A Rep for the Offbeat

PLAYWRIGHT CHRISTOPHER DURANG has pleased—and offended—audiences for three decades with his witty satires and farcical spoofs. Self-termed a “recovering Catholic,” he’s skewered religion in Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You, psychoanalysis in Beyond Therapy and dysfunctional families in The Marriage of Bette and Boo. And his offbeat plays have been favorites at the San Diego Repertory Theatre.

So it’s logical the Rep would schedule Durang’s most recent hit, Miss Witherspoon (October 6-29 in the Lyceum Space). The dark comedy, which played off-Broadway in fall 2005, was a Pulitzer drama finalist and listed by Time magazine and Newsday among the year’s top 10 plays. Its title character is a cantankerous woman—she’s always found it “hard to get on the hope bandwagon”—who commits suicide, then resists afterlife attempts to “clear her aura” through several reincarnations. Each of her lives—which include a helpless infant, an abused teenager and even a dog—gives the playwright a chance to target society’s foibles, past, present and presumed future. And perhaps surprisingly for Durang, it has a hopeful spin.

The Rep production is in the capable hands of a group of local award-winners. Director is Delicia Turner Sonnenburg, and the sparkling cast features Melinda Gilb as Witherspoon, along with Jo Anne Glover, DeAnna Driscoll, Steve Gunderson and Sylvia M’Lafi Thompson.

“THE LOST BOYS OF SUDAN” is the collective name given to the thousands of Sudanese orphans who fled their country’s devastating civil war and walked for years through the wilderness, first to Ethiopia—where they were again forced to leave—then to Kenya. Most died during the long ordeal, but many of the survivors received safe haven—4,000 or so in the United States.

Mia McCullough’s Since Africa concerns one such survivor and several persons, with conflicting agendas, who help him adapt to his new life in an urban society. The play examines thorny questions of culture, belonging, grief and loss, yet not without lightness and humor. It gets its West Coast debut from Mo‘olelo Performing Arts Company (October 13-29 at Diversionary Theatre), with an unusual distinction—an actual “Lost Boy” in the cast. Alephonsion Awer Deng, a co-author of the memoir They Poured Fire on Us from the Sky, has lived and worked here for five years, attending college, writing and acting.

Mo‘olelo, picked by this magazine in June as the city’s best new theater company, is a small company that doesn’t have a permanent home or regular season but pops up periodically with a significant offering. Its artistic director, Seema Sueko, helms Since Africa, with choreography by Suzanne Forbes. Others in the cast are Rosina Reynolds, Mark Christopher Lawrence, Nyeda Lane and Erika Beth Phillips.

IN 2005, LIVER CANCER TOOK FROM US the greatest African- American playwright, August Wilson. In his honor, Cygnet Theatre has teamed with the San Diego Black Ensemble Theatre to present periodic staged readings of Wilson’s works. The series spotlights the directing and acting talents of our area’s African- American artists. T.J. Johnson, associate artistic director of the Black Ensemble Theatre, is head of the project.

Remaining readings and directors in the series are Seven Guitars, October 23 and 24, Rhys Greene, artistic director, Black Ensemble Theatre; Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, December 11 and 18, Calvin Manson, artistic director, Ira Aldridge Players; Fences, March 5 and 6, Floyd Gaffney, artistic director, Common Ground Theatre; and The Piano Lesson, May 7 and 8, Delicia Turner Sonnenburg, artistic director, Moxie Theatre. Readings are presented at the Performance Annex in City Heights and other locations, and the series culminates at Cygnet in June with a week-long staged reading festival of all the Wilson plays.

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