The Custom Made Theatre’s ‘Slavs!’ Compensate in Passion What They Lack in Frills

One of the many “spiritual geniuses of the Slavic people,” noted by the playwright—the ability to put mind over matter—serves the Company’s cast well in Tony Kushner’s “Slavs!” performed now on a small Off Market stage. With very limited means, the San Francisco non-profit, relocated from Boston ten years ago, builds up a good deal of nuance, tension and emotion in passionate acting to illustrate the characters’ “thinking about the longstanding problems of virtue and happiness.” The author’s insightful story about the nation habitually stomping on virtue and eternally deprived of happiness finds its heartfelt presentation in the theatre’s unique, cross-gendered production. Communist apparatchiks circa Perestroika/collapse of the Soviet Union—dying along with their empire, children affected by rampant environmental pollution—dying despite the best efforts of selfless if helpless doctors, jarred brains of dead leaders preserved for scientific research and posterity—all come alive in an endemically tragicomic contemplation on the motherland of absurd, delivered by the talented troupe. Most actors, like Jessica Jade Rudholm, Megan Briggs, Alex Alexander, Brandy Leggett, and Michael Berlin are engaged in two different roles each. In other parts—A.J. Davenport and Richard Wenzel, and underage Lexi Oliva and Hannah Travis, playing the little girl in alternating performances. For an evening of devilishly funny and cathartically sad entertainment, come see The Custom Made Theatre Company's “Slavs!” through Feb. 23. Call for tickets 800-838-3006 or visit www.brownpapertickets.com. The Custom Stage@Off Market is located at 965 Mission St., SF.