Russian Performer Oleg Liptsin Plays Beckett At Shelton Eastenders Stage PINTERESQUE at the Eureka

Russian actor and director Oleg Liptsin performs the part of Winnie, in Samuel Beckett's HAPPY DAYS, becoming a Russian modern form of Kabuki theater's onnagata (male playing a female role), accompanied by Jayne Entwhistle as Winnie's mostly silent husband, Willie.

In Beckett's last full-length play (here in a shortened adaptation by Liptsin), Winnie soliloquizes about her Happy Days, as she gradually is engulfed by a mound of earth. With only her handbag and its contents for props (and Willie's newspaper, umbrella and dirty postcards), this wry, knowing play is a perfect expression of the spare poetic elegance that's been called Beckett's "minimalism."

It's also an opportunity to see an exponent of Russian theater technique perform a modern classic. We hear a lot about Meyerhold, Bio-Mechanics, even Eccentrism, and the great innovations of the first half of the 20th century, but rarely is there a chance to experience it from an heir to this research in performance and what has come since.

Liptsin directed HAPPY DAYS at the Beckett Centennial Festival in Krakow earlier this year.

Liptsin has also directed LIVING CORPSE, from Tolstoy, opening at the Shelton Theatre at the end of the first week in October.

HAPPY DAYS running Thurs. Sept 21 and 28 only at Shelton, 533 Sutter (bet. Powell & Mason in San Francisco), (415) 433-7875
--& in a one night-only benefit performance, Sat. Sept. 30, at the Berkeley City Club on Durant (bet. Shattuck & Telegraph). Call Anne Novak, (415) 531-8454

Eastenders Repertory Co. (their name refers to Oakland; only slyly, if at all, to London's Cockney quarter) is a genuine rep theater. In recent years their "A Hundred Years Of ..." one-act festivals, under various subject rubrics (politics, sex &c), have been a mainstay of the Bay Area theater scene.

Now, taking a cue from a new word in the OED (online), they're essaying PINTERESQUE: Harold Pinter's "The Lover," the tense dialogue of a husband & wife engaged in erotic games, and the premiere of several new works inspired by Pinter, add a new dimension to The Eastenders' ongoing project.

"The Lover" features longtime collaborators Craig Dickerson and Michaela Greeley together again as the strange, happy pair.

Running through Oct. 8, Wed. through Sat. at 8, Sun. at 3, at 215 Jackson (in the Golden Gateway), San Francisco. Tix: $15
Wed, Thurs, Sun; $18 Fri-Sat. Discounts available. info & tix:
(510) 568-4118--or see www.eastenders.org