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‘First Love’: A vaudeville of songs, dances

Robert Hall Special to the Daily Planet
Thursday June 20, 2002

Ferociously funny, blatantly bawdy, sharply poignant – that’s “First Love,” playwright Charles Mee’s latest excursion into the troubled territory where human longing breeds thorny tangles of love and hate. East Bay audiences got a double dose of Mee recently. Berkeley Repertory set “Big Love” on a giant pink floor mat, and University of California Dramatic Arts gave us a biting “Orestes.” Those plays were modern versions of Greek myths, set in times of war and pillage, but “First Love,” now at the Magic Theater, examines the oldest war of all, the one between men and women.  

It’s not a pretty sight.  

The play is a two-character work. Scrappy senior citizens, Edith (Joan Mankin) and Harold (Robert Parnell), meet as she nudges him out of sleep on a park bench. “You want peace, go somewhere else,” she snaps when he objects. Her words prove prophetic. Former radicals, the pair connect through the heroes they name: Abby Hoffman, Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey. Harold smiles blissfully as he recalls the good old days, and says, “We lost a lot when we lost Communism.” Though they try to keep the spark between them lighted, but blasts of misunderstanding during flirtations and attempts at closeness threaten to extinguish it. 

If this sounds like a downer, however, it’s not. “First Love” is wildly funny, a vaudeville of songs and dances, fantasies and outrageous sex scenes. Mee’s view of our ability to love is skeptical. He expresses that distrust in his illumination of stereotypical behavior such as a man’s penchant for fixing things or a woman’s insistence on marriage with such fierce energy that we can’t help laughing. “This is why women want to shoot men on sight,” Edith cries at one manic moment. Harold glares back. “This is why a man hopes to die of a heart attack,” he growls, and their over-the-top tantrums bring down the house.  

Yet “First Love” isn’t all messy misunderstanding. It has touching moments: reveries and reflections have a special depth because, though this pair have stumbled on true love late in life, they still don’t have the wisdom to make it work. “All life is about is missing my kids,’” Harold reflects sadly, and speaking of love, Edith murmurs, “Without it the world just comes apart.  

“First Love” is funny, but it’s heartbreaking, too.  

Happily Magic Theater’s production sizzles. Director Erin Mee, the playwright’s daughter, polishes the dark and light shadings of her dad’s play to a wicked gloss, and Kate Boyd’s witty, versatile set helps, with airy blue skies, slashes of scarlet, and a giant emblematic rosebud. Tom Ontiveros’s lighting shines nicely on moments of comedy and pathos, while Bo Bell provides subtle sound design. Kira Kristensen’s casual costumes fit characters and meaning to a “t”.  

As for the actors, Lindsay Drummer is charming as the young siren Melodee, who pops up from the floor or out of a wall to make trouble. Stormy but touching Joan Mankin and the shambling, shaggy Robert Parnell are simply terrific. Age-right for their roles, somewhere between 50 and 70, they perform with the energy of kids, seducing with lewd abandon and showing anger with pulsing verve. Mankin’s marathon dish-smashing scene will leave you happily breathless, and her buttock-rubbing scene with Parnell is like nothing you’ve ever seen.  

“Remember Beckett,” Edith says late in the action, appropriate because Mee is clearly inspired by Samuel Beckett. Like “Waiting for Godot ,” his play challenges a pair of symbolic souls with sticking to a rocky road. Their reward is not an unknown savior who will tell them their love has been worthwhile but having a lasting love. Oh, what a long way they traveled to earn it.