Delightful, riveting effort from outgoing COM director
Mark Langton
Article Launched: 04/29/2008 08:37:38 PM PDT


'Yup, this'll be my last show in the department, I figure," said director Carla Zilbersmith in the lobby of College of Marin's Studio Theater, minutes before the opening of "War and Peacemeal, the Musical."
" ... And then I'm outta here, literally."

She looked at the stricken face of her listener and grinned, giving him a quick elbow to the ribs. "Just a little death humor there," she said. "Relax. It won't kill you."

Despite that Zilbersmith, 45, has been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (a fatal neurodegenerative disorder commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease), no jokes were off limits, on or offstage, for the opening of her final COM offering, which opened to a packed house April 25.

She has resolved to live the rest of her life in joyful celebration, and she couldn't have found a better expression of it than with this delightful - at times riveting - evening of set pieces, song and dance numbers, wild improvisation and fearless guerrilla theater.

The core of the show was co-written by Zilbersmith, who has performed extensively throughout the Bay Area and became drama department coordinator at COM 14 years ago. She wrote it with her 16-year old son, Maclen Zilber, whose performance as narrator brought to mind the sweet ingenuousness of a young Matthew Broderick. It evolved later into a more fluid collaboration with a remarkable company of players, and the rest was fleshed out by original songs composed by versatile accompanist David Norfleet.

A

loose adaptation of one of the earliest anti-war plays known to man, Aristophanes' "Peace," the intent was to write a musical comedy that would draw comparisons between today's Iraq war and the long war between Greece and Sparta that inspired Aristophanes' political farce in 422 B.C.
In the original play, a young man named Trygaeus resolves to ascend to heaven to implore the gods to help rescue Peace, in this case a statue that has been hurled into a pit and buried by War. Eventually he reaches Olympus, only to find that the gods are gone fishing.

In Zilbersmith's version, the quest is undertaken by an American girl named Tracy (played by a scrappy Jennifer Boynton), who meets up with four modern gods - Jesus (Dennis Crumley), Buddha (Patcharee Boyd), the Hindu monkey god Hanuman (Matt Boucher) and Mohammed (Chris Tognotti), who plays Him with a paper bag over his head like the "Unknown Comic" - because, as he points out, "I can't be depicted."

The result is a rough-and-tumble collection of vignettes, loosely tied by Aristophanes' original plot and framed by a something as simple as a kiss. The show is a barrage of newsy quips and pop culture references, including a hastily added line about rice rationing in the United States.

The evening is peppered with "SNL"-type skits and occasional deeply dramatic moments, followed by (somewhat clunky) ensemble song and dance numbers. Mixed in are Gilbert & Sullivan patter songs (with lines such as "I am the very model of a modern major PFC"), an Abu Ghraib waterboarding number (to the tune of the Beach Boys' "Surfin' USA"), gays in the military, fetishism, the theme song from "The Patty Duke Show" (featuring Jesus and Osama Bin Laden as "cousins/identical cousins"). You get the idea.

The 14-member cast was terrific, fumbling only during large ensemble numbers - something that can easily be forgiven factoring in the scant five weeks they had to pull it together. Any time a voice went flat, it only endeared you all the more to this company. Nothing was sacred, not everything was funny, and the audience was left with plenty to talk about on the way to the car.

It would seem the voice of dissent is alive and well after all - something that's been woefully absent from local theater in recent years.

And it was at the more dramatic moments that individuals stood out. Evam Crockett, as the vulgar personification of War (sporting a pith helmet, a Hawaiian shirt and a tank) is a huge presence with a startling vocal range. David Abrams does triple duty as Hermes, Neo from "The Matrix" and a soldier in a tip of the hat to a scene from "Bent," called "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Matt Boucher, no longer a stranger to North Bay audiences, fairly danced across the stage, showcasing his facility for British, French, East Indian and monkey dialect.

In a jaw-dropping scene, Boyd may have stolen the show. She goes from a relentlessly cheerful manicurist in a Western nail salon, who, in a private moment, becomes an enraged and grieving mother lamenting, in broken English, the loss of her child during the fall of Saigon.

Where Aristophanes' "Peace" concludes joyfully, the ending of Zilbersmith's "War and Peacemeal" underwent a darker rewrite. The final song is based on a poem by Wilfren Owen about honor's 'Big Lie': "Dolce et decorum est pro patria."

"I suppose that's where my illness wound up influencing the show, thematically, at least," Zilbersmith said afterward. "I have a more Buddhist view these days, that life is mostly suffering, that the peace we seek must be found within ourselves. Hence the irony in the final number."

The day she wrote the new ending, Zilbersmith found a typewritten note from her son that read, "Who wrote this ending, a dying woman?!" The line was kept in the show, with one addition that seemed to come as a surprise to the director Friday night. The cast members stuck their head out from behind the set and shouted, "Too soon!"

No one laughed louder than she.

IF YOU GO

What: "War and Peacemeal, the Musical"

When: Through May 11; 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays

Where: Studio Theater, College of Marin Fine Arts Building, Kentfield

Tickets: $12 to $15

Information: 485-9555, www.marin.cc.ca.us

Rating: Four stars out of five

BENEFIT CONCERTS

- A benefit concert to help pay medical bills for Carla Zilbersmith is scheduled at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. May 6 at Yoshi's in Oakland. Thirty musicians will take part, and Zilbersmith will perform from her new CD of jazz classics, "Extraordinary Renditions."

- Another benefit is June 12 at Bay Area Theater Sports in San Francisco.

- Those who can't make it to the concerts can contribute through www.quiltmamas.com/dmc.

Mark Langton can be reached at mark.langton@comcast.net.

http://www.marinij.com/lifestyles/ci_9100614