heART on Center
Khaled (Brian Abraham, left) gets the big-time third degree from government agent Carl (Tom Hall).
As I took in the rebuilding effort at Ion Theatre Company’s new venue, I came away with the feeling that Claudio Raygoza, the group’s executive artistic director, was trying not to betray: No way, we agreed wordlessly, would the place be ready for its scheduled March 13 opening. The old Compass Theatre looked like a casualty of the Haiti earthquake, the scent of calcified pee wafting between mountains of mildewed junk and tales of a crumbling infrastructure. So much for the show must go on.
But as that great theater man Benjamin Franklin said, “He who has patience can have what he will”—and as if on cue, Ion postponed its opening a week, to its best advantage. BLK BOX @ 6th & Penn is now a reality for Hillcrest and the larger community, not so much refurbished as rethought. Clear views and 49 colossally comfortable seats replace iffy sightlines and stupid, overstuffed chairs, all the better for Ion’s very good current An American Duet. The two short plays, “Elliot, a Soldier’s Fugue” and “Back of the Throat,” are vastly different in their approaches to overt and covert warfare, but both feature lots of the dark, beyond-the-headlines deliberateness for which Ion’s become known.
Elliot Ortiz (Stephen Lone), central figure in Quiara Alegria Hudes’ “Elliot” and the baby in three generations of native Puerto Ricans who served the U.S. in battle, won the Purple Heart for his heroism in Iraq. His acclaim doesn’t come without its harrowing memories, which mirror those of his Vietnam-vet father (John Padilla) and his grandpa (Goyo Flores), who fought in Korea. The stories intertwine through time, with Elliot’s mom Ginny (an excellent Miriam White) weaving her own tale of devotion among them. This isn’t a play about characters so much as about memories, which director Sylvia Enrique stages with spot-on simplicity. And Shulamit Nelson’s costume design for grandpa at the play’s beginning is the best in the history of the American theater.
Yussef el Guindi’s “Back of the Throat” is overwritten, but there’s some nice subtext about the hapless Khaled (Brian Abraham), a freelance writer whose ethnicity and research materials have caught the attention of two intrusive g-men. The fatherly Bartlett (Walter Ritter) and his goon Carl (Tom Hall) have shaky evidence linking Khaled to terrorist Asfoor (Rhys Greene), and off-the-cuff testimony from an ex-girlfriend (DeNae Steele) won’t help his cause. Director Sara Beth Morgan can’t get around the wordiness, but she’s coaxed a superior performance from Ritter, and Abraham’s tapped Khaled’s pleaser mentality.
“Back of the Throat” may or may not depict a wave of our future, but it’s certainly a fitting complement to “Elliot” and its sobering illustrations of wars past. So too is BLK BOX an ideal venue for Ion, which, after six seasons of sweat equity, has finally found a place to land.
This review is based on the opening performances of March 20. “Elliot, a Soldier’s Fugue” and “Back of the Throat” run in repertory through April 10 at BLK BOX @ 6th & Penn, 3704 Sixth Ave. in Hillcrest. $20-$24. www.iontheatre.com. Write to marty@sdcitybeat.com and editor@sdcitybeat.com.
