Voices of Tenderloin come alive in ‘Spirits’
What if you encountered our city’s most troubled and couldn’t keep on walking? What if you had to look in the eye your fellow San Franciscans languishing or left practically for dead at, say, “the corner of Turk and Hyde”? Could you handle what you saw and be at peace with your own reaction (or lack thereof )? What if what you saw wasn’t just pain, but aching humanity, sharp humor, radical politics, flinty poetry and an imagination and spirit unbound by circumstance?
That seems to be the project of “Casa de Spirits,” written and directed by Roger Guenveur Smith for Campo Santo. The one-act piece, whose two-day run opened Wednesday, May 16, as part
Occasionally, the production transcends the script. No Bay Area actor can do possession as Donald Lacy Jr. can.
of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ Transform Fest, is inspired by the regulars of Tenderloin liquor stores, exploring a part of the city where every alley is at once “catwalk” and “toilet” and “morgue,” where the local version of the Pledge of Allegiance might read, “Yes, may I help you?” or “Put down the gun.”
But if the piece has noble and urgent aims, it hasn’t yet achieved them in its current form. Often, it’s not clear why Smith’s writing needs to leap from page to stage. It declares and describes rather than dramatizes. Ensemble members (Juan Amador, Delina Patrice Brooks, Britney Frazier, Donald Lacy Jr., Anna Maria Luera and Tommy James Shepherd Jr.) speak as if to take turns reading aloud an undifferentiated block of text. Smith often keeps them stuck in place as they twitch or writhe or float their limbs in slow motion to suggest the highs and lows of addiction. It’s a little like watching kelp sway left and right, unable to move from the ocean floor.
The dominant shade of Smith’s prose is purple. One speaker serves “a seven-year sentence of bad luck.” Another announces, “The houses of ill repute are packed with loyal congregations.” A third proclaims, “Tonight’s limousine could be tomorrow’s hearse.” If the grandeur is an attempt to elevate the subject matter, it winds up sounding trite. Worse still, it doesn’t often penetrate or complicate stereotypes about the Tenderloin.
Occasionally, the production transcends the script. No Bay Area actor can do possession as Lacy can. His faraway eyes summon the beyond in an instant. What he sees is terrifying, and you’re all the more afraid for having only his gaze as portal to it. Frazier is among the Bay Area’s most fearless performers, always keeping her text in a choke hold. At one point, when she plays with the phrase “brown paper bag,” intensifying it with each repetition, it’s as if to merely speak those words is to quaff of her vice.
If mikes were staticky and lighting cues illtimed on opening night, Marc Anthony Thompson’s compositions and sound design show real artistry. At one point, he stretches the opening lyric of Johnny Mathis’ “Chances Are” so long as to make time slow down. It discomfits, disorients. When it finally releases you, you emerge having heard menace in what was once cheesy, innocuous.
When you leave “Casa de Spirits,” by contrast, your portrait of the Tenderloin will likely be little changed.