- OTHER MEDIA
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- SF WBay Guardian July 22, 2009 (Robert Avila)
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- It's hard to resist the idea of seeing veteran stage actor Ken Ruta
on the intimate Exit Theatre stage in the Bay Area premiere of a play by
Yasmina Reza—the French playwright who penned Art and just walked
away with a Tony for The God of Carnage. Reza's 1998 two-hander, The Unexpected
Man, however, is not a very compelling play. Most of it consists of separate
sets of internal monologues unfolding on either side of a train compartment
by the two strangers occupying it: a curmudgeonly author (played with affable
fluster and bluster by Ruta) and a secret fan (a cautious but whimsical
Abigail Van Alyn) with his latest book, the eponymous "Unexpected
Man," in her handbag. The tone is lightly comic and a bit wistful
but neither character seems to reveal much about much. Spare Stage's production,
meanwhile, directed by Stephen Drewes, seems to do little more than let
the actors go, but the effect is a little too static, the journey not very
far or elucidating.
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