"Troublemaker" at Berkeley Rep: Scott Pilgrim vs. the Theater

I was prepared to dislike Troublemaker, or The Freakin' Kick-A Adventures of Bradley Boatright, the Dan LeFranc play making its world premiere at Berkeley Rep. There was that trying-too-hard-to-be-cool title. There was the ad copy, which made the play sound cutesy and juvenile: "Bradley and his bestest friend tangle with rich kid Jake Miller and his middle-school goons. And their nemesis has help from a bunch of zombies and grown-ups!" There was the usher informing me, to my dismay, that the play had three acts and was more than two and a half hours long. There was the annoying, video-game-like preshow music – and if I, a 25-year-old, found this irritating, I could only imagine how much it bothered the mostly retiree-aged audience who surrounded me at Berkeley Rep.

But then the show started, and, surprise surprise... I liked it. The fast pace, the stylized slang, the need to pay close attention to figure out what was going on – and whether it was really happening, or just happening in the protagonist's overactive imagination – swept me up and obliterated my qualms.

The nearest comparison to Troublemaker is probably Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, in that both of them layer a flashy video-game/comic-book aesthetic on top of a story about a boy struggling with everyday problems in mundane surroundings. Well, Bradley would probably call me an "a-hole" for implying that his problems are commonplace. He's 12 years old and, in his own mind, he's a superhero with a tragic origin story, a sidekick, a nemesis, and special powers. But in reality, he's a working-class kid with a taste for mischief and a single mom who might be dating the father of a boy he hates. Well, that's how it feels to be that age: your view of the world doesn't match external reality, and you think that no one else's problems could compare to yours. (At 12, I imagined I was the crown princess of a magical kingdom. Maybe that's what girls do.)

The play is incredibly stylized, but it's far less cutesy than the ad copy implies – one of the things LeFranc explores is whether Bradley might not be just a fun-loving "troublemaker," but a seriously messed-up and troubled kid. The play is also really Genre Savvy. I think where I fell in love with it is the scene where Bradley asks his best friend Mikey to be his "sidekick," and Mikey takes umbrage at this because he's black, which is just what a genre-savvy character and playwright should do.

Act One toggles back and forth between realism and stylization; Act Two goes completely nuts; and Act Three brings it back down to earth to for a more naturalistic, emotional resolution. That second act, though, man... it might be the craziest thing I've seen at a Big Theater in a long time. There's a soup kitchen populated by homeless pirate zombies, the rich kid lounges on a divan as "Goldfinger" plays, our heroes do an unconvincing drag act (leading up to a gay kiss that actually drew gasps from the audience – in liberal Berkeley!), Bradley's smart and mouthy friend Loretta turns into a pint-sized femme fatale... I watched it in disbelief and giddy delight that Berkeley Rep was producing this in such lavish style.

Troublemaker is not a perfect play. There are some parts that I don't think work at all, including the last scene, and some moments whose value is debatable. (I think I was the only person in the theater who laughed at the "poutine" joke, which probably means that it should be cut, even if I enjoyed feeling that this joke was there just for people like me.) But often, imperfect plays are the most entertaining, and they certainly offer more fodder for discussion than a play that is smoothly written but takes no risks. Go see Troublemaker, because it's exciting, and because I want to discuss it with you. Maybe not all of its punches land, but it kicks some serious A.

Troublemaker plays at Berkeley Rep through February 3.

Image: Jake (Robbie Tann) and Bradley (Gabriel King) square off. Photo by Kevin Berne.

We Played Rough

Another year, another JAW: A Playwrights Festival at Portland Center Stage. After missing half of it last year, I was so glad to be a part of the whole festival again! The four main staged readings were:

• Marie Antoinette by David Adjmi--Quirky, tragi-comic version of Marie's life. Mixture of elevated and Valley Girl dialogue. A talking sheep. Windmills. Focuses on Marie's psychology, makes you wish history was wrong.
• Bruise Easy by Dan LeFranc--Brutal, wrenching. Long, poetic, impossible stage directions. SoCal suburban wasteland. A pregnant woman. Her slacker brother. A Greek chorus of Nasty Neighborhood Kids.
• A Story about a Girl by Jacquelyn Reingold--Bittersweet. Story-theater form. Narration and retelling. A girl who has trouble learning how to talk, and her experiences with life and love.
• Box Americana: A Dream of Wal-Mart by Jason Grote--Sam Walton as diabolus ex machina. Six people, male and female, black and white, caught in our late-capitalist system. Funny but eye-opening.

Mostly I worked on Marie Antoinette, helping the cast and crew with matters of French pronunciation and language. It was good to use the language again and know that it has some practical purpose! The wonderful NY stage actress Marin Ireland played Marie. It's a very difficult role (at times ditzy, at times imperious, at times lonely, desperate, half-crazed) and I loved watching her during every scene; she also has a pretty good French accent! I also had to help actor Darius Pierce, who played Louis XVI, learn how to sing a lullaby in French. Darius is great--he's like a cross between Paul Giamatti and Wallace Shawn, so he's not going to play a lot of kings during his career, but he was perfect as the ineffectual, immature King Louis. And he ended up singing beautifully--not only was his pronunciation good, his acting was spot-on and moving.

I'm not really going to comment on what I thought of the plays--whether I liked them or didn't, whether they work or not--because they are still being workshopped and, after all, I'm involved with the Festival. But there were some interesting parallels and connections that I noted, which are probably fine to share.

All of the plays this year had a theme of "the responsibility that parents owe to their children." Bruise Easy is ALL about that--the main characters are children of divorce, the mom is missing, the daughter is pregnant, the Nasty Neighborhood Kids seem nasty only because they're crying out for their parents' love. In A Story about a Girl, Jessica's parents don't know how to deal with having a daughter who can't talk, and she ultimately runs away. Danae, in Box Americana, gets the job at Wal-Mart to provide for her daughter Janelle, but gets fired when she asks for time off to care for a sick Janelle. Marie Antoinette depicts Marie and her son the Dauphin, and also suggests that part of Marie's problem is that her mother neglected her and she never had a childhood--shipped off to marry Louis at the age of 14.

Three of the plays (not so much A Story about a Girl) were, self-consciously, new twists on old forms. Marie Antoinette uses contemporary language and a talking sheep, but it's not otherwise anachronistic and is true to history--a twist on the bio-play. You think "For all I know, it could have happened that way." Strip away the pop-culture references and the shocking, contemporary-seeming brutality from Bruise Easy, and you're left with something like a Greek tragedy--Dan LeFranc actually based it on Electra. (The brother and sister are Alec and Tess, not Electra and Orestes.) It is actually a very moral, ethical play, dealing with the question of how to live a good life for oneself and one's children. As a play about injustice in the workplace, Box Americana makes you think of a 1930s labor drama (Clifford Odets), until you realize that Jason Grote is avoiding simple propaganda. It reminded David Adjmi of "those '80s plays like Top Girls where you realize that everyone is caught in the system, that the system is to blame."

These same 3 plays also make use of symbolic, message-bearing characters--the revolutionary sheep in Marie Antoinette, the wise-beyond-their-years skate-punks in Bruise Easy, the spirit of Sam Walton in Box Americana. Perhaps this all comes down to Tony Kushner's influence? I think he is a really big role model for this generation of playwrights. Jason Grote's subtitle is even Kushnerian... Box Americana: A Dream of Wal-Mart versus Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.

Hopefully, you will see reviews of these four plays in The New York Times sometime, or better yet, at a theatre near you!