Show finds whimsy in senseless tragedy
In her solo show “Holding the Edge,” Elaine Magree plays a nurse who anthropomorphizes phone booths (it’s 1986), who refers to her partner as her son’s “auntie mommy” (it’s still 1986) and whose friend in the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence is her son’s male role model.
But if Magree’s perspective is antic, the backdrop for her show is anything but. It’s set not just in the thick of the AIDS crisis, when all of a sudden Magree finds herself a hospice nurse, but also on the day of the Challenger explosion. In the face of all that senseless tragedy, her wry, whimsical take on life and death offers wisdom and comfort. For each life lost under her watch, she adds a bead to a weaving, which is emphatically “not macrame.” The bead, she says, “doesn’t make it better. It makes it something.”
“Holding the Edge”: 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 22; 5 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 24. Through Oct. 15. $20-$100. The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way, Berkeley. (415) 282-3055. www.themarsh.org