High school football player Cory (Omari K. Chancellor) confronts his father Troy Maxson (Dorian Missick) in August Wilson's "Fences."                                                                       Photo by Rich Soublet II

            It would be simple enough to regard August Wilson’s venerable “Fences” in terms of its metaphors – like the fence around Troy Maxson’s Hill District house, the one that keeps the demon away, the one that devoted wife Rose counts on to keep her wayward husband home; and the ever-presence of baseball, the lifeblood of Troy’s younger years, the nexus between his past and present; and an old ball bat itself made not of ash but of broken dreams and frustrations.
            Now that all of this is out of the way – and these metaphors are valid enough – it’s more important to appreciate that “Fences,” the sixth play about Black American life in Wilson’s famed Pittsburgh Cycle, is a work of deeply emotional human drama. It’s a depiction of family that can’t help but course through your blood and a reminder of how loving bonds, already fragile, can be complicated and undermined by the very things that make us human. One man in particular.
            As Troy Maxson himself says: “You’ve got to take the crooked with the straight.”
            The Old Globe’s production of “Fences” does beautiful service to the essence and power of “Fences.” Delicia Turner Sonnenberg, who directed a Cygnet Theatre staging of the play in 2008, has stated how she admires Wilson’s craft of language and also the complexity of his principal character. In her hands, and with an extraordinary performance by Dorian Missick as Troy, this “Fences” is the finest I’ve seen, a realization rich with those eminent words of Wilson’s and pulsing in its considerations of inter-family relationships and a man’s wrestling with himself and with his mortality.
            The son of an abusive sharecropper, 56-year-old Troy Maxson now resides in Pittsburgh with wife Rose (De’Adre Adiza) and their teen son Cory (Omari K. Chancellor). Prominent in the front yard of their house is a baseball hanging on a rope and a bat harking back to Troy’s days as a star Negro League ballplayer but also a bitter reminder that he was never given the chance to play in the Majors. Troy is now a sanitation worker, but, in another perceived slight, not yet the driver of the truck. His larger dreams behind him, he works hard, brings money home to Rose’s hand, brings his singular slice of philosophy and hardened worldview to the shadow of the house’s front porch where he regales co-worker and indulgent friend Jim Bono (Rondrell McCormick).
            Troy’s son by a first marriage, a sometimes-gigging musician named Lyons (Mister Fitzgerald), is a recurring fixture on pay day with a hand out, far from the hard worker that his father is. And there’s Troy’s brother Gabe (Donathan Walters), a veteran of WWII who was severely wounded in combat, and left mentally and psychologically damaged. Gabe is a sweet soul, and Troy cares for him, though we learn early on that the recompense Gabe received for his injury in service became Troy’s means of buying the house in the Hill District.
            That there is so much to contextualize in “Fences” is a testament to its real-life cogency: How intricate, how untidy are the lives of not only the working-class poor, of not only the African Americans about whom Wilson writes, but when it comes to relationships with those in our circle, of us all?
            Hovering over these realities, too, is the same mortality that stares down Troy Maxson, he who defies it as would a stubborn batter braced for “a fastball on the outside corner”?
            Meanwhile, the curve balls in Troy’s mortal life are onerous ones. Son Cory, a high school football player, may be offered a college scholarship -- Troy wants him to work at the A&P, to work hard as he does, to not care about being liked by him or to be like him. Though Rose is as loving and understanding as the wife of a difficult man could be, Troy is straying, and that straying will upset the foundation of their relationship, and of their household.
            The highly charged scenes between Missick and Aziza that ensue are as potent as dramatic theater can get. From that point on, the denouement of “Fences” seems preordained, and it will be one that is hypertense and tender at once.
            Missick and Aziza are supported by an exceptional cast, with Chancellor at the forefront as a young man standing up to an uncompromising father and standing up for an anxious loving mother. McCormick brings likability and no end of common-sense wisdom to Jim Bono, and Walters’ erratic but devil-chasing Gabe is heart rending. It is he who will lead us to the conclusion.
            The set designed by Lawrence E. Moten III at the Globe is the Maxson world as conceived by Wilson down to its tiniest detail, with that front porch being the open door into what Rose has tried to create, even in the face of the harshest truths and most painful disappointments. It is still a home, a base, somewhere that love seeks to prevail.
            It’s shattering in a family when love isn’t enough, when fences alone are unable to contain its preciousness or to keep at bay the forces and the failures that threaten it. That love can survive is more than the demon can abide and, always, our own comfort and salvation.
            “Fences” runs through May 3 at the Old Globe in Balboa Park.

Maya Sofia Enciso (left) and Alejandra Villanueva in "Matt & Ben."  Jason Sullivan / Dupla Photography

            Mindy Kaling and Brenda Withers’ “Matt & Ben” was first seen at the 2002 New York International Fringe Festival. Twenty-four years later it still looks like so many typical Fringe offerings do: rowdy, ragged, a little rebellious.
            You’ll see what I mean next month when the San Diego International Fringe Festival returns.
            The titular “Matt & Ben” are Damon and Affleck, maybe Hollywood’s best buds ever. They met when they were 10 and 8 years old respectively and have forged a tight relationship socially and professionally that has endured 45 years. They also collaborated on a script for what would become “Good Will Hunting,” and that’s the impetus for Kaling and Withers’ one-act bromance comedy set in Affleck’s slop-happy apartment in South Boston in the mid-‘90s.
            New Village Arts in Carlsbad is staging the San Diego premiere of “Matt & Ben” with, as is prescribed, two female actors playing the leads: Maya Sofia Enciso as Damon, the straight man, and Alejandra Villanueva as Affleck, who’s depicted as a dashing doofus with the attention span of a 5-year-old. Maria Patrice Amon is making her New Village directorial debut, which gives this production a welcome all-Latina creative trio at its forefront.
            I can imagine Kaling and Withers, BFFs themselves, rolling on the floor as they composed “Matt & Ben,” written I assume for Fringe length – about an hour. The play it became is about 80 minutes long, which is about 65 minutes more than required for us to “get it.”
            “It” is that Damon and Affleck can’t help but be besties, in spite of competitiveness, professional jealousy, writer’s block or even the intrusions of Gwyneth Paltrow (Villanueva doing double duty) or J.D. Salinger (ditto Enciso).
            Most of the time “Matt & Ben” finds the boys hanging out, fueled by pizza and chips and donuts, trading “Bah-stin” accents and rough-housing more like kids than the young men they were. It’s frankly not that interesting.
            Possibly suggesting that Damon and Affleck stumbled onto the idea for “Good Will Hunting” rather than having toiled for one, Kaling and Withers’ story has the screenplay literally fall from the rafters, written and ready to go. But where the play goes from here is every which way without any particular rise and fall. Things just go down in Ben’s pad and we’re just flies on the wall having already circled the uneaten donuts.
            Performing “Matt & Ben” must be a physicality-minded actor’s dream and Villanueva especially seizes the day. Her Affleck is a human rowdydow. This boy just wants to have fun. Enciso gets her share of horseplay, but the script for “Matt & Ben” implies right away that Damon is the more focused of the two.
            I’m not sure what the “cameos” by Paltrow and Salinger add. I suspect it’s another case of Kaling and Withers going “I know! I’ve got it! Let’s have THIS happen!”
            The NVA production does add a couple of Hollywood touches in the form of clever projection design by Jesus Hurtado: at the start an illustrated depiction of director Amon that materializes before our eyes; at the end the actual Oscars ceremony TV footage from 1998 when then-baby-faced Damon and Affleck accepted their Best Screenplay award for “Good Will Hunting.”
            Seeing “Matt & Ben” may motivate theatergoers to revisit the film or in some cases watch it for the first time. Either way it’s worth it to hear Robin Williams’ psych professor character remind us that “Bad times wake us up to the good times we weren’t paying attention to.”
            That’s a message that transcends the passing years and their prescription that all of us, even Hollywood types, have to grow up sometime.
            “Matt & Ben” runs through April 26 at New Village Arts Theatre in Carlsbad.

Left to right: Bruce Turk, Jacob Caltrider and Steven Lone in "The Lehman Trilogy."   Karli Cadel Photography

            They were the best of the American Dream and the Worst of the American Dream.
            Cygnet Theatre’s production of the Tony Award-winning “The Lehman Trilogy” begins with a family of immigrants (three brothers) from Bavaria that goes into the cotton business in Alabama and, over the course of more than 170 years and succeeding generations, become kings of Wall Street.
            Until they aren’t any longer.
            That it takes three hours, three acts and two intermissions in the telling is not a surprise given the scope of “The Lehman Trilogy,” which started as a poetic novel (“Qualcosa sui Lehman”) by Stefano Massini and was adapted for the stage by Ben Power. What is a surprise is that under the direction of Kim Strassburger and in the hands of three venerable actors (Bruce Turk, Steven Lone, Jacob Caltrider) it’s able to sustain itself that long, mining taut dramatic tension but also uncovering enough humanity to prevent the eventual titans of finance from becoming villains or at the very least unsympathetic figures. 
            The actors in the round inside Cygnet’s Dottie Studio Theater stand upon, around or sit at movable tables throughout the epic storytelling, which is largely expository in nature, as though they were taking turns reading massive Massini’s novel to the audience. That they rise above what otherwise might be an articulate though static narrative device is the wondrous conceit of “The Lehman Trilogy.” In portraying more than 70 characters between the three of them, Turk, Lone and Caltrider inhabit full, flesh-and-bones, warts-and-all figures, pumping life into the main characters (immigrant brothers Henry, Emanuel and Mayer respectively) and evoking the rich and complicated nature of each man.
            The first and slowest of the three acts (for it must establish who the Lehmans are, their backstories, and their at-the-time modest but noble aspirations) introduces the dignified and commanding Henry, who literally refers to himself as “The Head” of the family; the fiery Emanuel, considered “The Arm”; and the youngest brother Mayer, dismissed by the other two as the softer “Potato.” They are the foundation of what will be a sweeping account over the decades as each man meets his destiny, in one case sadly cut short.
            To backtrack for a moment, “The Lehman Trilogy” begins by referencing the 2008 financial cataclysm that brought the mighty Lehman Brothers firm to its knees; it won’t return to it until the very end of the play. This is not a three-plus-hour recounting of that day of reckoning but rather a dissection of the family of men who began with the simple aspirations of immigrants awed and provided with hope by their new country, and the greed and corruption that overcame them and those who descended from them.
            The second act is the most frankly entertaining of “The Lehman Trilogy,” with diverting moments like Emanuel’s smug son Philip (Turk) choosing “just the right” wife, or Mayer’s son Herbert (Lone) standing up to him in comic exasperation. Also witnessed is the emergence of Philip’s son Bobbie (Caltrider), who will become the dominant and domineering force of the final act.
            “The Lehman Trilogy” is not only the chronicle of a Jewish family initially in quest of belonging, and then later, profit and power. It is a history lesson and a crash course in American economics. The various Lehmans live through and survive the Civil War, the Great Depression (wrenchingly dramatized at the end of Act Two), Pearl Harbor and the Second World War. Simultaneously, the origins of the New York Stock Exchange are explained as is the troubling dichotomy between banking and trading, and most revealing, the tragic and shameless acknowledgement that Americans can be sold – and will buy – anything, whether or not they’ve got any money.
            While the 2008 Lehman Brothers bankruptcy is a narrative inevitability, it is only the consequence of lifetimes of seduction by the aforementioned lure of power and profit.
            Cygnet’s cast of three is superb. The sheer volume of text and nuance of characters required of the actors is staggering enough. By the time the three are dancing atop tables to Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” it’s a wonder that they’ve got the stamina remaining to do so – though their commitment is never in question.
            Turk deftly shifts, for example, between Henry Lehman and Philip Lehman to the degree that they come off as entirely different men to us. Lone is the play’s visceral force in all of his characterizations. Caltrider’s underestimated “Potato” and the Robert Lehman who will regard both himself and his firm as immortal are potent and intuitive creations. (Caltrider also produces the sound of a crying infant like no one I’ve ever heard.)
            The smaller Dottie theater was a smart choice for a production such as this one which asks the audience to closely venture into the souls of these complex men. Projections by Blake McCarty accompany the chronicling, whether looking like the flashing trading updates in the NYSE orthe consuming flames of war. Scenic design (by Matthew Herman), lighting (Sammy Webster) and sound (George Ye) combine to create the illusion of time and space.
            Director Strassburger undertook this challenge with relish and can be duly proud of the result: theater in today’s era of preferred (including by me) 90-minute productions that compels audiences to listen and think for three hours, and more important, to be wary of those who embrace the American Dream but in so doing embrace their darker selves.
            “The Lehman Trilogy” runs through April 26 at Cygnet Theatre in Liberty Station, Point Loma.

Aleksander D'Avignon and Ray-Anna Ranae in "The Mercy Seat."                           Photo by Daren Scott

            Playwright Neil LaBute has described what his characters in “The Mercy Seat” engage in for an hour and a half as “emotional terrorism.”
            This may or may not be (but probably is) a reflection of the setting for this 2002 two-hander: a Lower Manhattan loft within horror-producing proximity to the World Trade Center site the day after the Sept. 11 attacks.
            That’s where we find Abby (Ray-Anna Ranae) and Ben (Aleksander D’Avignon), two typically unlikable LaBute protagonists who in spite of the first few minutes of the storytelling have made 9/11 mostly about themselves. Ben especially. Reluctant/unable to tell the wife he’s been betraying for three years that he’s all right in the tragic aftermath he hits on an idea: pretend he was killed in the terror attack so that he and Abby can run away and be together with new lives.
            Did I mention he has a couple of kids too?
            LaBute seems to revel in brutality in the perhaps ironically titled “The Mercy Seat.” The invective-laden confrontations between Abby (who happens to be Ben’s boss too) and Ben are brutal. Their indictments about their sex life are brutal. Their recriminations are too.
            My issue with “The Mercy Seat” is I don’t buy this relationship at all beyond the purely sexual. Are Abby and Ben so angry and wound up and unhappy because it’s the day after one of the most deadly days in American history? Or do they just not like each other that much anyway? Lust, yes. Love, meh. Like, your guess is as good as mine.
            It’s to director Jenn Peters’ credit at OnStage Playhouse and to the visceral performances by her two actors that “The Mercy Seat” is simmering theater in spite of the flaws of its script and its characters. Ranae has definite presence on the stage, and D’Avignon can yell to bring the rafters down.
            When it comes down to it, “The Mercy Seat” is an hour and a half of a relationship-in-crisis. Ben’s craven idea for escape from his marriage aside, the Sept. 11 (well, Sept. 12) backdrop is almost incidental. Yes, the older (by 12 years) Abby accuses Ben of not being “heroic,” and there are references to people walking the ash-covered streets posting photos of their missing loved ones, but there are practically as many references to the Amazing Kreskin, Audie Murphy and Guy Burgess – means of emphasizing the age gap between these two discordant lovers.
            This September will mark a quarter-century since 9/11. In that time, artists in all disciplines have tried to reflect what it meant and what it means. I’m still waiting for one of them to get it right.
            “The Mercy Seat” runs through March 29 at OnStage Playhouse in Chula Vista.

Left to right: AJ Knox, Samantha Ginn and Devyn Wade in "An Act of God."     Photo by Michael Pearce

            Roustabouts Theatre Co.’s “An Act of God” is scripted (playwright: David Javerbaum), but it comes off as Samantha Ginn, as the Woman Upstairs, doing standup for an hour and a half.
            Say “Amen” somebody!
            Ginn’s been among the most, if not THE most, gifted physical comedian in town, so she’s perfect in the immaculate white of a God who riffs, rants, dives and dances onstage beneath a bright illuminated sign reading “God’s, Open 24 Hours.” She’s so quick on the draw, reactive and spontaneously observational that it could be Robin Williams with blond hair up there.
            Javerbaum conceived “An Act of God” out of what began as a series of Twitter posts and a book -- “The Last Testament: A Memoir By God.” It premiered on Broadway in 2015 with Jim (“The Big Bang Theory,” ironically) Parsons in the title role. Since then actors male and female have played the Almighty, who is portrayed in “An Act of God” as the Old Testament version: omnipotent, and smiting left and right.
            The idea presented from the very beginning of the play (its Genesis if you will) is that God’s grown weary of and disillusioned with the original Ten Commandments that were passed down to Moses and has decided to decree Ten New Ones. (The old tablets are tossed somewhere backstage, followed by the complaining screech of a feline.)
            Assisting God in announcing these new laws are two winged archangels, Gabriel (AJ Knox) and Michael (Devyn Wade). They are Her wing men for the duration of the show, “fielding questions” from the audience (pre-written into the script), helping Her act out events in biblical history and naturally serving as comic foils.
            Phil Johnson directs the organized chaos onstage, rightfully trusting that Ginn has everything under her special brand of comedic control. Even when “An Act of God” gets pretty out there, it never reels OUT of control.
            I’m no biblical scholar but I have faith that much of the historical Scripture utilized as context for the storytelling here is accurate. “An Act of God” treads this fine line between parody of and attention to the acknowledged Holy Word.
            Pop cultural references abound, from an insider nod to “The Big Bang Theory” to a sound snippet from the old pop tune “Rock the Boat” (anyone remember the Hughes Corporation?)
            As for the new Ten Commandments they’re revealed behind the actors on a “Family Feud”-like board. A couple are holdovers from the Original Ten. The disclosure of each is followed by a parable-for-laughs. (There’s one exception: the new decree to honor/love one’s child after which Ginn recounts the story of Her son Jesus, from the manger to the cross. This is done with a tenderness otherwise absent from the dispensing of the other new commandments, and it’s a beautiful departure in tone from the playwright and from Ginn.)
            Periodically during the going, Archangel Michael poses questions to God that are universal and unanswered, like why She has permitted suffering and killing and cruelty and even death. For this directness Michael is practically smited himself, but ultimately God’s reasoning is attributed to “The Mysterious.”
            If there’s any issue with “An Act of God” it’s the length of the show. I would’ve been fine with say, Six of Seven New Commandments and had it at that. I wonder if Moses got impatient the first time around.
            Sam Ginn’s been away from local theater for a while, having devoted her attention to her work as an inclusive-theater teacher and to working with the Jason Mraz Foundation. It’s a blessing to have her back.
            “An Act of God” runs through March 29 at Scripps Ranch Theatre on the campus of Alliant International University.

Shelley Regner and Richard Baird in "The Maltese Falcon."                                   Photo by Aaron Rumley

            North Coast Repertory Theatre’s world-premiere production of “The Maltese Falcon” written by Matthew Salazar-Thompson is a parody of the Dashiell Hammett novel and, more so, the 1941 film adaptation that starred Humphrey Bogart as San Francisco shamus Sam Spade. So to understand and appreciate what is being parodied, you’d best know one or the other.
            That doesn’t mean this animated romp directed by Todd Nielsen can’t be enjoyed strictly on the strength of its physical comedy, well-timed sound effects (thank you, Foley artist Liam Sullivan) and lots and lots of similes and metaphors. But because this production runs nearly two and a half hours with intermission (the first act alone is 75 or more minutes’ long) knowing the source material that Salazar-Thompson, Nielsen and the game cast is winking at will make the time in your seat pass more swiftly.
            Personally speaking, I know the John Huston-directed film adaptation of “The Maltese Falcon” very well, and having read the novel I also know that many of Hammett’s cleverest lines were used verbatim in that movie. (There’s also a 1930s film of “The Maltese Falcon” that admittedly I’ve never seen.) Many of those clever lines and hard-boiled aphorisms are in the NC Rep stage show, though this production still felt long to me. A little too much exposition for one thing, even if that very exposition is meta-mocked by the actors delivering it. The 1941 movie never drags and clocks in at an economical and satisfying 100 minutes.
            This stage production stars Richard Baird as Spade, and from the jump he’s having a ball with the role, never taking himself too seriously but also faithfully speaking the grittiest of the detective’s banter as written by Hammett. (Huston wrote the screenplay for the Bogart film.)
            The other actor in the proceedings who plays only one part is Shelley Regner as femme fatale Brigid O’Shaughnessy. Her North Coast Rep debut is a big winner. She’s every bit the dangerous beauty that Mary Astor was opposite Bogie and, like Baird, she’s deft with the play’s parody of and tribute to its source material.
            A busy ensemble of Regina Fernandez, Louis Lotorto and Daniel A. Stevens handles not only the other principal parts in the mystery of the black bird (Spade’s secretary Effie, Miles Archer’s widow Iva, partners in crime Kasper Gutman and Joel Cairo, gunsel Wilmer Cook, et al) but all the stage play, pantomimes and prop manipulations that help tell the story of the dingus that Spade ultimately dubs “the stuff dreams are made of.”
            What’s most successful about this production is the cast and crew’s ingenuity in effecting a romantic and dangerous ‘30s San Francisco by simply moving a few props and partitions around. Physical touches like spray-canning fog, or creating the illusion of a moving cab or cable car, are creative and amusing. Sound design and music composed by Ian Scot give the setting the period atmosphere and noir shadings required. Sound and visual effects are also utilized to get laughs. This is, remember, a comic take on a classic.
            Here and there playwright Salazar-Thompson departs from the Hammett novel and/or Huston screenplay, and that’s as it should be. I’ve endured more than a few stage adaptations of well-known films that basically tried to reproduce them in a different medium … with dubious results.
            A staple on Turner Classic Movies and a treasured gem of film noir, the 1941 “The Maltese Falcon” flick is assured of cultural immortality. To try and duplicate it is folly. To have fun with it while respecting it at the same time, and doing so onstage, is just fine. Case closed.
            “The Maltese Falcon” runs through April 5 at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach.

 Jessica John and Francis Gercke in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"              Photo by Michael Mackie

            Edward Albee’s cynical history professor George, who in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” devises passive-aggressive “games” such as “Get the Guests” and “Hump the Hostess,” might appreciate a suggestion for a drinking game that would work like this: Every time George or his equally combative spouse Martha downs a fresh cocktail, take a shot.
            But, no, I don’t endorse drinking games; and besides, for all the booze that infuses Albee’s most famous work (now more than 60 years old), “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” is not about alcoholism. At least not completely about alcoholism.
            There is poison in the 23-year marriage between the at-once sodden and incendiary George and Martha, but the more times I see Albee’s play the clearer it becomes that it’s not all contained in a bottle.
            From its beginnings a producing company that resolutely embraces emotionally explosive classic theater (“August: Osage County,” last year’s “A Streetcar Named Desire,” et al), Backyard Renaissance Theatre Co. has now taken on “Virginia Woolf.” Its artistic director Francis Gercke (who also co-directs this production with Coleman Ray Clark) and its executive director Jessica John are co-starring as George and Martha. Drew Bradford and Megan Carmitchel complete the cast as Nick and Honey, the younger marrieds who find themselves embroiled in George and Martha’s not-so-private war.
            As with its notable production of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Backyard has with “Virginia Woolf” instilled a play set decades ago with a contemporary feel. No matter that the set of George and Martha’s ‘60s New England cottage living room (accomplished in minute detail by Chad Ryan) is equipped with a typewriter, a globe and what used to be called a hi-fi. The more urgent interpersonal aspects of this long night’s journey into hell could be witnessed today: two mutually loathing – and self-loathing -- combatants in a toxic marriage emboldened by drink to perform for an unwary younger couple. It’s an atmosphere heavy with brickbats and manipulations, a domestic arena rife with baiting and flirting and hectoring. I don’t know – do “grownups” still spend evenings together boozing from a bottomless bar or is that a suburban trope of the 1960s?
            It’s Albee’s words, however, prolific of rhythm and language, searing with assault, that sustain nearly 64 years after his play bowed on Broadway. Embedded in all the recriminations and salvos of “Virginia Woolf” are expressions of regret and often cruelty that, alas, human beings have not outgrown nor risen above in the years since. Academics, as revealed here, find downright hilarious the tweaking of the child’s refrain “Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?” into a literary reference, but have they ever come down from their ivory towers?
            “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” is a marathon of melodrama – three acts, three hours, two intermissions. Albee titled his acts consecutively “Fun and Games” (no subtle irony there), “Walpurgisnacht” (a nod to a folkloric gathering of witches) and “The Exorcism.” Each ends in a devastating manner. The last brings a drained sense of relief if not genuine catharsis.
            Co-directors Clark and Gercke give Albee’s exhaustive narrative lots of room while aptly emphasizing its most timely blasts and blow-ups. If there’s slack it’s in the George-and-Nick engagements, the likes of which dominate the second act. “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” is most potent when George and Martha are at it; Nick and Honey are more than bystanders – they are victimized.
            As written, George has more to say than Martha does over the course of three acts, but to me she is the complex and crucial figure. The daughter of the president of the college that employs her husband, Martha’s is a misspent life marked by disappointments and delusion and festering self-destruction. As movingly portrayed by Jessica John, though, and witnessed most in the final act, there’s a frailty there that almost begs sympathy. John’s performance, reeling between coarse and broken, mirrors that of Elizabeth Taylor’s presence in the 1962 film adaptation of “Virginia Woolf” more than any Martha I’ve seen onstage.
            At the opening of the story, said to be at around 2 in the morning, a weary George claims to be not up for company at all, and ready to drop (well, maybe after a drink). As it turns out, no one in the play has more stamina than does George, and Gercke is up to the physical demands. Not only does George become a tireless spouter of taunt and invective, but he’s a prankster often in motion and, as Martha pushes his buttons all the harder, ever on attack. Gercke can get loud -- it’s startling even in a shout-fest like “Virginia Woolf” -- and his George never seems to get as drunk as John’s Martha; but then George could be working off the booze with all his manic gamesmanship.
            Drew Bradford’s is a fully realized Nick, wholly believable as an ex-jock who also has brains but is susceptible to the vicious games his host and hostess play. He holds his own and reacts with equal restraint and incredulity in his confrontations with Gercke’s bullying George. Albee’s Honey character is more substantive than she seems on the surface, and Megan Carmitchel finds that substance given her few opportunities here. She’s shown herself, at Backyard and elsewhere, to be an actor who can intuitively navigate both lead and supporting dramatic roles.
            It shouldn’t be overlooked that this staging benefits from timely intrusions of sounds designed by Kamila Nunez and intermittent music composed by Evan Hart Marsh. Costume designer Brenna Maienschein, too, has attired Martha in three different outfits, each boldly reflective of her mood, with the last in funereal black.
            Each time I see “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” I imagine afterward what George and Martha – and Nick and Honey, too – might be experiencing the next day or even a few sleep-it-off hours in the wake of this awful evening.
            Better not to think about it.
            “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” runs through March 26 at the Tenth Avenue Arts Center downtown.

Summer Broyhill (left) and Marti Gobel in "Straddle."                                                  Photo by Xingyu She

            If you look up “straddle” in a dictionary it may say something like “a gesture between two people, of intimacy or possibly of dominance.”
            The back-and-forth between those two dynamics makes for a simmering undercurrent in Diversionary Theatre’s world-premiere production of Harrison David Rivers’ “Straddle.”
            For the first 10 to 15 minutes of this one-act co-conceived and directed by Diversionary’s Sherri Eden Barber, a long-married lesbian couple, Dodie (Summer Broyhill) and Vida (Marti Gobel), go a lot further than straddling each other in a fancy hotel room. I’ve seen some explicit depictions of sexual activity onstage before, but none that I recall as explicit as this. It makes a production I saw earlier this year, the quasi-graphic staging of Adam Rapp’s “Red Light Winter” by OnWord Theatre (of which Gobel is a co-founder), look like a Disney Channel special.
            But just as two lovers’ hunger and infatuation are apt to become two marrieds’ tension and anxiety, Dodie and Vida’s fun is interrupted by the reality of having kids at home being looked after by Grandma or, more disruptive, by a veiled accusation. What took Dodie so long getting a bucket of ice for the room, Vida challenges. “Truth or truth?” is a recurring ultimatum in “Straddle.”
            For just about all of the play’s 80 minutes Dodie and Vida alternate between being physically magnetized by each other (pretty impressive after 14 years of marriage!) and being at odds. Most of the latter is incited by Vida, who seems unable to sustain the spirit of play that her wife is enjoying the hell out of.
            There’s a truce when Dodie lights up a joint and the two proceed to get high. It’s quite funny, but how many times have I seen this old device onstage?
            Nothing in “Straddle’s” first hour prepares you for its confrontational, soul-baring, truth-telling windup. The less said about it here the more it will surprise and maybe enlighten you later.
            Broyhill, who brings to mind Geena Davis, gets to play with the most comedy in “Straddle,” whether it’s ordering hotel food while high or haplessly kicking in a door. Gobel is right there with her, comedy-wise, during the weed-smoking scene, but there’s gravitas in her portrayal of Vida, believable as lover, wife, mother and, eventually, a woman who is willing to share all, painful as all can be.
            The hotel room designed by McKenna Perry is contemporary and appointed in the way that “hip” hotel rooms can be, and designer Annelise Schultz-Salazar has lit the furnishing and mirrors for passionate proceedings. The focal point on the stage is the bed. You probably figured that.
            “Straddle” is sexier and sultrier than it is meaningful, and aside from learning that the two women met at a laundromat I’d like to have learned more about them BEFORE they met, something that could provide added perspective on who they’ve become together. To this end, “Straddle” is more voyeuristic than revelatory.
            “Straddle” runs through March at Diversionary Theatre in University Heights.

Edith Head (Susan Claassen) re-examines a gown she designed for Bette Davis' Margo Channing in "All About Eve." Photo courtesy of Moxie Theatre

            Before Susan Claassen’s performance of “A Conversation with Edith Head” even began, a Hollywood nostalgist like myself knew that I was in for quite an evening. Rollicking over the Moxie Theatre sound system were Bing Crosby and Bob Hope singing tunes from their popular “Road” pictures. The stage backdrop was sheer eye candy: replica Oscar statuettes; black and white glamor photos of Grace Kelly, Barbara Stanwyck, Elizabeth Taylor, Doris Day, Mae West; tailor’s mannequins fitted with recognizable dresses like the number Bette Davis wore at the “Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy night” party scene in “All About Eve.”
            To borrow from Bob Hope’s famous theme song, thanks for the memories, Edith Head.
         The 85-minute show Claassen created with Head biographer Paddy Calistro has been performed for almost 25 years after premiering at Tucson’s Invisible Theatre where Claassen (now a La Jolla resident) was managing director. While Claassen, practically a dead finger for Hollywood’s most honored (eight Oscars) costume designer, has performed this interactive piece at North Coast Rep and at the Coronado Film Festival, the current Moxie engagement is its first sit-down engagement.
            Edith Head spent more than a half-century in the movie business, stretching all the way back to the Silent Era. Her final job was on behalf of director Carl Reiner for 1982’s Steve Martin spoof “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid.” “A Conversation” finds Head in her customary tailored suit and trademark glasses reminiscing about her peerless career in the movie biz, sometimes praising/sometimes dishing on the major stars she dressed, wryly recounting the machinations of the studios for which she worked, self-glorifying in her Oscar wins, and here and there touching on her less-known personal life.
            Stuart Moulton is cast as the host of this affair, posing questions to the stage and playfully challenging Head’s memory a bit. Questions from audience members also have been gathered and are asked of Claassen – and are usually answered with some zing.
            The magic of this show is that not even halfway into it you’re buying that this IS Edith Head, circa 1981 when Reagan was in the White House, “Raiders of the Lost Ark” was tops at the box office (not a project Head worked on, by the way), and no one had dreamed of streaming or social media. More a series of anecdotes and asides than a traditional work of theater “A Conversation with Edith Head” is pretty much that – Head sharing her life’s work in all its big-screen enchantment, bantering with audience members, prompting them to recall the names of films or stars in the process.
            With all due modesty I can say that I know a lot about movie history. I can recite chapter and verse lines from films Head worked on like “All About Eve,” “Double Indemnity,” “To Catch A Thief,” “Sunset Boulevard” and more. But there was considerable that I learned from “A Conversation” …
            Like that Head dressed both Paul Newman and Robert Redford in “The Sting.” Or that she became great friends with Liz Taylor, Barbara Stanwyck and Grace Kelly. She had nothing laudatory to say about Audrey Hepburn, for whom she designed dresses in both “Roman Holiday” and “Sabrina.” And for all her record number (for women) of Oscar wins, she remained pissed off about the times she didn’t hear her name called.
            Not having read Calistro’s biography of Head or done deep-dive research I can’t say how accurate is “A Conversation’s” interlude when Claassen relives the screening of Billy Wilder’s “Sunset Boulevard” at Paramount and the climactic moment when Gloria Swanson, as Norma Desmond, descends the staircase, ready for her closeup. But this is one of the most touching sequences in “A Conversation with Edith Head,” an instance where the designer herself is absolutely overcome by the wonder of what motion pictures and larger-than-life stars can be.
            Audiences of a certain age, naturally, will most appreciate the trips down the memory lanes of the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s. But so will film buffs and lovers of classic fashion.
          Anyone will appreciate who Edith Head was and what she accomplished merely by discovering through a quick Web search this woman’s career filmography. It’s staggering.
            “A Conversation with Edith Head” is a lighthearted and feisty reminder.
            “A Conversation with Edith Head” runs through March 8 at Moxie Theatre in Rolando.

Andy Grotelueschen (left) and Michael Crane in "Bartleby."                                 Photo by Rich Soublet II

            I’ll leave it to the academics to dissect and examine from some informed critical perspective the socio-psychological intricacies of Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street” (Yikes, that sentence sounds like it was written by an academic.)
            Instead, let’s consider “Bartleby,” a theatrical adaptation of the 1853 short story that was originally published in Putnam’s Monthly Magazine of American Literature, Science and Art. Fiasco Theater’s Noah Brody and Paul L. Coffey, clearly unintimidated by Melville’s particular density, have taken “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and transformed it into a work of absurdist theater and in the process instilled in it comic devices that are in short supply in the original story.
            The play like that story hinges on one inscrutable line spoken by the neat but laconic copier (or scrivener) hired by a lawyer who presides over a small Wall Street office: “I would prefer not to.” What initially seems to prompt a “Say, what?” becomes a deadened refrain that baffles Bartleby’s infinitely patient employer while further and further exasperating the others in his employ -- scriveners Turkey and Nippers, and clerk Ginger Snap (Ginger Nut in the Melville story). Before long “I would prefer not to” applies to Bartleby’s requests to not only perform tasks on the job but to reveal anything illuminating about himself including those persistent denials. By the time he prefers not to leave the office from which he’s been dismissed, only the worst is bound to happen.
            One could legitimately question, even without having first read Melville’s short story, where the humor resides in what begins as apparent self-alienation and descends into self-destruction. Yet on opening night at the Old Globe, which commissioned this world-premiere Fiasco Theater production, there was hearty laughter in the audience and not of the nervous, unsettled kind.
            For starters, Brody and Coffey have made The Lawyer (Andy Grotelueschen) a likably pompous figure who’s much more sympathetic than in the short story. He truly wants to understand why Bartleby is demurring and he sincerely gives a damn about what happens to the enigmatic scrivener. Grotelueschen works some effective comic timing, too, on the audience and on his fellow actors. He’s entertaining to watch and to hear.
            The quirks of the clerks – I know, obvious rhyme – Turkey (Matt Dallal) and Nippers (Devin E.Haqq) include with great animation swilling from a flask after noon and cursing a blue streak before noon respectively; and direction by Emily Young keeps them and the turntable stage in motion. Were only “Bartleby, the Scrivener” as briskly moving as is this adaptation.
            As for Bartleby himself, played with robotic dignity by Michael Crane, he’s as much a mystery to the audience as he is to the characters around him. The incredulous reactions to him from The Lawyer and the others in the office may not be howling, but they are amusing.
            Everyone, especially Bartleby, is immaculately costumed for the time period by Emily Rebholz. If this were set in a 21st-century law office they’d be in polos and jeans.
            I emerged from this performance not entirely sure what it all meant while remaining firmly resistant to over-analysis in the fashion of those literary scholars to which I referred above. One realization lingered, however, and possibly that’s what even Melville planned at the outset: that all of us, at one time or another, are tempted to look duty and responsibility and commitment in the face and say no. Not now. Or “I would prefer not to.” Say this for Bartleby: He did so politely.
            Fiasco Theater’s “Bartleby” runs through March 22 at the Old Globe’s Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre in Balboa Park.