KPFA theatre critic Richard Wolinsky reviews “How to Transcend a Happy Marriage” by Sarah Ruhl, at Custom Made Theatre through Feb. 16, 2020.

Text of review (audio is slightly different)

As we grow and get older, we notice that our friendships have their own sets of rules, areas that can be discussed and areas that are out of bounds.

When they don’t, when lines are crossed, particularly sexual lines, then those relationships must deal with the changes or fall apart completely. Playwright Sarah Ruhl explores the nature of these kinds of relationships in her 2017 play, How to Transcend a Happy Marriage, which can be seen at Custom Made Theatre in San Francsico through February 16th.

Two straight couples in their early forties, Jane and Michael, and George and Paul, are enjoying an evening together, when Jane mentions a temp at her workplace, a woman named Pip, who is involved in a polyamorous relationship with two men. At first, the jokes and assumptions fly fast. Do the men have sex with each other, does their relationship revolve around Pip, and why does Pip kill goats for food in her spare time?, but eventually it’s suggested that Jane invite the threesome for dinner to see what they’re like.

The dinner party, and its aftermath form the core of the play as the four key characters wrestle with their own insecurities, their own fears, and the changing nature of their relationships.

Sarah Ruhl, first and foremost, is a master at dialogue. The opening dinner party, and then the second, is never less than brilliant. Satirizing modern life and attitudes, sometimes laughing with, and sometimes laughing at the characters, the wit and wisdom never stops. It’s a brilliant tour de force.

The actress Fenner is perfectly cast as the mysterious and pretentious Pip, and among the rest of the cast Hillary Hesse and Karen Offereins are standouts as Jane and George, respectively — and Malcolm Rodgers as Michael plays a mean guitar. All handle Ruhls dialogue with aplomb.

How To Transcend A Happy Marriage, though, has a second act problem. Because this is Sarah Ruhl, and because the cast is engaging, it’s not a fatal one. Still, the first act ends in a brilliant crescendo, and Ruhl never quite picks up the pieces. After a wonderful camping scene to open act two, the play briefly devolves into what might be fantasy, and then adds another character, sadly miscast in this production, which detracts from the matters at hand. Ultimately, though, she navigates us through choppy waters toward a conclusion that makes emotional sense, and the play does come to a satisfying end.

How to Transcend a Happy Marriage by Sarah Ruhl, directed by Adam L. Sussman, plays at Custom Made Theatre in San Francisco through February 16th. For more infroamtion, you can go to Custommade.org. I’m Richard Wolinsky on Bay Area theatre for KPFA.

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KPFA theatre critic Richard Wolinsky reviews “Noura” by Heather Raffo, a co-production of Marin Theatre and Golden Thread, at Marin Theatre Company through Feb. 9, 2020.

Text of review (audio is slightly different).

The cost of war is always high. It’s high at the start, through violence, destruction and the death of soldiers and innocent civilians. It’s high later on through the rebuilding process, and it becomes higher still when, through unintended consequences, everything falls apart. That happened to Mosul, one of Iraq’s largest cities, surviving the American invasionand then succumbing to the horrors of the ISIS takeover.

When ISIS came in, Assyrian Christians were forced to leave their homes and their lives. Many came to America, and those exiled Iraqis are the subjects of Noura, a play by Heather Raffo, at Marin Theatre Company through February 9th, in a co-production with Golden Thread.

It’s Christmas, and Noura and her husband Tareq, have been living in New York City for the past eight years. They’re expecting a visit from Maryam, an orphan girl who grew up in a convent, whom Noura sponsored for school in America.

Tareq was a surgeon in Mosul but now can’t operate because his hands never stop shaking. Noura was an architect, but once in America, she stopped pursuing her profession. Because of all the upheaval, she’s no longer sure who she is. Iraqi? American? What is she? It’s driving her crazy, and she’s not making it easy on her husband, her young son, or their best friend, the muslim Rafa’a, whom Noura knew as a child growing up in Mosul.

And then when Maryamm shows up, she’s not at all what Noura expected.

What Heather Raffo has done, and done well, is show how deep the collateral damage of war can run. Noura and Tareq have a nice life, their son is fully American, but they are neither here nor there. Iraq can never leave them, though realistically they know they can never go back. Even if they could, the Mosul Noura knew is gone forever.

Denmo Ibrahim rules the stage as Noura, who wavers between being supportive of others, and anger that she’s lost control of what’s important.. Maya Narzai as the forthright Maryam and Mattico David as the supportive Tareq give equally strong performances, joined by Abraham Makany as Rafa’a.

For most of its running time, the play brilliantly lays out the full brunt of the family’s life as refugees. But then at the end, melodrama takes over. Every question is answered as a series of personal secrets are revealed. But really – there’s no need. In a political play, the political IS personal.

Noura by Heather Raffo, a co-production of Golden Thread and Marin Theatre Company plays at Marin Theatre Company thru February 9th. For more information you can go to Marin theatre.org. I’m Richard Wolinsky on Bay Area theatre for KPFA.

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Valerie Soe, in conversation with KPFA associate theater critic C. S. Soong.

“Love Boat: Taiwan,” a documentary film directed, produced, and written by Valerie Soe, examines the allure of a Taiwanese government-sponsored summer program that brings overseas Taiwanese and Chinese to the island nation for cultural enrichment (officially) and potential romance (unofficially).

The film’s next Bay Area screening is in Milpitas on February 9; find a full list of dates and locations here.

The film’s website

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Mona Golabek is bringing her one-woman show, The Pianist of Willisden Lane, which was adapted and directed by Hershey Felder, to TheaterWorks in Mountain View, from January 15th through February 16, 2020. This interview conducted by Richard Wolinsky was recorded in 2013 when The Pianist of Wilisden Lane was produced by Berkeley Rep. Performing the story of her mother, a piano prodigy who escaped from Austria to England in 1938 on the Kindertransport and the years afterward as a refugee, Mona Golabek weaves the narrative with performances of the music that kept her mother alive, both as listener and performer. The play is based on her book The Children of Willisden Lane.

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KPFA theatre critic Richard Wolinsky reviews “Becky Nurse of Salem” at Berkeley Rep‘s Peets Theatre through January 26, 2020.

Text of review (audio is slightly different and has actuality from Sarah Ruhl)

The notion of witch hunt as metaphor comes from Arthur Miller’s play “The Crucible,” which translated what happened in Salem in 1693 to the story of McCarthyism and those accused during the darkest days of the Red Scare in the late 1940s into the 1950’s.

But while “witch hunt” is a perfectly fine metaphor, if abused by the absurdity in the White House, the real witch hunt was something else again, part of a war against sexuality and particularly, a war against women – something Miller himself stayed away from in his famous play.

Playwright Sarah Ruhl tackles that aspect of the witch trials, and their contemporary meaning, in a crackling new play, “Becky Nurse of Salem,” which is enjoying its world premiere run at Berkeley Rep through January 26th.

Becky Nurse of Salem didn’t happen in a vacuum. It happened because Sarah felt she had to write something about the times we live in.

And that got her thinking about Arthur Miller’s The Crucible

Sarah Ruhl had these two ideas. How, then, to put them together?

Becky Nurse is a complex character, not villain nor hero. Very smart, very astute and also very blind to what’s going on around her.

It’s a tough role, one that Pamela Reed takes and makes her own, a blindingly real person attempting to deal with the struggles of an out of work single woman raising a rebellious granddaughter with ideas of her own. But the entire cast takes Sarah Ruhl’s words and runs with them. The show is a brilliant tour de force by all concerned, convincingly directed by Anne Kaufman.

As a world premiere, the script could use tightening, mostly in the second act, and clarity over the time frame would probably be in order. But this is Sarah Ruhl at her finest, and most astute, and Becky Nurse of Salem is a brilliant play – thought-provoking, very funny, with something to chew on in nearly every single scene.

BeckyNurse of Salem by Sarah Ruhl, directed by Anne Kauffman, plays at Berkeley Rep’s Peets Theatre through January 26th. For more information you can go to Berkely rep. org. I’m Richard Wolinsky on Bay Area theatre for KPFA.

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