Combine the huge advances in computer technology with four decades of union busting since Ronald Reagan became President, add in advances in automation and robotics, the ability to offshore many technical and/or clerical tasks over the Internet, and you get a pretty frightening idea of just how quickly traditional jobs are disappearing from today's marketplace. Teachers, transcriptionists, coders, paralegals, and editors increasingly find themselves forced to work in a gig economy as opposed to enjoying the benefits of union wages and institutional job security.
Once an artist has achieved national recognition, how do they stay in the public's eye? While some performers diversify their skills (and may find work in voice-overs, coaching, and character roles), it takes much longer for a novelist or playwright to develop a new property. The old saying "That's great, but what have you done for me lately?" means that creative talents who don't (or can't) keep delivering new works that can fatten their revenue stream may soon find themselves sidelined by more talented, aggressive, or prolific writers.
Like many writers, before they can live solely off the royalties from a string of successful plays, some playwrights supplement their income with teaching, tutoring, bartending, waiting tables, and numerous other sources of increased financial security. Two recent productions by small Bay area theatre companies allow audiences to sample recent works by two prolific playwrights.
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With more than a dozen plays under her belt, Patricia Milton's latest creation recently debuted at Central Works in Berkeley. A gifted writer with a biting sense of humor who often focuses on stories of female empowerment, The Victorian Ladies' Detective Collective may be one of her best efforts to date.Directed by Gary Graves (who also handled the lighting design) with costumes by Tammy Berlin, sound design by Gregory Scharpen, and "fan fight" choreography by Marcella Rodgers, the action takes place in Victorian-era London where terrified women are worried that Jack the Ripper has embarked on another murder spree.
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| Alan Coyne as PC Henry Crane in a scene from The Victorian Ladies' Detective Collective (Photo by: Jim Norrena) |
The setting is a boarding house for "Single Ladies" run by two middle-aged sisters. Loveday Fortescue (Stacy Ross) is a former actress who was forced to retire from the stage after a grisly chemical attack resulted in severe skin burns for which she must wear gloves at all times. Though she has fallen from popularity, Loveday is convinced that her basic intelligence (combined with the critical thinking skills an actress uses while preparing a role) might make her a superb detective.
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| Stacy Ross as Loveday Fortescue in a scene from The Victorian Ladies' Detective Collective (Photo by: Jim Norrena) |
Her nervous older sister, Valeria Hunter (Jan Zvaifler), is much more cynical about Loveday's capabilities -- as is Scotland Yard's brusque and extremely misogynistic inspector, PC Henry Crane. The talented Alan Coyne tackles three roles in Milton's script, appearing as the snarling Crane, the condescending Jasper Warham-Wynn (a particularly smarmy, handsy, and manipulative Battersea businessman), and Toddy, an easily provoked local butcher who specializes in killing stray cats and discreetly providing their meat to private clients. Curiously, one of Toddy's clients is the opium-addicted Valeria, who likes to feed fresh cat meat to her lap dog.
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| Alan Coyne as the local butcher, Toddy, in a scene from The Victorian Ladies' Detective Collective (Photo by: Jim Norrena) |
Rounding out the cast of characters is Katie Smalls (Chelsea Bearce), an American actress who, prior to her arrival in Great Britain, learned how to defend herself using a combination of martial arts and decorative fans. Having been raised in the Deep South, Katie helps educate Loveday and Valeria on such American colloquialisms as the word "druthers."
As the play begins, the two sisters are fretting over a recent string of grisly murders in their neighborhood (one of their boarders managed to escape her attacker and is currently hospitalized). Loveday is eager to get involved; Valeria wants nothing to do with such insanity.
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| Chelsea Bearce appears as the fan-wielding Katie Smalls in The Victorian Ladies' Detective Collective (Photo by: Jim Norrena) |
Though there seems to be an impressive genetic difference between Milton's characters (her men are vainglorious bullies who do a lot of boasting but are remarkably ineffectual; her women are accustomed to using their powers of deduction as one of their strongest defenses), the battle of the sexes is employed with a specific aim in this play. As Milton explains in her program note:
"The detective genre typically calls for a strong male hero who steps in to restore an order that has been disturbed by a crime. But what happens when the crime upholds and reinforces the current social order? The crime resists a solution. I pondered the narratives of fairy tales, shows about celebrity mass murderers and serial killers, and stories about ‘the dead girl’ -- narratives that use fear to urge women to stay safely at home, to stick to domesticity. Dead girl stories are very popular tales where dead women are problems to be solved, and the problem of a disappearance or murder is seen as easier to deal with than the problem of the woman’s actual presence. The female victim becomes a canvas on which others project their fears and social anxieties, and her death may even be ascribed to her recklessness. I came to the script asking: How do these narratives intersect with the detective genre? How does misogyny hinder the women, and help the killer? How could lady detectives succeed (given the lack of forensics during the era and their own social constraints) with no access to crime scenes and without police cooperation?"
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| Stacy Ross (Loveday), Jan Zvaifler (Valeria), and Chelsea Bearce (Katie) star in Patricia Milton's The Victorian Ladies' Detective Collective (Photo by: Jim Norrena) |
"Two main inspirations for this play are the books Sherlock’s Sisters: The British Female Detective, 1864-1913 by Joseph A. Kestner and Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny by philosopher Kate Manne. The former book explores the handful of fictional Lady Detectives featured in Victorian literature. These women were often older 'busybodies.' A second type was the young woman who cleared her fiancé‘s good name of a criminal charge but then disappeared into marriage, never to detect again. In Down Girl, the author asks us to think of misogyny as the set of rewards, reprimands, and punishments that reinforce women’s strict role in society. She defines misogyny as the “enforcement arm of society’s oppression of women.” Finally, the play was also informed by the U.S. Senate’s Brett Kavanaugh hearings, which were televised as I was drafting the script."
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| Stacy Ross appears as Loveday Fortescue in The Victorian Ladies' Detective Collective (Photo by: Jim Norrena) |
It would have been all too easy to subtitle Milton's play "Murder, She Solved" simply because two of the script's shining assets are the intelligence with which its narrative has been crafted and the skill with which each plot twist has been planted. As the 63rd world premiere to emerge from the Central Works Writers Workshop, this production is blessed with the talents of three of the Bay area's most underappreciated actors (Stacy Ross, Alan Coyne, and Jan Zvaifler).
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| Jan Zvaifler portrays the opium-addicted Valeria Hudson in The Victorian Ladies' Detective Collective (Photo by: Jim Norrena) |
I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if The Victorian Ladies' Detective Collective becomes one of Milton's most popular and financially successful plays. As a period piece, it offers some lovely costume design opportunities and, since it only requires four actors, it is a remarkably cost-efficient vehicle. I can easily see The Victorian Ladies' Detective Collective being staged by numerous college theatre departments and community theatre groups as well as LORT and other regional theatre companies.
Performances of The Victorian Ladies' Detective Collective continue through June 9 at the Berkeley City Club (click here for tickets).
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San Francisco's Custom Made Theatre is currently presenting the Bay area premiere of Aaron Posner's 2015 play entitled Life Sucks, which is billed as "sort-of-adapted from Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov." A prolific playwright, stage director, and Shakespeare scholar, Posner also updated Chekhov's The Seagull (which he transformed into Stupid F*cking Bird in 2013) and Three Sisters (which was brought back to life as No Sisters in 2017). |
| Evan Sokol (Vanya) and Linda Ayres-Frederick (Babs) in a scene from Life Sucks (Photo by: Jay Yamada) |
Because I had previous plans to attend the closing night of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, I was unable to catch the opening night of Life Sucks, which has been directed here by Brian Katz. Instead, I caught a performance of Posner's play the following Friday, when it was performed before a half-empty house. Although some of Posner's zingers landed well, other bits of business were met with a surprisingly anemic response from the audience.
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| Emily Stone (Ella) and Gabriel Montoya (Aster) in a scene from Life Sucks (Photo by: Jay Yamada) |
While the limp reaction may have been due to some of the casting, I think it was more likely triggered by a series of gimmicks that consistently underwhelmed the audience.
- Posner's tiresome overuse of the word "Fuck" lost its punch much earlier than the playwright might have anticipated.
- All the ennui and dissatisfaction that lies at the core of Chekhov's 1899 play had surprisingly little effect on the audience.
- A gimmick used to much greater effect by other playwrights (having a character turn to the audience and say "Intermission") brought Act I to a close with little more than a sigh of resignation.
- Asking each character to name three things they love or hate felt like being stuck in a focus group whose participants had already become bored with their facilitator.
- Having each character inform Vanya (Evan Sokol) that they, too, had something in life to complain about came across more like an intervention without the slightest hint of urgency.
- By the time the performance ended, it seemed as if the actors (even moreso than the audience) were relieved that the play was over.
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| Jensen Power (Sonia) and Gabriel Montoya (Aster) in a scene from Life Sucks (Photo by: Jay Yamada) |
Gabriel Montoya fared best as Aster, with Brittany Sims (Pickles), Emily Stone (Ella), and Dave Sikula (Professor) trying their best to pump some energy into the performance. Jensen Power (Sonia) and Linda Ayres-Frederick (Babs) were physically (if not vitally) present onstage as well.
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| Brittany Sims portrays Pickles in Life Sucks (Photo by: Jay Yamada) |
It gives me no joy to compare Life Sucks to a failing sitcom nearing cancellation. Perhaps the performance I attended was simply an off night for the audience. Perhaps this is one play which broke the fourth wall too many times to keep the audience interested. My guess, however, is that Posner's script might have had more luck with a better cast and director.
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| Dave Sikula as The Professor in Life Sucks (Photo by: Jay Yamada) |
Performances of Life Sucks continue through June 1 at the Custom Made Theatre (click here for tickets).
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