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REVIEW ACT's play readings capture historic figures on cusp of change Comment By Bill Varble for the Mail Tribune MailTribune.com By Bill Varble for the Mail Tribune Posted Jul. 17, 2015 at 6:13 PM By Bill Varble for the Mail Tribune Posted Jul. 17, 2015 at 6:13 PM » Social News An overflow crowd turned out to see Ashland Contemporary Theatre present readings of short plays Friday afternoon at Grizzly Peak Winery. Dubbed “Moonlighting 2015,” the program featured works by local playwrights. ACT began cultivating new plays by area authors several years ago with the series that evolved into “Moonlighting.” This time out, ACT invited writers to create monologues by historic figures on the cusp of change. “The Great Ape” is Warren Carlson’s meditation on the mind of John Wilkes Booth on the eve of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the titular “great ape.” Booth (Will Churchill) muses on the blessings he believes come to slaves through the kindness of their owners, hopes his act of murder will inspire an uprising (never mind that the Confederacy was already a lost cause) and asserts that his act is “a matter of honor.” While he’s a bit long in the tooth to play Booth, Churchill convincingly immerses himself in the character, musing on the bullet that will “carve a furrow” through the brain of the Great Emancipator. In Jeannine Grizzard’s ironic “An Anti-Suffrage Appeal,” Grizzard plays the role of Lady Randolf, Winston Churchill’s mother, who finds it only “moral” to deny women the right to vote based on “the natural differences of the sexes.” She asserts that women aren’t “inclined to aggression” and suggests there are better fields of endeavor for women than politics. Like Will Churchill, Grizzard fully occupies a character of whom it’s safe to say that her every idea is anathema to everybody in the room. The third spectacularly wrong-headed historic figure we meet is Grigory Rasputin, “the mad monk” and confidante of the Tsarina in Russia in December 1916 in John Richardson’s “The Chess Lesson.” Rasputin (Richard Heller) regales officer cadets with a fittingly mad analogy between the Russian royal family (the king and queen), religious leaders (himself as the bishop) and military authorities (the knight) on one side and rural peasants (pawns) on the other. Heller got a big laugh by looking at the queen and remarking that she was made in Germany. His rant culminated in the odd assertion that social change must come from the top. The other short plays in the program focused on everyday people. In the funniest piece of the day, Phil Loveless’s “No Women Allowed,” Churchill and David Dials are a couple aging guys kicking around the idea of the treatments for Bruce’s (Churchill) ailing prostate. There’s laser therapy (“Like ‘Star Wars’?”) There’s surgery. (“What’s the downside?” “Death.”). There’s acupuncture (“Where do they put the needles?”) In John Yunker’s wry “The Sales Rank Also Rises,” Cathy (Colleen Pyke), a published writer, buys boxes of her husband Ed’s (Joe Charter) self-published book on Amazon to help his ranking — and his ego, with surprising results. In Ruth Wire’s “The Ferry of Relativity,” a Jewish refugee couple (Heller and Pyke) and their son (Ian Jackson) have an unexpected encounter with Einstein (Sam Younghans) in the early 1950s, when Ivy League schools had a quota on admission of Jews. In this skewed look at relativity, the takeaway is perhaps Einstein’s remark that, “Education is what remains after you’ve forgotten what you learned in school.” In Julia Sommer’s “Brothers,” three siblings reflect — and disagree — on the nature of their childhood and their parents’ relationship in front of their mother’s open casket in the viewing at a funeral home. Memory is notoriously tricky, but the boys have the advantage of coming across their mother’s last journal, which answers some pretty big questions. Performances continue at 8 p.m. today, July 18, and 2 and 8 p.m. Sunday, July 19, at the Ashland Community Center, 59 Winburn Way. Tickets cost $12 and can be purchased at the door or online at ashlandcontemporarytheatre.org . Reach freelance writer Bill Varble at [email protected] . By Bill Varble for the Mail Tribune MailTribune.com By Bill Varble for the Mail Tribune Posted Jul. 17, 2015 at 6:13 PM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Southern Oregon Directory Featured Businesses Loading... 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