Category: Reviews

Since its founding in 2014 by Tracy Liz Miller and Brenda Jean Foley, The Bridge Initiative has been a consistent and ardent champion of diversity and community-building. As a women-led artistic collective, they have stayed true to their vision ~ “an equitable industry where women and other groups who have historically been denied access are equitably represented and valued.”It is in this context that their productions and initiatives are invaluable mirrors through which audiences can broaden their perspectives and sensitivities. Such is the case with their current production of Elaine Romero‘s LIKE HEAVEN, a buoyant little comedy in two acts whose arc revolves around acts of bonding, betrayal, and empowerment.

It’s a fitting marriage of theatre company and playwright as Romero’s vision aligns with that of The Bridge Initiative. In her own right, Romero has established herself as a compelling voice through which the complexities of social and cultural issues ~ social justice, cultural heritage and personal identity ~ are illuminated. For EVITA at American…In LIKE HEAVEN, Romero casts her focus on one woman’s quest for self-fulfillment.

April (Brenda Jean Foley) is at the crossroads of small-town life, stuck between the conflicting pressures of personal ambition, family obligation, and a less than fulfilling marriage to Jeff (the play’s never-present but ever-looming and consequential figure). Her bag is packed, and she would be off and on her way to a singing career were it not for the persuasive entreaties of her younger sister Callie to remain…at least, for a couple more weeks.

As April stows her suitcase and dispenses with her traveling togs, she settles back into her old routine, that is, until it’s picnic time on the front lawn of their pristine neatly landscaped home. April the dreamer and Callie, the embodiment of domestic tranquility, are joined by two diametrically different personalities ~ the true-to-Scripture Trudy and Sapphire, the flamboyant champion of license ~ for a repast that evolves into an explosive set of revelations.

One revelation in particular snowballs into a chain reaction of unsettling confessions. They all may have been drinking from the same tainted well. As they confront their inconvenient truths, the foursome commences to unveil their true selves and motivations, only to test the boundaries of unadulterated friendship and personal responsibility. The joy of the play is their convergence into a chorus of encouragement that spells permission for April to spring forward.

Foley’s April is a model of understandable unsteadiness and naivete until she finds her legs and steadies herself to set out on her long-delayed adventure.

Callie (portrayed with disarming affability and balance by Natalie Andrews) is a marked contrast to April’s mercurial nature. As the primary caretaker of the household and, so it appears, the tie that binds the family, she seemingly epitomizes balance and fidelity. There is something, however, in her mysterious Mona Lisa smile at the play’s end that may make one wonder about her true intentions and motivations.

Trudy (Shonda Royall) brings her avowed faith to the gathering ~ chastising improprieties, calling out hypocrisies, and proclaiming the Word. However, for Trudy, not all is as it seems. And therein lie the makings of a dramatic twist in the narrative for which no spoilers are allowed. Let’s just say that what happens by the nearby river stays by the river…or ought to. Royall is a fireball presence on stage, delivering a robust performance and providing a delightful comic edge to the proceedings.

The jewel in the mix is Sapphire (played to perfection by Maren Maclean). She is irreverent, flamboyant, and the manifestation of “the internal slut.” Her performance is as good as it gets from a distinguished veteran of the Phoenix stage, once described by the former Arizona Republic theatre critic Kyle Lawson (RIP) as having a tongue that “takes to screwball comedy like a cat to a canary” and that, “like some denizen of the ether,” “can charm you into believing that air is water and dross is golden.” Maclean fulfills that promise with panache. She is an ethereal and uninhibited force, the embodiment of indiscretion, and an inspiration to one who may wish to emulate her spirit of freedom.

Thanks to Romero’s craftsmanship as a writer, the play does not get weighed down by gravity but is instead buoyed with precisely drawn moments of humor. She has penned four very distinctive and relatable voices. Director Samantha Wyer Bello has steered the cast’s course with a steady and sensitive hand. The set design (credit to Tiana Torrihon-Wood) and lighting choices (Stacey Walston) contribute to the play’s overall atmosphere. And the ensemble of Andrews, Foley, Maclean, and Royall delivers praiseworthy performances, heightened by an onstage chemistry that is highly entertaining.

LIKE HEAVEN, co-produced by The Bridge Initiative and Estrella Mountain Community College, completes its run of six performances on May 13th.

The Bridge Initiative ~ https://bridgeinit.org/ ~ Tickets available at eventbrite.com.

Venue: Estrella Mountain Community College Fine Arts Center, 3000 North Dysart Road, Avondale, AZ

Photo credit to Rick Meinecke: L to R ~ Andrews, Maclean, Foley, Royall

The production runs through May 13th at Estrella Mountain Community College in Avondale, AZ.

Review by Herbert Paine for BroadwayWorld.

At a recent “Two Trains Running” rehearsal at Marin Theatre Company, director Dawn Monique Williams led with conspiratorial joy.

Oakland theater director Dawn Monique Williams has two tattoos taken from Shakespeare. One is the beloved “Twelfth Night” opening line: “If music be the food of love, play on.” Another is the motto from Shakespeare’s family crest, which translates to “Not without right.”

It took Shakespeare’s family a long time to get a crest, which elevated its status, Williams told The Chronicle earlier this year, during rehearsals for Aurora Theatre Company’s “The Incrementalist.” She speculates that, to Shakespeare, the motto meant, “I have the dignity, the standing, the wealth, everything that a gentleman should have to bear a coat of arms.”

Williams then reinterpreted the motto for herself: “Everything that we say the Western theater is, everything within the English-speaking world, is my inheritance. As somebody who is a descendant of enslaved Africans in this country, I have a right to every single thing that we would say is American.” She extends that claim to Western civilization more broadly, and then more particularly: “I have a right to Shakespeare.”

The world is starting to recognize that right. This year, Williams’ schedule is crammed with projects, including co-directing Marcus Gardley’s “Lear” at California Shakespeare Theater, and now directing August Wilson’s “Two Trains Running,” which runs Nov. 25-Dec. 18 at Marin Theatre Company.

She has a few theories about why her career has taken off. One is simply that she works hard, makes good theater and earns collaborators’ respect and affection. “I will actually just give a little credit to myself,” Williams, 44, said. The other theory involves the racial reckoning of 2020. The document “We See You, White American Theater” demanding changes in theater had come out, “and people had to start getting their binders full of X, Y and Z together,” she said. “I happen to be a queer Black woman, so I think I help tick some boxes for people that are looking to tick boxes.”

If she sounds resigned and pragmatic, she wasn’t always that way.

In 2011, after she’d completed two theater master’s degrees, first from San Francisco State University, then from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, she assumed that theater leaders simply didn’t know that artists of color wanted to direct classics.

“I just have to let them know that I’m out here,” she recalls thinking at the time. “Then I had a moment where I was like, no, they don’t care. They know that we’re here, and they don’t want us.”

So as she’s finally gotten more work, she’s made her peace with the reasons why, since she knows she’s always deserved it.

“It’d be different if I thought I was faking it,” she said. “Shame on them for being asleep so long.”

At a recent “Two Trains” rehearsal at Marin Theatre Company, it’s clear that her rehearsal room is not hierarchical. She led her cast, not with a raised voice or with an implicit demand for deference, but with an almost conspiratorial sense of joy. She might break into a little song to make fun of herself. Or she and actor Sam Jackson, who’s in her third Williams production this year, might break into cartoon voices at the end of a director’s note, riffing on a character’s absurdities.

“She is the biggest fan of the actor,” Jackson said. “She can take that step back from micromanaging characters to allowing the actors she’s cast to form bonds themselves and create the world that they want to see.”

In “Two Trains,” which is part of Wilson’s epic Century Cycle of 10 plays, one for each decade of Black life in the 20th century, it’s 1969, and a restaurateur owner named Memphis (Lamont Thompson) knows city officials in Pittsburgh want to buy his property and demolish his building. “I ain’t taking a penny less than $25,000,” he repeatedly says.

Williams is drawn to Wilson for his poetry, the way his realism is supernatural while still being real, the way his plays assert, as she put it, that “the Black experience contains multitudes.”

“I’ve heard a native storyteller say that the best way to do a land acknowledgment is to tell the story of the land you’re on,” Williams went on. For her, that’s precisely what Wilson did with his native Hill District in Pittsburgh, where almost all his plays are set.

Williams calls “Two Trains” the “pivot play” in the Century Cycle.

“If you look at the canon up to ‘Fences,’ (Wilson) is really looking at a successful Black community,” she said. “There’s Black wealth. There’s Black middle class. Then ‘Two Trains’ is when he really pivots to this idea of urban renewal, of disenfranchisement, of what it means for these steel mill jobs to shut down, or what racial tensions look like on the street in terms of protest.”

When Memphis talks about his minimum price, the dramatic irony is almost physically painful. We have “2022 eyes,” Williams said. “We know where this is headed. We know because we’re living in the results of what happens.“

“It’s the whole running thesis of the American drama: Don’t give up the land,” she added. “Clearly, as Americans, we are really wrestling with our relationship to land and land ownership.”

Williams feels that impetus now in her own life. During the pandemic, she and her three adult siblings all moved back into their childhood East Oakland home with their mom.

“We hold on to to this house in a neighborhood that doesn’t always feel safe and there’s high crime, because this is all we have,” Williams said. “Sometimes my mom’s like, ‘Maybe we should sell and buy somewhere else.’ And I’m like, ‘If you do, you’ll never get it back.’”

It’s the same message she wants to tell Memphis: “It doesn’t matter what they offer you to sell. Don’t sell.”

“Two Trains Running”: Written by August Wilson. Directed by Dawn Monique Williams. Nov. 25-Dec. 18. $25-$65. Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley. 415-388-5208. www.marintheatre.org

Full article by Lily Janiak for The San Francisco Chronicle available here.