Total recall
Physical Rashomon marks decent season's end for perplexed North Coast Rep
It's not always easy to plead a case for Rashomon, North Coast Repertory Theatre's current entry. The play has some of this county's best talent behind it, and it unfolds under director David Ellenstein's experienced hand. But most everybody's in such angst all the time that sifting through the story takes a little doing. Sometimes it's kind of like watching World Wrestling Entertainment, only the opponents out-shout each other instead of going for the pin (in keeping, the fight scenes do feature a cool full-body flip for good measure).
But even the WWE has its merits as a performance entity. So does this show, all right, with its highly physical take on the subjectivity of truth, a decidedly un-physical topic. It challenges the eye and ear at about every turn, inviting our cerebral natures to follow the story's path. Get past the histrionics, and you have an interesting look at a fundamental part of the human experience, one that marks us with the cowardice we so often endorse.
Playwrights Fay and Michael Kanin got this piece to Broadway in 1959, nine years after the release of the landmark Akira Kurosawa film it's taken from (the movie was inspired by two early 20th-century short stories). Kurosawa's fatalist streak colors this tale from feudal Kyoto, Japan, about the bandit Tajomaru (Richard Baird), his sexual congress with a lowborn woman (Seema Sueko) and the stabbing death of her samurai husband (Mitchell Wyatt). The incidents center on everything from rape to marital dishonor to simple carelessness, and they're recalled from four wholly different angles. All truth is unknowable, Kurosawa seems to say, because we tweak it to conform to our perceptions of ourselves.
Just as Kurosawa tailored the dialogue to his medium, the Kanins got it spot-on for the stage. "The brush tore at my arms and legs until they bled," says a Woodcutter (Diep Huynh) uneventfully; in the next while, the Wigmaker (Doren Elias) declares that "truth is a firefly." The whole play mixes narrative and imagery that way. The passages are lush, spontaneous and three-dimensional, coloring the roily despair these two share with a Priest (Robert May) as the three gather in the rain at Kyoto's decaying Rashomon Gate.
Sometimes, that's the problem. That same attitude-the desperation, the turmoil, the fever-pitch self-flagellation-tends to pervade both this trio's narration and the others' story enactments, blurring the line between each function. I'd have preferred a bit more resignation from the people in the gate scenes. Their roles were designed to introduce and clarify the four accounts, not to emulate them. There's plenty of embellishment within the accounts themselves already, thanks.
Still, Diep and Elias make good menials, the working-class conscience of a crumbling society. Diep's Woodcutter is one of the four who recall the events-he has something to confess, something that renders his account closest to actuality. Ellenstein savors that humanity amid the final scenes; other times, he's content to shove his cast through their paces at the same volume and velocity. But he's got a solid premise here, and he's fronted by the likes of Diep, Elias, Sueko, the always-in-a-class-by-himself Baird and Marty Burnett's nicely counterpointed sets. There's too much of this show for its own good, but the excess comes from a place of conviction and depth.
North Coast, located in Solana Beach, is stuck amid lagging discussions on the city's Cedros Crossing development, a $50 million mixed-use project. More delays might affect state funding and thus North Coast's plans for a venue at the site. With Rashomon, the company draws its first quarter-century to a close. I hope this issue resolves before another 25 seasons go by the boards.
This review is based on the opening-night performance of July 14. Rashomon runs through Aug. 12 at North Coast Repertory Theatre, 987-D Lomas Santa Fe Drive, Solana Beach. $28-$37. 858-481-1055.
Exit the king
The last time I saw Floyd Gaffney was on Jan. 17 of this year, when he sat next to me at the opening of Cygnet Theatre's Yellowman. The show featured his über-talented daughter Monique, who'd inadvertently coughed during the show's climax-and Gaffney was immediately all over himself, his exhaustive theater savvy bested by an abundance of fatherly concern. In the last few days, that memory's become especially vivid.
Gaffney died Thursday, July 19, at age 77 following a recent diagnosis of stomach cancer. A UCSD professor emeritus, Gaffney was a theater faculty member from the department's inception in the early 1970s, and he'd helmed nearly 90 plays, the preponderance of which reflected his commitment to theater's social and cultural relevance. Those qualities also mark San Diego's Common Ground Theatre, of which Gaffney was artistic director.
I offer my earnest condolences to Monique, to the rest of Floyd's family and to the San Diego theater community at large, which has lost a king among its royalty and a supremely nice man.
Published: 07/25/2007
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