Home                       Writers Directory                Carol Davis           April 5, 2007

_____________________________________________________________________
Arts in Review

If I could put time in a bottle...
By Carol Davis
                    

If I could put time in a bottle, I would make sure that all of the plays I recently saw, could be around long enough to be seen by many more. I’d push the closing dates up so those in a time crunch could get a taste of what it is about the theatre that excites me. And I’d want to spend more time talking about what we saw and what we would like to see more of. Four of the plays closed on April 1st (That’s what I call a bad joke).

The Farnsworth Project is a page to stage presentation by the La Jolla Playhouse that does not allow reviews,  (certainly those who did see it should have spread the news by now.) Taking Flight, The Piano Teacher, and The Adoption Project,  are gone and on to their next venues. And all are worthy of another look back at why they should have been here longer and seen by more.

Taking Flight

Taking Flight by Adriana Sevan and directed by Giovana Sardelli is a ninety minute or so personal experience that this talented playwright/performer brings the audience in on in an effort to tell her compelling tale of friendship, devotion, devastation and healing.

In one fell swoop, we are drawn into her narrative like bees to honey by Sevan. It is not only whirlwind in nature, it is also breathtaking in scope and mystical in it’s storytelling components. It takes place in New York right after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and her best friend is hit by debris from the falling steel of the towers. It all but crushed her body. They were best friends, she and ‘Rhonda’. They were planning Rhonda’s wedding. She was planning Rhonda’s wedding. They had grandiose plans, these best friends. 

That all vanished on that fateful morning, and instead of planning a wedding, she was planning for her friends survival. And if wishing, wanting, being there and devoting ones entire self to that project was what it would take, she was in it for the long haul; her personal life be dammed.

So her journey began.

Dressed in a pair of jeans and a colorful blouse and set on Victoria Petrovich’s simple design, a single chair in the center of the stage  with flowing white curtains in the background surrounded by a margin of sand around the edges with glass bowls filled with water, a lone flower floating and a poem by Rumi. (‘The way of love is a subtle argument, the door there is devastation. Birds make great sky circles of their freedom. How do they learn it? They fall, and falling they’re given wings’), her story is compelling. Jose Lopez’s subtle lighting effects go  back and forth from reality to dreamlike and reinforce the reality of her story.

The Piano Teacher

Heading north to Costa Mesa and The South Coast Repertory Theatre, Julia Cho’s The Piano Teacher was the theatre’s 100th world premiere. Another one of those under the radar gems, Linda Gehringer is Mrs. K. a retired piano teacher who, sitting in her living room munching on cookies and tea (she offers them to the audience as well), looking like the kindly grandmother we would all love to have, goes back into her memory bank and reflects on her
___________________________________
Linda Gehringer in The Piano Teacher  Photo: Henry DiRocco
-----------------------------------------------------
students; wonders about their whereabouts; puzzles over why she never hears from any of them, and why so many of them left so suddenly.
Cho’s play and Gehringer’s demeanor set the tone as the suspense of there being something more than a retired piano teacher wondering about her students. As she ruminates, glimpses of some long and hidden hurt? guilt? secret? doubt? buried in some dark recesses begin to surface and after two former students finally do pay her a visit, we learn even more, but  nothing really definitive as to who Mrs. K really was and why the lessons ended so abruptly.

Somewhat confusing thoughts emerged as the play wound down,  unanswered questions surfaced and if any positive suggestions would be accepted, it would be for the first act to be a little shorter and perhaps a little more information as to what Mr. K really was about. But, maybe that’s the way the playwright wanted it. Overall however, The Piano Teacher seems headed for other venues. It’s new and will be around for some time.

Under Kate Whoriskey’s deft direction, Myung Hee Cho’s scenic and costumes and Jason Lyons fine lighting design The Piano Teacher is a treat and one to catch next time around.

The Adoption Project: Triad

Mo’olelo Performing Arts Company recently presented The Adoption Project: Triad written by Kimber Lee, directed by Seema Sueko and starring Jo Anne Glover, Sandy Campbell and Linda Libby, three of San Diego’s finest, portraying Aggie, an adoptee, Bernice, the adoptive  mother and Madeline, Agee’s  birth mother.

Adopted children usually have one thing in common, they need to find their roots. Years ago, for some draconian reason, adoptions were sealed and what was done, was done. It was too bad if the child wanted to find his or her biological parents. For the reasons those in ‘the know’ enforced this rule there were that many more reasons for it to be abolished. For The Adoption Project, set in the wide space of  the Centro Cultural de la Raza in Balboa Park this very same issue is examined and from every possible angle, aspect and psychology.

With the use of television clips, beautiful, raw symbolic dancing (Erika Malone) effective lighting (Kim Palma) and some of the most striking and compelling acting seen in some time the project angles along with one convincing  scene after another overlapping, swerving and in some cases careening into itself. It is an emotional roller coaster ride, sometimes funny sometimes frightening but always on target.

Mo’olelo Company, headed by Seema is to be congratulated for it’s fine efforts in the community for bringing pertinent issues to the fore.

See you at the theatre.