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Review
by Brad Rosenstein for the San Francisco Bay Guardian
In the mood
Shotgun Players offer a timely There Will Be No
Trojan War.
GIVEN THE LENGTHY advance planning a season requires, theater is often
slow to respond to changes in the political environment: "timely"
productions are more often the result of dumb luck than shrewd planning.
But recent weeks have brought a flurry of shows that refer directly
and deliberately to our current crisis. The Shotgun Players' entry,
Jean Giradoux's There Will Be No Trojan War, was a hasty replacement
for Adam Bock's The Fairy's Tale, rescheduled for March because of delays
in the completion of Shotgun's new theater in downtown Berkeley.
It's a savvy and pointed choice. Written in 1935, Trojan War was Giradoux's
warning about the catastrophe he could already see brewing in Europe,
an impassioned and well-reasoned plea for sanity. It was perhaps inevitable
that Giradoux, being French, should dress his argument in classical
robes, setting his piece on the eve of the Trojan War. Hector (Malcolm
Brownson), Troy's star general, has finally realized that in war there
are no victors. Returning home from another triumphant campaign, he
vows to close Troy's gates of war forever.
But Hector's brother Paris (John Patrick Moore) has made off with Helen
(Roxana Ortega), a situation guaranteed to engulf Troy in war once again.
For the lovers the liaison was merely an impetuous fling, but soon both
Greeks and Trojans are eagerly angling for war, citing everything from
wounded national pride to the enticing markets to be won. The bulk of
the play details Hector's cunning attempts to resolve the situation
peacefully, as he wins all his battles but inevitably loses the war.
Sound familiar? Just in case we missed the connections, director Patrick
Dooley updates the play with modern dress, contemporary sound bites,
and an exhortatory program note. The best news, however, is that the
play is quite worthy of revival. The language bubbles in Christopher
Fry's translation of this well-constructed parable, filled with such
witty turns as a mathematician's analysis of Helen's beauty. Things
bog down a bit in the second act, particularly in the artful but protracted
wranglings of Hector and Ulysses (Michael Asberry), which we know of
course will be in vain.
Brownson and Asberry are rock solid, and Kimberly Wilday's wry Cassandra
and Clive Worsley's manipulative Demokos shine. Dooley gracefully choreographs
his cast of 18(!) around the Eighth Street Studio space, and the majority
of the actors handle the play's high-flown style with ease. Shotgun
has made a specialty of animating foreign plays of ideas, and they squeeze
a lot of juice out of this challenging script. The play's warnings are
not just timely but also timeless, and its grim conclusion may prove
itself all too repeatable.
New Coates
Another voice entering the topical fray is George Coates Performance
Works, which after a quiet year has emerged to celebrate its 25th-anniversary
season with The Crazy Wisdom Sho. This freewheeling farce, written and
directed by Coates, sparkles with counterintuitive thought. Leadership
trainer Angie (Sara Moore) barely seems to have herself under control,
much less her star pupil, BaBa (Babatundé Garaya). Angie's main
innovation is a device that automatically synchronizes the speed of
a teleprompter with the natural rhythms of the speaker, allowing anyone
who can read to become a world leader.
Once again, sound familiar? But where Giradoux opts for compassionate
reason to close the gates of chaos, Coates and company embrace the anarchic
spirit and discover that laughter is the most lethal weapon. Besides
being a wicked satire on our current "misleadership" and the
technology and media that make it possible, The Crazy Wisdom Sho playfully
investigates the attendant fracturing of personality and identity and
the eruption of "belief disorders." Garaya is a very appealing
presence as a kind of robotic musical Othello, and Moore gives an absolutely
inspired comic performance, channeling Angie's flood of multiple personalities.
Coates hasn't fully decided what to do with his winning premise, and
after a marvelous concert for fire extinguishers the piece peters out
in a clever monologue dissecting the Shakespearean "authorship
question." But the show has an infectious loopiness throughout
and is well worth catching for Moore's brilliant turn. As with most
of Coates's recent productions, he plays down his technical wizardry
here. But in this anniversary production – the company's last at
Performance Works before the building is closed for seismic retrofit
– Coates leaves no doubt as to our culture's real leaders: tricksters
who shift the paradigm, making others see the world their way.
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Original article
on the web at
http://www.sfbg.com/AandE/36/12/theat12.html
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