Tony Kushner may have jumped the gun with A Bright Room Called Day. This pre-Angels in America drama works hard to find equations between the Reagan years and the rise of the Nazis in 1930s Germany. "From National Socialism to National Senility," remarks a contemporary character, who has fled America to explore her angst in Berlin. George W. Bush may well have pushed her over the edge with his policies labeled in patriotism. And what to make of his successor, considered soft on everything by the righteous enemies who would replace him, who has actually hardened Big Brother tactics that followed 9/11? Angst squared and beyond. Now is the time to invoke senility.
Most of A Bright Room Called Day, which had its official premiere at SF's Eureka Theatre in 1987, takes place in a Berlin apartment in the early 1930s as the Nazis consolidate their power. It is the home of Agnes, a mild-mannered bit-part actress who has dipped her toe into communist activism and regularly hosts gatherings of other party members and sympathizers. They talk and fret and make posters and put on puppet shows, but flight or acquiescence decimate the group as Hitler becomes unstoppable.
This outline sounds straightforward enough, even with the occasional "interruptions" (as billed via projections) by the modern-day Zillah, who has been called by some vague spiritual magnetism to Agnes' apartment to find answers to what she feels is ailing in America. But simplicity has never been an adjective suitable for Kushner, and the play travels to numerous stylistic, linguistic, and discursive ports without ever leaving a single room. Oh, and Satan dramatically shows up for one scene with his own set of problems.
To say that the play works in any traditional sense would be wrong, and its theatrical power is meager compared to what Kushner conjured in Angels in America and later works. But there is obviously a heady, feverish mind at work, and compelling moments limned with provocative ideas are scattered throughout the long play. It's a formidable play for a small troupe to undertake, but the Custom Made Theatre Company has admirably risen to the challenge in its current production at the Gough Street Playhouse.
Artistic Director Brian Katz has guided his large cast carefully through the verbal contortions that Kushner can inflict, and with video designer Maxx Kurzunski, he has made sophisticated use of historical photos, film footage, and obtuse Kushner-written scene titles projected on the rear of Marci Ring's set that finds evolving tones in Andrea Schwartz's lighting design.
Xanadu Bruggers tugs at your heart with her portrayal of the kind but timid Agnes, who cannot commit in any direction. She is eventually deserted by all her friends and comrades, including her one-eyed cinematographer lover (David Vega), a glamorous fellow actress (Megan Briggs), a sex-driven homosexual hanger-on (Chris Morrell), a steely visual artist (Jessica Jade Rudholm), a pair of comically arguing communist agents (Nick Trengove and Vahista Vafadari), and even the witch-like crone (Shelley Lynn Johnson) who comes begging for food. Maggie Ballard crisply plays the modern American drawn to Berlin, and Trengove reappears as her libidinous, monolingual German lover who can't understand a word she is saying, to her relief. Steve Budd appears briefly as the enfeebled Satan of confusing significance.
Perhaps the most cogent and effective dialogue in the play comes from Zillah, with her advantage of hindsight. Hitler and the Holocaust gave us "the standard of absolute evil," she says, and nothing else can "qualify as evil with a capital 'E.'" A main issue on Kushner's mind at the time was AIDS, and Reagan's lack of response to the plague. " I mean, do you have to pile up some magic number of bodies before you hit the jackpot?" Even more contemporary evil deserving of a capital "E" probably would give the play's devil a new burst of energy.
A Bright Room Called Day will run at the Gough Street Playhouse through April 8. Tickets are $32. Call (510) 207-5774 or go to www.custommade.org.