This time last year, Ross Valley Players brought tears of joy to our collective eyes with a brilliant production of Karen Zacarias’ “Native Gardens.”
Directed by Mary Ann Rodgers, the slyly incisive comedy won a San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle award for the 2023 season. Rodgers and Ross Valley Players are back at it with another Zacarias script, “The Book Club Play,” running at the Barn Theatre through June 9.
In this one, we meet a group of literary fans who gather every two weeks to discuss what they’ve just read — heavyweight classics like Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick,” or scathing social commentary such as Edith Wharton’s “The Age of Innocence.” The group meets in the home of Ana (“ah-nah”) Smith and her husband Rob (Mark Vashro), a former college football star who prefers watching the movie, whenever possible, to actually reading the agreed-upon book.
Ana (Elena Wright) is the group’s leader, a controlling and humorless columnist and editor who gets extremely agitated when things don’t go her way, which is pretty much the entirety of the show. Other book club members include a fussy curator of antiquities named Will (Matthew Travisano), an insecure young woman named Jennifer (Jannely Calmell) and a new recruit named Lily (Chiyako Delores), an editorial assistant and sometimes columnist who prefers reading books on her phone to dealing with actual paper.
There’s much friendly disagreement in the group about what to read, many clever inside jokes about books and authors, and much revelation about the members’ inner lives when they argue about whether or not to tackle Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” — a decision that proves to be life-changing for at least one of them. All the action transpires in the Smith family’s politely decorated middle-class home (set design by Ron Krempetz, construction by Michael Walraven).
In the second act, Jennifer introduces an interloper named Alex (Gabriel A. Ross), an erudite and outspoken professor of literature whose admission to the group spins it in totally unpredictable directions. Add to this the fact that their meetings are being recorded remotely on video by a Danish documentarian fascinated by the American phenomenon of book clubs. There’s a whole lot in their increasingly contentious gatherings that they’d rather not share with the world. They sometimes shout to the unseen camera, “Lars, please delete that.”
As in “Native Gardens,” Zacarias demonstrates an unerring instinct for skewering liberal guilt and intellectual pretensions, with comedy that builds from sly innuendos to full-on madcap door-slamming farce, except that here, the doors are all psychological. She also amps up the hilarity with a series of cutaways in which Marsha van Broek appears as various commentators delivering tangential observations about preceding scenes. She’s a deadly serious laugh riot as everything from a snooty academic to a skydiving former librarian.
Director Rodgers gets the utmost from this talented cast, whose delivery can pivot instantly from pathetically self-indulgent to cringingly vicious. In music, cooking, sex and comedy, timing is everything — and this is where the Ross Valley Players’ production shines. It’s a total scream on every level.
It’s one of the wittiest, most literate comedies to come along in years. Unlike many of its contemporaries, it doesn’t take a detour toward the dour and depressing at the end. Instead, it sails ever onwards toward the heavens of hilarity.
As mentioned about “Native Gardens,” few events in theater are more satisfying than a brilliant script brilliantly performed. All that and much more, “The Book Club Play” is a worthy candidate for repeat viewings — a shimmering work of individual and collective genius, and absolutely a must-see.
Barry Willis is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association and president of the SF Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. Contact him at barry.m.willis@gmail.com
If you go
What: “The Book Club Play”
Where: The Barn Theatre, Marin Art and Garden Center, 30 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Ross
When: Through June 9; 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays
Admission: $20 to $35
Information: 415-456-9555; RossValleyPlayers.com
Rating (out of five stars): ★★★★★
