A New Season's Greetings

Critics like to joke about their occupation being "a dark and dirty job, but someone's got to do it." Nevertheless, the inherent risk of attending a tightly-scheduled string of live performances is that one night can be magical and exhilarating while the next can be a total bore or a severe disappointment. Even with good material and skilled artists at work, once the house lights go down it's pretty much a crap shoot.

Like many school years, the theatre season comes roaring back to life soon after Labor Day. Regional theatre companies and smaller nonprofits are eager to welcome back loyal subscribers and single ticket buyers with entertainment that can offer a reprieve from the stress of family life, the daily grind of their jobs, the appalling state of our political climate, the threat of gun violence, and the terrifying impact of climate change.

When A Tale of Two Cities was published in 1859, I doubt Charles Dickens imagined that the first 12 words of his novel ("It was the best of times, it was the worst of times") would retain their potency 160 years later. So it came as no surprise to me that, before heading off to performances at the 2019 San Francisco Fringe Festival, I had already attended one brilliant, timely drama and one sadly curious misfire at theatres in the East Bay.

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Ten years ago, when 42nd Street Moon's Greg MacKellan and Lauren Hewitt attended a reading of Murder For Two at the National Alliance for Music Theatre's 2009 Festival of New Musicals, they were so taken with a two-character, 90-minute musical that they offered to present its West Coast premiere. They quickly recognized that Joe Kinosian and Kellen Blair's intelligently written show was being deftly performed by two men with plenty of charisma and strong audience appeal. Among the suspects who were portrayed by the energetic Mr. Kinosian were:

• Mrs. Dahlia Whitney: a middle-aged woman who had thrown a surprise birthday party for her husband (who hates surprises). Just when the guests were supposed to scream "surprise," there was a gunshot and her husband laid dead in the middle of their living room.
• Steph Whitney: Dahlia's niece who was visiting for the weekend while trying to finish her thesis.
• Barrette Lewis: a mysterious ballet dancer (and possibly Mr. Whitney's mistress) who had been invited to the birthday party by Dahlia.
• Dr. Griff: a psychiatrist well known to several of the guests.
• Timmy, Yonkers, and Skid: three kids from the neighborhood.

When staged by 42nd Street Moon in 2010, Adam Overett had just enough earnestness to make the audience want to believe that Officer Marcus Moscowicz of the Collarhorn Police Department was "a right kind of guy." Not only was he determined to solve the murder of Mr. Whitney, he had also been tasked with finding out who stole the ice cream from Mrs. Whitney's freezer. Working on a set that included little more than an upright piano, a large chair, a folding screen, and a handsome rug, the two actors were dressed in business casual and took turns at the keyboard as they moved the plot forward.

Adam Overett and Joe Kinosian in 42nd Street Moon's 2010
production of Murder For Two (Photo by: James Shubinski)

Originally developed for the Chicago Shakespeare Theater (where Murder For Two subsequently received its world premiere), Blair and Kinosian received Chicago's Joseph Jefferson Award for Best New Musical and, in 2013, won the ASCAP Foundation's Mary Rodgers/Lorenz Hart Award. The show's original subtitle ("A Killer Musical!") evolved into "They put the laughter in manslaughter!" In a cheeky 2013 article written for Backstage entitled "A Humble Apology to Actors from the Creators of Murder For Two," the two men explained that:

“In our search for a way to break into a seemingly closed-off business, we found each other at the BMI Musical Theatre Writing Workshop (which is basically speed dating for musical theater composers and lyricists). We teamed up and decided to write the next great American musical, complete with a cast of thousands and a 700-piece orchestra. And then we noticed something: the economy sucked and theaters were scaling back their seasons by replacing flashy musicals with four-person plays. Producers had always been cheap, but now they were being really cheap and we suddenly realized that our first show as two nobody-writers was never going to be a huge, expensive, Broadway spectacle. So we gave ourselves a challenge: How much could we do with absolutely nothing? A few months later that ‘absolutely nothing’ became a staged reading of a silly, intimate musical called Murder For Two.”

Joe Kinosian and Kellen Blair (Photo by: Eli Schmidt)

“Knowing this will be read by actors, we want to say we’re sorry. Not because you’re an actor -- we think that part is great! We wanted to apologize for writing a show with 14 characters played by only two performers. By our count, that means 12 of you don’t have a job right now because of us. In creating a two-person show, we weren’t selfishly trying to deprive you of a job -- we were selfishly trying to get ourselves a job. We looked around and did our best to take advantage of the world’s crappy situation. And sometimes that’s the best way to get your metaphorical foot in that allegorical door. Like it or not, we seem to be entering an era where being a triple threat isn’t always enough. Sometimes it helps to be a quadruple or even a quintuple threat. Learn an instrument. Practice ventriloquism. If you can find a way to drag around your own lighting rig while playing a harmonium, John Doyle will cast you in literally everything!”

The energetic Eric Shorey co-stars in Murder For Two
(Photo by: Kevin Berne)

Center Rep recently opened its 2019-2020 season with a production of Murder For Two featuring a grand piano, a handsome set designed by Bill Clarke, costumes by Tracy Dorman, and lighting by Lonnie Rafael Alcaraz. Directed by Paul Mason Barnes, Eric Shorey rapidly changes roles as he takes on the voices and physicality of the story's suspects while (looking like a young Graham Norton) Eric Van Tielen appears as Detective Moscowicz.

Eric Van Tielen co-stars as Detective Moscowicz in Murder For Two
(Photo by: Kevin Berne)

Despite giving their all onstage, the performance I attended just didn't click. Knowing how solidly the show is constructed, I was astonished by the audience's polite, but restrained response. At times, it seemed as if Shorey had trouble delineating the various characters he portrayed during each transition. And, though it seems like a petty detail, the fact that he was wearing a black tux, leaping on and off a black piano, and much of the playing space behind the actors was quite dark might have put a damper on the performance. Or could it have just been one of those nights attended by a fairly tepid audience?

Eric Shorey and Eric Van Tielen co-star in Murder For Two
(Photo by: Kevin Berne)

While I can't pinpoint the missing ingredient, there was one very refreshing piece of information in the artists' bios. Following in the long tradition of such illustrious theatrical couples as Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson, and Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, the program reveals that Shorey and Van Tielen are life partners offstage who are currently enjoying a chance to perform together. Performances of Murder For Two continue through October 6 at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek (click here for tickets).

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It's fair to say that, having grown up with a father who taught high school biology and a sister who worked as a school librarian, I have great respect for the teaching profession. Having been lucky enough to receive a good education in New York's public schools when that was still possible (and luck out with a handful of inspiring professors while at Brooklyn College), I know the invaluable difference a good teacher can make in a student's life. For those who have woefully been convinced that teachers are selfish, overpaid moochers who feed, like leeches, on the public's generosity, please watch Taylor Mali's famous rant entitled "What Do Teachers Make?"


One of the kindest comments I ever received came from a professor whose taught History of Theatre and Beginner's Acting. After performing a character study of someone I knew (a rabid ballet fan I had met on the ticket line to purchase standing room at the Metropolitan Opera House), Dr. Loney told me to feel free to just let my body relax, stressing that despite any self-consciousness I might have about my weight, I moved well. He then turned to a classroom filled with stunned and confused students who were shocked by my performance and said "You may not know anyone like the character you just saw but, believe me, they exist!"

Perhaps that's why I was eager to experience the Aurora Theatre Company's season opener, the Bay Area premiere of Ike Holter's 2014 dramedy entitled Exit Strategy. Written for Chicago's Jackalope Theatre, the play focuses on the plight of today's educators as opposed to the happier time, half a century ago, when teachers like my father could own their homes, raise a family on a single salary, and enjoy the employee benefits (including professional tenure, health insurance, and a summer vacation) that came from belonging to a strong union.

Holter, who counts many teachers among his friends, was inspired to write Exit Strategy by 2013's mass closure of 49 public schools (which displaced nearly 12,000 children in Chicago, a majority of whom were African American and Latinx students). His goal was to write about the people he had witnessed “hanging on and letting go" so that, when seen at their best and at their worst, they were people.”

Aurora’s new Artistic Director, Josh Costello (who was previously the company’s Literary Manager and Artistic Associate) also had a keen personal interest in directing Holter’s drama. As he explains in his program note:

“When I was a junior at El Cerrito High, the Richmond Unified School District ran out of money. We were told that the school year was going to end months early, in April, because there was no money to pay the teachers. We organized and went to Sacramento to protest, but it took a lawsuit to force the state to keep the schools open under the state’s direct control, with a slashed budget. The situation in Chicago is different, specific to its particular long history of redlining and unequal distribution of resources. But Holter uses that situation to tell a story that resonates all over the United States – and anywhere that finds those fighting for justice at the end of their ropes.”

Exit Strategy begins a day or two before the commencement of classes for the new school year. The Vice Principal, Ricky (Adam Niemann), is a young, white  administrator who is easily intimidated by older and wiser teachers who have seen it all. Eager to avoid confrontation (and incapable of giving anyone a straight answer), he resembles what my sister used to call "the school stupidintendant."

Margo Hall as Pam in Exit Strategy (Photo by: David Allen)

Having asked Pam (Margo Hall) to come to his office, Ricky is faced with the task of delivering bad news to one of his school's most beloved teachers, a tough-as-nails English teacher who has been making inner city students toe the line for 23 years. Even if Ricky has brought a nice chocolate cake to the teacher's lounge, Pam is in no mood to take any shit from him. Moments after their meeting ends, a gunshot echoes through the hallway. The revelation that their school will be forced to close at the end of the year isn't the only bad news to greet the arriving faculty.

Gabriella Fanuela (Jania) and Ed Gonzalez Moreno (Luce)
in a scene from Exit Strategy (Photo by: David Allen)

On the day before classes start, the teachers begin to arrive. In a rare occurrence, the Hispanic physical education teacher, Luce (Ed Gonzalez Moreno), has arrived at work on time. Arnold (Michael J. Asberry), an older teacher who does not want to be asked what he did during the summer, is a quiet man who carries the weight of institutional memory befitting a school's union representative. They are soon joined by Sadie (Sam Jackson), who has brought packages of rat poison to work since the school cannot afford to contract with an exterminator, and Jania (Gabriella Fanuela), who will be translating Arnold's announcement into Spanish when they break the news to their students.

Gabriella Fanuela is Jania in Exit Strategy (Photo by: David Allen)

Tensions continue to mount until the day when Donnie (Tre'Vonne Bell) is suddenly brought to the Vice Principal's office. Young, idealistic, and far more tech savvy than anyone on the faculty, he has been accused of hacking into the school's website to set up a crowdfunding page to help save the school. While there is no doubt that he needs to be disciplined, Ricky spots an opportunity to use Donnie as a way to (a) gain acceptance from the teachers who scorn him, and (b) help the school make one last-ditch effort to remain open.

Though some of the teachers have tried fighting back in the past (without any help from their Vice Principal), Donnie's determination and energy are sufficiently infectious to lure Ricky into the fantasy that he is heading up "Team Winning." As might be expected, their efforts to gain media attention do not stop the school district from executing its plan to demolish the school.

Tre'Vonne Bell (Donnie), Sam Jackson (Sadie), and Adam Niemann
(Ricky) in a scene from Exit Strategy (Photo by: David Allen)

"Structural racism in the form of redlining and school closures is not exclusive to Chicago," notes dramaturg Leigh Rondon-Davis. "While the emotional and psychological impact of school closures is less documented, we cannot ignore that, for many students, their school is the place where adults know who they are and care about their well-being (their siblings may have gone to the same school). When their school is closed, suddenly that is ripped away. And when we give up on our neighbors or our own communities, the harm goes far beyond low test scores. We are disempowering people, particularly young people of color. We are teaching them that other people do not care."

With costumes by Maggie Whitaker, lighting by Stephanie Anne Johnson, and sound design by James Ard that is especially chilling in the play's final moments, Costello has directed Aurora's powerful ensemble on Kate Boyd's cleverly-designed set. Veteran Margo Hall and the incredibly talented Tre'Vonne Bell deliver brilliant performances as Pam and Donnie. Adam Neimann's characterization of Ricky undergoes the most impressive transformation while Michael J. Asberry, Ed Gonzalez Moreno, Sam Jackson, and Gabriella Fanuele provide solid backup in a play that depicts what happens to disillusioned professionals stuck in a lose-lose situation.

Margo Hall (Pam) and Michael J. Asberry (Arnold) in a
scene from Exit Strategy (Photo by: David Allen)

For those looking to start off their theatre season with a punch to the gut, Holter's one-act drama packs a pretty strong wallop, expertly delivered by some of the Bay area's strongest artists. Performances of Exit Strategy continue through September 29 at the Aurora Theatre Company (click here for tickets). Here's the trailer: