Longtime local playwright Lynne Kaufman’s short (60-minute) four-hander, “The Secret Museum,” cries out to be a longer play: a drama that’s more in depth, with more stage area and actual scenery (images, projections, set pieces, etc.) That’s just how enticing it is.
But that would simply not be doable in The Marsh’s small theatre space in San Francisco.
However, it’s Kaufman’s ninth premiere here, so the connection to the Marsh’s executive/artistic director Stephanie Weisman, a theatre that usually produces solo shows, is understandable.
The central characters in “The Secret Museum,” set partly in the present and partly in ancient history, are American filmmaker Francesca (Arwen Anderson) and Italian museum director Paolo (Johnny Moreno). The two were once lovers, but now Francesca, who’s working on a documentary about women’s sexuality, is quite content with her single, free lifestyle.
She’s arrived in Italy with hopes of viewing a fresco that has been newly excavated in Pompeii after 2,000 years. It is said to be the most intact fresco of the ancient world and to reveal the deepest, most alluring secrets of sex. Paolo has the key.
What Paolo wants is initially unclear.
“I’m trying to solve the mystery of how things ended,” he tells her, but we suspect he also wants her. (The 79AD eruption of Vesuvius is another captivating element in the play.)
Suspense builds as Paolo seems to be taunting Francesca, promising to allow her to see the fresco—but not right away.
Another couple, played by Lyndsy Kail and Joseph O’Malley, appear on and off in various guises: initially as gods and later as a security guard at the museum, and an artist who is desperate for him to let her see the mysterious fresco. (Here again, the audience’s imagination is piqued—the fresco is reputed to represent “copulation in every shape and form”). Later still, aroused, she attempts to seduce her husband.
This is a play about love and sex and more, and it’s multi-layered.
“Has sex never been sacred to you?” the moody Paolo asks the more prosaic Francesca.
For her part, she hopes that seeing the fresco will be a thrilling segment of her documentary.
Under Warren David Keith’s direction, the four actors are fine—it’s great fun to see Moreno and Anderson as a couple; they often appear as such in Kaufman’s plays—and they make the best use of the intimate playing area.
Anderson in particular creates a believably conflicted woman, so much so that the play seems to want to be about her and museum director Paolo. The secondary couple in their various guises are less complex.
The destruction of Pompei, the fresco itself and how it affects the humans who have the privilege of seeing it, are described copiously throughout the play.
And as nicely written as much of it is, there’s some missing magic. Words are wonderful, good actors speaking those words, divine. But sometimes the absence of visuals, even fleetingly, is a letdown. The secrets of this museum are frustratingly—but tantalizingly—out of reach.
The Marsh’s “The Secret Museum” continues through Sunday, Nov. 22 at 1062 Valencia St., San Francisco; tickets are $30 to $100 at themarsh.org.