Theater Reviews: The Bird and Mr. Banks, Waiting for Godot, Boadicea, The Dining Room

Also, Mammals, Battle Hymn, Resignation Day

Comments (0) By L.A. Weekly Theater Critics Wednesday, Jan 21 2009

GO BATTLE HYMN In a fit of passion and adoration, young Martha (Suzy Jane Hunt) has a fling with a pretty (and pretty oblivious) school chum, Henry (Bill Heck), as he’s about to join the Union army during the Civil War (despite the couple’s Kentucky home). Finding herself pregnant and alone — Martha learns that Henry finds other men more attractive than her — she is spurned by her minister father (William Salyers), who banishes her to relatives far away. Jim Leonard’s lovely new play, a variation on Voltaire’s Candide, follows Martha as she traverses the country and the century, finding herself in San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury district during the Summer of Love, still pregnant, still waiting for “the right time” to bring her infant into the world. Leonard’s play is more emotionally moving than intellectually rigorous — a compendium of symbols that add up to a century of clashes between America’s founding principles and the betrayals of those principles, which show up through history, from slavery and gay rights to religious hypocrisy. This land is our land? Hardly. And yet the prevailing symbol is that of birth, and rebirth, of ourselves. Leonard’s structure has a few problems. Dwelling on the Civil War era through Act 1, and then racing through time in Act 2, its surrealism would be less jarring if the play’s motion were more carefully proportioned. He’s been given a first-rank production with John Langs’ quasi-cinematic staging, featuring some moving musical backdrops composed by Michael A. Levine. Brian Sidney Bembridge’s set and lighting have just the right amount of visual animation, without too much glib winking. Hunt simply charms as Martha, with a wide-eyed conviction that’s largely blind to the betrayals that lurk around every corner; John Short and Robert Manning Jr. complete the finely textured ensemble. [Inside] the Ford, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.; thru Feb. 21. (323) 461-3673. A Circle X Production. (Steven Leigh Morris)

GO THE BIRD AND MR. BANKS Alternately ghoulish and sweet, playwright Kevin Huff’s darkly ironic tale is a pleasingly twisted mix of romance and Grand Guignol horror. After she’s dumped by her lover, who also happens to be her louse of a boss (Chet Grissom), corporate secretary Annie (Jenny Kern) tries to kill herself. She receives emotional support from a soft-spoken accountant, Mr. Banks (Sam Anderson), whom the other folks in the office have long considered slightly creepy. After she moves into Mr. Banks’ sprawling, dusty house, Annie discovers that the co-workers don’t know the half of it. Still attached by a cast-iron Oedipal apron string to parents long since dead, Banks has furnished the home in a dusty style that can charitably be called “Norman Bates Modern.” When Annie’s boss stops by and subsequently attempts to rape her, Banks pulls out a cudgel, and events take a gruesome turn. Although the plot bogs down during a needlessly long Act-2 road trip, Huff’s writing is otherwise smart, edgy and full of vituperative charm. Director Mark St. Amant’s comedically tight production punches the weird, Addams Family tone, with brio, nicely balancing horror with genuine sympathy for the characters. From his deep, soft, insanity-steeped voice to his shambolic gait and his half-baked “drunk, crazy uncle” stage persona, Anderson’s turn as the crazed killer-accountant is utterly compelling. Lankershim Arts Center, 5108 Lankershim Blvd, North Hollywood; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.; thru March 14. (866) 811-4111. Road Theater Production. (Paul Birchall)

Maia Rosenfeld

Light up the Sky

Courtesy Bill Sterritt

Boadicea

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BOADICEA Writer-director Bill Sterritt’s treatment of the legendary Icenian queen’s revolt against the first-century Roman occupation of Britain is more a play of ideas than heroic exploits. It’s too bad, because if Sterritt had lavished the same attention on simple stagecraft that he does on transcendentalist philosophy, he might have landed the postmodern tragedy he intended rather than the arid dissertation he actually bags. The intellectual game Sterritt hunts is the age-old dichotomy between civilization and nature. The two sides are personified by Roman governor Suetonius Paulinus (Matt Haught), whose mandate is to peacefully Romanize the British tribes through civil means, and “nature’s regent,” Queen Boadicea (Gowrie Hayden), whose initial accommodation with Rome ends in humiliation — the rape of her daughters (Ashby Plain, Lindsay Lauren Wray) and the annexation of her lands by licentious procurator, Catus Decianus (a charismatic Sean Pritchett). Arousing her warrior nature, the queen initially mauls the Romans until Suetonius sheds the mask of civility to unleash the animal brutality of imperial power. Unfortunately, Sterritt’s stilted, quasi-heroic dialogue, his curiously flat staging and his reliance on symbolic relationships rather than the interpersonal kind robs the proceedings of any real pathos. With no character-driven conflicts to play off, the cast does its best (Hayden and Pritchett are standouts), but even Brando would have been hard-pressed to crack the role of “civilization.” Studio/Stage, 520 N. Western Ave., L.A.; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m.; thru Feb. 15. (323) 463-3900. (Bill Raden)