Archive for April, 2012

• Of mice and men

  Date: 2012.04.08 | Category: Theater | Response: 3

  One advantage of having read several hundred mystery novels over the years is that when I go back and reread old favorites, I’ve usually forgotten most of the details. The works of Agatha Christie are frequently an exception, however. Her resolutions are so memorable that they frequently stick in my brain like gum to the sole of your shoe. Who can read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Murder on the Orient Express or Ten Little Indians and not remember whodunit?

  There are plenty of other reasons to read Christie, of course, such as her marvelously eccentric characters and the sheer cleverness of her plot machinations. That’s why I was happy to see her play “The Mousetrap” again, despite the fact that I’d already seen it in England a decade ago — and, of course, I recalled precisely who the culprit was. Don’t worry, I won’t spoil it here. After all, Christie herself asked the first audience to see it back in 1952 not to reveal the ending.

  Perhaps because I’m a lifelong mystery reader, I will admit that when I saw this tale of murder at a snowbound country inn for the first time in London’s West End, I had a pretty good idea whodunit, and my hunch turned out to be correct. However, I still enjoyed it, along with the peculiarly British tradition of serving ice cream at intermission.

  The Altarena Theater doesn’t serve ice cream, but they do offer wine and chocolate chip cookies, and who can complain about that? Their 60th anniversary production of “The Mousetrap” has been packing ‘em in, proving that this old warhorse has plenty of good years left in it. Director Kim Saunders and her eight-person cast keep the audience laughing by emphasizing the piece’s comic touches — Damien Sepiri, as the mysterious Italian Mr. Paravicini, hams it up outrageously, while Ross Neuenfeldt is a perfectly flightly Mr. Wren. The actress playing Mrs. Boyle seemed at least a couple of decades too young for the part — I was reminded of an old “Saturday Night Live” sketch in which comic Rachel Dratch donned a gray wig to portray a character twice her age — but for a community theater production, everyone did a fine job of inhabiting their roles. It’s a fun night out, even if you’ve already fingered the perp.

  Meanwhile, across the bay, a much more serious piece of theater, Annie Baker’s “The Aliens,” is having its West Coast premiere at the SF Playhouse. Baker is one of the most exciting young playwrights working today — another one of her shows, “Body Awareness,” recently finished a run at the Aurora, and is the best thing I’ve seen so far this year. “The Aliens” isn’t as effortlessly crowd-pleasing and funny as “Body”; in fact, at times, Baker seems to be testing the audience’s limits in this tale of two aimless and troubled 30-something men who hang out behind a small-town Vermont coffee shop, and the naive young employee of the shop who befriends them. There are lengthy periods of silence, when nothing much seems to happen, and then there’s the scene in which one of the characters says the word “ladder” approximately eleventy billion times in a row. It makes sense in context, but I haven’t felt such a palpable sense of audience discomfort since Will Eno’s “Thom Pain,” which also uses silence to provoke a reaction in its viewers.

  I will admit that for the first 15 minutes or so, “The Aliens” annoyed me. But then I found myself drawn into the characters’ world, and Baker’s essential humanity and affection for this trio had me hooked. By the end, I felt profoundly moved, and eager to see more of her work (her third major play, “Circle Mirror Transformation,” will reportedly be getting a Bay Area run this fall). However, “The Aliens” is not for everyone. The couple sitting to my right had a long debate at intermission about whether or not to stay for the second act, and while they wound up sticking around  (after some ostentatious sighing on the part of the male half), they both took out their smartphones and checked them during the play. Not wanting to disrupt the production, I tried shielding my eyes from the phones’ glow with my hand, but it was still incredibly annoying. Note to the couple sitting next to me: I hate you and hope you either (a) had a flat tire or (b) missed every bus/train after the show and had to walk home. Note to everybody in the world: if you can’t get through a two-hour play without looking at your phone, stay home (unless, of course, it’s tweet night at the Playhouse… which it wasn’t). As they say at the Alamo Drafthouse: no talking, no texting!

  Joe and I did walk past the always-fabulously-attired Brown Twins on the way to the theater, which was awesome. The twins, who, like me, grew up in West Michigan and moved to California as adults, are a true San Francisco treat. Long may they reign over Nob Hill.