The Conical Glass: Out in the 'burbs

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Out in the 'burbs

There are two different theatrical worlds out here: City Theater World and Suburban Theater World. In Suburban World, patrons primarily enjoy the tried-and-true; "Damn Yankees" is always playing somewhere. Theatergoers in City World, on the other hand, want edgier, more challenging fare. In this area, at least, urban theatergoers also have their own warhorses. One of the reasons ACT can afford to try something like next month's "Blackbird" (a "tense and controversial play... that explores the outer limits of morality," according to the web site) is because they produce work by Tom Stoppard or David Mamet every single season. Nobody gets butts in the seats in San Francisco like Stoppard and Mamet. This season, they did Stoppard's "Travesties," so I was completely unsurprised to see Mamet's "Speed-the-Plow" on the list of offerings for next year.

Anyway, I will admit to being a wee bit snobby about the 'burbs, but I was still happy to take some friends up on an offer to go to the Willows Theater in Concord to see a play there. The Willows is best known in these parts for its enormous success with the "Nunsense" series of musical revues; the singing & dancing nuns have proved so popular that the Willows is opening an all-nuns, all-the-time cabaret theater in the nearby suburb of Martinez. (Its initial offerings will include the country-western "Nunsense Jamboree" and, for the holidays, "Nuncrackers.")

The Willows is located in a large shopping center, next to the REI and CompUSA superstores. (Advantage over city theaters: acres of free parking!) It was opening night for the comedy "Dearly Beloved," written by Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope and Jamie Wooten. "Beloved" takes place in small-town Texas, where Tina Jo is about to marry Parker in a "Gone With the Wind"-themed wedding. Frankie, the frantic mother of the bride, has to deal with one catastrophe after another, from the return of her prodigal sister Honey Raye to the disastrous catering by Clovis Sanford's House of Meat (arranged by her other sister, Twink) to the disappearance of the bride & groom themselves. It's pure farce, and I must admit I laughed a lot and had a great time. Sometimes it's fun to just kick back with a crowd-pleaser.

Meanwhile, about 45 minutes west of the Willows (depending on traffic, of course -- you have to cross a bridge and go through a tunnel to get to San Francisco from Concord), Philip Kan Gotanda's "After the War" is having its world premiere at ACT. It's always a bit of a drag to have tickets to something that garners critical brickbats, and "After the War" has gotten quite a few pans ("unsatisfying... a major disappointment" -Sacramento Bee; "wall-to-wall contrivance" -Variety; "disappointingly underdeveloped" -Chronicle; "monotonous... the thematic and narrative lines fail to make an impact" -SF Weekly). Perhaps the litany of negative reviews quashed my expectations because I didn't think it was all that bad. The main problem, I think, is that it would like to be an August Wilson-type exploration of life in a San Francisco boardinghouse post-WWII, and it never quite reaches those lofty heights. Most of the characters are Japanese-Americans who spent time in the internment camps. The boardinghouse is also populated by an unemployed black man and his sister-in-law; a Southern belle and her mentally challenged brother; and a Russian-Jewish woman.

The show is fairly entertaining, but it's also pure soap opera. For instance, one of the Japanese-Americans is a mild-mannered accountant who falls in love with the Russian... but then it turns out she's a prostitute who is "working off" her debt. The black guy is having a secret affair with the Southern woman. And on and on. Everyone has a secret!

The most annoying thing about "After the War" is its set -- the multi-story boardinghouse is built on a giant turntable, and when there's a change of scene (which is often), the entire thing rotates slowly, going creak-creak-creak! Near the end, the entire thing makes a couple continuous rotations. It made me dizzy, and the creaking was like fingernails on a chalkboard.

I'll say one thing about "Dearly Beloved," at least it doesn't have any pretensions, except to entertain. "After the War," positioned as an Important World Premiere by a Tony-winning regional theater company, tries to be something more than a melodramatic potboiler, and fails. Score one for the 'burbs.

posted by 125records @ 2:12 PM

1 Comments:

At 7:43 PM, yellojkt said…

We saw an anniversery tour of Nunsense awhile ago and while it was cute, I couldn't quite figure out the big deal. Same goes for the "Greater Tuna" shows. I don't get it.