Back Roads

“Back Roads” is the initial production of a new program through the UCD theater and dance department, called “Solo Explorations,” which fuses the interplay of actors’ bodies with their concept of contemporary issues.

This premiere production features two works by graduating MFA acting candidates, Victor Toman and Sara Zimmerman.

Toman’s “El Camino del Diablo” was inspired by his fascination for folkloric devil figurines from Mexico and two books about the current immigration situation between this country and Mexico. Blending acting, singing, guitar playing, and dance, Toman portrays four parts of the story of pollos (a derrogatory term for an undocumented immigrant) transported through the Sonoran Desert, with the idea to deliver them to farmers who had arranged for cheap labor.

This was a tour de force for Toman, who seamlessly transforms himself from innocent pollo to Don Pedro, the one who gathers and sends the workers to the United States, to the Minute Man guarding the border, to the devil figure, in red mask and jacket, playing the guitar and dancing.

Each character, helped by wonderful masks for all but the pollo, are wonderfully fleshed out and Toman is able to present a full picture of what drives each of these men, from the evil Don Pedro and his greed, to the innocent pollo who hopes to earn a bit of money so he can build his wife a home with a concrete floor, to the Minute Man who believes he is protecting his country from evil invaders.

I would have liked the volume on the guitar (excellent work on sound by Bryan Pham) to be just a tad lower...no need for ear-splitting volumes in a small house. It was also unfortunate that the entire final speech by the Minute Man was completely drowned out by the too-loud music, but despite that, Toman has created an excellent short theater piece.

Following “El Camino del Diablo,” the audience was led out of the Wright Building’s Arena Theater, across a courtyard, following a circuitous route marked by chalk arrows, and to another building, where an assortment of chairs which looked like they came from a storage closet somewhere was set up and the air was filled with the smell of freshly popped popcorn (which filled an enormous bowl from which Zimmerman ate during the performance).

We, as audience, may have a certain idea of what “theater” is and yet it is up to the artist to decide for him or herself how to interpret creative ideas. We are often asked to set aside our preconceived notions and just go with the flow. This is certainly the proper mental attitude for Sara Zimmerman’s “Circuitous Route,” a 30 minute piece which she describes as “a sonorous and physical exploration of speech and the unspoken: a winding and poetic piece of physical theater that pulls patrons inside worlds of hesitation and restraint.”

In the middle of her performance, a small child in the audience asked “what’s she doing?” and it was a good question.

With background of sounds from choral oooos, kazoos, tapping noise and other noisemakers, Zimmerman moved from one impossible body position to another, while speaking in stop-start repetitive sentences. At one point I had the mental image of being inside someone’s brain and watching neurons firing.

It was one of those once in a lifetime experiences you had to see to try to understand.

I’m not sure that Zimmerman’s idea of theater exactly meshes with my own, but whatever it was that she did showed a range of pretty amazing talent.

Back Roads will have two more performances. There is no admission charge and performance time is 7 p.m., rather than the usual 8 p.m.

Pajama Game

Every community theater company should have a comedienne like Lauren Miller, who can be seen currently as Gladys, the secretary, in the Davis Musical Theatre Company production of 'The Pajama Game.'

It has been a delight to watch her grow and develop in the various roles she has played during the past few years. For those who've had the fortune to see Gwyneth Bruch on stage, Miller reminds me of a blonde Bruch.

'Pajama Game' - music and lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross; book by George Abbott and Richard Bissell - is a dated bit of fluff about the workers in the Sleep Tite pajama factory, and their struggle to get a 7-1/2-cents-per-hour raise in pay. (The audience tittered when calculations showed that in a year's time, that would come to $852.74, which would buy a year's supply of gasoline!)

Joshua Smith plays Sid Sorokin, the new factory superintendent, who falls in love with Babe Williams (Amber Moore), the leader of the grievance committee.

But of course: Where else would we find the conflict plot line?

Smith and Moore are quite good. Smith has a nice voice and a pleasant manner. Moore's Babe lacks a bit of fire in her factory confrontations with Sid, but her voice is wonderful. Her melancholy 'Hey There' is like taking a bath in a tub of hot fudge: rich and warm, and something you wish would go on and on.

Their duet, 'There Once Was a Man,' is great fun.

Hines ('Hinzie') is the time-keeper charged with adhering to procedural order and increasing productivity. It's a strong role that requires someone who can be larger than life. Herb K. Schultz does not fit the bill. He seems pleasant - although the character actually is more of a curmudgeon - and he can carry a tune, but director Steve Isaacson can't get any energy out of him.

Hinzie's duet with Mabel (Dannette Vassar), the 'mother hen' of the factory and Sid's secretary, should be a show-stopper, but 'I'll Never Be Jealous Again' just kind of lies on the stage floor, while the audience gives polite applause.

Vassar, on the other hand, plays her role to the hilt. She has been getting meatier roles in recent productions, and definitely is coming into her own as an actress.

Dustin White plays Mr. Hasler, a CEO full of bluff and bluster ... and with a good sense of double-entry bookkeeping.

John Ewing is 'Prez,' the head of the union, who chases after anything in skirts. Michael McElroy is Max, one of the factory's salesmen.

Kirs Farhood and Jabriel Shelton join Lauren Miller in the 'Steam Heat' number. They're dressed all in black, with red accents: gloves, socks and hat band, with a red tie for Shelton.

The number itself is outstanding, and choreographer Darryl Strohl is careful to give it the Bob Fosse looks that made the song famous.

Strohl also created an interesting look for the 'Hernando's Hideaway' number, with dark figures against a bright orange-red backdrop. And his choreography is fun during the factory picnic number, 'Once a Year Day.'

A couple other actors in small roles are worth mentioning, starting with McKinley Carlisle, as Poopsie. Carlisle is cute as a button, and sparkles whenever she's on stage. Also pay attention to Chris Peterson, as Charlie. He has little to do, but he's one of those people who just gets 'noticed' when on stage.

Unfortunately, this 'Pajama Game' is less than the sum of its parts. Although individual performances are quite good, the show lacks pizzazz. It's a pleasant way to pass a few hours, but you won't leave the theater on a high, recalling how terrific the show is.

The DMTC cast and crew always work hard, and the energy should have appeared on stage, but - except for a moment, here and there - it didn't.

The music and vocal direction are by Erik Daniells, and it's fun to hear all those old songs again.

And if costume designer Jean Henderson wants to go into the pajama-making business, she'd have a ready clientele. The pajamas for the finale are just great.

I wanted a pair myself.

Mamma Mia

Mamma mia, here I go again
My my, how can I resist you?
When I learned that California Musical Theater was bringing back "Mamma Mia" for the third time in five years, I wondered why. When I saw the line up to get into the Community Center and learned that the show is all but sold out, I guessed why.
When I sat through the show again, I knew why. Yeah, it’s the same old show we saw a couple of years ago, but it’s a darn entertaining one–and any musical that can get an entire audience on its feet clapping and waving their arms in the air is worth seeing again and again. (In fact, the man sitting next to me, who looked like he was in his 70s, said he had already seen it 14 times!)
Though the Swedish singing group ABBA, which burst onto the scene when its song ‘Waterloo" won the Eurovision Song Contest in England in 1974, was "bigger than the Beatles" in Australia when it did its first World tour in 1977, it only had one song ("Dancing Queen") which made it to the top of the charts in the United States. Though big stars everywhere else, the group enjoyed only modest success in this country until the release of its album "ABBA Gold" (after the group had broken up) in the 1990s, when everyone realized that they actually knew most of the songs–they just hadn’t appreciated them before!
In 1999 Catherine Johnson decided to take 22 of the best known ABBA songs (written by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus) and weave a story around the lyrics. "Mamma Mia" was born.
In March of 2002, "Mama Mia" became the highest grossing show in North America, taking $3.7 million in a single week. The original cast recording is consistently in the Top 20 of the Billboard Catalog Charts, selling more than 4,000 copies a week in the U.S. alone. It is celebrating six sold-out years at the Winter Garden Theater on Broadway and is currently playing record-breaking engagements in Las Vegas and on National Tour in the United States. The original West End production has played more than 3,500 performances and an international tour has played in more than 30 foreign cities. A feature film based on the stage show will be released in July 2008.
The show centers on Donna Sheridan (played by understudy Annie Edgerton on opening night), a single mother raising her daughter Sophie (Rose Sezniak) in a small hotel on "an idyllic Greek island."
Twenty-year old Sophie has decided to marry Sky (Geoffrey Hemingway) and wants her father to give her away. The only problem is–nobody (including Donna) knows who Sophie’s father is. Unbeknownst to her mother, Sophie sends invitations to the three men with whom Donna had a romantic liaison twenty-one years before and the girl hopes to figure out which of them is her real father before the wedding takes place.
Mayhem and merriment ensue.
You don't need a lot of plot in this musical. The songs, which will have the most reluctant toe tapping, and the dazzling choreography by Anthony Van Laast (never let it be said that one cannot tap dance while wearing swim fins) provide all that's necessary for a not to be missed night of theater.
There's not a weak performance in the group. Particularly outstanding are Donna's former singing partners, Tanya (Michelle Elizabeth Dawson) and Rosie (Kittra Wynn Coomer), delightful comediennes. It's hard to know which is funnier--watching the tall, distinguished, somewhat bored Tanya take a pratfall or the more robust Rosie trying to fit into her old costume.
Sophie's possible fathers are also a wonderful set of performers. Michael Aaron Lindner was Harry Bright (whose ability--or desire--to father any child we question immediately),Martin Kildare was the Aussie adventurer Bill Austin, and John Hemphill was Sam Carmichael, Donna’s true love, who left her 20 years ago to return to the states to marry his fiancée.
Laast’s choreography is a delight, incorporating things like having heads pop over a wall to join in when one character is supposedly singing a song alone, or, with assistance from lighting designer Howard Harrison, have the customers in the taverna join in on a chorus when they are bathed in light, but then return to the shadows for the rest of the song.
Much of the fun in this show comes from trying to decide which of the ABBA songs (printed in alphabetical, not chronological order in the program) is going to pop up next. The cast is also taking donations for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and will be collecting donations in the lobby after the show, offering several one-of-a-kind souvenirs and the opportunity to be photographed with two of the costumed stars of the show.
Do I recommend this show? Of course I do, I do, I do, I do, I do.

Fool for Love

Sam Shepard wrote his “Fool for Love” following the break-up with his wife in order to be with Jessica Lange. He described the play as “the outcome of all this tumultuous feeling I've been going through this past year. It's a very emotional play and in some ways embarrassing for me to witness but somehow necessary at the same time.”

Capital Stage is currently presenting “Fool for Love,” under the direction of Janis Stevens. The 75 minute play is presented without intermission and is heavy on dialog and not much on plot, but “plot” is not the intent of playwright Shepard.

While the play does not deal with marital infidelity, it is an intensely powerful, sensual, emotional roller coaster detailing the obsessive relationship between two people, Eddie (Jonathan Rhys Williams) and May (Williams' real-life wife, Stephanie Gularte) in a seedy motel somewhere in the Mojave desert, where May has been hiding out ever since Eddie's relationship with someone she refers to as “The Countess.” This is kind of motel where you keep glasses in the bathroom because there is no kitchen, and where the blinds on the window hang at a rakish angle, and nobody seems to care.

The action starts in silence, three people on the stage—Eddie and May, and the old man (Loren Taylor), sitting in semi-darkness watching the dialog unfold.

We don't need to feel the heat to know that it is hot. May looks completely drained, physically and emotionally. Eddie, desperate, asks May if he should leave, even though he has just driven more than 2,000 just to see her.

“I missed you. I did. I missed you more than anything I ever missed in my whole life. I just kept thinkin' about you the whole time I was driving. Kept seeing you. Sometimes just a part of you.”

The ambivalent nature of their relationship is established very early, as Eddie leaves, then comes back only to have May grab him and give him a passionate kiss.

It is very clear that these are two people who can't live together and can't live without each other.

Eddie has grand plans—He's going to settle down. He's going to move a trailer, build a corral in which to keeep horses, have a big vegetable garden and some chickens.

“I hate chickens! I hate horses!...You keep coming up with this lame country dream life with chickens and vegetables and I can't stand any of it...”

Gularte and Williams are perfect in their roles. It is perhaps their real-life marriage which makes the physical relationship between the two sizzle with such passion.

As the action plays out, the Old Man sits, watching, a drink in hand. We learn soon that he is the voice in Eddie's head and in his conversations with Eddie, we learn what impact his relationship with both Eddie and with May has had on each of them, and on their on-again-off-again relationship with each other.

Taylor makes a perfect grizzled old codger, for whom life was never easy, and who took his anger out on those around him.

A fourth member of the cast, David Campfield, plays Martin, May's date, who unwittingly arrives at the height of tension between May and Eddie. Campfield has the dazed look of a deer caught in the headlights as he tries to assess what exactly is going on between May and Eddie. He was so perfect in the role that he seemed to have difficulty shaking it at the final bow.

Special notice should be given of the lighting design of Ron Madonia and sound design of Brad Thompson who made things happening outside the motel amazingly realistic.

Director Stevens deserves credit for her ability to direct the verbal battle between Eddie and May with the same care as one would direct the arias of an opera.

“Fool for Love” is a gritty story that has no resolution because we know that no matter what they do, Eddie and May will always be connected to each other, whether they want to be or not.

Pamela Trokanski Dance Theatre Spring Concert

In the fall of 2005, the Pamela Trokanski Dance Theater presented its “Ephemera” as a work in progress, part of a larger evening of selections. For its spring concert. The PTDT is presenting “Ephemera” as a complete work, approximately 75 minutes without an intermission.


“Ephemera” focuses on the swift passage of time, that our lives seem too short, and that the most important things are often the intangibles. (After 23 years of dance in Davis, one wonders if Trokanski is feeling the swift passage of time herself, and the intangibles which make up the high points of her life.)


The work is based on Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s “The Little Prince,” one section flowing seamlessly into another with no dividing line, save for some voice-over with quotes from Saint-Exupéry which focus on the discussion between the Little Prince and the Fox about friendships, “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."


The eclectic selection of music is by artists including Lyle Lovett, John Prine, Kate Bush, Laurie Anderson, and others, and is danced by company members Caitlin Barale, Nicole Bell, Bekah Shepard, Nicole Smith, and Pamela Trokanski, with additional guest dancers Maj Hapworth, Allegra Silberstein, Alex Sprague, and Catherine Schwedler.


The opening number, to a tune by Laurie Anderson showed that “dance” is more than body movement, as the hand movements, done with the dancers' backs to the audience, were mechanically precise and a beautiful visual.


A particularly strong section was set to “The Grave” by Don McClean [sic] (“The grave that they dug him had flowers / Gathered from hillsides in bright summer colors”), danced by Bell, Shepard and Smith, depicting the agony of the death of a young soldier (“I know I'm not brave...the earth is my grave...”)


Trokanski has a solo to a Lyle Lovett song which is a testament to the strength of the dancer, undiminished by time.


My favorite part of the 2005 work in progress remains my favorite part of the finished product, though the choreography has changed in the intervening years. It is “Old Friends,” by Simon and Garfunkel, in this production danced by Hapworth and Silberstein as the old friends, with Sprague and Schwedler as the young friends they once were. It is a beautiful salute to lasting friendship and how years melt away when old friends recalls their younger days.


“Death Cab for Cutie,” in which we are told that “love is watching someone die” segues into a song about Trains by Hank Lawson, with the dancers, in Pilobolus-like fashion, becoming a vehicle and move off stage, while Hapworth, Silberstein, Sprague and Schwedler move back and forth across the back of the stage, as trains, dropping off another car each time.


The entire troup reassembles for the finale section, to music by Lyle Lovett, closing off a delightful and often moving performance.


Ephemera: anything short-lived or transitory, lasting but a day. This production lasts but three days, so dance enthusiasts should get to the Pamela Trokanski Performing Arts Center before it disappears completely.

Brigadoon

Bagpiper Elizabeth Shull greeted patrons arriving at the Woodland Opera House, playing “Scotland the Brave,” and setting the stage for the trip back to 18^th century Scotland before anyone even entered the theater.

The Lerner & Loewe classic, “Brigadoon,” directed by Chesley award winner Bob Cooner, opened for a five-week run and, despite a disruptive toddler running back and forth, talking, and crying in the balcony at Sunday's matinee performance, the production was, in most areas, a success.

Brigadoon is the story of two disgruntled Americans lost in the Scottish highlands, who discover a strange village, learn of its miracle and discover the power of love.

Scott Reese (as Tommy Albright) and Michael Lie Murphy (as Jeff Douglas) are a bit stiff on stage, especially early in the show, but Reese has a wonderful voice and does justice to the role of the young man searching for meaning in his life.

Gina Marchitiello, as Fiona MacLaren, however, is absolutely marvelous as the sister of bride-to-be Jean (Laura Franklin), and a woman who is still “waiting for her dearie” and wondering if she will ever find love. Marchitiello has a beautiful, strong voice and brings a yearning wistfulness to her character. She alone is worth the price of admission.

The opening choral number, beautifully sung, was sung mostly in the dark. If this was by design, it was not a good one. Too many of the townsfolk who only have a brief moment for solo lines were unable to be seen at all. One hopes it was a lighting error at this performance.

As Tommy and Jeff try to figure out what sort of town they have stumbled upon, they meet many of the townsfolk, including Meg Brockie (Marcy Goodnow), a lusty, boisterous lass who quickly gloms onto Jeff and drags him off to her shack where, presumably, some hanky panky eventually takes place. Goodnow gives the role all the gusto that it requires and is great fun to watch in action.

Archie Beaton (Mark Fejta) is the town tailor whose son Harry (Justin Kelley) is in love with Jean and angry about her upcoming marriage to Charlie Dalrymple (Tim Dunlap). Kelley is dark and brooding and dances a mean sword dance, along with Kevin Little, Jon Shaffer and Shane Wright.

Dunlap is a likable Charlie, with a good voice and good chemistry with his bride-to-be, Jean. Laura Franklin is a wonderful dancer, and a less wonderful actress, but the role of Jean requires more dancing than acting, so it works well for her. Her wedding ballet was beautiful.

Jeff Nauer is Andrew MacLaren, father of Jean and Fiona who displays a strong voice in the chase scene, where all the men of the town chase after Harry, who has decided to leave Brigadoon, bringing an end to “the miracle.” (Sadly, the role of Angus is not listed in the program and so I don't know who sang that role, but he had a wonderful voice.)

(Traditionally, there is a funeral scene following Harry's death, and I assumed the bagpiper would be joining the group on stage, but the funeral procession was dropped in this production.)

Jim Lane is just wonderful as the wise Mr. Lundie, the man who holds the secret of “the miracle” (and check those genuine muttonchops!)

This is such a good looking production (scenic design by Jeff Kean) and such care is taken with the Scottish accents, and the sword dance that it is appalling that no consideration whatsoever was taken to make the costumes authentic. As a person of Scottish descent, I know that the plaid of a tartan indicates the clan to which a person belongs. To see the three MacLarens, for example, standing side by side, each wearing vastly different tartans was jarring and it was even more jarring during the parade of the clans at the start of Act 2, when there was no cohesiveness whatsoever. There are even mis-matched tartans, one design at the top of a dress, another for the skirt. Laurie Everly Klassen is too good a designer to make such an egregious error.

Music for this production is provided by pianists Sam Schieber and Chris Schlagel, who are so good one does not notice the lack of a full orchestra.

This is a production with some problems, but the good far outweighs the bad and should provide an entertaining couple of hours for anybody who comes to see it. (Please leave your small children at home!)

Laughter on the 23rd Floor

It is a sad fact that over the years I have been reviewing for The Davis Enterprise, I have seen that a mediocre musical will consistently get a bigger audience than a first rate play. I have often left a half-full theater thinking what a shame it is that people in this area just don't seem to come out for straight plays any more, and how sad that they don't realize what they are missing.

A case in point is Davis Musical Theater Company's new comedy series, which opened with one of Neil Simon's funnier plays, “Laughter on the 23^rd Floor.”

“Laughter” is Simon's homage to the time he spent working on “Your Show of Shows,” the old Sid Caesar weekly variety show, in the waning days of the golden era of television variety shows, and in the middle of the McCarthy era, when the networks were afraid of topical humor and were “dumbing down” shows to be more “family friendly.” The writing staff included some of the greats in comedy – Caesar himself, of course, Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, and Larry Gelbart, among others. (Reiner would go on to create his own homage to this period, in the form of “The Dick Van Dyke Show”)

Director Michael McElroy has hit a triple (not quite a home run, but close) on his first directing effort with a fast-paced, funny, well acted production that features a top notch cast.

Joshua Smith is Lucas, the Neil Simon character, who acts as both the narrator, introducing each writer in turn as he or she enters the room, and is also a participant in the action. Smith's Lucas is a fresh-faced, wide-eyed, innocent looking young man who is somewhat in awe of the company in which he finds himself on this high powered writing team. Sadly, actor Smith's lines aren't always distinct enough, so that you miss pieces of dialog or narration here and there, but overall he turns in a believable performance.

The group is writing for “The Max Prince
Show,” and Kevin Caravalho turns in an inspired, frenetic performance as Max, a comic genius whose insecurities cause him to throw up before each show, who pops pills and drinks too much. He rants and raves, throws the telephone, and punches holes in the wall, but he is intensely loyal to his writing staff and is in constant battle with the network to keep the show on the air. Caravalho always gives 110% and this role is no exception.

While this is a generally above-average cast, there are some, like Caravalho, who stand out. Paul Fearn as the head writer, Val, a Russian-Jewish immigrant, who is taking elocution lessons so that he can pronounce curse words properly, is another who lights up the stage when he makes his entrance, transforming “OK” performances into something electric. Val's exit line, at the end of the show, is one of my favorites.

Jeff Labowitch plays the hypochondriac Ira (based on Woody Allen), who arrives late each day and who seems to suffer from the malady du jour, everything from a heart attack to a brain tumor, and dreams of having a virus named after him.

Darryl Strohl is Milt, the womanizer who revels in his flashy dress. It's hard to know which is the more notable—his all white suit, or his red plaid pants (kudos to costume designer Jean Henderson).

Clocky McDowell is the chain-smoking Brian, who is always just about to make it big in Hollywood, once he writes that perfect script. His “shoe fight” with Ira was a very funny moment.

Lauren Miller is Karen, the lone woman on the writing team, who has been around so long she really is “one of the guys” (think RoseMarie in the Dick Van Dyke Show). Kris Farhood is Helen, Max's long-suffering secretary.

Kenny (Brennen Cull) is the peacemaker, the one who seems to be the solid rock of the group, constantly trying to talk sense into the other writers. By Act 2, when it becomes obvious that the show is on the way out, Kenny remarks, poignantly, “Maybe we'll never have this much fun again in our entire lives.”

Kenny was probably right, but Simon made sure that the fun didn't die entirely by recreating it in “Laughter on the 23^rd Floor,” which will give the audience a taste of what it was like to turn out one of the best variety shows in the history of television.

Fortunately, Davis Musical Theater Company has done well by the script. Treat yourself to something other than a musical and revel in the humor of a bygone day—and remember what television was like when the likes of Sid Caesar and his writing team ruled the airwaves.

Moving Midway

Miss Mary was not happy.

It was Dena Williams’ first Christmas at Midway Plantation and she decided to set up the Christmas tree in the parlor (“what we would call the living room,” she explained).

Williams’ husband, Charlie Silver tried to warn her that it was Miss Mary’s special room and that she wouldn’t want the tree there, but Williams was adamant that it was the best place to put it. “We put the tree in the parlor and had it all decorated and then, in the middle of the night we heard a crash and found tree down, but only one ornament broken. Miss Mary had been gentle but made her point,” she laughed.

“Miss Mary” was Silver’s great-great aunt, Mary Hilliard Hinton, the tiny matriarch, who dressed as her heroine, Queen Victoria, who was the teller of all the family stories, and who died in 1961. Miss Mary’s ghost (along with several others, including a cat) inhabits Midway Plantation.

(“How do you know the ghosts are there?” I asked Williams. “We see them,” she replied, with her husband adding that since these were relatives he knew in life, their ghosts don’t appear scary. Williams had some discussions with the spirits when she and Silver first married and moved to Midway Plantation. “I walked around from room to room and asked them to be nice to me and wait until I felt comfortable before showing themselves. They waited and they’ve always been very nice.”)

The spiritual side of Midway Plantation is only one aspect of a fascinating documentary which will kick off the Fifth Annual Davis Film Festival, This year's festival features films on topics ranging from movement and music to community and the consequences of war, and includes innovative short works by new filmmakers as well as feature-length films from around the world.

"Moving Midway" is an acclaimed documentary and multiple film festival award winner and an excellent choice to start the 2008 festival. In its simplest form, “Moving Midway” is the story of moving a family home from one location near Raleigh, North Carolina to another, but in the process of documenting the move, film critic turned filmmaker Godfrey Cheshire not only shows the mechanics of relocating an historical building, but also traces the importance of the Southern plantation in American history, gives us a glimpse into his own ancestry, and discovers a whole new side of the family, and more than 100 cousins he never knew he had.

The land on which Midway Plantation and two others (The Oaks and Beaver Dam) was built (420,700 acres) was given by the British crown to Miss Mary's family in 1739, before the American Revolution. Midway was built in 1848 as a wedding gift to Miss Mary's father, David Hinton. Over the years, the house became the gathering place for all the family and Godfrey Cheshire remembers happy times playing with his cousins, Charlie (Nicknamed "Pooh"), Winston ("Winkie") and John (Possum").

Things had changed in 2004, when Cheshire went to visit Silver, who now owned Midway Plantation. Where once lay a dirt wagon track, now was a major highway with more than 55,000 cars a day passing the home. Instead of looking out at rolling hills and trees, the former plantation faced a McDonald's, a bank, and several other shops in a strip mall. Silver's 80-something mother was looking to the house's upkeep and had rented it out, but she was getting calls from developers every day offering to buy the property and it had become a burden on her.

Silver and Williams decided to move into the house to make things easier on his mother. They lived there only two years before the couple made the fateful decision to buy another plot of land and move the house to a new location. What was most important to Silver was preserving the house for future generations, and he realized that in its present urban setting, his children didn't experience the house he remembered from his childhood. "I realized that none of my children would what to live in it, and that spelled doom for the house," he said. "Our big concern was to make sure the house was attractive enough to have someone else in the family live there.” They had offers from developers to make it the center point of the new mall development, or to tear it apart and reuse timbers. But Silver was adamant that the best thing for the house was to pick it up and move it. It would allow them to rebuild the aging foundation and the chimneys and to make improvements that would make it last another 150 years."

They even hired Rick Lambeth, a consultant who does historic architectural finishes who examined the house and told the couple what all of the original colors were in the whole house—trim, walls, outside, shutters, etc., so that they could restore it to the original appearance.

Godfrey Cheshire immediately felt there was a story to be recorded, but even he didn't realize where that story would lead.

The extended family had mixed emotions about the move, expressed at the last Christmas party held at Midway before the scheduled moving of the house. Midway was always a party home and always looked its best when filled with people. Brother Winston (Winkie) said that growing up in Midway was like nothing any child ever experienced and didn't believe that Charlie was actually going to move the house. "I'll believe it when I see it," he laughed. Brother John ("Possum") made his views on the moving of the house known in no uncertain terms. "I thought he was full of sh*t!" he said emphatically.

Silver and Williams were also concerned about how the ancestors would feel about the move. "We literally sat on the steps and talked to them. 'We hope you guys are all right with this,'" he said.

A part of the history of the house concerned the slaves who once worked on the plantation. There were records showing that the original slave was a man named Mingo, who had been a gift when the house was first built. (Previous work had been done by indentured white laborers.) The family Bible also held a photo of an African American man, Ruffin Hinton, who looked very much like Charles Lewis Hinton, the plantation owner (who also served two terms as State Treasurer of North Carolina). It was generally acknowledged that Ruffin was the result of a relationship with the house cook.

As Godfrey Cheshire was preparing for his film about Midway, a letter on some unrelated topic from Robert Hinton, a professor of African American Studies at NYU, appeared in the "New York Times." In the letter he mentioned that his grandfather, Dempsey Hinton, had been born on Midway Plantation in 1860. Cheshire made arrangements to meet with Hinton and through comparing their various family stories, they realized that Hinton's grandfather had been a slave at Midway Plantation. Hinton was invited to Midway Plantation to meet his cousins and travel around the grounds where the slave quarters had once been, and to explore the slave cemetery.

“I always thought I would meet another Hinton, but I hoped it would be someone I wouldn't like," Robert Hinton smiled.

Charlie Silver found a 47 acre plot of land three miles from Midway Plantation and purchased it. Mike Black, a professional house mover, was hired to handle the actual move of the main building and several of the out-buildings. When the day came to move the house, Robert Hinton was invited to join the rest of the family in breaking a bottle of champagne over the metal bars which held the house on dollies before the truck started to slowly pull the house over back roads to its new location.

"I felt it was important to help launch the move and represent my family,” said Hinton.

It took four days to move the house the three miles and set it down on its new foundation.

One of the most hair-raising segments of the journey involved crossing a narrow bridge. "We didn’t know for sure if the bridge would hold the weight," Charlie said. It had been designed by twins brothers and it had been their first job out of college 8-10 yrs before. They did lots of calculations to see if it would hold the weight of the house. The bridge was also so narrow that the house cleared the guard rails by less than an inch. The supports actually scraped the rails as it crossed over the bridge.

It was two years before the house was ready for parties again. When it held its first social gathering, several of the descendants of Ruffin Hinton were invited to attend, including Abraham Lincoln Hinton, Ruffin's grandson, born in 1909.

“I think in order to be a healthy individual, you have to know where you come from and how you got to be who you are. I cannot make sense of myself without understanding this house and being involved with the house,” said Robert Hinton.

And the ghosts? Did they move with the house? “We know that my dad has moved,” said Charlie Silver. “My great great aunt also moved and the ghost cats have moved. The 'nice lady' has moved. (We think it’s my grandmother. We haven’t seen her really clearly, but my granddaughter does.) Miss Mary came with us and has been very pleased. We usually see her as a wren. She came and flew thru the house.”

But employees at PetSmart and Target, which were built on the land once occupied by Midway Plantation, have reported strange things happening at night, with items being moved and found in odd places, so apparently some of the Hinton clan stayed behind to watch over the land as well.

Cyrano de Bergerac

At the risk of pandering to an obvious pun, Sacramento Theatre Company's current production of Edmund Rostand's “Cyrano de Bergerac” hits it right on the nose.

Sandford Robbins, the founder and director of the Professional Training Program (PTTP), one of the top ten dramatic education programs in the country, and "Cyrano" director Peggy Shannon adapted Rostand's classic especially for Sacramento Theatre Company. The result is a romantic tale of a 17th Century French cavalier poet, a master swordsman as skillful with the pen as with the sword, in love with a beautiful lady, but afraid that his protuberant proboscis will get in the way of his search for true love.

John Pribyl brings dignity, humor, and panache to the role of Cyrano, a man who covers up a lot of his insecurities by laughing at his own physical oddity, while inside pining away for the love of the beautiful Roxanne (Jackie Vanderbeck). Pribyl's diction is impeccable, as he delivers long discourses, equally eloquent on subject of love, or on put-downs of his own prosthetically enhanced nose.

Instead of embarrassing himself by declaring his love for Roxanne, Cyrano becomes the mouthpiece for the handsome, dashing, but somewhat inarticulate cavalier Christian (Brett Williams), helping him woo and win the hand of Roxanne by putting words in his mouth and in his pen, the words that Roxanne longs for and that ultimately help her fall in love.

Williams does a fine job as Christian. Most roles in this play are subordinate to Cyrano and Williams does not stand out.

Vanderbeck is a lovely Roxanne, swept away by the eloquence of Cyrano's words, which she feels are coming from Christian, only to realize, much too late, that the man with whom she has been in love for so many years is really Cyrano.

Matt K. Miller, who has become a master at playing the snide villain undergoing some sort of ultimate noble transformation does not disappoint as the Comte DeGuiche, with his own designs on Roxanne, outwitted at the last moment by Cyrano, who arranges a hasty marriage before Christian is sent off to war.

(Times were apparently different in the 1600s and it appears that even cads respected the bond of marriage.)

Others in lesser roles all performed well. Adrian Roberts is a commanding presence on the stage as Cyrano's lifelong friend LeBret.

Lynn Baker is Roxanne's Duena, and later in the play dons the habit for a role as a nun in the abby where Roxanne retires following Christian's death.

Michael RJ Campbell is resplendent in pink as Cyrano's enemy, the actor Monfleury.

Doug Kester is Ragueneau, a pastry chef with a particular love of poetry.

John Dalmon is the poet Ligniere, whose life Cyrano saves by single-handedly battling 100 men.

Incidental music is provided by Moises Rodriguez, softly playing the guitar at one side of the stage, occasionally as accompaniment for on-stage choral singing, or solos by Erik Smith, who has a pleasant, if not memorable voice.

Chris Uchman-Douglas, playing the role of the Vicomte Valvert is also credited with fight choreography and has done a masterful job of creating the feel of a band of cavaliers for whom swordplay comes as second nature.

Kudos to Todd Roehermann for his magnificent costume design. The costumes, particularly of the cavaliers gave a wonderful richness to the look of the show.

Arthur Roch's scenic design was utilitarian, though nothing spectacular, primarily dictated by the number of people needed to be on stage in several scenes. The abby scene, however, was especitally lovely. I took particular offense, however, to his "man in the moon" rising across the nighttime sky. As this production seems to have been designed more for realism than for fantasy, a big yellow moon with the face of a man on it seemed jarringly out of place.

"Cyrano de Bergerac" is a classic with a contemporary feel. Director Peggy Shannon's production is wonderfully accessible and with a tragic triangular love story and all the swash-buckling battles that take place on the stage, it should have broad appeal across the spectrum of audience members.

Putnam County Spelling Bee

If you want to get a real feel for "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee," the touring Broadway company production which opened last night at the Sacramento Community Center, go see it with a teacher.

Through all the stress, the angst, the mayhem and the fun, my friend was nodding her head. “I believe it all,” she said after the show, remembering the years that she helped to put on spelling bees in her school in Wisconsin.

The Tony-award winning musical comedy is based on “C-R-E-P-U-S-C-U-L-E,” an original play by the Farm. The book for the musical is by Rachel Sheinkin, conceived by Rebecca Feldman with music and lyrics by William Finn, perhaps best known for his “Falsettos” trilogy, about a man dying of AIDS.

There are no such heavy themes in “Putnam County Spelling Bee,” which is peopled not only by a delightfully zany cast of characters, but also assisted by four volunteers from the audience (there is an opportunity to sign up to become one of the on-stage members of the spelling bee team in the lobby, before entering the theatre). The audience members participated for a surprisingly long time and each received rounds of applause when they eventually misspelled a word.

How can you make a children’s spelling bee an interesting nearly two hour musical (it is performed without intermission)?

You start with the delightfully over the top Rona Lisa Peretti (Roberta Duchak), a former spelling bee winner and real estate agent, who now runs the annual spelling bee. Her delivery would do an aging Beauty Pageant participant proud.

Her cohort, and reader of the words and the delicious definitions and sentences is Douglas Panch (James Kall), now back from that unfortunate incident five years ago. He’s much better now, he reassures the audience.

Mitch Mahoney (Kevin Smith Kirkwood) is the guy who leads the pledge of allegiance, and is the guy who escorts each loser off the stage and presents them with their commemorative box of apple juice. (Kirkwood also has several other smaller roles throughout the evening.)

And then there are the children themselves, each a perfect depiction of a certain type of child. Olive Ostrosky is a latchkey kid whose mother has gone off to India to find herself, and whose father forgot to come to the spelling bee and who doesn’t have the money to enter, but is allowed to compete anyway. She learned to spell because she grew up in a house with an oversized dictionary that she liked to read while sitting on the toilet.

Leaf Coneybear (described as a home schooled kid from Davis) got into the contest on a fluke when both the real winner of the previous spelling bee and the runner up had to attend a bat mitzvah. He insists he’s “not that smart,” a notion which he seems to have picked up from his many siblings, and keeps surprising himself with his correct answers.

Marcy Park (Katie Boren) is an overachiever who speaks six languages, is good in music and in sports and everything else she attempts, but is a girl who just wants to be normal and eventually seeks advice from a surprisingly unlikely source.

Logainne Schwartzandgrubenierre (Dana Steingold) is president of the Gay Straight Alliance in her school, has two dads who dote on her, is a budding feminst, and yet wonders “what about me?”

Chip Tolentino (Justin Keyes) won the contest last year and, dressed in his Boy Scout uniform, is confident that he will easily win this year too, until an unfortunate hormonally induced incident spoils his chances. Chip has perhaps the most unusual song of the night—certainly a first for song lyrics!

William Barfee (whose name rhymes with ‘parfait’ but whose size makes him the perfect victim of jokes mispronouncing the name) has a “magic foot” and an unusual technique for figuring out the correct way to spell a word. Eric Roediger is delightful in the role, and his character’s growing friendship with Olive is very special.

You are not going to leave the Civic Center humming any of the tunes from this show (except perhaps the title song), but you will smile as you think back on the enjoyable evening you have just spent.

Is this a show worth seeing? D-E-F-I-N-I-T-E-L-Y.

Moving Midway

Miss Mary was not happy.

It was Dena Williams’ first Christmas at Midway Plantation and she decided to set up the Christmas tree in the parlor (“what we would call the living room,” she explained).

Williams’ husband, Charlie Silver tried to warn her that it was Miss Mary’s special room and that she wouldn’t want the tree there, but Williams was adamant that it was the best place to put it. “We put the tree in the parlor and had it all decorated and then, in the middle of the night we heard a crash and found tree down, but only one ornament broken. Miss Mary had been gentle but made her point,” she laughed.

“Miss Mary” was Silver’s great-great aunt, Mary Hilliard Hinton, the tiny matriarch, who dressed as her heroine, Queen Victoria, who was the teller of all the family stories, and who died in 1961. Miss Mary’s ghost (along with several others, including a cat) inhabits Midway Plantation.

(“How do you know the ghosts are there?” I asked Williams. “We see them,” she replied, with her husband adding that since these were relatives he knew in life, their ghosts don’t appear scary. Williams had some discussions with the spirits when she and Silver first married and moved to Midway Plantation. “I walked around from room to room and asked them to be nice to me and wait until I felt comfortable before showing themselves. They waited and they’ve always been very nice.”)

The spiritual side of Midway Plantation is only one aspect of a fascinating documentary which will kick off the Fifth Annual Davis Film Festival, This year's festival features films on topics ranging from movement and music to community and the consequences of war, and includes innovative short works by new filmmakers as well as feature-length films from around the world.

"Moving Midway" is an acclaimed documentary and multiple film festival award winner and an excellent choice to start the 2008 festival. In its simplest form, “Moving Midway” is the story of moving a family home from one location near Raleigh, North Carolina to another, but in the process of documenting the move, film critic turned filmmaker Godfrey Cheshire not only shows the mechanics of relocating an historical building, but also traces the importance of the Southern plantation in American history, gives us a glimpse into his own ancestry, and discovers a whole new side of the family, and more than 100 cousins he never knew he had.

The land on which Midway Plantation and two others (The Oaks and Beaver Dam) was built (420,700 acres) was given by the British crown to Miss Mary's family in 1739, before the American Revolution. Midway was built in 1848 as a wedding gift to Miss Mary's father, David Hinton. Over the years, the house became the gathering place for all the family and Godfrey Cheshire remembers happy times playing with his cousins, Charlie (Nicknamed "Pooh"), Winston ("Winkie") and John (Possum").

Things had changed in 2004, when Cheshire went to visit Silver, who now owned Midway Plantation. Where once lay a dirt wagon track, now was a major highway with more than 55,000 cars a day passing the home. Instead of looking out at rolling hills and trees, the former plantation faced a McDonald's, a bank, and several other shops in a strip mall. Silver's 80-something mother was looking to the house's upkeep and had rented it out, but she was getting calls from developers every day offering to buy the property and it had become a burden on her.

Silver and Williams decided to move into the house to make things easier on his mother. They lived there only two years before the couple made the fateful decision to buy another plot of land and move the house to a new location. What was most important to Silver was preserving the house for future generations, and he realized that in its present urban setting, his children didn't experience the house he remembered from his childhood. "I realized that none of my children would what to live in it, and that spelled doom for the house," he said. "Our big concern was to make sure the house was attractive enough to have someone else in the family live there.” They had offers from developers to make it the center point of the new mall development, or to tear it apart and reuse timbers. But Silver was adamant that the best thing for the house was to pick it up and move it. It would allow them to rebuild the aging foundation and the chimneys and to make improvements that would make it last another 150 years."

They even hired Rick Lambeth, a consultant who does historic architectural finishes who examined the house and told the couple what all of the original colors were in the whole house—trim, walls, outside, shutters, etc., so that they could restore it to the original appearance.

Godfrey Cheshire immediately felt there was a story to be recorded, but even he didn't realize where that story would lead.

The extended family had mixed emotions about the move, expressed at the last Christmas party held at Midway before the scheduled moving of the house. Midway was always a party home and always looked its best when filled with people. Brother Winston (Winkie) said that growing up in Midway was like nothing any child ever experienced and didn't believe that Charlie was actually going to move the house. "I'll believe it when I see it," he laughed. Brother John ("Possum") made his views on the moving of the house known in no uncertain terms. "I thought he was full of sh*t!" he said emphatically.

Silver and Williams were also concerned about how the ancestors would feel about the move. "We literally sat on the steps and talked to them. 'We hope you guys are all right with this,'" he said.

A part of the history of the house concerned the slaves who once worked on the plantation. There were records showing that the original slave was a man named Mingo, who had been a gift when the house was first built. (Previous work had been done by indentured white laborers.) The family Bible also held a photo of an African American man, Ruffin Hinton, who looked very much like Charles Lewis Hinton, the plantation owner (who also served two terms as State Treasurer of North Carolina). It was generally acknowledged that Ruffin was the result of a relationship with the house cook.

As Godfrey Cheshire was preparing for his film about Midway, a letter on some unrelated topic from Robert Hinton, a professor of African American Studies at NYU, appeared in the "New York Times." In the letter he mentioned that his grandfather, Dempsey Hinton, had been born on Midway Plantation in 1860. Cheshire made arrangements to meet with Hinton and through comparing their various family stories, they realized that Hinton's grandfather had been a slave at Midway Plantation. Hinton was invited to Midway Plantation to meet his cousins and travel around the grounds where the slave quarters had once been, and to explore the slave cemetery.

“I always thought I would meet another Hinton, but I hoped it would be someone I wouldn't like," Robert Hinton smiled.

Charlie Silver found a 47 acre plot of land three miles from Midway Plantation and purchased it. Mike Black, a professional house mover, was hired to handle the actual move of the main building and several of the out-buildings. When the day came to move the house, Robert Hinton was invited to join the rest of the family in breaking a bottle of champagne over the metal bars which held the house on dollies before the truck started to slowly pull the house over back roads to its new location.

"I felt it was important to help launch the move and represent my family,” said Hinton.

It took four days to move the house the three miles and set it down on its new foundation.

One of the most hair-raising segments of the journey involved crossing a narrow bridge. "We didn’t know for sure if the bridge would hold the weight," Charlie said. It had been designed by twins brothers and it had been their first job out of college 8-10 yrs before. They did lots of calculations to see if it would hold the weight of the house. The bridge was also so narrow that the house cleared the guard rails by less than an inch. The supports actually scraped the rails as it crossed over the bridge.

It was two years before the house was ready for parties again. When it held its first social gathering, several of the descendants of Ruffin Hinton were invited to attend, including Abraham Lincoln Hinton, Ruffin's grandson, born in 1909.

“I think in order to be a healthy individual, you have to know where you come from and how you got to be who you are. I cannot make sense of myself without understanding this house and being involved with the house,” said Robert Hinton.

And the ghosts? Did they move with the house? “We know that my dad has moved,” said Charlie Silver. “My great great aunt also moved and the ghost cats have moved. The 'nice lady' has moved. (We think it’s my grandmother. We haven’t seen her really clearly, but my granddaughter does.) Miss Mary came with us and has been very pleased. We usually see her as a wren. She came and flew thru the house.”

But employees at PetSmart and Target, which were built on the land once occupied by Midway Plantation, have reported strange things happening at night, with items being moved and found in odd places, so apparently some of the Hinton clan stayed behind to watch over the land as well.

Resting Place

Seven year old Ashley is dead. We know this because a huge grave stone dominates the set for the world premiere of “Resting Place, a new play by local playwright Richard Broadhurst (whose play "Benched" was given its world premiere at STC in 2001 and whose holiday comedy "Crib" was performed at River Stage in 2005).

Ashley’s grave is the meeting place for Ashley’s mother Margaret (Kelley Weir), who seems to be a very uptight and angry woman and the cemetery’s groundskeeper Paulie (Robert Sicular), a man of limited intelligence and education, lonely and desperate for company.

The first meeting does not go well. Margaret is angry because she feels Paulie is desecrating her daughter’s grave, though softens somewhat when she discovers he is the groundskeeper. When she tries to end their encounter, he seems desperate to keep her there, talking.

As the two talk, it becomes apparent that both have secrets they have buried and that both need a “resting place” where they can just get away from everything.

Paulie reveals a childhood of neglect and abandonment, a life lived in detention centers and then, saddest of all, his decision to rob a bank to get money for medical care for his grandmother. Prison, he confesses, taught him a trade and when he was released, he deliberately violated his parole so he could go back to prison and continue his education in gardening.

Margaret eventually reveals the marital abuse and alcoholism that drove her to leave her husband and the circumstances of Ashley’s death, for which she blames herself. She also confesses to estrangement from her younger daughter.

A casual friendship develops between the two, though each has more to reveal which will result in plot twists the audience does not see coming.

In attempting to hold on to Margaret’s friendship, Paulie suggests the two assume fantasy identities, Paulie a pirate, and Margaret “Monique,” a woman of mystery. This was perhaps the weakest part of the plot.

Though this is a serious story, there are lots of funny lines. In places the script seems not to ring true and it’s difficult to know if this is the part of the script itself or of Weir’s delivery, since it is her character who is the less believable of the two.

Sicular is excellent as a man who has never had to learn proper manners, but who is trying to be polite to this very proper woman. His persona is enhanced by his costume, the rough-hewn clothing of a man who is accustomed to working with the soil. Costumer Jessica Minnihan has added perfect little touches, like the heavy horn-rimmed glasses held together with duct tape.

Weir’s Margaret is an uptight woman whose grief over her daughter’s death is buried deeply and gives her a hard edge. The edge cracks at one point and anyone who has lost a loved one, particularly a child, will be able to identify with her pain.

The third member of the cast is a non-speaking child, dressed, head to toe, in a skeleton costume. The role is shared by Jack Hughes and Andrew Standriff.

Scenic Designer, Steve Decker, has created a realistic cemetery, somewhat hampered by the short space between the back of the stage and the front row of seats. In order not to step on “graves,” the actors always seemed to be close to stepping on the toes of those sitting in the front row.

Lighting Designer Dale Marshall has done some wonderful work, including a beautiful “morning,” as Paulie wakes up from a night of drinking. The “sun through the leaves” effect was perfect.

“Resting Place” is a show about coming to terms with the secrets in our past and learning to deal with them, to forgive ourselves for our past transgressions, give ourselves a “do over,” and to move forward. `

Fate and Spinoza

Any idiot can say God works in mysterious ways but only the scientists are proving it.

This is one of the central themes of "Fate and Spinoza," a new work by Granada Artist-in-Residence and 2007 Pulitzer Prize Finalist Rinde Eckert, with music composed by Eckert and Rich Gaarde, which premiered at the UCD Main Theatre on Friday evening. Gaarde also provides the musical accompaniment for the show from a spot off to the side on the stage.

Writers use lots of material as inspiration for plots of books or plays or musical works, but it seems fair to say that “Ethics” by Spinoza, a philosophical treatise based on geometric principles, would probably not be high on the list. But then Rinde Eckert is no ordinary playwright, as his large body of work will attest. Still, Eckert manages to make it all work, in a visually pleasant production filled with rich vocabulary and a gorgeous choral work which seems to come from out of nowhere somewhere in the middle.

“Fate and Spinoza”is more “philosophy driven” than “plot driven,” but the story revolves around April Lansky (Hope Mirlis), a wife, mother and engineer who designs satellites and telescopes. Lansky is inexplicably compelled to revisit a hotel from her past that is about to be torn down. There she encounters the ghost of artist David (Spinoza) Cornell (Matt Moore) and also the Devil (Timothy Orr) and, in conversation with them, reflects on her life choices and begins to come to terms with her present.

The action of the play is seen from the viewpoint of April. Through dialogue with the characters in the room that once was the artist's studio, she recovers that which she lost 20 years earlier.

The room seems to be a magical place, not necessarily a rational place. Things happen which may not happen in the real world (such as the meeting with the Devil). By virtue of the fact that April spends the entire play in the room, she is separated from her family but is still able to witness what they are going through.

There are a lot of story-telling issues that go into a study of something so complex and Eckert uses several devices to do it. Anna Schumacher plays April’s daughter Delia, and is also one of the classic “Fates” who provide much of the narrative. Vicky Zelaya is another of the fates.

Perhaps the clearest bit of philosophy is offered by two tile setters, Victor Toman and Travis Dukelow, who put their lunch boxes down and discourse on the notion of “wasting time.” The particular scene is very funny, yet at its conclusion you realize that you have just been given a lot of very deep thoughts to mull over.

“What do you mean waste of time?” “What do I mean what do I mean ‘waste of time?’ A waste of time is a waste of time! We all know what we mean!” “No we don’t. No one knows what we mean by that.” The character goes on to say that discussing “a waste of time” is in itself a waste of time.

Hope Mirlis is one of the actors who shines in this strong cast of characters, as does Timothy Orr, whose “Devil” is less evil than we have come to expect. His identity is hinted at in the red accents to his costume and the red bath of light in which he stands (costume design by Nancy Pipkin, scenic and lighting design by Carrie Mullen).

“Fate and Spinoza” may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but, as with everything Rinde Eckert does, it will leave the audience thinking about things that they had never thought about before.

And that definitely is no waste of time!

Renaissance Man

Rinde Eckert was in a taxi, heading to the airport on his way to Montreal, when he learned he was one of the top three nominees for a Pulitzer Prize for his 'Orpheus X.'

'I got a call from The Los Angeles Times, asking how I felt about none of the actual finalists have been chosen, and the award going to the fourth guy on the list,' Eckert recalled. 'The newspaper was looking for some sort of controversy.'

Eckert, who didn't realize his piece had been under consideration, was thrilled just to have his work nominated.

'I didn't care. I was happy to be close.

'The three of us who were Pulitzer finalists were very unconventional,' he continued. 'None of the pieces that were finalists made it to Broadway. They had, at best, been off-Broadway shows, but ultimately a Broadway piece was chosen.' (That would be David Lindsay-Abair's 'The Rabbit Hole.')

Eckert, a familiar name to UC Davis theatergoers, is back on campus as a Granada artist-in-residence. The Pulitzer near-winner will be presented for one performance only, at 8 p.m. Saturday at UCD's Main Theater, as a special American Repertory Theater presentation, prior to its heading off to a theater festival in Hong Kong.

This performance will be followed, next week, with a two-week run of Eckert's original piece, 'Fate and Spinoza,' now under development with a student cast.

Almost winning a Pulitzer has its advantages, Eckert acknowledges.

'It alerts people to some of the intricacies of the work, because the people choosing works for consideration aren't stupid, and they're aware of dimensions of a work that perhaps deserve attention. It helps to have someone in authority say, 'This stuff is worth getting. There's some deep stuff here.'

'That's an alert that says to the normal theatergoer, 'Wow ... I'd better take a closer look, because ... look, he was he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize! That isn't pig doots!' '

Eckert laughed.

In setting his piece, Eckert was inspired by the translation of a poem by German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, called 'Orpheus, Eurydice and Hermes.' In the classic myth, Orpheus is broken-hearted at the death of his love, Eurydice, and descends into Hades to bring her back to the living world.

'It's Greek,' Eckert explains. 'There is only Hades. There is no other place. They don't have any choice in the Greek world. They all go to Hades. Unless they're rescued in some way and made into a god, but that doesn't happen very often.'

In the Rilke poem, Eurydice already has become comfortable with the afterlife. Her memories of a life with Orpheus have faded, and she's not interested in returning to his world. She's perfectly content to remain in Hades:

Already she was root. And when suddenly, abruptly the god stopped her and in a pained voice said, 'he's turned around,' she did not understand and quietly answered 'who?'

Eckert's Orpheus is a rock star who substitutes an electric guitar for the traditional lyre. ('I needed to have him have mythic proportions, and the modern rock star fits that.') Eurydice is a street poet whose writing has become mundane and unsatisfying to her. She's struck by the taxi in which Orpheus is riding. He becomes obsessed with the woman, who dies in his arms.

He gives up everything to go to Hades, to bring her back to his world.

The trip is arranged by his agent.

'Agents always have connections,' Eckert laughs.

In Eckert's version, Eurydice no longer makes a sacrifice for Orpheus' poetic life, but for hers.

'She doesn't want to go back to what was terrifying and hellish for her,' Eckert explains. 'There's nothing for her up there.'

The 'X' in 'Orpheus X' indicates a variable that denotes the 'x' number of previous productions of the classic Greek myth.

'I've tried to honor each of the dimensions of the myth, while putting a spin on it that was of much more intrigue and interest to me, and would be a worthwhile addition to the great number of iterations of Orpheus, rather than trying to do yet another kind of straight-ahead depiction that already has been done extremely well.'

Whether a 'stunning music-theater production ... powerfully acted and gorgeously sung' (Variety), 'a multi-sensory extravaganza' (Tufts Daily) or 'a lugubrious and second-rate piece [that] nevertheless offers a fresh slant on a familiar but always haunting myth' (Edinburgh Festival Review), it's clear that in the hands of a masterful playwright/performer, Eckert's 'Orpheus X' will be an evening to remember.

*******

While 'Orpheus X' has been traveling around the world since 2006, 'Fate and Spinoza' will have its world premiere at the UCD Main Theater in a few weeks.

Christine Samson, a master of fine arts student playing a dual role (as are most of the actors), finds working with Eckert a novel experience.

'It's something he's creating as we go,' she said. 'It's the first time I've worked in a devised piece versus a pre-existing script. It's interesting to see his process, and what will and won't work as things change. Ultimately, it all makes sense and comes together.'

'I love working with Rinde,' said Hope Mirlis, who plays April Lansky. 'I love devised work; I love his language. I understand how his brain works, and I get his humor. He's an incredibly intelligent guy.'

The work grew out of Eckert's readings of Baruch Spinoza's 'The Ethics,' but as the work has progressed, the philosopher gradually has become more removed from the theatrical piece.

'I increasingly came to strip my character of the name 'Spinoza,' and it's come further and further into the fabric of the work,' Eckert said. 'It's imbedded in the work, certainly, but it's not an obvious connection.'

Eckert's Spinoza is a fatalist, and he hastens to assure me that Spinoza himself was no fatalist.

'Quite the opposite, in fact,' he said. 'He did have a lot to say about free will, and how free will is a kind of mistaken notion. He basically said that all of this religious lore is essentially superstition: stories you're telling yourselves for various purposes, but they have nothing to do with God. In the 17th century, this was radical stuff, which is why he was excommunicated. He was just too radical.'

Eckert's enthusiasm for the subject is infectious.

'This guy was writing in the 17th century. You suddenly appreciate why he survived. You realize he anticipated almost everybody. It's a remarkable work! He anticipated Freud. He identified subconscious desires.'

But how do you transform what might sound like a dry work of philosophy into a vibrant stage piece?

With music, dance, song, dialogue, visual intrigue and splendor.

'There's a line in 'Fate and Spinoza' that says any idiot can say 'God works in mysterious ways,' but only the scientists are proving it. We start the piece with this symbol of people looking up at a rocket launch of some kind, and then someone happens to say 'God forbid,' and it starts a discussion about whether the two characters believe in God.

'So we put that in the room to start with.'

Burlesque touches are added here and there for comic relief, while at the same time delivering powerful messages in the most matter-of-fact way.

Mirlis noted that the middle of the piece includes a big choral work, where the entire ensemble gathers and sings.

The play itself revolves around April Lansky, a wife, mother and engineer who designs satellites and telescopes. She's inexplicably compelled to revisit a hotel from her past, which is about to be torn down. While there, she encounters both the ghost of artist David (Spinoza) Cornell ... and the devil.

Through dialogue with these characters in the room that once was the artist's studio, April recovers what she lost 20 years earlier.

Spinoza's mythic presence permeates the work, as characters examine the past in order to come to terms with the present.

Spinoza concluded that most of what we claim about the world actually isn't true, and that free will is a figment of our imagination.

'Rinde's pieces always are theatrically surprising. He has that rare, happy knack of being both entertaining and thought-provoking,' said UCD theater and dance department chair Peter Lichtenfels. 'Rinde layers his pieces through singing, dancing, acting and playing musical instruments. I admire this range, and how he uses it to tell stories; that's why I'm so excited about his creation of 'Fate and Spinoza' with our students.'

The show was cast last quarter, and things were different right from the start, Mirlis explained, because Eckert gave the actors homework to complete during the quarter break.

'We had to come up with a sentence that used the words 'red' and 'hat.' We had to create a 30-second dance with a small box. We had to create a song in praise of Greenland, and we had to create an odd sound with either glass or metal. He wanted to see what we'd bring to the table, but he actually got some additional ideas. This play has been in his brain and in his book for awhile. We definitely were the next step, bringing it to the ensemble.'

'It's a great ensemble show with lots of energy,' said first year MFA student Rebecca David, who plays two minor characters. She loves the show for its 'otherworldly quality and its surreal set.'

'It takes awhile to generate a new work, especially in a university situation, where your time is really limited,' Eckert said. 'I'm usually working in professional situations, where my actors are there for eight hours a day, and they ain't doing nothing but this. We can go out to dinner after rehearsal, and discuss problems.

'Here, the cast disappears when rehearsal is over, because they have stuff to do, and they don't show up again until the next rehearsal.'

'I'm grateful to have a director who'll work with my schedule,' said Samson, an MFA student and mother who must plan around children's schedules. She explained her time constraints to Eckert before she was cast in the play.

'I needed some more mature actors within the company,' Eckert said, 'so I was willing to accept the limitations on her schedule.'

Samson, in her first year at UC Davis, finished her bachelor's degree at Sacramento State University in 1994, and then taught at Sacramento High School for several years before deciding to obtain her master's degree here. She'll eventually return to teaching.

What's ahead for Eckert, after he leaves UC Davis in March?

'I'm working on music for a performance at Joe's Pub in New York in May, and then I'm on a Guggenheim fellowship as a composer, so I'm doing a lot of compositional work over the summer. I have the money now to do that, thanks to Guggenheim.'

In the fall, he'll work with the medical school at the University of Iowa, under a grant from the Doris Duke Charitable trust. The piece will focus on issues surrounding blindness.

'I've interviewed doctors and people who are going blind. Out of that welter of information and impressions, I'll write a piece about the worlds that I've encountered, and some of the issues around blindness, and what it really is to see.

' 'Fate and Spinoza' actually is a precursor to that project. My artist is going blind, so I was imagining that maybe it would end up being a trilogy of pieces. I've been calling the Iowa piece the 'eye piece,' for lack of anything better. I thought the trilogy would be 'Fate and Spinoza' and 'The Eye Piece,' and then I'm doing another piece called 'Slide,' which is about perception.

'I suddenly realized that 'Fate and Spinoza' is about the lens and that transmission of light, so I've focused on the idea of the lens. The Iowa piece will be the retina: the place where light is collected and transmitted to the brain. It will be about blindness, to a degree, and then it will go into dealing with blindness.

'And then I wanted to get into perception: what happens in the brain after you get the information, and how does that stuff get over...'

And he was off.

As Eckert's fertile brain spewed a veritable cornucopia of ideas for future projects, I knew that the theatrical community would see a lot of this multi-talented man.

For decades to come.

Dinner With Friends

We never really know what’s going on in the lives of our friends when we part and they go behind their own closed doors, or so we learn in the Pulitzer Prize winning play, “Dinner With Friends” by Donald Margulies, now at Capital Stage, under the direction of Peter Mohrmann.

Karen (Jamie Jones), Gabe (Eric Wheeler), Beth (Karyn Casl) and Tom (Kenneth S. Figeroid) have been friends forever. In fact Karen and Gabe introduced Beth and Tom and now they spend lots of time together, their children play together.

As the play starts, Karen and Gabe, who are food and wine connoisseurs have just returned from a fabulous tour of Italy and are gushing to Beth about their eating, drinking and other food experiences, totally oblivious to Beth’s obvious state of disinterest and agitation. Karyn Casl is brilliant in this section of the play, completely conveying a woman whose life seems to be falling apart, trying to hang on to her sanity and stay focused on her friends, though her brain is a million miles away. Her pain is palpable and only the self-absorbed Karen and Gabe are unable to see it.

(Food is, by the way, central to this play, as each scene takes place in or around a kitchen, and fine foods and wines play an integral part in each of the discussions. The mouth-watering description of the dessert in Scene 1, which actually momentarily sidetracks an argument in Scene 2, sent me to Google looking for a recipe when I returned home!)

Karen finally notices that Beth is out of sorts and pulls from her the news that Tom has been having an affair and has announced that he is leaving their marriage.

Through the following scenes, we see what happens when close friends divorce, and the effect it has on their friends. Can you be friend with both husband and wife? Who is really the injured party? Aren’t there two sides of every story? If Tom has been Gabe’s best friend and Beth has been Karen’s best friend, where does that leave Karen and Gabe?

Margulies beautifully allows development of the effect of the break-up on the other couple. Karen feels betrayed when Beth finds herself a boyfriend, feeling she is rushing too quickly into another relationship, almost adamant that Beth break it off with her new love interest. Is Karen jealous that Beth is feeling the glow of fresh love? Or is she upset that this is someone Beth found on her own, without Karen’s assistance?

When Tom meets Gabe for drinks and extols the praises of his new girlfriend, Gabe is discomfited because he felt that he and Tom were going to “grow old and fat together,” and now Tom is feeling healthy, getting fit, and keeping up with a younger love interest.

Beth’s and Tom’s ability to move on is almost more difficult on Gabe and Karen than the news of their breakup was.

There is no resolution, or even a message, in this play. It’s simply an entertaining character study that gives much food for thought as we watch the chemistry between the characters, and their effect on one another. Just when we think one character is the bad person for whatever reason, we suddenly see things from the other side and it forces us to reassess who may be to blame. In the end, nobody is to “blame.” It’s just what happens.

The actors are marvelous. Jones and Wheeler are very funny as a couple absorbed in their passions for food and secondarily for each other. They are comfortable together and can’t seem to understand the temptations that have led to the break-up of their friends’ marriage.

Casl has perhaps the meatier part in the second relationship, conveying her utter despair and then her giddy happiness as she shares news of her new love with her friend.

Figeroid nicely portrays the man who never quite grew up into a responsible adult and who is ready to let himself be remolded into a middle-aged “man toy” for a new woman. It is not impossible to see this as a short-term relationship, but he’s enjoying it for all it’s worth at the moment.

Set designer David Fulk manages to find a way to use every bit of the Capital Stage stage to get more than one scene set at a time and somehow have it all work beautifully. The moveable windows were a particularly effective touch.

“Dinner with Friends” is a funny, yet thought-provoking play, that will leave you wondering what really does go on with your best friends behind closed doors.