THE MULTIPLICITY OF KUSHNER AT HIS WORDIEST 
                                              By Carol Benet
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area theater
                                                                 Weeks starting Nov. 1-8, 2009
                                                                 Vol. 12, No. 30
         BERKELEY --The Berkeley Rep. is on a roll.  Seven plays originating there have gone directly to Broadway including Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) that is now in preview at the Lyceum Theatre.  The current show came from its preview at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis and may go to New York too, because its playwright Tony Kushner (Angels in America) is a big draw. 
            But first, please: some heavy editing!
            Tiny Kushner: An Evening of Short Plays at the Berkeley Rep. consists of five short (could be shorter) one-acts. That they were written to be read is evident, as the staging (Tony Taccone) seems almost superfluous to nonexistent.  Not much happens on stage but talking, talking, talking.
            Don’t go home after intermission because the best is yet to come.  In Dr. Arnold A. Hutschnecker in Paradise,  J.C. Cutler plays the role of the psychiatrist that treated Richard Nixon. This is a very wry, very funny piece.  
            And the same goes for the last of the evening, the politico-satirical Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy.   Kate Eifrig plays Laura Bush who is at an elementary school to read to the children.  Of all works, she picks The Grand Inquisitor section from Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov---to an elementary class!  But she never gets to it. First she discourses on the reasons that American had to go into Iraq and drop bombs on the enemies and the civilians.  The fact that the children are all supposed to have died from one of these bombs makes the scene all the more poignant.  They are listening to the canned, propagandistic reasoning of why they are dead.  Eifrig’s Laura Bush is perfect with her southern drawl, her Hermès scarf tied in a boring square knot, her truly sympathetic attitude reflected in her concerned and pained expressions.
            <>  The first playlet is Flip Flop Fly!, a story about an egocentric performer in her younger days (Valerie Mudek) talking to an older woman, the Queen of Albania (Kate Eifrig).  They are both supposed to be dead and on the moon. 
            The second story is about a patient (J.C. Cutler) revealing all his insecurities to his therapist.  The third is a tour-de-force where Jim Lichtscheidl performs dozens of tiny teleplay monologues about NY City employees and policemen who successfully avoided paying taxes, all inspired by Howard Jarvis’s Tax Revolt.  Unfortunately he plays so many roles changing so instantly, that he can’t create the characters with any nuance or sensitivity.  All the impersonations become dizzying and tiring and the one-act is too long. 
         This bundle of mini-plays needs a re-write, but so did Kushner’s Angels in America when Taccone staged it at the Rep. By the time the latter got to New York it was fit, albeit long, as are many of the playwright’s works.  
             Tiny Kushner: An Evening of Short Plays at the Berkeley Rep. It runs through November 29.  For info: (510) 647 2949 or go online.
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        © 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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