San Diego Arts"Off the Ground" at New Village Arts
Enthusiasm Without Religion One Yuletide passeth away, and another cometh, but the Christmas show abideth forever, and there is no new thing under the sun, saith the Preacher. To every thing there is a Winter solstice season, and of making many Christmas plays there is no end. And so it came to pass that in the fullness of time New Village Arts Theatre also joined in our annual parade of Christmas shows, along with Old Globe’s "Grinch," Cygnet’s "Wonderful Life," any number of Pastorelas and Dickens adaptations, and Lamb’s Festival of Christmas.  Charlie Riendeau Copyright©2007 G.Weinberg-Harter New Village Arts let it be known that they did not want to do "any of the same old holiday shows." And indeed their commissioned premiere of "Off the Ground" by Ami Chini and Tom Zohar passes muster for an original play. Its basic story – about a diverse and far-flung family coming together at the holiday for a strained reunion, a good squabble, and an ultimate reconciliation – seems familiar not just from life, but in art as well. Down the coast and across the bay in Coronado, Kerry Meads, longtime mainstay of Lamb’s Player Theatre, has for many a year now been reliably turning out just this sort of play with her little Christmas cookie cutter – ever a reliable and tasty holiday product in many flavors: sometimes old-fashioned (from Medieval through Early American to Mid-20th century) and sometimes modern.  Francis Gercke Copyright©2007 G.Weinberg-Harter I daresay that Chini and Zohar may never have seen – perhaps never even have heard tell of – Meads’ continuing cycle of gamboling Christmastime lambkins. So it is not imitation but parallel evolution – some iron law of nature – that makes their own new contribution to the Yule genre seem so very much like an addition to that Lamb’s tradition, which is probably a universal American tendency. Excepting that "Off the Ground" might actually (without intending to) be considered a kind of anti-Lamb’s Christmas show. After all, the repeated and characteristic refrain of their New Village Arts play is a phrase most unlikely ever to be uttered in any Lamb’s performance: a bitter "Merry fucking Christmas!" (What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed.)  Wendy Waddell Copyright©2007 G.Weinberg-Harter And there is no noticeable trace of any religious message in "Off the Ground" either – hardly the case at Lamb’s, where it is unabashedly announced that their mission partakes of a Judeo-Christian viewpoint. Which is not to say that Chini and Zohar are necessarily irreligious. Chini has confessed that she "bows deeply to the universe," which suggests a certain pantheistic perspective. And Zohar’s very surname seems to echo mystic Judaica. But nothing is mentioned in their show about the "real meaning" of Christmas (a saturnalia which, with roots in ancient Boreal December solstice festivals, actually predates Christianity anyway).  Terry Scheidt Copyright©2007 G.Weinberg-Harter It was an 18th century English commonplace in funeral monuments to say the deceased had been "religious without enthusiasm" (showing how the word’s meaning has altered). One might conversely say that "Off the Ground" demonstrates enthusiasm without religion. Directed by Joshua Everett Johnson with a sure hand for ensemble work, the play introduces its troubled family of merrymakers with efficient accumulation and gradual acceleration. It begins with a lugubrious note on Christmas eve in the comfortable but cluttered and messy Pennsylvania living room (designed in realistic detail by Kristianne Kurner) of Dick, an elderly widower played with wry deliberation by Charlie Riendeau. (The specter of a deceased family member is a common accouterment for this festive genre.) Dick dwells untidily in the old family home along with his divorced, unemployed, agoraphobic grandson Joel (a vague and disheveled Francis Gercke). While watching television, the two make sloppy male attempts to deck the halls from cartons of tangled old decorations. With increasing pace and a rising mood of forced holiday enthusiasm verging on hysteria, visiting family arrive – hyper sister Susan (the highly animated Wendy Waddell) and her glum husband Luke (Terry Scheidt) whose marriage is verging on divorce; and oblivious parents Virginia (Sandra Ellis-Troy) and Jim (Jack Missett), along with the obligatory non-family guest Donna (Amanda Morrow, still and centered), yet another divorcee. As grandpa so aptly expressed it: "Merry fucking Christmas."  Sandra Ellis-Troy Copyright©2007 G.Weinberg-Harter The play moves with a kind of sub-Chekhovian drift – a sort of theatrical Brownian motion – that wanders down to a crisisless intermission having done little more than introduce the characters and touch upon their various discontents in a mood of droll pathos mingled with strained festivity. The second act does manifest a few diverse crises (none of them major) and brings them to some (but not much) resolution. The excellent cast handles every confrontation with exemplary engagement, whether in pairs or in deliberately chaotic scenes of mass confusion. A perfect high pitch of discordant group disarray comes during a climactic dinner scene where everyone is talking, yelling, screeching at simultaneous discombobulated cross-purposes. Director and playwrights show a well-calculated sense of drama’s musical necessities by following this hullabaloo with a contrastingly quiet, dim wee hours scene of hushed confidences and intimate revelations – a very Chekhov moment (see "Uncle Vanya" Act Two and "Three Sisters" Act Three).  Jack Missett Copyright©2007 G.Weinberg-Harter But since this isn’t pessimistic Chekhov but an optimistic American Christmas show, everything needs must end cheerily. If one had thought to escape the indispensable medley of Christmas tunes that forms an inevitable component of this sort of show, suddenly in the final minutes of the play those songs are crammed in, chorused out at hysterical high speed, sung from an unseen backroom by family members finally seized by true irresistible seasonal enthusiasm in almost a parody of our typical theatrical Christmastime expectations. Such seems to be the very pattern of the play – a dissonant traditionalism, by turns serious and mocking, that wants both to have its Christmas fruitcake and eat it too.  Amanda Morrow Copyright©2007 G.Weinberg-Harter DOWNLOAD PROGRAM PAGE ONE HERE DOWNLOAD PROGRAM PAGE TWO HERE DOWNLOAD PROGRAM PAGE THREE HERE Venue :New Village Arts Theatre, 2787 B State Street, Carlsbad Village
 George Weinberg-Harter About the author: George Weinberg-Harter George Weinberg-Harter has been active in San Diego theatre since childhood, appearing in many local stage productions as well as doing graphic art for them. He has helped start theatre companies, authored and co-authored a number of plays produced locally and is a co-founder of the Fellow Calligraphers of San Diego. He is a member of the Actors Alliance of San Diego, the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle, and the San Diego Press Club, which has presented him with its 2007 First Place Excellence in Journalism Award for Drawing or Illustration. More by this author Subscribe to Arts:
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~Tom