Actress Cheryl Lynn Bruce stars in the West Coast premiere of Head of Passes. Photo courtesy of kevinberne.com

Brittany: Did you like it?

Sam: I did. I feel like everyone in the play was made to represent one of the deadly sins. The son that was obsessed with how they would look to their church friends, Aubrey (Francois Battiste) was pride. The other son, Spencer (Brian Tyree Henry), was sloth. Cookie (Nikkole Salter) was…maybe gluttony…or greed. She was greed, she stole that stuff.

B: But the reason she stole stuff was for drugs which she was driven to because she was molested as a child.

S: Okay fair, but it’s still partially greed. And I guess the dead father is lust. And then the friends…

B: I don’t know if they’re really supposed to be the seven deadly sins. They’re just all imperfect people.

S: Maybe, but the guy, umm Creaker, he was anger. The doctor and Mae were gluttony since they drank all the booze. I don’t know who was envy…maybe Mae was envy.

B: I mean maybe, the play is definitely based in the Bible, but the characters were all too complex to just be emblematic of one sin. It’s a contemporary retelling of the story of Job, just set in coastal Louisiana. In Job people weren’t killed because they were sinful. God was testing Job’s faith. That’s part of what makes the story so tragic. Bad things happen to good people.

S: They didn’t teach Job in my Hebrew school.

B: Probably because it’s such a hard story. No one wants to hear that no matter how good you are, or faithful you are, or whatever, God will still test you and shit will happen.

S: Well the set was fantastic, it was one of the best sets I’ve seen in my life.

B: I really liked the first act. They really captured the cacophony of family drama. The second act was hard though. That final soliloquy is long and intense, and since the actress (Cheryl Lynn Bruce) had to call “line” a few times it lost some momentum.

S: In the pre-show talk the playwright said he added like 100 new pages to the script in the last two weeks. I can’t memorize 10 pages in two weeks, I was impressed she stayed in the moment as well as she did.

B: Definitely, the actress who played Shelah was amazingly talented, but having a prompters voice reading the line flat breaks the momentum no matter what. It was the biggest problem I had with the show. I feel like everyone in the audience was over it by the end. It’s like the Monty Python joke “I’m not dead yet.” She was supposed to die, and it just kept going as the house was crumbling around her.

S: But that was amazing, the set falling apart, and the water. Such cool staging.

B: I agree, but when I went to the bathroom I overheard someone else saying, “Thank God she finally died.” It’s a good show, I really enjoyed it, but the second act needs tightening.

The Verdict: Head of Passes is a promising new work. As always Berkeley Rep has extremely talented actors and designers. Go if nothing else to see a really cool set and well thought out design. By the end of the run (May 24th) it’s going to be great, but give the actors a week to work out the kinks of last minute additions to the script. Be prepared for an emotional night, if that final monologue is done to its full potential there won’t be a dry eye in the house.

The Drama Talk: Seriously, the set is dope. There’s lots and lots of water on stage which makes for really beautiful pictures and interesting sound effects. The show has the intimacy of a living room drama, the epic-ness of a Shakespearean tragedy, and the magical realism of a Kushner all rolled into one. This is only the second time this play has been staged (it was conceived and first performed at Steppenwolf in Chicago, the playwrights home theater), and there are still some kinks particularly in the second act, but McCraney is definitely a playwright to watch. The actors are all extremely talented, particularly Cheryl Lynn Bruce who play Shelah. She has the unenviable task of performing most of the second act alone with one of the most intense monologues we’ve seen in recent memory.

The Drinks: Berkeley Rep has a bar in the theater and since it was opening night they gave us passes for half-off drinks. Who can say no to half-off wine? We got our glasses and went over to the lobby of the proscenium theater and watched the final 15 minutes of Tartuffe on the monitor. One and ¼ of a Berkeley Rep show and half off drinks, not a bad date night.

Head of Passes runs through May 24th on Berkeley Rep’s Thrust Stage. Tickets are $29-$79 and available through Berkeley Rep’s website. If you’re still under the age of 30 half price tickets are also available for most performances. Those can also be booked online, but you’ll need to show an ID with proof of age to pick up your tickets.

[(l to r) Christopher Livingston (Malik), Steven Sapp (Omar), and Reggie D. White (Solias) perform in UNIVERSES’ Party People, a high-wattage fusion of story and song that unlocks the legacy of the Black Panthers and Young Lords at Berkeley Rep. Photo courtesy of kevinberne.com]

When parents visit, finding events with reasonable decibel levels can sometimes be a challenge. So when Brittany’s SO’s Mom was in town, they decided to treat her to a night at one of the best theaters in the Bay Area, Berkeley Rep, to see their current show Party People. Since the play is partially about fostering intergenerational dialogue, we figured why not do a Drama Talk & Drinks Parent-Visit edition!

Brittany: One of the biggest problems with the current theatre scene, at least in my opinion, is it tends to play it too safe and fall back on what’s already been done. We see so many revivals and classics being remounted, and even with new plays lots of topics have been revisited ad nauseum. There’s definitely something to be said for timeless theater, but it’s hard to stay relevant without taking some risks. This play takes risks.

Mom: I commend this play for bringing an extremely complicated problem to peoples’ attention, and being honest that the answers are somewhere in the gray area. There isn’t an easy solution and people have to be aware that inequality is still a problem, and people need to work together for the goodness of everyone. Even though I don’t normally like hip hop, I thought this was good. It’s done very tastefully.

B: The thing I really appreciated about this show is that they not only spanned genres using new media, video, spoken word, hip hop, jazz and gospel while incorporating different styles of theater, they also took a very contemporary look at a topic that tends to be examined more as a history lesson. Instead of just paying reverence to the civil rights movement, and specifically the Black Panther and Young Lords movements, they really followed that thread of history to the present day. They took a serious look at the successes and failures of these movements, and how those are both relevant and irrelevant in the contemporary struggle for equality now.

M: I liked the production. It was very fresh. The show is 2 ½ hours long and you don’t even notice it. It was very well paced. It kept me engaged the whole time.

B: You need to watch out for the splash zone though. The actors are putting on such an amazing performance, they were just dripping in sweat. There was one time when one of the actors dramatically turned his head and I was sure I was going to get soaked with a sweat wave.

M: The stamina of the actors was impressive. From the rapping to the dancing. Some of the actors weren’t that much younger than me, and I certainly couldn’t dance like that now.

The Verdict: This is a show that people need to see. It’s not only good theater, it’s important theater. Brittany is not one to give a standing ovation lightly and she jumped to her feet. Mom did too, despite the hip hop, so that has to be an endorsement.

The Drama Talk: Party People was first developed and produced at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival by UNIVERSES “A National / International ensemble Company of multi-disciplined writers and performers who fuse Poetry, Theater, Jazz, Hip-Hop, Politics, Down Home Blues and Spanish Boleros to create moving, challenging and entertaining theatrical works.” That they did! The play is the culmination of a series of interviews with people affiliated with the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords party. It captures the struggle of the young artists in UNIVERSES, who were younger than the subjects they interviewed, as they wrestled with the legacy of the civil rights movement and its implications for the continuing struggle for equality in America. Great production values, great energy and an all around great theatre experience.

The Drinks: We wanted to show Mom a fun night out in Berkeley. So we took her to the backyard fire pits at Jupiter after the show. We had already had a huge dinner and drinks at Angeline’s Louisiana Kitchen before the show (highly recommended), so we skipped the pizza and went straight for the beer. Brittany got a Goose Island Lilith and Sam and his Mom shared a Jupiter Dry Stout (you wouldn’t want things to get too crazy) and we toasted to a great night of theater and bringing generations together.

Party People runs through November 30th at Berkeley Repertory Theater. If you have parents in town for the Thanksgiving holiday consider picking up tickets, available through the Berkeley Rep Website. Current ticket prices range from $67–87 for premium to $35–59 for “Section B” seats with discounts for under-30 patrons. According to the Berkeley Rep website “Prices are subject to change at any time. Generally, your best bet is to buy early. Weeknight tickets tend to cost less than weekends”.