|
Hit parade By Robert Avila FUNNY HOW THE smile cracked in response to a dirty joke can sometimes bare menacing teeth, how a love song can turn suddenly dark, or how a bouquet of roses comes courtesy of a clenched fist. Funny and not so funny – it's a fine line. The genius of Philip Kan Gotanda's mesmerizing one-act deconstruction of the nature of domestic violence, A Fist of Roses, lies in its ability to see both sides – the harmless joke and the brutal confession – and then to blur the line between them. The play doesn't just explore its contradictions; like its subjects, it lives through them. The MC for the evening (Donald E. Lacy Jr.) warms up the crowd with some off-color humor before introducing the rest of the cast (Michael Cheng, Rajiv Shah, Tommy Shepherd, and Danny Wolohan), collectively known as "the Five Aces." They could be a singing group (they tackle a couple of startlingly reimagined Motown classics), or maybe teammates in some amateur sporting league, passing the baton to one another with locker-room camaraderie. There's good-natured kidding across ethnic lines, all the usual racial and macho shit. They're all on the same team, they're all friends, and they're all men. But the Aces turn out to be a different kind of ensemble altogether – or rather, all male ensembles together. Shades of the local sports bar and comedy club soon give way to discussions among a men's therapy circle and other male group dynamics, even in recognizing themselves as actors together onstage. Meanwhile, a variety of domestic scenarios emerge, and the actors take on the roles of husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, child, and family dog, roles that can be traded or blended into others in quick succession. But while we get recurring characters and situations, there's no plot or character development in the usual sense. At the same time, the cultural, class, and ethnic characteristics traded freely among the multicultural cast universalize the experience of domestic violence, without necessarily relativizing it or sacrificing nuance. Love and romance twist into pain and nightmare. Moods, memories, characters, relationships, and words and their meanings – all are constantly morphing into something else, including their opposites, so that a lovers' playful refrain (Man: "She's clumsy"; Woman: "I am. I'm clumsy.") becomes the public front for some private shame a short while (and a black eye) later. Throughout, male domination reflects deep-seated insecurities. In an ingeniously orchestrated dance number, and one of the evening's most powerful segments, the ensemble gradually underscores the possessive pronoun in the old Temptations song "My Girl" while cracking open with a raging force the synonyms within the noun – "my girlfriend, my wife, my bitch, my boss, my job," etc. Here and elsewhere, A Fist of Roses gets at the nature of objectification, the turning of another human being into something owned, a thing to be moved around at will or to be kept still forever. With the world premiere of A Fist of Roses, Campo Santo and Intersection for the Arts launch another extraordinary collaboration. It's a remarkable departure for playwright and director Gotanda, whose reputation has been built largely on well-crafted dramas about the Japanese American experience, and one that beautifully integrates the taut yet fluid choreography of movement director Erika Chong Shuch and a simmering score by actor-composer Shepherd (who accompanies the action throughout by beat-boxing or laying down a chord progression at the piano). Then again, Gotanda has always proved a master at incorporating multiple voices and perspectives. For the kaleidoscope of scenes and tropes that make up the nonlinear narrative, he draws on interviews and public discussions (the play's "consulting advisor" is Hamish Sinclair of the Manalive Violence Intervention and Prevention Training Institute, a reeducation program aimed at batterers), as well as any memories volunteered by each night's audience (handed in on note cards at the outset). Campo Santo has repeatedly shown its ability to draw out new resources and energies from already established authors like Denis Johnson and Naomi Iizuka, and this piece, its second with Gotanda, demonstrates collaboration in the fullest sense. Rarely does theater generate a jolt like this. An exceptional ensemble cast sets words, movement, and music in motion, engaging in a kind of perpetual masking and unmasking of masculinity. The cycle of domestic violence – suggested in scenes like that between Shah and Cheng in which a romantic slow dance becomes an abusive verbal rant and, finally, an abject plea for forgiveness – and the rhythmic quality of the action have an organic integrity that weds form and content into a subtle whole, while its guy-casual, informal unfurling belies a fundamental complexity and deft execution. 'A Fist of Roses' runs through Nov. 22. Thurs.-Sun. and Nov. 22, 8 p.m., Intersection for the Arts, 446 Valencia, S.F. $9-$15. (415) 626-3311, www.theintersection.org.
|
||||