Playing Around the Sound: Quick WrapUps of Satori Group, ArtsWest, STAGEright, and SecondStory Rep

"Returning to Albert Joseph"

Here are short impressions from attending a diverse selections of currently running plays in the area.

Until May 25, Satori Group is performing Returning to Albert Joseph which is scripted by Spike Friedman, a company member, but worked on by the collective. Friedman, in a press packet, says tentatively, that the play is about "loss." But he's afraid that by labeling it, it will make people feel like they won't want to see it. That seems strange for a company member of a group that believes so thoroughly in theatrical expression.

Directed by Caitlin Sullivan and Alex Matthews with a cast of two, LoraBeth Barr and Quinn Franzen, the play could indeed be said to be about loss. It's a very word-focused presentation about a dystopian society where it seems that people have lost the very connection to humanity: human connection. Even being friends with someone seems to threaten the very fabric of that unseen society. Who we are introduced to are outcasts who are on the run, and who have to justify themselves at every moment.

"Third" demonstrates Wasserstein's power to ignite, illuminate, challenge

Kate Witt and Marti Mukhalian in Third (photo Michael Brunk)

Third

ArtsWest

Through March 22

Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein died far too early (of cancer when she was 55 years old). Third was her last play, which played Off-Broadway in 2005, just before her death. It is now performing at ArtsWest with a tight cast of five, directed by actor/director Peggy Gannon.

Wasserstein focused resolutely, sometimes, on women’s issues and women’s voices, as she dissected and illuminated specific time periods and encompassed women’s rise to bang against the glass ceilings and find their voices. However, she did not neglect the classics, and in Third, her theme is King Lear.

Laurie Jameson (a vigorous, take-charge, and accomplished Marty Mukhalian) is at the peak of her career, having helped generate change and awareness of women’s issues and political power at a select, small Eastern university. She lectures on literature from a feminist perspective. As the play opens, Professor Jameson lectures the audience on King Lear.

A young man, Woodson Bull III (a convincing, earnest Mark Tyler Miller), presents a paper with his analysis of Lear. However, he is at the school as a wrestler, with dreams of becoming a sports agent. Given his name, legacy number (“the Third”), “jock” status, and white male privilege, Jameson profiles him and decides he doesn’t have the intellect or capacity to have written the analysis himself and accuses him of plagiarism.

The play can be looked at as a metaphor for Shakespeare’s King Lear, itself. Professor Jameson loses everything she worked for after mistaking Third’s honest opinion as stolen analysis, just as King Lear loses everything after rejecting his honest daughter’s expression of love.

 It can also be viewed as what happens when an outsider struggles so long and hard to become an insider that she forgets to be open to another’s viewpoint. So she becomes just exactly like those she supplanted in the first place, who judged her, as a woman, insufficiently intelligent or accomplished to be the professor she aspired to be at the beginning of her career.

Jameson’s portrayal is softened, enhanced, and explained by interactions with three key people: her daughter Emily (Kacey Shiflet), her dementia-increasing father Jack (Bill Higham), and her colleague Nancy (Kate Witt), who is battling cancer. Each of these strong performances and wonderful scene dialogues enlarge who Jameson can be, if she’d let herself, with Third. As we witness her compassion, her trials as a daughter, her difficulties as a mother of a grown child and a friend to a suffering colleague, we can see what she could offer Third as a mentor and teacher, and the tragic blinds she willfully keeps on her eyes.

This may sound like a tragedy, ala King Lear, but it’s far from that! It’s an absorbing, thoughtful play with loads of ideas and ways of examining what Wasserstein is saying. There are funny moments, wry moments, and especially heart-breaking moments where Mukhalian and Higham can move you to tears.

Gannon’s vision of Third is spare. Burton Yuen’s set design has a cloud-strewn backdrop and stately windows hung from the ceiling, implying the grandeur of the college. Costuming by Anastasia Armes is simple, yet effective. Lighting by Tristan Roberson is muted and subtle. Sound design and song choices root the play in 2003 (by Johanna Melamed). The simplicity sets of the complex clash of ideas nicely.

It’s a terrific opportunity to have a Wasserstein play on Seattle stage again. Third proves her power to ignite controversy, discussion, changing perspectives, and even an opportunity to see where feminism might have gone off the rails for some people.

For more information, go to www.artswest.org or call 206-938-0339. 

Review: The Little Dog Laughed at ArtsWest - More Than a Comedy

Heather Hawkins, Alex Garnett, Jeff Orton (photo by Michael Brunk)

THE LITTLE DOG LAUGHED
ARTSWEST PLAYHOUSE
Through February 16

Suppose you are a closeted actor on the verge of getting a really big film, and you and your agent are on the verge of making it to the top of the heap, instead of crawling around the pile with the rest of the grunts. Suppose the biggest irony is that the script of the film is about two Gay men, but the idea that Gay men would actually play the roles is gross to the powers that run Hollywood, so if you come out, you could ruin the movie and your big career move. 

In fact, that's still very much a Hollywood stereotype, if you look at huge films like Brokeback Mountain, and more recently at Behind the Candelabra, the HBO giant starring Matt Damon and Michael Douglas, even now winning the top awards for not being Gay. So, the script story in The Little Dog Laughed by Douglas Carter Beane is not too far off, even today, though he wrote the play in 2006. 

The ArtsWest production, starring the quartet of Alex Garnett, Jeff Orton, Heather Hawkins and EmilyRose Frasca, does a fine job of presenting the dilemma. 

Mitchell (Garnett), the actor, hasn't even been that interested in sex all these years, still conflicted about his sexuality, and insecure. Every once in a while, he pays for some fun, and meets Alex (Orton) after a phone call to an 'agency.' Diane (Hawkins), the agent, saw something in Mitchell and has stuck with him through thin, but when she sees his deepening relationship with the 'rent boy,' she starts to get worried. 

Alex, as written, is full of contradictions. He makes his money by having sex with wealthy men, but does not consider himself homosexual. He kind of has a girlfriend, Ellen (Frasca), though she also has sex with wealthy men. Yet, when he has the chance, at the top of the show, to 'roll' Mitchell and split, he doesn't. Something in Mitchell's vulnerability stirs something more in Alex and he finds himself wanting to stick around. 

That is a piece of the buggy ride that this more-than-comedy takes you on. It feels like a romp, and Hawkins' foul-mouthed, off-hand delivery definitely keeps that feeling alive. But there are also tender moments and some (perhaps unintentionally) awkward ones. Mitchell starts to accept himself and wants to out himself, consequences be damned. The men begin to have real emotions toward each other. 

In an interesting twist, Alex's character arc is most interesting. He has the farthest to go in finding out about himself and has the most integrity. Mitchell, at least, knows he's homosexual and it's more a matter of whether he will make that public or not. 

While Hawkins gets most of the big laugh lines, she is occasionally a bit broad, needing a stronger hand from director Annie Lareau. But by the end of the play, her character's smarts and calculation are fully revealed, and an appreciation for all that she does is inevitable. 

Caution for children younger than mature teens: there is a brief moment of male nudity, aside from regular vulgar language. For more information, go to www.artswest.org or call (206) 938-0339. Comments welcomed on this blog.