KPFA - Bay Area Theater

Will Eno is the author of the play “Wakey Wakey” starring Tony Hale, directed by Anne Kauffman, at ACT’s Geary Theatre through February 16, 2019. He is interviewed by host Richard Wolinsky.

Will Eno has written several successful plays, including Thom Pain (based on nothing), which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2005, The Realistic Joneses, which won a Drama Desk Special Award for its Broadway run in 2014, and Open House, which won an Off-Broadway Obie Award, also in 2014.

Wakey, Wakey concerns a guy (named Guy) who is nearing death and looking back on all that life has to offer. In the interview, Will Eno discusses how he came to write the play, as well as highlights from his own career as a playwright.

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KPFA theatre critic Richard Wolinsky reviews “Tiny Beautiful Things,” based on the book by Cheryl Strayed, at San Francisco Playhouse through March 7, 2020.

Text of review:

The writer Cheryl Strayed hit the best-seller charts in 2012 with her memoir, Wild, the story of a trek she took over the length of the Pacific Coast Trail in 1995. It was her second book. Her first, Torch, a novel had been published six years earlier to good reviews and little national notice.

But it was in 2010, struggling as a free lance writer, that she was offered the job – not really a job because there was no pay involved – to take over an advice column, Dear Sugar, for the Rumpus on-line literary magazine, which she then wrote for two years.

Those columns were collected in the book, Tiny Beautiful Things, which has been adapted by Nia Vardalos into a theatre piece now at San Francisco Playhouse through March 7th directed by Bill English.

After a brief opening in which Cheryl gets the gig, the rest of the play consists of questions from the Rumpus audience, and Cheryl’s extended autobiographical responses, which almost serve as parables to the conundrums she’s been presented with. Some questions are short, with brief answers, and some are longer, and deal with weighty issues like grief suicide, sexual abuse, not to mention, of course, queries involving relationships.

Without a through line, a plot, or really, any characters other than Cheryl Strayed, there’s very little forward movement to the story, if there’s even a story.

Thus it’s up to the actors, the director, and the design of a production to keep things moving, and most of the way, San Francisco Playhouse does just that. Susi Damilano as Cheryl does her part, in a warm and witty performance that often transcends material that could easily become mawkish or sentimental. She is ably assisted by Mark Anderson Phillips, Kina Kantor and Jomar Tagatec as all her interlocutors – who switch gender, age and character in the blink of an eye. Constant movement by all four actors inside a busy high-tech space gives the audience a roving eye, absolutely necessary when the text itself only consists of questions and answers.

It helps, of course, that Cheryl Strayed is such a good writer, and that the stories of her life, and how she responds to her Rumpus readers, are of themselves both interesting and profound. She’s no advice expert, she has no training, and even admits that maybe, some of her advice is wrong. But Tiny Beautiful Things is never less than honest, and even though the play starts to lag just past the one hour mark, it’s still a lovely and often moving night in the theatre.

Tiny Beautiful Things, adapted by Nia Vardalos from the book by Cheryl Strayed, directed by Bill English, plays at San Francisco Playhouse through March 7. For more information, go to sfplayhouse.org. I’m Richard Wolinsky on Bay Area theater for KPFA.

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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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