Mini-Update: The Empty Space and Artist Repertory Theatre

I regret not having found the open evening to go see Artist Repertory Theatre’s (ART) Glengarry Glen Ross in Fresno last month. By all accounts it was a very successful show. You can read Donald Munro’s review at the Bee here. But I feel the need to give ART a mention here because it is highly overdue. They did amazing work on their Rogue Entry last march, “All in the Timing” and their Arcadia was also very fine work. This fall they’re doing the Rocky Horror Show with a guest director from New York, so look out for it. You can visit ART’s MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/artfresno

And last night, I went to Bakersfield on business and wound up seeing Duck Hunter Shoots Angel by Mitch Albom at The Empty Space theatre. Since I wasn’t planning to review a show, I have no notes on the production except to say that I found the experience enjoyable overall. The space at ES is surprisingly welcoming and well-utilized (I don’t know why I had always preconceived it as being a makeshift stage in a half finished storefront, but it totally isn’t) as both a theatre and an art gallery. The show itself manages to be funny and engaging despite the choppy structure of Albom’s script and the actors are committed to giving you a diverting performance.

The Empty Space has some diverse fare coming up in the next six months, including Godmakers, Medea, and Debbie Does Dallas, The Musical. And admission to all shows are for donations only. Check out Empty Space’s MySpace Page at http://www.myspace.com/emptyspacenews

For everyone’s education– B.C., Ms. Chin, and ‘Two Sisters’

Last weekend, I drove down to Bakersfield College to give Kim Chin an All-American second chance for her production of Nilo Cruz’ “Two Sisters and a Piano”. While I found a few more redeeming qualities in it than her last outing, Top Dog/Underdog, I sadly cannot give this one positive marks on the whole.

I have to say, first, that while I applaud Ms. Chin’s overall taste in scripts, I wonder at their appropriateness for her immediate acting pool. Judging from the bios, the most experienced members of the cast have done perhaps three productions, making them not quite ready for the task of Cruz’ nuanced storytelling and lyricism.

But that script is the first place I question Ms. Chin’s choices in dealing with the script. Playwright Cruz is a pretty smart Pulitzer Prize winner and he made a conscientious choice not to use a lot of Spanish phrases and lines for his Cuban-set drama. This production, however, rewrote and translated a goodly portion of the dialogue into Spanish to create a sort of Spanglish environment.

Well, not only is this confusing because as Spanish-speakers in Spanish-speaking Cuba, the characters would speak all in the same language (Cruz acknowledges this and, when writing an English-language play, keeps his characters speaking all in the same language for the sake of continuity), but more importantly the changes of lines from English to Spanish is illegal. It violates the contract that the play’s producers (Bakersfield College) entered into with Dramatists Play Service who gives permission to produce the play on behalf of the playwright.

The volume of changes doesn’t amount to a cut line here and there or a change of a phrase, it changes the intentions of the playwright and his choices for phrasing and pacing his material. And so I have to wonder if the script wasn’t good enough for Ms. Chin as it was, why did she choose it? And, furthermore, why would she choose to jeopardize Bakersfield College’s ability to produce scripts from Dramatists (one of the largest publishers of plays in America) in the future?

Following such a large lapse in judgment and lack of support for playwright’s rights, the choices made by the production itself are dismal, but of little consequence. This production was marked by a lack of focus, poor sense of tension, extremely slow pacing, and a confusing sense of storytelling. I could go on about the acting, but as this is collegiate theatre, I tend to think that the lack of technique onstage has more to do with the teaching given by Ms. Chin in rehearsal than the performer’s ultimate ability.

It’s this sense of educational theatre that I perceive is missing in Ms. Chin’s productions. I don’t wish to discourage trying for challenging material for students. In fact, College of the Sequoias in Visalia and Fresno City College in Fresno have both recently produced some fantastic, compelling work for their students (“My Country’s Good” and “The Altruists” respectively). But those schools also seem to concentrated time in rehearsals teaching students techniques to handle the challenging material, crafting their moments, and guiding them toward a cohesive performance. Janine Christl at FCC is painstaking about creating a razor-sharp ensemble which understands the material they’re performing. And Chris Mangels at COS steered his ensemble toward performances of tremendous urgency and a compelling, engaging story. Ms. Chin just seems to have fallen flat on these counts with both of her shows this year.

Educational theatre isn’t always ‘reviewed’ in the classic sense as it is ostensibly geared toward teaching students the building blocks of performance through hands on experience (and you’ll notice I’ve tried not to review the students in this review). But I have no qualms about reviewing the results of a theatrical professional’s educational process with her students and community members.

Does she break scenes down for meaning, choices, and tactics with her casts? Does she illustrate effective staging and teach students how to utilize it? Are the actions and objectives of each scene clear to them? Are they all acting as though they’re in the same play? Are the experienced actors encouraged to make strong and meaningful choices with their language, their bodies and their voices? Are the less experienced actors cultivating a sense of confidence and an understanding of the basics of presentation? Not from what was exhibited last Friday evening.

If the objective of an educational theatre arts department is to help grow theatre scholars and develop theatre audiences, I’m not certain that Ms. Chin’s productions are fulfilling that objective. Would these actors be prepared to audition for other Bakersfield theatre companies? Would they be prepared to perform in productions at CSU Bakersfield or CSU Fresno? The actors on the stage didn’t seem to understand the essentials of the play that they were in and the audience—aside from one or two who had friends in the cast—seemed lost and unengaged. And so seems Ms. Chin in her directorial vision.

Further comments from me can’t be very helpful, either. While I truly attempt to be conscientious and considered in my review of shows and truly want to offer some helpful and concrete feedback, at this point some form of honest peer review seems to be needed for Ms. Chin. If that isn’t possible, I encourage the folks at Bakersfield College to see some theatre at other Valley community colleges—C.O.S. and F.C.C. in particular—to see the caliber of work that can be achieved with students and teachers of similar backgrounds and opportunity.

I see a lot of potential in the Bakersfield Theatre Community. I hope that, soon, the Bakersfield College Theatre Department can become a part of it.

The Diary of Anne Frank, Visalia Players

I was disposed to enjoy this production knowing that the new adaptation by Wendy Kessleman was quite good. The Visalia Players certainly put some effort into improving production values on this one, which is wonderful to see. Keith Lindersmith has renewed his talent with set design using the small-ish Ice House Stage space extremely effectively and art directing it well with a fully lived-in look. Costumes by Irene Morse and Nancy McGinnis were also nicely done.

While the actor movement and staging was effectively directed, the performances were largely wooden and lacked a cohesive sense of interpretation among the acting ensemble. Much of the narrative from fifteen year old Mandi Moore lacked variety and appropriate stops and transitions, something a director has to take into hand early. Ms. Moore, however, did have a confident and energetic presence on stage which will serve her well with more training and experience.

Of the ensemble players, Alison Clark Terry is a standout as Miep with an open expression and empathetic delivery. The majority of the other players had a few good individual moments, they were punctuated by long periods of stiff deliveries. It’s as though their words and sentiments were never able to land on their acting partners. . . most everyone seemed startlingly disconnected from everyone else on stage. Everyone knew what they were supposed to be doing on the stage at any given moment, but never seemed to know how that was supposed to work with their fellow actors.

Overall, I got the impression that director Nancy Holly knew how she wanted the play to look, but not how to pace or craft it into a fully cohesive statement. The most awkward piece of staging, unfortunately, happened at the climax of the play. As the Nazis inevitably arrest the Frank and Van Daan families, the actors portraying the Nazis are agonizingly slow and the reactions of the families strangely muted and polite. It never reached the level of sheer terror that would have been contained within that moment– thereby reaching out the audience to share in that horrific experience.

That said, however, I have to give an extremely positive review to Lindersmith’s portrayal of Otto Frank. Full of dignity and sentiment, it is a truly touching performance and probably the principle reason to see this show.

As it is, the show looks great but is uneven in the quality of performances.

They have, however, announced their next season and it looks to be a promising opportunity to level out the overall quality of their presentations.

“The Pillowman”—Spotlight Theatre, Bakersfield

Any company in the Central Valley who, in its 9^th year, says “Let’s put together a black box series of plays despite the limited audiences, the added stress on our acting pool, and the potential financial drain. . . . let’s do it just because it should be done”. . . . this company has my most positive thoughts going into a review.

Luckily, in the case of Spotlight Theatre’s The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh, the positive thoughts about the company remained thoroughly intact after the final bows.

Set in the police interrogation rooms of an unnamed totalitarian state, a writer, Katurian (Justin Lawson Brooks), is being questioned about his part in a string of gruesome child-murders. Each of the murders copycats the events in one of his stories. Katurian’s stories are not for the squeamish. They contain graphic and twisted details about horrific ways of “skewering a five-year-old.”

Interrogating him is a pair of detectives, the sardonic Tupolski (Brian J. Sivesind), and Ariel (Joel Walton), whose primary love seems to be the use of excessive force on suspects. They’re both as funny as they are imposing and often frighteningly articulate.

The first question seems to be who killed the kids? But through a series of stories posed, questions asked, misdirections and surprises, we learn that the whodunit question is a minor one compared to the questions of morality in storytelling and the shifting nature of truth.

McDonagh’s script does, indeed, “dazzle with a brightness” not often seen in this area (New York Times, 4/11/05). Equal parts black comedy and contemporary drama, its construction and themes are visceral and. . . .dare I say it?. . . . important in our times.

This production is under the capable direction of Jarred Clowes, Spotlight’s technical director. The aesthetic is minimal without any of the bells and whistles other directors may be tempted to include in the story (scrim-scenes enacting Katurian’s stories; young Katurian writing his stories as they’re told onstage). Instead, Clowes gives us the straight dialogue and simple storytelling of the base script, which is a more powerful choice given the themes of the play.

As Katurian, Brooks shines as the vulnerable artist doing everything in his power to defend his artform and make sense of the radical events of his life. In the first act, his (or perhaps his character’s) reactions don’t seem fully internalized, but he becomes increasingly bold with each step in his character’s ordeal. By the second act, he marries his body, actions, and feelings thoroughly. Some of his most effective work occurs in his solo-storytelling moments before the audience. Unafraid of being watched critically, Brooks’ emotional life becomes larger and stronger as he lays before us the disturbing details of Katurian’s imagination.

In the first scene, the detectives, Sivesind and Walton, control the pacing, establishing themselves as foils of one another. In their moments together and apart, each actor brings his full powers to the scene. Neither actor rides on another’s performance which strengthens the ensemble as a whole and allows each individual to fully embrace his pivotal moments in the scene.

The one character that stands out in most memories of this play is that of Katurian’s mentally disabled brother, Michal. Played by Ronnie Hargrave, the character is both infuriating and endearing, a balance Hargrave walks with ease. He pivots between innocent energy and a base rage without alienating the audience.

But more than anything else, this ensemble treated the material with intelligence and bravery. They lay out the questions of moral expectations on literature, the shifting sands of truth, and how we write our own stories with unflinching clarity. The cohesiveness of this troupe asked big questions without any embellishment and left the audience with a lot to think about at the end of the performance.

If this is the quality of work and the level of bravery to be seen at the Spotlight Series next season, where can I buy a subscription? Next year, the Spotlight Series grows into four shows: Copenhagen by Michael Frayn, I Am My Own Wife by Doug Wright, A Picasso by Jeffrey Hatcher (Oh, how I love Hatcher!), and BUG by Tracy Letts.

For more information on Bakersfield’s Spotlight Theatre, click to www.theatreap.com or call (661) 634-0692.

“Sweeney Todd” at C.O.S.

There are people among my theatrical acquaintance who undoubtedly believe that I dislike musical theatre. The fact is that I do not. I am actually quite affected by musical theatre, listen to numerous original cast recordings on long road trips, and secretly wish I had the vocal chops to perform in them. (Alas, I cannot carry a tune in a bucket.)

What I dislike is that so often the “theatre” is nowhere to be found in local musical theatre. School drama programs often insist upon annual musicals thinking that they build programs. They do not. They increase the number of cast members, thus increasing the audience size with more family members to attend. Annual musicals at the high school and college level usually only help the choral programs. You have to improve your singing in order to be considered for major roles. The acting. . . well, it can be taken or left.

As a result, I often sit through a series of songs strung together in static storytelling and sung by largely non-actors exhibiting operatic poses and not much else. (That is still better, I suppose, to musicals with people who can neither sing nor act.).

Anyway, I’m happy to say that the 2008 College of the Sequoias Music Theatre production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon barber of Fleet Street is, in truth, a theatrical success.

Sure, there are a goodly number of students who have beautifully trained choral voices in roles requiring more acting skill than they possess, but on the whole the production is balanced and well performed.

Of the major roles, the two cast with “actors who sing” instead of singers were the title role, played by Chris Mangels, and Judge Turpin (Richard Morrill).

Morrill takes his greatest risks in his solo “Johanna”, putting on a creepy, almost violating, show of a warped character. It can be a tough number to pull off, making him hateful enough to the audience without making them want to call child protective services there and then.

Mangels voice, while not as pristine as his co-stars’, has the advantage of being able to convey great character, mood and texture through it. Mangels commands the stage with his focus and intensity, keeping it reigned in until Sweeney’s most explosive moments. His acting ability also offers proof to the idea that a terrific actor with a decent voice can be just as moving in a musical (sometimes moreso) than a terrific singer who can only moderately act.

As Mrs. Lovett, Lainie Gulliksen has a perfectly cast voice and her characterization works. Acting-wise, though, she’s at her best when actively engaged with Mangels or having to match his intensity. Otherwise, her technique can fall into some amateurish habits.

Of the supporting players, Jim Bonnar (as Anthony Hope) and Danielle Donald (as Johanna) have beautifully rendered voices, and Danielle shows promise as a performance student at C.O.S. Bonnar’s acting performance is apt for his role but lacked the texture and technique needed for Sondheim. The rest of the ensemble worked together very well considering the average age and experience of the cast—the vast majority of the ensemble are student players and most of them from the C.O.S. Choral Department.

The look and feel of the scenic design (also the work of Mangels and his co-lighting designer Steve Lamar) was seamlessly rendered and the stage used effectively and imaginatively with few interrupting scene changes.

This year, C.O.S. is 3 for 3 in terms of fully imagined worlds for the stage. It seems as though the rest of the area theatre companies are going to have to play catch up to College of the Sequoias once again.

“Little Women”– Spotlight Theatre, Bakersfield

Last night, I saw my first show at the Spotlight Theatre in Bakersfield. I’m happy to say that it was a very lovely experience.

The Spotlight, if their past seasons are any judge, are a fairly commercial group of theatre artists from the Bakersfield community. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Their choices of shows exhibit a versatility and an ability to bring things that might be a little less mainstream (like “Assassins”) to more middle of the road subscribers. They also put a smattering of solid straight plays in their seasons that really work for them.

So, hey. . . I’m all for commercial stuff as long as its done well. Please. Let it be done well.

“Little Women” certainly fits the bill. The musical itself is not without its problems. It has a strange bookend structure that seems pointless and it lacks a singular song that keeps people humming as they leave the theatre. But, the characters are nicely revealed through their songs and it doesn’t stray wildly from the tone and intent of the original work.

The cast of community performers are really well prepared for their roles, with a few exceptions I won’t go into right now. The March girls on the whole are buoyant and have a marvelous chemistry together. The voices of Meg and Jo, especially counterpoint each other nicely.

Kat Brinkley as Jo has the brunt of the work of the musical carrying off the majority of the big numbers with energy and a tremendous commitment to character. At the top of the show, some of her transitions seemed a little rote, but once the bugs were worked out, she was the most present actor on the stage and crafted every major moment thoroughly.

The actors surrounding her know the purpose they are to serve in Jo’s story and tailor their parts accordingly. Even Aunt March, who seemed very unprepared in her first number, slipped into a solid character performance by her scene in the last act. Only Marmee March, with her doleful solos, seemed to lack any momentum onstage. Her vocal projection– even with the mics, but especially without them– needs work and she never seems to grasp the joy of Marmee’s dignity and strength. Instead, she seems tentative in her time on the stage.

But overall the numbers and scenes are well staged, nicely acted, and well sung.

On the technical topics, the use of the small stage wasn’t overdone, using movable lattice and sliding platforms to change scenes without having to dismantle the whole set. The lighting seemed uneven, though, with actors walking through dark patches on the stage in the middle of scenes and actors being in weak light at what I thought pivotal moments. (I did note a lack of fresnel instruments on the AP truss and only a few ellipsoids, so this complaint may be due to a lack of instrumentation. It’s incredibly difficult to light a stage well and have various specials with only a few instruments.).

So, all in all, I had a lovely night of musical theatre in Bakersfield and I’m glad to say that Spotlight has extended the run of “Little Women” with an extra weekend.

‘Dancers’ — Visalia Community Players

There have been discussions throughout the theatre-going world on the acceptability of leaving a show at intermission. Some people will bite the bullet and endure a show’s entirety even if it is painful to them. I prefer the anaesthesia of leaving and having a beer, or three. After all, I’m leaving seats that I paid for so its not as though they’re losing money. My absence, if it is even noted, may speak more than any review could and I’ll definitely enjoy that hour more over beers with a friend.

A companion and I attended the final performance of the VCP’s mid-season offering, Dancers. We apparently got the last two seats of a full house, so the VCP’s aging audience certainly responded to the show’s marketing. The play’s plot deals with a guilt-stricken Kevin’s friendship with a patient named Julia at a nursing home after his mother dies there. It attempts to show how forgotten and lost the very real people living in convalescence are. Unfortunately, the show’s production values just don’t live up to its desires.

Now, some readers may know that the sort of plays that could be a Lifetime movie are NOT my cup of tea. I like my theatre to be presented theatrically, not televisically. So the likelihood of my giving this show a rave would have been slim.

HOWEVER, I still have some desire to see some craft, some direction, some sense of detail work applied to the elements of the show. From the moment I sat down, the set’s unfinished nature glared at me. There was nothing finishing the top of the flats, no sense of convalescent home decoration in the patient rooms (convalescent homes TRY to not be depressing places by allowing floral wallpapers and hutches with personal items displayed), and not even an attempt at a privacy curtain in the co-ed room. I imagine the bright green paint was chosen to convey a sickly feel to the place and I’ll give that to them. But whenever you put flats up to construct actual rooms, your detail work has to be exceptional. A painting is actually mentioned in the dialogue at one point. The actors indicate it is hanging on the fourth wall. Well, why not hang an actual picture on the expanse of blank wall they have stage left? I just don’t get it. And, I’m even the more disappointed because director Keith Lindersmith was once so excellent with sets and set decoration. If anyone is going to do a box set justice, it would be Keith. I just feel that he fell short of his abilities on this one.

Mike Russell’s lighting of the solarium window in a second room is quite lovely enough. Unfortunately, when the lights are supposed to be ‘out’ on stage and the actors in a darkened room, there isn’t enough cool light in front of the actors– who are speaking full lengths of dialogue in this state– so there is this glare from the solarium window and the actors are almost just silouettes.

As for the acting, during the first act I was appalled by the stiffness of Timothy Rich as one of the play’s protagonists. I had expected to find this was his first role, but alas no. . . he’s worked with the Players twice before. He’s still very much in the beginning actor stage of “I have a line coming up, I will move here, I will now say my line.” There is no internalization of his dialogue or understanding of the motivation for his movement. I realize that directors have little time in rehearsal to deal with these things, but at some point. . . if local actors are to learn and grow. . . SOMEBODY has to carve out some time to teach them what those things mean.

Nancy Holley as the play’s protagonist, Julia, lacks the depth of texture her character calls for. She’s all Pollyanna with no Aunt Polly. She also has a tendency to raise her voice to an unnatural level and play her sense of elderly ‘cuteness’ to the audience. It comes off as hammy and not crafted.

I’m not sure to what extent the leading performances is due to lack of direction or lack of direction-taking, but there were definitely some moments of awkward staging. At one point, Julia is hiding from Nurse Montcrief, but they are standing not 4 feet from one another on the same plane of the stage. The only obstacle is another actor between them. From the audience’s perspective, we’re wondering why Montcrief– who has been looking for Julia all night– doesn’t say something TO Julia. If Montcrief had been brought downstage with Kevin and Julia left upstage in a shadow, the ‘hiding’ would have worked. It’ s a simple bit of staging that should have been corrected by Lindersmith’s 30 years of experience.

Donny Graham’s first scene turn as the irascible Jack was quite engaging, until I became inured to the swearing and aware the halting as everyone tries to remember what lines go where. His performance was the highlight of the first act, however.

The nurses are very small parts in the first act, but Randi Saul-Olson and Melinda Hatfield are delightfully natural. Their characters are fully formed and responses are quite consistent. These two seemed to understand, more than anyone else, what style of play they were in.

I’m not sure I can say the same of Lesley Dyer’s Nurse Raymond. She only had two brief moments before the end of the first act. In those moments she matched Graham irascibility for irascibility and suddenly the moment seemed unbalanced. There was no foil, no contrast to make things interesting. A cold, calculated, eerily still Nurse Threatening would probably enhance the arc of the character more for the explosion I expect happened in Act II.

But as it is, overall, I had a hard time sitting still to watch this slow car wreck happen. There were two or three groups in the audience who were sincerely enjoying the show for what it was, others had a good chuckle here and there, a few more, like me, were cringing. And in such situations, having paid for my full 2-3 hours, I feel my time more profitably spent in the company of a charming young man over beers across the street.

Call me crazy.

A Christmas Carol– Enchanted Playhouse

I speak a lot among my associates and friends about wanting local shows with a sense of “clarity, intelligence, and style”. Rarely, in Visalia (in the most recent seasons, anyway), have I had an example to point to.

Well, here is a fine example.

The Enchanted Playhouse, as mentioned earlier in this blog, has a number of original adaptations on its season this year (Huzzah!), and Chris Mangels’ one-man staging of the Dickens classic, A Christmas Carol, is its most ambitious. The sheer number of characters and technical elements of a straight version of this play make it daunting enough. Trying to do a one-man version feels lunatic to most sane performers.

The result, though, is a marvelously contemporary-feeling adaptation depending primarily upon the considerable talents of the actor and the fx designers. (As I was sitting in the audience, positive comparisons to Jeffrey Hatcher’s two-person adaptation of Turn of the Screw kept floating through my head.)

Beginning the piece in a backlit image of a top-hatted Storyteller (Mangels) singing the doleful “In the Bleak Midwinter” sets the scene of Scrooge’s pre-epiphany life as effectively as any fully played exposition. The fact that the singing of carols is revisited throughout the piece in various voices is an exceptional touch, tying in the lyrical quality of the play’s speech.

Mangels’ height and distinctive, elongated reach plays well in the space—in fact, are an advantage in the storyteller’s trade. But more important is the intelligence with which he treats his subject matter. He doesn’t go to great lengths to change his body-stylings for each character. He, instead, makes only the required changes in posture to hint at assist his voice and facial expression in delivering a unique character. Overdoing body work is what often makes storytellers look absurd, but there is none of that in these characters. Mangels’ female voices are a little too similar to one another, but his treatment of Belle, Scrooge’s one-time fiancée, is so tender and full that the audience sits in silence as the first act comes to a close.

The moments of humor inherent in the Dickens original (yes, there are a few!) are again treated here with intelligence. Mangels’ adept facial expressions and sense of timing play the humor with out playing it up. It feels very organic and nicely timed within the script.

Though Mangels is the only human onstage, kudos must also be given to the characters of lighting and sound. One of my favorite things is to see a set with only essential architecture, but using lighting to “edit” the scenes. The eye follows movement and lights move with greater alacrity than sets. Some beautiful use of backlighting and shadows at key moments keeps us in the foggy London of the 1840’s without being literal.

The sound design is exceptional, each cue coming in clear and with appropriate tones for the story. The music choices also contribute to the tone and style of the show.

The most impressive piece of FX is, of course, the ghost of Christmas Future. Without going into detail on its effectiveness, I can say that it managed to shut up the 14-year-olds sitting behind me for a full ten minutes of the show!

The biggest testament to the show’s success, though, is the fact that as often as possible, the company elected an acting solution over a technical one at almost every juncture. Ultimately, this production goes to prove that when the essentials are done well, you don’t need a lot of smoke and mirrors to tell a good story.

It also proves that “children’s theatre” isn’t just for children, anymore.

A Christmas Carol runs at the Enchanted Playhouse December 7, 8, 9, 14, and 15. Click to www.enchantedplayhouse.org for more information.

TopDog/Underdog– Bakersfield College

I have oft said that bad theatre is almost my favorite kind. My favorite kind, of course, is fabulous theatre. But bad theatre. . . the kind that keeps you awe-inspired by its audaciously ill-informed spectacle. . . can be just as entertaining.

 

Bakersfield College’s TopDog/Underdog does not fit into either category. It is, at best, a poorly rendered version of a rich, deep script.

Like the title suggests, Topdog/Underdog (published in 2001) is a play about competition, reversals, and mirror images that reflect the true self. It is about personal history, and the ways in which it forms identity and individual choices.

Topdog/Underdog tells the story of two brothers, Lincoln and Booth, who, abandoned by first one parent and then the other, have had to depend upon each other for survival since they were teenagers. Now in their thirties, the brothers struggle to make a new life, one that will lead them out of poverty. Throughout the play, the brothers compete against each other, vying for control, trying to one-up each other with personal and professional triumphs. At any given moment, one may wield power over the other, only to relinquish it in the next. Hence, Topdog/Underdog reveals a topsy-turvy world in which Lincoln and Booth live as a result of the personal history and the subsequent choices they’ve made.

It is not so much the story of African-Americans and their struggle against systemic racism, but instead about the violence and poverty African-Americans inflict upon each other. This is, unfortunately, something that seems to have escaped the actors and director of this production.

One need only look as far as author Suzan-Lori Parks’ Pulitzer acceptance interviews to know the intentions of the author: “To use terms such as victim and oppressor is to focus on the victimizer [...] But when you show yourself as a person, you focus on your humanity and your possibility, and the possibilities of the world you live in” (“Pulitzer Winner for Drama”, Newshour with Jim Lehrer, 4/11/2002). “When their father named them “Lincoln” and “Booth” as a joke,” she notes, this “sort of sets a certain life into motion, but they have choice—each moment of their lives they can exercise this choice. To be a “person” or “individual” rather than a “victim”, then, is to have “choice”, or an unending array of opportunities for “choice”, and not to have one’s choices systematically predetermined.” (“Pulitzer Winner for Drama”).

Parks also has stated, “By saying it’s all about a certain group pushing down another certain group, we deny ourselves an existence that occurs without the presence of any other group” (“Funnyhouse of a Negro”, The Village Voice, 11/3/1999). “To discuss “race” in terms of racism denies the autonomy and wholeness of the oppressed, notably their right to singular and freely chosen pleasures.”

A basic google search would turn up these interviews with Parks as basic background to inform the production of the play. I’m not convinced that happened. But even just looking at the text, the primary source, we see that there are two men in a room in this play. None of them are white. The neglect and abuse of their personal history is contained within a black family. The only mention of white on black oppression isn’t even real. .. it’s the misunderstanding of their father when the two boys pull an anonymous prank on him. What, in reality, is simply a family prank.

This show, then, is really about two men, their relationship and their past. Yes, it is informed by their abject poverty and history of neglect. Certainly. That’s an important distinction to make. But it still isn’t about black power over an oppressor. It’s an allegory about blacks and their sometimes violent relationship to other blacks.

The fact that these two young actors were encouraged to stand up on stage during a curtain call in a black power salute speaks to the fact that nobody involved in this production got the point.

So, aside from a massive lack of clarity and understanding of the text, what about the production values?

Well, I must give some leeway to the lighting design and such as the space wasn’t the usual theatre. But the small space of a drab lecture room is probably a better choice for the confining needs of TopDog/Underdog. The lighting design itself was awkward with agonizingly slow fade outs at the end of the scenes and awkward lighting levels at the top of the scene. The audience had trouble telling when a scene was starting of if the actors were still placing props for their next scene.

The sound and costumes were adequate to the need, even if a few sound cues overlapped into the world of the play without acknowledging them with a radio onstage.

The acting by newcomers Stefan Lambert and Dashawn Clark just wasn’t up to the task of this incredibly rich script. There is a reason why it took the talents of Don Cheadle and Mos Def to put the play on the map in New York City. It is that advanced and requires great imagination and discipline of mind to keep each beat alive.

Neither actor seemed to be able to connect the dots between each beat. These characters turn on a dime and the actor has to have the chops to make every change make sense to an audience. Too often it was apparent that the actor didn’t know why his character was changing tactics—fighting and needling one moment and then giving in the next. There was no process apparent behind the lines they were delivering. No sense of making active and spontaneous choices.

Again, this is advanced stuff you’re asking of your actors. To ask actors who have no sense of the building blocks of their craft to handle the architecture of TopDog/Underdog is almost senseless cruelty. I will say, however, that the two real moments in the play were A) when Lambert’s Link is relaying the ins and outs of his job. I could sense Lambert imagining and visualizing the job during this monologue. It also helped that, for once, Clark was directed to stand still and actually listen to his acting partner, thus not upstaging his monologue as so often occurred at other points.

The second was Clark’s explosion at the end of Act II. While the explosion wasn’t built up enough with each beat throughout the play, it didn’t contain Clark’s tendency to use indicating acting (that Scooby-Doo like tendency to make faces and gestures to indicate what you’re supposed to be feeling rather than just experiencing it in the moment).

Really, so much of the failure of this production really comes from the decisions of the director. One of the elements of educational theatre is that directors cannot always choose to mount the shows they would mount were they independent. Directors of educational theatre have to choose texts that are within the grasp of their pool of student and community actors. Yes, we want to challenge student actors, but to give them something so far outside of their level of experience will just succeed in either frustrating them or deluding them. Either way, not a lot of learning about the craft of performance is happening.

Director Kimberly Chin’s choice of TopDog/Underdog was way outside of the ballpark regarding the experience and understanding of her cast. (I actually question if the show is within her own level of ability and understanding). Certainly, shows with a social conscience are valuable and can be integral to the intellectual life of a college. But when dealing with a pool of students who largely have no training and, at best, some high school drama experience, wouldn’t it be better to try and get a professional company to come in and present such plays as TopDog/Underdog? Wouldn’t students learn more from understanding the elements of the craft of acting and staging before tackling changing the world?

Anyway, I digress. . . . Of the directorial elements, I didn’t see a sense of clarity in this production. The point of view and understanding seemed muddy and there was little cohesion in the acting and production elements. The staging was fine with only a few moments of awkward blocking. But the pacing was abominable. The first act alone was an hour and twenty minutes—for an 80 page script that is just unnecessary. Cue pick up from the actors was agonizingly slow and uncertain.

Ultimately, one of the great basic elements of the show was missed. . . . the fact that the show is bookended with the three-card monte street hustle should establish the pacing. The entire show should sound, look, and feel something like the rhythms of that gig. But the self-indulgent and slow pace—as ostensibly established by the director—just strangles the life out of the play.

Ultimately, I had trouble seeing or understanding what the intention of the director was for this production. I know what the author’s intentions were. But what were Ms. Chin’s? To make me think? Well, I’m afraid the ineffectiveness of the treatment of the text stopped that. To challenge me? To draw me into the experience of another race? Well, TopDog/Underdog may be a good choice for all of that in theory, but her execution of the choice stumbled at the starting block.

There is a difference between the concept in the director’s head and the execution of it on the stage. Bakersfield College’s Ms. Chin couldn’t seem to tell the difference on this one. I heartily encourage Bakersfield College to choose plays with their talent pool in mind and try to balance their artistic agenda with the needs of instructing the student body in basics of theatre arts. It’ll help the cohesiveness of their offerings greatly and eventually build a pool of talent more able to take on increasingly challenging work.

Mini-Review: Our Country’s Good

C.O. S. has hit another one out of the park with “Our Country’s Good”. Chris Mangels has staged a fantastically theatrical story with a talented cast. A balanced, well-thought out show from top to bottom with a cohesive sense of style. Nicely done.

I am looking forward, with great interest, next spring’s Sweeney Todd from Mangels. You all should be, too.