Theater Reviews: Photograph 51, Louis & Keely: Live at the Sahara, Ghosts

Also, The School for Wives, Tragedy: A Tragedy and more

Comments (0) By L.A. Weekly Theater Critics Wednesday, Mar 25 2009

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GO THE SCHOOL FOR WIVES The central character in Molière’s comedy, here translated and adapted by Frédérique Michel and Charles Duncombe, could be and often is a punching bag. But not here. Arnolphe is another in a stream of Molière’s aging, patronizing nitwits (like Orgon in Tartuffe), who presume that they can control the devotions and passions of young women in their care. In Tartuffe, when Orgon’s daughter protests his insistence that she break her wedding plans to her beloved suitor in order to marry the clergyman he prefers, Orgon figures her rebellion is just a impetuous, childlike phase. In The School for Wives, there’s a similar mindset to Arnolphe (Bo Roberts), who has tried to sculpt his young ward, Agnes (Jessica Madison), into his future wife. He’s known her since she was 4, and he’s strategically kept her closeted, as though in a convent, hoping thereby to shape her obedience and gratitude. Just as he’s about to wed her, in stumbles young Horace (Dave Mack) from the street below her window, and the youthful pair are smitten with each other, soon conniving against the old bachelor. Horace, not realizing that Arnolphe is the man keeping Agnes as his imprisoned ward, keeps confiding in the older man about his and Agnes’ schemes, fueling Arnolphe’s exasperation and fury. Perhaps it’s the use of director Michel’s tender, Baroque soundtracks, or the gentle understatement of Roberts’ performance as Arnolphe, but the play emerges less as a clown show and more as a wistful, almost elegiac, rumination on aging and folly. Arnolphe tried to create a brainless wife as though from a Petri dish, an object he can own, and the more she rejects him, the more enamored he becomes of her, until his heart breaks. The pathos is underscored by the obvious intelligence of Madison’s Agnes — an intelligence Arnolphe is blind to. The production’s reflective tone supersedes Michel’s very stylized, choreographic staging (this company’s trademark).

Ed Krieger

Photograph 51

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The ennui is further supported by a similarly low-key portrayal by David E. Frank as Arnolphe’s blithe friend and confidant, Chrysalde. In fact, when lisping, idiot servants (Cynthia Mance and Ken Rudnicki) keep running in circles and crashing into each other, Michel’s one attempt at Commedia physicality is at odds with the production rather than a complement to it. Company costumer Josephine Poinsot (surprising she doesn’t work more) provides luscious period vestments and gowns, and Duncombe’s delightful production design includes a gurgling fountain, a tub of white roses and abstract hints of some elegant Parisian court. City Garage, 1340½ Fourth St. (alley entrance), Santa Monica; Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 5:30 p.m.; through May 31. (310) 319-9939. (Steven Leigh Morris)

SIN, A CARDINAL DEPOSED The 2002 deposition of Cardinal Bernard Law had all the elements of great theater: small heroes, a giant villain and a troublesome morality that raised more questions than it answered. But while all the pieces are there, they still need to be shaped, and playwright Michael Murphy simply trims the transcripts and presents a fictionally synthesized laywer (Steven Culp) and his inquisition of the publicly disgraced (but Vatican-condoned) Cardinal (Joe Spano). It’s smart and interesting but wearisomely literal. This leaves director Paul Mazursky little to do but stage it as a stiff tableaux — the Catholic Church’s last ethically superior supper — centered on the deposition table. At that table, the cardinal is flanked by his lawyer (Carl Bressler) and his fictionalized opponent. Add to this trio two actors who read the letters of witnesses, truth seekers and church officials (Edita Brychta and Jack Maxwell, both great at shifting through a dozen accents) and a molestation victim (Christian Campbell), who oversees it all in silence. While the cast is quite good, all that reading from scripts adds to the inertia, leaving us restless enough to wish Murphy had dug beneath the surface and unearthed questions he only gestures toward, such as the coexistence of good and evil in priests whose six days of benevolence will never balance their afternoons of selfish harm. Hayworth Theater, 2509 Wilshire Blvd., L.A.; Thurs., 8 p.m.; through April 19. (323) 960-4442. (Amy Nicholson)

TRAGEDY: A TRAGEDY There are some good ideas in Absurdist playwright Will Eno’s metaphysical satire of the vapid, spectacle-driven infotainment that is local TV news. Unfortunately, stretching what is at best a one-gag comedy sketch into 80 intermissionless minutes isn’t one of them. The pity is that it should have been a joke worth telling. When a mysterious, cosmic calamity extinguishes all starlight, including the Sun’s, and thereby plunges the Earth into perpetual darkness, a hapless and incredibly inept local news team is left grappling with how to provide live TV coverage of the biggest story in history, when there is literally nothing to see. As a deadpan studio anchor (Christopher Spencer) juggles remote feeds from field reporters Stephanie Dorian, Jeff McGinness and Paul Knox, the realization of having nothing meaningful to communicate soon takes its toll. Unable to report on the outside world, the crew’s malaprop-mangled ad libbing slowly turns inward on the terror and emptiness of their own existence. And while an able cast (Spencer and Dorian are particularly fine) nails their characters’ insipid banalities and portentous posturing, the material’s comic potential too soon evaporates. Director Eric Hamme fails to find either the rhythms or the timing needed to extend the laughs, while Gisela Valenzuela’s bleak, all-black minimalist set and an overbearing sound design by Matari 2600 only add to the crushing boredom. Garage Theatre, 251 E. Seventh St., Long Beach; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; through April 18. (866) 811-4111. (Bill Raden)