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Theater: Seat of imagination
'Shaker Chair' latest from one of S.F.'s brightest new playwrights

by Lee Brady

Are Christmas and New Year's over? Have you had enough? Has Old Scrooge worn out his welcome, and have the annual children's treats like The Nutcracker become tiresome? How about those "only in San Francisco" specials, the ones to which you take visiting firemen: Beach Blanket Babylon, Kung Pao Kosher Comedy and Keeping the Yuletide Gay. Have they become a drag? Do you wish you could get back to "real" theater where the message isn't joy to the world? Try Adam Bock's The Shaker Chair, a 75-minute drama about saving the world, and about movers and Shakers who could be your neighbors in Marin.

Like Marion(Frances Lee McCain), actually a nice Midwestern woman, who has problems deciding whether it is better to be stagnant and alive or active and dead.

This is a good question for the New Year, and if we don't get a definitive answer, we do get lots of opinions from Marion's old friend Jean (Scarlett Hepworth) and her activist partners, Lou (Marissa Keltie) and Tom (Andrew Calabrese). Involved in shutting down a pig farm whose waste products are polluting underground water, these three are environmental activists who are totally involved. Marion is on the fence; she knows she should be involved but is more interested in keeping mud off her polished floor. And her sister, the well-named Dolly (Nancy Shelby), can't decide whether or not to leave her adulterous husband Frank (Will Marchetti); she goes back and forth between husband and sister, weeping all the way. The final character, a pig, is led on by Hepworth to make a point. This is not a cute piglet but a bristly and smelly hog, and if Jean doesn't get the point, the audience does.

The story begins with the chair of the title, a copy of a Shaker chair that Marion has just bought. She identifies strongly with the chair, seeing it as a piece of a simpler life made by simple workers. She feels that her clean, polished house is her artwork. Jean, her friend "from forever," has different ideas. "You are asleep!" she tells her. "The Shakers were people of strong beliefs who acted upon them. It's not about a chair!" Persuaded, Marion goes out with them to what she thinks will be a silent protest, but which turns into an act of violence. She scurries back to safety only to learn that Dolly has squealed to her husband about the activities going on, giving Frank a weapon to use against Marion. "Don't let Dolly stay here," he tells her threateningly. By the end of the evening, Marion sits alone center stage, conflicted, but speaking in a language we all understand: "Once you are awake," she says, "it is impossible to fall asleep."

Director Tracy Ward keeps the staging minimal on a set that is simple and pleasing with its beige walls and polished floor that contains only the Shaker chair and another, more comfortable one, where Dolly weeps and reads. "I should have made a decision when it was Angela," she says. Now another woman, Susanna Church, has e-mailed her that she and Frank are lovers.

Heather Basarab's lights and Sarah Huddleston's sound effectively bring the outside world in with flames, sirens and gunshots. Valera Coble's costumes go from all black for the activists who find "safety in darkness," to Marion's too-big cardigan sweater, and Dolly's hyper-feminine satin pajamas.

The Shaker Chair is a co-production of Shotgun Players and the Encore Theatre Company. Both small companies are dedicated to new works, often by Bay Area playwrights. Adam Bock, although Canadian, became a local when he moved here to jump-start his playwriting career, first with Swimming in the Shallows; and San Francisco is where he won the prestigious Glickman Award for his Five Flights. Later he wrote The Typographer's Dream, an offbeat look at career choices and where those choices land us. All of these were produced by Encore and the Shotgun Players, and all are frequently done by New York, as well as regional, theater companies.

There are no villains in The Shaker Chair, nor in any of Adam Bock's works. His characters may be misguided but they are trying to right wrongs, whether in themselves, or, in this case, the world.

NOW PLAYING

The Shaker Chair runs through Jan. 27 at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., Berkeley; 510/841-6500, www.shotgunplayers.org .