by Rob Kendt
The theatre we love is so heartbreakingly ephemeralÑall we take
away are clippings, programs, and our faulty memories. There are occasionally
returns, revivals of beloved plays or performances, but I'm wary of such repeat
pleasures, for fear they won't live up to the glow, however fading, of
remembered stage glory.
I shouldn't have feared with Justin Tanner, whose 1994 cycle of
plays at Hollywood's Cast Theatre remains a high point, if not the collective
high point, of my theatregoing thus far in L.A. Here was a bona fide homegrown
repertory company doing the work of a genuine L.A. original over several months
in matter-of-factly brilliant productions of plays that ranged from the
domestic angst of Pot Mom to the stoned badinage of Party
Mix, from the growing pains of Teen Girl to the family
tension of Happytime Xmas, from the genre spoof Zombie
Attack! to the urban anxiety of Bitter Women. There was
also the perverse Still Life With Vacuum Salesman and a slight
satire called The Tent Show, both of which featured the scruffily
resourceful Mark Ruffalo amid such definitive Tanner players as Laurel Green
and John Amirkhan. We all know Ruffalo's name now, but Tanner's star didn't
rise so high: Chicago critics dissed Pot Mom when Laurie
Metcalf took it to her hometown theatre, Steppenwolf; follow-up Tanner plays
included the so-so Intervention (headlined by Tanner regular French
Stewart), the hilarious and soulful Heartbreak Help, and the
trifling Coyote Woman; an abortive attempt by Tanner and his longtime
partner in crime, the handy set designer/producer/actor Andy Daley, to run the
Cast after ousting Tanner's exacting patron Diana Gibson ended with Daley and
Tanner's bitter parting, leaving the historic Hollywood venue to be snatched up
by the unambitious Theatre District.
So it's an unalloyed joy to see Tanner againÑliterally see him,
since he stars as a put-upon mailroom guy in his new Tent Show rewrite, Big
Bear, at Burbank's Third Stage through this weekend. Some critics have
dismissed Big BearÑin which L.A. executive types find they can't escape office
politics, even while campingÑas an undeserved expansion of a one-act, but I
couldn't get enough of its prickly, characterful banter; its nervy, seemingly
artless rhythm accumulates a sense of lived reality, from which both humor and
tension arise naturally, like a contact high. Tanner's plotting is still justly
tagged sitcom-ish, but it was never for the structural satisfactions of the
well-made play that one went to Tanner. Instead, his musical sense of the arc
of conversation, his attentiveness to telling detail, his genuine curiosity
about all kinds of people, even hateful ones, suggest a sort of profane, Gen-X
Chekhov. Directed seamlessly by the Colony's David Rose, Big Bear also stars
its producer, James Henriksen, alongside welcome Tanner newcomers D.J. Berg,
Tanya Little, and Jodi Carlisle, and one returning original: the lean, tall,
dry Jon Palmer, as a petty corporate misanthrope. It seems that you can go home
again after all, even if the home has a new address.
L.A. CONNECTIONS: Just got back from Ashland's Oregon
Shakespeare Festival, which I'll cover soon in a separate review feature. But
for the moment I'll note a few L.A. connections with that theatrical powerhouse
off the I-5: Armando Duran, who was so stirring in Murray Mednick's Dictator at
Hollywood's Theatre of NOTE, and who played a seductive Satan in Cornerstone's Los
Vecinos, is now in his third season at Ashland. I've seen him bring his
strength and sensitivity to plays you'd expectÑOctavio Solis' El Paso Blue, Nilo Cruz's Two
Sisters and a PianoÑas well as to roles you might not: Orsino in Twelfth Night, Christopher
Sly in Shrew, the ensembles of Pericles and The Good Person of
Setzuan. And Michael Donald Edwards, who directed a delicious glam/punk Henry
IV, Part I at OSF some years back, then helmed the San Francisco and L.A.
productions of Shopping and Fucking, is back at OSF with a dark,
Edwardian/Kubrickian Merchant of Venice. Costume designer Alex Jaeger,
who hangs his tape locally at A Noise Within and South Coast Repertory, has
designed Stop Kiss and Fuddy Meers for OSF. Finally, I was happy to
learn that Cornerstone's artistic director, Bill Rauch, will direct Handler by Robert
Schenkkan (The Kentucky Cycle) in Ashland's brand-new 350-seater
next year. My theatregoing home-away-from-home feels more like home all the
time.