‘Joe Turner Has Come and Gone’

When my theater companion suddenly canceled and I was scrambling to find someone who would want to join me, for this sensitive production of “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” I was surprised that people didn’t know who August Wilson was. Wilson who died in 2005 (2 October at age 60), won two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama and is best known for the ten plays which make up “The Pittsburgh Cycle.”

You might be thinking what could possibly be interesting in Pittsburgh? Wilson was born in Pittsburgh and he writes about what he knows. Wilson’s ten plays are each set in a different decade and illustrate the changing situation for African Americans in America. He won the Pulitzer for the 1985 “Fences” and the 1990 “The Piano Lesson.”

“Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” is about the 1910s. When this play went to Broadway, Delroy Lindo played Herald Loomis and Angela Bassett was his wife, Martha. The play tells about the Great Migration of African Americans from the South. The title comes from an old blues song:

Joe Turner

They tell me Joe Turner’s come and gone They tell me Joe Turner’s come and gone  (Oh, Lordy) Got my man and gone.

He come with forty links of chain He come with forty links of chain (Oh, Lordy) Got my man and gone.

The song is about true events and Wilson’s play expands and explains the possible background behind the stereotype of an African American husband deserting his wife and children. Instead of disappearing to shirk his responsibilities, we come to understand that a white man, Joe Turner, has been trumping up charges and giving stiff sentences for minor legal infractions in order to build up free labor chain gang style. If you had the right connections, you could order up your own labor crew in those days. The men would then just disappear, abducted and enslaved. In today’s media driven world, that wouldn’t be unlike the three unfortunate women who were kidnapped and raped in Cleveland.  No doubt women were subjected to such treatment as well during those dangerous times.

Yet Wilson begins his play in a boardinghouse. Scenic designer John Iavocelli’s dusky brick red and sunflower yellow set is cozy. This isn’t a flophouse for losers. This is a respectable home run by Seth (Keith David) and Bertha (Lillias White) Holly. Seth complains about Bynum Walker (Glynn Turman) and his folk rituals that involve a dead pigeon. We don’t get to see his doings in the garden and Seth is much more concerned about Bynum stepping on his prized vegetables. Any gardener can easily understand that anxiety. However in Seth’s case, it’s not just green thumb pride.

Seth worries about money and earns a bit on the side making things for a white traveling salesman, Rutherford Selig (Raynor Scheine). Rutherford is a people finder because he travels around. Bynum uses magic to bind people. Along comes Herald Loomis (John Douglas Thompson) with his young daughter Zonia Loomis (Skye Barrett). Herald is dressed in a dark long coat. He’s the man who was abducted by Joe Turner. For seven years, he was on a chain gang thought constantly of escaping and finding his wife and daughter. He found his daughter, left with her grandmother, but he now seeks his wife.

The play exposes the differing morals of the African American community in 1910s as compared to the accepted standards of the American society at large and each of the characters is attempting to define themselves in a legal system that barely recognizes them as people. The concept of migration considered–that of African American individuals looking for economic opportunities and people forced to move without the benefit of contacting their loved ones. Migration and identity are both tied to the racial discrimination that is in flux after the end of slavery.

At the boarding house, a young man, Jeremy Furlow (Gabriel Brown), lives life without long-term planning and takes love where he can find it. He finds it with Mattie Campbell (January Lavoy), a former slave who can’t quite adapt to independence and without a master, she needs a man to tell her what to do. We also see other women who have learned to survive alone.

Director Phylicia Rashad infuses this production with warm humor, more than you’d expect in what ultimately is a tragedy of a whole community.  Yet you get the impression that all will survive even when love does not. Under Rashad, you see Thompson’s Loomis as a husband you might not want to return to. He’s bitter and burnt down to his soul with hate and anger. Not a spark of joyous love survives, even in the presence of his daughter. He’s a man still in survival mode with an armor built over seven hard years. That contrasts sharply with the wisdom of David’s Seth Holly. Seth knows the precarious nature of being black in a white world, you can hear that in his dealings with Rutherford and in his warnings to the more careless Jeremy Furlow (Gabriel Brown).

Wilson brings the tragedy of those years to us in a lyrical language, like the blues with a buoyant beat, softening it all with a bit of magic. “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” continues at the Mark Taper Forum until 9 June 2013. $20-$70. Tuesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 1 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. For more information, call (213) 628-2772 or visit their website.

‘Tribes’ and tribal warfare in a family that doesn’t listen

Once in my pre-car owning days, I traveled by bus to a meeting. I was the only person there who didn’t speak the language. Someone kindly translated into English, but I missed all the quick comments, the witticisms and turns of phrases. My volunteer interpretor gave me summations and I went back to the bus stop for my journey home. Not a lovely way to spend a Sunday.

I would later have the same sort of experience in another country, but the dark night of incomprehension would eventually give way to understanding as my language skills improved. The difference was in a foreign country that is to be expected (although some American ex-pat assertively resist that notion).

Nina Raine’s “Tribes,” a New York Barrow Street Theatre production now playing at the Mark Taper Forum, is about communication and the boundaries built by limited ability to participate. Set in the present day (in England I surmised although the program doesn’t so state), we’re thrown into the cacophonous home of an intellectually privileged Jewish family.

The spacious, well-appointed home is tasteful, but cluttered–not only with possessions, but with thoughts and people. The parents, Christopher (Jeff Still) and Beth (Lee Roy Rogers) have three children–all in their young adulthood, but also all still living at home. Christopher is a former academic, apparently concerned with literature and language (but not in the linguistic sense). Beth is writing a novel about a detective suffering a marriage breakdown. The children have less focused on their career objectives. Daughter Ruth (Gayle Rankin) is pursuing operatic singing in pubs and church halls but not on the “X Factor” like the lovely surprise Susan Boyle. Son Daniel (Will Brill) is writing a paper with a thesis that “language doesn’t determine meaning.”

The set and home is dominated by a large dinner table which is the setting for verbal brawling. Each member trying to overtalk the other. Or maybe it’s everyone attempts to get a word in before being slammed down by Christopher. The meal time conversation is loud, aggressive and decidedly not easy on one’s digestion. Supportive is something that the family might attempt, but has not the slightest clue how to actually provide it. One family member, Billy (Russell Harvard), can’t really interrupt the word battering that goes on during meals because he is deaf.

Christopher and Beth haven’t allowed Billy’s deafness to define him. Billy doesn’t know American Sign Language. He had learned to read lips. Billy is very adept, but he also picks up clues and fills in between what he understands. That is how he has lived and any interpretor knows that might be well and good in most cases, but eventually this linguistic sloppiness will trip you up.

A chance meeting with a woman who signs because she was born into a deaf family changes all these things. Sylvia (Susan Pourfar) leaves her unseen boyfriend and becomes Billy’s first girlfriend and his conduit into another culture–the signing deaf community. Sylvia is also becoming deaf and exists in that twilight between hearing and deafness. Neither Billy’s family nor Billy and Sylvia’s unseen deaf friends can understand her grief over this inevitable loss.

Director David Cromer makes us cringe at the loud, non-stop barrage of words in the first act. I know in some places and cultural enclaves it is the norm to start talking before your partner in conversation has finished, but to many ears, this style of conversation will seem like rude, angry confrontational interruptions. By the second act, when Billy has become militant in his own way and refused to speak except by signing (using Sylvia as his interpretor) the moments of silence will seem like a blessing.

You might bristle when Christopher cloddishly insists on knowing which is better: English or ASL. You wonder why he’s learning Mandarin Chinese and yet can’t trouble himself to learn ASL or if once he’s learned Chinese whether the Chinese will want to talk with him. There’s nothing like being a beginner in a language to teach you humility, but one doubts that humility will find Christopher in an accepting mood.  He’s have to be willing to listen.

I’m not at all clear on why Daniel suffers to painfully and linguistically when Billy takes his stand, but the overall effect is thought-provoking. Moreover, when Billy falters in his promising career due to his guesstimations, are we to blame the culture he was raised in that forced him to guess? No matter. “Tribes” raises some important issues that aren’t limited to deaf versus hearing tribes. You just have to be willing to listen.

“Tribes” was commissioned and first presented by the English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre in 2010. The North American premiere was last year at the Barrow Street Theatre in New York City (Off-Broadway). The play earned a 2012 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play.

“Tribes” continues at the Mark Taper Forum until 14 April 2013.  Tuesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 1 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. No public performances 19-22 March (student matinees only). No 6:30 p.m. performance 14 April 2013. $20-$70. For more info visit www.CenterTheatreGroup.org or call (213) 628-2772 or TDD (213) 680-4017.

‘Other Desert Cities’ Is a Whine Fest

Whining is only cute in young puppies, and even then, it soon gets tiresome. But if you aren’t getting enough whining at home for the holidays, or, in the case you want to learn how to be a more effective whiner, spend an evening at the Mark Taper Forum for Jon Robin Baitz’s whine fest, “Other Desert Cities.”

The desert city in this case is Palm Springs, the home of confirmed wealthy right wingers Polly Wyeth (JoBeth Williams) and her husband Lyman (Robert Foxworth). Lyman is a retired actor, friends of another retired actor, the late former president Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy. Depending upon your political leanings, this might set your teeth on edge because these are the people who were behind the presidencies of both Bushes, believing “if he’s behind the war then you can be sure it’s the right thing to do.” Worse yet, because neither Lyman nor Polly are actual politicians, they aren’t particularly adept at political correctness. Polly and Lyman were from a time when tossing a word like “Chink” didn’t offend the important people. Polly can’t help but wonder “when did everyone get so damn sensitive.”

The son, Trip (Michael Weston), works on a TV program that gives a retired judge and down-on-their-luck has-beens the chance to be on reality TV. The daughter Brooke (Robin Weigen) is a writer, but has been suffering from writer’s block for nearly six years. Brooke has arrived for the holidays, just as her book is about to be published.

As you probably already suspect, this cozy family has a few skeletons in their closet and those secrets will soon start falling out. Besides Brooke and Trip, there was one other child, one that became “collateral damage.”

Into the mix, is the terrorist of the family–Silda Grauman (Jeannie Berlin). An alcoholic, she’s been cared for by her sister Polly who warns Trip that he will eventually be responsible for both Silda and his sister Brooke because a “family’s gets terrorized by their weakest member.”

Brooke is ready to terrorize her family, too, by publishing what she and Silda recall about the death of her brother, her best friend. What writer would trust the ramblings of an alcoholic, particularly one bent on browbeating the sister who has held her hand throughout life? Brooke also required some expensive hand-holding, but is too spoiled to recognize her own needy ways.

Although Baitz’s resolution provides us with a more likable Brooke, it comes much too late. Director Robert Egan gives us a good flow and rhythm and none of the characters is completely unlikable. Baitz’s reversal, at least by Los Angeles standards, is that the liberals are the doubtful characters and the upstanding old-style Republicans are the sensible characters you might want to be friends with. In the end, the parents do know best.  The play was nominated for five Tony Awards in 2012. Baitz was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his “A Fair Country” and created the ABC TV drama “Brothers & Sisters.”

In a land where too many kids make a quick buck by writing ghastly tell-alls before their parents or parental figures can become ghosts of the past, this play is something of a morality tale, or at least one advocating better manners for writers everywhere. It does contrast the gloom of the East Coast with the sunnier, perhaps less sincere West Coast. The holiday setting may give one hope that the confrontational gatherings of the season might lead to better understanding. Don’t we all need a bit of encouragement to get through some of the tougher family meals? What is the holiday season without a little whine?

“Other Desert Cities,” continues until 6 January 2013 at the Mark Taper Forum.

‘November’ is political satire with laughs for all sides

Elections are upon us and our Facebook pages are filled with political commentary. Did you really want to know your friends’ political points of view? Are you ready for arguments at the family table?  David Mamet’s “November” doesn’t make you choose between donkeys and elephants, but will have you laughing at the foibles of the political system that is all about numbers instead of principles.

It’s November  and the incumbent president, Charles Smith (Ed Begley, Jr.), is asking his adviser Archer Brown (Rod McLachlan) for advice. “How bad can my numbers be?”

Plainly, Archer replies, “You fucked everything you touched.”

Smith hasn’t quite given up hope for re-election, but if Smith can’t be re-elected, there’s one thing he wants–enough funds for a presidential library. There’s also one thing his unseen wife wants–a couch for his presidential library. She’s even chosen one in the White House and has to be reminded that the presidential residence is only on loan to them from the American people.

Everyone seems to want something from the president, but he’ll have to bargain to get what he wants. Smith isn’t good with words, but he has a wordsmith on his team, Clarice Bernstein (Felicity Huffman). She’s sick, just returned from China with an adopted child.

Into this mix, comes an unnamed man (Todd Weeks), a representative of the National Association of Turkey and Turkey By-Products Manufacturers. He wants the president to give the chosen two turkeys a presidential pardon in return for a small donation.

The president attempts to raise money for his library by bargaining with this rep for the pardon. He sets Clarice to re-write history and threaten the dominance of the turkey on the American Thanksgiving table, thus gaining a bargaining chip to raise the turkey industry’s contribution. Any excess a president raises for his re-election campaign, he can keep and for President Smith, the money will be the means for establishing his presidential library.

Clarice has issues of her own. She is a lesbian and wants to be married in a very public way. We never see her partner nor do we see the First Lady. Women might wince at the portrayal of women as needy of decorative details and white dresses.

Scott Zigler directs with spot-on timing. Begley is at his befuddled best with Huffman pitch-perfect as the sharp-thinking counterpoint, the brains behind this political operation.

Otherwise, this is a funny, foul-mouthed satirical look at men who rise via the Peter Principle to be the president and how special interests and lobbyists influence public policy.  This play may take the pain out of the current mud-slinging, political contest or allow friends and family supporting opposing parties to come together and have a good laugh.

“November” continues until Nov. 4 at the Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90012.. For more information, call 213.972.4400 or visit the official website.

It’s ‘Red,’ but is it art?

For long-time theater-goers in Los Angeles, the current production, “Red,” at the Mark Taper Forum is like deja-vu mutation. We have Alfred Molina again on stage discussing art and color, this time in a 90-minute intermissionless play.

In 1999, Molina was one of three men in the original Broadway cast who was imported to the UCLA/James Doolittle Theatre in a production of the Tony Award-winning (for best play) “Art.” As the title suggests, the topic was art, but in Yasmina Reza’s 1994 French-language play (which was translated into English by Christopher Hampton) none of the three men were artists. Theoretically, the men were friends.  One man, the dermatologist Serge (Victor Garbor) has bought a painting that is various tones of white. His intellectually arrogant friend Marc (Alan Alda)is appalled but it’s not clear at first if this is because his friend has challenged his authority of matters intellectual and artistic or because he’s genuinely insulted that a white canvas can be called art. In the Broadway version of that production, Molina received a Tony Award nomination.

In the current show at the Mark Taper Forum, Molina is the artist and the color isn’t white, it’s “Red.” Molina plays Mark Rothko.  Rothko wasn’t born in America; he was born in Russia (Latvia) in 1903 and came to the United States when he was 13 and went under the name Marcus Rothkowitz.

As his name suggests, Rothko was Jewish. He was given a scholarship to Yale, but he left soon after it ran out during his second year. He moved to New York and became an artist. The play starts when Rothko had obviously changed his name (in 1940), his divorce from his first wife Edith Sachar in 1943, his fortunate meeting with his benefactor, noted collector Peggy Guffenheim, and his second marriage to Mary Ellen “Mell” Beistle. Rothko had already begun contemplating Matisse’s “Red Studio” and taken to his multiforms–blocks of color.

The conceit of John Logan’s play is that Rothko needs an assistant, who is the eager Ken (Glee’s Jonathan Groff). It’s 1958. Rothko is 55 and has been awarded a major mural commission by the the Joseph Seagram and Sons beverage company for their Park Avenue building’s restaurant, Four Seasons. History tells us this will end badly.

Ken comes dressed in a lovely brown suit, something more appropriate for an accountant than an artist. Rothko is in faded jeans and an olive green shirt, tucked in.  He asks Ken what he sees and Ken says, “Red.” This is like a red flag before a bull.

Just last month, I was in LACMA regarding a hexagonal painting that was entirely white and joking with my nephew that he could easily become an artist. Rothko’s painting are more dynamic than the painting in question at LACMA and the painting that might be described as a snowstorm in the play “Art.” The layered blocks of color seem to move, almost vibrate. you can have that sort of experience yourself on your own walls by painting two similar colors one on top of the other, particularly with a sponging technique. That’s wall painting and not art. That’s my opinion or art. You might have the same feeling, but you’ll want to overlook it and come into this play with an open mind although you might have fun snarking much in the same way that Alan Alda’s character did in “Art.”

At this point in time in art history, abstract expressionism wasn’t new. The more colorful and outrageous Jackson Pollock (whom the young assistant favors) is dead (1956). Molina’s Rothko calls it a long suicide. When you drink and drive and there’s that sense of danger that sometimes is even reveled in, particularly among men. Pollock was an alcoholic and drunk when he crashed his car, killing himself and one of his passengers.

What Ken finds is that Rothko isn’t concerned about him as a person, his friends, his family or his work. We rarely hear about Rothko’s personal life, but we do get to hear about his philosophy, including his affection for the philosopher Nietzsche. But Rothko has challenges coming his way. He is troubled by his success. He’s troubled by the rise of pop art which he considers not serious enough because of the “importance of seriousness.”

Yet this play foreshadowed this well enough. “The child has banished the father. Respect him but kill him,” Rothko tells Ken. When Ken questions the Seagram murals, the conceit here is that Ken spurred Rothko’s eventual rejection of the commission in which he returned his advance. In reality, Rothko completed 40 paintings in three months and after his family traveled to Europe, he and his wife returned to New York and dined in the restaurant. Those paintings were kept in storage until 1968 and now are in one of three museums: London’s Tate Modern, Japan’s Kawamura Memorial Museum and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

The subject of suicide isn’t just a tangental remark to indicate Rothko’s opinion of a contemporary and there’s another moment, which I won’t spoil, that considers the topic. This isn’t idle chatter. Rothko would commit suicide and his own life of drinking, heavy smoking and little exercise or attention to his diet was also a kind of slow suicide that ended in a more direct approach a few months in 1970 after he separated from his second wife.

His assistant, a man named Oliver Steindecker found him. What happened later in the so-called Rothko Case adds a layer of sadness, revealing that even as an artist his so-called friends sought to exploit him and his work was actually more valuable than he knew.

Logan’s play doesn’t go past the Four Seasons project or even mention his family enough for you to realize how much he must have cared about him. This is a play about two men talking, arguing about the philosophy of art. What is art? What makes art? Who are real artists? What is meant by a single color, red or white?

On Broadway in 2010, with Molina and Eddie Redmayne, “Red” won six Tony Awards including Best Play. Even if you don’t like abstract expressionism, a term Rothko rejected, even disliking the term abstract painter, if you’re open to listening to a man pontificate about his art and, to a certain extent, to life, then this may make you appreciate abstract art or, at the very least, Rothko’s multiforms.

Director Michael Grandage, who won a Tony for Best Direction for his work here,  shows us the process of painting without boring us with smooth transitions despite a lot of paint being sloshed around (Christopher Oram won a Best Scenic Design Tony and Neil Austin won for lighting). This is a male-bonding, territorial growling match and Grandage shows us the young bull initially afraid to challenge the established male evolve slowly. That approach emphasizes the loneliness of Rothko because in his nine-to-five work ethic where he’s neither fatherly nor friendly, he’s utterly isolated himself from the joy of teaching as well as the joy of finding inspiration in his fellow man.

“Red” continues until Sept. 9 at the Mark Taper Forum. For more information, visit the Mark Taper Forum website.

‘Los Otros’ examines immigrants experience–inside and out

The most fanciful part of Christopher Barreca’s set design for the Ellen Fitzhugh (book and lyrics) and Michael John LaChiusa (music) musical, “Los Otros,” is above the set. Worn chairs, toys and other odds and ends hang from the ceiling. This lackluster musical about the immigration experience is making its world premiere at the Mark Taper Forum.

According to the program notes, this piece is semi-autobiographical and one assumes this means that Fitzhugh is the Caucasian woman in the first act who grows up in National City (south of San Diego). Perhaps blinded by personal attachment, this is the weakest portion  of this new piece. Michele Pawk, whose previous credits include “Hairspray,” “Mamma Mia!” “Chicago” and “Cabaret” on Broadway, no doubt can sing, but you wouldn’t know it from this piece.

Fitzhugh’s musical is more talk with a sing-song voice and with Pawk this meanders sometimes into what could be perceived as flat-toned, cringe-worthy vocalizations. There are no soaring melodies or memorable, toe-tapping tunes.

“Somos tres niñas,” the unnamed woman  begins. “Daddy says some girls grow up too fast,” she explains while dressed in a wine-colored, black-lace trimmed negligee and sitting on a sorry-looking couch. There’s nothing more than permanent than temporary housing that her family finds themselves in in National City. The woman and her friends are 11, 10 and 9 years of age. Beautiful puffy white clouds rise against a bright blue sky, but the ground isn’t a carpet. Silty gray sand covers the stage, but it’s far from romantic beach time. The neglected beach vibe is strong and suggests an over-sized sand ashtray (Do these still exist in SoCal?).

“We draw and redesign paper dolls we make instead of buy,” the woman warbles. Then one day, they witness a man, a woman and a baby jumping off a train and then hiding in a tunnel.  For three days, the three girls take banana bread and hard-boiled eggs to the family. This is in 1952.

Over ten years later, the woman is living in Burbank. She’s divorced had three kids and works at Pacbell, but not for long, one suspects. Her ex-husband helps her find an illegal housekeeper in Tijuana. Suddenly, “somos tres niñas y una mujer” but this doesn’t last long.

A few years later, the woman’s life takes a turn for the worse. Are we supposed to celebrate her drunken one-nighter with a young, strange virile Latino?

The woman’s experiences with immigrants are superficial. Talking about people that she never met or a man she never knew except in the biblical sense seems to slender a thread. This seems like a case of writing about what you don’t know about.

The second act of this intermission-less 90-minute production is much more entertaining. Julio Monge is the unnamed man. He’s Latino and legal, but not particularly sexy because he’s an accountant. The man’s tale begins in Carlsbad where he works as a stock boy, or really a janitor.

Monge handles the music with considerable charm and less dissonance. Is this by design or mistake? It’s hard to tell. The man’s story takes us to the fields where the family helps pick plums and the man–as a young boy, gets his first sexual experience with another boy.

Director Graciela Daniele could do more with the first half and somehow the whimsical nature suggested by the floating chairs and other items never comes to fruition.

This isn’t an in-depth view of life as “Los Otros.” The others are the Latinos, but in the first half, they are mere acquaintances. There’s very little meditation on the issues of race and the differing communities in areas of Los Angeles or San Diego. The character of the man is more intriguing and one wishes we had gotten to know him better.

LaChiusa’s music doesn’t transport us anywhere and I don’t foresee any of the songs becoming hits on any billboard.

“Los Otros” continues until 1 July 2012 at the Mark Taper Forum. Tuesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 1 p.m . and 6:30 p.m. Dark on Mondays. $20-$65.

Worthy ‘Waiting for Godot’ at the Taper

“Waiting for Godot” is much like the TV show “Seinfeld,” nothing much happens, but there’s bickering and talking. Unfortunately, there are no Soup Nazis or nagging parental units and no women. Much of what happens is about the relationship between two lowly men on a non-scenic route of life. For those that take pleasure in talk and the possible philosophical conjectures one can draw from the stripped down look at humanity, this “Waiting for Godot”  at the Mark Taper Forum is worth seeing.

Director Michael Arabian adds more comedy and musicality than one usually associates with Samuel Beckett’s 1953 play. Part of this is achieved by the accent a few characters speak in.

The two main characters are downtrodden men, Estragon (Alan Mandell) and Vladimir (Barry McGovern). They are in a barren area that has a rock and a leafless tree. They are waiting and during this time, they make small talk, sing and whine. They also meet a man, Pozzo (James Cromwell who was in Best Picture “The Artist” that came out last year). Pozzo is bombastic and cruel. He has, at the end of a rope, a man named Lucky (Hugo Armstrong). Lucky is Pozzo’s servant although slave would be a better terms.

Estragon and Vladimir have the opportunity to feel superior for compared to Lucky, they are better off. Yet who should we have sympathy for? Pozzo or Lucky? Lucky seems to be an unpleasant man who has given up on life. In the second act, Estragon and Vladimir will meet Pozzo and Lucky again, but Pozzo will be blind.

The play does take on questions of religion and life. If nothing else, the play should give you an opportunity to consider your journey through this world and perhaps, even your marriage (Estragon and Vladimir bicker like an old married couple).

“Waiting for Godot” continues until 22 April 2012 at the Mark Taper Forum.

‘Clybourne Park’: Race and the cost of dreams

Clybourne Park is a fictional place where dreams were not deferred and the American dream was realized through nightmarish conditions. Lorraine Hansberry used this fictional place as the name of the white neighborhood where the black family of her “A Raisin in the Sun” were moving into despite obviously hostile white neighbors. In Bruce Norris’ eponymous play, we meet the white family selling their home in 1959 and revisit the new buyers in 2009, each time revisiting issues of race.

The Playwrights Horizons Production of this Pulitzer Prize-winning play is currently at the Mark Taper Forum., raising uncomfortable questions even as the audience laughs and groans at obvious faux pas and racial conceits of the past. Yet Norris also points out how we are totally comfortable in talking about race in 2009.

If you’re not familiar with Hansberry’s original play, the Youngers are receiving a sudden financial boon. The father has died and his life insurance policy will give the family $10,000. The mother wants to fulfill the dream she shared with her husband–a home in a nice neighborhood. She puts a down payment on a house in a white neighborhood. A Mr. Lindner comes from the Clybourne Park Improvement Association offers the Youngers money not to move in, but they refuse this deal. Things are further complicated when the eldest son, Walters, steals most of the money to put a down payment on a liquor store with his friend, but his friend takes the cash and runs.

Lorraine Hansberry was witness to a similar incident. Her father was involved in a famous case, Hansberry v. Lee in 1940 regarding racially restrictive covenants preventing African Americans from purchasing land in a Chicago neighborhood.

The actual neighborhood was in Washington Park (6140 S. Rhodes) and the home was bought in 1937. Hansberry wrote in her book “To Be Young, Gifted, and Black,” that the battle went on for 25 years and included being cursed, beaten and threatened. The battle was both legal and personal.

Neither play touches on that chapter. “Clybourne Park” is about a series of unwelcome neighbors.

In real life, Olive Ida Burke (who had in 1934 brought an action to enforce the racial restriction) and her husband James were the owners who sold the home to Hansberry’s father; they are replaced by Bev (Christina Kirk) and her husband Russ (Frank Wood).

The nice cozy living room has packed and half-packed cardboard boxes. Russ is sitting in a chair eating ice cream. The refrigerator has to be cleaned out, after all. Bev is dressed in a blue plaid dress and heels. She’s trying to be upbeat, but her voice is strained and she is unsure about how to speak with her husband. Her maid, Francine (Crystal A. Dickinson), tolerates Bev, although Bev seems to believe they had a friendship of some depth. The pastor (Brendan Griffin) stops by, but he’s unwelcome by Russ. Bev and Russ has a son who was unwelcome in the neighborhood when he returned from the Korean War.

Also unwelcome is Karl Lindner (Jeremy Shamos) who has a deaf, pregnant wife (Annie Parisse). That makes him somewhat sympathetic, but he’s the same person who has just visited the Youngers as a representative of the Clybourne Park Improvement Association. Karl wants to be sure Russ is aware that he’s selling to a black family.

Russ hardly cares. It becomes clear that for Russ and Bev, they leave behind no friends.

In Act II, we leap past the Youngers time in the house. Almost half a century has passed and the neighborhood has become predominately black. Karl and his family quickly moved out as did other white couples–we know this because the white female lawyer of the new buyers–a white couple, is the daughter of Karl and Betsy. The new couple, Lindsey (Annie Parisse) and her husband Steve (Jeremy Shamos), want to rebuild, tearing down this house to make one 15 feet higher than the current neighborhood association approves.

Playing on Hansberry’s play, Norris’ piece riffs on race relations then and now. Being politically correct isn’t easy–maybe what was the correct thing to do  was clearer in the 1950s–but only for the people living now. In our own times like 2009, navigating racial tensions and other land mines such as jokes, heritage and gentrification can accidentally result in small explosions and neighborhood squirmishes.

We’ve come a long way since Hansberry fought for his legal rights in court, but the dialogue of race between races remains a touchy issue that still needs to be discussed.

“Clybourne Park” continues at the Mark Taper Forum until 26 February 2012.

In conjunction with the presentation of “Clybourne Park” at the Taper, CTG is presenting  the critically-acclaimed Ebony Repertory Theatre production of “A Raisin in the Sun,” directed by Phylicia Rashad, at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, January 19 through February 19, 2012.

Playwrights Horizons, Inc., New York City, produced the world premiere of “Clybourne Park” off-Broadway in 2010.

Tickets and information are available at CenterTheatreGroup.org, the Center Theatre Group box office located at the Ahmanson Theatre, or by calling (213) 628-2772.

Morris Panych’s ‘Vigil’ vacillates between dark humor and pathos

A nephew 30-years estranged dashes to his aunt’s home after she write a letter declaring she’s on her death bed. White-haired and seemingly mute, the old woman doesn’t seem quite ready to die and the nephew gets a bit impatient.

“I’m concerned about your health these last few days; it seems to be improving.”

Director/writer Morris Panych’s “Vigil,” an American Conservatory Theater production presented at the Mark Taper Forum has a few surprises to this seemingly routine formula. The dialogue is wickedly dark and delivered with a barrel of bitterness.

The old lady, Grace (Olympia Dukakis), says very little while the nephew, Kemp (Marco Barricelli) rants about his unhappy life. His rotten parents were more worried about the cat missing than their son and neglected the niceties like Christmas stocking stuffing and presents. His mother was disappointed that he wasn’t a girl. He was home schooled by a “rum-soaked Romanian dwarf” and can speak French with a Romanian accent.

As an adult, Kemp has no friends because people smelled of “carbon monoxide mixed with desperation.” His boss wouldn’t give him time off for his dying aunt, so he left. And yet he arrives with an empty suitcase.

This aunt seemed to be so exotic, so worldly the one time he met her because she arrived in a taxi. So he wrote to her, letters that she apparently didn’t bother to keep and he sent photos–hoping that she would remember him fondly.

Grace’s home isn’t well-kept. It’s old and Ken MacDonald’s scenic design with its walls set askew and yellow paper covering the windows suggests chaos and a dismaying neglect. Grace isn’t rich. And yet Kemp grasps to have what little she has.

Panych’s allows Kemp to say things we might all be guilty of thinking, but wouldn’t dream of airing out loud. And perhaps Kemp goes a bit further here and there. As time passes, he gets a bit creative in a manner that will remind you of Wile E. Coyote in his many ill-conceived attempts to capture the Road Runner.

While the first act is filled with dark humor, the second act has touching moments. To say more would spoil the carefully plotted journey.

Barricelli is vulnerable even when he’s gruff, and his timing, is spot on. Dukakis, who speaks little, particularly in the first half, still manages to hold her own, conversing with subtle body language.

“Vigil” is a lovely contemplation on life, loneliness and old age, sneakily sweetened with enough dark humor to break down one’s normal reserve. Perhaps it’s just what one needs to prepare for the upcoming family-oriented holidays.

“Vigil” continues until 18 December 2011 at the Mark Taper Forum. Tuesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 1 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. Dark on Mondays. No 1 p.m. performances on 13 November and 11 December. No 2:30 p.m. performance on Saturday, 19 Novmber. No performance Thursday, 24 November. No 6:30 p.m. performance Sundays, 4 and 18 December. $20-$65. Call (213) 628-2772 or visit www.CenterTheatreGroup.org.

Wickedly witty excuse for ‘Poor Behavior’

Theresa Rebeck is back and in good form at the Mark Taper Forum in a world premiere of “Poor Behavior.” The plot is the stuff of nightmares: two couples on a weekend vacation that devolves into arguments and adultery.

According to the program notes, Rebeck was inspired by a particularly nasty weekend of her own. Imagine being at a rented vacation home with some old friends and being wrongfully accused by a woman of an affair with her husband. From that bad experience, Rebeck has mined some theatrical gold.

To begin with in the play, Ian (Reg Rogers) and Ella (Johanna Day) are totally sloshed, but still manage a relatively intelligent argument about goodness. Ian, my husband assures me, is playwriting shorthand for arse and, indeed, Ian is a very smuggly British man with dark machinations.

Ian met Peter (Christopher Evan Welch) at his engagement party to Maureen (Sharon Lawrence). Maureen was once serious about Peter’s brother, but Peter feels that his brother dodged the bullet. Peter tells Ella, Maureen is “almost family,” yet Maureen is high strung and not particularly emotionally stable.

On this particular weekend, Ella and Ian stay up after Maureen and Peter retire. Ella cleans up and leaves Ian but Ian doesn’t go up to bed and this inspire wild accusations by Maureen. Peter then doesn’t actually deny Maureen’s suspicions of adultery and goes one step further. He doesn’t deny them when asked by Peter. And when asked to leave with his wife, he stays.

While on one level we understand  Ian as he tells to Maureen, “The public perception of our marriage is you’re a rampant nut case,” yet one wonders to what degree Ian has manipulated Maureen’s hysterics for his own narcissistic needs. Ian isn’t evil, but he’s a desperate, self-involved man and perhaps the whole concept of good and goodness eludes him.

The moral is that holding self-destructive friends close, can bring “soul-sapping” disaster  home. Has Peter been proudly smug, holding himself and his marriage above Ian, ghoulishly delighting in this train wreck of a relationship? Like a lookie loos getting too close to a train wreck, Peter and Ella become victims themselves. And by doing so, have then also been behaving poorly?

The ensemble are strong and the pace crisp under the guidance of director Doug Hughes. Day stumbled a bit on her lines opening night, but quickly recovered. Rogers as Ian was disarmingly charming, making Ian almost forgivably evil. Lawrence has a vulnerability as Maureen that makes you pity rather than despise her hysterics–particularly as we see Rogers’ Ian manipulate the events. Day’s Ella is the pragmatic person falling under Ian’s spell while Welch plays Peter as a slightly rigid but upstanding guy.

Rebeck commented in the program notes that “the definition of marrige as an essentially good institution…is problematic” but the play is really about “definitions of behavior.” And in one weekend, we see some darkly funny examples of “Poor Behavior” that will leave you laughing and hopefully relieved that you aren’t in that lovely country house on this particular weekend. ”Poor Behavior” is wickedly funny but asks some scary, dark questions about the goodness, semiotics, marriage and just what is good behavior.

“Poor Behavior” continues until 16 October at the Mark Taper Forum.