The Writers Block

Virago Theater Company’s production of Catherine Trieschmann’s “Crooked”  at The Flight Deck in Oakland was outstanding.   The acting was spot on, vigorous, and relentless — made more so because one of the actors — Isadora Cass (as “Maribel”) is thirteen years old.  Her transformation into Maribel was astounding. Her counterpart, “Laney” was played by Jamella Cross, a young actor who captures all the nuances of prodigy, self-conscious pain, and exibits the kind of willpower one would expect from a more mature actor. Angela Dant plays Laney’s mother, “Elise.”  Dant’s portrayal of is vivid and natural: Elise is competent, hard working, rational, aware of social distinctions, and suffering from the emotional distress of having to deal with a marriage broken by her former’ husband’s deterioration.  Her desire to be nurturing is offset by her fatigue.

“Crooked” is a play about madness.  Not exactly raving madness, but the more quiet kind — the common madness that occurs in ordinary people who are mostly honest.  But for the characters in “Crooked”, their grip on sanity — which is to say their confidence in the sanctity of the world around them — is shattered by a combination of forces: puberty, Satan, mental illness, and finally, Jesus and salvation.

That last force being particularly brutal. Because the problem with salvation is this: it requires honesty.  Jesus loves you, and he dies for your sins, not just once but every time we harm each other.  But dishonesty not only prevents  salvation, it prevents even the very vision of the thing.

The title “Crooked” refers to Laney’s twisted spine, a medical condition caused by, as she puts it, “muscles working against each other.”  She has a sharp wit, a bruised ego, and a vivid imagination.  She has a gift for writing, which is her last defense against the world around her. Her mother, Elise, is a kind-hearted person exhausted by her ex-husband’s mental illness and her daughter’s pension for dramatic expression.  In turn Laney resents her Mother’s abandonment of her father.  Maribel, portrayed as a backwards simpleton with a childish religious fanaticism, falls headfirst into Laney’s world.

Once the two girls discover their mutual resentment at being outcasts, they enter into a mismatched friendship.  Maribel’s simplicity is offset by Laney’s brilliance.  Laney’s manipulative bullying is offset by Maribel’s desire to offer up salvation.  Maribel is obsessed with stigmata, Laney is obsessed with lyrical expression. Maribel’s concept of the healing powers of Jesus — actually quite beautiful in it’s honesty — is offset by Laney’s muscular cynicism.  And with all that emotional overhead they both struggle with the chaos of sexuality.

Watching these two girls reminded me of the doomed friendship of George and Lenny in Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men.” Maribel’s abject sadness when Laney’s conversion and acceptance of Christ doesn’t seem to work is a marvel — she takes Laney’s sin on her shoulders.  And in a moment of remarkable insight, played almost as an aside to the audience, she sagely points out that Satan is a metaphor for the evil people do to each other, and from that arises all sin.

Through all this Elise struggles to maintain the will to think everything will turn out all right. That Laney’s power of observation and emotional cataloging can be controlled.  She does what every mother tries to do: forgive her teenage daughter’s rebellion.  She has a glass of wine, tries to be witty, wants to be her daughter’s friend.  Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.

“Crooked” was expertly staged, marvelously directed by Robert Lundy-Paine, the acting was brilliant.  The show is currently closed, but rumor has it may get another run soon.

William Bivins’ “Ransom, Texas” reminds me of Oedipus Rex turned inside out– a Greek tragedy with a distinctly Western accent.  There are no women in the play, except as references, and it shows: not a hint of femininity anywhere.  The world condensed down to two men, fighting, as John Steinbeck once said, like terriers. In a very, very small, dingy room full of old papers, photos, and a very heavy, ponderous desk.

Like all power struggles, this one rests on the delusion that if you have control of some external thing, you have power.  Delusion begets delusion — the two men are drowning in deceit and treachery. It’s never quite clear who is actually lying, or about what, until the end, and then it doesn’t really matter, because the subterfuge is just another posture that hides the truth: a young man wants what an old man has, and the old man, steeped in pain, tries to warn him off.  And at the same time draws him in. And the young man goes willingly.  Is that fate? Or simply the nature of the beast?

Dixon Phillips plays the father, Vern  — by turns a wise man, a hateful  braggart, a liar, a man of deep truth, violent, tender.  A generation ago he had the same struggle with his father.  He knows the past and the future. He has a love-hate relationship with himself, and he sees himself in his son.

Damien Seperi plays Bruce, a deceptively gentile young man, Vern’s son.  He is by turns mild, cajoling, pleading, whining, violent, perceptive, a loving husband and father, treacherous and every bit as ambitious as Vern.  Full of desire. He knows little of the past, and his vision of the future is dimly lit.  His journey into himself is only beginning.  He loves his father, but wants to displace him. He naively believes himself to be different from his father.

And they do appear at first to be very different — Damien’s accent (which I took to be Castilian), soft demeanor, refined modernity.  Opposed to Vern’s roughness, his crude speech, his old world manners and combative nature.

No two men could appear to be less alike and yet be the same — possessed of a destructive need to rule. To be supreme.  The only difference is that one man knows the cost and the other doesn’t.

It’s that discovery of the cost that makes this play work.  At 70 minutes it feels like 15.  Tense, terse and unremitting.  The acting is brilliant, the staging perfect.

Produced by Virago Theater, directed by Jon Tracy.  “Ransom, Texas” will be  playing at the Theatre Asylum in Los Angeles, Jan 9-25, 2015.

Photos of  Damien Seperi and Dixon Phillips by by Luis A. Solorzano courtesy of Virago Theater. 

I’ve been thinking lately that it’s really quite easy to convince someone of something they already believe to be true.  The reason I came to that conclusion, and why such an obvious truism should need to be restated, will be come clear in a moment.

But let me offer up a comment about belief.  One of the most iconic movies about race and racism was Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mockingbird” — and one might think (as I did for years) that it served as a beacon of reason, of passionate regard for our need to change.  I’ve come to doubt that it was that at all; but rather it was a piece of propaganda — and for all it’s glory it did not change anyone’s mind about anything.  I think it’s quite rare that anyone is ever reasoned out of a belief.

Which is not to say it wasn’t useful: it served to allow a whole generation of people to say — “that’s how I feel!”, and then politicians could use that as an exit poll of sorts to craft legislation that responded to the mass of feelings uncovered — a wall of desire to change the way people regarded each other.  As it so happens I enjoyed the movie, and “believed” in it — but I think time has revealed not everyone did.  And some things have not changed.

And that brings us around to Celebration Arts production of David Mamet’s “Race.”  Four actors — Rob Anthony Gray, Gregory Smith, Chis Lamb and Alana Matthews play three attorneys and one man (Greg Smith) accused of raping a black woman.  The white man, one Charles Strickland, is a hapless patsy who seems to have a fetish for black women.  The lead attorney is a Jewish white man, Jack Lawson, a man with what one might call a streak of idealism tempered by a wider streak of cynicism, Rob Anthony Gray plays the junior partner Henry Brown, a black man with no idealism but a marvelously healthy pragmatism (and some righteous indignation.) Alana Matthews plays a young attorney, Susan, recently brought on board to start her career.  Her idealism has a very slow burn, but when it ignites it’s quite hot.  White hot, as it turns out.

As the evidence is presented in the play, it appears that Charles Strickland didn’t rape anyone.  It’s not clear that he didn’t, but it’s less clear that he did.  But the very idea that he was having a relationship with a black woman, made all the worse that she might be a prostitute, is a formula for bad press.  Which the play is full of.  Because it’s bad enough for a white man to have a fetish for black women, but to pay one to submit to one’s carnal ambitions is — well, racism.  Isn’t it?

The play was well staged and very well acted.  A marvelous fun thing to watch, in spite of the content — terse, quick, well timed, intense.  I really enjoyed it.

But I couldn’t quite say that the play was about race or racism.  Then I would tell myself, well yes it has to be.  Because there are some black people who are angry with a white man.  Then I would argue myself out of that and say, well really what we have here is really lies, deceit, and betrayal. Happens all the time, right? How is that racism?

And the betrayal is so outrageous, so patently detrimental to the law firm, the case, the defendant, and the various officers of the court that are involved, that it transcends race. It surely did, and it is quite common that people are that venal and exhibit bad intent and race has nothing to do with it.

So I next asked myself, would this have happened were the participants all of one color?  It certainly could.  Did the situation require the outcome? No.

But that doesn’t change what happened — and the attitudes expressed are so believable, so visibly true even today (see Donald Sterling et al. Or “The Last White Knight“)  — that Mamet’s “Race” is about race after all.  Didn’t need to be, shouldn’t be, but was.

All those beliefs, assumptions, all those passions, and those unmet needs, are not subject to reason. Convinced is as good as truth.