 |
| A scene from Waiting for Lefty. |
By Ed Rampell
Expressing the zeitgeist of the times, 2010 saw an emerging trend of left-leaning plays and operas on the Left Coast.
Theatre West staged a powerful revival of Clifford Odets’ classic Depression era pro-strike proletarian drama Waiting For Lefty.
The second act of the new Charlie Chaplin bio-play called Limelight: The Story of Charlie Chaplin at the La Jolla Playhouse near San Diego is primarily political, as the Little Tramp takes on Hitler in The Great Dictator and outspokenly advocates opening a second front during WWII in order to relieve the Soviets’ burden. The musical also vividly depicts the Redbaiting, surveilling and blacklisting of the sympathetically portrayed Chaplin, as well as a Communist rally with red flags.
As did Il Postino, the operatic adaptation of the 1990s Italian film about Chilean poet Pablo Neruda -- portrayed by the greatest living tenor, Placido Domingo -- and a simple mailman, whom the Marxist Neruda transforms into a writer and militant, who is eventually assassinated by reactionary police at a Communist demonstration full of red flags. In this L.A Opera production, instead of being portrayed as bogeymen, the Communist Neruda and mailman are the opera’s noble heroes.
The Latino Theater Company’s La Victima explored the vicissitudes of Chicano migrant laborers north of the border and depicts a United Farm Workers’ strike.
Carry It On! premiered at Topanga Canyon’s Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, co-founded by the blacklisted actor who co-starred in 1954’s classic, Salt of the Earth, and eventually played TV’s Grandpa Walton. A sort of people’s history of America told largely through protest songs, progressive whites are portrayed in Carry It On!, including Woody Guthrie, Mark Twain, Lincoln, Walt Whitman, Susan B. Anthony, Mother Jones, Lillian Hellman and Cindy Sheehan, as well as notable Blacks, like Harriett Tubman and Martin Luther King (vividly depicted by Gerald C. Rivers).
L.A. Opera’s glorious production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s immortal The Marriage of Figaro was deliriously uplifting and joyous, making one glad to be alive, if for no other reason than to see and hear shows like this.
Academy Award winner Tim Robbins’ Actors’ Gang play, Break the Whip, deconstructs the Jamestown colony with a story told from the point of view of slaves, indentured servants and American Indians.
The Sacred Fools Theater premiered Watson, The Last Great Tale of the Legendary Sherlock Holmes, a Sherlockian spoof told from Dr. Watson’s point of view, with much whimsy, drollery and French Stewart in a dual role –- as Dr. Sigmund Freud and Queen Victoria.
The Odyssey Theatre presented Tales From Hollywood by Christopher Hampton, a dramedy about European literary refugees fleeing Hitler and winding up in La-La-Land. The play’s lefty highlights include: Daniel Zacapa (who bears an uncanny resemblance to Jean-Luc Godard) as playwright Bertolt Brecht, a Jewish-American female screenwriter who joins the Communist Party, a Soviet diplomat, the playing of the “Internationale,” etc.
My favorite 2010 play was, but of course, the one that I wrote: Still Standing, The Musical, a dramatization of the life and hard times of Kenyan rapper Gleam Joel, directed by Iona Morris, choreographed by Tor Campbell. Gleam wrote the lyrics for the songs composed by Sergio Fertitta in this hip-hop musical, wherein gangsta Gleam eventually turns his back on the thug life and finds spiritual salvation. We performed the play at Long Beach and flew the L.A. cast -- including Taylor McKinney, Eddie Wheeler, Vernetra Gavin, Constance Reese, Chris Allen, Brooke Bridges, Lloyd Collins and Harry Zinn -- to Switzerland, where Still Standing received standing ovations.
