A Very Brechty X-mas: Theater for a turbulent political season

"A Very Brechty X-mas" is an evening of two un-seasonal plays. The first is an anti-war comedy, "Candaules, Commissioner" by Daniel Gerould. Written when the war was in Vietnam, this bawdy tale of an occupation bureaucrat's downfall is disturbingly up-to-date. The second half of the double-feature is "The Exception and the Rule" by Bertolt Brecht, a musical lesson about economic exploitation and which side the law will take.

8:00 p.m. on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday
December 21, 22, and 23
Custom Made Theatre Company
965 Mission Street, San Francisco (Near the Powell Street BART Station)
Tickets: $25 General. $15 for Students and Seniors
800-838-3006 or brownpapertickets.com


Review from the San Francisco Bay Guardian
"Custom Made Theatre’s holiday twofer dreams feverishly of a white, postcolonial Christmas. Daniel Gerould’s 1965 play, Candaules, Commissioner, updates for the Vietnam War era the story of the prideful downfall of a royal dynasty related by Herodotus in The Histories. This rendition turns King Candaules into a glad-handing American diplomat (played with relish by Jay Martin) who forces his beloved driver, Gyges (a fiercely dissembling Perry Aliado), into furtively admiring the exceptional physique of his wife, Nyssia (a coolly commanding Katja Rivera), as she undresses for bed. A broad political cartoon turning the Greek cautionary tale into an allegory of revolution in the face of racist imperial hubris and colonial possession, Gerould’s angry comment on the US role in the third world reeks, needless to say, with contemporary significance. Then Lewis Campbell unrolls another master-servant tale, directing his own fine translation of Bertolt Brecht’s darkly comic, brazenly didactic musical fable The Exception and the Rule, about the case (moral, political, and judicial) of a Western entrepreneur (a delightfully entitled Carson Creecy IV) who slays his honest porter (Benjamin Pither) while racing to lay an oil claim in a distant Eastern desert. The pace is sluggish at times, but the performances remain decent to strong throughout this modestly wrapped Christmas political pageant." (Avila) http://www.sfbg.com/printable_entry.php?entry_id=2360