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Review: ‘The Whipping Man’ at Marin Theatre Company
(The Bay area premiere of “The Whipping Man”, co-produced by the Marin Theatre Company and the Virginia Stage Company, plays at the Boyer Theatre from March 28 through April 28).
The moment we see Kat Conley’s remarkable set design of a crumbling antebellum southern plantation house and hear the haunting sounds of a stormy night as beautifully realized by sound designer Will McCandless, Matthew Lopez’s “Whipping Man” carries us away into a fantastic Southern gothic world rich with poetic imagery and slippery realities.
Tobie Windham as John, L. Peter Callendar as Simon and Nicholas Pelczar as Caleb in “The Whipping Man”. Photo credit: Marin Theatre Company.
The crumbling facade appears about to collapse. We see only by candlelight (completely convincing with Ben Wilhelm’s excellent lighting design). A masked man lopes mysteriously past the broken windows of the front hallway.
Then a desperately wounded soldier stumbles in and collapses.
This is among the most dramatic openings you are likely to see in the theatre, and it works well. The audience is rendered breathless in short order.
The act that follows is mostly exposition. We learn that the house is the home of the confederate soldier Caleb (Nicholas Pelczar) and that it has been cared for by two slaves of the family who are now free but remain because they have no place to go and are hopeful that the master of the house will return and give them some promised money to make their way north to a new life.
After the initial exposition, the plot of this play is remarkably convoluted, perhaps too much so, but it provides many extraordinary opportunities for a trio of highly skilled actors, particularly L. Peter Callender as the elderly, recently emancipated slave, Simon. Callender is called upon to play scene after scene of extreme emotional intensity and he rises to it over and over again in a performance of operatic grandeur. It is a career highlight performance for this always excellent Bay area actor.
Among the most interesting discoveries in the play is the Jewish identity of the three men. Caleb’s father, the plantation owner, is Jewish and he saw that the slaves raised on his plantation were given a Jewish religious education as well. The peculiarities of this situation bring many opportunities for reflection on the meaning of slavery and freedom. How can a Jew, whose primary religious celebration emphasizes the release of the Jewish people from slavery, hold slaves? What can the celebration of a Passover Seder possibly mean to Black slaves in the antebellum American south? When Callender’s Simon insists upon holding a Seder in the midst of disaster, singing “We are coming Father Abraham”, and reporting how he has learned of Lincoln’s assassination or when he reflects upon the nature of freedom and Jewish identity, the stormy emotional currents set loose upon the stage powerfully reflect the stormy circumstances of the story. This is a play about unending torment: emotional, physical, religious, social, familial, all at the hands of the mysterious figure of the ‘whipping man’ vividly described by the older and younger former slaves, Simon and John (the latter played well by a very charismatic Tobie Windham). One wonders if perhaps this whipping man might not be G-d Himself. It is a deep play.
Perhaps too deep for easy comprehension. One is left with the feeling that the ever more complex details and secrets revealed in the course of two acts are too much to follow. Playwright Lopez makes unusual demands upon his audience, perhaps a bit more than necessary.
Director Jason Minadakis, however, does an excellent job of keeping the play emotionally interesting through every sequence, even in the midst of an over abundance of detail and revelation. The design elements are uniformly excellent, and, most importantly, the actors take the audience on a memorable emotional ride, not easily dismissed, and likely to remain in the heart long after seeing the play.
For further information, click here.
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“The Whipping Man” by Mathew Lopez, co-produced by the Marin Theatre Company and the Virginia Stage Company. Director: Jason Minadakis. Scenic Designer: Kat Conley. Lighting Designer: Ben Wilhelm. Costume Designer: Jacqueline Firkins. Composer: Chris Houston. Sound Designer: Will McCandless.
Caleb: Nicholas Pelczar. Simon: L. Peter Callender. John: Tobie Windham.
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Review: ‘Reasons to be Pretty’ at SF Playhouse
(“Reasons to be Pretty” plays at the San Francisco Playhouse from March 30th through May 11th.)
Neil LaBute‘s “Reasons to be Pretty” premiered on Broadway in 2008 and was awarded a Tony in 2009. Like his funny and brutal screenplay, “In The Company of Men”, it deals with relations between the sexes and our obsession with appearance.
That obsession is so common, and has been around for so long, it is engrained in the human condition. But it is something of a smokescreen as far as this play is concerned. I think the elephant in the room is the phenomenon of the modern “psycho-bitch” (a term I first heard from a woman who was referring to her boyfriend’s sister).
Live-in couple Greg (Craig Marker, left) and Steph (Lauren English) fight when she learns he described her looks as “regular” in Neil LaBute’s “Reasons To Be Pretty” at SF Playhouse. Photo Credit: Jessica Palopoli
The comedy begins with a domestic dispute which is so over the top and one sided, it was like watching a car wreck as a woman in full fury lacerates a man with whom she has lived for four years. He doesn’t know what hit him or what he did to warrant this whirlwind of curses and insults. It’s depressing how much he takes from her, like a doormat/sponge. And all because in a conversation with his buddy in a garage he referred to his girlfriend as having “regular” features. This was overheard by his buddy’s wife, Carly, and relayed to the girlfriend, Stephanie. Then all hell breaks loose. How dare he speak in less than chivalrous terms about the fair damsel with a potty mouth?
The boyfriend, Greg, is a sensitive schlub who works in a warehouse with his buddy, Kent (Patrick Russell) and Carly, a security guard (Jennifer Stuckert). Greg (in a very nuanced performance by Craig Marker) actually reads books and doesn’t like lying to women. Kent is practically a sociopath in that respect. What does it mean to have equality if Stephanie (Lauren English) can have a meltdown over this, especially considering that if she referred to him as regular-looking he wouldn’t blink an eye? She tries to play a sensitive feminine card, but is closer to a “truck driver in drag” (to quote Truman Capote’s description of the writer Jacqueline Susann). It’s as if she were screaming “WADDAYA MEAN I LACK SOCIAL GRACES YA FRIKKIN’ LOSER!?” while throwing her industrial-strength vibrator and knocking over a vase full of flowers. Lauren English is ferocious in this role, which also requires some magnetic quiet moments.
The second act balances the first. There is a twisted symmetry unfolding in the plot involving shifting alliances amongst the two couples. A little information can be dangerous. Carly, the security guard, comes across as more human when she is pregnant, and not only because there is another human onboard. Her husband Kent, Greg’s buddy at work and on the company baseball team, is a cocky two-dimensional two-timer. He and Greg end up slugging it out on the outfield. He loses the fight and has an emotional breakdown which gets applause, although it seemed a bit overdone to me. Nevertheless, Patrick Russell nails the part.
Overall, this is a fine production. I enjoyed the snazzy revolving set (designed by Bill English) where the entire background turns and sets up the next scene. The theater itself goes back to 1923 when it was some kind of a ballroom. Later it was Theater on the Square with 700 seats. SF Playhouse took over a few months ago and redesigned it into a beautiful house with a more manageable 200 seats.
For further information, click here.
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“Reasons to be Pretty” by Neil LaBute, produced by San Francisco Playhouse. Director: Susi Damilano. Set Design: Bill English. Composer/Sound Design: Billy Cox. Costume Design: Tatjana Genser. Lighting Design: Michael Oesch. Fight Director: Dave Maier.
Steph: Lauren English. Greg: Craig Marker. Carly: Jennifer Stuckert. Kent: Patrick Russell.
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Review: “The Lisbon Traviata” at New Conservatory Theatre Center
(Charles Kruger)
(“The Lisbon Traviata” plays at the New Conservatory Theatre Center from February 22 through March 24, 2013).
Terrence McNally is certainly one of America’s premiere gay playwrights, and it is no surprise that the New Conservatory Theatre Center has made something of a specialty of his plays. As one would expect, their current staging of “The Lisbon Traviata” is intelligent, straightforward and effective.
Opera Queens Stephen and Mendy discuss records and love.L to R: Michael Sally (Mendy) and Matt Weimer (Stephen).
Opera represents a world of heightened emotions, and is famously appealing to gay men, perhaps because for so long so many gay men have felt compelled to bury their strongest emotions beneath a veneer of indifferent camp bitchiness or hide them deeply away in the closet. In “The Lisbon Traviata”, McNally uses the love of opera and its emotional power to get at the feelings of his gay male characters with a maximum of intensity. It was written at a time (the 1980s) when it was commonplace to imagine that the emotional life of gay men was somehow shallower and less legitimate than their straight counterparts, even as the community was suffering the war-like impact of AIDs and its emotional attendants of terror and grief. Using opera as a model, the play pushes the inner life of its characters well beyond what is typically experienced outside of opera or classical tragedy.
When Richard Thomas was appearing in the Los Angeles production, I read in an interview that he did not invite his children because he felt its depiction of gay characters might seem so grim and sad and close to stereotypical that he did not want them exposed to it until they were old enough to put it in context. I have similar reservations. I understand that, in the context of the 1980s, a strong case can be made for McNally’s approach. And I certainly recognize the excellence of the play’s construction, the elegance of the writing, and the power of its impact in performance. Still, a part of me (and I speak as a gay man who came out in the late 70s) finds it to be as excruciatingly dated and cringe-inducing as “The Boys In The Band”.
These doubts notwithstanding, “The Lisbon Traviata” is a marvelous vehicle for fine if over-the-top acting, and the cast at New Conservatory Theatre Center delivers the goods. As the brilliant, brittle, bitchy yet bubbly Mendy, Michael Sally provokes laughter and tears with ease, handling the characters aria-like monologues with aplomb. Matt Weimer brings deep sadness to Mendy’s best friend (and unrequited love) Stephen, making his eventual operatically intense meltdown at the play’s denouement believable. Philippe Gosselin and Adam Roy do well in the supporting roles of Stephen’s lover Mike and his new boyfriend.
For further information click here.
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“The Lisbon Traviata” by Terrence McNally, produced by New Conservatory Theatre Center. Director: Dennis Lickteig. Set Design: Kuo-Hao Lo. Lighting Design: Christian Mejia. Sound Design: Stephen Abts. Costume Design: Jessie Amoroso. Fight Choreography: Will Springhorn.
Stephen: Matt Weimer. Mendy: Michael Sally. Mike: Philippe Gosseline. Paul: Adam Roy.
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