"This it How it Goes" ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

This is how this review goes: we can't tell you anything about the plot. Neil LaBute's 2005 "This is How it Goes," currently running at Berkeley's Aurora Theatre, is vintage LaBute: relentlessly angry and fiercely clever. On its face, the show is about conscious and unconscious racism, but deceit is at its core. The superb cast of three (Gabe Marin [Man], Carrie Paff  [Woman] and Aldo Billingsley [Cody] makes us fidget in our chairs. Three thirty-somethings living in an un-named midwestern town, they think they have a handle on things. But they don't. And neither do we, until the very end.





Marin is the clueless narrator. Warning: not so clueless. Paff is the wronged wife. Warning: you don't know the half of it. Billingsley is aggressively terrifying. Warning: The guy always gets what he wants.

There are plenty of inside theater jokes -- the children, for example, who are never seen. Marin breaks through the fourth wall to tell the audience how difficult it is to work with children, what with tutors and the union and all, so we're not going to actually see them during the performance. His narrations take place in dim light (cleverly realized by lighting designer Kurt Landisman), then the lights come back up and Marin flashes immediately back to character and the action proceeds.

We don't want to give away the many turns in the plot, but we can say this: there is a string of racial slurs that may feel gratuitous and out of place. Later, when you think about what has really happened, and how Gabe Marin's Man really feels about Aldo Billnglsey's Cody, the language becomes understandable, if not very nice.

But racism isn't nice, nor is getting what you want at any cost. It's a great show, but you'll be glad you can walk out onto Addison Street and buy a Street Sheet.

RATINGS: ☼  ☼  ☼  BANG
The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "This is How it Goes" Three Stars with a BANGLE OF PRAISE. The BANGLE first: Playwright LaBute has the guts to write plays that talk about big issues. We are grateful both for that and for a script that keeps us involved and surprised. All three actors are excellent, though we could use a little more of Man's backstory. Who is this guy? I mean, honestly? Cody and Woman, we get.

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"This it How it Goes"
Aurora Theatre
2081 Addison Street, Berkeley
Through July 21
$32-$50

"Black Watch" ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

It is said that when good Scots go to Heaven they hear only accordion music: bagpiping is for the other place. The ACT/National Theater of Scotland's co-production of "Black Watch,"  which is in the midst of a brilliant and successful run at the San Francisco Armory, is an unforgettable night of innovative theater which is so good you can endure the bagpiping that fills the room for a long time before the show begins. You don't have to plug the piper. The show will start soon, and when it does you will be enthralled.

This is spectacle as much as drama. It is ostensibly a history of the fabled Black Watch, a unit of the Scottish armed forces since 1739, with an emphasis on its problematic service in Iraq during the American invasion of Fallujah. These men consider themselves heirs to the tradition of Scottish highland warriors (think Mel Gibson in "Braveheart"). Their speech is misogynistic and potty-mouthed, but we see the fear under their bravado. Nothing in their training has prepared them for suicide bombers. The nobility of hand-to-hand combat is from another age.


In an all-male ensemble cast a few roles stand out: Stuart Martin as Cammy is the one who seems to be thinking things through a little more clearly; Richard Rankin is tough but understands his men; and Stephen McCole is the commanding officer who also plays the legendary Lord Elgin.

The production team is superb. This is a show that has played around the world and learned the craft of putting on a production of this magnitude. Lights, music (these soldiers drill and also sing and dance a little bit), set and costumes all contribute to the excitement. 

Do not expect personal growth. Little is learned by these men. Most discouraging is that the same is true for the governments who have sent them into combat. Scots, Americans and English soldiers are hostage to election year politics. Thrust into the most hostile of theaters of war, the fabled Black Watch can do little but try to survive.

RATINGS:  ☼  ☼  ☼  ☼
The San Francisco Theater blog Awards Division awards "Black Watch" Four Stars. It is exciting as well as novel. But writing about this show misses the point. You must see it. Do so quickly before it ships out for its next deployment.

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"Black Watch"
San Francisco Armory
1800 Mission Street, San Francisco
(between 14th and 15th Streets)
$35-$70
Through June 16 ONLY

"Wild With Happy" ☼ ☼ ☼

Coleman Domingo's "Wild with Happy" is a farce. A gay farce. A gay, black farce. At its best it makes you laugh out loud and appreciate the strange situation into which each character has wedged himself. In the one female role, Sharon Washington (in a double assignment as Adelaide/Aunt Glo) is so good you are not the least bit surprised that she was nominated for an Outstanding Lead Actress Lucille Lortel Award when the show premiered Off-Broadway in 2012. When you leave the theater you are still talking about her.

There is not a lot of meat on these bones, though. Jokes, yes. Insightful comments on the funerary industry, on the morés of black people, of gay people, of church and its reluctance to accept gay people, yes indeed. There is a lot more here too, including alienation and a modern world's reliance on detached communication. But for us the problem is Gil.

As the lead character, Gil (played by Domingo) could help us a lot more than he does. Perhaps his ultra-cool New York sheen says a lot to his target audience, but it doesn't give the rest of us much to go on. It takes until the very end of the show until we get a very small hint of what has been haunting him vis á vis his mother, but Domingo the writer and Domingo the actor take a long time to get us there. The rest of the time Gil mostly kvetches.

"Wild With Happy" is for laughs. The gags are a mile-a-minute, most of them from the deliriously loony mouth of Aunt Glo. "Cremation?" she asks Gil. "We don't do that! Maybe if they're burned or mutilated or too fat to fit in the coffin. But that's it!" You just keep talking, Aunt Glo.

So what are Duane Boutté (Mo) and Richard Prioleau (Terry) doing there anyway? Adoring Gil, mostly. Aunt Glo doesn't go for that. That's why we love her.

We also love Erik Flatmo's set, especially the way he pictures the car chase during the road trip South. The Cinderella room -- well, it just may be the Happiest Place on Earth.

RATINGS: ☼  ☼  ☼

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Wild With Happy" Three Stars. Go to have your funny bone tickled by Sharon Washington. 

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"Wild With Happy" 

Mountain View Center for Performing Arts

500 Castro Street, Mountain View

Through June 30

$23-$73

 Photo Credit: Tracy Martin and Mark Kitaoka

"Terminus" ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG!

"It's a voice I'm certain I recollect, someone I taught in school, I suspect, then am sure of. Yes. A girl named Helen I had for maths. A fucking mess. Though that's a tale best told at another time. For now, she's saying she needs an abortion. Fine. I ask her how many months she's gone, she says 'Nine.'"

---Character A, from Mark O'Rowe's "Terminus"

Read that out loud and you will pick up the lilt of the internal rhymes. Mark O'Rowe's one hour forty-five minute (no intermission) "Terminus" consists of three characters giving ten to fifteen minute monologues, one character following the other, all told in what sounds like verses from a Poetry Slam. It's not an easy evening. You need every ounce of concentration just to make sense of what you are watching and hearing. But give it awhile, because once the story takes on a form you may find yourself, as we were, spellbound.

Things will begin to pop into your head. We thought of Vikram Seth's magnificent "The Golden Gate," a novel about San Francisco written completely in sonnets. The connection is how something can be at once so literary and full of heart.

The three actors (Stacy Ross, Marissa Keltie and Carl Lumbly) are nothing short of brilliant, which is admittedly an easy word to use. So consider this: since they never speak at the same time, nor do they interact with each other, it is a necessity for each character's next monologue to continually one-up the previous one, or the show will drag. It never does. Ross's secret guilt gives her surprising strength, Keltie's innocence brings her to the strangest love this side of Star Wars, and Lumbly is just plain terrifying. Each actor has a reserve, and that reserve has another reserve under it. By the end of the evening they have used themselves up. You find yourself wondering how they will do this show every night for the length of the run.

But after the show, Lumbly said: "I can't wait for tomorrow."

It's dark and smoky in the theater, but this makes sense since we are apparently in Hell. Robert Brill's coal-mine like set and Gabe Maxson's smoke and low light seem perfectly reasonable when faced with issues of life, death, afterlife, monsters, rape, worms, payback, Bette Midler and a goodly collection of Irish guilt. 

You won't see another show like "Terminus" this season. But after Opening Night there are only 17 performances left. If you love great acting and writing, and we know you do, please don't miss this one. 

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG!

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Terminus" Four Stars with a BANGLE of PRAISE. Each actor plus director Jon Tracy earn one star each, while the Bangle goes to Artistic Director Loretta Greco for having the courage (and, apparently, a supportive Board of Directors) to mount this peformance. "Terminus" makes you squirm. And stretch. Did we mention squirm? We can't stop thinking about it.

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"Terminus"
The Magic Theatre
Fort Mason Center, Building D
San Francisco
Through July 15

"Abigail's Party" ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

An English play written in 1977 about tasteless middle-class people would normally be greeted with a smile and a nod or two. It was that way the last time Mike Leigh's "Abigail's Party" came through town in 1998 at the old Aurora. But this time San Francisco Playhouse has an ace up its sleeve -- Susi Damilano. She may have born to play the role of Bev. A fine comic actor, Damilano allows Bev to be so crass and oblivious that you would strangle her if you could stop laughing. The crasser she gets, as when she is dancing seductively with Tony (Patrick Kelly Jones), the more we gasp. Damilano and the rest of this fine cast make a lightweight play memorable.

Jones, with his barely contained disgust for both his wife and the party he has been forced to attend, and Remi Sandri as Lawrence, Bev's henpecked real-estate salesman husband, give a strong undercurrent to the story. Angela (Allison Jean White) and Sue (Julia Brothers) have no defense against Bev's aggressiveness. They sit and watch as Bev realizes her goal to to get everyone drunk so she can torment her husband. 

Amy Glazer directs. The show is a true two act play and longer than we are used to seeing these days, but does not drag. And you get a surprise ending which, thinking about it later, isn't really much of a surprise. If you were Lawrence, you'd do it too.

 RATINGS:     ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Abigail's Party" Three Stars with a BANGLE of PRAISE. The cast, direction and story earn one star each and Damilano's performance brings home the Bangle. Nobody takes the easy way out -- Amy Glazer does not allow Damilano to leave character for an instant, nor does Julia Brothers stand up and scream as we might expect. One word of warning: they smoke real cigarettes and cigars. Some of us love it. Be aware.

"Abigail's Party"
San Francisco Playhouse
450 Post Street (2d floor of Kensington Park Hotel)
San Francisco
Through May 24
$30-$100

Will Durst: "Boomeraging - From LSD to OMG" ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

It probably helps if you've been around the block a few times, circled back and then forgot where you were going, but even if you're not a boomer Will Durst will make your shoulders ache from laughing. Or maybe it's bursitis.

Every Tuesday night until November, Durst will be helping us use the Marsh as an alternative to going to the gym. He is so danged funny. We get 90 minutes of joke after joke after joke, but we also are allowed inside a little bit this time. Durst has always made us laugh, but it's nice to hear him talk about his family (especially his Dad -- one of our favorite moments is watching him do his father's four-part groan when getting out of a chair).

Basically, it's a rant. 

Durst is 61. He thinks that is old, only not in comparison to igneous rock formations. He remembers (so do we) being his parents' TV remote control. ("You! Get up and change the channel!") He remembers when doing drugs didn't involve a co-pay. Bada-bing bada-boom.

But he also comments on being invisible as you get older, and he is kind enough to give us the meaning of life:

"It ends."

"Boomeraging" is Will Durst's most satisfying show yet and the best part about it is we can go back every couple months on a Tuesday night and watch the whole thing evolve. 

RATINGS: ☼  ☼  ☼  ☼

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Boomeraging - From LSD to OMG" Four Stars. Sure, it's a solo performance, and sure, there is no staging to speak of, and sure, he doesn't change costumes nor does he have one (visible) tattoo. He's just a very funny man. We feel better when we come out than when we walked in. And now we know why our Dad was always fiddling with the change in his pocket.

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Will Durst: "From LSD to OMG"

The Marsh

1062 Valencia Street, San Francisco

Tuesday nights through November 6

$15-$35

"The Arsonists" ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

The play is delightful, the message not so much. Written in 1953 in his native Czechoslovakia, Max Frisch seems to be lampooning blind totalitarianism at the same time he is sticking it to the wealthy who choose to live with their heads in the sand. The issue here -- a businessman who has invited two arsonists into his attic because he is afraid to appear too terribly bourgeois -- is one we can relate to easily. We see what we choose to see, even with our house about to burn down around us.

You have to love the two arsonists -- Tim Kniffin (Eisenring) and Michael Ray Wisely (Schmitz) never pretend to be anyone except who they are. Bottom line: they love burning things up. Schmitz (seen above with Gwen Loeb as Mrs. Biedermann) is also a pathological liar, and he has figured out that his tales of personal woe elicit embarrassed generosity from others, especially Mr. and Mrs. Biedermann.

We know Biedermann (Dan Hiatt) is a bumbling plutocrat, but it takes us awhile to realize he is also guilty of mistreating an ex-employee.  Perhaps it is this guilt that causes him to try so hard to appease Schmitz with good cigars, excellent food and accommodations in the very attic that every person in the theater, except for Biedermann, knows Schmitz is planning to burn down.

We love the attic scenes. It is theater of the absurd mixed with a touch of The Simpsons, as Biedermann  absolutely refuses to acknowledge what he is staring at with his own eyes. There is an epidemic of arson in the city? You have dragged barrels of gasoline into my attic? No, nothing out of the ordinary here.

 The firemen and their (lengthy) unison chanting seem a little strange -- as much absurdist theater from the mid-50s seems to us now. But the message remains strong. If someone tells you they are intent on burning down your house -- they probably will.

RATINGS: ☼  ☼  ☼ BANG
The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "The Arsonists" Three Stars with a BANGLE OF PRAISE. The sets, acting and direction (Mark Jackson) earn one star each. Special mention to Dina Percia for her delightfully frustrated Anna. We give the BANGLE to the bad guys -- who doesn't love bad guys who are truly bad? Especially when they have such nice smiles?

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"The Arsonists"
The Aurora Theatre
2081 Addison Street, Berkeley
Through May 12
$32-$50