Spalding Gray left more stories to tell in a church on Gough Street
Richard Wenzel as Love
Photo by Jay Yamada
Photo by Jay Yamada
In Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell a five-person ensemble performs his beloved classics and never-before-heard stories. Custom Made Theatre Company’s Bay Area premiere of Spalding Gray’s autobiographical monologues embraces his wit and wisdom and touches on subjects ranging from a child in a high chair being subjected to Beethoven, a visit to “the Bermuda Triangle of health care,” a car explosion, and his first communion. In 50 recitations, the cast takes him from Vineyard Haven and Provincetown in Massachusetts (getting away from his mom) to a prison mess hall in Nevada (watching a barbecue on a prison bunk).
Spalding became world-famous for such monologues as Swimming to Cambodia, Monster in a Box and Gray’s Anatomy. His widow Kathleen Russo conceived of a tribute to him using five actors of mixed age and gender to take on parts of Spalding’s psyche in the reading of his works. The five (miming reading from book props but obviously having memorized the lines) have symbolic names: Love (Richard Wenzel), Family (AJ Davenport), Career (Patrick Barresi), Adventure (Leah S. Abrams), and Journal (Gabriel A. Ross).
He was shockingly neurotic, brutally funny and amused by the irrational world around him. She put together beloved sections of his famous works with unpublished private writings into a vibrant, creative 90-minute narration that is both familiar and unexpected. The result is a collage of his reactions from the 1960s to the ‘90s.
There is very little interaction between the players. Each one having a unique style, they create a synergy of self-exposure with their personal inhabitations of Spalding’s storytelling. The professional intonations of the cast dramatically underscore the genius of his lines. This staging does involve some slightly choreographed group dancing, but there is no drama in the production, only in the lines. With their caring involvement in the text, the ensemble gives insight to his complex, funny and touching private life. Even so, the finale degenerates into a cacophony of individual voices proclaiming all at once.
There is very little interaction between the players. Each one having a unique style, they create a synergy of self-exposure with their personal inhabitations of Spalding’s storytelling. The professional intonations of the cast dramatically underscore the genius of his lines. This staging does involve some slightly choreographed group dancing, but there is no drama in the production, only in the lines. With their caring involvement in the text, the ensemble gives insight to his complex, funny and touching private life. Even so, the finale degenerates into a cacophony of individual voices proclaiming all at once.
Custom Made Theatre Company produces plays of literary significance and social conscience in their intimate space attached to the historic Trinity Church. Their core of actors has great talent, but the paucity of its display in this production screams out for a better presentation of this new, beautifully poetic prose. The individual personal narratives leave no room for interaction between the actors.
Directed by Brian Katz and Daunielle Rasmussen; Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell continues through February 19 at The Gough Street Playhouse (formerly The Next Stage), 1620 Gough Street (at Bush), San Francisco. Tickets ($20 to $25) are available online at 510.207.5774.