Theatreworks gives us new perspectives on art DOUBLE INDEMNITY: A THRILLER ON EVERY LEVEL Oregon Shakespeare Festival draws to a close THE KITERUNNER OREGON SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL OPENS ITS 2009 SEASON Tough Titty A PICASSO at San Jose Rep

Theatreworks presents……
THE PITMAN PAINTERS
By
Lee Hall
Directed by Leslie Martinson
It is through art and through art only,
That we can realize our perfection.
Oscar Wilde


“I have a passion for plays about art,” said Theatreworks Artistic Director Robert Kelley. “They are inevitably about much more – about the flawed, fragile, familiar human beings behind every aesthetic endeavor and often about the politics and prejudices of the era that produced it.”

That sums up the beauty and the impact of this wonderfully produced story of a group of British coal miners in the thirties who take up painting in an effort to understand ”art.” Andrea Bechert’s creative and highly original set designs coupled with Leslie Martinson’s tightly paced direction elevate the fairly loose plot into a compelling story meant to spur us all to find our own creative muse. “The joy of this play ….. is that it gives us a vibrant ‘insider’s view’… we all are visitors to their community,” said director Leslie Martinson. “When Robert Lyon, their teacher, urged them to pick up brushes and create their own paintings, his goal was simply to give them a means to understand what they were looking at when they looked at a painting. …..What he wasn’t expecting…is the energy and complexity of the images they created.”

The men were fascinated by the creative process and each man found something in it that gave him new perspectives on his own life. “We paint those little moments of being alive,” said Harry Wilson (Dan Hiatt).

Lee Hall was fascinated by the true story of these men and he says, ”I think more than the pitmen wanting to become artists, I was attracted to the idea of a group discovering and discussing art.”

The miners painted together once a week and eventually put on several successful shows of their work. When collector Helen Sutherland (Marcia Pizzo) tries to explain her fascination with the men’s work, she says “The meaning is something that happens in your heart.” And Oliver Kilbourn (Patrick Jones) says “Art is making things possible that weren’t there before. It is the first time I made something that was mine and not for money or for anyone else.”

The work these men produce is not the polished paintings of artists who have studied the creative process and devoted their lives to perfecting their technique. Instead, the works the pitmen produce are unique to each one, reflecting who they are and what is in their hearts. Their teacher Robert Lyon (Paul Whitworth) observes, “Don’t mistake technique for quality. Art is about knowing yourself.” And he tells Oliver, “Go out and paint something new.”

The cast in this ensemble production is outstanding and it would be difficult to single out any one as better than the others. The beauty of the presentation is that they all work together to create a mesmerizing treatise on the importance of unleashing each person’s creative spirit and letting it grow at in its own way. “Why do we assume that art is the province of the educated and elite?” asks Lyons. “You can’t have a rich culture if half the world is disenfranchised.”

THE PITMAN PAINTERS continues through February 12 at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro Street in Mountain View. For information and to order tickets call (650) 463 1960 or visit theatreworks.org

Paintings have a life of their own
That derives from the painter's soul.
Vincent Van Gogh

San Jose Rep presents…….
DOUBLE INDEMNITY
By James Cain
Adapted by David Pichette & R. Hamilton Wright
Directed by Kurt Beattie

DOUBLE INDEMNITY, now playing at the San Jose Repertory Theatre, is based on a 1936 serialized novella by James M. Cain, in which a woman and her lover conspire to murder her husband for the insurance money. In 1944, the year after the story was published in a collection by Cain, Billy Wilder made it into a very famous movie starring Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G. Robinson; Raymond Chandler shared the writing credit with Wilder. The movie rather than the novel has lasted in the public consciousness. DOUBLE INDEMNITY was not made into a stage play until David Pichette and R. Hamilton Wright adapted it last year for Seattle’s ACT (A Contemporary Theatre); the current San Jose run is a co-production with Seattle.

Pichette and Hamilton based their adaptation on the novella rather than the movie. The result is a spare, stylized work that communicates the spirit of noir better than any recreation of the movie could have done. It comes to the stage as a taut, streamlined chamber piece (five actors play ten roles, compared to 30 credited roles in the screenplay), deliberately simple on the surface but much deeper than it looks at first. Hamilton said that DOUBLE INDEMNITY
reads as if Dostoyevsky “decided to write a leaner, meaner little book in English.”

Director Kurt Beattie has kept this concept clearly in mind, and the result is a tight and compelling evening of noir entertainment. The audience is kept continually involved, even though everyone knows the story cannot end well. As the apparently perfect crime first evolves and then unravels, we identify with the very flawed, indeed wicked, characters – this is the mark of noir, which approaches a mystery from the viewpoint of the participants rather than that of an outside detective. Rooting for murderers is a walk on the wild side for us, a thrill that is part of the excitement of the genre.

Beattie (and Cain) are helped by a cast that is always competent and sometimes outstanding. John Boger has many excellent as the insurance salesman drawn into Carrie Paff’s murderous plot. It is sometimes deliberately ambiguous just whose plot this is. Boger’s intentionally subdued affect is part of the style, and strangely helps rather than inhibits his communication of unspoken passion. Richard Ziman is terrific as the doomed husband, and extra-terrific as the insurance man who tries to solve the crime. Mark Anderson Phillips takes three small roles and makes something memorable out of each of them.

Double Indemnity is effectively staged. Thomas Lynch’s set provides many startling and ingenious effects while staying within the production’s minimalist tone. Its details, and Annie Smart’s costumes, help keep the action believably in its period, as does a modest amount of actual smoking, without which noir is barely gris.

Cain wrote, in the preface to his novel The Butterfly (1947), “I think my stories have some quality of the opening of a forbidden box, and that it is this, rather than violence, sex, or any of the things usually cited by way of explanation, that gives them the drive so often noted.” This is certainly true of DOUBLE INDEMNITY, and the San Jose Rep makes opening that box very pleasurable indeed.

DOUBLE INDEMNITY plays at the San Jose Repertory Theatre, 101 Paseo de San Antonio, through February 5. Evening performances are at 7:30 on Tuesday and Wednesday and 8:00 on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays; matinees at are 11:00 AM (on Wednesday January 25th only), 3:00 on Saturdays and 2:00 on Sundays. Tickets can be ordered from the theatre’s website at www.sjrep.com. Discounts are available for students, teachers and seniors.

OREGON SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL:
THEATER AS IT SHOULD BE

When I want to see theater that defines who I am and where I am going, I travel to Ashland Oregon and indulge myself in one spellbinding production after another. If I need to put my world in perspective and figure out what is real and what is sham, I book as many shows as I can at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and indulge myself in works on stage. . In over twenty years, their program has never disappointed me.
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival was born on July 2, 1935 with a production of TWELFTH NIGHT and was an instant hit. The program has grown and changed with the years but excellence and innovation have always been its hallmark. In 2003, OSF was named one of America’s top five regional theaters by Time Magazine and I assure you, there is no theater company anywhere in the world that deserves more honors than this magnificent company dedicated to bringing the finest drama to the stage and introducing all of us to the multitude of ways good theater enhances our understanding of ourselves. “Whatever one’s political perspective, it’s hard to deny that there is a new optimism in our country,” says Artistic Director Bill Rauch. “We have worked hard to offer a repertory of productions as thrilling, entertaining, dangerous and moving as these tumultuous times demand.”
And this season, they certainly succeeded.
The three shows I saw to close this spectacular season all dealt with the difference between appearance and reality. THE SERVANT OF TWO MASTERS was adapted from the original Goldoni version by Oded Gross and Tracy Young who also directed this production. This piece is a prime example of commedia dell’arte, an art form that began with troupes of actors traveling from town to town setting up a stage in the local marketplace and performing for whomever they could persuade to stop and look. “It is rough theatre in the extreme,” says Young. “It is singing for your supper. “
These plays were often improvised and played with minimal props and costumes. The actors relied on their wits alone to grab and hold their audiences. “The stock characters of the commedia express our human folly and our primal instincts,” says Young. “Commedia deals with the things we need right now – things like food, money, shelter and love.”
As always, the acting in this production is astoundingly good and Truffaldino’s interaction with the audience choice. The original play was unscripted. Each character seems to be one thing while in reality he is another, even though the dialogue is his alone. Truffaldino is torn between his need to serve his master and the desire to satisfy is own appetites. Every character finds his true amore but the one who stole the show for me was Eileen DeSandre as Brighella who waxes eloquent about the food he will prepare and finds love and proper appreciation with the porter. In the finale, everyone‘s appetite is sated amidst laughter, pratfalls and mistaken identities. The differences between men and women are addressed throughout the play but the main theme remains our search for love in all its many forms and the confusion, heartbreak and longing that search brings. It is said that love has no rules…and that is a perfect description of the delightful chaos and the charm of this production.
Bill Cain’s EQUIVOCATION also addresses what is real and what is assumed in the lives we lead. “It is a play about family, warning that if we injure those who should be dearest to us, we do so at great personal loss and often with perilous consequences for the larger society,” says director and OSF Artisitic Director Bill Rauch. “I hope our world premiere of this absorbing new work makes your head spin and your heart stir. . .”
And it certainly did for me.
I love Richard Elmore. I have watched his extraordinary talent on the OSF stage for at least 20 of his 25 seasons at OSF and he has always excelled. I do not believe I will ever forget his UNCLE VANYA. I cannot imagine a better portrayal and his George in WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF. His performance as Richard in this moving historical drama was equally thrilling. The dialogue centers on artistic integrity and our need for approval and love. The title refers to how we get around the hazy boundaries of truth and fantasy and tell ourselves we are honorable when we obfuscate truth to save someone we care about or our own image. Elmore, when he plays the priest who is imprisoned and on trial in the production maintains that the trick to communication and survival is to answer the question underlying the one that is asked. Elmore’s character attempts to convince his persecutors that to survive and keep our own integrity, we must address the consequences of our statements and protect ourselves. The word equivocation has been defined as the doctrine that a man suspected of a crime is justified in answering doubtfully under oath in order to avoid incriminating himself and others. Is this not the road we all must follow if we are to survive with our hearts appeased and our pride intact? Bill Cain points out that ”If you’re the minority voice in the country, you can’t trust what the majority voice is saying….”
How true that was 400 years ago in the time frame of the production and how true it is today.
I love any play by Clifford Odets because he paints such an accurate picture of human suffering, endurance and survival. PARADISE LOST did not disappoint me. The action begins in 1932 during the Great Depression when there was 25% unemployment, banks failed and homelessness was almost a way of American life. . Paradise Lost explores the terrible misfortunes brought about by the unexpected poverty of the middle class. We watch the Gordons and their friends lose everything they have and yet the principal character, Leo Gordon (Michael J. Hume) never loses his firm belief that things will get better. “The world is beautiful,” he says as he surveys a home empty of furniture, his eviction imminent and his sonly surviving son about to die. “No fruit tree wears a lock and key….Ohhh darling, the world is in its morning…”
And indeed as we look at the economic chaos of today’s world we can well take heart from Leo Gordons promise. Time and determination will heal society at its own pace and our job is to hold on to our hope and live every day the best we can.
It is time now to plan ahead for the spectacular 1010 season, OSF’s 75th anniversary year. The season opening is February 19, 2010 and continues until October 10th. On the Angus Bowmer stage, we will see HAMLET, CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, SHE LOVES ME & THRONE OF BLOOD, a world premier adapted from the film by Akira Kurosawa. In the New Theatre, we will see WELL, by Lisa Kron, RUINED, by Lynn Nottage & AMERICAN NIGHT, another world premier. The Elizabethan Stage gives us three of Shakespeare’s most beloved: TWELFTH NIGHT, HENRY IV PART ONE and my personal all-time favorite, THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.
For tickets and more information: www. osfashland.org; or call toll free: 800 219 8161

San Jose Rep presents….
THE KITERUNNER


I loved Khaled Hosseini’s novel, THE KITERUNNER and I could not imagine how San Jose Rep could possibly condense it into a two hour theatrical production. But they did more than shorten the story, they managed to create a unique entity that in many ways was stronger than the book because of its visual impact and because it zeroed in on the message without all the description and explanation we expect in an epic novel such at THE KITERUNNER.
Playwright Matthew Spangler did an amazing thing: he managed to take out the histrionics that gave the book a soap opera flavor and fashion a compelling, intensely human drama with universal appeal. All of us suffer guilt when we forsake a friend. All of us want our parents to accept us. And all of us know in our hearts when we have not been as moral as we should be to those who love us. We want to feel we have earned the respect we receive and when we know we are less that we appear, we are plagued with remorse.
The story is told through the lives of two boys growing up in Kabul in the same household, but in two very different worlds. Amir (Barzin Akhavan) is the son of a wealthy and successful businessman with pride in his accomplishments and meticulous in his duty to live an honorable, and valuable life. Hassan, Amir’s best friend is the son of Ali, the family servant, who is a Hazara. The Hazaras in Afghanistan were considered less than human by the Taliban and the more affluent population. They were a group of people who had little access to education and were relegated the most servile jobs in the community. Yet Baba (Amir’s father) never treats Hassan or Ali (James Saba) with anything less than love and respect. He considers the two his family. The two boys form a bond that is far stronger than mere friendship and both take part in kite fighting together. This sport in Afghanistan is a true work of art and involves considerable skill and dexterity. One person maneuvers the kite and the other holds the wooden drum around which the wire is wrapped. The idea is to take down the opponents kite by cutting his wire and releasing the kite into the air. The two boys worked as a team and together they win one of the contests. However, Hassan is bullied by one of the losers and as Amir watches he is brutalized unmercifully. Amir says nothing and the guilt he feels for his selfish insensitivity to the need of a boy who is as much his brother as anyone can be haunts him the rest of his life. I do not want to spoil this story for you but I promise you will sit in that theater mesmerized from the moment the action begins until the lights dim on the final heart-rending scene.
This play belongs to Barzin Akhavan who is both the narrator and the main character. He never loses his audience as he tells us a story that spans nearly 30 years of political and emotional upheaval and unrest. When the Soviets invade Afghanistan , Baba and Amir flee to Fremont California like so many of their countrymen and we are swept into the difficulties of adjusting to a materialistic culture that worships wealth as its god and cares not a whit for integrity, honor and respect.
Years later, Amir, now grown and a married man returns to his homeland to find his friend and eventually discovers a way to atone for his cowardice and neglect to the boy who was willing to sacrifice everything for him.
All the acting in this production is powerful but it is David Ira Goldstein’s gifted direction that keeps the pace moving, the action spellbinding and play of emotions at just the right level. I was struck by Lowell Abellon’s character…he was exactly as I had imagined Hassan would be when I read the book. He never over-played his part, he stayed in character and he captured every heart in the theater.
I cannot praise this production enough, not only for what it says, but for what was omitted. The book was a long one, rich with the kind of detail everyone loves in such a dramatic story of love, hate, brutality, sacrifice and an honor. Matthew Spangler managed to pull out the essence of Hosseini’s message and, without being maudlin, or overly sentimental, created a drama not just about Afghanistan and its people, but about humanity and the conflicts every thinking human being faces as he attempts to create an honorable life.

IF YOU GO:
The Kite Runner continues until April 19, 2009
Tickets: www.sjrep.com
408 367 7266
$33-$62 with senior and student discounts
WHERE:
101 Paseo de San Antonio
San Jose, CA 95113-2603

THE OREGON SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL
THE 2009 SEASON: SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW AND A BIG BRASS BAND

There is something magic about driving up to Ashland, Oregon to enter a world where theater is far more than entertainment. It is the raison d'être: the very justification for existence to everyone there. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival has been providing top quality drama to the West Coast and beyond for almost 75 years and despite the dire threat of economic collapse for the rest of the nation, it is doing very well indeed. “We took seven and a half million dollars from the budget,” said Executive Director Paul Nicholson. “Yet, we tried to preserve the integrity of the productions themselves.”
OSF is one of the few regional theater companies that operate with a profit and that is no accident. Once you attend an OSF production, you are hooked. People return year after year and always discover something excitingly new or comfortably old on the OSF stage. The company attracts well over ten thousand visitors a year. “It’s very clear that we really matter to a lot of people,” Nicholson continued. “And strangely enough, price isn’t a huge factor in determining our attendance. In challenging times, people have a need to come together to attend performances such as we offer here.”
Great theater is what it is all about in Ashland and everybody who attends the OSF productions treats themselves to professional, high quality productions, innovatively staged and sensitively portrayed. ”Our goal is to have something for everyone,” said Artistic Director Bill Rauch. “We try to make theater relevant. But in the end, I have to trust ultimately in my own taste.”
The opening weekend productions dealt with various facets of what constitutes a good life and the many ways we deal with death. As the season progresses, each play seems to find its own voice so that to see the opening presentation is only a hint of what each will become by the end of the season. MACBETH, a beloved favorite of mine was a mixed bag of pleasure and disappointment for me on the Angus Bowmer stage. “My passion for this play lies in its complex themes and deep underlying study of human behavior in extremis,” said director Gale Edwards. “What are we all capable of, given the right circumstances, the right temptations and the right psychosis?....If theatre holds a mirror up to life, than this is indeed a play for our times.”
Peter Macon was a conflicted, agonized Macbeth and Robin Goodrin Nordli a macho and aggressive Lady Macbeth. Both actors had celestial moments: speeches that captured our hearts and stayed with us long after the play had ended. When Macbeth says, "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time. And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.” you want to say, “Yes! I’ve been there. I know! I really know how you feel.”
When Lady Macbeth descends the staircase weeping and distraught, wringing hands that once were covered with Duncan’s blood crying “Here's the smell of blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand," you cry for her, loving her, understanding her agony because what was done cannot be undone.
Kevin Kenerly rose to distinction when he realizes his wife and children have been slaughtered. In this scene alone, his are not merely words, they are cries of indescribable pain and we all are as wounded as he at the senseless loss he suffers.
Yet, for the most part, the cast was only acting their parts. The people on stage had memorized a script but they had not become their characters. It seemed to me that the goal of this production was to shock the audience and jar them into recognizing the significance of each sequence instead of building on the cumulative personal horror these beings feel as their tragedy accelerates.
The three witches were a delightful exception and they are nothing short of amazing in this production. You want to package them and use them liberally at every Halloween party you attend. Unlike too many in this cast, they were in every moment; they were frightening seers of a future they dreaded as much as we did. They knew what we did not and we knew that they did.
That said, the pace of this production was excellent, the characters said their lines, fought with vigor and the message was clear: Ambition can eat you up and warp your moral boundaries. And yet…. and yet. …when the lights dimmed and last curtain call was taken, I walked out of the theater with a sense that something was missing. Whenever I see a Shakespeare tragedy I am struck by how relevant it is not just to our present time, but to ME. This production said the right words, did the proper motions, but it did not grab me. I suspect that as the season progresses and the actors become more immersed in their roles, I will have a very different reaction.
DEATH AND THE KING’S HORSEMAN is based on a real incident that occurred in Nigeria in 1946 when time-honored tribal customs meet an inflexible British bureaucracy with tragic results. It opens in a lively Yoruba marketplace filled with poetry, riddles and music. The staging is glorious and the audience captivated by the color and panache of the scene. We meet Derrick Lee Weeden, who is masterful as Elesin, the horseman of the king who is honored to take his own life and eager to follow the destiny of his ruler. We see him decide to spend his last hours on life, making love to a young girl so that his seed will live on after he is gone. We are told over and over that Elesin is readying himself to undertake a death that is an honor and a responsibility for his people. The problem is that we believed him the first time. We didn’t need the message hammered into us. By the end of Act I, I had the feeling I had swallowed way too much of a very good thing.
It is the second act that saves the play. We see the arrogance and hubris the British had for their subjects, the complete lack of respect and sensitivity to the value of the culture they ruled. “Death and the King’s Horseman though written nearly forty years ago, resonates with.. …a presumption on the part of a dominant culture about what is right and good for another,” says director Chuck Smith. “I urge all who experience this play regardless of cultural heritage, to resist the temptation to view the responsibility for this tragedy as caused by one side or the other.”
But we do. We see the inevitable tragedy building and we know that the British made it happen. Still, horrifying as it is, that tragedy could have had a great deal more impact if it had happened with less verbiage and a better pace. It took two hours and a half to tell a story that would have resonated with us forever in an hour and a half…even less. The message is such an important one; the actors gave themselves completely to their task; but the script defeated them. All the local color, beating drums and music could not save this production from being a dirge instead of a hard hitting drama of the inevitable consequence when one culture is determined to orchestrate the values of another.
DEAD MAN’S CELL PHONE is one of those delightfully wry, comic commentaries only OSF can pull off. Sarah Ruhl’s play while interesting and provocative, is not nearly as marvelous and charming as the production itself. “Dead Man’s Cell Phone takes us all on a journey down the rabbit hole to explore the meaning of connection in this still new century,“ says director Christopher Liam Moore. “How can we be in contact, in touch, be seen and really see each other in this world of constant communication?”
A cell phone rings. Jean (Sarah Agnew) sees it sitting on a table in a coffee shop in front of a man who seems to be ignoring it. She approaches him and asks him to answer the phone. He does not move. She insists. She nudges him and he topples over.
The phone rings again. This time she answers it.
It takes an immense talent to pull this off. The whole premise is so ridiculous that no one in their right mind is going to swallow it ….at least they won’t until they see Sarah Agnew tussle with her conscience, fight it, resist it ….and finally give in. That phone is ringing and she has to respond.
From there the plot unfolds and it is a romp through a reality that could actually happen, a discussion of what death does to the people it touches including the dead man himself played in perfect key by Jeffrey King. Each character in the play is choice. I do not think I have ever seen Catherine Coulson (in her fifteenth season at OSF) do a more amazing piece of acting. She is Mrs. Gottleib, a controlling bitch of a mother with every hang-up exaggerated and yet all too true. You laugh at her, you love her and you remember your own mother’s outrageous demands. You cannot doubt the veracity of this caricature that Coulson has created. Hermia (Terri McMahon) is the dead man’s wife. Her lines are wonderful in themselves but McMahon takes the words and makes them into a tangible, biting masterpiece. She is superb and must be seen to appreciate fully. She is the wife who never really loved the guy she was stuck with…and now free, drunk and on the loose, runs into her future with open arms. There isn’t a weak link in the action of this production; the direction is gifted; the effects almost magic. Only the script itself is lacking. It doesn’t really tell you anything. It laughs at a mythical situation Ruhl concocted and then relies on the characters to make it real. It is the talent that put the play on a stage that makes this production a masterpiece.
The acting throughout is solid gold. The production combined delight, laughter, sarcasm and a true definition of our inner psyches…the ones we try to suppress and often cannot. In the hands of director Christopher Liam Moore and his gifted cast, DEAD MAN’S CELL PHONE is transformed into a fast moving, refreshing confection you will relish for years and years to come.
And this brings me to my favorite production of the weekend, the one I adored from start to finish: THE MUSIC MAN. Everyone knows the story of the shyster who bilks an entire town into buying band instruments and uniforms for a children’s band. To everyone’s surprise, including his, he meets with unexpected success, but not the way he intended. His energy, charisma and faith in the magic of mankind transforms an entire community from one who copes with tiresome reality to a group of loving individuals ready and willing to take the risks necessary to follow their dreams. River City, Iowa becomes a place where miracles can and do happen because its population is wiling to allow them to come true. Bill Rauch directed this production and his is a masterful interpretation of a true American masterpiece. “With this production, we’ve set out to ask these questions: How is River City transformed by Harold Hill? How is Harold Hill transformed by the community?” said Rauch.
And I ask: “How can every single member of this immense cast so perfectly convey the message of hope, tolerance and the power of community through synchronized song and dance.
Michael Elich is Harold Hill and he is everything the character embodies: slick as greased lightning, clever as a provincial Einstein and loveable as Bugs Bunny. Each character was a character in his own right but I cannot review this beautiful piece of musical theater without a word for Richard Elmore, that true master of comedy in all its forms. In his 25 years with the company, I have never seen him fail and here he shines like the true beacon he is… a perfect exaggeration of a blustery, self centered, narrow minded buffoon of a mayor of a tiny town he is determined to control. Linda Alper plays his wife and she is perfectly perfect (you will know such a thing is possible when you see her lead the Ladies Club in their interpretive dance.)
Whenever I see children on stage, I adore them just for being adorable In this production, I saw two youngsters who were so brilliant in their roles that I would have loved them had they each been unreformed convicts. Chloe Brown was Amaryllis Squires and she danced, played the piano and sang like the angel I am sure she is. And then there was Sergio Thompson’s Winthrop, too perfect to be true. When he stood in the front of the stage, all 3’+ of him and sang “Gary, Indiana” we saw no one else on that stage.
Every person in this cast is a star worthy of national recognition, but I must say word about a favorite of mine for many years at OSF: John Pribyl. He played Charlie Cowell, the Anvil salesman determined to stop Harold Hill from giving his profession a bad name. To see him lift his briefcase of anvils and slam it down on the stage was worth the entire production…and that is really saying something because every moment of this musical is choice. I also want to point out Howie Seago, who signed instead of spoke his part. (Marcellus Washburn). His acting was marvelous indeed but the signing that he and the others made integral to this production, in particular the conversations between him and Michael Elich, added a richness to the text and a special beauty to this heartwarming, idealistic plot. THE MUSIC MAN reminds us that thinking can indeed make it so and encourages every one in the audience to get out there and sing his song for nothing else but the joy it gives to the psyche.
These four plays are only the beginning of what promises to be a rich, diverse season that will make us think about who we are and how we conduct ourselves on our paths through life. EQUIVOCATION a world premier directed by OSF Artistic Director Bill Rauch makes us think about truth-telling in dangerous times. Set in London, 1605, this is the story of King James and the Gunpowder Plot and Tower dungeons and Shakespeare trying to write a play to please the king. “I think what EQUIVOCATION is about is the part that’s thrown away,” says the playwright, Bill Cain. “The part of ourselves or the part of the country that we demonize or cut off from ourselves. I think what Shakespeare learns to do in his writing is to say, ‘No, all of it’s mine. It all belongs to me.’”
Clifford Odets PARADISE LOST opens July 22 and is directed by retired artistic director Libby Appel. The play is a long neglected tour de force, an ode to holding fast to idealism and morality in a climate of fear. It was first produced in 1935 in the midst of the Great Depression when hopes were constantly dashed and dreams abandoned. In this play, his favorite, Odets asks if it is possible to combine idealism and practical action, to wake the dreamers from their dreaming and make the world anew.
New Theatre offerings includes THE SERVANT OF TWO MASTERS an irreverent, exuberant farce by Carlo Goldoni. The action unfolds at Truffaldino is torn between serving his master as best he can and satisfying his own urgent appetites. “It is based on eternal ideas about the conflict between parents, on love prevailing over all, on lovers who are always kept apart, on the egos of powerful men,” said director Tracy Young.
That defines commedia dell’arte and that is THE SERVANT OF TWO MASTERS.
Shakespeare’s wonderful comedy about trying to get what you want, ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL is the final offering in the New Theatre. In this provocative play, it all ends well but not without a measure of hurt, lies and mistakes to get there. Amanda Dehnert directs this fairy tale made real of flawed but beautiful people finding their way.
The Elizabethan stage opens its doors June 2 and features those old favorites HENRY VIII and MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING and an adaptation of the Cervantes play I have always found timeless, DON QUIXOTE by Octavio Solis. I have always loved this chivalrous hero, a loveable buffoon who has nothing to show for his life, has made no impact on the world and chases dreams he cannot possibly attain. He is misunderstood and beloved for his ineptitude; a madman with the courage to joust with windmills. You have to love him for the beauty of his dreams and the whimsy of his failures. In this production, Solis explores the collision between illusion and reality liberally peppered with bumptious humor.
It is going to be an interesting season for OSF and anyone who loves theater owes it to himself to drive up route 5 and see what is happening on their three stages.
CHECK IT OUT:
www.osfashland.org
800 219 8161

Magic Theatre presents….
TOUGH TITTY
By
Oni Faida Lampley
Directed by Robert O’Hara
Until February 22, 2009
Magic’s Northside Theatre
Building D Fort Mason
San Francisco
Tickets and information www.magictheatre.org
415 441 8822

There is no disease more cruel than breast cancer. Its treatments destroy your body, your sense of self and life as you once knew it. My mother died of it when she was 77. She battled the disease for 6 years enduring pain as vicious as childbirth, worse because it didn’t end, disfigurement and chemo-therapy that felt like the death it was supposed to prevent. My mother was a woman who had once been strong, prideful and in charge of us all. She commanded; we obeyed. When she was seventy years old, she discovered that dreaded lump every woman fears…the one that was malignant. Her breast was removed, an implant inserted under her arm and her life was reduced to a series of tests, painful procedures and unending medications that nauseated her, destroyed her memory and reduced her to total dependence on strangers in starched uniforms, people who did a job, and returned to their families without thought of my mother and her need to survive. That house-proud woman, who dressed like a model from Vogue, cooked like Julia Childs wished she could, entertained with more style than a professional caterer and never lost control of her world and all of us in it, was transformed into a piece of meat probed, prodded and mutilated. My father allowed all this to happen because he believed those procedures would make her whole again.
As I sat by her bedside and realized that this emaciated piece of flesh had once been my mother, I wondered if the six years of treatment she had endured, the round-the-clock care and the grief that destroyed those who watched her fade away had been worth it. Would she not have been better succumbing to the cancer and letting it take her to the heaven she believed in six years ago ?
The year after my mother died, I met a woman named Karina who was 38 years old. She had been fighting cancer since her only daughter was born 6 years ago and she wrote a book describing her fury at the fate that prevented her from seeing her child grow into a woman with a family of her own. I heard her rage at her husband because he no longer found her desirable. I listened to her anger at the technicians who treated her with no consideration for her pain or her humanity and the doctors who made inaccurate careless decisions to mutilate her further without any sense of what they had destroyed. I saw her go to unbelievable lengths to find a cure for this growth inside her that nothing could abate. She fought for life with every muscle, every nerve, and every resource she could find. In the end, when she knew it was hopeless, she went through her library and put notes to her daughter in all the books she loved so that her little girl would know the ideas her that had inspired a mother she would never know. I remember marveling at the energy this dying woman mustered to fight a battle she always knew she’d lose.
When I saw TOUGH TITTY at the Magic Theater, I did not see Angela (Kimberly Hebert Gregory) I saw my mother screaming at the doctors and railing at my father. I saw Karina hating her husband because he would see their baby grow up and she would not. I heard all the women I knew who despised the treatments, the agony of chemo-therapy and yet endured it all for a hope they knew was in vain.
The story we see on the Magic Theatre stage is a real one. It will make you question who has a right to make decisions about your own life. I cannot help but feel that we each need to own our existence and choose how we want it to play out. I cannot help but feel that accepting our own mortality is as healing as fighting a disease when the fight is more miserable that the death it will bring.
I still see Karina traveling to Hawaii for what she thought was a miracle cure. I still see my father bending over what once was the woman he loved, weeping because she was so drugged she didn’t recognize him. And I see Angela on stage, angry at her husband for being alive, hating her “medical team” and I understand.
I cannot recommend this production enough. It is a must see for every human being who faces such a decision when his body fails him. Each of us must ask ourselves, “How much do I want this life of mine, if I cannot be in charge of how it is lived? How valuable am I to myself that I cannot let go of breathing and a heartbeat that no longer obeys my soul. How important is it to exist when life is not longer an option?”
TOUGH TITTY continues until the end of the month. Once you see it, it will linger in your mind until you are no longer here. It forces each and every one of us to access how much we value life and what it must contain for us to want to save it.

San Jose Rep presents…
A PICASSO

“Picasso was a fascinating figure both as an artist and a citizen,” says San Jose Rep’s artistic director, Rick Lombardo. “It’s a delight to see him square off in Hatcher’s play with a representative of the Third Reich… and an art critic to top it off.”
This play is set in Paris in 1941 when the city was occupied by the Germans. Pablo Picasso (James Carpenter) has been summoned to a vault beneath the city to authenticate three paintings that have recently been confiscated by the Germans. The dialogue between Picasso and Miss Fischer, a German art critic played by Carrie Paff, is a mesmerizing testimonial to what art means to its creator. “I have not painted the war because I am not the kind of painter who goes out like a photographer for something to depict,” said Picasso. “But I have no doubt that the war is in these paintings I have done. Later on perhaps the historians will find them and show that my style has changed under the war’s influence. Myself, I do not know.”
He does not know because he is an artist. A painter puts color and line on canvas and it becomes a piece of him that others interpret in their own way because of what that design says to them. Pablo Picasso revolutionized the art world by the time he was thirty. He remained neutral during both world wars and he did not fight. However, he made a very definite anti-war statement in his masterpiece Guernica. That painting is far more than a series of images on canvas; it is anger at the devastation, the murder and the senseless destruction war does to our view of what it is to be human. Picasso was classified as a degenerate artist by the Germans when they occupied France. He was often harassed by the Gestapo and when he discussed his own war-time activities, he said, “Most certainly it is not a time for the creative man to sit, to shrink or to stop working.”
In this play, the Third Reich wants to publicly burn one of his paintings as their statement that Picasso’s brand of artistic expression was unacceptable to them. If you are not an artist, it is difficult to catch the undercurrent of this dialogue. It is hard for anyone who does not meld his heart and his mind together to produce something uniquely his own, a reflection of his place in the steam of events that make his world to understand the impact of burning a work of art, be it a casual sketch on a piece of wrapping paper or a fully realized canvas that graces a prestigious museum. Each is of equal value to its creator.
The first time I saw James Carpenter he played a Romanian immigrant so hungry he scraped a broken egg from the floor rather than waste it. I remember thinking, “I am seeing genius on the Berkeley Rep stage”. I have seen him thousands of times since and no matter what role he plays, he transforms it into something sublime. He has done more than that in this rendition of the tortured, angry and very frustrated man Pablo Picasso was during the Second World War and beyond. Carpenter is more Picasso than Picasso himself. He is the man and he is the mentality that made the man. He is the artist who expresses himself in color and line and he is the trapped soul who cannot say his anger but must splash it on canvas, paper, walls, and in notebook after notebook, one image after another filled with rage, desperation and the need we all have to define who we are to ourselves.
Carrie Paff is an excellent foil to Carpenters immense talent. Without her, we would not SEE Picasso and we would not understand the murder that is trying to happen on the San Joe Repertory Theatre’s stage. This play becomes a masterpiece in the hands of director Jonathan Moscone. Jeffrey Hatcher has created dialogue so true to character that you never doubt that it is real. This production is a mesmerizing 90 minutes; a portrait of what it means to be an artist and why what we create is more who we are than the very bodies we inhabit.

IF YOU GO:

A Picasso continues through February 22

San Jose Rep, 101 Paseo de San Antonio
San Jose, CA 95113
Tuesdays through Sundays
Matinees Saturday and Sunday.
(Times vary )
Tickets $16-$61
www.sjrep.com
408 367 7255