Arts Listings

The stage for 43 Plays for 43 Presidents, Rough & Tumble’s show at LaVal’s Subterranean, is dressed a little like a quiz show, with a “Quotation” sign that lights up when somebody says something that a real player in history actually, originally said—and in fact the audience gets a little of the feel of being packed into an old-fashioned TV studio for a live broadcast show, in the days when there wasn’t much difference between show genres—games and quizzes being mixed together with comic and variety acts. 

And in practice, that’s pretty much what Rough & Tumble’s up to in this brisk, humorous entertainment. Cliff Mayotte, cofounder and artistic director, who presided over the production, notes that the 43 “short and distinct” plays, one for each chief exec, rely on “a relatively short attention span for narrative,” and a vaudevillized performing style, making the rather “bitty” sketches more than blackouts; the whole thing, with all its pitch and yaw, flows together—it runs, it plays. 

The actors, numbered One through Five, being Joshua Pollock, Norman Gee, Stewart Evan Smith, Louise Chegwidden and Arwen Anderson, are up to this ludic spirit and troupe through the roll call of who held the highest office. 

They juggle roles, play in turn narrator and chorus (besides candidates and presidents) and question each other—and, at times, the audience. The effect shifts around as quickly as the plays for each administration turn over, from farce (even burlesque) to occasional bittersweet irony. It’s a skeptical overview of American political life, but upbeat and savvy, though more a relating and acting-out of entertaining trivia than any particular critical scan. 

In the spirit of shows like that old daytime chestnut, Queen for a Day, the action really begins with a struggle over costumery—not a crown, but a blazer, with Old Glory on the back and bunting running down its lapels, as emblems of office. All the running and wrestling for it is preceded by the mythic original assumption of the title “In The Beginning,” by the only reluctant prez, The Father of His Country himself, to the tune of fife and drum, and intoning of an appropriately altered (or sampled?) reading of the first chapters of Genesis, to indicate where The Republic believes it truly issued from. 

There are British and French serpents in the Garden of the Enlightenment, however, and the various Founding Fathers who try on the presidential blazer in succession would concur with the view of God Almighty, “who peered back through history with 20th Century cynicism—weltschmerz that finds its simplest expression in the words of John Adams (as the “Quotation” sign lights up), “Let me have my farm, my family and goose quills.” 

“The history of our Revolution will be one continous lie from one end to another.” As the chorus swills Sam Adams and chortles, Ben Franklin roasts Jefferson in a men’s club get-together of the Founders, shamelessly quoting and promoting himself, books, inventions and all, and coming off like an Early American Henny Youngman (“How about that Napoleon? He’s got some kind of complex!”). A quick turnover has cue cards (to a Star-Spangled choir) detailing what happened to Madison when he chose the French serpent over the British: “And the English burned his house.” (Not a word about American plans to forcibly annex Canada.) 

The North and The South, wearing baseball caps, quarrel over slavery ... bilious and badmouthed Andrew Jackson points out how he’s not like his hoity-toity predecessors, but is “more like you!” (the audience)—and as an afterthought on Indians: “Kick ‘em out!”). Old Hickory also steers sycophantic O.K. (Old Kinderhook) Van Buren into office, and a national banking system., followed by “Tippicanoe and Tyler Too!” cheerleaders with pom-poms, who usher in the legend of the old Indian Fighter, red campaign balloons becoming Native American heads popping as he scalps them, while a narrator runs through his career as defender of Manifest Destiny, up to the rainy-day delivery of the longest inaugural address in history, followed by his death from pneumonia a month later, unsaved by the Indian snake remedies he requested—and his veep, Tyler—never elected to office—making jokes as the burst balloons are swept out. 

And so it goes, through the line of august office-holders, up to Watergate, Iran-Contra and the Fox that was Clinton versus the Hedgehog that’s George W. U.S. Grant, in reality a fascinating sensibility (and part-saviour of Noh theater), comes in for the usual razzing, just as Jimmy Carter is uncritically, if wryly, valorized, as usual. The sex life of a few White House residents is played up, FDR and Bill Clinton in particular, but not the greatest roué of them all, JFK. There’s audience participation, including a volunteer inaugurated, donning blazer and trivia-quizzed—though not reelected. 

Rough & Tumble, an Oakland-based troupe of a baker’s dozen in years, like many small companies doesn’t regularly stage productions—though their actors and director are familiar enough to Berkeley theatergoers. They’re a downhome group in every sense, skilled at their craft and sharing it and the fun they obviously have doing it. 

The run at LaVal’s is a good excuse to see their stuff. It’s upbeat and fast-paced, just comic and thoughtful enough. The name of the troupe that originally cowrote it, the Neo-Futurists of Chicago, makes it sound like avant-garde performance—but it’s less Neo-Futurist than it is Chicago in style—a Second City, Compass Players-style breezy improv-generated string of comic sketches, meant for a diverting evening. 

43 PLAYS FOR 43 PRESIDENTS 

8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays through Jan. 27 at LaVal's Subterranean Theatre. $15-20. 1834 Euclid Ave. www.randt.org.