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Regional Reviews: San Francisco Annapurna, Working for the Mouse and Totem
Magic Theatre, San Francisco's home for new plays, continues its 2011-12 season with the world premiere of up and coming author Sharr White's Annapurna, a story about the longevity of love (his The Other Place recently premiered to good reviews at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in New York). Annapurna is about affection and fear and transience, enthralled in a brief and penetrating encounter between a man and woman who have nothing to lose. The 95-minute play opens with the disheveled Ulysses (Rod Gnapp), a quasi-hermit living with his ungrateful dog in a very nasty trailer on a remote Colorado mountain. The former academic and cowboy poet is out of friends, out of luck, and out of time—he is dying from emphysema. Emma ((Denise Cormier), his estranged ex-wife, walks in dragging her suitcases, much as she walked out twenty years before. She finds him standing almost naked save for slippers, an unctuous apron not much larger than a loincloth, and an oxygen tank. The ex-wife has arrived with seventeen grand in cash and a fruit bowl—she has left her abusive second husband and intends to stay. She also has a second reason for coming back to Ulysses which the playwright keeps from us until a pivotal scene in the middle of the one-act play. What happened on that night twenty years ago that caused her to leave in a hurry? They talk and argue, and the story of that emotional night emerges slowly and horrifyingly before becoming strikingly clear. Annapurna is used as a metaphor in a speech by Ulysses toward the end of the play. The disheveled man has written an epic poem involving the mountain that runs more than one hundred and fifty stanzas. Rod Gnapp is brilliant in this production. He looks and acts like a character out of a Sam Shepard play. He nails down the magnetism of a man who is disdainful of convention. His last scene is a magnificent tour de force of acting in which Ulysses believes he may not deserve redemption for that fateful night twenty years ago. Denise Cormier has the less showy role, since the playwright hides her background until the middle of the play. She gives a wonderful performance as a person on a mission, with captivating determination laced with ambiguity and a polished wit. The two actors radiate a profound chemistry which holds the audience's attention. Andrew Boyce has made a breathtaking set that looks like a rundown mobile home with a shambles of broken furniture, books thrown about the floor, and food packages that look like they have been there for ages—all within a wall-less metal skeleton. Loretta Greco directs this mesmerizing drama. Annapurna runs through December 4th at the Magic Theatre, Building D, Fort Mason Center, San Francisco. For tickets call 415-441-8822 or visit www.magictheatre.org. Their next play will be the world premiere of Lloyd Suh's Jesus In India opening January 26, 2012.
What's it like to be a seventeen-year-old star-struck lad who doesn't want to be an adult and works at a job at the "happiest place on earth"? Playwright and actor Trevor Allen wanted to be that teenager so he went to Disneyland in Orange County to fulfill his dream. Was it all peaches and cream to be Pluto and then a pirate? As one costumed colleague tells Trevor as he starts his first day of work inside the park, "Welcome to Mauschwitz." Working for the Mouse played to great reviews in 2002 at Val's Subterranean Room in the East Bay. This is a restaging by Nancy Carlin for the Exit Theatre in San Francisco. Allen's stopover in Disneyland is a very funny exercise of coming-of-age disenchantment, medieval working conditions, and sidesplitting iconoclasm. "Parents, if you love your children, do not take them backstage at Disneyland," so said a wise man. For 85 minutes the audience gets a hilarious all-out Mouse-bashing. Disneyland was sometimes called by those unfortunate employees, "Michael Eisner's wet dream." Trevor trekked from the Bay Area to Anaheim after graduating from high school to pursue his dream, which was to be Peter Pan at Disneyland. He rented a sad, roach-ridden apartment and started as a lowly breakfast-shift character outside the park. After three weeks of servitude he got his first job inside the park as Pluto in full costume: a furry, six-foot, yellow suit. An old-school midget in the Donald Duck outfit sounding like Rocky Balboa told him the following rules: "Never let 'em get behind you ... Never stand in direct sunlight ... and Watch your ass." Trevor talks about his first day in full costume as hundreds of kids descend on the park. He tells a wonderful story of meeting 7-year-old "Scotty" wearing a Make-A-Wish t-shirt hugging him through the hot felt armor of the dog suit as says "Bye, Pluto!, Don't forget my birthday." It really gets Trevor emotional, even though one of the rules is "never get emotional with the kids." The heavy costumes leave the workers defenseless, and Pluto was grabbed, groped and, once, stabbed with a large hatpin. Trevor works five days a week for minimum wage and nonexistent benefits, with bizarre rules and ungodly hours (he is must be available at 5:30 am to put on the very hot suit. It became his own private Hades). He longs for a "voice clearance" to play a talking character; maybe, if his dream comes true, he will play Peter Pan. Trevor finally gets his chance to audition for a "face character." He does not get to be Peter Pan but the Mad Hatter and, in an Ed Wynn voice, he tells of his adventures falling in love with the slim Tammy who plays Alice. He also moves into a shared apartment in Newport Beach. Trevor's crush on Tammy gets more serious and our hero hosts an employee party in his apartment to impress her, much to the dismay of his fellow roommates (in one room were the seven dwarfs and three little pigs having an orgy, and Winnie the Pooh high on acid). The romance ends when he finds out that Tammy got busted for fucking Dick Tracy in "partial costume" on the Matterhorn. This consummate artist keeps the stories from debasing into stale disenchantment. Dressed in shorts, a t-shirt, his "Trevor" name tag, and knee pads, he maintains a contagious liveliness throughout the telling of his "mouse tales" in this 85 minute intermission-less performance. Working for the Mouse runs through December 17 at EXIT Theatre, 156 Eddy Street, San Francisco. For tickets call 800-838-3006 or visit www.brownpapertickets.com/event/201528. You can get more information on this production by going to www.workingforthemouse.com.
Cirque du Soleil is holding forth at AT&T Park through December 18th. Their new production Totem celebrates evolution starting with a dazzling, primordial swamp and moving headlong into a space future. Robert Lepage, the renowned Canadian theatre director, is standing in for God or the circus answer to Darwin. We watch floating amphibians and creatures with the aspiration to fly in this three-hour extravaganza. All of the acts have some kind of aerial dynamic, and when apes are finally introduced it is largely for comic relief. Sometimes the apes become a little too much and outstay their welcome. Some of the clowns are funny while others are downright silly. Deadpan Mykhaylo Usov's fishing gem in a wonderful set involving a real motorboat is a comic jewel, racing through some amazing special effects. The magical night starts as the lights go down into darkness. Suddenly the audience sees what looks like a projected turtle coving the bulk of the stage. This is a nod to a universal legend found in First Nations oral traditions. Hindu lore, Chinese myths, and many cultures tell tales of a world propped up by a giant tortoise. It's an awesome effect to start the night of great entertainment. Totem features hoop dances, rings, juggling, and innumerable spins, each outdoing the other. There are astonishing acts, such as a spangled man played by Joseph David Putignano who descends from the tent's highest point. At first he is curled up, a volatile fetus, and then he reorganizes his body until one reads him as an ideogram. He slowly descends to the floor and suddenly there is tribal dancing, rudimentary drum rolling, and a group of fabulous dancers with twirling hoops around their bodies. Also amazing is a female quintet who miraculously maintain their balance while lobbing golden bowls onto each other's head. Cirque performers continue to flabbergast the audience with a Canadian couple, Louis-David Simoneau and Rosalie Ducharme, who seem to be forming their bodies in examples from the Kama Sutra while flying high on a trapeze. There is a fantastic double act on roller blades, with a man (Massimiliano Medini) slinging a woman (Denise Garcia-Sorta) around at super speed like a human lasso. There are Russian acrobats high up on the tent with bendable bars held on their shoulders while performing astounding feats on equally balanced towering poles. Part of Totem's charm is the music created by Guy Dubuc and Marc Lessard who work professionally as Bob & Bill. It's an upbeat blend featuring many cultural influences, a bit of Bollywood, First Nations drumming, and hints of world beat, didgeridoo and flamenco. Jeffrey Hall's choreography is exciting as all of the performers come together, complete with impressively lifelike monkeys and a stunning gymnast made up to look like Buddha, for a final dance. Totem will be playing at AT&T Park, San Francisco through December 18th. The production will return to the Bay Area on March 2nd through April 1, 2012, at the Taylor Street Bridge side, Lot E in San Jose. For tickets go to www.tichetsoffical.com/cirque-du-soleil-tickets.com or www.broadwayticketscenter.com or call 800-363-5085.
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