| THEATER TIMES REVIEWS MAY 2007 |
The Constant Wife
Pasadena Playhouse
Geffen Playhouse
A Noise Within
South Coast Repertory
Mark Taper Forum
Pasadena Playhouse
Geffen Playhouse
A Noise Within
South Coast Repertory
Mark Taper Forum
Pacific Playwrights Festival
South Coast Repertory / May 4-6, 2007
Over the weekend of May 4-6, South Coast Repertory’s (SCR) Pacific Playwrights
Festival held its 10th Annual encampment in Costa Mesa. Seven plays had their first
public airing: four as script-in-hand readings, one a semi-produced workshop with five
performances, and two in full productions whose multi-week runs passed through the
three-day Festival weekend. It was also a gathering of the American theater tribe –
writers, administrators, funders, directors, literary managers, the public, and
members of the media (including this writer, who, for full disclosure, previously
worked here).
The writer roster split between four stalwarts of SCR’s stable and three younger scribes in their first
presentation here. Among the vets were Richard Greenberg, Donald Margulies, José Rivera, and John
Strand. The newcomers were Kenneth Lin, Julie Marie Myatt, and David Wiener. In a nice twist, Lin, Myatt,
and Wiener benefited from the larger investment of full productions and the workshop staging while the
elders provided reading material.
The Festival is a chance to survey what is on the minds of today’s American playwrights. Admittedly, the
results require serious qualifying: writers are a very independent group to begin with, and any assessment
must take into account the high-gauge screen of the theater’s selection process. Still, one theme that early
on threatened to make this a "specific" playwrights festival was an issue confronting everyone, especially
the middle-aged writers.
In Greenberg’s Our Mother’s Brief Affair, Rivera’s Boleros for the Disenchanted, and Lin’s Po’ Boy Tango,
the impact of a parent's recent or imminent passing was particularly important. Both of the productions,
Myatt’s My Wandering Boy and Wiener’s System Wonderland, flipped the dynamic in different ways. In
Myatt’s story, it's the younger generation that is lost. In Wiener’s drama, the generational succession is in
the Hollywood context of careers, fame, loyalty, and the subject writers find hardest to resist: writers.
Among the broader issues was Wiener’s investigation of creativity in a commercial industry and a nicely
turned bit of culture clash in the kitchen of Lin’s Tango. Here, a raw, regrettable showdown between Asian
American and African-American friends becomes a riveting moment that, at least by measure of its
uniqueness here, was the Festival’s proudest.
The less heralded but always exciting aspect of this play festival is the acting and directing. Readings and
workshops, when employing this level of excellence and cast with this sensitivity of actor to role, are a
theater sub-genre that deserves considerably more respect than it gets as a process to serve the
playwright.
Veterans of hundreds of readings know that one of the secrets of contemporary theater is that a play's
reading may be more powerful than its first productions. There's blue flame intensity when great acting
meets great writing under competent but unintrusive direction that renders a special clarity to the playwright’
s words. The joy of experiencing words gleaned verbatim from the page, without concern for blocking,
hitting a mark, finding the light, costume malfunctions, and pre-set props is an art apart.
This year’s company was deep as usual, and there wasn’t a misstep among the lot. A few marathoners
who tackled especially tough assignments with award-winning panache should be singled out: Arye Gross
and Jill Clayburgh in the Greenberg play; Greg Itzin in Margulies’ Shipwrecked, a theater-celebrating
adventure tale; Danny Blinkoff and John Vickery in An Italian Straw Hat, Strand's musical adaptation with
composer Dennis McCarthy of the classic farce by Eugene Labiche; Gary Perez and Adriana Sevan in
Rivera’s memory play; and Nelson Mashita and Kimberly Scott for their parts in Po’ Boy, which included the
aforementioned face-off.
There were news items here, too, with the release of a new six-play anthology published from the
catalogue of scripts presented here over the first nine years. Also, SCR announced an award of grant
money from the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust to Culture Clash. It will support another in their
series of explorations of American communities. That one, which will survey the Orange County community
around South Coast Repertory, could make the 11th Pacific Playwrights Festival a very hot ticket.
South Coast Repertory / May 4-6, 2007
Over the weekend of May 4-6, South Coast Repertory’s (SCR) Pacific Playwrights
Festival held its 10th Annual encampment in Costa Mesa. Seven plays had their first
public airing: four as script-in-hand readings, one a semi-produced workshop with five
performances, and two in full productions whose multi-week runs passed through the
three-day Festival weekend. It was also a gathering of the American theater tribe –
writers, administrators, funders, directors, literary managers, the public, and
members of the media (including this writer, who, for full disclosure, previously
worked here).
The writer roster split between four stalwarts of SCR’s stable and three younger scribes in their first
presentation here. Among the vets were Richard Greenberg, Donald Margulies, José Rivera, and John
Strand. The newcomers were Kenneth Lin, Julie Marie Myatt, and David Wiener. In a nice twist, Lin, Myatt,
and Wiener benefited from the larger investment of full productions and the workshop staging while the
elders provided reading material.
The Festival is a chance to survey what is on the minds of today’s American playwrights. Admittedly, the
results require serious qualifying: writers are a very independent group to begin with, and any assessment
must take into account the high-gauge screen of the theater’s selection process. Still, one theme that early
on threatened to make this a "specific" playwrights festival was an issue confronting everyone, especially
the middle-aged writers.
In Greenberg’s Our Mother’s Brief Affair, Rivera’s Boleros for the Disenchanted, and Lin’s Po’ Boy Tango,
the impact of a parent's recent or imminent passing was particularly important. Both of the productions,
Myatt’s My Wandering Boy and Wiener’s System Wonderland, flipped the dynamic in different ways. In
Myatt’s story, it's the younger generation that is lost. In Wiener’s drama, the generational succession is in
the Hollywood context of careers, fame, loyalty, and the subject writers find hardest to resist: writers.
Among the broader issues was Wiener’s investigation of creativity in a commercial industry and a nicely
turned bit of culture clash in the kitchen of Lin’s Tango. Here, a raw, regrettable showdown between Asian
American and African-American friends becomes a riveting moment that, at least by measure of its
uniqueness here, was the Festival’s proudest.
The less heralded but always exciting aspect of this play festival is the acting and directing. Readings and
workshops, when employing this level of excellence and cast with this sensitivity of actor to role, are a
theater sub-genre that deserves considerably more respect than it gets as a process to serve the
playwright.
Veterans of hundreds of readings know that one of the secrets of contemporary theater is that a play's
reading may be more powerful than its first productions. There's blue flame intensity when great acting
meets great writing under competent but unintrusive direction that renders a special clarity to the playwright’
s words. The joy of experiencing words gleaned verbatim from the page, without concern for blocking,
hitting a mark, finding the light, costume malfunctions, and pre-set props is an art apart.
This year’s company was deep as usual, and there wasn’t a misstep among the lot. A few marathoners
who tackled especially tough assignments with award-winning panache should be singled out: Arye Gross
and Jill Clayburgh in the Greenberg play; Greg Itzin in Margulies’ Shipwrecked, a theater-celebrating
adventure tale; Danny Blinkoff and John Vickery in An Italian Straw Hat, Strand's musical adaptation with
composer Dennis McCarthy of the classic farce by Eugene Labiche; Gary Perez and Adriana Sevan in
Rivera’s memory play; and Nelson Mashita and Kimberly Scott for their parts in Po’ Boy, which included the
aforementioned face-off.
There were news items here, too, with the release of a new six-play anthology published from the
catalogue of scripts presented here over the first nine years. Also, SCR announced an award of grant
money from the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust to Culture Clash. It will support another in their
series of explorations of American communities. That one, which will survey the Orange County community
around South Coast Repertory, could make the 11th Pacific Playwrights Festival a very hot ticket.
The Man of La Mancha
by Dale Wasserman, music by Mitch Leigh, lyrics by Joe Darion
directed by Julia Rodriguez-Elliott, revised orchestrations and musical direction by David O
A Noise Within • through June 10
WITH Geoff Elliott, Alan Blumenfeld, Nadia Ahern, Steve Weingartner, Steve Rockwell, Deb Snyder,
Gregory Franklin, Meaghan Boeing, Alison Elliott, Erich Schroeder, Scott Asti, Radick Cembrzynski, Nora
Frankovich, Susan Jewell, Brandon Lim, Andy Steadman MUSICIANS David O, piano; Kevin Tiernan, guitar
PRODUCTION Melissa Ficociello, set; Soojin Lee, costumes; Ken Booth, lights; Ken Merckx, fights; Kate
Barrett, stage management.
Don Quixote de la Mancha, the title character of Cervantes’ 17th Century novel, was
born for a life in the theater. His onion-layered identity – a commoner who cannot
separate reality from literature, in a fabricated tale validated by a made up historian –
is tailor made for stage actors who simultaneously are person and character. It
wasn't until the 1960s, however, when Dale Wasserman, with the help of composer
Mitch Leigh and lyricist Joe Darion, converted his teleplay version of the story to
stage musical that the essence of the Quixote story found an equally fantastic
theatrical motif. That musical, ‘The Man of La Mancha,’ is currently getting a good
showing at A Noise Within in Glendale, California, now in an extended repertory
schedule through June 10.
In the novel, Cervantes invents an expert to verify a story he discovered in Arabia. This Arabian tale
involves a minor landowner so stuffed with story that he goes out into the world in a cloud of chivalrous
delusion. He is on a mission to cure the world of its ills and earn the love of a special woman. For his
stage version, Wasserman puts the author Cervantes at the mouth of the story, tossed with his 'Quixote'
manuscript into a prison. (Cervantes in fact had spent time under arrest.) Cervantes then acts out sections
of the novel for the inmates, using them to portray some of the characters.
A Noise Within has a ready character of its own to lend to the chain of Quixote personalities. Geoff Elliott,
who co-founded A Noise Within with his wife Julia Rodriguez, who directs 'La Mancha,' is also the
company’s most frequent leading man. As a creative force behind the theater who gallantly takes on
performance duties to help keep the wolf from the door, he is a kind of clear-headed Quixote who has
fought for his dream across a deriding countryside. Elliott’s acting style is well suited to Quixote’s take on
the world. It is an affect perfect for the detached would-be knight. When he drops it, to play Cervantes, it
really distinguishes the two.
As Sancho Panza, Quixote’s corpulent corporal, Alan Blumenfeld makes another outstanding contribution to
A Noise Within. His title turn in ‘Ubu Roi’ last year was delightfully over the top, and here he occasionaly
pushes Panza's size beyond its design. However, it’s never off-putting, and always appreciated, especially
against an ensemble that feels a little drab outside the central core.
The third element of that core is the country girl Alonza whom Quixote's imagination transforms to the
ravishing Dulcinea. She is played here by Nadia Ahern, who keeps the character grounded in the real
world as counterpoint to Elliott's Quixote. She also delivers the songs, as do Elliott and Blumenfeld, with
gusto and conviction. Though the remainder of the ensemble is less interestesting, Elliott, Blumenfeld and
Ahern keep this focused. And, the physical production of Melissa Ficociello’s set, Soojin Lee’s costumes
and Ken Booth’s lights fit both story and theater space perfectly.
As he always does, David O, as musical director and performance pianist, provides a solid musical
foundation for the show.
by Dale Wasserman, music by Mitch Leigh, lyrics by Joe Darion
directed by Julia Rodriguez-Elliott, revised orchestrations and musical direction by David O
A Noise Within • through June 10
WITH Geoff Elliott, Alan Blumenfeld, Nadia Ahern, Steve Weingartner, Steve Rockwell, Deb Snyder,
Gregory Franklin, Meaghan Boeing, Alison Elliott, Erich Schroeder, Scott Asti, Radick Cembrzynski, Nora
Frankovich, Susan Jewell, Brandon Lim, Andy Steadman MUSICIANS David O, piano; Kevin Tiernan, guitar
PRODUCTION Melissa Ficociello, set; Soojin Lee, costumes; Ken Booth, lights; Ken Merckx, fights; Kate
Barrett, stage management.
Don Quixote de la Mancha, the title character of Cervantes’ 17th Century novel, was
born for a life in the theater. His onion-layered identity – a commoner who cannot
separate reality from literature, in a fabricated tale validated by a made up historian –
is tailor made for stage actors who simultaneously are person and character. It
wasn't until the 1960s, however, when Dale Wasserman, with the help of composer
Mitch Leigh and lyricist Joe Darion, converted his teleplay version of the story to
stage musical that the essence of the Quixote story found an equally fantastic
theatrical motif. That musical, ‘The Man of La Mancha,’ is currently getting a good
showing at A Noise Within in Glendale, California, now in an extended repertory
schedule through June 10.
In the novel, Cervantes invents an expert to verify a story he discovered in Arabia. This Arabian tale
involves a minor landowner so stuffed with story that he goes out into the world in a cloud of chivalrous
delusion. He is on a mission to cure the world of its ills and earn the love of a special woman. For his
stage version, Wasserman puts the author Cervantes at the mouth of the story, tossed with his 'Quixote'
manuscript into a prison. (Cervantes in fact had spent time under arrest.) Cervantes then acts out sections
of the novel for the inmates, using them to portray some of the characters.
A Noise Within has a ready character of its own to lend to the chain of Quixote personalities. Geoff Elliott,
who co-founded A Noise Within with his wife Julia Rodriguez, who directs 'La Mancha,' is also the
company’s most frequent leading man. As a creative force behind the theater who gallantly takes on
performance duties to help keep the wolf from the door, he is a kind of clear-headed Quixote who has
fought for his dream across a deriding countryside. Elliott’s acting style is well suited to Quixote’s take on
the world. It is an affect perfect for the detached would-be knight. When he drops it, to play Cervantes, it
really distinguishes the two.
As Sancho Panza, Quixote’s corpulent corporal, Alan Blumenfeld makes another outstanding contribution to
A Noise Within. His title turn in ‘Ubu Roi’ last year was delightfully over the top, and here he occasionaly
pushes Panza's size beyond its design. However, it’s never off-putting, and always appreciated, especially
against an ensemble that feels a little drab outside the central core.
The third element of that core is the country girl Alonza whom Quixote's imagination transforms to the
ravishing Dulcinea. She is played here by Nadia Ahern, who keeps the character grounded in the real
world as counterpoint to Elliott's Quixote. She also delivers the songs, as do Elliott and Blumenfeld, with
gusto and conviction. Though the remainder of the ensemble is less interestesting, Elliott, Blumenfeld and
Ahern keep this focused. And, the physical production of Melissa Ficociello’s set, Soojin Lee’s costumes
and Ken Booth’s lights fit both story and theater space perfectly.
As he always does, David O, as musical director and performance pianist, provides a solid musical
foundation for the show.
Geoff Elliott
PHOTO CRAIG SCHWARTZ
PHOTO CRAIG SCHWARTZ
John Vickery
Patrick Kerr
PHOTO HENRY DiROCCO
Patrick Kerr
PHOTO HENRY DiROCCO
Fat Pig
by Neil LaBute, directed by Jo Bonney West Coast Premiere
Geffen Playhouse / Audrey Skirball Theatre May 5-June 10 (Opened May 11, rev. 5/10)
WITH Andrea Anders, Chris Pine, Scott Wolf, Kirsten Vangsness PRODUCTION Louisa Thompson, set;
Tina Haatainen Jones, costumes; Lap-Chi Chu, lights; Colbert S. Davis IV, sound; Frankie Ocasio, stage
management
The need to overcome low self-image and be thick-skinned enough to overlook
demeaning opinions of others is at the heart of Neil LaBute’s ‘Fat Pig,’ now in its West
Coast premiere (through June 10) at the Geffen’s Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater in Los
Angeles. The title suggests a much nastier piece of work than this 90-minute,
intermission-less script from the smart and fearless author of such plays as 'The
Shape of Things,' 'Autobahn' (reviewed here) and 'Bash' and the films 'In the Company
of Men,' 'Nurse Betty' and 'Your Friends and Neighbors.'
Instead, 'Fat Pig' seems to settle in more like a contemporary television dramedy with a single story line and
stock characters from hit shows. There's a further dimension of familiarity in the attracted opposites at its
core, who give it a Disney fable quality: like a reverse anthropomorphizing of incompatible cartoon animals
out to set an example for the rest of the forest. Yet the kind of menace that LaBute previously employed in
his unsettling comedies shadows this story beneath the surface, waiting until the final curtain to rise up
and make us pay for our laughs.
Obesity in this country is, of course, no joke. There’s no question that it is dangerous to be greatly
overweight and/or the victim of compulsive overeating, yet LaBute manages to have his cake and eat it,
too. His characters divide between master purveyors of fat jokes and heart-breaking targets of them. We
are early on given permission to laugh when the character referenced by the mean-spirited title reveals
that she is quite comfortable in her own skin. Fat Pig is in fact not about how or why one becomes obese,
but about the more universal issue of how groups treat the "other," and what happens when people try to
see past those definitions.
LaBute and director Jo Bonney push the question of how audience members will react when the title
character first appears to the forefront. They immediately turn the tables by stationing Helen (Kirsten
Vangsness) on stage for pre-show. Standing at a high table, eating what looks to be a starchy lunch from
a cafeteria tray, she occasionally looks up from Walter Isaacson’s hefty new Einstein biography (she's a
librarian and voracious reader) and looks around the lunchroom at the audience without making eye
contact. Accustomed to eating alone, she has spread her gear over the two-person tabletop, which forces
Tom (Scott Wolf) to make eye contact and conversation with her when he needs a spot.
Tom Sullivan (the name also belongs to a real-life blind entertainer) discovers over the course of a quippy
chat that Helen also tips the scale in the personality department. The twentysomething Tom, at sixes and
sevens regarding his life direction after another lack-luster relationship, ventures a cautious request to see
Helen sometime.
His parents might have said about ordering off the menu, “Don’t take a bite of something you can’t finish”
but Tom appears to be blind to Helen’s weight. He wants to test his mettle and probe for a deeper
connection with someone. He may also, given his boyish Michael J. Fox irresistibility, subconsciously
believe that even a brief affair with a hunk would be a net gain for Helen. However, foreseeing the ridicule
a relationship with her will heap upon him from friends and co-workers, he quickly closets their get-
togethers.
Bonney keeps the depth of the inner turmoil in these two from surfacing for most of the play. It's a
measured strategy to provide greater impact later on, but it does make the bulk of the play seem lighter than
it otherwise might. LaBute has kept his stage tidy with only two additional characters, both from Tom‘s
world.
Without a friend of her own, Helen can't let her hair down and show the mix of euphoria and dread that
accompany suddenly becoming the object of desire of a truly cute guy. We only glimpse how she’s feeling
through her carefully monitored interaction with Tom, where she must keep the lid on her feelings so as not
to freak him out. Structurally, therefore, Vangsness is prohibited from making this show her own, but she
gives us glimpses into her true feelings as much as she can, and sounds the plea we should all heed: "Just
be honest with me."
Instead, Tom and Helen's relationship is reflected in the cool, cruel world of Tom’s office, where the people
are incapable of looking unattractive, and of looking at the "unattractive" with anything but contempt or pity.
Ironically, they appear incapable of engaging in healthy relationships of their own. Jeannie (Andrea
Anders), a sexy 28-year-old from the accounting department who has been dating Tom, has to wring from
him the fact that he isn’t interested anymore.
Wisecracking co-worker Drew Carter (Chris Pine) is given a breadbasket of assorted roles: confidante,
nemesis, blockhead, and clear-eyed seer (with his own shameful story of an obese loved one). To his
credit, Pine keeps all these facets within his acting wheelhouse and makes this grab-bag character feel
real. It's also a very entertaining performance.
The jilted Jeannie also gives us the embodiment of that funny-painful experience of knowing you’re in a go-
nowhere relationship, but becoming incensed when the other person pulls the plug. At a crap table,
however, the real-life odds against the most highly compatible Helen being chosen over even a high-
maintenance Jeannie could fatten any bankroll into the GNP of Kuwait.
Still, in the world of literature, anything is possible. At one point, there’s a slight evocation that, like Huck,
Tom has escaped the real world and now floats in harmony with the person he freed, and who has freed
him in return. Twain’s raft ride through race relations will have a happier ending. If Tom tosses Helen
overboard, she likely will not make it back to the healthy spot she had reached in her life. Instead, she could
sink under the weight of a rejection she had allowed herself to believe the world had moved beyond.
Bonney has an excellent design team with costumes by Christina Haatainen Jones, lights by Lap-Chi Chu,
a sleek and versatile multi-location unit set by Louisa Thompson, and a tough, engaging soundtrack by
Colbert S. Davis IV. by Cristofer Gross (edited by Diana Hartman, blogcritics.org
by Neil LaBute, directed by Jo Bonney West Coast Premiere
Geffen Playhouse / Audrey Skirball Theatre May 5-June 10 (Opened May 11, rev. 5/10)
WITH Andrea Anders, Chris Pine, Scott Wolf, Kirsten Vangsness PRODUCTION Louisa Thompson, set;
Tina Haatainen Jones, costumes; Lap-Chi Chu, lights; Colbert S. Davis IV, sound; Frankie Ocasio, stage
management
The need to overcome low self-image and be thick-skinned enough to overlook
demeaning opinions of others is at the heart of Neil LaBute’s ‘Fat Pig,’ now in its West
Coast premiere (through June 10) at the Geffen’s Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater in Los
Angeles. The title suggests a much nastier piece of work than this 90-minute,
intermission-less script from the smart and fearless author of such plays as 'The
Shape of Things,' 'Autobahn' (reviewed here) and 'Bash' and the films 'In the Company
of Men,' 'Nurse Betty' and 'Your Friends and Neighbors.'
Instead, 'Fat Pig' seems to settle in more like a contemporary television dramedy with a single story line and
stock characters from hit shows. There's a further dimension of familiarity in the attracted opposites at its
core, who give it a Disney fable quality: like a reverse anthropomorphizing of incompatible cartoon animals
out to set an example for the rest of the forest. Yet the kind of menace that LaBute previously employed in
his unsettling comedies shadows this story beneath the surface, waiting until the final curtain to rise up
and make us pay for our laughs.
Obesity in this country is, of course, no joke. There’s no question that it is dangerous to be greatly
overweight and/or the victim of compulsive overeating, yet LaBute manages to have his cake and eat it,
too. His characters divide between master purveyors of fat jokes and heart-breaking targets of them. We
are early on given permission to laugh when the character referenced by the mean-spirited title reveals
that she is quite comfortable in her own skin. Fat Pig is in fact not about how or why one becomes obese,
but about the more universal issue of how groups treat the "other," and what happens when people try to
see past those definitions.
LaBute and director Jo Bonney push the question of how audience members will react when the title
character first appears to the forefront. They immediately turn the tables by stationing Helen (Kirsten
Vangsness) on stage for pre-show. Standing at a high table, eating what looks to be a starchy lunch from
a cafeteria tray, she occasionally looks up from Walter Isaacson’s hefty new Einstein biography (she's a
librarian and voracious reader) and looks around the lunchroom at the audience without making eye
contact. Accustomed to eating alone, she has spread her gear over the two-person tabletop, which forces
Tom (Scott Wolf) to make eye contact and conversation with her when he needs a spot.
Tom Sullivan (the name also belongs to a real-life blind entertainer) discovers over the course of a quippy
chat that Helen also tips the scale in the personality department. The twentysomething Tom, at sixes and
sevens regarding his life direction after another lack-luster relationship, ventures a cautious request to see
Helen sometime.
His parents might have said about ordering off the menu, “Don’t take a bite of something you can’t finish”
but Tom appears to be blind to Helen’s weight. He wants to test his mettle and probe for a deeper
connection with someone. He may also, given his boyish Michael J. Fox irresistibility, subconsciously
believe that even a brief affair with a hunk would be a net gain for Helen. However, foreseeing the ridicule
a relationship with her will heap upon him from friends and co-workers, he quickly closets their get-
togethers.
Bonney keeps the depth of the inner turmoil in these two from surfacing for most of the play. It's a
measured strategy to provide greater impact later on, but it does make the bulk of the play seem lighter than
it otherwise might. LaBute has kept his stage tidy with only two additional characters, both from Tom‘s
world.
Without a friend of her own, Helen can't let her hair down and show the mix of euphoria and dread that
accompany suddenly becoming the object of desire of a truly cute guy. We only glimpse how she’s feeling
through her carefully monitored interaction with Tom, where she must keep the lid on her feelings so as not
to freak him out. Structurally, therefore, Vangsness is prohibited from making this show her own, but she
gives us glimpses into her true feelings as much as she can, and sounds the plea we should all heed: "Just
be honest with me."
Instead, Tom and Helen's relationship is reflected in the cool, cruel world of Tom’s office, where the people
are incapable of looking unattractive, and of looking at the "unattractive" with anything but contempt or pity.
Ironically, they appear incapable of engaging in healthy relationships of their own. Jeannie (Andrea
Anders), a sexy 28-year-old from the accounting department who has been dating Tom, has to wring from
him the fact that he isn’t interested anymore.
Wisecracking co-worker Drew Carter (Chris Pine) is given a breadbasket of assorted roles: confidante,
nemesis, blockhead, and clear-eyed seer (with his own shameful story of an obese loved one). To his
credit, Pine keeps all these facets within his acting wheelhouse and makes this grab-bag character feel
real. It's also a very entertaining performance.
The jilted Jeannie also gives us the embodiment of that funny-painful experience of knowing you’re in a go-
nowhere relationship, but becoming incensed when the other person pulls the plug. At a crap table,
however, the real-life odds against the most highly compatible Helen being chosen over even a high-
maintenance Jeannie could fatten any bankroll into the GNP of Kuwait.
Still, in the world of literature, anything is possible. At one point, there’s a slight evocation that, like Huck,
Tom has escaped the real world and now floats in harmony with the person he freed, and who has freed
him in return. Twain’s raft ride through race relations will have a happier ending. If Tom tosses Helen
overboard, she likely will not make it back to the healthy spot she had reached in her life. Instead, she could
sink under the weight of a rejection she had allowed herself to believe the world had moved beyond.
Bonney has an excellent design team with costumes by Christina Haatainen Jones, lights by Lap-Chi Chu,
a sleek and versatile multi-location unit set by Louisa Thompson, and a tough, engaging soundtrack by
Colbert S. Davis IV. by Cristofer Gross (edited by Diana Hartman, blogcritics.org
Kirsten Vangsness
PHOTO ED LAMONT
PHOTO ED LAMONT
Megan Gallagher
PHOTO ED KREIGER
PHOTO ED KREIGER
The Constant Wife
by W. Somerset Maugham, directed by Art Manke
Pasadena Playhouse May 4-June 10, 2007 (opened May 12, reviewed 5/12)
WITH Andrew Borba, Stephen Caffrey, Megan Gallagher, Kaleo Griffith, John-David Keller, Ann Marie Lee,
Monette Magrath, Carolyn Seymour, Libby West PRODUCTION Angela Balogh Calin, sets/costumes; Peter
Maradudin, lights; Steven Cahill, sound; Lea Chazin/Hethyr Verhoef, stage management
After a year, W. Somerset Maugham’s enduring ‘Constant Wife’ is back on stage in
Southern California. As an Old Globe staging suggested last year, Maugham’s literary
powers were in full-enough flower in 1926 that this message comedy rings true 80
years later. What might have been dismissed when it premiered as a prescription for
infidelity can now be seen as a primer on how best to insure a shared marriage yoke.
A script this well crafted should work with any cast capable of staying out of the story’s way. However,
the cast director Art Manke has assembled at the Pasadena Playhouse through June 10 makes this an
especially good night for Mr. Maugham. Only an imposing and oddly garish set, which will be addressed,
undressed and redressed later, earns the production any demerits.
Chief among the acting assets is Megan Gallagher as Constance, the titular spouse. Before Ms. Gallagher’s
first entrance, Mr. Maugham prepares us for a pitiable woman who is unaware that her husband is cheating
with her best friend. From her gait to her gaze Ms. Gallagher quickly dispels such notions and establishes
Constance as a study in steadiness – a woman unlikely to be victimized. Ethel Barrymore created this
character on Broadway and enjoyed a 300-performance run. Mr. Maugham is quoted as saying her
performance was the best he had seen in any play he had written. She set the bar high, but Ms. Gallagher
serves the tradition well. Here, Constance looks to be comfortable with early middle age, dressing and
coiffing without need to deceive, yet maintaining a beauty that will reward the constancy of still-smitten
Bernard Kersal (Kaleo Griffith), who last saw her 15 years before, following her rejection of his marriage
proposal.
Mr. Maugham gives mixed signals as to whether or not Constance is able to leave her husband John
(Stephen Caffrey), or even wants to. When another friend (Ann Marie Lee) offers the chance for her to get
out of the house and enter business, she confesses she is happy at home. Is it a case of the emptiness
she knows being preferable to the one she doesn’t? Ms. Gallagher’s performance seems to project a
woman who has lived a life of her choosing.
She chose John over Bernard because he seemed the less devoted. After an initial five years of
passionate love, theirs eased into the love between devoted friends. When John's affair with Marie Louise
(Libby West) is disclosed, Constance reveals she knew about it but saw no percentage in exposing it and
risking divorce. “I never understood why a woman should give up her home, a considerable part of her
income and having a man around the house to take care of all the tiresome chores.”
But the extramarital outing occurs in the presence of the still-obsessed Kersal – who Mr. Griffith gives a
winning blend of matinee idol looks and mid-level intelligence. In her mind, John’s philandering and the public
humiliation it brought has earned Constance a Free Affair Coupon. With the debonair Kersal at the ready
she sets in motion a plan to gain financial equality, sample passion one last time, and afford John the bitter
taste of the cuckold’s medicine.
A large gilded birdcage, with its own special, supports the production’s metaphor of constant confinement.
So, too, does the floor-to-ceiling grid of upstage windows. Long diaphanous drapes of focus-yanking blue
laze against those windows, and some ugly, pedestal-borne sculpture, further force the set and actors
towards the apron. The company's downstage confinement will be explained. Until then, our attention is
drawn to the drapes, a garish chandelier, and this odd wall of sitting room windows. (It’s especially ironic
that when a set design is actually attributed to a character on stage – and a character, Constance, whose
independence will be dependent on her decorating –it looks so tacky.)
Of the rest of the cast, Mr. Caffrey, a favorite for his recent turn in SCR’s Bach at Leipzig, creates a
blustery Dr. John, a bit of a blowhard beneath a constantly knitted brow. West earns her laughs as
Constance's conscienceless pal. Monette Magrath keeps younger sister Martha animated, if perhaps too
young. John-David Keller, Andrew Borba, and Carolyn Seymour round out the cast.
In a beautiful directorial coda that shows Constance in Italy (and explains the windows and the crowded
stage), Mr. Manke sets Constance free. It's a fine, hard-won stage moment suggesting that freedom is its
own reward. But, the fact that she is heading back into a different kind of marriage seems to make this
lovely flourish a bit beside the point. The triumph to relish is not John’s defeat, but in forcing him to accept
her as his true equal. That final face off, which normally signals lights out, should be just desserts enough.
by W. Somerset Maugham, directed by Art Manke
Pasadena Playhouse May 4-June 10, 2007 (opened May 12, reviewed 5/12)
WITH Andrew Borba, Stephen Caffrey, Megan Gallagher, Kaleo Griffith, John-David Keller, Ann Marie Lee,
Monette Magrath, Carolyn Seymour, Libby West PRODUCTION Angela Balogh Calin, sets/costumes; Peter
Maradudin, lights; Steven Cahill, sound; Lea Chazin/Hethyr Verhoef, stage management
After a year, W. Somerset Maugham’s enduring ‘Constant Wife’ is back on stage in
Southern California. As an Old Globe staging suggested last year, Maugham’s literary
powers were in full-enough flower in 1926 that this message comedy rings true 80
years later. What might have been dismissed when it premiered as a prescription for
infidelity can now be seen as a primer on how best to insure a shared marriage yoke.
A script this well crafted should work with any cast capable of staying out of the story’s way. However,
the cast director Art Manke has assembled at the Pasadena Playhouse through June 10 makes this an
especially good night for Mr. Maugham. Only an imposing and oddly garish set, which will be addressed,
undressed and redressed later, earns the production any demerits.
Chief among the acting assets is Megan Gallagher as Constance, the titular spouse. Before Ms. Gallagher’s
first entrance, Mr. Maugham prepares us for a pitiable woman who is unaware that her husband is cheating
with her best friend. From her gait to her gaze Ms. Gallagher quickly dispels such notions and establishes
Constance as a study in steadiness – a woman unlikely to be victimized. Ethel Barrymore created this
character on Broadway and enjoyed a 300-performance run. Mr. Maugham is quoted as saying her
performance was the best he had seen in any play he had written. She set the bar high, but Ms. Gallagher
serves the tradition well. Here, Constance looks to be comfortable with early middle age, dressing and
coiffing without need to deceive, yet maintaining a beauty that will reward the constancy of still-smitten
Bernard Kersal (Kaleo Griffith), who last saw her 15 years before, following her rejection of his marriage
proposal.
Mr. Maugham gives mixed signals as to whether or not Constance is able to leave her husband John
(Stephen Caffrey), or even wants to. When another friend (Ann Marie Lee) offers the chance for her to get
out of the house and enter business, she confesses she is happy at home. Is it a case of the emptiness
she knows being preferable to the one she doesn’t? Ms. Gallagher’s performance seems to project a
woman who has lived a life of her choosing.
She chose John over Bernard because he seemed the less devoted. After an initial five years of
passionate love, theirs eased into the love between devoted friends. When John's affair with Marie Louise
(Libby West) is disclosed, Constance reveals she knew about it but saw no percentage in exposing it and
risking divorce. “I never understood why a woman should give up her home, a considerable part of her
income and having a man around the house to take care of all the tiresome chores.”
But the extramarital outing occurs in the presence of the still-obsessed Kersal – who Mr. Griffith gives a
winning blend of matinee idol looks and mid-level intelligence. In her mind, John’s philandering and the public
humiliation it brought has earned Constance a Free Affair Coupon. With the debonair Kersal at the ready
she sets in motion a plan to gain financial equality, sample passion one last time, and afford John the bitter
taste of the cuckold’s medicine.
A large gilded birdcage, with its own special, supports the production’s metaphor of constant confinement.
So, too, does the floor-to-ceiling grid of upstage windows. Long diaphanous drapes of focus-yanking blue
laze against those windows, and some ugly, pedestal-borne sculpture, further force the set and actors
towards the apron. The company's downstage confinement will be explained. Until then, our attention is
drawn to the drapes, a garish chandelier, and this odd wall of sitting room windows. (It’s especially ironic
that when a set design is actually attributed to a character on stage – and a character, Constance, whose
independence will be dependent on her decorating –it looks so tacky.)
Of the rest of the cast, Mr. Caffrey, a favorite for his recent turn in SCR’s Bach at Leipzig, creates a
blustery Dr. John, a bit of a blowhard beneath a constantly knitted brow. West earns her laughs as
Constance's conscienceless pal. Monette Magrath keeps younger sister Martha animated, if perhaps too
young. John-David Keller, Andrew Borba, and Carolyn Seymour round out the cast.
In a beautiful directorial coda that shows Constance in Italy (and explains the windows and the crowded
stage), Mr. Manke sets Constance free. It's a fine, hard-won stage moment suggesting that freedom is its
own reward. But, the fact that she is heading back into a different kind of marriage seems to make this
lovely flourish a bit beside the point. The triumph to relish is not John’s defeat, but in forcing him to accept
her as his true equal. That final face off, which normally signals lights out, should be just desserts enough.
Yellow Face
by David Henry Hwang, directed by Leigh Silverman World Premiere
Mark Taper Forum, May 10-July 1, 2007 (Opened May 20, rev. 5/20) produced by Center
Theatre Group and The Public Theater in association with East West Players
WITH Julienne Hanzelka Kim, Kathryn A. Layng, Hoon Lee, Tzi Ma, Lucas Caleb Rooney, Peter Scanavino,
Tony Torn PRODUCTION David Korins, set; Myung Hee Cho, costumes; Donald Holder, lights; Darron L.
West, sound; James T. McDermott/Elizabeth Atkinson, stage management
One of the most satisfying scenes in David Henry Hwang’s new 'Yellow Face,' a play
full of satisfying scenes, is the face-off between a playwright named David Henry
Hwang and an unnamed New York Times reporter. The playwright has taken the
unusual step of making himself the protagonist in this cracked-lens look at identity,
cultural loyalties and the relative reliability of commercial theater vs. commercial
journalism. The meeting between the writers ends after each gets his story: an
exposé of Hwang’s father for the two-faced journalist, and a final chapter for Hwang in
the saga that will become 'Yellow Face' (continuing its world premiere through July 1
at the Mark Taper Forum, in a co-production by L.A.’s Center Theatre Group and New
York’s Public Theater in association with L.A.’s East West Players).
To both ape and undercut the media’s claim of objectivity, Yellow Face employs the scattershot quoting of
headlines, bylines and datelines to identify its events and characters. Rather than reflecting on history – as
set designer David Korin’s wood deck and massive gold-framed mirror suggest – Hwang at first seems to
be transcribing it. The more these citations punctuate the script, however, the more holes they produce in
it. Soon, we are in a limbo where fact and fantasy, whether on stage or front page, are indistinguishable.
As Hwang told Sylvie Drake in LA Stage, “Some of the stuff in the play is true and some of it isn’t and I hope
it’s hard to tell the difference.”
The seesawing between drama and documentary serves Hwang’s larger goal of revealing the cost of
prejudice in real terms while showing its utter absurdity through farce. He does this through his own
powerful writing and the strong yet playful direction of Leigh Silverman. Silverman holds the tonal teeter-
totter for her Asian and Caucasian cast, who balance their alternately scary or silly performances upon it.
Future productions of this play, however, will only be this good if they can rest on the kind of sharp-yet-
solid fulcrum provided by Hoon Lee's performance as Hwang. In one of the region's best stage
performances so far this year, Lee makes simultaneously getting the laughs and landing the punches look
easy.
Ironically, Hwang credits stories in The New York Times with inspiring his M. Butterfly, the take on the
Puccini opera that became a landmark Broadway hit in 1988 and made the 31-year-old the first Asian
American playwright to win a Tony for Best Play. Whatever political capital came with his success was
immediately tested when mega-producer Cameron Macintosh announced that Miss Saigon, which had
opened its record-breaking London premiere in 1989, was heading to Broadway.
Lead Broadway roles for Asian Americans was a dream come true for the underappreciated theater
community that Hwang found himself providing a public face. When Macintosh announced that he would
bring his London stars, including Caucasian Jonathan Pryce as the Eurasian “Engineer,” to America, there
were protests. The producer justified it by saying he could not find an Asian American good enough for the
role. That just compounded the indignity, much like Attorney General Gonzalez did this year in attempting to
soothe the feelings of fired U.S. Attorneys by attributing his actions to their poor performance.
It was just the latest in a long list of show-business slights for Asian Americans. And in his newfound
prominence, Hwang was faced with a lose-lose decision. He could be loyal to the commercial theater that
had helped make him a star, or be an advocate for the community that had helped make him a man.
What transpired is both reported and satirized in Yellow Face, which incorporates Face Value, Hwang's
failed mid-90s spoof of these issues. As Spike Lee did with the hypocrisy of blackface in Bamboozled,
Face Value did with yellowface, a performance style in which Caucasian actors tinted their skin and pulled
their eyelids to evoke an Asian look. As bizarre as it sounds now, stars as big as Marlon Brando, Katherine
Hepburn and Mickey Rooney joined the ruse.
Like Bamboozled, Face Value could not work its brilliant satire into sustainable drama, and famously closed
its Broadway run after previews. But, thanks to Yellow Face, it is now part of this hysterical history
lesson.
(Hwang, who would also protest the depiction of the woman in ‘Miss Saigon,’ gave a lecture in 1994,
which provides additional context.)
Among the stand outs in the cast are Tzi Ma in numerous roles including Hwang’s father, and Peter
Scanavino, as the white man who becomes a leading Asian personality based on some resumé tinkering.
(By putting him in The King and I, Hwang reminds us of Lou Diamond Phillips, who starred in a recent tour of
that warhorse after gaining fame in La Bamba, directed by the same Luis Valdez who had his own casting
nightmare with a Frida Kahlo biopic.)
Others who give multiple dimensions to multiple personalities are Julienne Hanzelka Kim, Lucas Caleb
Rooney, Tony Torn and Kathryn A. Layng, the real-life wife of the playwright who, despite Yellow Face's
careful blurring, knows exactly where the newspaper ends and the fish-wrapper begins.
This world premiere is a co-production between Center Theatre Group in L.A. and The Public Theater in
Manhattan. At press time, the Public’s press office confirmed that the play would be produced in its 2007-
08 Season, but the exact slot was yet to be announced. The production is also made in association with
East West Players, which America’s paper of record called “the nation’s pre-eminent Asian American
theater troupe.” There will not be a separate run at East West – whose main stage is named for this
playwright, and whose health is in part owed to his father. So that 10% of the ticket price will benefit East
West, order tickets online and use code 8873.
by David Henry Hwang, directed by Leigh Silverman World Premiere
Mark Taper Forum, May 10-July 1, 2007 (Opened May 20, rev. 5/20) produced by Center
Theatre Group and The Public Theater in association with East West Players
WITH Julienne Hanzelka Kim, Kathryn A. Layng, Hoon Lee, Tzi Ma, Lucas Caleb Rooney, Peter Scanavino,
Tony Torn PRODUCTION David Korins, set; Myung Hee Cho, costumes; Donald Holder, lights; Darron L.
West, sound; James T. McDermott/Elizabeth Atkinson, stage management
One of the most satisfying scenes in David Henry Hwang’s new 'Yellow Face,' a play
full of satisfying scenes, is the face-off between a playwright named David Henry
Hwang and an unnamed New York Times reporter. The playwright has taken the
unusual step of making himself the protagonist in this cracked-lens look at identity,
cultural loyalties and the relative reliability of commercial theater vs. commercial
journalism. The meeting between the writers ends after each gets his story: an
exposé of Hwang’s father for the two-faced journalist, and a final chapter for Hwang in
the saga that will become 'Yellow Face' (continuing its world premiere through July 1
at the Mark Taper Forum, in a co-production by L.A.’s Center Theatre Group and New
York’s Public Theater in association with L.A.’s East West Players).
To both ape and undercut the media’s claim of objectivity, Yellow Face employs the scattershot quoting of
headlines, bylines and datelines to identify its events and characters. Rather than reflecting on history – as
set designer David Korin’s wood deck and massive gold-framed mirror suggest – Hwang at first seems to
be transcribing it. The more these citations punctuate the script, however, the more holes they produce in
it. Soon, we are in a limbo where fact and fantasy, whether on stage or front page, are indistinguishable.
As Hwang told Sylvie Drake in LA Stage, “Some of the stuff in the play is true and some of it isn’t and I hope
it’s hard to tell the difference.”
The seesawing between drama and documentary serves Hwang’s larger goal of revealing the cost of
prejudice in real terms while showing its utter absurdity through farce. He does this through his own
powerful writing and the strong yet playful direction of Leigh Silverman. Silverman holds the tonal teeter-
totter for her Asian and Caucasian cast, who balance their alternately scary or silly performances upon it.
Future productions of this play, however, will only be this good if they can rest on the kind of sharp-yet-
solid fulcrum provided by Hoon Lee's performance as Hwang. In one of the region's best stage
performances so far this year, Lee makes simultaneously getting the laughs and landing the punches look
easy.
Ironically, Hwang credits stories in The New York Times with inspiring his M. Butterfly, the take on the
Puccini opera that became a landmark Broadway hit in 1988 and made the 31-year-old the first Asian
American playwright to win a Tony for Best Play. Whatever political capital came with his success was
immediately tested when mega-producer Cameron Macintosh announced that Miss Saigon, which had
opened its record-breaking London premiere in 1989, was heading to Broadway.
Lead Broadway roles for Asian Americans was a dream come true for the underappreciated theater
community that Hwang found himself providing a public face. When Macintosh announced that he would
bring his London stars, including Caucasian Jonathan Pryce as the Eurasian “Engineer,” to America, there
were protests. The producer justified it by saying he could not find an Asian American good enough for the
role. That just compounded the indignity, much like Attorney General Gonzalez did this year in attempting to
soothe the feelings of fired U.S. Attorneys by attributing his actions to their poor performance.
It was just the latest in a long list of show-business slights for Asian Americans. And in his newfound
prominence, Hwang was faced with a lose-lose decision. He could be loyal to the commercial theater that
had helped make him a star, or be an advocate for the community that had helped make him a man.
What transpired is both reported and satirized in Yellow Face, which incorporates Face Value, Hwang's
failed mid-90s spoof of these issues. As Spike Lee did with the hypocrisy of blackface in Bamboozled,
Face Value did with yellowface, a performance style in which Caucasian actors tinted their skin and pulled
their eyelids to evoke an Asian look. As bizarre as it sounds now, stars as big as Marlon Brando, Katherine
Hepburn and Mickey Rooney joined the ruse.
Like Bamboozled, Face Value could not work its brilliant satire into sustainable drama, and famously closed
its Broadway run after previews. But, thanks to Yellow Face, it is now part of this hysterical history
lesson.
(Hwang, who would also protest the depiction of the woman in ‘Miss Saigon,’ gave a lecture in 1994,
which provides additional context.)
Among the stand outs in the cast are Tzi Ma in numerous roles including Hwang’s father, and Peter
Scanavino, as the white man who becomes a leading Asian personality based on some resumé tinkering.
(By putting him in The King and I, Hwang reminds us of Lou Diamond Phillips, who starred in a recent tour of
that warhorse after gaining fame in La Bamba, directed by the same Luis Valdez who had his own casting
nightmare with a Frida Kahlo biopic.)
Others who give multiple dimensions to multiple personalities are Julienne Hanzelka Kim, Lucas Caleb
Rooney, Tony Torn and Kathryn A. Layng, the real-life wife of the playwright who, despite Yellow Face's
careful blurring, knows exactly where the newspaper ends and the fish-wrapper begins.
This world premiere is a co-production between Center Theatre Group in L.A. and The Public Theater in
Manhattan. At press time, the Public’s press office confirmed that the play would be produced in its 2007-
08 Season, but the exact slot was yet to be announced. The production is also made in association with
East West Players, which America’s paper of record called “the nation’s pre-eminent Asian American
theater troupe.” There will not be a separate run at East West – whose main stage is named for this
playwright, and whose health is in part owed to his father. So that 10% of the ticket price will benefit East
West, order tickets online and use code 8873.
Hoon Lee
Julienne Hanzelka Kim
PHOTO CRAIG SCHWARTZ
Julienne Hanzelka Kim
PHOTO CRAIG SCHWARTZ