“A Picasso” at the San Jose Rep

Back in February 2009 I got to watch Jeffrey Hatcher’s play “A Picasso” directed by Jonathan Moscone in the San Jose Repertory Theatre. <– Digital window verification 001 –>

While I have lived here in San Jose, CA, for quite a while, I must admit that I have not been to the San Jose Rep before. It is a beautiful theater in the center of San Jose and the evening turned out to be very moving and thought-provoking.

Hatcher’s play is set in Paris in October 1941 during the Nazi occupation in World War II. Two character plays are always a bit challenging, but this one turned out to be great. James Carpenter plays Pablo Picasso, already an acclaimed painter at the time. When the curtain opens, the audience gets a direct view into a storage room in which lots of paintings apparently are stored away in shelves. Picasso seems to be confused and agitated obviously unsure about the situation he is in. His character is set against Miss Fisher, down to the German accent beautifully played by Carrie Paff.

Not giving away any of the plot, I really enjoyed the Hegel-like dialectic structure of the play as I had learned it back in school. There are three rounds off thesis, and anti-thesis and synthesis, always leaving the audience and surprise about the sudden turn. In the end, after all three turns, Miss Fisher’s character has evolved from the mean German Nazi officer into a true human being, with which everybody can identify. In turn, Picassos arrogance, which he exhibited at the beginning, has been replaced with the realization that he also is just a human being with emotions, faults and issues like everybody else.

I found the dynamic between the two characters quite captivating and was very impressed by both Carpenter’s and Paff’s performances. They play the transitions inherent to both characters in a very seamless way, making one almost forget that the two humans exiting the stage had been quite different, less likable characters, at the beginning of the play.

Plays of this quality make me really look forward to future plays in the San Jose Rep – like the upcoming stage world premiere of the Kite Runner based on the novel of Khaled Hosseini.