The Theatre Group at Santa Barbara City College has long been in the top tier of local stage companies, so its return from the virtual wilderness to the warm, resonant confines of the Garvin Theatre is an artistic event of some magnitude.
To accomplish their emergence from the shadows of the pandemic, group members have chosen for their vehicle David Lindsay-Abaire’s 2015 comedy “Ripcord,” directed by the inimitable Katie Laris, with a cast that includes Justin Davanzo, Ann Dusenberry, Shannon Saleh, Nicholas Sheley, Justin Stark and Leslie Ann Story.
The synopsis of “Ripcord,” on the Goodreads website, reads as follows: “Set in the Bristol Place Assisted Living Facility, this glorious and biting new comedy from David Lindsay-Abaire centers around Abby, who takes pride in her residence in one of the most coveted rooms in the rest home. Things turn sour quickly when she must take in Marilyn, a new roommate to share her precious space. In a satirical conflict of territory and control, Lindsay-Abaire spins a benign, typically mundane setting into an absurdist, colorful battleground. This high-stakes comedy examines our expectations of what it means to grow old in twenty-first century America, and what happens when a sense of possession collides with a mania of obsession.”
Or, as the Theatre Group itself puts it: “A sunny room with a lovely view is prime real estate in the Bristol Place Senior Living Facility, so when the cantankerous Abby is forced to share her quarters with new arrival Marilyn, she has no choice but to get rid of the infuriatingly cheerful woman by any means necessary. A seemingly harmless bet between the women quickly escalates into a dangerous game of one-upmanship that reveals not just the tenacity of these worthy opponents, but also deeper truths about their community, their families and themselves.”
“Ripcord” plays through Oct. 30 in the Garvin Theatre on SBCC’s West Campus (900 Cliff Drive) at 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, and at 2 p.m. on Sundays. The show previews at 7:30 p.m. this Wednesday and Thursday. The 2 p.m. Sunday performance will be live-captioned for the hearing-impaired.
Tickets range from $18 to $26 with discounts for seniors and students and can be purchased by calling the box office at 805.965.5935 or online by clicking here.
COVID-19 protocol requires wearing masks inside the theater and building, and presentation of proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test taken within 72 hours of the performance.
Click here for more information.
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“Growing old is not for sissies.” — Bette Davis
As a charter member of the post-World War II “baby boom” (1946-57), and being of an ironic turn of mind, I have watched my cohort with a sympathetic smile as we moved through the late 20th century and into the 21st, proclaiming our discovery of each transitional stage of life — puberty, first love, adolescence, school, graduation and the breakup of early friendships, gainful employment, marriage, children, retirement — as if we were the first to ever have such experiences.
Now, the purpose of literature, according to my favorite philosopher, Richard Rorty, is to answer the question: “What sorts of people are there in the world, and how do they fare?” But the baby boom, it seems to me, never really produced much in the way of literature.
The two great American novels of the 1960s — Richard Fariña’s “Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me” (1966) and Robert Stone’s “Hall of Mirrors” (1967) — were written by men born in 1937, i.e., pre-baby boom. The very interesting speculative novel “Dance the Eagle to Sleep” (1970), about a rock band that leads an insurrection against the U.S. government, was written by Marge Piercy, who was born in 1936; it is not a great novel, but it gets closer to capturing the 1960s zeitgeist than any other novel I have read of the time. (Richard Jessup’s “A Quiet Voyage Home” from 1970), about a youth-led mutiny aboard a Transatlantic liner, is a more politically savvy treatment of the same subject; Jessup was born in 1925.)
Thus, the most insightful chronicles of the boomers were written by our older siblings, not by us. The most influential American novelists of the 1960s were Joseph Heller (“Catch-22,” “Something Happened”), who was born in 1923, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (“Cat’s Cradle,” “Mother Night,” “Slaughterhouse Five”), born in 1922, and Katherine Anne Porter (“Ship of Fools”).When the boom began to produce novelists, they tended to avoid any whiff of autobiography, of bildungsroman, in favor of whimsy, fantasy or OCD extravaganzas.
On stage, the situation is even more starkly retro. Arthur Miller, born in 1915, and Tennessee Williams, born in 1911, continued to dominate the American theater in the 1960s, and neither of them spent much time on the counterculture. The greatest American play of the decade — admittedly an entirely subjective judgment — was “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf?” by Edward Albee (born 1928). The only production of the era that dealt directly with the drugs-rock-antiwar aspect of the 1960s, “Hair (1967),” was written by three men born, respectively, in 1935, 1932 and 1928. Plays that created a stir at the time, such as Arthur Kopit’s “Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad” (1963), are mostly forgotten today; Kopit was born in 1937.
Wait! — you will exclaim — What about the music? I was getting to that. The popular music that is the glory of the 1960s, our music, was, like our novels, the work of the boomers’ older siblings. Bob Dylan and John Lennon were born in 1940; Jerry Garcia and Marty Balin in 1942; Mick Jagger and Keith Richard in 1943. It wasn’t until the advent of Tom Petty (born 1950) that the boomers produced a world-class artist from their own ranks.
So now, the boomers have reached retirement age and beyond. Many of us find ourselves residents of places like the Bristol Place Assisted Living Facility. As before, our stories are told by someone else, this time by our children (Lindsay-Abaire, born in 1969, is clearly the son of boomers).
“One of the reasons the human race has such a low opinion of itself is that it gets most of its wisdom from writers.” — Wilfrid Sheed
— Gerald Carpenter covers the arts as a Noozhawk contributing writer. He can be reached at gerald.carpenter@gmail.com. The opinions expressed are his own.