A.C.T. Archives — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

‘Venus in Fur’ electrifies at A.C.T.

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March 27, 2014

Good lord, this play is hot, hot, hot. Rave reviews of its run in New York last year — mostly heralding the rise of Broadway newcomer Nina Arianda — gave me pause. Could our own A.C.T. pull off this super-steamy, sometimes-harrowing, consistently enthralling sex comedy without Arianda’s now-famous starpower?

No fear. Sensational actors Brenda Meaney and Henry Clarke stole the audience’s breath away, when playwright David Ives’ perverse 2010 take on novelist Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s perverse 1870 masterpiece opened at A.C.T. last night. Prepare to be intellectually and emotionally (and even a bit physically) whipped, beaten, and thrilled into submission.

And yes, there will be a touch of Velvet Underground.

The basic story: Thomas (Henry) is auditioning actresses for a play he’s written and will direct, based on Sacher-Masoch’s groundbreaking 19th-century “romance,” Venus in Fur, from which the term “S&M” is derived. A hyperenergetic Vanda (Meaney), one of those wonderfully scattered-but-brassy NYC actress-types, bursts in late and cajoles Henry into giving her a shot.

But how does she already know the whole script, which hasn’t been released yet, by heart — not to mention intimate details of Henry’s personal life? How does she slip so effortlessly and expertly into the role of her dominatrix namesake in the novel, and eventually take on aspects of a goddess herself? And how is it that Henry, too, channels Venus in Fur’s love-smitten sex slave with such erotic aplomb?

Mysteries and personalities start multiplying as the pair engages in a vertiginous pas de deux, slipping surreally between contemporary arguments about sexism and gender roles and smokin’ hot scenes of 19th century parlor-sex games. Soon it all begins to slip off the rails into a timeless mystery of psychological conquest and mythological lust, with more than a little taste of danger.

Meaney, lanky and sensuous, and Clarke, tightly wound yet passionate, held the crowd spellbound for an intermissionless, many times hilarious 90 minutes. (Casey Stangl’s ace direction kept things moving swiftly yet with admirable lucidity.) One excruciatingly erotic scene, featuring a pair of thigh-high leather boots, almost turned me straight! Which may well be one of Ives’ points — in the context of human power dynamics and fetish objects, some desires transcend all contemporary sexual categories, and appeal to murkier, more ancient aspects within us.

VENUS IN FUR

Through April 13

American Conservatory Theater

Geary Theater

415 Geary, SF.

More info here

The action of bodies in heat

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May 28, 2013

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arts@sfbg.com

THEATER Tom Stoppard is not a playwright who shies away from topics of unusual size. While other writers might confine themselves more narrowly with plumbing the emotional depths of their protagonists, Stoppard further concerns himself with the very workings of the universe they live in, and the machinery of history and the evolution of thought that informs their relationship to it.

In Arcadia, Stoppard inserts his articulate, intellectually-curious characters into long-winded conversations about Euclidian geometry, determinism, and the second law of thermodynamics, while still giving plenty of stage time to more emotionally-fraught preoccupations such as “carnal knowledge,” public reputation, and even romantic love. Set in both the Romantic age and the modern era, the two storylines are rife with parallel plot points: the philosophical implications of chaos theory; the abrupt self-exile of that most tempestuous of poets, Lord Byron; the struggles of two brilliant female characters to be taken seriously in their respective times; and even a quiet affection for tortoises.

Set primarily in the gracious drawing room of an English estate (designed for this production by Douglas W. Schmidt), the play is nevertheless far from static, spanning, as it does, 200 years of Western thought and several generations of the wonky Coverly clan, who inhabit their Derbyshire home with the carefree insouciance of the very wealthy. However, with the exception of the formidable Lady Croom (Julia Coffey), the expected mannerisms of a stifled upper-class don’t really manifest themselves in either her gifted daughter Thomasina (Rebekah Brockman), or in the modern-day coterie of Coverly siblings, who wander through their stately mansion in hoodies and jeans, speaking frankly of mathematics and sex as if the two passions were one and the same. Indeed, by the end of the play, it’s hard to believe otherwise, testament to Stoppard’s ability to thoroughly contextualize both.

It’s the character of Thomasina, as luminously portrayed by Brockman, who first captures our attention. Armed with precocious directness, the 13-year-old quickly reveals herself to be both sharp-witted and intellectually hungry, tackling Fermat’s Last Theorem, the meaning of “carnal embrace,” and the scientific implications of a bowl of rice pudding with equal intensity. Although her advanced aptitude eventually commands the respect of her otherwise professionally-frustrated tutor, Septimus Hodge (a handsomely rakish Jack Cutmore-Scott), she is constantly and casually dismissed by every other adult in her life — from her forceful mother, to the foppish Captain Brice (Nick Gabriel), to her unpleasant, Eton-educated brother Augustus (Titus Tompkins). Truly a product of her time, even Thomasina’s name is telling — the name given to a girl child whom everyone would have preferred to have been a boy, then left to her own devices until she reaches the age of matrimony.

Shifting to the next scene and the present day, we encounter Hannah Jarvis (a pitch-perfect Gretchen Egolf), a brittle yet erudite academic whose own intelligence has recently come under attack thanks to her controversial book about Lord Byron’s erstwhile lover, Caroline Lamb. As she seeks clues to the identity of the mysterious “Hermit of Sidley Park,” her pragmatic Classicist outlook locks horns with the strident Romanticism of a fellow academic, Bernard Nightingale (a fabulously fatuous Andy Murray) who has come to Sidley Park in search of Lord Byron. The combative chemistry between the two professional and philosophical rivals is one of the production’s great pleasures, and although it’s hard to not delight in Nightingale’s eventual comeuppance, the occasional points he scores in the name of “gut instinct” can be equally cheered.

This is Perloff’s second go-round helming Arcadia, the first occurring in 1995 at the then-Stage Door Theatre (now Ruby Skye). Despite some lags in energy, her measured direction matches the elegance of both the decor and the lofty ideation without sacrificing the sly wit that simmers beneath almost every dialogue. Though the pragmatic, modern-day scientist Valentine (Adam O’Byrne) points out that thanks to the principles of thermodynamics, everything in the universe will eventually wind up “at room temperature,” the emotional heat trapped in the most coolly academic characters nonetheless gradually seeps to the surface. The play’s final scene, a wordless waltz between two unlikely pairs, trembles right at the verge of combustion.

ARCADIA

Through June 9

Tue-Sat, 8pm (also Wed and Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm, $20-$95

Geary Theater

415 Geary, SF

www.act-sf.org

The bagpipe squawks for thee: first thoughts on ‘Black Watch’

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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May 12, 2013

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The bagpipe squawks for thee: first thoughts on ‘Black Watch’

If you thought the theatricalized story of a jaunty and imperiled Scottish regiment in Iraq in 2004 would come off as a sort of “Trainspotting meets Black Hawk Down,” you wouldn’t be too far off the mark — in a very positive way. I’ll leave the nuts and bolts reviewing of full-force National Theatre of Scotland via American Conservatory Theater’s spectacular “Black Watch,” (through June 16) presented at the huge Mission Armory, to my colleague Robert Avila in next Wednesday’s Guardian. But my first thoughts upon emerging from Sunday night’s opening performance, after I cleaned the constant stream of expletives from my ears (and a bit of something from my eye) is that yae fookin’ coonts moost sae this pish, i.e. the production and performances are well worth the gasp-inducing $100 ticket price.

As is, I guess, a reminder of the — hey, ongoing! — sorry state of our “misadventures” in that part of the world. Ten years later, we have to drop a Benjamin for a complex, moving, and engrossing take on what just happened, or any take whatsoever, pretty much. That it also includes a lot of nifty multimedia effects (a surprisingly malleable pool table basically co-stars), affecting and thrillingly performed choreography, a bit of fascinating history, and some old Scottish ballads — oh yes, there will be bagpipes — is icing on the erroneous Occupation.

Less plot-driven than situation-oriented (within the framing device of a “researcher” interviewing former squadron-mates at a pub, the story of the 300-year-old Black Watch Scottish fighting force’s dissolution in Iraq is told through clever reenactments), Gregory Burke’s play, first performed in 2007, keeps its ideological cards tucked slightly up its sleeve. But it pulls no punches when it comes to the hella screwy “facts” on the ground. It also toys with the Mametian trope that language is a real sharp double-edged sword, especially the language of power in crisis, when all the misogyny, homophobia, sexphobia, and racism comes howling through the seams of ballsy mens’ speech. One wondered how the more delicate members of A.C.T.’s regular subscription audience was taking all the “fucks,” “cunts,” and every other realistically used expletive, all fenced in by a true yet penetrable thicket of brogue.

One also wondered how many of them knew they were sitting in a giant BDSM porn studio — a famous fact left out of the program’s introduction to the “Armory Community Center,” a.k.a. Kink.com HQ, the timeline of which conveniently ends in the late 1970s, and has the gall to state that “plans to convert the building into a full-time film studio did not come to fruition.” Ahem. Aaanyways. For those of us in the know, it made the porn jokes a lot more funny.

The location also resonates with military history, of course. It was built in the early 1900s to help quell any union strikes or labor demonstrations downtown … with hundreds of troops armed to the teeth. The wee irony of a play about an occupation staged here isn’t lost. But the genius of the location comes through in other ways. On first hearing ACT was hosting the play here, I immediately thought it would involve dozens of extras and a full orchestra. The play, however takes place in a modest (if very large compared to other locations) draped off part of the armory, and the often-eerie backing music is recorded. It is up to the cast, numbering a mere 10, to bring a full war and its aftershocks to a life big enough to fill the physical and mental space, which they do with aplomb.

They’re aided by a panoply of well-executed mulitmedia efects, culminating in a series of tragic explosions that ripple outward into the Armory’s enormous space. Those explosions can’t help but remind of the recent Boston marathon explosions, permanently televised into our senses. So much blood, so many severed limbs, the media and government weren’t afraid to show us in that bombing earlier this year. And yet 10 years ago, I remember seeing hardly any blood at all, let alone any troops’ bodies, in the long, long, then too-short coverage of the “Iraq War.” How far we’ve come, and haven’t come at all since then, “Black Watch” reminds us.

The Performant: Manic pixies

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January 22, 2013

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‘Manic Pixie Dream Girl’ and ‘The Witch House’ roil with fantastickal energies

It was only a matter of time before the familiar genre of the comic book movie migrated to the stage. But don’t expect any muscle-bound jocks in colorful spandex roaming the aisles of A.C.T.’s intimate mid-Market venue, The Costume Shop. Not only is the titular “Manic Pixie Dream Girl,” of their current production not a superhero with mutant powers bestowed upon her by a quirk of DNA or gamma rays, but in a twist, the comic book involved actually originates from the play — not the other way around.

The play centers mainly around a youthfully shiftless, struggling painter Tallman (Joshua Roberts), whose dire straits and afternoon drinking habits lead to a chance encounter with one of cinematic fiction’s most enduring tropes, the Nathan Rabin-dubbed MPDG Lilly (Lyndsy Kail), a woman who “exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventure.”

It’s a problematic relationship model on so many levels it’s hard to even know where to begin. Lilly is conveniently mute so she never has to share her feelings, or even her last name, but somehow, within an afternoon of their meeting, she’s moved into Tallman’s hovel, from which he is about to be evicted (by his ex-girlfriend’s new lover, smarmy real estate agent Rick [Lucas Hatton] no less). She never expresses a desire for anything beyond colorful scarves and starburst candy, and Tallman, in the middle of a painting frenzy, is so self-absorbed he can’t bring himself to question his “luck.” Even his sympathetic-to-a-point best friend Porter (Michael Barrett Austin) becomes disgusted with his lack of awareness. “Liking the way someone makes you feel is not the same as liking an actual person,” he observes astutely before abandoning Tallman to his fate.

The comic book, or rather, graphic novel, is represented as a series of projections which serve as backdrop and counterpoint to the live action unfolding onstage. Drawn by local actor and graphic artist Rob Dario, the panels form a silent but urgent backdrop to the narrative, adding visual heft to the bare bones set of stools, a humble futon, and primer-splotched countertop/bar. Or rather, presumably they do. Due to technical glitches, many of the images refused to project when cued, and the promise of a wholly symbiotic graphic-novel-play was under-realized the evening I went to see it.

But the images that did make it through, deceptively simple black-and-white line drawings somewhat reminiscent of the art of Brian Wood, gave Tallman’s inner struggles an external medium to be expressed through as his mysterious affair unfolded. Doubtlessly constrained by budget and time considerations, what the company failed to produce (but should have) was a companion comic as takeaway. I could have filed it next to my oft-referenced Transmetropolitan collection.

Meanwhile, up the road a ways at The Garage, Morgan Bassichis’ “The Witch House” involves a whole panoply of characters who are not quite pixies, but certainly manic. A pair of pre-adolescent boys dabbling in witchcraft set off for Salem in order to cast a spell for a third youth, and all three find themselves possessed by the restless spirits of witch trial accusers Abigail Williams, Ann Putnam Jr., and Mary Walcott.

A fairly oblique examination of gender roles and the justice system, what “The Witch House,” does offer is a wealth of intriguing visuals mainly provided by the largish cast of “bees” (also shades of the accused) who writhe and dance across the stage, simulating the emotional storms brewing thereon. Also, the company has designed a series of original “playing cards” to give away, with art by Lis Goldschmidt and a poetic speech penned by Bassichis, a savvy promotional tactic that even PlayGround (who coproduced “Manic Pixie Dream Girl”) can learn from.

Show trial

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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July 3, 2012

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arts@sfbg.com

THEATER The set (by Beowulf Boritt) is almost unassuming in its simplicity: just a trio of receding frames arching over the stage, each progressively more askew, and beneath them a jumble of aluminum chairs piled to one side. Still, such simplicity also hints at, and soon delivers, rich complexity.

The chairs become many things over the course of the evening but first of all a bus stop, where an African American woman (C. Kelly Wright) in 1950s dress waits and remembers. This mute opening scene then gives way to a reverie and nightmare — a memory and history that take the form of a highly fraught “entertainment” — as a man in a white suit and a black string bow tie (Hal Linden), invariably recalling the Old South if only via the emblem of a certain fast-food chicken franchise, comes onto the stage and pronounces the start of the show.

That would be a minstrel show, a notorious artifact of 19th and 20th century American popular culture, which returns with subversive vengeance in The Scottsboro Boys — the iridescent 2010 Broadway musical by the famed song-making team of John Kander and the late Fred Ebb, in collaboration with equally-no-slouch associates David Thompson (book) and Susan Stroman (director and choreographer). Making an impressive Bay Area debut at American Conservatory Theater, The Scottsboro Boys revisits the trials and the international cause célèbre sparked by the false accusation of rape leveled by two white women at nine freight-train–hopping African American youths (all teenagers ranging in age from 13 to 19) in Depression-era Alabama.

If this seems a heavy subject for a musical, that hardly prevents The Scottsboro Boys from being exquisitely well wrought and enthralling, thanks to an excellent score (channeled wonderfully by Eric Ebbenga’s pit orchestra), Stroman’s devilishly potent staging and choreography, and a strikingly multifaceted, charismatic cast that includes a memorable Clifton Duncan as Haywood Patterson, upon whose memoir, Scottsboro Boy, the narrative partly draws (David Bazemore, Cornelius Bethea, Nile Bullock, Christopher James Culberson, Eric Jackson, Jared Joseph, James T. Lane, JC Montgomery, Clifton Oliver, and Clinton Roane make up the rest of the outstanding ensemble).

At the same time, it’s precisely the mesh-clash of form and content —recalling similar canny deployments of popular theatrical forms Kander and Ebb’s Cabaret and Chicago — that makes Scottsboro a vigorous, if sometimes simplified excavation of the case, as well as this country’s ongoing convolutions over race, sex, ethnicity, and class. A productive tension arises between the show’s exquisite spectacle and the often uncomfortable, even macabre content of the storyline. In just one example, a winning tap number erupts in the young men’s shared jail cell, inspired by the terrifying proximity of the electric chair. So charged a number generates as much thought as emotion, as the audience shifts uneasily in a place where popular entertainment mingles pleasure and complicity, truth and artifice.

The subversive appropriation of minstrelsy is not unique to Scottsboro —there’s the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s 1965 production of Minstrel Show, Or Civil Rights in a Cracker Barrel, Suzan-Lori Parks’ use of minstrel tropes in Topdog/Underdog and The America Play, and Spike Lee’s 2000 film Bamboozled, for instance — but the musical deploys it with its own intent, humanizing the young men whose lives were permanently altered by their arrest and the subsequent trials, which became international news when the Communist-led International Labor Defense got involved, sending in celebrated New York attorney Samuel Liebowitz as the new defense counsel. That the trials were themselves the lesser evil in a white Southern regime of lynching and mob justice (waiting, essentially, just outside the walls of the jailhouse) is never lost on the audience either.

Thompson’s admirable book, meanwhile, in the figure of the woman at the bus stop (an unnamed Rosa Parks) bearing witness to the events of the past, draws a line from the Scottsboro case to the later Civil Rights Movement. But, ironically, the use of Rosa Parks obscures as much as it reveals if we think of her as a lone actor who sparks a revolt against an unjust system. She too was a member of a movement culture, one that had built on the activism of the 1930s that first brought the Scottsboro case to light. *

THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS

Extended through July 22, $20-$95

American Conservatory Theater

415 Geary, SF

www.act-sf.org