Theater Reviews: Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, Looking for Paul, The Night of the Tribades
Also, The Sunset Limited, Uptown Downtown and more
MACBETH Warrior Poet theater company was founded on a shared interest in martial arts and the stories of soldiers. (Vets get in free.) Which means the fights in this Macbeth are great, sword-clanging, near-miss brawls and the highlights of this handsome and hungry staging. Unfortunately, the line readings are delivered like wild punches, which is a considerable impediment. They're strong, if not accurate. Still, you can't say director Anton Ray lacks ambition: Not only does he include scenes most productions skip, he adds new ones, worms in the Lord's Prayer, and even plays out Macbeth's banquet breakdown twice, with and without Banquo's ghost (Vonzell Carter). There's even more death in the deaths. We see Macbeth (Michael McIntyre) stab Duncan (Ray), see Lady Macbeth (Murielle Zuker) take her own life, and when the minions murder Lady MacDuff (a forceful Joanna Kelly), the lights dim over a necrophiliac gang rape. McIntyre's Macbeth gets better as he gets cockier and the large ensemble looks great stomping around in designer Kat Marquette's leather and chiffon costumes, their clothes heavy with buckles as Lady Macbeth races around the stage in boots that look like architectural marvels. As the tragedy powers forward, the Weird Sisters (Abica Dubay, Meghan Lewis and Whitton Frank) lounge around the castle like evil vapors — and in this over-the-top staging, they even get the last word. Mission Control, 11920 W. Jefferson, W.L.A.; Fri., 8 p.m; Sat., 2 & 8 p.m., Sun., 4 p.m.; thru Dec. 4. (661) 219-4577. (Amy Nicholson)
GO THE NIGHT OF THE TRIBADES Generally speaking, biographies of even immortal artists rarely produce compelling dramas. Whatever mysterious alchemy transmutes raw experience into refined art is simply too interior and remote from the dramatic, social arena to ever satisfactorily be laid bare on the stage. Swedish playwright Per Olov Enquist's delightfully sardonic 1975 take on the marital woes of Scandinavian literary giant August Strindberg (in Ross Shideler's spry 1976 translation) may be the notable exception. Drawn from a period when Strindberg (John Prosky) was an adherent of what might be charitably termed Darwinian male chauvinism, the play opens on the read-through rehearsal of Strindberg's short 1889 one-act, The Stronger, the writer's self-flattering portrayal of the affair between his wife, actress Siri von Essen (Sarah Underwood), and her lover, Marie Caroline David (Linda Castro), which ultimately scuttled the Strindbergs' already foundering marriage. In a stroke of sadistic pique, Strindberg has cast the real-life lovers to play their fictionalized counterparts. The results only recapitulate the hapless playwright's emasculating trauma, and play as if the author of The Dance of Death had written an episode of Fawlty Towers. Director Thomas P. Cooke's mercurial production and a superb cast (including Craig Anton's hilariously vapid ham actor Shiwe) capture all of Enquist's mordant wit, while a peerless production design team (Catherine Baumgardner's museum-grade period costumes; Jeffery Eisenmann's antique, backstage set; Ronan Kilkelly's expressionistic lights) lends the proceedings a literate gloss. Royal Theater aboard the Queen Mary, 1126 Queens Highway, Long Beach; Tues.-Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2 & 8 p.m. (no perfs Nov. 23-27); thru Dec. 11. (562) 985-5526 or calrep.org. (Bill Raden)
NIGHTSONG FOR THE BOATMAN Perhaps playwright Jovanka Bach was attempting an update of Euripides' Alcestis: In both plays, a selfish man tries to elude death by persuading someone else to die in his place. Poet/college professor Harry Appleman (John Di Fusco) gambles for his soul with Murlie (Alexander Wells), the thuggish boatman who ferries the dead across the River Styx. He loses the game, but wants to welsh on the deal. Harry is so obnoxious and arrogant, it's hard to care what happens to him. He hasn't written anything substantive in years, but feels his identity as an artist absolves him from all responsibility. A spoiled, drunken, irresponsible egomaniac, he seduces his students, treats his mistress (Nicole Gabriella Scipione) shabbily, and abandons his wife (Donna Luisa Guinan) and daughter (Amanda Landis). In the incoherent, contrived and ultimately silly second act, Harry continues to seek someone else to die his death. The piece is awkwardly written, with many short scenes that seem to just stop rather than reaching any climax, separated by clumsy scene changes. Director John Stark does little to bolster the pretentious script, but the capable actors (including Michael Byrne, Geoffrey Hillback and J. Lawrence Landis) struggle manfully to make sense of a preposterous plot, and designer Jaret Sacrey provides a handsome set. Odyssey Theatre, 2055 Sepulveda Blvd., W.L.A.; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m., Sun., 2 p.m.; thru Dec. 12. (310) 477-2055. (Neal Weaver)
RENDITION IN DAMASCUS Playwright John Christian Plummer's character-driven moral drama is almost undone by the sheer randomness of its plot, which somehow encompasses such disparate figures as a maniacal Protestant minister with a butcher's knife, a philandering husband who might be possessed by the devil, and a professional torturer working for the U.S. government. Minister Sarah (Courtney Rackley) finds her faith sorely tested when her professor husband, Hal (Pete Caslavka), confesses that he has been having an affair with Sarah's church secretary, Missy (understudy Laurel Reese on the night reviewed, sweetly perky). Worse, Hal's excuse for his errant behavior is that he has started to hear voices in his head: Someone claiming to be none other than "A Satan" told him to cheat on his wife. While Sarah storms off to Misty's house, intending to do her great bodily harm, Hal gets a visit from his brother Schuyler (David Stanbra), just back from Iraq, where he tortured a hapless suspected terrorist to death. Complications ensue when His Infernal Majesty (aka Satan) again takes over Hal's body, Exorcist-style. Plummer's play does not lack for potentially intriguing themes, but they're poorly tied together and the thought processes are sometimes choppy: A play that equates in moral importance the notion of a man torturing someone to death and a rather prosaic, tawdry love affair requires more logical underpinnings than this work possesses. Still, director Kiff Scholl's crisply staged, intimate production boasts some nicely committed acting work, particularly in the turns by Caslavka's creepy, possibly possessed Hal and by Rackley's brittle Sarah, whose character's emotional decomposition is shattering. Working Stage Theatre, 1516 Gardner Ave., Hollywood; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; thru Dec. 3. (323) 960-7719. (Paul Birchall)
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