Opened Feb. 11, 2008 at SF Playhouse Stage II

Mee’s melancholy Gone goes down easy
Three stars (Sad beauty)

No man was ever born
but he must suffer.
He buries his children and gets others in their place;
then dies himself. — Sophocles

Those words open Charles L. Mee’s grief-stricken but strangely joyous Gone, having its Bay Area premeire from Crowded Fire Theatre Company at SF Playhouse’s Stage II in San Francisco.

The ever-entertaining Mee (Big Love, “Fetes de la Nuit’’ at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Wintertime at San Jose Repertory Theatre, Summertime at the Magic Theatre) always takes an unusual approach to his plays. He borrows liberally from any source that happens to interest him. There’s almost always good music (also mostly borrowed), and the final creation is often an enjoyable theatrical collage.

Gone is what Mee calls a “fragment’’ play. And that’s as good a description as any. He takes chunks of Sophocles, Proust, Ginsberg, Updike, Alphonse Daudet and Philip Larkin – not to mention the New York Times obituary page and random blogs. Oh, and Mee has included pieces from some of his own plays as well.

With such a variety of sources and no plot or consistent characters, the task before director Marissa Wolf is to create not a play so much as a tone, a feeling, an experience. When other writers attempt this fragment thing, the results tend to be pretentious and boring. Mee values humor and music, two combatants against boredom, so Wolf already is at an advantage.

Rod Hipskind’s set consists of doors – some useable, some leaned up against the wall of the small black-box theater. In the center of the performance space is a sort of sandbox filled with dark soil – not unlike a fresh grave.

The set also consists of many and varied lamps, which play an important role in Jarrod Fischer’s lighting design, which often consists solely of a single lamp being held by an actor. This is a dark evening, figuratively and literally.

The text, as intoned by Shoresh Alaudini, Kalli Jonsson, Marilee Talkington (above) and Mollena Williams, is dominated by themes of loss. You’ve got your death, your love loss, your wiped-out civilizations.

It’s moody to be sure, but not grim. Part of that has to do with the music. For Odetta’s “Another Man Done Gone,’’ for instance, the cast is doing sort of a spiritual dance in the sandbox. For Montgomery Gentry’s country-fried “Gone,’’ Jonsson lip synchs, and the other cast members provide back-up (choreography throughout the show is by Humu Yansane).

Between the country songs and spirituals, we get a healthy dose of Proust’s madeleine moment from Swann’s Way, a musing on the tragic, love- and pleasure-filled lives of cicadas and some insight into the world of Ruth M. Siems, inventor of Stove Top stuffing on the occasion of her death.

It’s all rich and compelling and beautifully performed, but I must admit, after about an hour, I found myself longing for character and story. Some elements, such as Proust and Sophocles, make repeat appearances, but the fragment nature of the show couldn’t overcome my need for narrative.

There’s pleasure, fleeting (as in life) to be sure, amid the pain and loss, and that’s the triumph of Mee’s show and Wolf’s production: that we seize on the joy when it arises. But then we head back to Sophocles, who leaves us in, as he puts it, “Egyptian blackness’’ with, “Time makes all things dark and brings them to oblivion.’’

Gone continues through March 2 at SF Playhouse Stage II, 533 Sutter St., San Francisco. Shows are at 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 5 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $15 to $25. Call 415-433-1235 or visit www.crowdedfire.org.

On Saturday at San Francisco’s El Rio bar, where a giant cut-out of Carmen Miranda looks down on the back courtyard, Crowded Fire Theatre Company held a festive fundraising chili cook-off.

Here are the competitors, who each contributed three chilis — traditional, veggie and “anything goes”:

Impact Theatre

Fools Fury

Playwrights Foundation

Crowded Fire (actually this is just Mollena Williams, but her chili had the event’s best name)

Here are Crowded Fire artistic directors (and newlyweds) Kent Nicholson and Cassie Beck:

And here are the fine judges (Chloe Veltman of the SF Weekly, yours truly and Karen D’Souza of the San Jose Mercury News):

The overall winning chili was Playwrights Foundation’s traditional chili, “Fires in the Chili.”
Here are all the winners:

It was a great event. Everyone had a marvelous time, and with luck, funds were raised to keep all these artists in business.

Upcoming theater fundraisers are going to let you fire it up and throw ‘em down.

First up, this Saturday (Oct. 13), Crowded Fire Theatre Company is hosting a Chili Cookoff with foolsFury, Impact Theatre and the Playwrights Foundation.

Here’s the beauty part: in addition to a “fan favorite” chili, there will be a “critics choice” selected by a “celebrity” panel of judges comprising yours truly and the far more beautiful Chloe Veltman of the SF Weekly and Karen D’Souza of the San Jose Mercury News. Impact is already promising to burn our mouths.

New co-artistic director Kent Nicholson says: “We wanted to create an event that brought the Bay Area small theater community together. It’s more of a way to connect off stage with each other and our audience members than as a means for making money…though that’s an added bonus!”

The event, which will also feature bluegrass music by the Duck River Band, is from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at the El Rio Bar, 3158 Mission St., San Francisco. Tickets are $1 each, and for one ticket, you get a chili “taster.” For three tickets you get a side dish, and for five tickets, you get a piping hot bowl of your favorite chili. All you can eat “gas passes” are $20 in advance and $30 at the door.

Purchase tickets at www.crowdedfire.org or at the door.

The mouth-burning folks at Impact are busy with a fundraiser of their very own. On Saturday, Oct. 20, the company hosts Full Houses: A Poker Tournament to Benefit Impact Theatre. Tickets are going fast (only 35 remain at this writing). Participants will play No-Limit Texas Hold-Em, with a massive prize pool up for grabs and pizza and desserts throughout the night.

Top prize is an 8GB Apple iPhone, and the runner-up prize is $200 in gift cards to Bloomingdales and Nordstrom. Anyone who gets a full house or better during the tournament, even if they don’t win the hand, gets one of the other prizes. And what are the other prizes you ask? Theater tickets, of course, to ACT, Berkeley Rep, Cal Shakes, Magic, Shotgun and other local companies. There are also gift cards of varying kinds, movie tickets, jazz concert tickets, an autographed “Simpsons” script. And more. Hey, even the first player out of the tournament gets a prize.

“We specialize in theater that’s relevant to our audience,” says Impact artistic director Melissa Hillman. “So naturally the kind of benefit we’d have is relevant to them, too. And of course, poker was meant to be played in a basement, and La Val’s Subterranean is the perfect basement for a benefit tournament like this. Best of all, you could be the worst poker player in the world and still win an awesome prize worth more than the buy-in just for getting a full house or better…or being the first one out.”

The tournament is limited to 54 players (must be 21 or older). The buy in for Full Houses is $50, with unlimited $25 re-buys for the first two hours of the tourney. Tickets are available at www.impacttheatre.com.

Opened June 9, Traveling Jewish Theater

Sounds dazzle in Crowded Fire’s odd, fascinating Anna Bella Eema
three stars Weirdly wonderful

Crowded Fire Theatre Company, now in its 10th year of producing intriguing, original shows, recently underwent a regime change, but all seems to be going well for the troupe. New co-artistic directors Kent Nicholson and Cassie Beck unveiled their first show, Lisa D’Amour’s Anna Bella Eema, last week, and it’s a striking production.

Beautifully directed by outgoing artistic director Rebecca Novick, the play features three actresses (Beck, Danielle Levin and Julie Kurtz) sitting in chairs for about an hour and 45 minutes telling the story of Irene (Beck), a housebound woman stuck in her rural “trailer home,” as she calls it, and her 10-year-old daughter Anna Bella (Levin).

The little girl creates a mud baby that comes to life (Kurtz) just as the family is threatened with eviction when an interstate is constructed through what used to be their trailer park.

Part fairy tale, part creepy campfire story, Anna Bella Eema is a beguiling soundscape brought to vivid life by the actors, all of whom are superb. Beck is positively radiant as an intelligent mother trapped by a life that somehow escapes her. She’s a marvelous narrator, even if we can’t quite trust everything she tells us (especially the parts about the werewolf, the vampire and Frankenstein’s monster)

Like a radio show on stage, the play is all about sounds and voices and music and rhythm. Novick’s direction and the actors’ performances are extraordinarly sharp, with equal parts humor and poignancy.

I could have done with a somewhat shorter (maybe by 15 minutes) evening — the bits involving the raccoon and the owl broke my concentration — but this odd, fascinating play is well worth seeing.

Anna Bella Eema continues through July 1 at Traveling Jewish Theatre, 470 Florida St., San Francisco and then July 5 through 15 at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., Berkeley. Call (415) 439-2456 or visit www.crowdedfire.org for information.

Hot on the heels of their latest show (Big Death & Little Death, see below), Crowded Fire Theater Company has announced the departure of founding artistic director Rebecca Novick.

Erin Gilley’s press release stated that Novick has has announced her resignation after “10 years at the helm of one of San Francisco’s most notable small theater companies.”

Apparently Crowded Fire’s board of directors is now in the final stages of a search for Novick’s successor and expects to announce their selection soon.

Says Novick:

It’s been exactly 10 years since I stood in line at the Fringe Festival to sign up for what would turn out to be Crowded Fire’s first show. I’m enormously proud of what we’ve achieved in that time and thrilled that the company has grown into an institution that will continue without me.

In the 10 seasons under Novick’s leadership, Crowded Fire produced 23 shows including 10 world premieres, five of them Crowded Fire commissions.

Novick is reportedly leaving Crowded Fire to pursue freelance directing opportunities, with the eventual goal of serving as the artistic director of a larger institution. Upcoming projects for her include A Blessing on the Moon, a dance/theater piece based on Joseph Skibell’s novel about Holocaust Poland which she will workshop at Theater Emory’s Brave New Works Festival in Atlanta and a return to Crowded Fire to direct Lisa D’Amour’s Anna Bella Eema in June.

For more information about Crowded Fire, visit www.crowdedfire.org.

(opened Feb. 10, 2007)

Crowded Fire blazes forth with bleak, funny Death
three stars Apocalypse soon

When the first scene of a play involves dead puppies, you can be sure you’re not headed into the usual dramatic territory.

Such is the case with Crowded Fire Theater Company’s Big Death & Little Death, a 2005 play by Mickey Birnbaum that foretells the end of the world as we know it — and Birnbaum feels fine.

Sort of Donnie Darko mashed up with “DeGrassi High” with a little American Beauty cynicism thrown in for good measure, this dark comedy, which opened Saturday at San Francisco’s Traveling Jewish Theatre, is angry about three things: U.S. war-making in the Middle East, American suburbia and everything else.

Imagine a heavy-metal sitcom full of doom, gloom and laughs, and you’ll get a sense of Big Death, the story of high schooler Gary (the superb Carter Chastain, an actual high school student at Los Lomas High School in Walnut Creek) and his wretched home life.

His father (Lawrence Radecker) has just returned from the first Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm, and he’s damaged and angry, though he’s able to tell his kids he loves them nonstop.

Something terrible happened to Gary’s adulterous mom (Michele Leavy) during the family’s road trip from hell (at one point the car was flying — don’t ask), leaving him and his sister (Mandy Goldstone) to pretty much fend for themselves.

Gary takes refuge in heavy metal bands — his favorites include Septic Wound and My Autopsy — and his earphones are never further from his ears than around his neck. Sister Kristi finds her escape in a photo album compiled by her father of gruesome fatal car accidents.

At school, Gary doesn’t get a whole lot of support from his nerdy friend Harley (Ben Freeman), who turns into a neurotic mess whenever Kristi’s around. And the school’s career counselor (Tonya Glanz) doesn’t provide much counseling, but she does have sex with Gary and enjoy his drugs — including a bag of mysterious red pills called “bub.”

Sean Daniels, the former associate artistic director of the California Shakespeare Theater, guides the chaos of Birnbaum’s play through 2 1/2 off-beat hours that skirt the usual sitcom rhythms and find deeper, more troubling places, especially in Act 2.

The play devolves into surreality — cue Mick Mize as the giant pit bull puppy and Michael Barr as the dead uncle calling from the afterlife — as Chloe Short’s suburban kitchen set falls apart to reveal a night full of stars.

Performances are pumped-up and funny throughout, with stellar work coming from the grounded Chastain, whose believable Gary is as humorous as he is heartbreaking. Goldstone is also a believable teen, though her character remains disappointingly under-developed.

With the universe imploding around them, the teenagers finally calm down, and Big Death & Little Death, as its fatalistic title implies, finishes the equation it sets up in Act 1: human + time = dust.

Bleak but undeniable — and somehow strangely entertaining.

For information about Crowded Fire and Big Death & Little Death visit www.crowdedfire.org.