Theater Reviews: Bronzeville, Dead, Therefore I Am, The Seafarer

Also, The Last Hippie: A Western Novel, Doomsday Kiss and more

Comments (0) By L.A. Weekly Theater Critics Wednesday, Apr 29 2009

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Michael Lamont

The Seafarer

Robert Millard

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THE LAST HIPPIE: A WESTERN NOVEL Performer-designer Vincent Mann’s claims that his solo show (directed by Rachel Rebecca Roy) “began as an (almost) finished novel.” Those origins are clear in his epic, autobiographical performance, which runs more than two hours, with intermission. Mann’s saga starts during his youth, in mid-’70s San Antonio, Texas, centering on his and his high school pals’ magnetic attraction to mind-altering drugs and the personal-metaphysical explorations that were part and parcel of the hippie movement, which was fading even then, in the wake of the subsequent pre-Reagan, greed-is-good generation. Among the performance’s many virtues is its ability to take a personal story and attach it to the sensibility of an era — and Mann accomplishes this with erudition and literacy. Eventually, as his friends fall by the wayside, Mann flees his town on a kind of spiritual quest, from Texas to Colorado Springs, working as a janitor for minimum wage. Here, the quixotic essence of the hippies’ scrambled ideals, and Mann’s stake in those ideals — including enlightenment through hallucinagenic drugs — unravels into mere autobiography, a stream of events that represent little beyond themselves. Whitefire Theatre, 13500 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks; Tues., 8 p.m.; through May 12. (818) 783-6784. (Steven Leigh Morris)

GO THE SEAFARER If you’re seeking innovation in the theater, look elsewhere. Conor McPherson’s Irish yarn is a chip off the stock-block of Celtic-folklore — story-telling, bullshitting, scatological jokes, card playing and a visit by somebody from the metaphysical realm, which raises the not-trivial question: What on Earth are we doing with our time? Thanks to a quintet of sharp-as-they-come performances, under Randall Arney’s carefully calibrated production, the event holds up. McPherson’s drama isn’t as menacing as in New York; Arney gives it a lighter touch, which reveals some of its holes but also skirts around both melodrama and glibness. This is a starkly moral universe, filled with causes and consequences, where somebody named Mr. Lockhart (Tom Irwin, and a spit-and-polished suit) determined to collect an old debt visits the North Dublin home-tavern of Sharky (Andrew Connolly) and his disabled brother, Richard (John Mahoney) — who blinded himself while scavenging in a trash canister. The drama slowly pivots on a poker game, with life-and-death stakes as the men, including denizens Ivan (Paul Vincent O’Connor) and Nickly Giblin (Matt Roth) — who’s the new husband of Sharky’s ex-wife — try to bluff their way through the night, which is really the larger allegory for existence. Imagine Harold Pinter having rewritten Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in an Irish brogue. Arney’s gentle production can’t mask or provide irony for the sentimental resolution, but the strength of his interpretation derives from the silent, brooding power of Connolly’s victimized Sharky, and the perverse indulgences of Sharky’s blind brother, played by Mahoney with a gleeful grittiness that renders him a weird blend of whining matron and the power broker of the house. The marvelous, tawdry details of Takeshi Kata’s set have little congruence with the actors’ perfect teeth — one tiny reminder of how difficult it is to leave Hollywood on our stages, despite theater’s magic. Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood; Tues.-Thurs., 7:30 p.m.; Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 4 & 8:30 p.m.; Sun., 2 & 7 p.m.; through May 24. (310) 208-54545. (Steven Leigh Morris)