Joel Perez and Melinda Lopez in "Stir." Photo by Rich Soublet II In the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic, when I like many others found myself in isolation, I wondered: When this was all “over,” if it ever would be, how would artists, including theater makers, respond? Would there be a slew of real-life-inspired fictional stories about the darkest days and loneliest nights, about the losses and sacrifices, about the struggle to survive an unprecedented viral enemy?
More than four years after the onset of the pandemic, the answer is … no. There have been a few notable attempts to document artistically what we all went through, such as the collaborative novel “Fourteen Days” or Jodi Picoult’s “Wish You Were Here.” “The COVID Confessions” by Louisa Vilardi was a New Play Exchange production, and Richard Nelson’s “What Do We Need to Talk About?” from 2020 was hailed by The New Yorker as “the first great original play of quarantine.” But I ask you: Have you seen or read any of these? I’ve been considering this for some time and am drawing closer and closer to the conclusion that rather than attempting to reflect on life during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, creatives have decided to do what many of us have chosen to do as well: move on. For some, the years between 2020 and 2022 were deeply painful and best not exploited as “art.” For some others, including theater makers, it’s better to move forward than to re-examine the past. The cost to live theater and to theater companies in general from COVID isolation is well documented. But some positives did come out of having to reinvent the wheel in order to keep the flame alive, artistically and financially. One of them was experimenting with Zoom technology to present virtual theater to audiences stuck at home. That’s how a one-act drama by Melinda Lopez and Joel Perez (who also co-star) began: as a Zoom production originating at the Huntington Theatre Company where Lopez is artist-in-residence. What was originally called “The Black Beans Project” taps into all the devastations and disorientations of COVID isolation while also telling an intimate story of family. Its potential recognized by Old Globe Artistic Director Barry Edelstein, “The Black Beans Project” would be workshopped as a live play at the theater’s Powers New Voices Festival. Now a world-premiere production, the retitled “Stir” is onstage at the Globe in the Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre space. Marcela Lorca directs. Make no mistake, “Stir” has a pandemic foundation: Siblings Mariana (Lopez) and Henry (Perez) communicate throughout the 80-minute show via Zoom. (Not literally, but much of the time they are looking into the screens of laptop computers.) The worst of COVID lockdown is over and vaccines are available, but both Mariana and Henry are still isolated – she in her Buffalo home, alone after the departure of her husband Carlos (the reason for that is made out to be a big reveal later), he sharing a place with their viejo but sprightly Papi (Al Rodrigo) in an Orlando retirement home. Their mother has passed away (during COVID but not from it). Mariana and her younger brother connect virtually, ostensibly to cook up in each other’s kitchens (niftily designed at the Globe by the ingenious Diggle) their mother’s secret and wonderful black beans recipe. Well, Mariana knows the recipe and Henry is kinda comically learning as they go through the cooking process. As expected, the beans and the preparation of them are a pretext for the dramatic revelations and admissions – and conflagrations – that ensue over the course of this slowly simmering one-act. I never saw the original Zoom iteration of this production. Like most Zoom theater I watched during COVID isolation, it must have seemed very talky and claustrophobic. Not so with this stage production, where not merely the business of chopping and slicing and stirring but also the actors moving in and around the two cleverly mobile “kitchens” works to create a piece that is very live. These are working kitchens too – you can smell the onions from anywhere in the theater. Conflicts major and less so abound in “Stir,” a pot full of crises. The chief ingredient is grief. Because of the enforced isolation of the pandemic, neither sibling (nor their father) was able to formally lay the beloved family matriarch to rest. Her ashes wait in a closet at the retirement home. Henry it turns out is most tormented by this. At once haunted and soothed by a memory of a family camping trip, he becomes more and more determined to do right by his mother. Mariana, a busy tax expert, missed her last opportunity to visit her mother before the pandemic arrived and is as such ridden with self-recrimination. As for Papi, his strategy is live for the moment. Though he misses the woman who first beguiled him in Miami’s Little Havana, he’s got his dominoes and friends and Fox News (ugh) to keep him going. Where “Stir” overreaches is overcomplicating the recipe. While the story never loses sight of its arc – a family separated physically and emotionally by not just COVID but by the loss of its dearest guiding light – it addresses seemingly every other aspect of Mariana and Henry’s troubled lives. Her wayward spouse and grown gringa daughters. His “emotionally unavailable” romantic history as a gay man. Her COVID-initiated and ongoing agoraphobia. His frustration with and resentment about living with his father. Her obsession with work. His not having any. To be fair, if we learned one thing about those Zoom conversations we had with each other it was that closeup-to-closeup we found ourselves sometimes rambling to fill the silences. That’s how “Stir” feels at times. Got to keep the convo moving. There is comic relief now and then, which also feels very Zoom-y. And the cast is excellent. Lopez, who starred in the Globe’s one-woman play “Mala” two years ago, carries this production, and the slings and arrows of Mariana’s life as such have emotional authenticity. Perez’s is the flashier, funnier role, which he does well by, and in mainly cameo appearances onstage (until a rather strained, dreamlike sequence near the end of the play) Rodrigo is delightful as Papi. It’s a character that wasn’t in the early versions of the play; its inclusion was inspired. Dominoes is the metaphor for “Stir,” the game having been not only the first impetus for the parents’ relationship but the go-to glue that kept the financially poor family together for years. The dominoes are the “bones” of the family, Papi tells us. They allow this play’s characters to escape for a little while their pain but also to honor their family roots and the love that made them grow. You could actually take COVID-19 out of “Stir” and still have a meaningful play about family, loss and love. But somebody has to say something about how our shared global nightmare took its toll in so many ways. That is part if not all of Lopez and Perez’s play. Food for thought. “Stir” runs through May 26 at the Old Globe’s Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre in Balboa Park.
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Left to right: Allison Spratt Pearce, Larry Raben and Bets Malone in "Into the Woods." Karli Cadel Photography Making my way out of the Moonlight Amphitheatre on opening night having just reveled in the enchantment that is “Into the Woods,” I heard someone behind me ask someone else behind me: “So which act did you like better? The first or the second?”
It’s a reasonable question if you know this legacy musical by James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim, their second collaboration following “Sunday in the Park with George” (and to my mind the more entertaining of the two shows): Act One of “Woods,” which was born at the Old Globe Theatre in 1986 and premiered on Broadway a year later, is a charming and just a little subversive deconstruction of the Brothers Grimms’ greatest hits – “Cinderella,” “Jack and the Beanstalk,” “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Rapunzel.” Everyone wishes in his or her own way for a happily ever after and – SPOILER ALERT – gets it. But as with “Sunday in the Park,” which also has a darker, forward-in-time second act, “Into the Woods” Part 2 finds its fanciful characters confronting the consequences of their wishes-come-true. There is revenge, retribution and death. Reality bites in Fairy Tale Land. It’s not a question of which half of “Into the Woods” is more appealing – they work together, owing to the ingenuity of Lapine’s adaptation and the brilliance of Sondheim’s music and lyrics. Moonlight Stage Productions’ season-opening staging of “Into the Woods” is a faithful, full-fledged reminder of that ingenuity and brilliance, which endure nearly 40 years after the show was first seen in Balboa Park. “Woods” is not your typical season opener for family-friendly Moonlight. Kids were few and far between in the Wednesday evening audience. Not a surprise: The darkness and subtle comic treatments of the characters would fly over the heads of most children or, in the case of the second act, possibly prove unsettling. Moonlight Artistic Director Steven Glaudini, who also directs this production, wanted to start the season with a theatrical atmosphere to match the vestiges of a lingering winter giving way to a new spring. He also wanted to honor Sondheim, a personal hero and inspiration, who passed away in 2021. In a poetic stroke in itself, Glaudini’s wife, Bets Malone, portrays the Witch in this “Into the Woods” – a role she also played years ago at Moonlight when she was only 18 years old. Another poetic stroke? The cast of this “Into the Woods” is wearing costumes worn by the original Broadway cast. I hadn’t seen this show in 10 years – not since the McCarter Theatre Center and Fiasco Theater staged a production at the Old Globe in summertime 2014. (I unfortunately missed the New Village Arts/Oceanside Theatre collaboration two years ago.) It is gratifying to be reminded of the beauty and cleverness of “Into the Woods” and most of all of Stephen Sondheim and one of his many enduring gifts to American theater. The precise ensemble numbers. The lyrical flourishes that give delightful momentum to the storytelling. The hilarity of the two princes’ “Agony” and the surprising emotion of Jack’s “I Guess This is Goodbye” (sung to a cow) and the Witch’s “Stay With Me” (sung to Rapunzel). As for “No More” and “No One is Alone” near the end of the show, they are as thoughtful and stirring as the best of Sondheim, and that’s some best. Bravos all around for a marvelous cast, led by Malone reprising her Witch role with supreme bad-assness. The principal parts of the Baker and the Baker’s Wife are charismatically realized by Larry Raben and Allison Spratt Pearce, respectively, with Courtney Blanc shining as a Cinderella who, in this telling, articulately bridges the two halves of “Into the Woods”: She wants neither the oppressed life she had under the thumb of her malevolent stepmother and sisters, nor the “perfect” life in the kingdom of her prince. She wants something in between. For all its cerebral reflections, “Into the Woods” is a very funny affair. Moonlight’s production exploits that with animated turns from Brooke Henderson as a sharp-tongued Little Red Ridinghood, Samantha Tullie as a sobbing, downtrodden Rapunzel, and David Burnham and Evan White as dashing if doltish princes. Neither Steve Gunderson, who doubles as the narrator and the “Mysterious Man,” nor Sandy Campbell, portraying Jack’s put-upon mother, ever turns in less than a memorable performance. It’s great to have them in this ensemble. Moonlight is debuting its new LED screen with this show. That and Blake McCarty’s projections fashion a wondrous woods. And as always, an orchestra conducted by music director Elan McMahan is first-class. All due credit to Steven Glaudini for bringing back (for the third time) this classic to Moonlight and also for helming this inspired production which demonstrates that none of the magic has dissipated in these woods. “Into the Woods” runs through May 18 at Moonlight Amphitheatre in Vista. |
AuthorDavid L. Coddon is a Southern California theater critic. Archives
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