Friday Five

The Friday Five is boring, and I cannot honestly answer at least two of the questions, so I am skipping it. In fact, I will be too busy to do much posting at all, particularly if I end up seeing The Passion tonight.

I did see Ibsen's Ghosts at the Berkeley Rep on Wednesday. Fantastic play, well produced, well acted, definitely worth going to if you are in the Bay Area. I have read most of Ibsen and tend to have a hot and cold reaction to him. When he was good, he was very good, but when he was bad, ick. Then there are those plays that read well, but resist staging, for instance, Peer Gynt.

I saw a particularly awful Peer Gynt at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival a number of years ago (13 I think). It ran way too long (and had been edited) and felt like sitting through a four-hour long dead horse beating. That horse was dead from about minute 17 and stayed that way until the bitter end.

Part of the problem was the director's urge to be clever. Translation was done in such a way as to make un-subtle references to current events that really did not serve the drama. For instance, Peer was looking at the stars or something and exclaimed, "a thousand points of light!" (this was during the senior Bush administration). Titter titter. It got the laugh from the aging liberal set, but...so what? So imagine this sort of liberties for four hours on a play that already resists staging.

Berkeley Rep, on the other hand, did a fantastic job. I was at first taken aback by the stark stage, but given the mood of isolation and loneliness, it was entirely appropriate. The last scene was done in front of a large detail of an El Greco, which had the unfortunate look of Art Student Who Is Just Getting Into Baroque Mannerism, which in many ways describes the look of much of Greco anyway, but when enlarged to mammoth proportions becomes overbearing.

However, overbearing is the whole point of the last Act, and Munch did do the sets for an early staging of the play, so it all fit in, as did the strangely post-industrial electronic music that was used sparingly throughout (very sparingly, and quite appropriately).

An added bonus to going to the Berkeley Rep is that it is just around the corner from the only real gelateria in the Bay Area (I forget the name, as they changed it recently - I think it is Gelateria Naia or something. It is on Shattuck at Addison). OK, I take that back, there is an Argentinian gelateria in Oakland, but their style is a bit different than the real Italian thing.

Since we went as guests of the Rep, and they fed us, we resisted gelato, but it is something to keep in mind if you are in the area and are looking for a good evening of drama and gelato.