Recap: Yale Cab 46

Yale Cabaret Season 46 is now just a memory. So let’s test our memories. Surveying the season, I’ve come up with five top picks in thirteen categories, as I have done for Seasons 45 (’12-’13) and 44 (’11-’12). Picks are listed in order of the show’s appearance, except the last named is my top choice. First up, the category of pre-existing play adapted to the unique opportunities afforded by the ever-intimate Cab space: All of these had something to do with power dynamics and each was a gripping experience: Dutchman, the challenging provocation about erotics and racial profiling by LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka; erotomania as a work ethic between sisters in Jean Genet’s The Maids; He Left Quietly, Yaël Farber’s dramatization of the incarceration of an innocent man sentenced to death in apartheid South Africa; YSD alum Tarell Alvin McCraney’s exploration of the bonds and frictions between brothers as archetypes in The Brothers Size; and . . . Edward Bond’s daunting look at a world bereft of goods and memories, Have I None.

New plays inaugurated at the Cab this season, as usual, were a mixed bag, trying out eclectic forms: We Know Edie La Minx Had a Gun, by Helen Jaksch (*15), Kelly Kerwin (*15), Emily Zemba (*15) is a drag-show drama with music, comedy, and pathos; The Most Beautiful Thing in the World, conceived by Gabriel Levey (*14) and devised with Kate Tarker (*14), is a performance piece that invites the kinds of pitfalls theater is prone to, and brought the audience into the performance; The Defendant, by Elia Monte-Brown (*14), commands the attitudes and language of its teen characters, while walking a difficult line between comedy and unsettling social reality; The Mystery Boy, adapted by Chris Bannow (*14), is a frenetic theatrical romp as weird and vivid as the mind of a pre-teen; and . . . A New Saint for a New World by Ryan Campbell (*15) is a funny dialogue-driven exploration of faith and defiance through the figure of Joan of Arc.

For Sets, the created space wherein everything happens: the runway by way of Warhol for the camp and glam denizens of We Know Edie La Minx Had a Gun, by Christopher Ash (*14); the gritty prison space open to our view to make theater of incarceration for He Left Quietly, by Christopher Thompson (*16); the posters and atmosphere of a bygone theatrical era that lent much visual interest to The Crazy Shepherds of Rebellion, by Reid Thompson (*14); the striking combination of modern and ancient ruin that served as backdrop to graffiti art in We Fight We Die, by Jean Kim (*16); and . . . the improbable rooms within a room, meticulously outfitted and wrought for The Maids, by Kate Noll (*14).

For Lighting, that magical aspect of theater that adds so much atmosphere and affect to our viewing experience: Elizabeth Mak (*16) for the highly effective illuminations of the will-of-the-wisp figures in Crave; Oliver Wason (*14) for the use of light and dark to evoke the uncertain occurrences in The Small Room at the Top of the Stairs; Oliver Wason (*14) for the intricate lighting of actual interior space in The Maids; Oliver Wason (*14) for the different lighting for the different worlds—from domestic earth to prison to another planet—in A New Saint for a New World; and . . . Andrew F. Griffin (*16) for playing with light and dark in an almost musical way in The Brothers Size.

For Costumes, that aspect of the experience that helps us suspend our disbelief, and helps actors convince us of their characters’ reality: Hunter Kaczorowski (*14) for the stylish retro outfits of Radio Hour; Elivia Bovenzi (*14) for a cast of regular people and inspired clowns in Derivatives; Asa Benally (*16) for costuming a cavalcade of different plays in a short compass in The Crazy Shepherds of Rebellion; Fabian Aguilar (*16) for the varied habiliments of Joan of Arc’s ordeals in A New Saint for a New World—including space-age angels; and . . . Grier Coleman (*15) for the pastiche and aplomb, charm and chutzpa of We Know Edie La Minx Had a Gun.

More ethereal even than Lighting is Sound, but a telling aspect of any production in augmenting the action and creating a mental space to support the visual: Joel Abbott (*14) for tying together all the moods and styles of We Know Edie La Minx Had a Gun; Tyler Kieffer (*15) for the use of scored moments in the presentation of The Most Beautiful Thing in the World; Brian Hickey (*15) and Steve Brush (*14) for the razzle-dazzle TV-esque documentary and comedy productions of Derivatives; Tyler Kieffer for letting us eavesdrop so effectively in The Maids; and . . . Tyler Kieffer (*15) and Steve Brush (*14) for the radio soundscape and Foley art of Radio Hour.

For some productions, the visual element doesn’t end with Lighting, Sets, and Costumes, but acquires more presence through the use of projections and other special Visual Effects: Christopher Ash (*14) for the enhancement of the performance space of We Know Edie La Minx Had a Gun; Nick Hussong (*14) for the various charts and logos and floating backdrops in Derivatives; Kristin Ferguson (*15) for the striking and lyrical use of photographic projections in Bound to Burn; Joey Moro (*15) for the creation of different visual moods so important to Joan of Arc’s odyssey in A New Saint for a New World; and . . . Rasean Devonte Johnson (*16) for the graffitied visuals of We Fight We Die, and for adding to the fluid visual experience of The Brothers Size.

Use of Music is another element that, for some productions, is almost like adding another character or a special effect to color the action or complete it: Steve Brush (*14) for the songs and jingles and accompaniment so crucial to the aural world of Radio Hour; Jenny Schmidt (*14) for adding to the tensions and suggestiveness of The Small Room at the Top of the Stairs; Pornchanok Kanchanabanca (*16) for the enlivening musical asides that fleshed out the variety of The Crazy Shepherds of Rebellion; Mike Mills for the percussion that acts as Greek chorus to comment musically on—and even control—the action of The Brothers Size; and . . . Joel Abbott (*14) for the sensitive accompaniment that helped render the range of possible motives and actions in We Know Edie La Minx Had a Gun.

Another aspect of the experience of the play’s physical presence is how it moves—sometimes that means actual choreography and the creation of dance, other times it has to do with how much activity and physical interaction takes place in the show; choice examples of how intricate Movement greatly enhances a play are: the choreography of the drag queen sleuths by Kelly Kerwin (*15) for We Know Edie La Minx Had a Gun; the fluid use of the entire space and the highly expressive interactions directed by Hansol Jung (*14) in Crave; the dance numbers that told stories with movement and mime, choreographed by Rob Chikar (*14) and Alyssa Simmons (*14), in Bound to Burn; the incredibly active interludes bursting out of The Brothers Size, directed by Luke Harlan (*16); and . . . the prop-happy cast, creating sound effects and a variety of characters in different costumes while constantly on stage, of The Mystery Boy, directed by Chris Bannow (*14) and Helen Jaksch (*15).

In terms of Performance, some roles and actors move beyond the traditional “actor”/”actress” dualism, but as such is still the norm of awards shows, I’ll follow suit; for the xy chromosomes: as the one, the only, the much maligned and deeply mourned Edie La Minx: Seth Bodie (*14) in We Know Edie La Minx Had a Gun (*14); as Claire, “the pretty one” that Mistress should have designs on: Mickey Theis (*14) in The Maids; for his show-stopping turn as a Lena Horne impersonator in We Know Edie La Minx Had a Gun, and for acting out the gripping ordeal of Duma Kumalo in He Left Quietly, Ato Blankson-Wood (*15); as Ogun, the god of iron in the form of a paternalistic and truly fraternal car-shop owner in The Brothers Size, Jonathan Majors (*16); and . . . as the alleged brother who brings death to his sister in Have I None, and as the manipulative “sister” in The Maids, Chris Bannow (*14).

And in Performance, those actors with xx chromosomes: as Lula, the mercurial provocation on a subway car in Dutchman, Carly Zien (*14); as the introducer forced to provide the presentation, with improvised patter and invited responses, Kate Tarker (*14) in The Most Beautiful Thing in the World; as the curious, distraught and distrustful wife in The Small Room at the Top of the Stairs, Chasten Harmon (*15); as a Joan of Arc forced to be normal and then again extraordinary, Maura Hooper (*15) in A New Saint for a New World; and . . . as a woman at her wits’ end in a world of deprivations, Ceci Fernandez (*14) in Have I None.

For the task of somehow orchestrating all this diverse input and making decisions that create a coherent theatrical experience—for Directing, in other words: Jessica Holt (*15) for the harrowing world, driven by complex language and meaningful actions and silences, of Have I None; Cole Lewis (*14) for the mounting tensions and effective contrapuntal presentation of The Small Room at the Top of the Stairs; Sara Holdren (*15) for keeping a handle on comedy with cosmic dimensions, and drama with unsettling implications in A New Saint for a New World; Luke Harlan (*16) for the combination of movement, music, intense dialogue and strong characterizations in The Brothers Size; and . . . Dustin Wills (*14) for the challenging presentation and darkly comic tone of drama queens seduced by death behind closed doors but bare windows in The Maids.

Finally, for overall Production, which means having the wherewithal to make this thing happen, as enablers and aider-abetters, the producers and dramaturgs of the shows that impressed me most: We Know Edie La Minx Had a Gun: Emika Abe (*15), producer, and Helen Jaksch (*15), dramaturg; Have I None: Molly Hennighausen (*15), producer, and Hugh Farrell (*15), dramaturg; A New Saint for A New World: Sally Shen, producer, and Helen Jaksch (*15), dramaturg; The Brothers Size: Alyssa Simmons (*14) and Melissa Zimmerman (*14), producers, and Taylor Barfield (*16), dramaturg; and . . . The Maids: Lauren Wainwright (*14), producer, and Tanya Dean (*14), dramaturg.

Some of those mentioned have completed their time at YSD—best of luck in all you do!—and others have a year or two to go. Thanks to all for their dedication, talent, and spirited engagement with the special performance space that is the Yale Cabaret. And to this year's departing team, Whitney Dibo, Lauren Dubowski, Kelly Kerwin, and Shane Hudson, many thanks for a lively season.

Coming soon: a preview of the Yale Summer Cabaret, with Artistic Directors Jessica Holt and Luke Harlan, and Managing Director Gretchen Wright.

See you next year, at the Cab!--with Artistic Directors Hugh Farrell, Tyler Kieffer, Will Rucker, and Managing Director Molly Hennighausen.

A Room of One's Husband's Own

Carole Fréchette’s The Small Room at the Top of the Stairs, directed by Cole Lewis and currently playing at the Yale Cabaret, plays upon not only the audience’s likening the play’s situation to the tale of Bluebeard but upon its characters doing so as well. While having free reign of a thirty-plus room mansion, Grace (Chasten Harmon) knows that her rich husband’s request that she never enter the little room up the hidden stairs recalls the story of Bluebeard. Her husband, Henry (Ryan Campbell), knows this as well and is disposed to joke about it, while remaining adamant about forbidding her entry to that one little room. In other words, Fréchette asks us to consider that, just because something is like something we read, that doesn’t mean it’s not really happening. But what is really happening? That may not be so easy to determine. Our entry into this world is through Grace, who Lewis and set designer Adrian Martinez Frausto place in the center of the playing space on a raised platform, as she acts out for us her temptation and her misgivings. Along each side of this platform are long banquet tables beneath chandeliers, very reminiscent of a kind of “Beauty and the Beast” set, so that we may expect some dark secret or special charm or horrible truth lurking in that little room (staged as a trapdoor in the ceiling).

At the head and foot of each banquet table, at which the audience members sit, are placed the other principals of the play. At one end sits Grace’s sister Anne (Elia Monte-Brown), a rather self-righteous worker against the ills of the world who belittles Grace’s materialistic marriage; at the other end sits Henry. On the other table, Jenny (Mariko Parker), Henry’s faithful housemaid sits, and, at the other end, Joyce (Elivia Bovenzi), mother of Anne and Grace, who is beside herself with delight at Grace’s marriage. Thus we have a very interesting and suggestive game of diagonals crossing at the heart of the space where Grace goes through her dark nights of the soul.

In Grace’s mind play conversations with Joyce, telling her to obey Henry and to not look a gift horse in the mouth, much less into a secret chamber; and with Anne, who mainly berates her for becoming yet another possession of a man she barely knows. Indeed, Henry is a rather unknowable character, the kind of symbol of masculinity that one minute showers her with kisses and flowers and the next stamps his foot and raises his voice (or brandishes an ax) when she gives too much attention to that one room.

The situation of the play is artfully staged in this production, and the mounting tension works well as each entry by Grace into the forbidden room becomes more harrowing, with effective use of darkness, sound effects, music, and dirt—the latter leaving a physical trace of Grace’s every trespass. What does she find in the room? The answer to that question is not so easy to give and that’s what keeps our interest—that, and what Henry will do when he finds out. For though Grace describes her experiences in the room, we don’t see any of what she claims to find. The fact that one of the rooms of the house is decorated “Vienna, 1900,” is a wry comment on the kinds of Freudian spaces we might expect Grace to be investigating.

So, yes, there is a psychological dimension to all this—what drives someone to do the one thing some patriarchal figure or other forbids. We can think of Eve as the figure for such trespass, but there’s also the fact that those “voices” of mother and sister are the very crutches apt to undermine that “cleaving to one’s partner” that marriage expects. In other words, Grace doesn’t only disobey Henry, she also betrays him by seeking help from others outside the marriage—this includes, astonishingly, the housekeeper, who of course betrays her to the Master (perhaps Grace needs to see next week’s Cab show The Maids to have a better feel for what she might expect from her maid when it comes to loyalty).

Questions—apt enough for a Valentine’s Day weekend show—about trust in relationships and the moral ambiguity of “one’s own space” is certainly sounded in all this (comparable matters like passwords to email and other accounts might flit through the audience’s mind at such moments, to say nothing of ‘girl’s’ or ‘guy’s’ nights out), but Fréchette has other things in mind that might be said to have more to do with Jane Eyre than with Bluebeard or The Beast and his Beauty. The “madwoman in the attic” of Rochester’s house was the figure that brought the house down, with, in Jean Rhys’ hands, the implication of colonial misdeeds in the backstory. The misdeeds figured in the attic of Fréchette’s house have much to do with Anne’s critique of her sister’s lifestyle, so that Henry, however blameless he is in the Bluebeard scenario, will never be blameless in Anne’s view of the world we live in.

The idea that Grace is not blameless either is figured largely by the somewhat cliché manner with which she courts Jenny, giving her jewelry and paying compliments about her skin. In fact, the Jenny subplot (if it can be called that) relies heavily on a Victorian sense of mistress-master-and-maid, while Joyce is a caricature of a social-climbing mother living vicariously through her daughter. Which is a way of saying that three of the four figures surrounding Grace’s central drama of conscience are very minor and barely articulated.

The real struggle is between Anne and Grace, and Elia Monte-Brown gives Anne a natural, easy-going moral superiority that only occasionally becomes strident and holier-than-thou; as Grace, Chasten Harmon delves deep to pull up the kind of cathartic power that convinces us her character’s mental and spiritual health is at stake. Center stage in this show is a woman wrestling with her demons and Harmon delivers—would that the playwright had delved a bit deeper to make those demons more distinctive.

The Small Room at the Top of the Stairs By Carole Fréchette Directed by Cole Lewis

Composer/Musician: Jenny Schmidt; Stage Manager: Avery Trunko; Dramaturg: Dana Tanner-Kennedy; Producer: Charles Felix; Set: Adrian Martinez Frausto; Costumes: KJ Kim; Lights: Oliver Wason; Technical Director: Lee O’Reilly

Yale Cabaret February 13-15, 2014

A Doubter In Spite of Myself

Dario Fo is a Nobel-winning dramatist, famed for skewering the powers that be, catching the absurd contradictions that expose the willful sham of a powerful few operating against the good of the many. Accidental Death of an Anarchist, now playing at the Yale Rep, has been translated and adapted and performed all over the world, as its basic situation is germane to the non-transparent operations of any state in its often arbitrary and pernicious impositions, at times provoking violence and death. And even when the state isn’t the killer outright, its agents often are, for reasons of their own. In Fo’s play, based on a real event that took place in 1969 in Milan, a worker, believed to be an anarchist and accused of a political terrorist act (bombing a train station) was held for questioning and fell to his death from the window of the police station. The outcry about such methods of interrogation and torture that might have been involved became even greater when it became clear that the deceased was innocent of the crime. Not exactly the stuff of slapstick, you might assume, but that’s where you’d be wrong. Fo’s play intrudes into the very same police station, a few floors below and a little while after the death, a “Maniac” who, in his mania for playing professional roles, decides to adopt the disguise of a visiting judge whose task is to find out if the police were culpable in the anarchist’s death. Think Groucho Marx in any of his preposterous masquerades and you’ve got the tone of the proceedings—with “here come da judge” jive laid on for good measure.

Christopher Bayes, who directs this slaphappy farce, and Steven Epp, who plays the Maniac, are masters of stage comedy in all its forms. Their grasp of commedia dell’arte is fertile and fun, and that permits the kind of playful staging that Anarchist depends upon. For there isn’t much happening beyond the gags—a first act that stretches out the Maniac’s shenanigans from his interrogation by the splenetic Bertozzo (Jesse J. Perez) to his duping of inspector Pissani (Allen Gilmore) and the Superintendent (Liam Craig), going so far as inspiring a heartfelt rendition of the Anarchist’s Song; and a second act that continues with the interrogation of the interrogators, abetted, eventually, by a exposé-seeking journalist, Feletti (Molly Bernard), ending, as it were, with a hung jury. We begin with: Did the anarchist jump or was he pushed? We end with: If a bomb goes off in the police station, who will be the victims?

Bayes and Epp, with their adapter Gavin Richards (from a translation by Gillian Hanna), have the imaginative wherewithal to live up to the play’s requisite shift of time and place to wherever it happens to be played. The play's amorphous quality lets it jab at whatever matters might be unsettling the body politic wherever. It’s not that the play gets moved to New Haven, exactly, but any character at any time might decide to reference something as close to home as they choose. And with that bombing in Boston still in everyone’s mind, as well as the recent sad and suspicious death of a Yale professor in the lock-up of the New Haven police, to say nothing of a lock-down of Yale’s campus and downtown New Haven last month, Accidental Death is, in a sense, happening where we live. We want the police to protect us from threat but do we want to sanction any means necessary? And who will protect us from the police when their ends and ours aren’t exactly simpatico?

That’s where the bite of Fo’s play comes from. It’s aimed at an audience that knows, at some level, it is complicit with whatever is done in the name of “society,” so it wants a state with a human face, liberal and benign, but, like the attack dog we’ve trained to attack and which lacks our finely tuned nuance about who’s “ok” and who’s not, the state might not really be our best friend. “The mere fact that he jumped was clear admission of his guilt,” of course. Fo goes further, but then, his play was written for a country that actually had fascism and has actual anarchists (come back, Sacco and Vanzetti!). Extremes of right and left, you see, help a play such as this, rather than that creeping moderate muddle that tends to swallow U.S. politics, radio demagogues notwithstanding.

Which is all by way of saying that, while I was enthralled as ever with the Rep’s stagecraft, I was somewhat less than tickled pinko by the proceedings. Kate Noll’s scenic design is wonderfully cluttered and cheerily lit by Oliver Wason, with Michael F. Bergmann’s projections creating not only different rooms but also collaged treatments when images seem appropriate—such as anarchists marching, slogans, clouds. The costumes by Elivia Bovenzi tell us right away we’re in the country of the mad with couture that no one in his right mind would wear—and I’m talking about the two inspectors. The Maniac’s costume is even loonier and if he’s not wearing a squirting boutonniere that must be because it was confiscated.

And then there’s the added enjoyment of having the accompanying musicians—Aaron Halva and Nathan A. Roberts—onstage and dressed as cops. One of my earliest laughs was when Roberts, as a cop, is asked to perform some task but has to demur because “I’ve got to play this musical cue.” The breakaway asides are the best part of the play because, though scripted, they feel fresh. And everyone has some bits that work—such as Liam Craig’s limp finger questioning of Molly Bernard’s aggressively leg-crossing reporter, in the second act (which is better than the first, so don’t leap from the window midway), and Eugene Ma’s Constables should get a permanent gig in some comedy troupe somewhere.

The problem? From the start, the repartee lacks tee-hee—“your grammar’s a bit retarded” earns the riposte “did you call my grandma retarded?” But that’s only logistical—and someone may find that side-splitting, especially if delivered, as every second of the play is, with relentless zaniness. It might be easiest to say it thus: if everything’s funny, nothing is. Every line’s a gag, a throwaway, nothing is for real. Satire would make us believe in the police station before it skewered it, but that’s impossible here. Farce—based on characters—would let us sense the absurd contradictions as something a character is blind to but which we laugh insanely to see exposed, but here the characters aren’t even blind to the fact that they’re in a farce, as Bertozzo tells us in his opening speech. In commedia dell’arte—as perpetrated by Bayes and Epp in A Servant of Two Masters and A Doctor In Spite of Himself—the only target is human stupidity, cupidity and the ever-present possibility of a sight-gag or a pun or a fleeting reference to the gags of yesteryear. And you can bet your bippy that such is enough when the point is simply the power of comedy, but when your point is . . . . the state is corrupt but comedy will save us? The agents of the state may be brutal, but let's laugh about it anyway? We’re all screwed and the laugh’s on us? The latter seems the strongest takeaway of this production, once Epp/Maniac (hard to tell them apart) starts pontificating about Bush/Cheney, then Romney, with understandable impatience but not exactly witty sallies. At that point, button-holed, we’d really rather he had that squirting boutonniere.

The critics in the audience get a shout-out at one point, shortly before Gilmore, as Pissani, launches into a stand-up comedy routine that the middle-aged among us will find amusing. And maybe that’s part of the problem—step aside and let some youngsters have a chance! I get more laughs about our stupid century reading The Onion. But I’m starting to sound like a ponderous commentator (imagine the insufferable Alan Alda character in Crimes and Misdemeanors: “if it bends it’s funny, if it breaks…”) and it might be better to put my dissatisfaction in the terms of the text: Sometimes the vehicle (varooom) and the tenor (laaaaaaaa!) work (va-laaaaaaa-room!) and sometimes not so well (mimes vehicle running over tenor).

Accidental Death of an Anarchist By Dario Fo Adapted by Gavin Richards, from a translation by Gillian Hanna Directed by Christopher Bayes

Music Director: Aaron Halva; Composers: Aaron Halva and Nathan A. Roberts; Scenic Designer: Kate Noll; Costume Designer: Elivia Bovenzi; Lighting Designer: Oliver Wason; Projection Designer: Michael F. Bergmann; Sound Designers: Nathan A. Roberts, Charles Coes; Vocal Coach: Walton Wilson; Production Dramaturg: Samantha Lazar; Casting Director: Tara Rubin; Stage Manager: Carolynn Richer

Photographs by Joan Marcus, courtesy of Yale Repertory Theatre

Yale Repertory Theatre November 30-December 21, 2013