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Highlights and lowlights
1999's theater gets reviewed in the second Upstage/Downstage Awards.
By Brad Rosenstein, SF Bay Guardian December 22, 1999
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What better time than the eve of the millennium to ask once again where we've been, where we're going, and when the hell is intermission? Here, then, with gratitude and affection for all those who've shtupped me with comp tickets all year, I celebrate the Good, the Bad, and the Underfunded with my second annual Upstage/Downstage Awards.
 
(Following are exerpts of performances on the boards at EXIT Theatre and the San Francisco Fringe Festival. The full article follows at the end.)
 
Most dubious but gutsy trend: Artistic directors taking to the stage:
While it's certainly not a policy I would universally endorse, EXIT Theatre's Christina Augello, Shotgun Players' Patrick Dooley, and San Jose Rep's Timothy Near all came out of the administrative closet and did admirable work onstage this year.
 
Best annual theatrical crapshoot: The San Francisco Fringe Festival.
 
Best scenic design: John Sowle, Problem Child and Subject to Fits
 
Best onstage orgasm: Shelley Mitchell in "Dialogue for a Single Voice" – a more rarely seen excerpt from Orgasmo Adulto. See what can happen when you innovate?
 
Best costumes: Roberta Doylend, The Ugly Duchess
 
Best theater about theater: Art Street Theatre's Bang! by Mark Jackson.
 
Great performances (women): Beth Donohue, Subject to Fits.
 
Great performances (ensemble): Problem Child
 
Best solo flights: Emily Shihadeh, Grapes and Figs Are in Season: A Palestinian Woman's Story
 
Great directors: John Warren, Problem Child
 
The full article follows:
Highlights and lowlights
1999's theater gets reviewed in the second Upstage/Downstage Awards.
By Brad Rosenstein
WHO CAN SAY what makes for a theatrical trend? Is it a manifestation of the zeitgeist, a telling coincidence, or merely an anxious critic looking for order in a random universe? Well, whatever. But I can tell you this: 1999 was the year of the Irish playwright. Irish playwrights were in, Irish playwrights were hot, and if you had so much as a grain of the old sod under your fingernails, you stood a good chance of being produced on a Bay Area stage.
That, or your name happened to be Bertolt Brecht. The actual centenary of Brecht's birth went by virtually unnoticed here in 1998, but suddenly this year everyone remembered and rushed to mount Brecht productions with varying degrees of success. And then there were puppets. After ages on the theatrical back burner, puppetry seemed to be rediscovered by everyone – as a storytelling medium, as a gimmick, or as an art form in its own right.
Well, trends, schmends, it all made for some thrilling, middling, and occasionally downright awful Bay Area theater in 1999. What better time than the eve of the millennium to ask once again where we've been, where we're going, and when the hell is intermission? Here, then, with gratitude and affection for all those who've shtupped me with comp tickets all year, I celebrate the Good, the Bad, and the Underfunded with my second annual Upstage/Downstage Awards.
Most dubious but gutsy trend: Artistic directors taking to the stage. While it's certainly not a policy I would universally endorse, EXIT Theatre's Christina Augello, Shotgun Players' Patrick Dooley, and San Jose Rep's Timothy Near all came out of the administrative closet and did admirable work onstage this year.
Best Irish accents: The cast of DEO Ireland's Amphibians – some of whom (surprise, surprise) actually are Irish.
Most creditable stab at an Irish accent: Michelle Morain in The Beauty Queen of Leenane.
What Irish accent? Angela Paton in The Beauty Queen of Leenane.
The Lazarus award: Josie's Cabaret and Juice Joint. Despite multiple obituaries, reports of Josie's death have been continually premature. Supposedly the club will pass to new owners in January, but don't you believe it. Josie's is Ron Lanza's, now and forever, so expect to keep hearing about its "last show ever" throughout the next millennium.
Most overrated use of puppetry: Basil Twist's Symphonie Fantastique.
Most sublime use of puppetry: Basil Twist and company's brilliant, soul-touching work with Julie Archer's uncanny puppets in Peter and Wendy.
Welcome-back award: The newly redecorated Curran Theatre, free at last from the stranglehold of Phantom.
Best new idea: Berkeley Rep's Parallel Season, inaugurated with a stellar year featuring work by Mabou Mines and Rinde Eckert.
What were they thinking department: Yury and Tanya Belov's abysmal "clown show," Getting a Head, which was deservedly canceled the day after it opened at the Eureka Theatre.
Most encouraging recent change of management: The Eureka Theatre.
Best new performance space: The Thick House, Thick Description's raw but energized new theater on Potrero Hill.
Best old space with a promising new direction: The Phoenix II (formerly the Jewel), new home for the Phoenix Theatre.
Most compelling theater made from a potentially unpromising subject: Solo artist Marty Pottenger's City Water Tunnel #3, a celebration of the ongoing construction of the titular 64-mile water tunnel under New York City. Even such a massive civil engineering venture might not immediately suggest riveting theater, but Pottenger's love for both the poetics of hard work and its nitty gritty details made for an affecting and fascinating evening.
In memoriam: Costumer Eliza Chugg.
Most inspired reimagining of a classic: Director Charles Randolph-Wright's Tartuffe at ACT, transposed to the African American elite world of Durham, N.C. in the 1950s. Not one word of Richard Wilbur's classic verse translation was changed; the text fell quite naturally into a crystalline, hilarious rap that got knocked out of the park by a powerhouse cast. Far from rewriting Molière, this brilliant production was so faithful to him in both word and spirit you often felt as though you were seeing the play for the first time.
Worst Brecht revival: Carey Perloff's awkward, dispirited ACT production of The Threepenny Opera, which somehow managed to transform one of the all-time thrilling works of musical theater into a bore.
Best Brecht revival: Mark Wing-Davey's Berkeley Rep production of The Life of Galileo in a version by David Hare.
Best Brecht straight from the horse's mouth: The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by the Berliner Ensemble.
How's that for an alienation effect? The last Brecht-identified incarnation of the Berliner Ensemble gave its final performances ever in California – a place Brecht loathed.
What were they thinking department: AvidFan Productions' Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? featured a cast as youthful as that of Rent.
Best play that nevertheless failed to leave a lasting impression: Yasmina Reza's Art.
Another good idea: The National Ensemble Theatre Festival, which made its inaugural bow at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts during Theatre Communications Group's national conference. It featured performances by six notable ensemble companies from across the United States, including San Francisco's Traveling Jewish Theatre.
Best annual theatrical crapshoot: The San Francisco Fringe Festival.
Best local theatrical coups: ACT landing the U.S premiere of Tom Stoppard's Indian Ink and Marin Theatre Company doing likewise with the (almost) world premiere of Tennessee Williams's early play Spring Storm. Even better, both companies rose to the challenge and delivered fine productions, and ACT is now poised to repeat the feat with Stoppard's Invention of Love in January. We could get used to this.
What were they thinking department: Margaret Booker's obtuse direction of The Joy Luck Club at Theatreworks, which descended to such kitschy Asian stereotypes it bordered on the insulting. Surely the Bay Area has a wealth of directors who might have mounted this production with far greater sensitivity and savvy.
Mon dieu, I'm speechless! Marcel Marceau returned to San Francisco for the first time in 15 years and proved all over again at age 76 why he is one of the most sublime performing artists of the century. To watch Marceau's hands and finally his caged heart flutter and soar in "The Bird Keeper" was to experience a soul's transformation, theatrical magic in its purest form.
Biggest disappointments: Peter Sellars's production of Tang Xianzu's Peony Pavilion; The First Picture Show by David and Ain Gordon and composer Jeanine Tesori; Sisters Matsumoto by Philip Kan Gotanda; Wrong Mountain by David Hirson, directed by Richard Jones
Best scenic design: Douglas Stein (set) and Alexander Nichols (projections), The Life of Galileo; Rick Martin, Gum; Mikiko Uesugi (set) and April Minnich (videos), An Immaculate Misconception; Loy Arcenas, Indian Ink; James Noone and Robin Phillips, Jekyll and Hyde; Laurie Anderson, Songs and Stories from Moby Dick; John Sowle, Problem Child and Subject to Fits; Julie Archer, Peter and Wendy; Alexander Nichols, Ravenshead; Ralph Funicello, Tartuffe and The Magic Fire; Peggy Snyder and Dan Chumley, Up a Tree; Christopher Barreca, The First 100 Years; Lauren Elder, Spring Awakening; Daniel Ostling, Metamorphoses.
Best lighting: Hugh Vanstone, Art; Joshua Marchesi, Greensboro: A Requiem; Rick Martin, Gum; Beverly Emmons, Jekyll and Hyde and Lillian (adapted by Kate Boyd); Steven B. Mannshardt, Pride's Crossing; Andrew Hill, Symphonie Fantastique; T.J. Gerckens, Metamorphoses; Blake Burba, Rent.
Golden chutzpah award: Berkeley's Last Planet Theatre, for mounting a four-play, monthlong Wallace Shawn Theatre Festival.
What was all the hoo-hah about? Rent, Shopping and F***ing, Stonewall Jackson's House, The Beauty Queen of Leenane.
Most sublimely awful moment in Bay Area theater in 1999: Scenes from the life of slain Earth First! activist David Chain, rendered via hagiographic shadow puppetry in Up a Tree.
Monologue that most deserves a rest: "A Woman Alone," from Dario Fo and Franca Rame's Orgasmo Adulto Escapes from the Zoo, endlessly performed on Bay Area stages since Fo won the Nobel Prize in 1997.
Best onstage orgasm: Shelley Mitchell in "Dialogue for a Single Voice" – a more rarely seen excerpt from Orgasmo Adulto. See what can happen when you innovate?
Best offstage orgasm: Alas, such a judgment lies beyond the scope of this survey.
Best costumes: Bill Whitten, Ask Any Girl; Eliza Chugg, The Dance of Death; Roberta Doylend, The Ugly Duchess; Meg Neville, The Life of Galileo and Gum; Ann Curtis, Jekyll and Hyde; Ariel, The Merchant of Venice; Fumiko Bielefeldt, Pride's Crossing; Angela Wendt, Rent; Beaver Bauer, Tartuffe and Of Thee I Sing; Sarah Michelle Baum, Bloody Poetry; Kristina Lenss, The Second Man; Mara Blumenfeld, Metamorphoses.
Three languages and I still don't know what he said: Stefano Fogher's solo Francis of Assisi and Other Stories was offered here in English, French, and Italian performances. But the inherently multilingual piece, a fugue of voices attempting to discover a personal poetry of faith, was so densely scripted and fragmented that it remained largely opaque, despite Fogher's exceptional gifts as a performer.
Best reason to wear a flak jacket to the theater: The motto of writer-performer Mark Insko's Frank Rich Is Dead was "Kill the critic."
Best theater about theater: Art Street Theatre's Bang! by Mark Jackson. Honorable mention to certain acute passages in Jonathan Reynolds's highly uneven Stonewall Jackson's House.
Most bizarrely appealing musical theater: Triangulated Nation, a concert staged by multimedia maven George Coates, featured singers and musicians moving through an installation of 21 human-scale plumb bobs, created out of materials ranging from charred wood to panty hose. What the installation had to do with musical choices ranging from Native American songs to Britten arias remained obscure, but where else could you see a tenor sing impassioned Schumann lieder to a column of acrylic petri dishes?
Biggest wastes of incredibly talented performers: ACT scores big here, with both Ellen Greene in The First Picture Show and Bebe Neuwirth in The Threepenny Opera.
Who you callin' Irish? Trust, by Belfast playwright Gary Mitchell, was promoted as a rare look at the troubles in Northern Ireland from a Protestant perspective. But if you overlooked the wayward accents, the tangled web of personal and political loyalties in this quasi thriller could just as easily have taken place in any number of the world's trouble spots, from Belgrade to Detroit.
Great performances (women): Cynthia Bassham, Heart of the World; Sarah Jones, Surface Transit; Rebecca Dines, As Bees in Honey Drown; Cristine McMurdo-Wallis, Collected Stories; Lesley Fera, Communicating Doors; Nancy Dussault, Lisa Vroman, and Anika Noni Rose, The Threepenny Opera; Karen Kandel, Peter and Wendy; Mary Eaton Fairfield, Swimming in the Shallows; June Lomena, Venus; Pamela Payton-Wright, Long Day's Journey into Night; Michelle Duffy, Sunday in the Park with George; Lee Ann Manley, Transcendental Wild Oats; Marsha Ward, Babes in Arms; Tiffany Hoover, Marie and Bruce; Michelle Morain, The Beauty Queen of Leenane; Beth Donohue, Subject to Fits.
Great performances (men): Jack Willis, Art; Bob Ernst, Eyes for Consuela; Will Power, The Gathering; Nick Scoggin, Greensboro: A Requiem; Harry Waters Jr., The First Picture Show; Rinde Eckert, Ravenshead; John Flanagan, Swimming in the Shallows; Peter Macon, The Trial of One Short-Sighted Black Woman vs. Mammy Louise and Safreeta Mae; Rhonnie Washington, Venus; Daniel Davis, Wrong Mountain; Robert Wu, The Nanjing Race; J. Michael Flynn, The Second Man; Norbert Leo Butz, Cabaret; Kelvin Han Yee, Under Western Eyes; Richard Reinholdt, The Fever and Marie and Bruce; Martin Wuttke, The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui.
Great performances (ensemble): Tartuffe, Violet, Spring Storm, Hillary and Soon-Yi Shop for Ties, Sisters Matsumoto, Gum, Problem Child, Rent, Trust, The Life of Galileo, Jekyll and Hyde, The Glace Bay Miners' Museum, A History of Things That Never Happened, Indian Ink, The Joy Luck Club, The Magic Fire, A Common Vision, Metamorphoses.
Best voiceover performance: Ellen McLaughlin, Ravenshead.
Best performer in mediocre productions: A special citation to Paul Sulzman, who consistently managed to brighten his moments in such less than stellar evenings as An Immaculate Misconception, A Flea in Her Ear, and The Glass Menagerie.
Best solo flights: Holly Hughes, Preaching to the Perverted; Scott Barry, solo gig2; Frank Wortham, House of Lucky; Roy Conboy, Drive My Coche; Deke Weaver, The Crimes and Confessions of Kip Knutzen: A Hockey Way of Knowledge; David Cale, Lillian; Marga Gomez, jaywalker; Emily Shihadeh, Grapes and Figs Are in Season: A Palestinian Woman's Story; Tim Miller, Glory Box.
The Bay Area's clown jewel: Geoff Hoyle.
Artistic director needed (desperately): California Shakespeare Festival.
Another good idea: In a promising collaboration, the Phoenix II Theatre and the West Coast Playwrights Alliance will develop and premiere eight new plays over the next two years, taking them from early drafts through full production.
Best prop: The severed head of Pentheus in the Shotgun Players production of The Bacchae. As a rule, severed heads are usually a comic failure on stage, but Michael Frassinelli's rendering was an eerily convincing manifestation of both flesh and spirit.
Great directors: Mark Wing-Davey, The Life of Galileo; John Warren, Problem and Child and Greensboro: A Requiem; Lee Breuer, Peter and Wendy; Barbara Damashek, Spring Awakening; Kent Nicholson, Swimming in the Shallows; Tony Kelly, Venus; Amy Glazer, Trust; Matthew Warchus, Art; Danny Scheie, As Bees in Honey Drown; Margo Whitcomb, The Glace Bay Miners' Museum; Tony Taccone, Ravenshead; Lee Sankowich, Spring Storm; Sam Mendes and Rob Marshall, Cabaret; Charles Randolph-Wright, Tartuffe; Mary Zimmerman, Metamorphoses.
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