JOHN GUARE'S LIVES PUSHED BY RANDOM EVENTS
Tragedies, and Fingers of Fate
By Carol Benet
artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area theater
Weeks starting Feb. 17, 2009
Vol. 11, No. 65
With John
Guare’s “Landscape of the Body,” the tiny S.F.
Playhouse maintains its enviable track record;
it never disappoints. <>
The Bay Area
has become such a theater town that two of
Guare’s plays were playing simultaneously and within two blocks of each
other. A.C.T.’s production of Rich and
Famous just closed, but to have two by the same author puts S.F. in the
category of real theater capitals like London
or
New York.
Where “Rich
and Famous” also had Guare’s signature cabaret
style singing in the middle of the serious drama and his introductions
of other
worldly intimations, Landscape of the Body, goes to a further extreme
of comedy
and tragedy. The script is based on
many incidents in Guare’s life while living in New York in the ’70s.
Guare shows
humanity facing difficult choices and yet
responsible for acting on them in an almost existential way as people
live and
die in an relentlessly meaningless and haphazard world. The message in
all his
plays is that life is a series of random events, sometimes one leading
to
another, but mostly strokes of fate that come out-of-the-blue.
His
“Landscape” is
about a naïve mother, Betty (Susi Damilano), and her teenage son
Bert
(Alexander Szotak), who come to New York
from Bangor, Maine
to check-up and possibility to save Betty’s sister Rosalie ((Rana
Kangas-Kent). Rosalie, all dolled-up in
a provocative white gown, sings in a
nightclub (and on stage in this play), works in a sleazy travel agent
with a
real scumbag Raulito (Gabriel Marin) and acts in porno films in order
to afford
her Christopher Street Apartment and New York lifestyle.
She has no regrets and would never go back to
Bangor, Maine
– never!
The events of
the play are presented through a series of
flashbacks so that from the beginning Rosalie is already dead, killed
in a
freak accident. We also know from the
beginning that Bert’s body was found decapitated in the river. In the
opening
scenes Betty is being interrogated by Captain Marvin Holahan (Andrew
Hurteau). The rest of the play (2.5 hours
with
intermission) tells how these deaths occurred and what other chance
happenings
occur.
When Durwood
Peach (also played by Marin), a real nut-case, abruptly
appears and proposes to Betty, taking her to his estate in Georgia,
the
play seems to go in one direction. (He had
met her one summer in Bangor,
Maine when he was selling
ice
cream from a cart.) When the kids are playing a trick in a bank and
someone is
shot and killed, it goes in quite another.
Bert’s circle
of teenage friends played by Julia Belanoff,
Haley Reicher and Otto Pippenger, kids at risk in Greenwich
Village, are so realistic that my therapist friend was
uncomfortable as she is familiar with many such cases.
And once Rosalie dies and Betty assumes her
lifestyle, the adults’ lifestyle in the City is likewise realistic and
sordid.
The music, so
professionally performed and sung, the rapid
change in plot, the excellent acting – all on this postage stamp sized
stage -
combine to make an entertaining and thought provoking play. Bill English’s direction is very
skilled. He is Artistic Director and
Susi Damilano the Producing Director of the wonderful SF Playhouse.
"Landscape of the Body" runs at the
SF Playhouse through March
7. (Just off Union Square,
at 533 Sutter, San Francisco). For info: (415) 677-9596
or go online.
#
© Carol Benet 2009
Carol Benet is a regular theater reviewer for artssf.com.
These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never
weakly)focus
on theater, dance and new musical creativity in performance, with
forays
into recordings by local artists, and a few departures into books (by
authors
of the region)as well.
#
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