate, a phrase that surfaces about 100 times in the comic drama. Set in Texas in 1987, in the midst of a financial downturn, the play introduces us to the disgruntled Gordons: the octogenarian matriarch, her three offspring and their children, and a trio of African American servants. As the Old South erodes, the family implodes.
In 2009, the piece was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play. Most of the cast remains the same in this Old Globe production, in which two of Foote’s children appear. And yet, there’s just no there there. The storyline is musty, the characters are two-dimensional and stereotypical. And at the end of the first act, after two deaths, it’s really hard to care what happens next. Michael Wilson’s staging feels static, and his cast of 13 both over- and underacts. Despite all the hype, the evening proved underwhelming.
Less high-profile but more satisfying theater experiences are available at our smaller companies.
Up in Vista, Moonlight Stage is offering a nimble production of the longest-running play in theater history: Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap,” still going strong in London’s West End after 60 years and 25,000 performances. Under the direction of Jason Heil, the cast is delightful, even if we don’t quite feel the claustrophobic terror of another impending murder in Monkswell Manor, a guest house where eight people, including a killer, are trapped during a blizzard. Turns out they’re not quite strangers, and there are some fraught family ties. The characterizations are the key here, and trying to figure out whodunit is a challenge and a treat. Audiences, as always, are sworn to secrecy. Great fun!
More deep and thought-provoking is Donald Margulies’ comic drama, “Brooklyn Boy,” having a fine outing at Scripps Ranch Theatre. The set may be intrusive, the young movie actor too earnest, but these are quibbles. Ruff Yeager helms a solid cast that persuasively conveys the story of a newly acclaimed writer who can’t seem to satisfy his competitive wife or his demeaning father. He may be a professional success, but he’s a familial failure. Perhaps the cast plays more for laughs than dramatic depth, but you’re free to do your own analysis.
Families present so much food for contemplation and introspection.
“The Mousetrap” runs through February 5 at Moonlight Stage Productions in Vista.
“Dividing the Estate” plays through February 12 in the Old Globe Theatre.
“Brooklyn Boy” continues through February 19 at Scripps Ranch Theatre, on the campus of Alliant University.
© 2012 Pat Launer
Ever since Adam and Eve plucked fig leaves for coverage, people have been obsessed with their appearance. But what if you were so ugly, so disfigured, that you literally had to walk around with a bag over your head?
Such was the sorry plight of Joseph Merrick, who lived for 27 wretched years in the Victorian era. He suffered from a congenital, incurable affliction that still remains unidentified, but it left him with an extremely oversized head and skin described like “brown cauliflower.” One arm dangled uselessly. He couldn’t lie flat or he’d suffocate – which is ultimately how he died, possibly intentionally.
Merrick spent a good part of his life on display, with folks paying a few pence at a freak show to gawk at “The Elephant Man.” In 1977, American playwright Bernard Pomerance wrote a drama by that name, which won a Tony Awards for Best Play when it opened on Broadway two years later.
It’s a touching story of one sad life, but it’s also something of a minimally plotted morality play – showing the best and worst of humans in confronting ugliness, loneliness and isolation, dignity and compassion, and exploitation of the less fortunate for their own interests.
The primary relationships are between Merrick and his ambitious young physician, Dr. Treves, who brings Merrick into the London Hospital to live, but keeps him confined by space and a series of arbitrary rules. There’s also the beautiful actress, Mrs. Kendal, who’s able to see beyond mere appearance to the sensitive, intelligent, romantic soul Merrick harbors beyond his grotesque exterior. Or was she just acting?
For a while, thanks to Treve and Kendal, Merrick becomes the toast of English society; duchess, princess, bishop, actress, doctor – all see elements of themselves reflected in him, like a funhouse mirror. In a not-so-subtle rebuke of Victorian hypocrisy, Pomerance shows a world filled with distortions and deformities.
At OnStage Playhouse, the trappings are there. Like others who have played the role of Merrick, James Steinberg evokes his misshapenness adroitly, without makeup or prosthetics, twisting his face, body and speech into credible disfigurement. Like the fussy design and blackout-heavy, lurching direction, O.P. Hadlock’s Treves delivers his lines in a herky-jerky fashion. Cheryl Livingston is empathic as Mrs. Kendall. But there is a lack of psychological depth in all these portrayals that limits our emotional response to the material. The writing can be clinical, and our reactions tend to be equally intellectual, rather than profound and introspective. Perhaps, as the text becomes more firmly established in memory, the cast can relax and explore the complex layers of the characters.
Because drama, like beauty, is more than skin deep.
“The Elephant Man” runs through February 4 at OnStage Playhouse in Chula Vista.
© 2012 Pat Launer
Greetings. My name is Richard. I’m a fighter, and I’m mad as hell. My father’s having an affair with my fiancée. I must confess, I think I’m in love with her brother. But that’s another story. My dad has kept my mom under lock and key for ten years, because she and I rebelled against him. My younger brothers are hateful – one’s a scheming conniver and the other’s a pimply, pea-brained brat. My father’s threatened to disinherit us all. And we’ve threatened to kill him. Oh well, as my mother says, “What family doesn’t have its ups and downs?”
Thank you, Richard the Lionheart. And welcome to Christmas with the Platagenets. Game on. Pretty high stakes in this wicked 6-way contest of treachery and deceitful deal-making. Winner takes all: the crown and the vast kingdom of Henry II of England.
This is the world of “The Lion in Winter,” James Goldman’s 1966 luscious historical fiction, set in the winter of 1183. You might remember the acclaimed 1968 film, with Peter O’Toole and Katharine Hepburn clawing each other’s eyes out as megalomaniacal Henry and his she-wolf of a wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. The characters are real; the situation, not so much. But Goldman has a field-day with the machinations – and so will you. The play is whip-smart and frequently funny.
These may be 700-year old battles royal, but they sure seem familiar, rife with jealousy, sibling rivalry and infidelity – writ very large. Everyone is hellbent on power and revenge, but in the rare quiet moments, each also craves love and affection, in very short supply in this vile, vituperative clan.
Despite the horrors they try to inflict on each other, the King and Queen are still deeply connected and strikingly well matched. They obviously take delight in the Machiavellian power-plays, though they seem genuinely appalled by their despicable spawn.
As part of its 30th anniversary, North Coast Repertory Theatre is bringing back the show that helped inaugurate its first season. Under the direction of Andy Barnicle, the production is sheer delight, fast-paced and filled with charismatic scenery-chewing, as a crackerjack cast nails the 12th century’s most deliciously vicious family.
Mark Pinter and Kandis Chappell are delectably paired as Henry and Eleanor. And, as their monstrous sons, Richard Baird, Jason Maddy and Kyle Roche carve out juicy, if contemptible characters. The icing on this poisonous confection is provided by the young pawn in the game, Princess Alais of France, a thankless role nicely played by Alexandra Grossi, and her devious half-brother, Phillip, the King of France, shrewdly portrayed by Kyle Sorrell.
The production values are aptly spare – it is the 12th century, after all. Here, it’s all in the words, words, words – aggressively witty and brutally irresistible.
“The Lion in Winter” has already been extended - through February 5 - at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach.
© 2012 Pat Launer
For an archive of all of Pat's reviews, going back to 1990, use the 'search' function at www.PatteProductions.com.
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