Drama Masks: Could the tide be turning?

This is Drama Masks, a Bay Area performing arts column from a born San Franciscan and longtime theatre artist in an N95 mask. I talk venue safety and dramatic substance, or the lack thereof.

As I started writing this, folks were heading to the polls for the first time in a long, terrible year. Hyperbole somehow failed us when the White House was (is still being) destroyed. Plus, everyone’s Social Security numbers were stolen, the world’s biggest anti-vaxxer wants to ban Tylenol, and SNAP benefits were frozen for the first time. Yeah, it’s been that kinda year. Pandora’s box has been opened and all the maladies therein have been unleashed.

Then again, the story of Pandora’s box ends on a note of optimism (in most translations): The one thing that didn’t escape the that box was hope. The very concept itself was found sloshing around in the same container that held all of the bad things that plague our species.

Indeed, it was a delight to wake up Wednesday morning to some good news for once.

We in California hope Prop 50 can act as a stop-gap to the Trump-supported gerrymandering of Texas. In New York, an unabashed capitalist and accused sexual predator lost the mayoral election to an overt Democratic Socialist and Muslim. These are just two of the dozen or so elections that took place across the country, but the time and energy (and money) put into them rivals anything we saw last year.

It’s not hard to see why. Despite all that’s happened to scare and disillusion people into accepting fascism as the new normal, we’re seeing that people still have hope. What’s more, they still have fight left in them. The Idiots in Charge have spent the past year publicly in-fighting, betraying one another on social media. They let hate lead them to victory, but they don’t have the intelligence to hold onto it.

Greek mythology rarely ends happily, but the story of Pandora ends with hope. Let’s make that the start of our story.

Besides, Dick Cheney died and that’s something we can all appreciate.

Dada Teen Musical: The Play world premiere by Central Works

Oh, to be young again. Everything seems new. A wise adult would do well to tap into that freshness, and steer young folks in a direction where they could fully express and discover themselves. A play, perhaps—a musical.

The young trio at the center of Dada Teen Musical: The Play (world premiere through November 23 at the Berkeley City Club) don’t really come off as teens, unfortunately, because they seem to be written as adults who make contemporary references to modern technology. Hell, one of them is such an exaggerated interpretation of a privileged child you’d think playwright Maury Zeff were writing about a serial killer.

Our story finds over-achiever Mariah (Chanel Tilghman, whose scene-stealing performance was a highlight of last year’s Evita at SF Playhouse) so close to a Harvard enrollment that she can taste it. Unfortunately, she’s lacking some artsy-fartsy credits to boost her extra-curriculars. As a last-ditch effort to boost those numbers before the end of the school year, she makes a bold pitch to teacher Mr. Dorfman (Alan Coyne): a Dadaist deconstruction of The Sound of Music.

For any other teacher, that would be a tough sell. Fortunately, Dorfman’s a lifelong Dada enthusiast who signs off on the idea. Unfortunately, rich boy Tyler (Jacob Henri-Naffaa) has to make himself the main character—literally—so he bribes Dorman to make that very thing happen. None of this should matter in the slightest to punk enthusiast Annabel (Zoe Chien), but when Mariah suddenly makes her the show’s musical director, the introverted Annabel is surprised to suddenly be invested in the show’s success.

Tyler is aforementioned character with all the serial killer red flags. He’s a compulsive liar and psychopath detached from emotionally connecting with anyone, despite his frequent use of the phrase “I love you!” to each of the girls. He just isn’t a parody of entitled brats, he’s Patrick Bateman in the making. I doubt Zeff wanted him to be that spot-on, but it reflects an adult’s outside understanding of youth culture.

Sure, youngsters today have an abundance of online resources from which to cull knowledge (Mariah’s early “bonding” with Dorman over Dadaism is hilarious, seeing as how she admits she only discovered it recently), but Annabel’s obsession with the Ramones comes off less as a modern teen loving older music (something to which I can relate) so much an Aaron Sorkin-style judgement of “the kids today” who don’t instantly love the pop ephemera the writer loved.

Then, there’s the fact that the play-within-a-play is never seen. This is a four-person play by Central Works (directed by CW AD Gary Graves), so it’s understandable to not see the epic crowds our characters allude to, but the piece exists so much as an abstract that it doesn’t even fit into the play’s understanding of Dadaism. We don’t have to see a full production of something akin to Andy Warhol’s Vinyl, but a little glimpse of these kids’ work would go a long way toward showing us who they truly are, beyond the Zeff’s “teen” conception. Still, the one song they actually play is catchy.

As usual, the performance room of the Berkeley City Club kept the courtyard doors open during the play. This lead to a constant flow of fresh air that kept CO² levels no higher than 779ppm during the two-act show. There were actually a surprising number of masked patrons at the performance I attended, even though the production’s final mask-required performance won’t be until November 8.

DADA TEEN MUSICAL: THE PLAY runs through November 23^rd at the Berkeley City Club. Tickets and further info here.

Parsifal at SF Opera

Let’s be honest: one can’t talk about Wagner’s Parsifal (through November 13 at the War Memorial Opera House, SF) without talking about the changes made in the life of its author at the time. Wagner wrote his final “non-opera” under financial strain, debilitating heart problems (he’d die the year after its premiere), and a considerably more right-leaning political stance which the show’s Christian tone reflects. The final result indeed reflects a man wanting to make his final statement to the world, but it doesn’t mean it’s the best thing he’s ever said.

His take on the Arthurian legend of Parsifal/Percival (US tenor Brandon Jovanovich) finds the amnesiac “youth” on a quest to retrieve the Holy Grail, defeat the evil Klingsor (UK bass David Soar), and redeem the soul of the conflicted woman Kundry (Swiss mezzo Tanja Ariane Baumgartner).

I’m forced to put “youth” in quotes because, despite the enviable vocals of Jovanovich and Baumgartner, it’s impossible to buy these middle-aged performers as their youthful characters. Hearing them referred to as young for five hours breaks the verisimilitude pretty early. Better served is conductor Eun Sun Kim as she checks off another item on her Wagner “to-do” list. Director Matthew Ozawa seems to bring a unique Asian influence to the production, as Robert Innes Hopkins’s sets and Jessica Jahn’s costumes show an unmistakable Japanese aesthetic that clashes with the Western story, but without really feeling out of place.

Watching the show as a livestream, there’s only so much of chest-pounding bombast one can pick up from what was likely felt in the Opera House. Parsifal is wince-inducing in how it reflects its creator’s then-new conservatism. Yet, as the swan song from the German master of bombast, it still reflects the epic high notes that were his trademark.

PARSIFAL runs through the November 13 at the War Memorial Opera House, SF. Tickets and further info here.