January 30, 2004

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High drama in South Africa

by Ben Marks

The dark side of duty is one of several provocative threads running through Jon Robin Baitz's "A Fair Country," now playing at the Pear Avenue Theatre.

The impressively dysfunctional family Baitz has conjured to populate his clever, well-written and well-acted tragedy is presided over by Harry Burgess (Tom Ammon). Burgess is a naively idealistic cultural-affairs diplomat stationed in late-1970s Durban, South Africa, which is depicted as some sort of State Department equivalent to purgatory, if not outright hell. Harry is devoted to his family, but his sense of duty to his country makes him a largely inabsentia patriarch.

Standing unsteadily by Harry's side is Patrice (Diane Tasca), a would-have-been, could-have-been former museum curator who has devoted much of her adult life to supporting her husband's plateauing career and raising their two sons. Trouble is, much of the time Patrice is consumed by bouts of depression and abusive behavior that today would likely be diagnosed as some form of bipolar disorder. In her own way she's just as AWOL as her husband; more a patient than a parent.

When we meet Patrice as the play opens in 1987 she displays none of these traits. In fact, she's remarkably composed considering she's just tracked her youngest son, Gil (Kirk Pierron), to the jungles of Mexico, which the sad, gay man apparently prefers to any place that's even a centimeter closer to either of his parents.

Patrice is on her best behavior for her son as she tries to bridge the chasm that clearly exists between them. For his part Gil makes little effort to disguise his contempt for his mother, whom he bitterly addresses by her first name rather than "Mom." There's obviously a whole lot of history between these two individuals, which, obligingly, Baitz delivers in the very next scene -- a flashback to South Africa, 10 years earlier.

Though the heart of the play is set in apartheid South Africa, "A Fair Country" is not primarily an explication of that country's woeful history of racially motivated brutality. Nor is it an arch critique of the injustice of modern-day class systems, although both these topics provide plenty of red meat for Baitz's characters to chew on.

As if to emphasize this point, director William Kenney has given his actors a handsome but decidedly non-South African Mondrian-esque set (designed by Michael Walsh), even though only two of the play's seven scenes take place in the Netherlands where the Dutch artist was born.

This carefully calibrated lack of preoccupation with South Africa is one of the play's many strengths. Instead of moralizing, the play uses the circumstances of its unsettling South African setting to explore that country's impact on the lives of four people, and vice versa. As it turns out, the internal combustions of the Burgess family prove a formidable match to the external injustices of '70s South Africa.

Gil, if you hadn't already guessed, spent much of his pre-Mexico life doting on his mother -- his innocent sense of service was, of course, betrayed; how else to explain his bitterness when we meet him in the first scene?

Like his father, Gil expends a great deal of emotional capital covering for his mother as she struggles with her demons. Gil's brother, Alex (Eric Rice), suffers his fool of a mother less gladly. Like his father, though, his world view is just as foolish -- as it turns out, his perspective is fatally flawed, due in no small part to its privileged Columbia journalism school vantage point.

All four main actors are a pleasure to watch. Tasca is especially good when her indignant Patrice explains to a self-righteous Alex just exactly why she needs servants to entertain all the visiting artists and dignitaries her diplomat husband drags around Africa and, ultimately, through the Burgess living room (Patrice's wonderfully jaundiced take on artists is that they are really just glorified complainers, as opposed to enlightened storytellers).

As Harry, Ammon's beaten, dead-end-career body language is perfectly suited to the out-of-date corduroy jacket that hangs on his slumped frame in the play's third and fourth scenes (his carriage and wardrobe stand taller and are less rumpled in the play's more prosperous-feeling fifth and sixth scenes).

Gil is probably the most demanding part, since the character changes so much over the 10 years chronicled in the play, but Pierron is up to the task, handling both the older-and-wiser moments and the panting puppy scenes with equal aplomb. Alec's smoldering indignation, on the other hand, got on my nerves, which is probably a testament to Rice's ability to play that troubled character so convincingly.

Even the cast's supporting players exhibit range. Dan Roach's turn as Harry's boss, flaunting his new authority during a brief encounter with Harry in a backwater African airport, will remind you of anyone you've known who's forgotten his roots on the way up the corporate ladder. Roach is even better later in the play as the Burgess's tight-assed Dutch neighbor.

Elsewhere, the dulcet voice and proud demeanor of gardener-turned-housekeeper Hilton (Carter Stewart) kept the Southern African scenes nicely grounded, while Carly (Elizabeth Coy) kept boyfriend Alec grounded as he struggled to make sense of the inexplicable behavior of his father (which seems to surprise even poor Harry himself).

If I had a major complaint with the play, it would concern the playwright's habit of removing characters from the action once their service to the plot has been fulfilled. Similarly, I thought the decision to give Patrice a poorly-defined mental illness was a cheap shot. Why should her behavior be easier to excuse than her husband's? The play would have been even more layered, I think, if she had been portrayed as an unapologetic bitch.

I guess I wish the author had shown as much devotion to his characters as they show for each other, however misguided their judgment and displays might often be. Somehow it doesn't quite seem fair, but in Burgess country, not much is.

What: "A Fair Country," presented by the Pear Avenue Theatre

Where: Pear Avenue Theatre, 1220 Pear Ave. in Mountain View

When: Through Feb. 8. Show times are 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. on Sundays

Cost: Tickets are $15 for Thursday and Sunday performances; $10 for students and seniors. Admission is $20 for Friday and Saturday performances; $15 for students and seniors.

Info: Please call (650) 254-1148 or visit www.thepear.org

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