At the end of the world premiere of the emerging playwright, the playwright in particular of Gardner, “The Escaorcase”, an 84 -year -old Hawaiian mother confronts her average age son with a universal truth on generational charges often transmitted within families.
In Pidgin English / Hawaiian Creole Cadences, she warns “… because I can see that you wear something that you don’t need to wear.”
Now, on the Argyros scene from the South Coast repertoire, “The Staircase” proves a contemporary challenge in American life: the caretaker’s emotional assessment on the goalkeeper.
A piece on the unsubscribe of the weight of responsibilities – and personal guilt accompanying him – could involve trail on the morale of an audience.
But this captivating act, the 100 -minute drama embraces and animates the humanist writing of Gardner through a superbly directed distribution of five and a carefully organized and accomplished production.
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Ehulani Hope Kane and Wil Kahele star in “The Staircase”, on stage at the South Coast Repertory until May 18. (Photo by Robert Huskey)
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Ehulani Hope Kane and Wil Kahele star in “The Staircase”, on stage at the South Coast Repertory until May 18. (Photo by Robert Huskey)
Develop
The events take place in a Hawaii far from coastal stations and tropical cocktails. A sequence of night scenes is sweated inside a two -story house modestly preserved, but attractive with a formidable wooden staircase and bad lighting. Apart from the structure, a mango is looming nearby.
The undeveloped time was probably set at the end of the 1970s / early 1980s (a visual index was a new Sony of the square television on which “Tonight Show” by Johnny Carson reigns supreme).
The four characters are anonymous, but with archetypal descriptors: mother, son, darling and father.
The father, we learn, experienced a deadly incident when the son, at a young age, was not at hand to intervene. Subsequently, the father lives intermittently in the mother’s erratic memory as an idealized version that the son rejects. The challenges of maintaining responsibility for the mother’s daily life weigh on a son, aware of her personal life drifting.
The mother is inhabited in a protesting characterization of Ehulani Hope Kane.
The actress, making her SCR debut with her distribution comrades, is a mother, a grandmother and a half-century veteran in the performing arts. She forcefully conveys an animated spirit living in the native Hawaiian roots of the mother, with a naturalistic determination which clearly shows that her voice will count whatever the obstacles.
“The stairs are a young woman’s game, I tell you,” observes a mother, pulling a laugh from the public, while Kane navigates carefully in the formidable staircase that the father designed for the house and left.
Wil Kahele is a veteran actor from Honolulu. He traces a clandestine son and compensation at the start, the actor then slowly enlarged the character’s conflicts and the internal needs with grace and insured while his son creates a future by facing the past.
Two smaller and amplifier roles are written for the son’s intermittent sweetheart and for the father.
Nara Cardenas brings an open and warm generosity as a “darling” whose presence invites her son with a second chance to claim a life with a future. Ben Cain is suitable for the role of a safe paternal figure. Father-son confrontations are nothing new in dramas, but in this case, this leads to cathartic release.
There is an important fifth interpreter, actively shaping production while literally supervising it. Located above the public and featured in one of the second-level boxes of the theater, the musician Kainui Blaze Whiting is heard throughout the striking intermittent beats on two “IPU”, traditional Hawaiian percussion instruments made from squash.
Whiting also plays a Hawaiian string instrument and contributes to impactful vocal songs. Performance is a fascinating sound presence. This work is also improved by a subtle sound design credited to Amelia Anello.
Visually, the panoramic design of Rachel Hauck is also an excellent visual ingredient. A veteran of four other SCR productions, Hauck won a Tony Award for his conception of “Hadestown” and is recent nominated for another Broadway production, “Sleept Away”.
The whole is flanked and dominated by the staircase, which is both imposing and mysterious by climbing in an obscurity that the public cannot see. Inside, the house is a carefully organized assembly of a living space and kitchen filled with objects which evokes both a relaxed life.
Sara Ryung’s utility costume first transmits a downward dressing devoid of any aspiration, from comfort to the detriment of ambition. But as the events advance, it introduces interesting touches that signal the aspiration of character.
The action is supported by skill, the night lighting of Josh Epstein, who is probably delighted to continually frustrate a son with a bald light with his own mind.
In the end, the probable key to the success of this program is the impact of a talented ringmaster. It is a sure bet that “the staircase” has this in the director Gaye Taylor Upchurch.
The components of this production flow without tightening without any facet that does not feel in the broader objectives of the narration. The talent of genius is real when it does not draw attention to itself.
However, there is a quibble recoveries the writing of the character of the mother and he leaves one with a last little discomfort. Since early, there have been repeated cases of memory loss and dissociation, signaling the start of dementia by character.
But the end of the play suggests a level of self -sufficiency for an 84 -year -old child who seems to be in contradiction with what we have been shown, and who threw an involuntary shadow on an otherwise optimistic outcome.
Since 1983, SCR has awarded 356 commissions to 245 playwrights, composers and lyrics. “The Staircase” is the first 164th produced by the theater that the theater organized a new local work and it must surely stand in the legacy of the theater.
A final word of precursor advice: there are only two weeks of additional performance. Move quickly for tickets for “the staircase” would be a very good step to take.
‘The staircase’
Notation: 3 1/2 stars (out of a possible 4)
Or: Julianne Argyros Stage, South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa
When: Until May 18; 7:45 p.m. Wednesdays, 2 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays
Tickets: $ 35- $ 114
Information: 714-708-5555; scr.org
Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
