Theater Review: Ben Butler

             Richard Baird and Brandon J. Pierce

The American Civil War was anything but civil, but playwright Richard Strand has found a way to create a fascinating, thought-provoking and (believe it or not) funny play about one of its more interesting incidents.

Strand’s play “Ben Butler” runs through Nov. 14 at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach. NCRT’s artistic director David Ellenstein helms the play.

It’s 1861, hostilities have just begun, and Union Army Major General Benjamin Butler (Richard Baird) has just arrived to take over at Fort Monroe, Virginia. He’s reading a telegram on his desk when his stiff young adjutant, West Point graduate Lieutenant Kelly, enters. Butler looks up.

“It informs me that last night, Virginia seceded from the Union,” Butler says.“What do you make of that?”

“Not much,” answers Kelly. “It only makes official what we already know.”

Kelly has another reason to talk to his boss. “There is a Negro slave outside who is demanding to speak with you,” he says. In fact, he reports, there are three runaway slaves at Ft. Monroe, and they are seeking sanctuary.

Butler informs Kelly that legally he must return slaves to their owners, but when Kelly seems fearful to relay the message, Butler tells him to show the slave in.

This is the beginning of a most unusual relationship. Butler, who loves his authority and his sherry (he offers the latter to everyone who walks into the office) is also likely the only Union officer who voted “57 times” for Jefferson Davis as president of the Confederacy, before war broke out and Butler changed sides.

Likewise, Shepard Mallory (Brandon J. Pierce) is a different kind of slave. He seems most concerned that no one find out that he knows how to read. But he says his main problem is that he can’t resist telling the truth, which, he says, has made him universally hated. As proof, he lifts his shirt to reveal deep scars on his back from whipping. 

When Butler asks why, Mallory’s response is “I was whipped because me and the man with the whip just saw things differently.” 

That is also his philosophical reason for this – or any – war. Mallory and the other slaves escaped from making fortifications for the Confederate cause. He says they now want to help the Union cause.

Butler thinks a better idea is for the slaves to escape, but Mallory will have none of it. So Butler is stuck with them.

Baird is masterful as the turncoat Confederate who can be clever, exasperating, or just plain stubborn. If you’re wondering about that hair, Google the real Butler and see what the original looked like.

Mackey’s dutiful lieutenant is suitably – and comically – subservient, and always fun to watch.

Pierce is excellent as the slave Mallory, too smart for his own good but delightful to watch as well.

Bruce Turk is likewise fine as Confederate Army Major Cary, who comes to collect the slaves toward the end of the play.

Marty Burnett’s set is properly spare and utilitarian, and lighting and costumes are (as always) wonderfully handled by Matthew Novotny and Renetta Lloyd, respectively.

What will happen? I’m not disclosing it, but know that “Ben Butler” is a clever, fascinating “think piece” that will give you plenty to talk about on the way home.

“Ben Butler” runs through November 14, 2021 at North Coast Repertory Theatre.

Shows Wednesday at 7 p.m.; Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m.; Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 and 7 p.m.

Tickets: northcoastrep.org; (858) 481-1055

 

Film Review: Love It Was Not

It always cheers me up to learn about someone ordered to do evil who does good instead.

But a Nazi SS officer at Auschwitz? Who would even believe that?

But “Love It Was Not” is a true story, a documentary about Franz Wunsch, a Nazi officer ordered to make sure the stream of prisoners to the crematorium at Birkenau never lacks for victims. 

It’s Wunsch’s birthday, and he’s just returned from herding the latest group from the train. But he wants someone to sing for him, so he asks and a young Slovakian prisoner named Helena Citron volunteers. She is not only beautiful, but has a lovely voice.

He’s no slouch in the looks department either, and there is as much of a spark between them as either can afford to betray. But he does his job, willingly beating male prisoners and visibly making life miserable for all while assigning Helena to the “cushier” job of working at Kanada, the storeroom for personal effects of the prisoners, rather than physical labor.

Of Helena’s family, only Helena and her younger sister survived the camp and lived to be freed, and that only because Wunsch intervened to save the sister while she was lined up for the ride to the crematorium.

The story is told through interviews with survivors, including Wunsch’s wife, who wrote Helena before Franz’s testimony at the Nuremberg trials, asking her to exonerate her husband. He was, in fact, the last Nazi to be tried there.

It’s a story of horror and kindness, unspeakable evil and unexpected good, during an awful time in human history. “Love It Was Not” should be seen by all – whether they are old enough to remember, or just seeing as history – so that perhaps the horror will never happen again.

Theater review: Shutter Sisters

                        Shana Wride and Terry Burrell 
 

                        Shutter Sisters

When I saw the announcement for this play, I assumed it was about photographers. Imagine my shock when I found out it’s about two women who sell shutters – window shutters – for a living.

But that’s only one of many surprises in the world premiere of Mansa Ra’s “Shutter Sisters,” the newest play to open at The Old Globe’s White Theatre. This play, commissioned by the Globe, is so unusual that it’s difficult even to describe.

The setting is Atlanta in 2019. Two women – one African American, one Caucasian and named, oddly enough, Mykal (Terry Burrell) and Michael (Shana Wride), are onstage in-the-round at the White the whole time, alternately telling us their stories about adoption, friendship, family and finding your own way in life. (Their names are both pronounced “Michael.”)

Burrell and Wride are excellent as the adoptees who both want answers only their birth mother(s) can provide.

But they don’t just stand and deliver their lines, and they aren’t necessarily inhabiting the same time frame at any given moment. And Director Donya Washington has them both walking in circles the whole time. 

Yep. This is an unusual play. 

The talk is largely about family, but also about race. Both of these women were adopted, Michael into a family with two boys, Drew and Andy, who are described but not seen.

Mykal’s story is a bit different, and I’m not going to reveal how because that’s part of the plot.

Mansa Ra has managed to get pathos, jealousy, bigheartedness, belonging, joy, death and enlightenment, all into a 90-minute play with no intermission. It’s quite an achievement.

Wride, frequently seen on local stages, is excellent as the instigator of the plot. Broadway veteran Burrell’s Mykal, a bit more “ouchy” as a result of racial profiling, turns in a likewise stellar performance.

Wilson Chin’s sets, Kara Harmon’s costumes and Zach Murphy’s lighting and Chris Lane’s sound design all do their job without calling attention from the action.

The only problem with this show is the insufficiency of the sound. Keeping actors in the round in constant motion without body mikes means it is unlikely that anybody in the audience hears all the lines. This could easily be fixed, and should be.

But welcome to a fascinating new voice in American theater. 

“Shutter Sisters” plays through November 7, 2021 at the Old Globe’s Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre. Shows Tuesday, Wednesday and Sunday nights at 7 p.m.; Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m., Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2 pm.

For tickets: www.TheOldGlobe.org or (619) 234-5623

Theater review: Mother Road

                        

                                                     Cast of "Mother Road"

John Steinbeck’s Depression-era classic “The Grapes of Wrath” tells a heart-wrenching story about a family of farmworkers forced to move from Oklahoma to California in search of work.

Now San Diego Repertory Theatre presents “Mother Road,” Octavio Solis’ new  multiethnic, multiracial take on the story, and a plot that meanders and sometimes gets lost in several other directions.

It opens on a stage with two nude trees on either side of the stage and a virtual projection of country at the back. Several characters are scattered on the stage like a Greek chorus. They speak, noting that they are “not looking for heaven, just a place with less pain.”

Mark Murphey is excellent as current landowner William Joad (cousin of the paterfamilias), who has cancer and no direct heir (“I wasn’t the procreation’ type”). But he wants to leave the property to someone with at least family ties, and his attorney Roger (Jason Heil) has found in California the only direct descendant, a young Mexican American farmworker named Martín Jodes (Richard Jessie Johnson), scraping by on odd picking and landscaping jobs.

It seems the original property owner, the young Tom Joad, went off to Mexico and raised a family. “Tom was your first cousin,” he tells Martín. He also says “I’ve got the deed right here,” but he wants to assure himself that Martín is up to the task before turning it over.

The rest of the play is the Steinbeck road trip in reverse: William takes Martín from California back to Oklahoma. But this is a trip like no other.

There’s an imaginative jeep-like vehicle which cleverly splits when necessary and 

seats an alternating group of interesting, recognizable characters with noble (and less noble) attitudes. There are funny (and sometimes hostile) verbal exchanges. It’s just like real life. But most of these other characters and their subsequent adventures add time (the play runs two and a half hours with intermission) but not substance to the play.

The cast is excellent. Richard Jessie Johnson is perfect as the young, wiry Martín, who at last sees hope in his future.

Early on, Martín spies a woman who immediately steals his heart. This is Amelia (Celeste Lanuza), a lovely woman who seems to welcome his interest. Will they get together?

There is Martín’s sidekick Mo (Yadi Correa), a funny, mouthy lesbian farmworker who shares Martín’s reverence for the land. 

Several other actors play multiple roles. Heil plays four characters brilliantly. Sandy Campbell, Javier Guerrero and Rubin Rubio and Cedric Lamar all play multiple roles. 

There is much I like about this show. It does, however, seem a tad overlong and greatly overstuffed. Some judicious cuts are in order.

“Mother Road” plays through October 31, 2021 at San Diego Repertory Theatre. 

Wednesday at 7 p.m.; Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m.; Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 and 7 p.m.

For tickets: sdrep.org; box office (619) 544-1000

Theater review: The Belle of Amherst

                                     The Belle of Amherst

                               Cynthia Gerber as Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson and I have something in common. Alas, it is not a flair for poetry, but the fact that both of us spent our lives essentially alone. She claims it was on purpose; so do I, but though I decided early on that marriage was not for me, I can still identify with her excitement at the thought that she might have met the man of her life – or at least the publisher of her dreams.

Cynthia Gerber is brilliant as Dickinson in playwright William Luce’s solo biographical show “The Belle of Amherst,” on view through Nov. 14 at Coronado’s Lamb’s Players Theatre.

Set designer Mike Buckley sets the tone with a woodsy set that offers a beautifully restful maple tree on either side of the curtained stage, using the curtained area for projected photos.

Dickinson was born in 1830 and spent most of her life in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her father was an attorney who, it would seem, never even smiled, never mind encouraging his children in their endeavors. She flashes an unsmiling photo on the backdrop. “He looks like a bear,” she notes.

But that didn’t stop her. Neither did rejections from several submissions to “The Atlantic.” A prolific writer, by the time of her death only 10 of her nearly 1800 poems had been published, and one letter. Nearly all the poems were heavily edited because she didn’t bother with the conventional rules of poetry of the time. She always wore white.

She didn’t bother with other conventions either, like religion. “Some keep the Sabbath going to church. I keep it, staying at home,” she wrote. 

Emily was closest to her younger brother Austin, who as the only male child got most of their father’s attention. 

Emily tells her side of the story, jumping around here and there as her spirit takes her. 

To me, the saddest lines of all are these: “I’m nobody. Who are you?”

I am extremely happy to report that she is not “nobody” to anyone who reads English poetry.

Gerber doesn’t just play Emily; she really inhabits the character, which allows the audience a seemingly much closer relationship to this singular talent (really, to both talents).

If you’d like to meet Emily Dickinson, get thee to Lamb’s Players Theatre. 

I would suggest, however, that the theater insert a short intermission. It’s a long sit without one.

“The Belle of Amherst” plays through November 14, 2021 at Lamb’s Players Theatre, 1142 Orange Ave. in Coronado. Masks and proof of vaccination required.

For tickets: (619) 437-6000 or https://www.lambsplayers.org

Theater review: One in Two

                        

            Durwood Murray, Carter Piggee, Kevane La'Marr Coleman

Since 2019, the world has been so consumed with COVID-19 and its effects that many have forgotten about previous bugs that likewise kill. 

Diversionary Theatre returns to live performance with Donja R. Love’s “One in Two,” a most unusual three-hander that explores the effects of HIV/AIDS, the ’80s “gay epidemic” which has killed 700,000 gay/bisexual Black men since its discovery – matching the U.S. Covid death rate so far. AIDS still claims 13,000 lives a year in the U.S.

But it’s the way this story is told that’s different. Three numbered actors – Kevane La’Marr Coleman, Durwood Murray and Carter Piggee – have learned all three roles, and which one they play on a given night is supposed to be up to the audience to indicate – by applause.

So first, we in the audience clapped once for each actor, and they were “numbered” accordingly. (It didn’t exactly work out as expected, since the declared #1 isn’t the one who got the most applause, but let that go.)

Playwright Love identifies as an Afro-Queer playwright and filmmaker, and this is based on his story.

The plot follows these three gay/bisexual Black men, (on opening night) concentrating on Carter Piggee as a wannabe writer who finds out as we watch what it means to be gay, black and HIV-positive, and plans to write about the experience. But it’s difficult.

“Sometimes the hurt is worse than the HIV,” notes the nurse who gives him the news. He goes through shock, fear, pretending not to care and drowning himself in drink on the way to eventual acceptance.

Kevane La’Marr Coleman is fine as both a sassy, flamboyant man with HIV and Donte’s mother, who doesn’t want anyone to know about her son’s affliction.

Durwood Murray is excellent as the older, more experienced and steadying force (also with HIV) for the other two.

The CDC projected in 2016 that one in two African American gay or bisexual men may be diagnosed with HIV in their lifetime.

Diversionary’s artistic director Matt M. Morrow picked exceptional local director Delicia Turner Sonnenberg to bring this play to life, and she does an outstanding job with a difficult task. Though some audience members (like me) might have preferred a jollier piece to reopen the theater, “One in Two” offers a rare experience.

Theater review: The Mineola Twins

 

                     Emily Jerez and Samantha Ginn

                     

                       The Mineola Twins

The changing roles of women during 30-plus years of the 20th century are lampooned mercilessly and hilariously in Paula Vogel’s “The Mineola Twins,” playing through Oct. 24 at Moxie Theatre.

The time frame is three U.S. presidential administrations: those of Eisenhower, Nixon and George H.W. Bush, from the early '50s to the early ’90s.

The “almost identical” Mineola twins live in that tiny town on New York’s Long Island. But there’s nothing identical about them: they are polar opposites in physique, temperament and attitude and – get this – are played by the same actress. 

Samantha Ginn, a Moxie regular, is a wonder as both straightlaced, conservative Myrna and her free-wheeling, liberal twin Myra as they age from teens to adults, learning to deal with men and figuring out what they want to do in life along the way.

One big thing is, of course, that three-letter word starting with S. Myra, slight of build and endowments, has a fairly casual attitude about it, to the extent that the twins’ father has already dubbed her “the whore of Babylon.” But Myrna (much better endowed) is (as my mother used to say) “saving herself.”

Along for the ride here are fellow actors Phillip Magin and Desireé Clarke, who morph into several characters including psych ward attendants, sons and potential lovers.

                                        Phillip Magin and Samantha Ginn

Reiko Huffman’s set features a bed on either side, a colorful sort of podium in the middle and a few steps to a walkway leading offstage in either direction.

One thing Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Vogel is expert at is spoofing sexual, political and cultural norms, and this script is a roller-coaster ride of one-liners, funny situations and visual jokes played at warp speed by a cast that frequently has to dash offstage (usually to change character and costume) and run back on for the next scene.

Jennifer Eve Thorn, Moxie’s artistic director, helms the show with a sure hand (no easy task, considering all the craziness going on). The actors carry props and set pieces on and offstage, morph very quickly from one character to another, and manage to keep the 90-minute show at about that mark. You may wish it were longer.

Danita Lee’s costumes and hair styles for the twins are hilarious, especially in comparison. Myrna favors pink, sweaterlike tops that both accentuate and cover her attributes. Myra goes for the more casual, with-it looks, easier to get into and, ahem, out of.

Missy Bradstreet’s wigs, mostly curly (it was the style, right?) but in various lengths, manage to convey different messages along with the costumes.

Lighting, sound and props are well handled by Christopher Loren Renda, Matt Lescault-Wood and Alyssa Kane. Kudos to Cynthia Bloodgood, who handled the technical stuff. 

If you’re looking for relief from the 24-hour news cycle, or just feel like seeing something funny, you can’t do better than to spend 90 minutes with the ladies (and gents) of Moxie Theatre.

“The Mineola Twins” plays through October 24. Thursdays at 7:30, Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m.  

For information: www.moxietheatre.com

Theater Review: Book of Leaves

                             

                             Maybelle Shimizu & Tom Stephenson 

You’ve seen this situation before:  A father lives alone in the house he and his family used for years. His wife has been dead for some years and he is dying of cancer, but his two adult kids don’t know this. They just want to be able to keep using the beautiful, woodsy house in the exurbs of New York City. 

The father, Walter (Tom Stephenson), lives in the house with son Prince (Justin Lang), an actor hoping for the big break, who has just brought young girlfriend Sylvie (Maybelle Shimizu) in to help out with the aging patriarch. Walter hasn’t exactly despaired of Prince, but does wish he’d just get a good job and settle down.

Walter’s daughter Beth (Leigh Akin), self-possessed and married to inebriate Jack (Durwood Murray), covets use of the house as well. She thinks dad belongs in a home for the elderly, where he could get 24-hour care if needed. 

Family used to be a notion we all understood, a solid place, a refuge, a home. Or as my family used to say, home is where you go when nobody else will take you in.

But the world has been turned upside down more than once in the past two or three years, and every day brings news of something else we thought we’d never see. Is family a fantasy, just changing, extinct or none of those?

These characters seem normal enough, but they all have secrets. Fasten your seat belt. Will Cooper, resident playwright of scrappy little Roustabouts Theater Company, offers “Book of Leaves,” his latest effort, through Oct. 10 in a reading filmed by multiple Emmy Award-winning Mike Brueggermeyer.

Walter has gathered the family together to tell them that he is “getting his affairs in order” and planning what to do with his assets. 

Stevenson is brilliant as Walter, modeling calmness and the acceptance of inevitability despite the pain underneath, and warmth in his interactions with others. His face tells all.

The titular book refers to Walter’s habit of having the kids each keep a “book of leaves,” in which they were to pick a leaf each year that they liked, put it in a scrapbook and write about why they picked it. He also planted a sapling for each, to atone for those that were felled in his job as a builder.

After these reveals (and the one about how Walter’s wife died), the ending comes pretty quickly. 

This show was filmed in April against greenscreens. It’s astonishing how well Mike Brueggermeyer filmed this, and how well the actors managed to be in the right spots at the right time, when two were never in the same room. Though Director Kim Strassburger teases the best out of each performer, I would love to see the show again live.

Theater review: The Garden

                            The Garden

Actor/playwright Charlayne Woodard has been no stranger to La Jolla Playhouse since her 1986 debut there. She has worked for each artistic director, either onstage or as playwright. Now, at the Potiker, she brings her newest play to life through Oct. 17.

“The Garden” is a two-hander featuring Stephanie Berry as Claire Rose, an elderly woman who enjoys puttering around in her backyard garden, a truly lovely place with real plants and trees that shed autumn-like leaves when the wind blows, a wooden rocking chair and lots of gardening implements. 

Claire Rose is a pistol: opinionated, stubborn and sure she’s right, she can be a tough cookie to deal with. “You can’t be lazy and grow orchids and African violets,” she says.

She is surprised by an unannounced visit from adult daughter Cassandra (Ms. Woodard), a documentary filmmaker from whom she’s been estranged for three years. We don’t know exactly what caused the split, but much animosity seems to exist between them, and the 90-minute conversation becomes a mutual shout fest of complaints, escalating the tension in an increasing series of old hurts.

Woodard’s Cassandra, as stubborn as her mother, has also suffered reverses that haunt her to this day. 

Just when you’re about to wonder where this is going, it ends suddenly and ambiguously, shedding little light but providing plenty of food for thought and conversation on the way home.

The Playhouse picked the right directors in Delicia Turner Sonnenberg and Patricia McGregor. Both know how to choreograph these characters to excellent effect.

Rachel Hauck’s set design looks like a working garden, with lots of tools, plants and a greenhouse toward the back. Oh, and dirt, lots of it.

Karen Perry has designed simple but realistic clothes for the women. Sound and lighting are nicely executed by Sherrice Mojgani and Lugman Brown.

“The Garden” is a strange but beautiful, interesting but confusing piece.

Welcome back, La Jolla Playhouse! We’ve missed you. 

“The Garden” runs through October 17, 2021 at La Jolla Playhouse’s Potiker Theatre. Ticket information at www.lajollaplayhouse.org.

The Playhouse requires proof of vaccination and requires attendees to wear masks.

Parking is impacted by construction. Attendees are advised to park free at the Osler, on the corner of Gilman and Scholars Drive. Complimentary shuttles will be available before and after performances.