Incomparable Theater

Creditors:  I was lucky enough to see Broken Gear Project Theater's production of this August Strindberg play.  Easy to see what a delicate mechanism the play is... how quickly this love/hate triangle could slip into ranting or fossilize into one of those over-corseted classics where the back row audience snoozes.  Not here.  I never use the word "perfect" (it sounds so unlikely to be true), but I honestly can't think of a thing that could be improved.  Direction, sets, costumes, the sum of the parts including, most importantly, the wonderful performances... were just... right.

I admired the set and costumes.  The set was just a couple little bookend walls added to the jogs and corners of the existing space in what feels like an old garage.  There is a painted-over window and a cracked concrete floor.  All of this is simply painted over again in subtle shades of gray to suggest vertical boards that blur into a sea view - mostly a dark horizon line, pale water, lowering clouds, with the feeling of a Japanese ink brush painting.  Furniture is beautiful Victorian stuff, which either looks white-washed (and white upholstered) or gleams a little redly, like the actress's auburn hair.  Costumes take this delicate color game even farther, with gray, subtle shades of cream, palest green, hints of auburn, and in the gown, another green and a pale slate-y blue.  All nuance.

The play itself - which I'd never seen performed -  was a fascinating three-way duel of jealousy and mental-power games as written by a sort of evil Henry James (a contemporary).  All the characters were in their own ways, monsters.  This is going to sound fanciful, but it made me think of a delicate glass goblet, the kind made in Murano for Medicis and Borgias, filled with a white wine like crisp apples, all floral bouquet... and poisoned.

image borrowed from Rossana & Rossana 

Boeing Boeing:  A rollicking farce, set in the 1960s Paris about a man with three fiances, each one an air hostess - he just has to keep their schedules straight.  Could there be a greater contrast to Strindberg?  Mental whiplash!  Yet, you know, both plays are about men and women and love triangles/ rectangles/ pentangles (pentagons?).  I can't pretend to review Boeing, as I designed it, but I will say that directing and acting a farce are - in a utterly different way - just as difficult as in the most serious drama.  This farce is, I think, successfully accomplished and very funny.  As for the tech parts: the stewardess' uniforms are period correct in zippy colors and the set... well, when I read on page 2, "exit door # 7" I smacked my forehead.  Hard.  But amongst all those doors I did manage to sneak in a few playful views of Paris and some bright, '60s art.

Apples versus oranges?  At least those are both fruit - these two plays are poisoned apples versus orange shag carpeting.  Impossible to compare.  Except... maybe... both productions are souffles.

image borrowed from flikr