Political drama plays out unevenly on stage
There are four characters in Shotgun Players’ “Kings,” but only one of them changes much.
Sure, circumstances evolve and power shifts in Sarah Burgess’ play about members of Congress from Texas and their hangers-on, but you might not know it from how her characters react. Freshman Rep. Sydney Millsap (Sam Jackson) stays blunt and ideologically pure. But for one passing outburst, longtime Sen. John McDowell (Don Wood) stays folksy, personable, caring and pragmatic. Lauren (Sarah Mitchell), a former chief of staff, now a lobbyist, stays
cynical, savvy and loyal.
It’s only Kate (Elissa Beth Stebbins), another lobbyist, who evolves with the circumstances of the drama, which opened Thursday, May 23, at the Ashby Stage. As Sydney’s star meteorically rises and falls, Kate discovers cracks in her own businesslike carapace. Maybe there’s some idealism lying dormant within her after all, amid all the absurd fundraisers and backroom dealings and slick sales pitches. But just how far might that idealism extend when it puts everything else — Kate’s friendships, her livelihood, her reputation, her future — at risk?
Kate would seem to be a shoo-in to be the show’s main character, but the show keeps one of her key crises of conscience offstage for you to piece together after the fact. That wouldn’t feel like such a loss if Burgess didn’t instead devote her stage time to foregone conclusions, like Sydney preaching about how corrupt government is, how immune she is from it, how McDowell embodies it — not because he’s evil, but because the system demands it of him, because he surrounds himself with the special interests who buy his votes instead of with his constituents.
It’s all too easy for Sydney to make these tirades (and a little implausible that she would be so shocked that money fuels politics), and when her progressive proselytizing doesn’t give her the results she wants, the show shrugs it all off, as if to say, “Well, that happened; now we can get on mostly as we were before.”
Maybe that’s what life is like; maybe humans aren’t rocked to their cores by cataclysm as much as most theater would have us believe. Maybe there’s daring verisimilitude in creating self-possessed characters who simply are who they are. But most theater needs a “So what?” for us to care about it, and it’s not clear that Kate’s subdued evolution is enough of one to justify “Kings.”
Joanie McBrien’s direction further dampens the show’s spirit. She rarely makes much use of the space, and exchanges that ought to simmer with tension instead sputter, as if her actors are purposefully marking — performing at half-mast, so as to preserve voice and energy. You want to ask them, “Don’t you know something major is happening right now? Why aren’t you registering it?”
Still, her cast members — some of the most dependable performers in the Bay Area — each fashion moments of depth and thoughtfulness. Wood’s McDowell, challenged during a primary debate, uses a deerin-the-headlights expression on the offensive, seeming to say, “Hey, audience, I’m just an average guy, just like you,” all of which makes you see immediately how he rose to power and held it for decades. Stebbins’ Kate zings her barbs with a kind of panicked fragility underneath — as if she’s always making a last-ditch effort not to have to reveal her true self. Jackson, while having less complexity to work with, savors Sydney’s self-righteousness as if she’s lapping up cream. Her words devastate, but her delivery is a slice of dessert.
“Kings” is perhaps at its finest in the opening scene, when Kate and Lauren talk lobbyist shop. They share an easy shorthand, and they wear their power as naturally as if it’s the uniform for another fundraiser — a puffy ski vest for one event, a cocktail dress for another. Here, Burgess implies, is where power is really brokered, where decisions get made, where governing gets done — not on Capitol Hill, not in the voting booth. That disconnect is the animating impulse of “Kings,” but as yet the show hasn’t mastered its subject. Lily Janiak is The San Francisco Chronicle’s theater critic. Email: ljaniak@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @LilyJaniak