When I imagine avant garde theater in the Bay Area, circa 1974, the picture in my mind is not far from what's currently on stage at the Ashby Theatre, where Berkeley's Shotgun Players are mounting a bracing, madcap, riotously raunchy production of Jen Silverman's "Collective Rage: A Play in Five Betties," which is sub-subtitled:
"In essence, a queer and occasionally hazardous exploration; do you remember when you were in middle school and you read about Shackleton and how he explored the Antarctic? Imagine the Antarctic as a pussy and it's sort of like that."
You're probably already clear as to whether this is a show for you. But even if you're game to venture into this realm of tundral pudenda, you may still need some grappling hooks.
Character sketches
More a collection of overlapping sketches than a linear, logical narrative, Silverman's very funny but ultimately unsatisfying script gives us five characters in search of themselves.
Each of the titular crew is a fine-lined caricature, giddily etched by cast members who, under Becca Wolff's disciplined direction, remain extraordinarily consistent throughout their performances. This is the best comedic ensemble I've seen locally in years.
Betty 1 (Nicole Odell) is an Upper East Side housewife, prim, prudish and privileged; unappreciated by her unseen but oft-discussed husband, Richard (Read: Dick)
Betty 2 (Atosa Babaoff) seems similarly blessed financially, but is single, lonely, a touch dimwitted, and ready for unhinged adventure. (Babaoff's elastic facial expressions are a hoot).
Betty 3 (Linda Maria Giron), brassy and over-confident, is a literal lipstick lesbian (She works at Sephora).
Betty 4 (Raisa Donato) is a tender, sad-eyed butch dyke who silently carries a torch for Betty 3.
And Betty 5 (Skyler Cooper) is a stoic "gender-nonconforming, masculine-presenting, female-bodied individual who's comfortable with female pronouns" who runs a boxing gym.
Alas, each Betty has trouble seeing herself beyond the same highly circumscribed role in which the audience sees her. Through the evening, they will strive to imagine themselves out of cartoonish consistency and into three-dimensional humanity.
Messily meta
The vehicle for the Betties' personal transformations is a play within the play. Betty 3 corrals the rest of the crew into a 'Let's put on a show' scenario. The play they'll perform is a dramatization of the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, which is also the source of the play performed within Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," which itself, a tangle of role-playing and facades, has much to say about the malleability of identity.
In the end, "Collective Rage" proves too play-within-a-playful for its own good. The acting is terrific, the stagecraft delightful (Erika Oba's music direction combined with James Ard's bloopy-glitchy sound design is a comic performance in and of itself), but Silverman's script never effectively fleshes out its flashy intellectual underpinnings. The show ends with a whimper disguised as a bang; the tension between its genuine fun and would-be profundity awkwardly unresolved.
'Collective Rage: A Play in Five Betties,' through August 18. $28-$36. Shotgun Players' Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., Berkeley. www.shotgunplayers.org
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