It's A Hard Knock Life

Given a choice, which would you prefer to suffer from? Sensual or sensory overload?

• The mere thought of sensual overload evokes images of constant waves of physical pleasure that match or exceed the hype of tantric sex. Unfortunately, it could also result in exhausting waves of orgasm that refuse to abate or an erection that simply won't go down.
• Sensory overload, however, is something that seems inescapable these days. From noise pollution to feeling the need to program regular time-outs from electronic devices, the damage it does to our psyches seems increasingly formidable.

Over the past two decades I've found myself annoyed by sensory overload on a fairly regular basis.

• Restaurants with deafening acoustics are a constant source of frustration.
• Some musicals are so severely amplified that the decibel level and sound distortion routinely hover over the pain threshold (after one performance at San Francisco's Orpheum Theatre I couldn't wait to exit the auditorium and get out onto Market Street, where the traffic was guaranteed to be quieter and more peaceful).
• Many cable news programs feature a rogue's gallery of political pundits who specialize in talking over their colleagues in order to cannibalize a rival's air time.
• In his recent article in The Guardian entitled Our Minds Can Be Hijacked: The Tech Insiders Who Fear a Smartphone Dystopia, Paul Lewis describes in frightening detail how we have unwittingly become trapped in an "attention economy."

Long ago I reached the point where, when riding in someone's car, I could no longer listen to music while trying to hold up a conversation (I can only handle one source of input at a time if it requires my focus and concentration). Since Donald Trump ascended to the Presidency, the world has become increasingly unstable and dangerous. Many of us have grown numb to daily reports of violent outbursts that manifest themselves in the form of road rage and mass shootings.

Heather Havrilesky's excellent piece in New York magazine entitled Don’t Call It ‘Toxic Masculinity.’ They’re Sociopathic Baby-Men does an excellent job of reframing one of the most insidious problems currently facing our society. This clip from a Dutch comedy show helps to highlight the delusional thinking of far too many Americans.


How does this affect our daily lives? There's a famous scene in the film adaptation of Leonard Gershe's play, Butterflies Are Free, in which (after being lectured by an angry young artist who boasts of how he tries to capture all the agony and pain of real life in his work) Eileen Heckart, in that wonderfully acerbic voice, replies: "Let me tell you something, young man. Diarrhea is a part of real life, but I wouldn't pay for it as entertainment!"

I recently attended two provocative plays that featured a great deal of screaming. In one instance, the cacophony generated by people talking over each other caused me to tune out the noise and not even try to understand what they were saying. In the other, what should have been horrifying and shocking left me wondering if I'm dead inside. Or if, like the Diana Morales character in A Chorus Line, I simply felt nothing. It also made me think about Fraulein Schneider's solo in Act II of Cabaret.

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Sarah Kane's intense drama, Blasted, poses some stiff dramatic and technical challenges for any theatre company. However, looks can be deceiving. The premise is simple enough, the cast is small, the costume budget is minimal, and Blasted only requires a unit set. Well, sort of.

The action takes place in Leeds, where a man and woman enter an upscale hotel room. Though they were once lovers, that's long past. Whatever sexual tension now exists between them is based on the man's hunger for relief and the woman's fear. The man's refusal to respect the woman's insistence that she does not want to have sex (as well as his failure to acknowledge that she is obviously suffering from some form of post traumatic stress disorder) is a clear example of how some men refuse to back off when a woman says "No." The audience soon realizes that, unlike such hits as 1968's Plaza Suite and 1976's California Suite, this play could never have been written by Neil Simon.

Robert Parsons and Adrienne Kaori Walters in a
scene from Blasted (Photo by: Cheshire Isaacs)

Ian (Robert Parsons) is a middle-aged journalist who, despite a diagnosis of metastasizing lung cancer, refuses to give up smoking. Cynical, jaded, and self-absorbed, he's mostly concerned with numbing his pain with booze and fulfilling whatever carnal desires he can still feel. Like the character of Joe in Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II's 1927 musical, Show Boat, he is "tired of living and scared of dying." In between acute, nearly crippling attacks of pain, he's remains clinically focused on getting his dick sucked.

Cate (Adrienne Kaori Walters) is a 21-year-old woman from South London who, during their recent phone calls, has sensed that Ian might be dangerously depressed (Cate also seems to be suffering from severe psychological problems of her own). She frequently lapses into psychotic episodes during which she alternates between terrified shrieking and maniacal laughter until she blacks out. After Ian finally coerces her into performing fellatio on him, she gives him a taste of her technique before biting down hard on his cock. This is not a well woman.

Adrienne Kaori Walters and Robert Parsons in a
scene from Blasted (Photo by: Cheshire Isaacs)

At Ian's request, room service delivers several meals to the hotel room but, because she has recently become a vegetarian, Cate is only able to eat bits of cheese. Ian has no problem eating ham (which he insists on calling "pig"). A gun is passed back and forth between the couple. The situation keeps deteriorating until there is blood on the walls, on the sheets, and all over Cate's body. Then the doorbell rings. Not knowing who it could be, Cate heads to the bathroom for safety.

Instead of room service, the visitor turns out to be a crazed soldier (Joe Estlack) toting a machine gun. Ravenously hungry, he devours the uneaten scraps of food like a wild animal while threatening to kill Ian (who is more than willing to die).

When it becomes obvious that the soldier is not going to get his hands on Cate (who has fled through the bathroom window), he proceeds to urinate on the bed before pinning Ian down, pantsing the journalist, and savaging the older man's ass. Shortly after achieving orgasm, the soldier stands up and swallows a bullet. A bomb explodes nearby which levels the hotel, leaving Ian completely traumatized and stranded in the rubble near the soldier's corpse. By the end of the play, Ian is in a state of shock, feeding on the body of a dead baby. This would be a good time to send in the clowns.

Joe Estlack as the soldier in Blasted (Photo by: Cheshire Isaacs)

As the artistic director of Shotgun Players, Patrick Dooley knew that Blasted might be a tough sell for his audience.

“The Bosnian genocide was at its height and showed no signs of waning when Sarah Kane wrote this play. The extent to which Kane portrays this violence -- and how personal she makes it -- is what makes this play so controversial. She is angry at a world that has glossed over the savage depravity of war, and worse yet, chosen to ignore it. The atrocities portrayed in this piece were all drawn from real life accounts of the Serbo-Croatian genocide. And, while the events may seem unimaginable and far-fetched, that’s only because most of us have been fortunate not to have this kind of violence as part of our everyday lives. But that doesn’t mean it’s not happening. The closest we come to violence is a news account or image on social media. Unless we choose to pay attention, these victims (and they’re all victims -- even the perpetrators) are nameless numbers. A blur of something we’d rather not see.”

Poster art for Blasted

“For an organization hungry for stories that challenge all of us to be awake to the breadth and depth of the human experience, this play stands alone. The well-documented violence and depravity of the piece always made it feel just too… extreme. But extreme times demand extreme theatre. Kane’s most controversial play has pushed our artistic and technical teams to the extremes of their abilities. 'Risk' is an overused term in our industry, but I can safely say that no Shotgun production has ever embodied that word more completely. That said, Blasted is not for everyone.”

Back in the 1950s, a young musicologist named Joseph Kerman caused quite a sensation when he described Tosca as a Puccini's "shabby little shocker." How well does Blasted play before an American audience? Before answering that question, perhaps it's best to look at how American audiences have changed since the play's 1995 premiere at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in London.

• Since the advent of cable news, our culture has become increasingly focused on ways in which violence and depravity can be monetized and weaponized as sources of entertainment. As a result, audiences have become increasingly desensitized to depravity and dehumanization.
• With the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, the United States got dragged, kicking and screaming, into the world of international terrorism.
• In April of 2004, CBS released pictures of American troops torturing Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison. Documents released several years later revealed that the "enhanced interrogation techniques" used at Abu Ghraib had been approved prior to the American invasion of Iraq. The cruel facts of war delivered a rude awakening to people who naively believed that the U.S. military always respected the Geneva Conventions and did not torture people. The United States has remained active in the Iraqi war zone for the past 15 years.
• Thanks to the mainstreaming of leather culture and BDSM porn, millions of kinksters have masturbated to simulated male-on-male rape scenes on DVDs and in streaming releases with titles like Pledgemaster: The Hazing; Ass Fucking Alpha Males; Straight Studs Punished, Soldiers in Submission, Prison Shower, and Season's Beatings.
• The use of psychoactive bath salts as recreational drugs have led to shocking news stories about seemingly normal people acting like wild animals.

Joe Estlack as the soldier in Blasted (Photo by: Cheshire Isaacs)

I tip my hat to Robert Parsons, Adrienne Kaori Walters, and Joe Estlack for delivering three totally committed performances under Jon Tracy's taut direction (the fact that I puked all over a BART platform on my way to the theatre was not an acting exercise to prepare myself for Ian's stomach cramps). However, unlike Tracy, I did not find Kane's play to be "full of hope, full of love, and full of tenderness." Instead, it demonstrated that we're all animals and can revert to our primitive animal selves all too easily.

While Heather Basarab's lighting design and the powerful sound design by Matt Stines added a great deal to the production, the top honor goes to Nina Ball, who effected one of the most stunning set changes I've seen in my life (the kind of coup de theatre that has to be witnessed firsthand in order to be believed).

Performances of Blasted continue through October 22 at the Shotgun Players (click here for tickets). Here's the trailer:

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The San Francisco Playhouse opened its season with a dramedy that contains more red herrings and plot twists than a murder mystery by the great Agatha Christie. In order to avoid too many spoilers, let me just point to some key ingredients:

• The action takes place in a public park where a picnic bench sits within spitting distance of two restrooms.
• A stereotypical American family has gathered to stage an intervention for one of their clan: a woman whose problems with substance abuse have landed her in jail and caused the family a certain amount of heartache.
• Just as people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, each member of the family has one or more addictions of their own.
• Like most Americans, the family lives in a culture that has become hooked on reality TV shows, celebrity gossip, and handsomely rewards fame.
• A key plot point revolves around "property development."
• Although things are seldom what they seem, the only color these people really care about is green.

As Bill English (the artistic director of San Francisco Playhouse who also designed the unit set) explains:

“As I began looking for the play to open our 15th Season, I hoped to find a work that would speak profoundly to the moment in which our civilization finds itself. I hoped to find a fresh voice who has their ear tuned to the pulse of our times, complicated as they are with divisions, prejudice, injustice, hatreds, and the ennui of a culture many feel is in danger of coming off the rails. Irreverent, insightful, and hilarious, Robert O'Hara's Barbecue delves deep into the miasma of racism in America, confronting us with the sneaking tendrils of micro-aggression, subtle prejudices that we all are prey to, no matter how convinced we and our local San Francisco community are of our moral superiority. It is a simple trick he plays on us and yet we cannot escape the subtle ways O'Hara opens the doors of perception so we can see ourselves more clearly.”

“In times like these, we turn our hopeful ear to playwrights, the prophets of our time, who have been blessed with the capacity of tuning their sensitive antennae to the tumult of our lives, to bring down insight, to illuminate the darkness, to light a tunnel through our troubles to the light at the end. Aiming the fire of his wit at ways in which our media reflect and perpetuate subtle and unsubtle prejudice lifts Barbecue to a higher level. There are few works of art which tackle deep societal issues on both the micro level of personal relationships and the larger arena of public discourse. We, in our little bubble of liberalism, are easily seduced by works of art that preach to our self-congratulatory choir. Barbecue gets under our skin, peeling away preconceptions and giving a fresh prescription to help us see.”

One vision of the O'Mallory family (Photo by: Jessica Palopoli)

Another vision of the O'Mallory family (Photo by: Jessica Palopoli)

In his way of proving that we're all cut from the same cloth, in one version of Barbara's story, Adlean is played by Jennie Brick, James T. by Clive Worsley, Marie by Terri Whipple, and Lillie Anne by Anne Darragh. In an alternate reality, Adlean is played by Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe, James T. by Adrian Roberts, Marie by Kehinde Koyejo, and Lillie Anne by Halili Knox. With the exception of the two actors portraying Barbara (Margo Hall and Susi Damilano) the white and black interpretations of each character wear the same clothes and speak the same lines. How the audience reacts depends on their own prejudices and box office potential.

Margo Hall co-stars in Barbecue (Photo by: Jessica Palopoli)

Susi Damilano co-stars in Barbecue (Photo by: Jessica Palopoli)

Brooke Jennings has provided some smashing costumes for the cast of this production (which is lit by Wen-Ling Liao and features sound design by Cliff Caruthers). While parts of Act I may seem tacky and tedious, there's a sudden rush of energy just before intermission that is the dramatic equivalent of overturning a chessboard and throwing all the playing pieces across the room. Act II may start slowly but, under Margo Hall's sly direction, Barbecue rapidly gains momentum until it starts to feel like a ride on the Wild Mouse. By the time the play reaches its grandiose climax, audiences may be dizzy from each new development.

While most of the cast are doing solid character work, the heavy lifting falls on the shoulders of Susi Damilano and Margo Hall as the dual incarnations of Barbara. Instead of modeling itself on the formula established by Rod Serling in The Twilight Zone, Barbecue takes audiences through a dizzying set of power plays that, quite surprisingly, manage to give everyone exactly what they want. Or need.

Margo Hall leads the cast of Barbecue (Photo by: Jessica Palopoli)

Performances of Barbecue continue through November 11 at the San Francisco Playhouse (click here for tickets). Here's the trailer: