Madeleine George's Obie Award-winning comedy with a climate-change theme, serves up a great night of theater.
In “The Bacchae,” the ancient Greek tragedy by Euripides, the god Dionysus avenges an insult by driving the women of Thebes (including the king’s mother) into a frenzy in which they tear the king apart.
In “Hurricane Diane,” Madeleine George’s Obie Award-winning comedy now onstage at Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre Company, Dionysus comes to suburban New Jersey in the guise of a lesbian gardener, Diane, to seduce four women of a well-to-do cul-de-sac into moneyed Maenads and transform their manicured lawns into primeval forest permaculture to save the planet.
It’s just the sort of ingenious interweaving of comically fanciful premises and urgently weighty topics theatergoers have come to expect from George, whose delightful comedy “Precious Little” involves dying languages and an unexpected bond with a gorilla, and whose dizzying “The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence” is a time-twisting medley of artificial intelligence, Alexander Graham Bell and Sherlock Holmes. Both plays have been seen at Berkeley’s Shotgun Players in past years.
Diane is played at Aurora by Stacy Ross, a local theater deity in her own right. Ross exudes cool confidence and compelling charisma as Diane. The amused and unwavering gaze she fixes on whoever’s talking to her might fluster almost anybody, and she laces even the most on-topic discussions of sustainable gardening with innuendo.
She may have met her match with Carol, an uncompromising suburban conformist who wants what she wants, and what she wants is a wrought iron accent bench like she saw in HGTV Magazine. Played by Rebecca Schweitzer with syrupy civility barely patching over feverish agitation, Carol clings tenaciously to her vision of consumerist suburban normalcy.
Diane’s targets are Carol’s immediate neighbors, which also comprise her whole circle of friends. Leontyne Mbele-Mbong shines as magazine editor Renee, who’s seemingly smarter and more cultured than the others and insecure enough to have to point that out fairly frequently. Mbele-Mbong is fresh off of Aurora’s last production, “Cyrano,” and it’s a treat to see her, Ross and Schweitzer reunited onstage after Aurora’s “Bull in a China Shop” a few years back.
Luisa Sermol is fretful and forceful as their loud friend with the louder outfits, Pam, the only one sporting a distinct New Jersey accent, who’s given to rants about dangers or no-good husbands. (The women’s husbands and Pam’s children are occasionally referenced but never seen.) Gianna DiGregorio Rivera is hilariously dotty and fey as Beth, who’s been in a daze ever since her husband left her and has even let her lawn go to seed.
The four contrast wonderfully together, and it’s fascinating to see how each interacts with Diane, whether in garden consultation or seduction (insofar as there’s any difference between the two). And they become a haunting chorus as everything starts to go “full Greek,” as Diane puts it, with some wild dancing choreographed by Natalie Greene.
It’s a terribly funny play shown to its best advantage through the truly excellent performances in director Jennifer King’s production. King’s staging deftly utilizes the intimate Aurora space, keeping the production elements fairly simple for the most part.
Kate Boyd’s set gives the sense of a spacious kitchen with ostentatiously elegant French doors framed by empty space in the background. (Empty except for Kurt Landisman’s colorful lighting, that is.) Brooke Jennings’ costumes give a great sense of individual character, from Pam’s tight-fitting animal prints to Diane’s godly garb. Lana Palmer’s sound design packs a wallop when a storm comes a-calling.
Even with a lot of direct address exposition, Diane’s plan to revive her cult and save the world remains pretty vague, especially regarding why the coming hurricane seems to be a hard deadline. (And no, the storm isn’t some work of Zeus or Poseidon horning their way into the action.) What’s all too clear is that something needs to change, and quickly, and nobody shakes things up like Dionysus. Especially this Dionysus.
Contact Sam Hurwitt at shurwitt@gmail.com, and follow him at Twitter.com/shurwitt.
By Madeleine George, presented by Aurora Theatre Company
Through: July 16
Where: Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison St., Berkeley (also streaming July 11-16)
Running time: One hour and 40 minutes, no intermission
Tickets: $20-$75; 510-843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org
