..
.home | art & architecture | books & cds | dance
| destinations | film | opera | television | theater | archives
..
Berkeley, Aurora Theatre Company |
There is an old Jewish saying: “God loves a good story.”
If true, then God had to love Guy de Bonheur, whose name, loosely translated, would be
“Lucky Guy.” Unfortunately, in Carol Wolf’s The Thousandth Night,
Guy’s luck has run out.
The intrepid and multi-talented
Ron Campbell (R. Buckminster Fuller: The History (and Mystery) of the Universe)
plays a small time French actor in Nazi-occupied Paris. He has been arrested, not because
he is Jewish, or a Communist, or a member of the Resistance, but because the fables he
performs at the Cafe Scheherazade are considered “subversive.” Crowded into a
train headed for Buchenwald, he gets one last chance at freedom when the track is blown up
by saboteurs. Sneaking out in the chaos, he takes shelter in the station, where it is
warm. It also is filled with French soldiers of the collaborative Vichy regime.
Pleading his innocence, he begins
pulling costumes and props out of his trunk and spinning tales to “pass the
time.” The tales are the same as his small acting company, now decimated by
deportations, had performed at the cafe. “Just a harmless amusement, you see. Not
subversive at all.” It is the performance of his lifetime and the stakes are life
itself. And thereby hangs Wolf’s tale.
This is a one-man show, populated
by nearly forty different characters. Campbell is a superb clown, switching, with the
positioning of a pillow, from a bosomy wife to her paunchy husband. A veil turns him into
a Sultana and he puffs himself up to become a genie with a booming voice. If not a force
of nature, he certainly is a force of the stage. A well-known Bay Area actress, leaving
the theater, was heard to mutter, “That boy is an acting machine!”
The audience too is part of the
show; the intimate Aurora space is a perfect venue for this kind of interaction, a
breaking down of the fourth wall. Campbell asks questions, sits down next to people,
tosses a pillow into a woman’s lap. But, when he begs his listeners to save him, to
attest to his innocence, the audience (and, by extension, the French soldiers) is struck
dumb. It is only a show after all. “It is so easy to be silent,” he says
ruefully. “It is so easy to be afraid.” And, suddenly, this is more than an
entertainment. Suddenly, we are ashamed.
Guy de Bonheur slips some sad
truths into his funny stories. The introduction of a baker leads to a mention of the
rationing of bread. The Sultan’s executioner casts a shadow not unlike an officer of
the SS. As the night goes on, more and more reality creeps in. He hints at his devotion to
the pretty ingenue, Lisette, and his jealousy of the leading man, Etienne, who is her
lover. (His imitation of Etienne as a bad actor may well be the funniest thing in the
show). As he tells a story about a lovely maiden abducted by brigands, we learn that
Lisette has been picked up by the Gestapo and beaten until her beauty is only a memory.
Perhaps these tales are subversive after all.
Wolf wrote this play for Campbell,
who has performed it on and off for the past twelve years, most notably at the Edinburgh
Fringe Festival and again in London. Aurora director Jessica Kubzansky was his original
director and she paces things beautifully. The laughs keep coming and, if there are tears
underneath, they never surface in a way that is maudlin. Richard Olmsted’s spiffy
French train station interior, Chris Houston’s sound and Jon Retsky’s lights add
much, as the coming and going of those dread engines of death pass by outside,
interrupting the delight of the tales with the reality of doom. It is a most unusual take
on the Nazi Holocaust, delivered by a most unusual performer. Scheherazade herself
couldn’t have done a better job.
Berkeley, CA, June 25, 2005 - Suzanne Weiss
