Theatre: Anniversary Plays

Covenant by York Walker, Directed by Nicholas Japaul Bernard, Arts West Through 2 March.

Blues For an Alabama Sky by Peral Cleage, directed by Valerie Curtis-Newton, Seattle Rep through 23 February

The Lovely Bride and I have crested 42 years of marriage this past week (thank you, thank you), and to celebrate, we decided to hold a "staycation" where both of us took off work. As a result, we played games (I lost several games of Wingspan), ate a lot of good food (Chestnut Cafe, which is the LB's favorite's lunch spot, Lobster Shop in Tacoma, Mashiko Sushi in West Seattle, and Toulouse Petite near the Seattle Center). And, as fate would have it, we had two plays scheduled over three days - Covenant at the Arts West, and Blues for an Alabama Sky at the Seattle Rep.

Let me get to the heart of the matter - Covenant was the best play and the best performance I have seen in Seattle for years, Arts West has been putting together bang-up seasons for the past couple years, and this one fired on all cylinders. The writing was top-notch, the performances were amazing, the direction was fantastic, and set design was grand. The small nature of the theatre brought an intimacy that allowed the actors to reach out across the void of the forestage and grab the audience by the collective shoulders and give them a good shake. The play is mythic and suspenseful and fully engaged.

Covenant is about secrets. It is also about faith and superstition, but it is most of all about secrets. The setting is a small town in Georgia, 1936. Johnny (Donavan Mahannah) comes back to his home town. He left town a stammering boy in the wake of his older brother's death. He returns now without the stammer, a master musician with his guitar, and possessing a smooth self-assurance. Naturally there's suspicion he made a deal with the devil. He came back for Avery (Simone Alene), who was just a friend but now something much more. Avery's Mama (Felicia V. Loud) is a god-fearing woman who does not approve of Johnny and his juke joint antics. Little sister Violet (Deja Culver) and family friend Ruthie (Kaila Towers) round out the ensemble. They're all brilliant.

And I don't want to say more because I don't want to do spoilers here - it's that good. Each character gets their turn to tell stories and reveal secrets, as well as sparking off each other in meaningful relationships. And the writing is SO GOOD, of the level that I was left thinking "Man, I wish I had written that" and "Man, I wish I could write like that". There is a not an ounce of fat in this play - even the most cast-off line has meaning and subtext, and is delivered in such a natural and engaged fashion, that over the course of the play as you realize (often to your horror) what is really going on here. All questions are resolved, even the ones you didn't know you had.

And part of that is the direction (Nicholas Japaul Bernard) and the dramaturg (Marquisa 'QuiQui" Dominguez. The players maneuver perfectly a two-tiered stage, the back stage being Mama's dining room, dominated by a cross, which the forestage was open for a variety of purposes, including a general "theatre space" as the actors share secrets with the audience. The sound design was excellent, accenting the action on the stage. Even the stagehands, the black-dressed theatre ninjas moving props onto and off the stage, were used perfectly. 

I rarely say that something is a near-perfect play, but this is it. Get yourself out to West Seattle for this one. 

Sunday we decamped for the Seattle Center and Blues for an Alabama Sky. And I will be honest - it was good. And if I saw it on its own I would probably give it greater praise. But it suffers in comparison with Covenant.

We're still in the 1930s, but this time in Harlem. Angel (Ayanna Bria Bakeri) is a hot mess of cabaret singer who just lost her job, her living space, and her boyfriend. Guy (Jamar Jones) is her gay best friend from Savannah, who is a costumer and is sure that Josephine Baker will sweep him up and invite him to come work for her in Paris. As he is trying to navigate a drunken Angel home, they're aided by Leland (Ajaz Dontavius), newly arrived from Alabama in the big sinful city. Delia (Ester Okech Lewis) is the prim neighbor from across the hall who is working to bring a family planning center (read: birth control) to Harlem, aided by a boisterous local doctor (Yusef Seevers). The five of them struggle with life and survival in the wake of the fading Harlme Renaissance.

And it works, mostly. The first act feels like it drags a bit, Checkov's gun makes a requisite appearance, and you can see some of the twists and turns coming a ways off. Some personal revelations and traumas show up rather late in the day. And there is a huge amount of name dropping going on - Marcus Garvey, Josephine Baker, Adam Clayton Powell (Jr and Sr), Margaret Sanger, Langston Hughes, none of whom show up on stage. 

The music, however, is haunting and delightful, with Nathan Breedlove on the trumpet acting as the ghostly spirit of the city itself to show time passing. Which is a good thing, since the stagecraft involves a turntable set that shifts back and forth to show what apartment we are in. I would wonder if the play would work better in a smaller confines, or, on the other hand, if Covenant would fade if thrust onto a larger stage.

Yet, it all comes together. The actors are fine. It is the best of three revivals at the Rep this season (it was originally produced 30 years ago). Given a choice between this and the Super Bowl, I'd definitely choose Alabama Sky. But seriously, go hunt down Covenant and prepare to be impressed. 

More later,

Game: Murder, She Roleplayed

 Brindlewood Bay by Jason Cordova, The Gauntlet, 2022

Here's the High Concept - Murder She Wrote Meets a Cthulhu Cult. The players take the roles of elderly women living in a small New England town. They're members of a book club known as the Murder Mavens, and they solve mysteries. And in the process they discover a deeper conspiracy underlying it all.

It's a really good game concept, and I was pushing our regular group of veteran gamers to try it out, and despite some challenges, it worked out pretty well.

Let me hit the biggest challenge first - the rule set is a complete mess. It is well-produced, a digest sized hardback, but the contents could stand a complete revision. RPG rules are challenged by two conflicting purposes. One is to teach the game, and the other is be a reference when playing the game. This book does neither well. 

Part of it is that the game is Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA), which is a new style of play. Its got some really cool ideas, but Brindlewood assumes that you're already familiar with them. The vibe I got on the first reading was akin to reading the original Chainmail or original D&D rules. There a basic assumptions to the game that are assumed to be common knowledge, so a newcomer will just bounce off them.

Further, you absolutely need to have the characters sheets available to understand the game. There is a description of characters sheets in the book, but vital information that only exists on the sheets (which are not in the book). I was part of the Kickstarter, so I could dig up the files, but for everyone else, you have to go online (no, they don't tell you where to go, or even that you really need the characters sheets to understand the game). The further downside of this is that, once the site holding the sheets go down (because the Internet is both eternal and ephemeral), you're high and dry.

The organization of the book does not help. Definitions, when provided, are in a couple different locations. The explanation of what happens in the first play session shows up 140 pages after we're told about what is a typical play session consists of. There is no index. We had three hard copies of the book and an e-book at the table, and we were still flipping through pages, muttering "I'm sure it's here elsewhere".

Powered by the Apocalypse runs differently than your traditional RPG game (like D&D or CoC). Players are much more empowered to determine what happens, defining both the results (and penalties) of their actions. The basic mechanic is two six-sided dice. You role for success. On a 6 or less you fail (and you or the Keeper can describe what happens) on a 7-9 You succeed but at a cost (the Keeper decides with your input). On a 10 or better you succeed, but we advance the meta-plot a bit (the Meta-Plot involves a creepy cult of a supernatural being - we just started digging into that after the second scenarios, but have not gotten too far)..

The players have a lot of input, and as a result always have to be on their toes and ready to engage (as opposed to the more traditional, initiative driven systems where you wait your turn to do something). The Keeper also has be on their toes, in that one has to continually figure out what goes wrong on those all-too-common rolls. Sometimes this results in dead spots where players (and/or the Keeper) are trying to figure out what happens next.

Further, while this is a mystery game, you the Keeper don't know whodunnit. The players gather clues which tend to be rather open ended, and let the players fill in the blanes  (real conversation from the game - ME: You find a steamy letter. PLAYER: Who is it from? ME: Who do you want it to be from? PLAYER: I HATE this game!). After they have gathered sufficient clues, they piece them together and roll to see if they are right. As one player put it "OK. Who are we pinning this on?"

I know. This all sounds like this is a heavy lift. How did it work out in play?

Well, we had a marvelous time over about five game sessions. The character creation system required a lot of engagement - they effectively had to write the introduction to the TV show, where each character got their moment and a description of their "cozy place" home. As a result we created characters with much more depth than the your standard 1st-level dwarf warrior. Again a favorite interchange: ME: Tell me about your late husband. PLAYER: No one ever suspected a thing

The format is very much 80's television, right down to the jump-scare (getting locked in a freezer, or sliding off the deck of a ship) and going to commercial. There are a multitude of ways to damage or kill the characters, and a multitude of ways for the characters to unwind that and take another path. The setting is a small coastal town in New England, but many of us had worked in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, so the small-tourist town flavor came naturally to us. We ran through two adventures - one involving a wealthy family patriarch getting pushed off his yacht, the other being a Halloween party where the victim was drowned in a tub used for bobbing for apples. It was goofy in places and a lot of fun.

The flavor is great, and the players rose to the occasion. This is definitely a case of a good game, but a challenging explanation of it, and we had to mentally unwind a lot of traditional role-playing assumptions and mannerisms in order to get to the heart. And yeah, I'd like to see a few other examples to see where this game did and did not adhere to the original PbtA rules. But a good time was had by all.

More later,