stage matters / By William Kowinski

Meet the Meat

The kind of absurd and perverse humor inspired by Gene Wilder falling for a sheep in Woody Allen’s Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex is an important element throughout this play, but it is hardly the only mood. There’s family and personal tragedy and revelation, touches of awe and horror, and a mix of levels from midlife crisis to ultimate human issues in the patented Albee banter.

That this production effectively expresses such rapidly shifting and sometimes simultaneously opposite moods is due to director Michael Thomas’ brilliant blocking and pacing, and to what he created with this exemplary cast that works so well together. James Read gives Martin both perplexity and clarity, helplessness and internal force. Shelley Stewart discards the dowdy sister in “Beware” to become the attractive, intelligent and passionate Stevie necessary to be convincing. Lincoln Mitchell (after a semi-deus ex machina walk-on in “Beware”) plays the creepiness and the hard concern of the self-appointed friend. Sam Cord also excels as the gay teenage son who adds even more layers to the sexual tensions and carnal conundrums.

This is vintage Albee, uncompromising, with wit and complexity of character, dramatic weight and fearlessness seldom seen these days, when how we’re supposed to feel about a character and think about a subject is typically prefabricated. This production serves and illuminates this play, which is the highest praise I can give it, other than to suggest that this is North Coast theatre at its best.

Coming Up: Ferndale Rep opens The Wild Guys, a comedy about a men’s retreat by Canadian husband-and-wife team, Andrew Wreggitt and Rebecca Shaw, on Thursday (Jan. 29). But take heed: this production runs only three weekends, closing Feb. 15.

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                     steve ross