March to May 2, 1999
Chicago
Icarus’s Mother
Killer’s Head
Four H Club
Written by: Sam Shepard
Chicago, Icarus’s Mother, Killer’s Head directed by: Frédérique Michel
Four H Club directed by Stephen Pocock
Production Design by: Charles A. Duncombe, Jr.
Produced by: Stephen Pocock
Cast: Carlos Alvarado, Jeff Boyer, Scott Collins, Liz Davies, Jeff Decker, Andrea Isco, Paul Rubenstein, Shan Serafin, Leonard Shields, Raquel Silva
LA Times
Emotional ‘Shepard Project’ Shows Playwright as a Work-in-Progress
April 16, 1999
By. F. KATHLEEN FOLEY
Bristling with youthful experimentation, “The Shepard Project: The Early Works of Sam Shepard” at City Garage gives a fascinating glimpse into Shepard’s artistic progression. For anyone not a die-hard Shepard fan, however, the works are limited in scope and execution, punk playlets by an unformed writer who had not yet found his voice, performed by actors not always sure of theirs.
The characters in all four pieces are emotionally isolated losers with elemental longings–for the sea, for the sky, for the wide open spaces of the American West. The opener, “Chicago,” ably helmed by Frederique Michel, is essentially an absurdist monologue delivered in a bathtub (or perhaps it is a docked boat) by a heavily tattooed man (Stephen Pocock) whose lover (Liz Davies) is leaving him.
The most wickedly funny piece of the evening, “4-H Club,” directed by Pocock, concerns three hormonally fueled young men (Carlos Alvarado, Paul Rubenstein and Shan Serafin) who share the unfettered destructive capacity of children. These guys are geniuses at smashing things, but when it comes to anything constructive–like picking up their mosh pit of an apartment–they are helpless.
Michel also directs “Icarus’s Mother,” in which a quintet of holiday picnickers (Jeff Boyer, Andrea Isco, Raquel Silva, Jeff Decker and Alvarado) play twisted mind games until interrupted by a spectacular air disaster. Evocative of Ambrose Bierce, “Killer’s Head,” the closer, also staged by Michel, features F. Scott Collins as a condemned cowboy who dreams of the open range in the moments before his electrocution. The metal headgear Collins wears entirely obscures his eyes–a serious shortcoming in a one-character play. Otherwise, Charles A. Duncombe Jr.’s austere production design is highly effective.
Journeys Among the Dead
January 29 — March 14, 1999
Written by: Eugene Ionesco
Translated by: Barbara Wright
Directed by: Frédérique Michel
Production Design by: Charles A. Duncombe, Jr.
Produced by: Steven Pocock
Cast: Strawn Bovee, Jennifer Dion, Scott Donovan, Joel Drazner, Richard Grove, Patricia Raquel Lopez, Anna Pond, Valerie Ramirez, Bo Roberts, Paul Rubenstein
Backstage West
18 February 1999
Review by Anne Louise Bannon
“It’s seldom that I run across something as difficult to describe as Journeys Among the Dead, Eugene Ionesco’s autobiographical last play. The City Garage’s production, directed by Frederique Michel, is compelling, beautifully paced, nicely performed for the most part, and yet… How do you wrap words around what is essentially an old man’s dream journey to find his mother and confront the guilt and anger that has plagued him since childhood? Simple enough to say, but it doesn’t quite convey what seeing this play is like.
Do read the excellent program notes. They provide the factual background and give a little structure to the performance. If you’re a fan of Jungian dream analysis, or even Freudian analysis, go to town.
While this is an ensemble piece, it is held together by the old poet named Jean — essentially Ionesco. Richard Grove gives the old man a tenderness and sense of wonder not easily accomplished, since the emotional throughlines are seldom clear from the text. Grove’s work with the young Jean, Paul Rubenstein, is seamless. The two seem to have a single vision for the character and it works well. But Scott Donovan, as Jean’s father, occasionally falls a little flat. The rest of the ensemble holds up nicely, with some lovely performances by Stawn Bovee as Jean’s mother and Jean’s grandmother, Patricia Raquel Lopez as Jean’s stepmothre, and Valerie Ramirez in her role as Violette.
Charles A. Duncombe Jr has outdone even himself with his lighting and particularly his sound design, pulling together sound effects and music that feed the production as a whole, as opposed to overpowering it, as so often happens. He also did the very simple but effective set.
Probably the highest achievement belongs to Michel. You have to assume that some of the bits and action were directed in, but it is really hard to tell what came from the script’s stage dircetions and what was Michel’s work. Michel is an extremely intellectual director, and her work serves this piece very well. Even better is the way she paces the play: one of the difficulties of Theatre of the Absurd is that it has the capacity to be relentlessly boring. Michel takes time where it’s warranted, but lets things run at a nice clip otherwise.
It’s not the easiest play on the planet to do well. City Garage has done it well.”
Georges Sand: An Erotic Odyssey in Seven Tableaux
September 25 — November 22, 1998
Four LA Weekly Award Nominations — BEST ENSEMBLE! BEST LEADING FEMALE! BEST LIGHTING! BEST DIRECTION!
LA Weekly — PICK OF THE WEEK!
Back Stage West — CRITIC’S PICK!
Written by: Ginka Steinwachs
Translated by: Sue-Ellen Case, Jamie Owen Daniel, Katrin Sieg
Directed by: Frédérique Michel
Production Design by: Charles A. Duncombe, Jr.
Cast: John Burton, Ruthie Crossley, Jeff Decker, Joel Drazner, Hope Easton, Vanessa Hopkins, Bo Roberts, Valerie Ramirez, Paul Rubenstein, Paradorn Thiel, Doria Valenzuela
LA Weekly — PICK OF THE WEEK!
review by Miriam Jacobson
“French Novelist Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin, a.k.a. George Sand, was at the center of the 1848 European revolutionary movement that gave rise to communism; she was a femme fatale “who changed lovers more often than her shoes” and whose beaux included Karl Marx, Chopin, Schubert, Balzac and Flaubert; she dabbled in lesbianism, left her marriage to a country baron and supported herself through her writings, employing a male pseudonym.
The seven hallucinatory tableaux composing German playwright Ginka Steinwachs’ intoxicating, impressionistic study of Sand (brilliantly translated by Sue-Ellen Case, Jamie Owen Daniel, and Katrin Sieg) bleed into each other, each constructed around a single idea taken from pivotal events on the writer’s life. We see, for instance, Sand nude from the waist down, obtaining mens’s trousers, as scandalized, swishy tailors look on. The play is a wild kaleidoscope of sex, politics and art, sprinkled with allusions to the 20th century.
Director Frederique Michel has found the perfect actor to play Sand in the free-spirited, tattooed Venssa Hopkins, who even resembles the iconoclast, and the stunning ensemble don animal masks to hilarious effect as they slip in and out of multiple roles. Steinwachs’ play ultimately indicts Sand’s persecutors — the moralizing, infantile prudes who keep (to this day) attacking drugs, sexuality and art, as though these were really the causes of human misery.
Charles A. Duncombe Jr.’s intricate set and lighting incorporate slide projections and simply take your breath away; the barrage of visuals and wordplay is so forceful that this production should be seen more than once to be fully appreciated.”
Back Stage West/Drama-Logue — CRITIC’S PICK!
Reviewed by Anne Louise Bannon
“The one thing you don’t want to do while watching George Sand is think. That can come later. For this City Garage presentation directed by Frederique Michel is not so much a play as a performed poem — the sort of performance art piece that stretches our definition of theatre.
And it does so brilliantly. Keep in mind, this is coming from someone with an unfashionable but decided preference for plot and narrative. In this case, you can almost close your eyes and lose yourself in the rich language and still get the larger essence of the piece.
The play is about, but not quite, George Sand, the 19th-century French woman writer who adopted men’s dress and a brace of lovers, the most famous of whom was Chopin. Postmodern German playwright Ginka Steinwachs has used the character of Sand literally as an icon — a symbol which, when reflected upon, becomes a window into deeper understanding. Of course, this is where the post-performance intellectual discussion comes in. Because while Steinwachs is definitely looking at Woman’s place in the World, what she actually thinks that place is is certainly open to interpretation and debate.
The translation by Sue-Ellen Case, Jamie Owen Daniel, and Katrin Sieg who worked with Steinwachs, is not literal, but uses purely American terms-equivalents rather than word for word. As such, it’s filled with tremendously rich images, just on the edge of making sense, and while the effect is often silly, it doesn’t devolve into pseudo-intellectual nonsense. The play, which tips its hat to Ionesco at least twice, has pulled off that difficult element of Theatre of the Absurd: somehow managing to play up the ridiculousness of its images without falling into the self importance trap that makes performance art such a joke much of the time. The acting is lyrical, and the players have the good sense to go with the absurdity rather than worry about “the message.” As Sand, Vanessa Hopkins, the only actor p]laying a single role, is the linchpin; she carries the play without overwhelming it. While she stands out from the unit that is the ensemble, she is at the same time a part of the cohesive whole.
While the visual elements seem a]most secondary to Steinwachs’ words, they are at least as rich as the language. Charles R Duncombe Jr.’s set is sumptuous, playing upon the rich excesses of the Romantic period with red curtains, doors, and mirrors in the background of the spare playing area.The lighting, also by Duncombe, is a triumph of logistics — not only are there the mirrors to contend with, but slides projected onto a cloth-covered door at up center.
The extensive program notes notwithstanding, it is better to experience the play first, because it is a feast for the senses. Once the experience has trickled through your psyche, there will be plenty to think about.”
Noises
June 18 — July 25, 1999
Back Stage West: Critic’s Pick
Written by:Enzo Cormann
Translated by Priscilla and Michael Sheringham
Directed by Frédérique Michel
Production Design by Charles A. Duncombe, Jr.
Produced by Stephen Pocock
Cast: Jeff Boyer, John Burton, Victoria Coulson, Liz Hight, Elizabeth Oakes, Mark Phelan, Stephen Pocock, Anna Pond, Paradorn Thiel, Doria Valenzuela, Erin Vincent
Back Stage West
Review by Anne Louise Bannon
“I am constantly and consistently amazed by the work done by City Garage. Its current production, Noises, by French Playwright Enzo Cormann, is basically 90-odd minutes of watching petty, nasty people with too much money on their hands (and snorting the coke to prove it) getting progressively more drunk and more spiteful. Not exactly my cup of tea, and yet, under Frederique Michel’s beautifully paced direction, it works, and it works well.
Often enough, I will enjoy a show in the moment but, upon reflection afterwards, feel like I wasn’t fed enough, as if there wasn’t enough there to grab onto. The reverse inevitably happens with a City Garage show: I may feel a little antsy at first, waiting for the play to find its direction, but by the end I am completely drawn in, and on reflection afterwards I’m hard pressed to edit down the many, many thoughts and feelings I have to fit in this small review space.
Noises, while somewhat straightforward, is much more like the jazz riffs Cormann has based it on. It is noisy, seemingly without direction, and there are no conclusions to be made. Even as the relationships among the four couples disintegrate, you suspect that most of them will repeat the same sordid pattern soon enough.
Playing drunkenness is no mean trick. It’s too easy to fall into stereotypes, not to mention having to be under perfect control while creating the illusion of a total lack of control. Doria Valenzuela, as Vera, one of the wives, nails it right on the head, so much so that one almost wonders if she has indeed been drinking — which is impossible, because she can still hold for the many stylized freeze sections that pop up through the play.
The rest of the cast is equally strong, from Stephen Pocock as Hugo, a famous writer facing terminal writer’s block, to Mark Phelan as the charming bastard movie producer, Will, to everyone, really. It’s an incredibly tight ensemble, each piece fitting together perfectly.
If I have to pick on something, there were the periodically late light cues on the night reviewed. But the set, by Charles A. Duncombe, Jr., is perfect, as are Michele Gimgenbre’s elegant costumes. Either these people have a terrific budget, or they really know how to make a set and clothes look like they do.
But a lot of praise goes to Michel, also the company’s artistic director. She not only has a real knack for picking the best of offbeat modern drama out there — she can make it work, which is saying a great deal.