Last night we saw John Guare's A Few Stout Individuals at Signature Theatre Company. While not a perfect play (the ending seems to peter out), it's a very clever rumination on history, and has one of the best casts I've even seen in a play. I think he was trying to reach for more surrealism than he was able to pull off -- maybe he's afraid of confusing the kind of audience he has now. I didn't find it particularly unusual as a play, but the generally 60ish crowd around me all talked about how "weird" it was.

It's a huge cast (13 actors) and is very well directed. The standouts included Polly Holliday, Donald Moffat, and William Sadler as a perfect Samuel Clemens. I felt like Mark Twain had returned from the dead. The woman who played the great diva Adelina Patti (Cheryl Evans) was a real opera singer -- I saw her in Akhnaten a couple of years ago in Boston. James Yaegashi was quite dashing as The Emperor of Japan.

I had never seen Donald Moffat on stage -- he has a great presence as a physical actor and made a believable U.S. Grant at the end of his life.

The title comes from a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson: "all history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons".

You can get cheaper tickets right now while it's in previews. For my impoverished actor/artist friends, I recommend calling to see if you can usher/volunteer to see it. I think it's worth seeing just for the cast.

One more thing: The actress playing the Empress of Japan, Michi Barall, kept looking at James and me as if she knew or recognized us; we were in the front row. Hmm... other than in plays, do I know her?