Taking Over (Berkeley Rep until Feb 10)

I just came back from seeing the world premier of Taking Over, a one-man piece written and performed by Danny Hoch. The show speaks to the conflicts and issues inherent in gentrification of neighborhoods–families who have to leave because their rent has become too expensive for them to stay in their homes, the changing culture as new people move in, the things that you lose and the things that you gain.  Hoch plays several different characters and each character’s piece works with the others to build a compelling story.  Hoch is amazing– he adds a hat and becomes a 50-year-old black woman on her stoop talking about the neighborhood’s past with ”piles of crack viles so big that midgets could play in them” and its present of ”almond croissants with just the right amount of powdered sugar on top in the new French brunch place.”  He plays a hyper Jewish real estate developer being interviewed by a reporter from the Greenpoint Gazette while getting a yoga lesson from a young woman named Willow–”the real thing–she’s from Berkeley.”  In character after character, by making only the simplest external change, he inhabits these people from the inside so that I believed them, I cared about them, and I wanted to know more about them.  In the second to last scene, Danny comes out dressed in black, and seems to be talking about his own life, his own conflict as a person who grew up in the neighborhood and resents the newcomers, and yet goes back to his “own refurbished brownstone” and “dates women from other states who go home for the holidays because New York isn’t really their home.”  The strongest part of this piece is in the middle, where in addition to playing the black woman and the real estate developer, he becomes a Dominican taxi dispatcher, performing the whole scene in rapid Spanish with subtitles, and a desperate neighborhood ex-convict trying to connect to a production assistant making a movie on his street.   My daughter lives in Williamsburg on the same street as Hoch and I have been there many times.  With his incredible talent in writing and acting, he makes every aspect of life there come alive.  The audience jumped up to give Danny Hoch a well-deserved standing ovation–this show is raw, edgy, funny, and powerful–get there if you can.

after the quake (Berkeley Rep)

after the quake is an adaptation by Frank Galati of two short stories by Haruki Murakami. The production involves four adult cast members and a child. The adults move back and forth between characters in a simple, elegant and powerful way. The first story is about the psychological upheaval caused by the Kobe earthquake, especially for the girl, Sala. The story within that story is one created by Junpei, a writer who is the soul of the play. It is about a character named Frog, who, with the help of a meek accountant named Takatsuki, is determined to save Tokyo, where the play is set, from a frightening earthquake. The stories wrap around each other, taking the audience from the outer landscape to the inner landscape and exploring the themes of upheaval, connection, friendship, fragility and love on all planes. Performed seamlessly in 90 minutes with no intermission, and staged beautifully and simply, this play left me breathless with appreciation about what good theatre can evoke.

Spring Awakening (in NY)

Spring Awakening, which won the Tony for best musical in 2007, is a fascinating piece based on a play written in 1891 by the controversial German playwright, Frank Wedekind . It is the story of sexual awakening in an oppressive society where the rules are very rigidly enforced at the expense of love, youth, family and compassion. It touches on issues such as puberty, sexual freedom, intimacy, misunderstanding, oppression, and violence. The play incorporates German techno music and choreography by Bill T. Jones with lyrical melodies and words to tell this story, which is a tragedy, in the Shakespearian sense. The young cast is wonderfully talented and this show has a great energy.  The entire cast is excellent but John Gallagher, Jr., who won a Tony for his role, is a standout.

Sweeney Todd

I just had the great pleasure of seeing a preview performance of Sweeney Todd at ACT in San Francisco. This is the recent NY production of Stephen Sondheim’s dark musical, conceived and directed by John Doyle. It is brilliant. Sweeney Todd, based on a Victorian tale, tells the story of a vengeful barber, who pairs up with a delightfully scheming pie maker and blends murder and mayhem. What makes this production so unique is that there are 10 actors on stage the whole time and they not only play parts in the story but they also perform all the music, some playing multiple instruments. The staging is so graceful and seamless that it is both intimate and stunning. Sondheim is a genius and the music and lyrics in this play left me smiling and amazed. The simple tight stage, for me, brought me in closer than the original more tradiional version, which I saw with Angela Lansbury. This cast, many of whom came from the recent NY production, is wonderfully talented and handle the complex material perfectly as well as playing the instruments without making it look at all difficult. They pass around a cello as if it is a feather. See it if you can.