A perfect example: When I was a kid, my parents brought home a recording of Prokofiev's 1936 "symphonic fairy tale composed for children" entitled Peter and the Wolf. I'm not sure who narrated the story on our recording (early recordings were narrated by Basil Rathbone, Eleanor Roosevelt, Milton Cross and Arthur Godfrey) but I think it might have been Sterling Holloway. Recently, I thought I would listen to Prokofiev's music while inserting hyperlinks into a long blog post. The recording I chose was from 1957, with the Vienna State Opera's orchestra and Boris Karloff as a guest narrator.
Suddenly, a very strange childhood memory came back to me. My parents brought our recording home sometime in the 1950s, when most record players were geared toward 78 rpm discs (although with a spindle, one could also change the setting to 45 rpm). Our record player was located on a table in the basement, just outside a room that contained an oil burner and a washing machine for laundry. To this day, I don't know what caused me to believe that the wolf was hiding in the laundry room waiting to swallow me. But for several years, I was afraid to open the door to that room.
I fared much better with the song catalog from musical theatre. Not only did it paint tender, sentimental images of characters bursting with passion, in an odd way musical theatre defined a very different kind of love. From Meg Brockie's bawdy recollections of the men she dated ("The Love of My Life") in 1947's Brigadoon to Nellie Forbush's description of herself as "A Cockeyed Optimist" in 1949's South Pacific; from Frank Butler's dreams about "The Girl That I Marry" in 1946's Annie Get Your Gun to Calamity Jane's "Secret Love" in the popular movie musical, there was a lyricism to most expressions of love that is rarely heard in today's musicals.
While Shakespeare claimed that "the course of true love never did run smooth" in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1600), Chaucer's three-word warning from Tale of Melibee (1386) was far more succinct: "familiarity breeds contempt." Today, if one listens to songs written more than 50 years ago with the insight of an older, more world-weary soul, one can see how certain songs mirror the unraveling of relationships from infatuation ("Getting To Know You" from 1951's The King and I) to desperation ("The Very Next Man" from 1959's Fiorello!), from disappointed accommodation ("We're Gonna Be All Right" from 1965's Do I Hear A Waltz?) to disbelief and downright disgust ("Could I Leave You?" from 1971's Follies).
Two new productions examine the frailty of married couples who think they know each other inside out but are battling some frightful insecurities.
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Recent years have introduced a new term ("rolling world premiere") to the regional theatre industry. However, the San Francisco Playhouse seems to be polishing another industry term that might be called the "sustained-release world premiere." Its Sandbox Series is designed to "go beyond simple staged readings of new works that show strong potential." A Sandbox staging serves as an intermediary step (following readings and workshops) that can be taken prior to a theater company committing to a full-fledged mainstage production.This cost-effective approach allows a playwright to be given a test run that employs professional actors and directors and limited design elements but is financed on a shoestring budget. One of SFP's first Sandbox successes was Aaron Loeb's provocative Ideation, which started in a November 2013 Sandbox production, had its professional world premiere here in San Francisco in October 2014, and received its New York premiere in March of 2016.
Christopher Chen's lean, mean, and meticulously crafted psychological puzzle (You Mean To Do Me Harm) has undergone a similar gestation. After undergoing a lengthy developmental process shared by SFP with the Vineyard Theatre in New York City, You Mean To Do Me Harm received its first stage world premiere as part of SFP's Sandbox Series in June of 2017. The company is now offering the play's formal world premiere on a much more stylish (and costly) set designed by Angrette McCloskey with lighting by Kurt Landisman and a winning combination of projections and sound design by Theodore J. H. Hulsker. Within a very short time, the play has become tighter, a little more weird, and more politically relevant following Google's cancellation (however temporary) of its plan to accommodate Chinese censorship requirements in order to extend its search engine's reach into the huge Chinese market.
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| Jomar Tagatac, Katie Rubin, Charisse Loriaux, and Cassidy Brown in a scene from You Mean To Do Me Harm (Photo by: Ken Levin) |
SFP's fine four-actor ensemble consists of two interracial couples with interesting backstories. Lindsey (Katie Rubin) is a Caucasian woman whose success as a corporate attorney is no doubt due to the fact that her mind is as sharp as a tack. Her Chinese-American husband, Daniel (Jomar Tagatac), is high up in management at a large tech firm based in Silicon Valley.
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| Katie Rubin (Lindsey) and Jomar Tagatac (Daniel) are a married couple in You Mean To Do Me Harm (Photo by: Ken Levin) |
Ben (Cassidy Brown) has recently been hired by Daniel's company. Having lived in China for several years, he's found doors opening for him simply because he's a white guy who has some knowledge of Chinese culture. Though Ben may be a fairly laid-back kind of guy who doesn't sweat the small stuff, his Chinese-American wife, Samantha (Charisse Loriaux), has a habit of noticing petty details about the behavior and conversation of the men she meets. When Samantha and Ben interviewed for the same job, she didn't hesitate to sabotage her husband's chances of being hired because she felt that (a) as a Chinese-American she was better qualified for the position, (b) she was not about to be passed over for a key opportunity because of her husband's privileged status as a white male, and (c) as a woman she knew she would have to work harder to prove herself during the interview process. How did Samantha meet Lindsey? They now work for the same company.
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| Katie Rubin (Lindsey) and Cassidy Brown (Ben) dated each other before marrying different spouses in You Mean To Do Me Harm (Photo by: Ken Levin) |
The fact that Ben and Lindsey dated years ago sparks a curious moment during a dinner party for the two couples, Ben fondly recalls a camping trip they took together, which is enough of an irritant to Daniel's fragile ego to generate doubt about Ben's motives and Lindsey's responses. A simple throwaway remark causes Daniel's insecurity to start spiraling out of control, making him wonder if Ben poses a sexual threat to his marriage.
As Chen's intricately-plotted 90-minute play unravels, the audience follows a series of two-character vignettes starting with a discussion between Lindsey and Dan that transitions to a conversation between Daniel and Ben. A tense exchange between Ben and Samantha is followed by a surprisingly candid confrontation between Samantha and Lindsey.
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| Katie Rubin (Lindsey) and Charisse Loriaux (Samantha) in a scene from You Mean To Do Me Harm (Photo by: Ken Levin) |
Any assumptions an audience member may have made at the beginning of the play are shredded with clinical precision while revealing how Lindsey and Samantha see very different things happening than their husbands do. The cultural sensitivities of people like Daniel and Samantha (who grew up in Chinese-American families) reveal startling insights into the privileged behavior of Caucasians they encounter (such as Ben and Lindsey). As the playwright has stressed in the past, “It’s my firm belief that the way to move through life is to constantly question and interrogate whatever so-called truths are put right before your face."
SFP's four-actor ensemble does some breathtaking work as they hack away at each other's deceits, analyze false assumptions, dissect easily overlooked microaggressions, and manipulate their friends and spouses whenever they sense a strategical advantage. Chen has always had a strong skill for crafting dialogue, but in this play he seems to have broken through to a new level. Although his characters' words may overlap, there is an underlying musicality to his dialogue. As the play's director, Bill English, notes:
"Chen has given us a much-needed story about young urban professionals -- witty, brilliant, sophisticated, but still struggling to define themselves and find their place in a society lacking moral guidelines and infected by subtle and insidious forms of racism. A fateful dinner party ignites cultural misunderstandings and conflicts, embroiling two racially-mixed couples in a nightmarish series of events that spiral increasingly out of control, spinning them (and us) into a surreal landscape where we're never quite sure where reality ends and paranoia begins. Chen pulls the rug out from under his characters (and us) by twisting the nature of the play's metaphysics so that we understand what it must be like to be an outsider in the white world where what one is led to believe can never quite be trusted."
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| Cassidy Brown (Ben) and Jomar Tagatac (Dan) share a drink as their wives hover in their minds during You Mean To Do Me Harm (Photo by: Ken Levin) |
"More prescient now than a year and a half ago, the play is set against the backdrop of Sino-American political and business relations, You Mean To Do Me Harm focuses on the way racial misunderstandings and microaggressions are expressed in the microcosm of personal relationships. As the encounters devolve, our grip on what is real and what is imagined starts to slip, as does that of our protagonist, Daniel. Is he being paranoid or victimized by subtle racism? Does he just have an overactive imagination, or are the subtle comments of his wife and friends taking aim at his identity? How do we make sense of seemingly contradictory versions of reality in a nation where 'truth is not truth'? By throwing us into this Rashoman-like world of multiple unprovable truths, we are led to an understanding of how unmoored those from minority cultures can feel."
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| Charisse Loriaux in a scene from You Mean To Do Me Harm (Photo by: Ken Levin) |
This new production of You Mean To Do Me Harm allows contains certain improvements from the original Sandbox production which help to broaden and clarify some of its characters.
- Katie Rubin's portrayal of Lindsey is easily more recognizable as an adolescent mean girl who grew up to become a successful attorney. Her facial tics, eye rolls, and the way she holds a cigarette betray levels of repressed anger and insecurity that make it easier to understand her motives for sowing discontent (in the Sandbox series, Lauren English portrayed Lindsey as a more sophisticated, almost glacial wife).
- Charisse Loriaux's outstanding portrayal of Samantha has deepened over time. Merging a panther-like charm with the observational and analytical strengths of a great horned owl, she watches and muses over what she sees without ceding an ounce of power.
- Whereas the original production took place surrounded by arena-style seating (with the characters not involved in a particular vignette standing off in a corner), McCloskey's unit set features a main playing area surrounded by two stylish ramps leading to an upstage platform. Not only do Hulsker's projections do a strikingly effective job of changing the environment for each scene with some lighting tricks, his ability to screen a jumble of images backed by some disconcerting sound effects help to underline the possibility that Daniel might be imagining things or that his thought processes could be spontaneously misfiring.
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| Jomar Tagatac as Dan in You Mean To Do Me Harm (Photo by: Ken Levin) |
Like many of Chen's plays, You Mean To Do Me Harm is an intriguing piece of writing that leaves audiences aware that the characters they initially met are far more complicated and insecure than when they presented at the top of the evening.
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| Jomar Tagatac, Charisse Loriaux, and Cassidy Brown in a scene from You Mean To Do Me Harm (Photo by: Ken Levin) |
Performances of You Mean To Do Me Harm continue at the San Francisco Playhouse through November 3 (click here for tickets).
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Unlike the couples in Chen's play (who have probably been married for less than 10 years), the husband and wife at the core of The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? have been together for at least two decades and raised a gay teenage son who adores his parents. Although, in his most famous play (1962's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) Edward Albee focused on a childless couple whose years of familiarity caused their relationship to deteriorate far beyond contempt, in his 2002 one-act drama (which won the Tony Award for Best Play), Martin (Matt Weimer) and Stevie Grey (Hilary Hesse) are still very much in love. Although Albee's "shabby little shocker" (borrowing Professor Joseph Kerman's famous assessment of Puccini's Tosca) is now more than 25 years old, it is suddenly taking on a new and unexpected relevance.How so? At first glance, the Greys seems like a picture-perfect couple. Their suburban home is the love nest of an affluent couple (like the Kavanaughs?) who enjoy a moderate degree of fame. Martin is a recent recipient of the Pritzker Prize (the highest honor in the architecture profession). He and his wife share the kind of intellectual intimacy which allows them to tease each other about their grammar, vocabulary choices, and whether or not Martin's increasing forgetfulness might be an impending sign of Alzheimer's disease. Although, on a moment's notice, they may act like a couple in a Noel Coward play, they also have a big problem which, initially, only Martin knows about.
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| Matt Weimer (Martin Gray) and Hilary Hesse as his wife, Stevie, in a scene from The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? (Photo by: Jay Yamada) |
As the play begins, Martin and Stevie are awaiting the arrival of Ross Tuttle (Ryan Hayes), a television producer who is Martin's closest, oldest, and dearest friend. Ross's goal is to interview Martin for a segment coinciding with Martin's 50th birthday. They've done this routine numerous times in the past but, as Ross sets up his camera and starts chatting Martin up for the interview, his friend seems surprisingly nervous. He's been wrestling with a deep, dark secret and, after making a failed attempt to share it with his wife, wonders whether or not he can confide in Ross.
By now, most audiences know Martin's secret is that he has fallen head over hoofs in love with a goat he encountered while roaming the countryside in search of a barn he might purchase and renovate as a rural getaway. He could be risking everything by opening up to Ross but, then again, what are best friends for?
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| Matt Weimer (Martin Gray) and Ryan Hayes (Ross Tuttle) in a scene from The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? (Photo by: Jay Yamada) |
As it turns out: betrayal. When Martin keeps dancing around Ross's questions about whether he is having an affair with another woman, the closest Martin can come to confessing is to hand Ross a picture of Sylvia. Ross, Stevie, and Martin's son, Billy (Max Seijas,) all react by screaming some variation of "You're fucking a goat???"
Once Stevie learns the truth, the shit hits the fan. Erupting in rage, she warns her husband “You have brought me down, and, Christ!, I’ll bring you down with me!” before storming out of the house. A little while later, as Martin is trying to explain the situation to Billy, Ross walks in unannounced and misinterprets a tender father-son kiss.
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| Matt Weimer (Martin Gray) and Max Seijas as his son, Billy, in a scene from The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? (Photo by: Jay Yamada) |
When Stevie finally returns, making a blood-soaked entrance befitting a Greek tragedy, there's no doubt that "La commedia è finita." Stressing that his play is not about bestiality, Albee noted that he had to look further afield than Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 novel, Lolita, in order to find a taboo that would still be controversial enough to spark horrified reactions from audiences.
“Imagine what you can’t imagine. Imagine that, all of a sudden, you found yourself in love with a Martian, in love with something you can’t conceive of. I want everybody to be able to think about what they can’t imagine and what they have buried deep as being intolerable and insufferable. I want them to just think freshly and newly about it. You may, of course, have received the misleading information that the play is about bestiality (more con than pro). Well, bestiality is discussed during the play (as is flower arranging), but it is a generative matter rather than the ‘subject.’ The play is about love, and loss, the limits of our tolerance and who, indeed, we really are.”
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| Matt Weimer (Martin Gray) and Hilary Hesse as his wife, Stevie, in a scene from The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? (Photo by: Jay Yamada) |
As the first play in Custom Made Theatre's 2018-2019 season, The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? generates plenty of laughter thanks to Albee's dark sense of humor. Matt Weimer creates a sympathetic portrait of Martin as a deeply confused man who can barely fathom his emotions much less find the words to articulate his feelings to his wife, son, and best friend. As the woman who learns she has been sharing her husband's body and soul with livestock, Hilary Hesse goes on a justifiable rampage (breaking plates, destroying paintings, overturning bookcases) while swearing revenge on her competitor. Ryan Hayes is appropriately smug as Ross, with Max Seijas giving a moving performance as young Billy (who is only slightly less confused than his wayward father).
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| Max Seijas (Billy Gray) and Hilary Hesse as his mother in a scene from The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? (Photo by: Jay Yamada) |
Working on a handsome unit set designed by Sarah Phykitt (with costumes by Lindsey Eifert, lighting by Chris Lundahl, and sound by Larry Tasse), Paul Stout has done a superlative job of directing Albee's play, which remains a rip-roaring piece of theatre. However, changes in our society since The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? premiered 25 years ago have fostered a most curious consequence. In a world dominated by the amorality of Donald Trump and his corrupt cohort, calling one's husband a goatfucker almost seems quaint!
The following video from the Charlie Rose show contains a fascinating conversation with three extremely articulate theatre artists: Albee and the two actors who starred in the play's world premiere (Bill Pullman and Mercedes Ruehl). It's well worth your time.
Performances of The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? continue through October 20 at the Custom Made Theatre (click here for tickets).
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