|
SpearBearer Down Left - SD Theatre Site | Anne Marie Welch - San Diego Union Tribune | Pat Launer - KPBS | Cuauhtémoc Kish - SD Theatre Scene | Martin Westlin - SD City Beat Magazine |
Charlene Baldridge - La Jolla Village News
SpearBearer Down Left - Theatre and More In San Diego
"In Arabia We'd All Be Kings." It's an observation spoken near the end of Steven Adly Guirgis' play of the same name. Despite sad juice-hound Sammy's assertion, let me assure you that none of the characters that people Guirgis' play are going to be king of anything, in Arabia or anywhere else. The play is set in a Manhattan bar - the kind of bar you turn around and walk out of the moment you see what kind of dive it is. Unless you're a member of the sociological sub-strata Guirgis so thoughtfully and movingly captures.
Last year director Al Germani and his Lynx Theatre, seemingly out of nowhere, knocked the socks off San Diego theatregoers - at least those lucky enough to have heard the buzz and heeded it in time - with his production of Guirgis' stunning prison drama Jesus Hopped the A Train. That production was easily among the best of San Diego's year, thanks to Germani's pitch-perfect casting and direction, actors who almost made you think Germani had pulled the characters themselves out of the hood, and Guirgis himself, whose play packs a wallop with a subtle character shift near the end which completely reverses everything we thought we knew.
Germani is not (at least yet) a prolific director. But when he does put a production up, it's a good bet that it will be a must-see. He's done it again this year, with a production that amazes in the specificity and just-plain-rightness of its rhythms, and an ensemble full of knockout performances that neither sentimentalize nor judge these deeply wounded characters.
Though no one captures America's urban underclass as well as Steven Adly Guirgis, this is slightly different terrain from Jesus Hopped the A Train. That later play, which chronicles the relationship between a young first-time convicted felon and his born-again cellmate, is about redemption: if anyone's beyond it, how you get it, and what it costs. This earlier work is more collage-like than narrative-based, but each character has an arc. At the risk of oversimplifying Arabia, it seem to me this work is much more principally about power and control: who's got it, what it means to each person, and where the lack and/or loss of it leads them.
It's also a dangerous play to write about. You run the risk of turning potential audiences off just in describing the characters. Anne Marie Welsh wondered in her Union-Tribune review why San Diego's larger theatres have failed to snap up the rights to Guirgis' plays. A rather easy one: because San Diego is the way it is, and the theatres aren't crazy, that's why. It may be an old stereotype, but these are the kind of plays that have a chance at a larger audience in Chicago maybe, but not so much here. And more's the pity. It takes an audience willing to embrace work that's a little darker, a little sadder, if for no other reason than to see superb actors showing us people we mightn't have seen otherwise, with clarity and grace.
So I won't describe the characters, even though I wish I could, as it would allow me to wax more eloquent about the actors. Much has been made of Al Germani's perfect casting. But it should be pointed out, these kinds of roles don't get nailed this consistently across a cast of ten individual artists, without a director of impeccable instincts pulling and coaching. Germani also has one of the most interesting curriculum vitaes I've seen recently: he's a director who's also a psychotherapist. That's got to help in ways I can't even imagine. Yet my guess is, most psychotherapists don't possess this level of theatrical mastery. It helps to be an artist too.
It should also be noted that for a director to so successfully pull and push, he must have actors able to make adjustments and to take risks. And Germani's cast is one of the bravest ensembles seen recently. And I almost forgot to mention, because they were so good at it I almost didn't notice, just how tough it is to take Guirgis' dialogue and make it entirely their own?
Josh Adams. Ciceron Altarejos. Sonya Bender. Monique Gaffney. Bill Kehayias. Linda Libby. Veronica Murphy. Claudio Raygoza. Walter Ritter. Steven J Warner.
Bravo, all. The rest of you: go see it.
back to top
A Moving Look At Life's Seedy Side
By Anne Marie Welch, San Diego Union Tribune
Will you teach my boyfriend to be a Jedi? asks Chickie, a crack kid who turns tricks around Times Square. Shes dreamily playing Go Fish with the mentally challenged bartender, Charlie, a guy who thinks hes a Jedi warrior and buys meals for her because he wants to protect her and maybe even go out with her someday. Chickie and Charlie are just two of the sad, lost souls, fully fleshed characters
all of them, who inhabit the shifting worlds of playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis.
These two are the quietest in this extraordinary writers first play, In Arabia
Wed All Be Kings, now in an affecting, bare-bones production at Lynx Performance
Theatres warehouse space in Bay Park.
Lynx director Al Germani introduced San Diego to Guirgis fierce and compassionate voice a year ago when he staged a blistering production of the philosophical prison drama Jesus Hopped the A Train. Set in a Rikers Island cell, that production
revealed an original writer with an acute ear attuned to the myriad speech rhythms and ethnic diversity of New Yorkers.
And it demonstrated as well director Germanis seriousness about pinpoint casting and the emotional exploration of character.
For Arabia, hes assembled and groomed a 10-person cast that includes many virtual unknowns. All the actors probe Guirgis on-edge characters with a fearsome focus. Still, Arabia is a less coherent work than A Train; its a sprawling portrait gallery like Our Lady of 121st Street, the play that proved Guirgis 2003 New york breakthrough. So far, his strength is creating compelling portraiture, not cohesive dramatic structure.
If Guirgis could join his painfully authentic portraits to a more thematically rich
core of action, Arabia would rival Eugene ONeils great threnody to the
down-and-out, The Iceman Cometh. Like the denizens of Harry hopes saloon, the
broken spirits of Arabia are shut off from the world in the camaraderie of a
last-chance saloon -- a place from which, it turns out, a sinister scum bag of a
developer will soon evict them all.
When the lights come up on Arabia, Springsteen is playing on the jukebox and the
old drunk Sammy fends off sleep or death at one end of the bar. Now and again, he
yells for his wife, conflicted about whether he wants her there as he recalls a
happier affair with someone else.
Lenny arrives, a recently released ex-convict. Actor Steven J. Warner lacks the
imposing size built into the part, but he projects innocence and vulnerability in
the role of a man gang-raped while incarcerated and struggling to find his manhood. Daisy (Linda LIbby) is his alcoholic, self-dramatizing girl-friend; she wants a
life with a real man -- someone with a job, like cruel Jake (Josh Adams), the
missing bartender who toys with her.
Also on hand is Skank (Ciceron Altarejos), a failed actor turned junkie. Hes the
exploitative boyfriend of Chickie, willing to hustle for cash as he goes through
withdrawal. His tormenter is Greer (Claudio Raygoza), the new owner. Raygoza give
a meticulously detailed performance, creating a creepy, cruel, semi-psycho using
such gestural details as how he looks at his fingernails and swishes the vodka in
his glass.
The big arias come in a series of seriocomic scenes for teens Chickie (Sonya
Bender) and DeMaris (Monique Gaffney). A single mother brandishing a handgun,
DeMaris wants Chickie to teach her how to be a hooker so she can support her boy.
Transforming from masculine aggressor in camouflage to a strutting tease in
miniskirt, Gaffneys DeMaris feebly attempts to tone down her abusive rhetoric to
snare a guy.
But soon enough shes as cracked out as Benders fragile, wrecked Chickie, the
downtown trajectory of a life telescoped in a few scenes. Two deaths, a
disappearance and several emotional detonations later, the play simple stops. Lynx Performance, who brought the urban street poetry and fierce and compassionate voice of Stephen Adly Guirgis to town with a bistering production of "Jesus Hopped The A Train", scores again with this extraordinary
writer's first play.
back to top
'Not To Be Missed!'
By Pat Launer, KPBS
“In Arabia, We’d All Be Kings” – dark, intense, depressing… beautifully performed.
At Lynx Theatre Performance Space, through October 23
THE SHOW: ‘In Arabia We’d All Be Kings” by Stephen Adly Guirgis
THE SCOOP: If “Too Old for the Chorus” is too frisky for you, here’s something guaranteed to bring you down. A bar-full of losers and deadbeats, alkies and crack-heads, come together in pairs and trios to curse fate and each other. The performances are uniformly excellent, but this one won’t send you out whistling. It paints a sad picture of a run-down dreamland inhabited by drunks and punks, which is about to be upgraded, or Disneyfied, thanks to the efforts of former New York Mayor Giuliani.
THE STORY: The denizens of Jake’s Bar will cry, scream, swear, berate, delude and dissolve – and some will even die – before they realize that they’re about to lose the only refuge most of them have – this seedy, grungy Hell’s Kitchen haven they call home. Money, dignity and life expectancy are short. Weapons are at the ready; drugs and prostitution are the activities du jour. The New York school of hard knocks never looked so hard, so brutal, so hopeless (except in Guirgis’ later, award-winning “Jesus Hopped the A Train”). Despite some viciously realistic dialogue, it’s not at all clear why we should grieve with these lowlifes about losing their unholy ground to gentrification.
 |
THE PLAYERS: Outstanding performances. Sonya Bender is achingly adorable as the addict/hooker Chickie, whose nervous, gullible boyfriend, Skank (beguilingly jumpy Ciceron Altarejos) promises her a dream-life with his famous-actor friend in Baltimore. The off-kilter barman, Charlie (Walter Ritter, in his best performance ever), sees himself as a Jedi fighter from Star Wars. Demaris (magnificent Monique Gaffney, with angry, adolescent attitude to spare), is a teenager with a gun, who craves security for herself and her out-of-wedlock baby. She and her hooker-mom (nicely blowsy Veronica Murphy) go at it like rabid dogs. Sammy (in a lovely, understated but often amusing performance by Bill Kehayias) wakes up from his perpetual drunken stupor to ooze a memory and express a drowsy fear that his wife will find him. Linda Libby is strung-out but still sexy as Daisy, who hangs onto whoever’s near: first, ex-con Lenny (truly menacing Steven J. Warner); then no-nonsense bar-owner Jake (a somewhat bland Josh Adams). Claudio Raygoza is ominous and intimidating, casually cruel as Greer, who’s bought the hangout, seduced poor Skank and plans to rip out all the history to clean the place up. In this world of zero tolerance, the barflies’ illusions are as ripe for demolition as the dilapidated bar.
THE PRODUCTION: It’s an incredibly intense 100 minutes. You want something good to come to somebody. But that ain’t gonna happen in this neighborhood. Director Al Germani brings all the requisite darkness, violence and intensity to this bare-bones production. The focus is on character, on brutal interactions. And on a dim, slim possibility for reconciliation, if not redemption, at the end.
THE LOCATION: Lynx Performance theatre, Clairemont.
BOTTOM LINE: Best Best back to top
In Arabia Wed All Be Kings
By Cuauhtémoc Kish, San Diego Theater Scene
Lynx director Al Germani (responsible for the quite effective set and lighting design as well) has found redemption once again with another dark, seedy, painful introspective drama called In Arabia Wed All Be Kings by the gifted playwright, Stephen Adly Guirgis. Germani allows his audience to meld into voyeuristic observers focusing upon the lives of a fraternity of bar people who seem to thrive on misery but arent quite ready to cash in their devalued, failed lives to the keeper of the keys. Germani clearly maps out the lines within the drama, allowing for his talented cast to access each emotional oasis easily, without cumbersome and distracting set pieces. The audience faces the patrons as if they were serving up happy joy juice to the actors themselves. Seated within the audience (a stroke of near-genius) is Charlie (Walter Ritter), sometimes under the glare of a spotlight, but always the voice as he responds to his various patrons. Ritters cant is methodic, maddening and mesmerizing at the same time; its undercurrents include friend, task-maker, and psychologist/comforter.
As Sammy (Bill Kehayias) sits down deep into his stool at the edge of the bar as if nested for life and Skank (Ciceron Altarejos), an ex-actor/junkie, plays records on the jukebox, the audiences anticipation almost peaks until Sammy calls out in an anguished voice: Gladys from his perch. Its a howl to the moon and back, and is a prelude for bottled-up emotions that will spew constantly from the other players who seem to thrive in the company of the damned.
Ex-conman Lenny joins Sammy and Skank at the bar in a slugfest of putdowns that lasts only until Demaris (Monique Gaffney) waves her pistol threateningly at Mr. Macho, eliciting a teary-eyed sex confession that plummets him to ground zero. There is a constant dark parade of losers that frequent the bar: misery apparently is the magnet for the company of such low-life dwellers whom are drawn together but instantly repelled at the same time. Guirgis world is written raw with bleeding emotions; he has created individuals that are truly lost and only found amongst themselves. Sonya Bender does a nice turn as Chickie, Skanks gal-pal, driven to sell her young body for a much needed fix. Chickie turns into professor as she instructs Demaris in Hooker 101. Gaffneys Demaris is all energy, anger, strut, and then regret as a single Mom looking for a way to take care of her child. She does a fine job of camouflaging the child within who finally emerges when arrested for selling her fine black flesh. Kehayias performance of the washed up drunk is just about perfect. He climbs into his characters psyche right from the get-go, enlivening the production with an almost stream-of-un-consciousness. His voice modulation, timing, and physical mannerisms were potent.
Claudio Raygozas Greer-character was right on the purchase (of the bar) money as well. He portrayed a sleaze with bucks, hoping for a deal not only for the bar, but any cheap flesh deal that came his way as well. He carried the slime of his character like a proud disease. Josh Adams (Jake), Linda Libby (Daisy) and Veronica Murphy (Miss Reyes) all contributed nicely to the drama-scape of hell with some rugged, shouted-out but effective character turns. In Arabia Wed All Be Kings is a must see for anyone who loves raw, edgy drama and an opportunity to catch actors doing black magic with a well written script. Its alright to be the voyeur in this one and Al Germani promises you wont get arrested as long as you feast your eyes upon the characters from his cozy Lynx performance space.
back to top
CRITIC'S PICK
By
Martin Westlin, San Diego City Beat Magazine
Storm before the calm
Sammy (Bill Kehayias) has taken a concerted interest in his wife’s ass, which reportedly sports all the width of a salt cracker. Problem is, Sam’s never around to play with it. He’s busy holding up his end of Jake’s bar—his alcoholic stupor, in fact, anchors Stephen Adly Guirgis’ In Arabia We’d All Be Kings, the current Lynx Performance Theatre piece. Sammy’s one of 10 serious washouts, including alkie ex-con Lenny (Steven J. Warner) and doomed crackhead hooker Chickie (Sonya Bender), whose despair congeals as the tavern is slated for a direct hit from a Manhattan wrecking ball.
It’s extraordinary how these folks never cave to self-pity amid their anguish. What’s even more remarkable, and sad, is that they don’t come close to acting on their boundless capacity for resilience. Guirgis draws his conclusions about ’em accordingly, while director Al Germani coaxes some eminently persuasive character studies in this very solid stream-of-consciousness entry. Germani, Lynx’s artistic director, is a psychotherapist by vocation. It shows.
back to top
Stage Page
Charlene Baldridge, La Jolla Village News
Lynx Performance and director Al Germani present Stephen Adly Guirgis’ hard-hitting, suspenseful first play, “In Arabia We’d All Be Kings,” continuing through October 23 at the Lynx Performance Space, 2653-R Ariane Dr. in the Morena area. As reported in The New York Times, the work is filled with “raw and violent language.” Performed by a fine ensemble, it concerns denizens of Jake’s, a Times Square bar during the early ‘90s, when then-mayor Rudy Giuliani was cleansing the area of pimps, prostitutes and low-life establishments like this one. Ex-cons, alcoholics and prostitutes, Guirgis’ taut slices of reality look for their next meal and, unaware, for a kind of redemption in the known world that crumbles and transmutes around them.
Guirgis presents these folks in all their grisly humanity and makes us aware that there is another world, a stratum beyond our ken, and in the many cases, beyond our caring. Thus, he is a great humanitarian who delivers the goods.
Filled with mesmerizing and stunning performers, the company comprises Sonya Bender, Steven J. Warner, Claudio Raygoza, Veronica Murphy, Walter Ritter, Bill Kehayias, Ciceron Altarejos, Josh Adams, Monique Gaffney and Linda Libby.
Charlene Baldridge, Freelance Writer and member of San Diego Theatre Critics Circle
Regularly writes for: Riverside Press Enterprise, La Jolla Village News, North County Times, Performances, Riviera, La Jolla Today
back to top
|
