.Sticks and Stones

Two black-box theater companies use their resources wisely.

When faced with a Greek tragedy as daunting as The Oresteia,
most theater companies can’t resist turning it into an anti-war
allegory. Ragged Wing Ensemble went the other route entirely. Its new,
highly condensed Oresteia — called So Many Ways to Kill
a Man
— hones in on a domestic drama while deemphasizing the
war abroad. Scripted by Amy Sass (who also stars), So Many Ways
is a tale of double homicide: Queen Clytemnestra (Sass) does a hatchet
job on both her husband Agamemnon (Keith Davis), and his mistress
Cassandra (Anna Shneiderman). But it’s more than mere revenge fantasy.
Sass uses the Trojan War as a backdrop for a script that’s actually
about sex, gender, and power. She brings depth and complexity to the
three principal characters.

A lot of the play’s success owes to Sass’ ability to work in threes.
Right away, she foregrounds the love triangle, a dynamic made
complicated by each character’s backstory. Clytemnestra is the
self-described “viper” sister of beautiful Helen, whose abduction
caused the Trojan War. A long-entrenched feeling of inadequacy taints
her marriage to King Agamemnon, who, like most Greek warriors, is a bit
of a sex predator. He kidnapped Clytemnestra when she was young, made
her bear four children, then set off for Troy and found a replacement.
In the meantime, she became an embittered, cigarette-smoking femme
fatale. There’s an odd symmetry between the wicked queen and her rival
Cassandra, who has the opposite temperament. Shneiderman plays
Cassandra as a guileless, lovelorn wimp who falls for her captor just a
little too easily. The women’s tense relationship is best encapsulated
in the moment that Clytemnestra tenderly kisses Cassandra, while
sticking a knife in her back.

It takes a lot of stamina for three actors to mount an epic Greek
tragedy (complete with a three-puppet chorus), and Ragged Wing’s
production — while creative — gets a little spotty in
places. Sass uses several devices to streamline the original text, from
having the puppets read parts of it in a newspaper (as though the
misadventures of Greek aristocrats were grist for a Page Six gossip
column), to filtering some of Clytemnestra’s monologues through a
song-and-dance number (written by Shneiderman). Some innovations work
quite well, like turning Clytemnestra’s estranged daughter Electra
(also Shneiderman) into a punk rocker, and son Orestes (also Davis)
into a boozy, Hawaiian-shirted gambler. Other times, the company trades
cute stagecraft for substantive content: The song-and-dance bits work
in isolation but don’t really propel the action of the play.
Nonetheless, it’s well-conceived overall, especially for three
people.

Oakland’s similarly small-scale, equally ambitious group
TheatreFIRST began its season last week with Stones in His
Pockets
, Marie Jones’ comedy about two extras working on a
Hollywood film set in Ireland. Stones is partly about the
friendship that grows between Charlie Conlon (Clive Worsley) and Jake
Quinn (Kevin Karrick) as they toil on the set of The Quiet
Valley
for a mere forty pounds a day. It’s partly about a cruel
form of imperialism, as the Americans capitalize on the dreams and
delusions of working-class Irishmen. It’s partly about the permeability
between film and real life: Not only do Charlie and Jake become
accomplices in their own exploitation; they also try to shill their own
script to the directors. On a more abstract level, it’s a play about
working very hard toward something, even when the benefits are
illusory.

Stones in His Pockets is apropos for a theater company that
appears to have suffered its own share of setbacks in the past year.
Now under the artistic directorship of Michael Storm, TheatreFIRST
recently moved into the Marion E. Geene Theatre inside Oakland School
of the Arts, which will hopefully become its new home. The space is
still quite raw but big enough to install a proscenium stage or do
theater in the round, and equipped with an incredibly clean sound
system. It’s ideal for a play like Stones, which calls for a
spare set (a dresser, a stool, a wooden chest, and a small bench) and a
two-man cast (the actors share fifteen parts). The play could easily
fall apart in less-capable hands, but Worsley and Karrick are old hats
at this. Worsley, in particular, knows how to switch bodies (and
genders) with ease. Not only does he play blue-collar Charlie and a
host of other blokes; he also transforms himself into the fey Hollywood
actress Caroline Giovanni — and manages to do so without looking
too much like a man in drag.

Stones in His Pockets and So Many Ways to Kill a Man
both succeed on the merits of a few good actors, deft stage direction,
and rigorous imagination. Above all, they milk their source material
without forcing any political themes that aren’t already in the text.
Having that sense of restraint is a feat in itself.

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