theater

Shotgun Players take on Berkeley

Shotgun Players take on Berkeley-Foto by Pak Han.jpg

Berkeley. It’s both a place and a state of mind – a liberal state of mind, admittedly. It’s one of the best known towns (as opposed to cities) in the world. When, soon after I set foot in Europe for the first time, in 1969, I told the owner of an Irish B&B where I was from, he smirked. “Not going to start a revolution over here, too, are you?” he replied.

And now Berkeley is onstage at Shotgun Players, in a collaboration between writer Dan Wolf and director Rebecca Novick called Daylighting, that attempts, in 90 uninterrupted minutes, to paint a portrait of the town. If you’re inclined to see it, you’d better do so now, because its appeal is intensely local. Despite Berkeley’s fame/infamy, Daylighting will never reach the Big Apple.  It’s not even likely to make it through the tunnel to Walnut Creek, and the reason isn’t only it’s close-to-home theme; it is, I’m reluctant to report, that the play is, well … not very compelling.

My reluctance to say so comes partly from Shotgun’s fully justified enthusiasm for the project, which it funded and encouraged for the three years of its gestation, and partly from the very idea of it: to produce theater deeply rooted in your community, as the troupe did previously with another commissioned original, A Dream House in Lorin.

In other words, I want the play to be better than it is.

Not that it’s not likable, in its eager way, and the opening night audience with which I saw it greeted it with friendly cheer. Patrons laughed at jokes about marijuana and Berkeley Bowl, and they responded to the theme of lost creeks, the ones that were buried as the town grew and are now being nostalgically rediscovered and, if possible, encouraged to bubble to the light of day.  Too, the cast is pleasant, and it bustles about its business gamely.

But what is that business?  Program notes tell us the play’s creators conducted dozens, perhaps hundreds, of interviews with locals of all stripes – young/old, well-off/poor, left/right. Given the richness of what they must have collected, the puzzle of the onstage result is how thin it is. It stumbles raggedly from scene to scene, in a cobbled-together way, with no special insights, no Aha! moments, no sense of discovering something new. The problem may be that its creators, Wolf and Novick, are not natives (they arrived in town just a few years ago), but it may also be that the task they set themselves, to “do” a place like Berkeley in an hour and a half, is inherently impossible.

But another puzzle of the Shotgun production is how amateurish it seems. I regard the company as a fully professional troupe, and it’s done remarkable, freshly startling work in the past. But, from its awkward, boxy set to its just okay acting, this show has a community theater feel.

So what? My guess is that residents of the Peoples Republic of Berkeley will bring to it a forgiving heart and a willingness to respond warmly to its local allusions and to its genial nature. The cast includes Juan Amador, Mary Baird, Christina Chu, Brit Frazier, Karina Gutierrez, Abhi Kris, Paul Loomis, Donald Lacy, Tim Redmond and Megan Schirle. Its musical trio is comprised of musical director, Olive Mitra along with Hannah Birch Carl and Brian Rodvien. Hannah Birch Carl also did the praiseworthy  sound design, Courtney Flores provides a rich array of costumes, Heather Basarab designed the lighting and Michale Lochner the set.

Daylighting plays at the Ashby Playhouse at Martin Luther King and Ashby Avenue until June 22nd, followed by Shakespeare’s peerless romantic comedy,Twelfth Night, directed by Jon Tracy. For tickets/information, call 841-6500 or visit www.shotgunplayers.org.

– ROBERT HALL