Reviews / Full Text
CREDITORS
Toxic misogyny meets its match at Aurora Theatre in Berkeley
By SAM HURWITT, CORRESPONDENT | SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS
UPDATED: February 12, 2019 at 8:31 am
There’s an almost nonstop barrage of misogyny on display in “Creditors,” the August Strindberg drama playing at Berkeley’s Aurora Theater Company in a new adaptation by David Greig, the Scottish playwright whose mass shooting drama “The Events” was recently produced at both the Curran and Shotgun Players.
A new friend has wormed his way into the confidence of Adolph, an insecure and suggestible young painter, and proceeds to chip away at the confidence in his wife, his art and his life. But mostly in his wife, to whom he’s utterly devoted.
Jonathan Rhys Williams’ Gustave speaks with a chillingly calm, seemingly friendly confidence, but everything he says is venomous, at first subtly but soon less so. He keeps coming back to the idea that men shaping women is the natural order of things, and any independence on the part of a wife is inherently emasculating. As Adolph’s older wife Tekla is extremely independent and strong-minded, much more so than he is, and flirtatious by nature, Gustave insists she’s making a fool of him. Joseph Patrick O’Malley compellingly portrays Adolph’s descent from a adoring and wryly self-effacing sense of relative contentment to a jittery, jealous frenzy as Gustave skillfully twists every chatty confession into poison for his heart. Why Gustave is doing this is a matter for later on, but he does it deftly and utterly without mercy.
Gustave’s philosophy isn’t easily dismissed as being simply of its time; it’s rooted in a deep contempt for women and sounds unnervingly like the kind of misogynist bile you might hear “men’s rights activists” on Twitter spewing today. The title itself, a metaphor leaned on heavily in dialogue, is predicated on an entitled sense of being owed something.
Rebecca Dines is a breath of fresh air as Tekla when she finally arrives, charismatic, playful and keenly perceptive. Even as meticulously poisoned against her as his perceptions have become, Adolph quickly succumbs to her charm and to his love for her before his carefully nurtured insecurities come spilling out. Dines’ Tekla handles all this secondhand venom with cool, collected self-assurance, not letting on to whatever extent this sudden burst of jealous cruelty may hurt her.
The play is relentless, every single scene a study in either what not to say or what not to listen to. Each of the three parallel conversations that make up this tragicomic psychodrama starts off pleasant and soon becomes both unbearably cruel and nowhere near letting up anytime soon.
Director Barbara Damashek just accentuates that discomfort with the smothering atmosphere of her tense staging. Angrette McCloskey’s set of a sparsely furnished sitting room peppered with artworks in progress is all in pale off-white tones, as are most of Christine Crook’s costumes, with Tekla’s dress the only real splash of color. From time to time, Jim Cave’s moody lighting is taken over by blue streaks lining the walls, combining with an electric hum in Matt Stine’s sound design to suggest Adolph’s agitation rising into some kind of fit or seizure.
The seminal Swedish playwright Strindberg wrote “Creditors” in 1888, the same year as his more famous “Miss Julie” (which Aurora produced 10 years ago), and that’s a pair of plays that could leave you with a pretty grim view of pretty much everything.
It’s all terribly cruel and mean-spirited and destructive, but here again what saves it is Tekla. People may bad-mouth her all play long — and they do — but she’s so self-evidently better than her detractors are at life that the damage they do proves nothing (despite all Gustave’s philosophical bluster) except how poisonous sour grapes can be.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/02/12/toxic-misogyny-meets-its-match-at-aurora-theatre-in-berkeley/
Contact Sam Hurwitt at shurwitt@gmail.com, and follow him at Twitter.com/shurwitt. Running time: One hours and 40 minutes, no intermission
ONCE IN A LIFETIME
A Lifetime of Comic Chaos
By MARK DEL LA VINA, MERCURY NEWS THEATRE WRITER | SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS
July 22, 1997
FEW PLAYS or movies — "Singing in the Rain" is perhaps the exception — have come close to presenting the apprehensive alliance between stage and screen with as much panache as George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart's "Once in a Lifetime,” which TheatreWorks opened Saturday at the Lucie Stem Theatre in Palo Alto.
Director Robert Kelley, who also
is TheatreWorks' artistic director,
has taken the 1930 comedy about
the absurdities of movie making in
the age of the studio system and
converted it into an almost interactive production. Set designer Eric
Landisman has transformed the Lucie Stem into a sound stage where
the sets don't quite reach the ceiling;
bulky, overhead microphones dangle above the players; and each
scene ends with a squadron of grips,
gaffers and gofers making haste at
the end of a film take.
Part of the illusion
Augmenting the illusion is a
crew's nest for a cameraman who
looks down on the audience and the
stage. And sitting in a director's
chair is the monocled Kammerling
(Peter Schmuckal), a Teutonic tyrant loosely modeled after German
filmmaker Erich von Stroheim.
No dummy when it comes to
knowing his subscribers' tastes, Kel
ley has brought back Rebecca
Dines, who played Lorraine Sheldon
in the company's hit production of
another Kaufman and Hart comedy, "The Man Who Came To Dinner".
As the opportunistic May Daniels, Dines plays the reedy quick-to-quip modern woman who can hold her own with almost anyone. But then there's Jerry Hyland (George Castillo) her slick business savy partner who she loves. Together they plan to open a school of elocution and voice training in California where Al Johnson's "The Jazz Singer" has just cleared the way for talkies.
Comic Timing
Dines is mixed salad of sophistication and schoolgirl longing and her comic timing is right on the money. Ringing throughout her performance is a somewhat muted sneer at the film industry, perhaps best illustrated when she prods pal George (Darren Bridgett) into coming to Hollywood by prophetically arguing "You don't know anything about anything, and if what they say about the movies its true, you'll go far." Castille is all double-breasted dapperness and the slightly roguish man who always has an angle. Last seen at TheatreWorks in "Holiday Memories" Castille makes Jerry just smarmy enough to work. George the nut-chomping befuddled Doctor*, who goes along for the ride, is so out of sync with the world, that his every misstep proves a masterful move in the chaos of the film industry.
Merry Multitude
Like most Kaufman and Hart comedies, Once In A Lifetime has a large cast - how else can each scene end with the cacophony of every character trying to talk over every other character? Gerald Hiken (ACT's "Singer's Boy") portrays Herman Glogauer, is almost grandfatherly as the powerful stardom broker. He and Bridgett are hilarious: their characters somehow see eye-to-eye in spite of the succession of messes made by the young doctor.
Also worth noting is Kathleen
Burch (TheatreWorks' "Tintypes"),
as the gossip columnist; Cambron
Williamson (San Jose Stage's "Middle-Aged White Guys"), as the elongated. raspy-voiced starlet Florabel
Leigh; and Lara Hope Owen, who as
Phyllis Fontaine is a big-eyed Olive
Oil soundalike who might well do in
May's school of elocution.
*Correction: May introduces George to Glogauer as "My technical advisor, Doctor Lewis"
in their bid to appear as expert elocution teachers.
GOOD PEOPLE
(Capital Stage Co.)
Solid acting, directing make ‘Good People’ a great play
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by BEV SYKES - DAVIS ENTERPRISE | JUNE 15, 2014
David Lindsay-Abaire may not be the name of a everybody’s lips. Some may know him as the man who wrote the book and lyrics for “Shrek, the Musical,” a lightweight piece not likely to make much of an impression.So expectations were not high going to Capital Stage to see his “Good People,” directed by Stephanie Gularte. Just shows you how expectations can deceive. This is a fabulous play, tightly directed, wickedly funny, painfully seriously, deeply moving and, ultimately, decidedly memorable.
The play is set in South Boston, or “Southie,” which many of us probably came to know thanks to Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s “Good Will Hunting,” an area known as a working-class, predominantly Catholic neighborhood, and home to some of the oldest housing projects in the United States. (In fact, the playwright grew up in South Boston and lived there until he won a scholarship to a private school, which he credits with changing his life.)
The story centers on Margaret (called “Margie,” with a hard “g” sound), a feisty single woman who has lived all of her life in Southie, who struggles every day to keep herself and her handicapped adult daughter going.
Rebecca Dines gives an amazing performance as Margie, with a thick Southie accent, a chip on her shoulder and a sense that life just keeps beating her down over and over again but she is determined to fight back. Dines’ performance is one of those that, years later, you will remember and say smugly that you were there to watch her.
As the play starts, Margie is being fired from her job by her boss Stevie (Brandon Lancaster), a lifelong friend and now manager of a Dollar Store. She has been late one too many times, lateness the fault of the late arrival of her quirky landlady Dottie (Linda Montalvo), who takes care of Margie’s daughter while she works. Dottie makes silly rabbits out of flower pots as a way to supplement her income.
Suspecting what is coming in her meeting with Stevie, Margie plays the “I remember your mother” card, to no effect. Stevie is a good guy, and well-meaning, but he has to report to “corporate,” which has ordered him to fire Margie after many write-ups for tardiness. He offers to help her get a new job at the Gillette factory, where his brother works, but she feels she is too old for the physical demands.
Margie faces the loss of her apartment and having to move to the streets with her daughter since Dottie is threatening to move her son into the apartment if Margie can’t come up with the rent.
Margie, along with Dottie and Jean (Lori Russo), play bingo as their one night on the town. And over the cards, Jean suggests that Margie look up her old boyfriend, Mike (James Hiser). Mike got out of Southie, got a good education and is now a successful fertility doctor, married and living in the upper-class Chestnut Hill. Maybe Mike can give Margie a job in his office.
After unsuccessfully avoiding her, Mike (James Hiser) finds himself confronted face-to-face, when Margie shows up at his office. Things are awkward, then sad, then confrontational. Margie finally wrangles an invitation to his birthday party the next night, where he implies she might meet someone who has a position open in his office. When Mike later calls to explain the party was called off because his child was sick, Margie smells a rat.
She shows up at his house anyway, where his wife Kate (ZZ Moor), unaware of their past history, treats her with dignity and respect and a big platter of cheese.
The play does a 180 here, and the comedy we had been laughing at so heartily up to now turns serious, things are revealed that are better left unsaid, Hiser does an excellent job of holding in his anger until he must explode — and does. Moor is wonderful as the clueless wife, just trying to be a good hostess, who gets a big dose of things she had no business knowing.
The play ends up back at the bingo parlor with a lively discussion taking place and a surprising conclusion.
Capital Stage’s production of “Good People” is marvelous and shouldn’t be missed.
http://www.davisenterprise.com/print?edition=2014-05-22&ptitle=A11
GOOD PEOPLE
(Capital Stage Co.)
Out of Luck
-
by PATTI ROBERTS - SACRAMENTO NEWS & REVIEW| MAY 8, 2014
If life is a game of cards, how much is determined by choices, by skill, by available options or by sheer luck of the draw? In David Lindsay-Abaire’s searing story of South Boston’s working-class neighborhood, two Southies whose paths drastically diverged after high school meet up again to find out they have radically different views on self-determination.
Capital Stage’s Good People starts off in the alley behind a dollar store, where cashier Margaret (Rebecca Dines, in an achingly honest, memorable performance) is getting fired for her chronic lateness. Margaret responds to her manager with a flip, hardened humor that’s both hilarious and reeks of desperation—trademarks of Margaret’s personality that make her character both endearing and infuriating.
Margaret’s hopelessness is played out when she returns to her apartment to commiserate her lot in life with Dottie (Linda Montalvo-Carbone), who is both her landlord and the babysitter of Margaret’s disabled adult daughter, and Margaret’s best buddy, Jean (Lori Russo). The three are a hilarious trio of bitter bitchery. They no longer have any social filters or much hope that life will turn a corner, since they’re all stuck in the muck of luck or choices gone bad.
Through a chance meeting and a ballsy, desperate decision, Margaret bursts into the life of old high-school boyfriend and now doctor Mike (James Hiser), who lives miles and a lifetime from his Southie roots. At first, Mike is humored by this blast from the past, but he soon learns that Margaret is an unreliable firecracker ready to blow up his comfortable smug life with unpleasant truths and awkward accusations. Class distinctions come to an interesting head when Margaret ventures out to his spacious house to find out he’s “all lace-curtains Irish now” with fancy wines and a bourgeois wife (ZZ Moor, reprising her Marin Theatre Company role as Kate)
Director Stephanie Gularte deftly directs this talented cast, careful not to teeter into stereotypes or overplayed accents or attitudes. Dines shines as a wounded Margaret—so much so that, in a moment when her character breaks down, the audience lets out a collective moan of painful recognition. Special shout-out to the always-creative Capital Stage scenic designer Dave Nofsigner for the imaginative set design.
MUD BLUE SKY
Aurora Theatre's Mud Blue Sky Soars
By LOU FANCHER | SF WEEKLY I SEP 9, 2015
At 35,000 feet, flight attendants are like demigods. Back here on earth? Not so much. Playwright Marisa Wegrzyn portrays the high-low dynamics of three middle-aged flight attendants on layover in a Chicago O’Hare Airport hotel in Aurora’s season opener, Mud Blue Sky. Demonstrating a flare for interjecting the perfect “spoiler” and steering what could be solely a rollicking farce into an unexpectedly gentle salute to motherhood, sexual desire and kindness among strangers, Wegrzyn tosses into the mix a weed-selling high school kid whose prom date has dumped him.
Aurora Artistic Director Tom Ross leads an accomplished cast with a keen ear. There’s never a misstep in the tempo of arguments that accelerate and crescendo or collapse upon themselves at exactly the right moment — or silences that not only separate thoughts from sentences but stretch into expressions of the characters’ alienation and loneliness. Whether Ross relied on the actors’ instincts or coached them to the skillful execution is hardly important. What matters is that it serves Wegrzyn’s bitterly funny script admirably.
From Beth’s (Jamie Jones) first shoe-shedding moment to the slime-covered television remote control in the opening scene, there’s no doubt that the life of a flight attendant is no longer glamorous. Unlike the nostalgic 1960s TWA ads and photos of smiling young women with perfect teeth projected above the golden-hued hotel room (astutely designed by Kate Boyd), these beaten-down keepers of life-saving strategies (and alcohol) are bent and spent. Even the vivacious Sam (Rebecca Dines) teeters on desperation as she tries to get Beth to go out for a night on the town or juggles phone calls from her teenage son left at home alone for the first time. Their reunion with Angie (Laura Jane Bailey) doesn’t happen until half way through the play, but conversations between Beth and Sam make it clear Angie’s fallen victim to the job’s most obvious and shallow bottom line: “fat and fired,” Beth declares.
When backache—and existential pain that’s never fully defined but resonates clearly—drives Beth to meet Jonathan (Devin O’Brien) to buy the marijuana she’s purchased from him for more a year, the play accelerates. Their relationship is an odd blend of parent/child, counselor/patient; except it’s not always clear whose doing the parenting or advising and frank sexual elements lend an incendiary atmosphere to their encounters.
Sam’s narcissistic approach upon discovering Jonathan hiding out in Beth’s room is more directly predatory, until her attraction to his gawky youthful energy is interrupted by the arrival of an image of a cleaned up kitchen that is sent to her phone by her son. The boys are suddenly too similar; the aborted “fling” is tawdry instead of a terrific way to thrill a kid and fulfill a single mom’s fantasies. Sam withdraws, sending Jonathan into an emotional spiral that sucks in the women and leads to more secrets revealed.
The beauty of Wegrzyn’s withholding and her clever distribution of the layers underneath her character’s lonely lives would be spoiled by describing in detail the rapidly unfolding stories that follow. It’s enough to say that there’s intimacy, regret, compassion, betrayal, violence and hope — a heady mix Wegrzyn handles with aplomb. Perhaps the fact that the playwright’s mother was a flight attendant explains the script’s well-balanced funny, furious and fond tones.
Of course it would all go to waste if the actors weren’t what these actors are: honest, convincing, relaxed. The last term might seem a surprising one, but it’s remarkably the taking off point for Jones’ grounded performance, Dines’ steamy and sensitive portrayal, Bailey’s exact rendering of her character’s fragility and strength and O’Brien’s complete capture of a teenage boy’s annoying, lovable nature. Amid the laughs and one-liners, there’s nothing flighty about Mud Blue Sky.
Mud Blue Sky, through Sept. 27, 2081 Addison, Berkeley. $32-$50; 510-843-4822 or auroratheatre.org
http://archives.sfweekly.com/exhibitionist/2015/09/09/aurora-theatres-mud-blue-sky-soars