Mime
Troope edition 2017
The San
Francisco Mime Troope was founding in 1959, making it one year younger than me
and the same age as the Cuban Revolution.
I have only been going to their political pantomime theatre in the parks
for 28 years, having missed once, in 1995.
Saturday
was season opener in Cedar Rose Park, Berkeley.
How can
one be critical of people whose work one adores and admires? Who am I, this radical mechanic from back
east to provide any theatre reviews? Yet
here I am with a new encounter with an old love that left me feeling a bit sad
and a lot disappointed.
This
year’s piece is called The Wall, and they mean Trump’s wall of course.
It was
sweet that the band started the pre-show set with a jazz instrumental of the
Pink Floyd song. They went on to do some
other surprising covers that I found excellent.
If
there is anything that describes the Mime Troope over the past two and a half
decades it is an every improving production value. The music is great. The acting is brilliant. The politics are strong and in sync with my
own. The staging is amazing for what
they can do with so little. The shows go
on professionally and are smooth and well presented. If there was an opening day mess up on stage
under the afternoon sun, I didn’t notice it, nor did most of the fellow members
of the audience with blankets on the grass.
So why disappointed?
I found
it predictable, a bit boring and worse still, not very funny.
This is
the same Troope that once suddenly converted an argument between the Dictator
of Obscuristan and a US state department operative into an S&M ballad that
mixed that kind of a sexual relationship with the international relationship
between the United States and producers of petroleum. That was unpredictable, made a political
point and made my ribs hurt from laughter.
Don’t
expect anything like that in this year’s show.
Maybe
the Mime Troope wants to move to drama and away from comedy? Nobody said that they have to stay stagnant
and not change up their art. There is
certainly little to call funny in what is going on with US immigration
policy.
But
shouldn't drama have its innovation and surprises too? What I heard today was the predictable
language about immigrant rights that one would hear from a lawyer or some nonprofit
fundraiser. It treated Mexican illegal
immigration with the clichés of the movie El Norte.
It
would have been nice to introduce the traditional migratory labor across Mexico
and stretching into the US as being from OAXACA State. Mixteco, Zapateco and Triqui would be good
native languages to show, given that they are present here in our fields and
construction sites. But I digress
knowing more about Mexico than I do about theatre.
It's
not that all the themes were not good, they were just not engaging. Little bits like a soldier having served “in
the DMZ of North Korea” feels sloppy and detracts from the piece’s
authority. (US troops serve along the De
Militarized Zone on the South Korean side). And like I said, most of it was so
predictable that the pace started to feel slow and I found myself waiting for
it to end.
There
were some of the brilliant Mime Troope funny bits, including Velina Brown
perfectly doing a short role as a shopper that everyone in Oakland has met at
least once. One sequence of quick lines
was funny, witty and sharp at the same time.
Maybe I
am just being critical of a good show because in the past they have put on so
many great shows? It would be great to
see an interview with their playwright and often actor Michael Gene
Sullivan to hear what he thinks of this piece and where he wanted it to
go. Seems that the crowd liked it a lot
more than I did, so maybe I missed something.
There
was something different and something eternal about the SFMT audience.
On the
side of being the same as always, we were mostly white. Much more white than any part of the Bay
Area, even the North Berkeley neighborhood around the park. We are also many of the same people, just
older. At 59 I should not feel that I am
below the median age.
There
were a few people of color, and a few more people under 50 than that, but a lot
less of both than the crowds I first sat in when I moved to the US in 1989 and
met my first Mime Troop fans in Dolores Park.
There
were two other big differences in today’s audience.
1,
There was a lack of common courtesy with people bringing dogs into the middle
of the crowd, walking them and/or themselves over other people's blankets, and
setting up chairs blocking the view of those on blankets behind. All of these things I had learned to be
against the rules from the Troope staff in earlier shows. In fact, I own a chair that sits flat on the
ground that I bought specifically for Mime Troop shows and found that it was a
polite thing to use at other outside shows, such as Stern Grove.
2,
There are always fewer of us. Once upon
a time, we would make going to a Mime Troope show a group outing, a picnic that
we started early to get our blanket somewhere with a good view. Today it was not hard to get to the side of
the people in the full size chairs and see the stage without arriving
early.
Like I
said, others enjoyed the show more than I did.
When the dialog said those good things that I agree with, but found a
bit old hat, many hands clapped. When
the show was over there was a standing ovation.
I
watched everyone stand up from the back, next to the audio booth.
In
years past, that same spot was the middle of the crowd.
