“All those guys who wrote the ‘classic’ American plays — they wrote domestic dramas. Then comes the 1960s and theaters start dealing with ‘issues’ to shake people up. And they did it. They shook all the Republicans out of the audience. Only the liberals, who agree with the issue to begin with, attend the theater. Non-profit theater is just a way of making rich Democrats feel good about themselves. They confuse enjoying the play with genuine civic engagement. If you really want to shake people up, put on a play endorsed by the NRA. They’ll be screaming in the aisles, canceling subscriptions left and right.” — the character Mike Braschi, general manager of a nonprofit theater, in John Morogiello’s Blame It on Beckett (currently at the Colony)
We’re about to enter the home stretch of the quadrennial political sweepstakes. And quite a few LA theaters are offering politically-themed plays. Seize the day, and all that.
How Obama Got His Groove Back, which is explicitly set in this year’s presidential race, opened on Saturday. Several plays that were written earlier but which have been revised to meet the 2012 mood also opened this weekend (The Grönholm Method) or in the last few weeks (The Return to Morality, The Inspector General). And Assassins is up on its feet again, as it should be every four years or even more frequently, so that Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman can once again give us some historical perspective on one of the darkest corners of American political culture.
Although I’m an Obama-supporting Democrat, I can’t help but notice that none of these plays contradicts what the character Mike Braschi in Morogiello’s Blame It on Beckett says about nonprofit theater’s treatment of political issues in that quote at the top of the column — that political plays tend to preach to the left-leaning choir. If someone knows of a play that’s currently being produced in LA that treats political themes from a Republican, Romneyesque point of view (whatever that is — Romney’s views have, of course, flipped and flopped), please let me know.
At first glance, How Obama Got His Groove Back looks likely to engage in some satire of the president, in its premiere at Fremont Centre Theatre. After all, its primary story hook is that Obama (Derek Jeremiah Reid) is so taken with the thrill of singing Al Green riffs at the Apollo and elsewhere that he decides to turn the governing duties over to his wife, Michelle, and concentrate instead on becoming a professional entertainer.
But co-writers Reid and Nicholas Zill also give Romney (Phillip Wilburn) an interest in the performing arts. The former governor realizes how stiff and humorless he is and decides to take lessons in comedy improv — which, as you may have surmised by now, is the arena that gave birth to How Obama Got His Groove Back.
These are funny ideas and they make a larger point — though hardly an original one — about the relationship between modern politics and the lure of showbiz. Still, the juxtaposition of these comic set-ups gives Obama an advantage. After all, many observers nodded approvingly about Obama’s brief ventures into soul singing — he sounded OK, maybe even promising. No one feels that way about Romney’s ability to improvise wisecracks.
Regarding more substantive issues, the script continues to take more digs at Romney and other characters than at its titular character. When Romney has trouble with the comedy improv teacher, he simply decides to buy the improv company and fire the troublemaker. Later, when minor issues arise between Barack and Michelle Obama, they take counseling from people whose marriage clearly seems worse — Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Some may ask whether this kind of comedy is superfluous, considering all the satirists on late-night TV who reach such vastly larger audiences. But unlike late-night TV, How Obama Got His Groove Back sustains a relatively long-form plot longer than you might think possible. While it stays on a sketch comedy level and veers into some wild tangents — among those who show up are North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un, a Taliban leader and one of the Colombian prostitutes who entertained the Secret Service — the writers nevertheless manage to tie the segments together in a way that genuinely resembles a play instead of a night at the Groundlings or SNL.
The actors, many of them with experience at iO West, demonstrate sharp comedy skills, although the musical performances could use a little extra practice (perhaps such practice is currently taking place?). Except for Reid and Constance Reese, who play only the Obamas, the cast members play multiple roles with impressive dexterity.
How Obama Got His Groove Back, Fremont Centre Theatre, 1000 Fremont Ave., South Pasadena. Fri-Sat 8 pm, Sun 3 pm. www.fremontcentretheatre.com. 866-811-4111.
***All How Obama Got His Groove Back production photos by Kim Mulligan
The Grönholm Method, at the Falcon, isn’t explicitly about the current political scene, and in fact it originally wasn’t even about America — it was written in Catalan by Jordi Galcerán Ferrer and translated into English by Anne Garcia-Romero and Mark St. Germain. But it carries a lot of American political resonance anyway, not merely because it’s now set on Wall Street with a reference or two to Occupy protesters, but also because of the presence of Romney in this year’s race.
Romney, you may recall, began his campaign by touting his big business credentials as someone “who knows how to create jobs.” Recently, those credentials have been so tainted by all the revelations about Bain Capital and by his unwillingness to release most of his recent income tax returns that he has retreated from that emphasis. But he is still left with the residue — that he somehow personifies much that is disliked about the American world of big business.
The Grönholm Method is a worst-case scenario of how that world operates, in its microcosmic story of how a large corporation holds interviews for a senior-level job.
As we watch the narrative unfold, we begin to realize that the advantage goes to whoever can best mask the hardness of his heart, truth be damned. Is it just me, or does that quality remind you of Mitt Romney?
Also, the story has as many reversals as Romney’s campaign. I’m writing this only a few days after the opening of the American premiere, and I don’t want to be a spoiler, so I won’t go into details about the plot. But it’s a rather ingeniously constructed psychological maze. My only reservation is that its last twist should have been maintained instead of undermined by the final sentences.
Like Obama’s reminders of late-night TV, The Grönholm Method’s competition for a job stirs up comparisons to “reality” TV shows like Survivor and The Apprentice, especially when you see how the little messages from the company arrive in the room. But befitting a play, the authors and translators avoid bombastic music and commercials — and this fictional concoction with a skilled cast of actors (Jonathan Cake, Stephen Spinella, Lesli Margherita and Graham Hamilton, directed by BT McNicholl) actually seems more “real” than some of the ostensibly “real” TV shows that use non-actors.
The Grönholm Method, Falcon Theatre, 4252 Riverside Dr., Burbank. Tue-Fri 8 pm, Sat 2 and 8 pm, Sun 4 and 7 pm. Closes Sept 30. www.FalconTheatre.com. 818-955-8101.
***All The Grönholm Method production photos by Chelsea Sutton
I’ve been remiss in not adding my voice to the many who have recommended Oded Gross’ quasi-musical adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s The Government Inspector, in a lively co-production by Theatre @ Boston Court and Furious Theatre, at the Boston Court, directed by Stefan Novinski.
Gross has definitely shaped his adaptation to fit the current political climate. The portraits hanging on the walls of the mayor’s house are, if you look closely enough, images of modern American politicians and other glitterati. The mayor (John Billingsley) in the quasi-Russian town uses these words to disparage the protesters who are fomenting rebellion across the country: “They are denouncing corporate greed and disparities between rich and poor and criticizing politicians for not prioritizing the needs of working people.” It sounds like a line from any number of pundits on MSNBC.
Now, if that kind of language and especially the use of “prioritize” sound stuffy and bureaucratic, perhaps befitting a provincial mayor, you should know that Gross’ tone in general is anything but stuffy. In fact, he resorts to a few jokes and puns just for the sake of being funny, because they don’t always make political points. But most of them do earn their laughs.
While he depicts nearly all his characters as being terminally foolish, he makes an exception for the title character’s servant, here depicted as a woman and played by Boston Court’s much beloved Eileen T’Kaye. If this can be seen as a feminist gesture, Gross compounds that effect in a cautionary way by portraying the mayor’s daughter (Megan Goodchild) as an impossibly naive believer in fairy tales that rely on the arrival of a Prince Charming, which makes her overly receptive to the title character (hilariously fussy Adam Haas Hunter).
This production is in its final week and deserves to be seen.
The Government Inspector, Theatre @ Boston Court, 70 N. Mentor, Pasadena. Wed-Sat 8 pm, Sun 2 pm. Closes Sunday. www.bostoncourt.org. 626-683-6883.
Over in Hollywood, the Production Company is introducing a play to LA that was originally a response to the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal. Jamie Pachino’s The Return to Morality has been updated somewhat, but it doesn’t rely on taking place in any particular administration. Although its plot includes a sex scandal, it’s a scandal that doesn’t affect the president.
Instead, the central character here is a longtime progressive activist, Arthur Kellogg (Kevin Weisman), who has written a fictional satire that’s apparently a portrait of an extreme right-wing America. To boost sales, his publisher persuades him to present it as something other than satire, as if he were actually promoting a right-wing agenda — and sure enough, soon the sales take off, propelled by right-wing fans. Kellogg plans to acknowledge that it’s just a satire at some point, but that point is delayed too long to prevent violence from breaking out, apparently inspired by the book.
The first part of the story is somewhat plausible, although it’s a little difficult to believe that this strategy would work at all in the era of Stephen Colbert. The second half of the play, however, becomes truly unhinged. Soon after Arthur finally tells the truth about his intentions on 60 Minutes, he’s embroiled in the sex scandal, which will be hushed up only if he agrees to — would you believe that he’s forced to accept the role of keynote speaker at the Republican national convention?
Actually, no, I don’t believe that this character — obviously a loose cannon with no political standing, who has just reversed himself on national television — would be anyone’s choice to fire up the troops at a national convention. Rep. Todd Akin, the real-life Missouri Republican and Senate candidate who yesterday raised a ruckus over his televised contention that a “legitimate rape” might prevent pregnancy, would have a better chance of being picked to keynote next week’s GOP convention than Arthur Kellogg.
In short, while The Return to Morality might make “some rich Democrats feel good about themselves,” it needs a rewrite that focuses on the return to reality. Mark Taylor directed.
The Return to Morality, the Lex, 6760 Lexington Ave.., Hollywood. Fri-Sat 8 pm, Sun 3 pm. Closes Sept 8. www.theprodco.com. 800-838-3006.
Finally, a few blocks away from The Return to Morality, is Coeurage Theatre’s revival of Assassins. Producing this sharp-shooting musical at any time probably requires a degree of courage. For those of you who haven’t seen previous productions, this is probably not the best play for people who feel strongly that the media shouldn’t even mention the names of the alleged murderers in the recent mass shootings. Assassins mentions the names of its title characters repeatedly.
But Assassins isn’t called Murderers for a reason — the victims or would-be victims of these characters are all presidents. And so the crimes of the assassins are essentially full-scale assaults on the fabric of our democracy, with more wide-ranging impacts than other kinds of murder.
That fact provides more than enough reason why great artists should examine the personalities and motives of presidential assassins, and connect the dots between them and other strands of American culture — such as our seemingly innocuous but dangerously vague notion that “everybody’s got the right to be happy” and our apparent inability to prevent wackos from obtaining firearms.
Alone among all the productions I’ve discussed here today, Assassins really should be able to attract support from partisans of many viewpoints — both Republicans and Democrats have been the targets of assassins. Would anyone object to the show on ideological grounds? Well, perhaps the NRA (which might therefore impose its opinion on most Republicans and many Dems in Congress). The NRA might see the show’s lyrics about guns as taking, yes, cheap shots. So I suppose that even Assassins wouldn’t meet the “endorsed by the NRA” criteria mentioned by the character in Blame It on Beckett, at the top of today’s column.
Oh well. The Coeurage theater is tiny and admission is pay-what-you-can, so any NRA concerns shouldn’t prevent this show from selling out. Julianne Donelle’s cast is superb, carefully walking the line between character and caricature. The same actor, Jeremy Lelliott, plays both the eager Balladeer and the reticent killer Lee Harvey Oswald. His transition occurs after the assassin characters turn on the Balladeer for not taking them seriously enough. It’s a chilling stroke — subtly implying that the play’s one voice of reason has been not only silenced but also converted into yet another member of the grim tribe of killers. Lelliott’s climactic scene in which he’s convinced to pull the trigger by Ryan Wagner’s John Wilkes Booth is riveting.
Donelle doesn’t use the “Something Just Broke” song that sometimes appears near the end of the show, after the assassination of JFK. In productions that used it, I’ve found it unnecessarily sentimental, but Donelle does flash iconic images of JFK and his family on a screen at that moment, which serve the same purpose in much less time. I found only two problems in this production. The volume of the musical accompaniment occasionally obscured lyrics, and the intermission — why?
Assassins, Actors Circle Theatre, 7313 Santa Monica Blvd, West Hollywood. Fri-Sat 8 pm, Sun 7 pm. Closes Sept 9. Pay what you want. www.coeurage.org.
***All Assassins production photos by Kevin McShane
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