Seattle Fringe Festival 2013, Waiting for Godot and Aisle 9

While I was galavanting to San Francisco and back on business, the Weisenheimer saw two of this year's Seattle Fringe Festival offerings: Waiting for Godot and Aisle 9. He was so impressed that he got tickets for me to join him on Saturday, during the 60 hours I was home between business travel and fun travel. 

We are indeed here in Ashland now, home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, for our ninth year. But I loved kicking off 14 shows in 16 days with Beckett back home. One World Theatre's Waiting for Godot is a kick in the pants, and these guys know what they're doing. They should, as three of them—Shawn Belyea, Jeff Page, and K. Brian Neel—played these parts 23 years ago. A Seattle Weekly review praising that 1990 production griped only that the actors were 20 years too young for the roles, thus providing the inside joke for this revival.

The cast of Waiting for Godot.
Clockwise from upper left: Belyea,
Page, Neel, and Moore.

I think of Godot as our time's mystery play for post-Christian people. Ok, for me. It is dripping with references to scripture, salvation, sacrifice, torture, slavery, faith, redemption and, natch, waiting for someone who never happens. It is elegantly simple, highly structured and ritualized, and practically liturgical (liturgy=work of/for/by the people) as the cast milled around in costume but not necessarily in character before curtain and during the intermission, interacting with the audience, talking about and playing with hats, and generally creating the sense that we had come together to do the Beckett. (Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to do some Beckett...in the name of...um...where two or three are gathered in...aw fuck it. Nothing to be done.)

I loved the clowning, the ramshackle Laurel-and-Hardyesque funny business, the outrageousness of everything that happened, even as nothing happened—twice (in Vivien Mercier's famous assessment). Gogo is aimless, and Belyea played him with a wonderful agelessness, as a lunk of a kid and a sleepy old man. Page's Didi was piercing and frowny, as if there was always something just beyond his grasp. Neel was squirmy disturbing as Lucky, and Moore was perfectly pompous and anguished as Pozzo.

Alas, I didn't see it 23 years ago, but I like to imagine Belyea, Page, and Neel are even funnier and more grotesque than they were then. As Page said in a lovely quote in our playbill, "We don't have to be precious to the Beckett, we have to be precious to the funny." I hope they and Moore do it again in another 20 years. 

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Plays that delve into the conduct of people's broken romantic relationships generally aren't my favorite thing. Turns out, I'm afraid of Virginia Woolf and some of the other stuff Edward Albee has written. We walked out of ACT's Rapture, Blister, Burn at intermission in large part because the relationship stuff between exes was so boring. Radial Theater Project's Aisle 9 is about a couple's relationship at three points in their lives, and I'm glad the Weisenheimer chose it because, even though it might not be my favorite subject matter, I liked everything else about it. Not a surprise, given that Aimée Bruneau was involved, conceiving and directing the project.

This play was written by three different playwrights. K. Brian Neel (yes, Lucky in Godot; talented guy!) wrote a quirky-funny, engaging first act, where our characters Ben and Oona meet in aisle 9 of a grocery store in 1983. Keri Healey wrote the present-day act in which Ben and Oona bump into each other in the same aisle of the same grocery store, shortly after their divorce, and loop through multiple versions of that meeting—real or imagined? And Wayne Rawley closes the play with Ben in the ruins of the condemned grocery store meeting one last time with Oona's spirit and memory, a touching close, with some futuristic Twitter funny business. 

Erin Stewart and Sam Hagen in Aisle 9.
Photo: Truman Buffett.

Bruneau weaves these separate acts together into one whole, using lovely ideas like costumes and the act of dressing and undressing to mark the changing years and relationship roles; shopping cart bumpercars and ballet; and grocery baskets that seem to carry the stuff of years. I'm so curious what the process was. How much discussion did each playwright have before writing, with Bruneau or with each other? Did they read each other's plays? However Bruneau and the playwrights did it, it all gelled.

The performances from Sam Hagen as Ben and Erin Stewart as Oona had everything to do with the play being so enjoyable. Ben and Oona are barely likable characters, but Hagen and Stewart made them vulnerable and human, and made us care. Their performances took what could have been an interesting idea and experiment with some snappy writing and smart direction and turned it into a living, breathing play. 

No arguments with the Rep's Speech and Debate

The Seattle Repertory Theatre production of Stephen Karam's Speech and Debate, directed by Andrea Allen, is a marvelously entertaining presentation of a fantastic, witty script and provides some great opportunities for a trio of superb, young, local actors.

Erin Stewart as Diwata is at the center of the action from the beginning, when she concocts a musical podcast diatribe against the clearly clueless drama teacher who failed to cast her in the lead of her Salem, Oregon high school's production of Once Upon a Mattress. She becomes the leader of a small ring that includes Solomon (Justin Huertas), a cub reporter miffed because the school paper won't let him publsh his story of a sex scandal involving the mayor; and Howie (Trick Danneker), the openly gay, new kid in school who wants to start a gay-straight alliance. That's Stewart in the foreground, with Danneker (at left) and Huertas in the Chris Bennion photo above right.

Diwata is completely annoying; a bossy know-it-all who doesn't yet care what others think of her, and Stewart plays her with great flair and sensitivity and even a hint of vulnerability. Solomon is a total dork who is really pushing that story. "I'm a journalist," he says while sticking his digital recorder in everyone's face. As a journalist, he's not so hard-boiled; he gets out of sticky situations by declaring, "My dad is waiting for me outside." Howie is a little high-strung and nervous, and Danneker nails the character.

In the end, they get around the censors by forming a speech and debate club at the school. They present their story in a Group Interpretive performance ("Group Interp" is what the cool kids call it, Diwata informs us). Their interpretation of the story includes a strip and dance to Diwata's original composition. OK, they're wearing flesh-colored body stockings, but I bet they got the school board's attention.

The three manage to take us through a discussion of teenage angst and sexuality, free speech, politics, and fighting with "the man" without scaring away everyone over 23. In fact, they draw us in with wonderful performances of this funny and touching script.

The show is free of adults save for Amy Thone, who plays both the weary journalism teacher at the school, and the local NPR reporter who does a story on the team and promises Solomon she'll try to get his story into the Oregonian -- which we're sure she'll do if she can just stop plugging the new edition of her book for a minute.

Stewart has earned some measure of appreciation on the Weisenheimer pages for being the author of the incredibly sick Mr. Jibbers, performed at last summer's 14/48 festival and for which Stewart earned a Wisey nomination for best writer. Danneker played the title role in Picasso at the Lapin Agile last year at Balagan Theatre.

Speech and Debate is a great production. We're a little worried that it's a hidden treasure, as there were way too many empty seats in the Rep's Leo K Theatre at Friday night's performance. It runs through Feb. 21, so get out there and see it while you can!

Wisey Wm. Sh. Best Writer: Bill Cain, Equivocation

Well, one way to deal with problem of choosing 'best writer' when you see half a dozen or more plays a year by William Shakespeare is to name the award after him and take him out of the running. Thus handicapped, the slate is:

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE BEST WRITER WISEY

Michael Hollinger, Opus

Bill Cain, Equivocation

George Brant, Elephant's Graveyard

Erin Stewart, Mr. Jibbers

Darian Lindle, Great Expectations!

Deborah Zoe Laufer, End Days

Shel Silverstein, The Best Daddy

Vincent Delaney, Six Months In

We love 10-minute, one-act plays; they're like chewy salty-sweet dark chocolate caramels. Death/Sex at Balagan and 14/48: The World's Quickest Theater Festival serve up gobs of one-act goodness. Especially memorable 14/48 plays in 2009 were Mr. Jibbers by Erin Stewart—disturbing and hilarious; Great Expectations! by Darian Lindle, a tale of trust and betrayal in the high-stakes world of show choir; and Six Months In, because it still takes good writing to make a play with six pregnant men in it that funny. A Death/Sex highlight was The Best Daddy by Shel Silverstein, a rather sick little specimen from a collection of short sketches first produced as An Adult Evening of Shel Silverstein.

Among full-length plays, we especially admired the writing of George Brant for Elephant's Graveyard, at Balagan Theatre. Brant bases his play on a historical incident, which makes it all the more horrifying, but takes artistic license to turn it into an all-too timely and relevant study of American "us and them" tendencies. It's not preachy; it aims for the solar plexus, and every punch lands.

Opus, seen at the Seattle Repertory Theatre, is a beautifully written piece of possession and jealousy, love and friendship, and work and creativity—much of which goes wrong, even as the ensemble is achieving professional triumphs. I found the unsatisfying, anything but neat-and-tidy ending very....satisfying.

I was just sure we had our winner all the way back in early Feburary when we saw End Days by Deborah Zoe Laufer at Seattle Public Theater. This is a very smart play, great Comedy with a capital C. As I wrote in my original Weisenheimer review, "It's got it all: two couples who aren't together but should be, an interloper, dislocation, disguised identities, conflict between generations/ societies, and a reaffirming happy ending. And it's funny as hell."

So imagine my surprise when we saw another play this year good enough to edge it out for best writer: Bill Cain's majestic Equivocation. We saw the Oregon Shakespeare Festival production at OSF and again at the Seattle Rep; the Jenny Graham OSF photo above shows Anthony Heald as Shagspeare and Jonathan Haugen as William Cecil.

Cain's project with Equivocation is very, very big. All the heavy themes of work, religion, citizenship, friendship, and family; integrity, truth, and deception; and the meaning-of-it-all. And to make it good and challenging, it's in a historical setting with only the most famous playwright in the world for a protagonist. The play is intricate without ever getting bogged down; clever without ever being trite; ambitious without ever getting lost. It carries you through a range of emotions pleasant and difficult until all of the characters—and the audience—arrive at the end with compassion. I think this is an important and enjoyable play—and that's not an easy combination to strike.

Don't count End Days out just yet. It's playing at the Harlequin in Olympia, WA. And we've got tickets. Which means by Wisey rules, we can nominate it again for 2010! It's early in the year, but I wouldn't be surprised if it makes the list again. Think of it like the Hall of Fame. It can take a few ballots to get in. Get your tickets, it's playing January 29 through February 20.