"Second Wind has a goal that is rare in today's bottom-line
theatre world: to use the stage to explore social and political
issues that impact ordinary Americans lives."

~~Charles Brousse, Marin Independent

"A cool literary mystery... fascinating and exciting"

~SF Examiner

The Gravedigger's Tango Delves

Review by Leslie Katz (San Francisco Examiner, July 2007)),

A fierce champion of the San Francisco theater scene, playwright, director and actor Ian Walker is keeping it invigorated with the premiere of “The Gravedigger’s Tango,” running at Traveling Jewish Theatre through the end of the month.

It’s easy to understand why Walker has won awards for his work. A cool literary mystery, “The Gravedigger’s Tango” cleverly tells the intersecting stories of a couple of cemetery workers and the people responsible for an undated grave with the epitaph: “Not one but two hearts lie below/ Beyond the reach of all we know/ Pray be silent and do not stir/ Till I find my way back to her.”

While unraveling the mystery of the grave marking is perhaps the most exciting element of the show, the admittedly spare Second Wind Productions presentation boasts food for thought on many levels; Walker, who also directs, explores fascinating philosophical themes and imbues his characters with passion and points of view.

Overseeing the graveyard is caretaker Laszlo (Doug Thornburg), a belligerent yet poetic fellow who, if nothing else, respects the sanctity of the site, which likely will be destroyed by a new highway coming through. Laszlo is joined by Pip (Kathryn Tkel), who, at first, is simply there to make money as a gravedigger. But Pip, w hose home life with Patrick (Joseph Rende) is unsettled at best, becomes caught up as Laszo tells what he knows about the grave’s inhabitant. The Englishwoman was named Isabella Ashecombe (Natalie Palan), and the man who grieved for her, Alexander Charon (Ryan Tasker).

Scenes fluidly alternate among those in the graveyard, in Pip’s apartment, and in England, where, with Laszlo and Pip watching, Alexander meets Isabella — and becomes dangerously entangled with her family.

The story instantly sucks the viewer in: Alexander, a young, idealistic doctor, meets an older physician, Geoffrey Pockworth ( Brian O’Connor), on a train in the English Moors. But was their meeting chance? Due to circumstances beyond his control, Alexander is forced to go with Pockworth to the Ashecombe estate, where he’s instantly attracted to Isabella, and finds that her elderly father is, and has been, in a near-death state. Alexander’s ethics are challenged when asked to consider the prospect of ending the man’s life; the situation is exacerbated by Isabella’s over-the-top, angry brother Thomas (Tony Johnston).

Their stories unfold with intensity in the engaging drama.

What’s missing from this production of “The Gravedigger’s Tango” are beefier, possibly more creative, production values that really capture the eeriness permeating through the play. Realizing that Second Wind and similar small companies have limited resources, it may seem an undoable task. But with such committed actors and a classy script, “The Gravedigger’s Tango” deserves a physical setting that’s as lively as its spirit.

~

One Nation Under Dog

Review by Robert Avila (San Francisco Bay Guardian, September 2006)),

"Rich and dramatically powerful"

~SF Bay Guardian

In Suzan-Lori Parks's The America Play, the setting is a vast dirt hole — what the piece calls "an exact replica of the Great Hole of History." You could say it's still the operative landscape in her 2002 Pulitzer Prize–winning play, Topdog/Underdog, which also takes as a central motif The America Play's image of a black man dressed as an arcade Abraham Lincoln (there for patrons to shoot in a continual reenactment of the assassination in Ford's Theatre).

Parks now grounds it in a more ostensibly realistic plotline Linc-ing two African American brothers to a deep and sordid past they only partially and fleetingly understand. The hole of history here consists of the squalid apartment shared by Lincoln (Ian Walker) and Booth (David Westley Skillman), named by their father as "some idea of a joke."

In Parks's telling, the joke is loaded. The layering of history, it suggests, turns Booth's inner-city digs downright archaeological. It blends — in subtle and intricate ways — the brothers' troubled childhood, a history of racism and endemic poverty, and a ruthless culture suffused with fantasies of death and easy money.

Second Wind's production, ably helmed by director Virginia Reed, is the first one locally since the touring Broadway version came through town. It's great not only to have the opportunity to see this rich and dramatically powerful work performed again but to see a small company do this demanding piece such justice. (If justice is a word one can draw anywhere near the world of Linc and Booth.) The actors establish an engaging rapport onstage. Skillman is sharp and just vaguely menacing as younger brother Booth, jumpy and less certain than his big brother despite his obsessive ambition to be the three-card monte hustler his now disillusioned brother once was. Walker's Linc, meanwhile, is a finely tuned combination of resignation, restraint, and irrepressible pride. He first appears in whiteface, wearing the president's getup, which gives him a steady paycheck and time to think; when his startled kid brother trains a real gun on him, we have a tableau that sets the whole history ball rolling.

True, opening night saw the performances, especially Walker's, fluctuating slightly in intensity, focus, and rhythm, but that's only to say an excellent cast will likely prove even stronger as the run continues.

Read the original review here!