By Susan Dunn
Sometimes, we just can’t get a play out of our heads. Marin Shakespeare Company’s The Untime bristles with scenes that I relish, question, deny, and finally succumb to, riding out on a wave of acceptance of the drama.
Promoted as an echo of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, it opens in today’s world with five characters grappling with issues of power, both military and domestic, reality versus fantasy, and the workings and underminings of hierarchical succession. Director and co-author Jon Tracy deploys short videos to introduce or deepen our understanding of the two leads—Michael Torres as “The One” and Leontyne Mbele-Mbong as “The Spouse” whom we learn was a war booty prize wife twenty years earlier.
” … Don’t miss The Untime! …”
In their austere kitchen (great set design by Randy Wong-Westbrooke), The One, a general who is 3rd in line of succession to a throne, balks at the insistence of a media consultant, “The Artist” (co-writer Nick Musleh), who has arrived to make a promotional video of him. In a confusing and portentous stroke, The King has ordered the video to embellish The One’s public profile. His wife stands by warily and defensively, but The One suspects this intrusive Artist knows his fate and pressures him to reveal what’s going on.
Then we meet “The King” (Steve Price) and his daughter, “The Heir” (Calla Hollinsworth), who arrive to complete the project. The King appears overly jaunty, unhinged, and evasive as to why he’s promoting The One, 3rd in line, over rival Gen. Caldor, 2nd in line, who we never meet.
His teenage daughter sports a headset and bops to her digital music. In the next scene The One has moved up to 2nd in line — by a convienent political assassination. The King says they have Caldor’s head, which, thankfully, is not dragged onstage.
Although there are constant echos of Macbeth, The Untime focuses on “the space between awareness and action” as Tracy puts it in his director’s note, where constant mulling and evaluating and assessing of the political situation take place. As for action, there are two murders onstage, but for this reviewer the salient feature of The Untime is the larger-than-life acting of The King, The Spouse and The One which left me agape through much of the play. Videos of The Spouse and The One fill in their backstories: A woman won in war … a booty bride to the General … told by his mother that he will be a king. He’s lived his life in search of that title.
Stephen Price as The King takes his role to a new level of mercurial expression: from one moment to the next, mundane, maniacal and murderous. His performance is a tour-de-force.
All that said — The Untime is a work in progress with a great start on a fascinating script once completed. For a play with little real action, the addition of sound and videos by Ben Euphrat and lighting effects by David Leonard take us mentally to places other than the kitchen set. And they help to warp time periods for narrative effect and also to show us that The Spouse and The One are concerned about their baby son, and mourning their dead-by-suicide teenage son — strong echoes of Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”.
And it’s probably fair to posit that these references might be confusing to playgoers not steeped in modern theater. And Shakespeare. Yet another level of resonance is the confusing politics, power struggles and ruthlessness of our own times, also mirrored here.
That said, do yourself a favor: don’t miss The Untime for depth-of-theater experience and the horror of power play(s). And don’t fret about the time needed to put the mental jigsaw pieces together. Real art — is often that way.
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ASR Senior Contributor Susan Dunn has been on the executive boards of Hillbarn Theatre, Altarena Playhouse, Berkeley Playhouse, Virago Theatre and Island City Opera, where she is a development director and stage manager. An enthusiastic advocate for new productions and local playwrights, she is a voting member of the SF Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle, and a recipient of a 2015 Alameda County Arts Leadership Award. Contact: [email protected]
| Production | The Untime |
|---|---|
| Written by | Jon Tracy and Nick Musleh |
| Directed by | Jon Tracy |
| Producing Company | Marin Shakespeare Company |
| Production Dates | Thru Aug 25th |
| Production Address | Forest Meadows Amphitheater (outdoors), Dominican University of California 890 Belle Avenue, San Rafael, CA |
| Website | www.marinshakespeare.org |
| Telephone | (415) 499-4485 |
| Tickets | Variable from $15 to $40. |
| Reviewer Score | Max in each category is 5/5 |
| Overall | 4/5 |
| Performance | 4.5/5 |
| Script | 3.5/5 |
| Stagecraft | 3/5 |
| Aisle Seat Review PICK? | YES! |