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May Shows Reviewed Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
On stage however, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf turns out to be marvelously black comedy with a highly emotional kick that stays with you. All the characters are fascinating to watch. The drama is intense and the laughs organic. George (Michael D. Jacobs), a stifled associate professor at a small New England college, and his wife Martha (Julie Hughett), daughter of the president of that college, are yin yang opposites nestled together in the intimate pain of their lives. She seems a boozy floozy, an outgoing aggressor, he an introverted, but dangerous man capable of inflicting emotional pain on anyone who comes within their cherished circle of mutual torment. George and Martha have well-honed weapons unavailable to less educated, less cerebral people. They don’t slap each other around in frustrated inability to put thoughts and emotions into words. No, words are darts, razors and arrows and the games they play with them are deadly earnest. They enter the scene a bit lit from a faculty party and continue drinking until dawn. Booze fuels their action, but drink doesn’t dull their wits, their tongues or their pain. Sucked into their vortex are Nick (Ted D’Agostino) and Honey (Anne Louise Marquis), a young biologist and his wife new to the college. He is handsome, athletic and forthright; she a simpering pleaser who just wants to get along. The evening’s activities reveal them to be something else. Their masks are ripped away and by the end, they must confront themselves, just as George and Martha do. Great writing deserves great acting and in the PacRep production, the actors reveal the brilliance of the script. The cast delivers the play with searing credibility. These are fully realized characters that live fully in the moment. In masterful performances, each actor creates a soul who changes through the arc of the play from first meeting to final line, radically different people from where they began. Julie Hughett as Martha flaunts a needy sexuality and seems the controlling partner. She is loud (“I don’t bray,” she brays), aggressive and ultimately fragile making her Martha initially repellent and ultimately pitiful. A bravura performance in a bravura role. Mr. Jacobs reveals in George a badger-like ferocity that belies the initial impression of weakness. Jacobs’ touch is sure and facile, powerful yet understated. His George has a lightening quick wit and he turns phrases (“his mouse is a little wifey type”) and slips them between ribs before the other characters (or the audience) realizes it. With infinite variety and continual surprises, this actor inhabits the role, owns it in complete in-the-moment spontaneity. Ted D’Agostino and Anne Louise Marquis are ideally cast as the young couple who become the not so innocent collateral damage of George and Martha’s war. Mr. D’Agostino takes his Nick from wide-eyed new faculty member to ambitious arrogant user to discarded boy toy in microscopic increments turning the audience’s opinion from sympathy to loathing. As Honey, the shyest member of the quartet, Ms. Marquis creates a character who is not terribly likeable. Her character clings and simpers; drinks too much and gets sick. But when her mask is stripped away she is revealed as a woman who uses her weaknesses to get what she wants and when she stands exposed, Ms. Marquis delivers a stunning moment of personal horror. It’s a fine performance in a very difficult role. The show looks great. Rick Ortenblad give us a living room set on a raked stage that is fully functional and believable, superbly lit by Derek Duarte. Lady Hull’s costumes are right for the period and the characters. And director John Rousseau’s hand is wonderfully transparent.
One Acts Going to a show at Pintello Comedy Theatre is like visiting favorite relatives. Aunt Marion and Uncle Rod great you warmly when you come in and make sure that you are comfortably seated at a table with a nice bowl of bar kibble. There’s coffee in the kitchen and they always introduce the show and on opening night always get a photo of the crowd for the album. It’s so nice to visit. Rod and Marion Pintello presented a charming changeup in May with a pair very funny one-act plays, At the Beep by Steph DeFerie and My Narrator by Pintello favorite Norm Foster. Physical action is static in At the Beep. Rod and Marion play lifelong friends Skippy and Mary Elizabeth whose relationship unfolds through telephone messages, either left or announced. With touching and hilarious turns of phrase Rod and Marion take their characters all the way from play dates to retirement with plenty of conflict, teen angst, misdirected love affairs and ultimately a life long friendship that weathers all. Simple and affecting, awfully clever and very sweet, At the Beep is solid comedy. A clever playwright’s device is the core interest in My Narrator. A pair of mismatched lovers, a poor artist who makes bad choices in men (Alika Spencer) and a socially inept loser (Charley Gilmore) make fumbling advances toward a relationship. They are guided by “narrators,” a unique theatrical device, (spirits? consciences? entities?) who comment on the action hoping to nudge their particular character to good choices. An angel on the shoulder? Whitney Pintello is Ms. Spencer’s narrator and Kevin Heath tries to give advice to Mr. Gilmore. Of course, the “real” people don’t follow instructions and the narrators start to fall for each other. And therein lies the comedy. An interesting playwriting conceit and absurd characters make for delightful comedy in this one act play.
Sam Burguesa and the Pixie Chicks
The story has Sam Burguesa (the always entertaining, charismatic and versatile Anahuac Valdez) as a not so young man living in both a fantasy world of his own device and in the garage of his mother and stepfather (Rosa Escalante and Jesus Huerta). His fantasies tip over into full-blown delusion when his childhood dolls come to life as “Pixies” who take over his life to the horror of his parents. There is plenty of social and cultural commentary as well as politics woven in the fabric of the piece. Although the show is experimental and at an early stage of development, Valdez and company present a highly polished product. The music is original, entertaining and superbly performed by both the musicians and a tireless cast. Christy Sandoval’s challenging choreography energizes the dancers who deliver it with breathless precision. The entire cast, fully committed to the project and holding nothing back, deliver a solidly entertaining show. I particularly enjoyed Michelle Valentyne as Trixie Trickster who was an amazing cyclone of expression and movement. Katie Hipol, a true veterana of El Teatro Campesino at a very young age, pulled a voice and an authentic accent from the bottom of her boots or the depth of her psyche to create the wonderfully comic and threateningly sinister Boris the Gnome. I’ll be very interested to see how the show develops. In San Francisco and Berkeley For those theatre goers who like their drama in the cultural centers of San Francisco and Berkeley, take a look at what is playing at American Conservatory Theatre and Berkeley Repertory Theatre in June. At ACT, Edward Albee’s At Home at The Zoo, is a “new spellbinder…a meticulously calibrated and dangerously brutal look at the lives of three New Yorkers. The story opens with Peter, a tweedy book editor, and his wife, Ann, whose everyday conversation takes an unexpected turn into dangerously personal territory. It’s the kind of conversation that can drive a husband out for a walk – to Central Park, where Jerry, a desperate outcast, awaits. [It’s] an unforgettable pairing of Albee’s original The Zoo Story with a freshly penned prequel.” At Home at the Zoo runs June 5–July 5 at the Geary Theatre in San Francisco Over at Berkeley Rep You, Nero runs through June 28 on the Thrust Stage. This world premiere production presents the infamous emperor as comedy. Robert Hurwitt, the excellent San Francisco Chronicle theatre critic who is often sparing with praise calls Danny Scheie’s performance in the title role “a tour de force of murderously comic, canny and catty derangement.” He then goes on to say that You, Nero “pays off in two hours of almost uninterrupted delight.” High praise indeed. Maybe we’ll motor up and have a look. And Don’t Forget… El Teatro Campesino brings back the one-man show phenom Kirk Ward in 3 Stories Tall June 11 – 28 at The Playhouse in San Juan. I saw Kirk the last time he was here and his show is a comedy blast, edgy, adult oriented – a tour de force. Don’t miss it…Mount Madonna School presents its 31st annual production of Ramayana, a spectacular staging of the ancient Hindu story, June 5, 6 & 7…The well regarded Cabrillo Stage opens their summer season with I Love You, You’re Perfect…Now Change June 26 – July 26 in the Cabrillo College Theater…Pacific Repertory Company continues The Blue Room in the Circle Theatre through July 18 and runs Laughter on the 23rd Floor in the Golden Bough Theatre June 18 – July 19…I look forward to seeing Lydia Lyons, my terrific Aldonza in the recent PacRep Man of la Mancha in The Great American Trailer Park Musical at San Jose Stage Company thru July 5…and The Western Stage opens its new season with Arthur Miller’s The American Clock Hartnell Colleges Studio Studio Theatre running June 5 – 28.
See you at intermission.
FREE BOYS CLASSES! Ballet San Jose School is offering free boys class this summer for new students. No previous dance experience necessary. For boys who have always wanted to give dancing a try – this is the opportunity! Classes will take place June 22-26, Monday through Friday, 10–11am for 5 to 7 year olds and 11:10am–12:10pm for 8 years and up. All classes will be taught by company member and school ballet instructor, Mads Eriksen (See Mr. Eriksen’s bio at: www.balletsanjose.org/dancers/meriksen.htm). The required dress code is a plain white t-shirt (not too long, or baggy – must fit well), black shorts, white socks, and black or white ballet shoes. To register, please call the School Registrar at (408) 288-2820 x223 or email registrar@balletsanjose.org. Ballet San Jose School, 40 North First Street in downtown San Jose.
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What surprised me a little in PacRep’s superb production of Edward Albee’s now classic play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, was how entertaining a play it is. Casting my thoughts back across decades, I am not sure if I have ever seen the work onstage. Saw the film, of course, Mike Nichol’s brilliant directorial debut which starred the most famous actors of the time (1966) Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in the iconic roles of George and Martha. It seems everyone knows the play is about a savagely battling couple who spend a boozy late night, after-party get together shredding each other as well as the young couple Martha has invited over. Sounds bleak on the page.
A new work by Kinan Valdez, Sam Burguesa and the Pixie Chicks, with music by Stephanie Woehrmann, Chas Croslin and Valdez, opened under the banner “A Teatro Lab Production.” It’s a work in progress, a first look at an ambitious project that hits the boards still wet, the script still warm from the printer, a bit raw and in need of revision and trimming, but with solid attributes that show much promise. Sam Burguesa and the Pixie Chicks bills itself as “a new musical cabaret,” a fair description. It is a musical fantasy, boldly staged on a reconfigured Playhouse that thrusts the action close enough to touch in various places at various heights and angles at times giving the audience a terrific spectacle akin to a three ring circus, with the patented Teatro exuberance bursting out everywhere.
2009-2010
Dining Guide
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