It’s normal to go to the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s annual political-musical comedy expecting to laugh. The longtime leftist Troupe presents a brand-new original show every year, free, in Bay Area parks and beyond, poking fun at the bad guys and urging us all to take action.
You will indeed laugh during various scenes in this year’s show, “Wreckage: A Musical Tragicomedy,” by the company’s head writer, Michael Gene Sullivan. But by the end, you also might feel a lump in your throat.
More about that later.
“Wreckage,” accompanied by a live three-person band (music and lyrics by Daniel Savio), follows various threads, beginning with a feverish evangelical preacher raging at the audience (the always wonderful Jed Parsario in one of several roles) and urging everyone to donate money immediately—the Rapture is on its way.
The church’s new accountant (Chloris Li, all but unrecognizable in six different roles), sweet but deluded, joins the preacher to holler about salvation on a street corner, thereby unsettling that particular corner’s Japanese-American flower seller (longtime Mime Troupe member Keiko Shimosato Carreiro). The flower seller has other problems. Her landlord is about to sell the building where she lives. And she’s struggling through life, following her mother’s instructions not to make waves.
Plus a new artificial intelligence “personal assistant” seems to have been automatically downloaded onto her computer (Li, looking uncannily believable as an implacable head in a box). “‘Always On’ is the latest operating system,” explains the AI.
Elsewhere, in one of the show’s funniest conceits, a computer programmer at the corporation Anthropomorphic, frantic to get back on top of the heap of technology run amok, is secretly beta testing a new website app. The app spews out the lugubrious, soothing tones of chief justice Thurgood Marshall’s voice thundering away on your phone, informing you of your constitutional rights, just when you’re most in need.
And then there’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In the show’s most hilarious scene, set in an army barracks, a pair of National Guard soldiers (an especially hilarious Sullivan and a cheerful, clueless Parsario) have volunteered for a training session with a “psychological counselor” hired to “probe your minds,” as the sergeant threatens.
A particularly well-designed set by Sullivan is a special treat this year—a sort of trompe l’oeil vision of ravaged city streets bordered by tableaux of a Dickensian-like crowd of the starving and downtrodden. Above the proscenium, the Statue of Liberty lies askew, seemingly on the verge of drowning.
That the play’s multiple threads—poverty, greed, AI, ICE, Christianity run amok, our American rights threatened, all packed into 11 scenes and six songs—come together so cohesively at play’s end is impressive.
One more thread finally emerges, which doesn’t try to be funny. At first, you might wonder why it’s even there. Yet it’s a deeply touching scene and beautifully performed. Director Lisa Hori-Garcia strikes just the right notes.
And it leads right to the end, the point at which the Mime Troupe traditionally preaches to the choir. This year the Troupe’s urging feels more succinct than ever: Protest. Even a dedicated choir like a Mime Troupe audience needs a reminder, and a little good-humored fun.
The San Francisco Mime Troupe’s “Wreckage: A Musical Tragicomedy” continues through Sept. 7; see schedule below. Admission is free for most performances; a $20 donation is suggested. For more information and to RSVP, visit sfmt.org.
July 11 (2 p.m.): Panhandle, San Francisco
July 12 (3 p.m.): La Plaza Park, Cotati
July 15-16 (7 p.m.): Lakeside Park, Oakland
July 22 (7 p.m.): Davis Senior High School, Davis (indoor, RSVP required)
July 27 (2 p.m.): Precita Park, San Francisco
July 26 (5 p.m.): Community Center, Mill Valley
July 30 (7 p.m.): Ukiah High School, cafetorium (indoor, RSVP required)
Aug. 1-2 (3 p.m.): London Nelson Community Center, Santa Cruz
Aug. 8-9 (2 p.m.): SF Mime Troupe Studio Space, San Francisco
Aug. 15 (2 p.m.): Glen Park, San Francisco
Aug. 19 (7 p.m.): Z Space, San Francisco (indoor ticketed show, $20-$50, RSVP required)
Aug. 22-23 (2 p.m.): Willard Park, Berkeley
Aug. 29-30 (2 p.m.): Cedar Rose Park, Berkeley
Sept. 2 (6:30 p.m.): Tower Lawn South, San Jose State University
Sept. 5 (2 p.m.): Panhandle, San Francisco
Sept. 6-7 (2 p.m.): Dolores Park, San Francisco