‘Josephine’s Feast’ at the Magic Theatre t << Theater

by Jim Gladstone

Agrand buffet of ideas crowds the table in “Josephine’s Feast,” the world premiere play by Star Finch being presented by the Magic Theatre and Campo Santo through this weekend.

Over the course of a busily absorbing 90 minutes, you’ll enjoy a taste of fourth-wave feminism, a few nibbles of racial tension, forkfuls of family drama, some saucy comedy, and a dip into the supernatural.

This is a play that, while ultimately undercooked, offers plenty of fodder for post-prandial conversation. The show’s titular centerpiece is an emptynested, long-divorced, middle-class mother, played with an endearing balance of anxiety and panache by Margo Hall.

We meet Josephine home, alone, on the morning of her birthday dinner. She’s composing a presentation she plans to share over her grown daughters Sami (Britney Frazier), a theory-entangled quick-to-condescend lesbian graduate student, Amaya, a cheerful, materialistic make-up artist (Jasmine Milan Williams), her brother Tony (Donald E. Lacy, Jr.) and nephew Jaden (Tre’Vonne Bell).

Having dedicated many years to being a daughter, sister, wife, and mother, Josephine has decided to dedicate the rest of her life to herself. She’s reclaiming her time.

Quoting her grandmother’s wisdom, Josephine declares, “In order to be reborn, you’ve got to die before you die.” She’s developed a close friendship with an artist ten years her junior and found herself aspiring to new levels of creativity and personal independence.

We’ve heard this line of thinking expressed by white women on stage and screen for decades, but it’s refreshing to see it put into action in the context of an African American family. Josephine seems ready to step away from the stereotype of the soulnurturing, self-sacrificing, keeping-itall-together Mama and step fully into her own personhood.

When Josephine complains that her daughters have ceaselessly leaned on her throughout their lives, we believe her because Hall easily wins our trust with her earnest presence; not because of anything in Finch’s script. For most

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From page 15 rely heavily on texting and phone calls to reveal the repartee and increasing affection of both characters. One gimmick that works has Alex and Henry visually together in bed while they’re texting thousands of miles away, to suggest intimacy.

The film was released with an Rrating, which is absurd, as there are of the play, there is little beyond Josephine’s assertion to suggest her children are particularly demanding.

A vicious late-in-the-game outburst during which Sami contemptuously dismisses her mother’s hopes and dreams comes out of left field, both in terms of what’s preceded it –typical family squabbles, talk of relationship troubles, interludes of cheerful and woeful nostalgia– and in light of this elder daughter’s social justice-oriented academic background. There’s something eating Sami that “Josephine’s Feast” fails to serve up.

The two male characters are similarly underwritten. We’re happy to spend time with them because both Bell and Lacy –fueled by Finch’s wellhoned dialogue– make for humorous good company. There’s a bit of arrested adolescence to each of them, but they don’t seem particularly reliant on Josephine. A sixth character, Sami’s upbeat, sensible college friend, Lani (Teirra Allen), has similarly little dramatic function.

Other than Josephine, only Amaya –played with charming believability by Williams– has a clear and substantial story arc. She’s struggling with the possibility of ending a romantic relationship and gradually comes to realize, with her mother’s gentle help, that her fiancé shares many characteristics with her father.

Throughout the evening a mysterious storm rises outside the family home. Russell Champa’s lighting, Joan Osato’s video projections and virtually no nude scenes (one fivesecond flash of ass), and no similar heterosexual movie would earn that same designation. The sex is purely suggestive, “filthy acts” implied more than explicitly enacted.

The way it’s photographed, we’ve a fairly good idea of what sex feat they’re engaging (i.e. Henry’s legs in mid-air with Alex striding on top of him, can lead to only one conclusion) yet it all feels perfunctory. Their pre-

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Lana Palmer’s sound creating a slowbuilding, apocalyptic edginess to the proceedings, in the mode of Steven Karam’s “The Humans.”

Yet when Josephine finally makes her anticipated presentation, it’s a head-scratcher; far less life-changing than the build-up has led us expect.

Playwright Finch serves up small portions of interesting notions without enough of any one to leave you sated. Still, you’ll walk out of the theater with plenty to chew on.

‘Josephine’s Feast,’ through August 20. $30-$70. Magic Theatre, Fort Mason, 2 Marina Blvd., Bldg. D. (415) 441-8822. www.magictheatre.org

We Players’ ‘The Keeper’

Artists who work in almost any medium will empathize with Caretta

Caretta, the lighthouse keeper whose surprisingly madcap solitary existence is chronicled in “The Keeper,” an outdoor production by We Players, playing Fridays through Sundays in August at the CalShakes amphitheater in Orinda.

“You’re working in isolation and not really knowing whether what you do is connecting with anyone,” explains Ava Roy, the artistic director of We Players who plays Caretta under the direction of Britt Lauer. Then again, Roy adds, “You’re free to be a little ‘off.’ Nobody’s around to tell you that you’re weird.”

During its debut run last summer in Alameda, “The Keeper,” was warmly received by audiences of all ages.

Noting that the show originated with her musing on Beckett and Nietzsche and “Moby-Dick” during the pandemic, Roy says it’s ironic that, “It became this wild and whimsical and welcoming thing, more surreal and absurdist. We’ve had some of our most profound reactions from six-to-eight-year-olds.”

‘The Keeper,’ through Aug. 27. Sliding scale, from $20. 100 California Shakespeare Theater Way, Orinda. (415) 547-0189. www. weplayers.org

‘Reciprocating Pumps’ at The Marsh

Playwright Dirk Alphin, a longtime fixture of San Francisco’s arts scene, helped establish legendary queer venues the Valencia Rose Cabaret and Josie’s Cabaret and Juice Joint.

The title of his new play, “Reciprocating Pumps,” set in the late 1990s, suggests the echoes and ironies in store. Zack, a gay former lifeguard, is terminally ill. On the evening he plans to end his life, he is joined by a friend he once saved from drowning.

The five-character drama plays on Saturdays and Sundays at the Marsh. ‘Reciprocating Pumps’ through Aug. 27. Sliding scale, from $20. The Marsh, 1062 Valencia St. (415) 2823055. www.themarsh.orgt vious name-calling was more steamy than the actual mechanics of any insinuated “dirty deed.”

As for the acting, Perez and Galitzine look like swooning models who’ve just stepped out of a perfume ad. Perez is serviceable, while Galitzine acquits himself handsomely having to stand up to centuries of queer denial and royalty as prison, making it almost impossible for him to be openly who he is. In a brilliant casting twist, the homophobic King James III, bound by ancient monarchic rules, is played by Stephen Fry, one of the first British out actors, who’s also a vocal activist for LGBTQ rights. Thurman as President Ellen has one of the worst Southern twangs in recent memory (though not as awful as Tom Hank’s Colonel Parker in “Elvis”), but brazenly plays it like the campy role it is, giving gravitas to howlers like, “Honey, we need to get you on Truvada as soon as possible,” so improbably she succeeds.

Sarah Shahi excels as Zahra Bankston, the White House Deputy Chief-of-Staff who’s onto the Alex/ Henry dalliance from the get-go, playing both a kind of supportive older sister to Alex but also a steely tough nononsense crisis manager. The rest of the underused cast are miniscule with scant screen time to shine or develop. How should we construe “Red, White & Royal Blue?” It’s fun, frothy, wish-fulfillment at times cheesy fluff, an outlandish plot with absurd ele- ments like Prince Henry appearing incognito in a Texas bar with no one recognizing him because he’s wearing a baseball hat. Imagine Prince Harry attempting to perpetrate such a stunt! We even witness Rachel Maddow playing herself, providing commentary on a phony media storm concerning the Alex/Prince Henry brouhaha. Unlike the book (recommended), we’re given no background material or insights about either character’s history or why they interact with each other the way they do. In fairness, the film never pretends to be more than what it is: the Hollywood equivalent of a Harlequin potboiler beach read, easily digestible and easier to forget.

However, there’s something faintly hypocritical about a movie urging queer liberation when both characters, despite being outed, spend almost the film’s entirety hiding who they are. Yet there’s an undeniable appeal here about two public figures who can have almost anything they want, yet being in love, are prevented from getting together by forces seemingly beyond their control.

So, it’s an enjoyable, feel-good, fiendishly addictive, smutty-lite summer entertainment and a pleasant trifling diversion in these oppressive times, as long as you don’t reflect on how implausible and unapologetically silly it all is.t