Year in Rewind
Stage
IT’S ALWAYS SATISFYING to review San Diego’s theater year and realize that much of the best work appeared on smaller stages. We can be justifiably proud that our two large companies, the Old Globe and La Jolla Playhouse, have each won the Tony for outstanding regional theater and have contributed so many productions to Broadway and national stages. But what truly makes a city’s theater scene vibrant are the less-heralded groups whose offerings provide a more colorful palette, which naturally increases audience size and sophistication.
This year was especially rich in such shows, and nowhere more so than at Cygnet, arguably the local Theater of the Year. The team of artistic director Sean Murray and managing director Bill Schmidt produced a schedule with no weak spots and three knockouts——Yellowman, Arcadia and Communicating Doors——two of which were precisely directed by Esther Emery. Yellowman delineated the racial hierarchy among African-Americans, and Doors was a tone-perfect version of Alan Ayckbourn’s time-tripping adventure. Arcadia was a Murray-directed reprise of the multilayered Tom Stoppard work Murray previously staged at North Coast Rep.
Up north, New Village Arts opened the year with a clever repertory pairing of Chekhov’s The Three Sisters and Beth Henley’s Dixie homage to Chekhov’s drama, Crimes of the Heart. Before moving to their new Carlsbad Village venue, the New Villagers said farewell to their longtime Jazzercise studio home with possibly their best production ever, Sailor’s Song. A multitalented cast etched John Patrick Shanley’s exquisite, funny-sad dance play about love, loss and death forever into memory.
It was also a banner year for Diversionary, highlighted by two local premieres, The Break Up Notebook: The Lesbian Musical and Paula Vogel’s The Long Christmas Ride Home, about the travails of family life in a crumbling marriage. Ride was one of two excellent local productions that deftly mixed humans and anthropomorphic puppets. The other was the surprise 2004 musical Tony winner, Avenue Q, which the Old Globe presented, in its West Coast debut, at the Spreckels.
Other golden Globe offerings were The Four of Us, the debut of Itamar Moses’ Pirandellian drama about two buddies’ changing relationship as one becomes more successful than the other; Measure for Measure, a crystal-clear rendition of Shakespeare’s “problem” play; and Two Trains Running, a new version of the August Wilson period drama the Globe had inaugurated in 1991.
La Jolla Playhouse’s Page to Stage production of Aaron Sorkin’s The Farnsworth Invention was deemed Broadway-ready, then opened there in November. And LJP’s crackerjack revival of Elmer Rice’s expressionist classic The Adding Machine took full advantage of the new Potiker Theatre’s versatile facilities.
Masterly performances by women put two shows in the upper echelon. At the San Diego Rep, Adriana Sevan brought several characters to life in Taking Flight, her moving script about the personal aftermath of 9/11, and at North Coast Rep, the redoubtable Rosina Reynolds was mesmerizing as the terminal cancer patient in Wit. On the other side of the spectrum was Lamb’s Players highlight, Enchanted April, one of their typical triumphs of ensemble.
Best of all in 2007 was the recurring news of theater growth and stability. North Coast Rep, after fizzled hopes to be part of a Solana Beach development, happily announced an expansion of the current venue. Dale Morris’s schedule-filled 6th@Penn has a new lease, and Claudio Raygoza and Glenn Paris settled their Ion Theatre into the Arts Academy enough to lay out a full season. And at the Birch North Park Theatre, San Diego Musical Theatre debuted with a rousing The Full Monty while slating three productions for 2008.
Amid all the gains, however, we suffered an immeasurable loss. Dr. Floyd Gaffney, the UCSD professor emeritus who for years was the major mover for African-American theater in our city, died in July. His legacy included Common Ground Theatre, which will carry on with his talented daughter, Monique, on its board.
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