Bob's Theater Blog

Theater can be so educational. Today I learned that fellatio became popular in the early twentieth century because of recent improvements in hygiene and the invention of the zipper. I also learned that the play’s title was a euphemism for that sex act. Tom Jacobson’s two-hander (pun not intended), now at Rattlestick Theater in a co-production with L.A.’s Theatre @ Boston Court, is based on a true story. In 1914 the Long Beach, California police hired two actors named Warren and Brown to entrap homosexuals in both public and private places and arrest them for “social vagrancy.” Apparently the California sodomy law did not specifically cover oral sex, which one of the characters refers to as “sodomy as a snack.” To get the evidence, the entrapping officer marked an X on the exposed member with indelible ink. I’m not making this up. Their campaign was so successful that they were hired by other California cities and their efforts were at least partly responsible for the state passing a law explicitly banning fellatio and cunnilingus the following year. Certainly this material could lead to an interesting play. Unfortunately the playwright chose to embellish it with a framework in which two present-day actors are waiting for an audition for the role of a con man in a movie. Brown (Will Bradley), the slighter and more sensitive of the two, is an actor who builds a role from within. Warren (Robert Mammana), bigger and butcher, follows the technique of building a role from the outside in. To pass the time, they improvise scenes about the people involved in the 1914 story, including the two actor-policemen, the chief of police, a newspaper editor, a reporter, an attorney, a florist, a respected churchgoer. Warren seems oblivious to the harm they are doing to people, while Brown is uncomfortable betraying men he has befriended. There are philosophical arguments about the difference between actor and role and a moment when the fourth wall is broken. And, of course, there is the obligatory nude scene before the end. I credit the actors for giving it their all. The near bare set is by Clifton Chadick. Garry Lennon’s period costumes are evocative. Michael Michetti directed. Running time: 90 minutes, no intermission.

Longtime readers of this blog know that I have little taste for plays set in trailers. Once again, I am reminded why by this latest work of playwright Samuel D. Hunter, chronicler of marginalized Idahoans. Although his previous play, The Whale, won many prizes, I found its characters too grotesque to care very much about, much as I admired Shuler Hensley’s fantastic performance in that play.  The three characters in his new play, now at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, are far less extreme and easier, at least for me, to feel compassion for. They are Bryan (Michael Laurence), a former trucker who founded a newspaper for lonely truckers, his high school friend and lover QZ (Tasha Lawrence) and a needy effeminate teenager Matthew (Jacob Perkins, u/s for Gideon Glick) who has helped QZ (no explanation for her strange name is given) run the newspaper since Bryan abruptly disappeared four years ago after the funeral of their trucker friend and newspaper co-founder Jim. In Bryan’s absence, QZ has turned the newspaper, called “The Few,” from a financial flop into a barely viable entity by shedding its content to concentrate on personal ads for truckers. Matthew, Jim’s nephew, who has been rescued by QZ from an abusive family, hopes that Bryan’s return will restore the glory days of the newspaper, when its office, the cluttered double-wide trailer skillfully realized by Dane Laffrey’s set, will once again be a welcoming oasis for alienated truckers. Gradually — very gradually — we learn the reason’s for Bryan’s departure and his sudden return. I felt that a viable one-act play had been stretched to make an evening of it. The acting is first-rate and Davis McCallum’s sympathetic direction shows the material to best advantage. Jessica Pabst’s costumes are fine too. Some of the telephone recording of trucker personals are amusing. I liked it better than The Whale, but that isn’t saying a lot. Running time: 1 hr 40 minutes, no intermission.

NOTE: I must confess that I really do not like attending plays at The Rattlestick. There is no handicap access, the stairways within the theater are rickety, the absence of an aisle on one side of the theater is a safety hazard, the seats are barely more comfortable than rocks, and the offstage bathrooms make the starting time dependent on people’s bladders. I try hard not to let the decrepit surroundings influence my opinion of the play, but I wish a wealthy benefactor would favor Rattlestick with the money to bring the place into the 21st century.