William Bivin's new darkly comic drama attacks marriage, capitalism and cloven-hoofed quadrupeds. With The Apotheosis of Pig Husbandry, SF Playhouse has mounted another highly successful production in The Sandbox series of world premieres. This play of socialist -- or sexual -- revenge presents a conniving idealist seeking to "undermine the capitalist system" by seducing a landowner's wife, driving him out of his 250,000-hog business and turning the stinky pig farm into a park. In the end he keeps the wife, the farm and offers a job to the forlorn husband.
The self-anointed Marxist philosopher Asuncion "Assy" Boyle (Chad Deverman) takes over a distressed hotel in the desert, downwind of the pig farm. Opportunistic and ruthless, he pressures the farm owner Charles Masterson (Keith Burkland) into selling it to him so he can turn it into Desert Park as a charitable donation. This noble soul also has Masterson's wife Lola (Madeline H. D. Brown) handcuffed to his bed in Room 7.
Ensuing events include inane philosophical discourses. Assy spouts conventional cant with a learned sense of rage when he pontificates that, "The American family house is the footprint of global destruction." In one sequence of menacing gunplay, Lola sticks the pistol barrel in her mouth and pulls the trigger. It's not loaded. Sexual complications arise when Assy claims Charles was sleeping with his mother, adding a new dimension to Assy's plans to ruin him. The "pickled pig parts" is either ridiculous or hilarious, depending on your tolerance for adolescent humor.
Even though she is in bondage wearing only a slip, Lola can escape if she wants. She stays with Assy while he grows rich at her husband's misfortune. Brown consistently plays Lola with a passionate but hesitant intensity toward Assy. Her explosive acquiescence at the end makes her the protagonist, the discredited capitalist system.
Deverman as Assy delivers a self-assured, cocky character who is single-minded in his coldblooded pursuit of social justice for his own ends. As the owner of the seedy motel with windows taped shut to keep out the odors, he plays with casual aplomb and a smooth but complex texture of take-it-or-leave-it capitalist merchandising.
Charles Masterson decays from a position of wealth to that of a peon seeking any work he can get. Burkland's interpretation of this character early on foreshadows the resignation to the fated loss of his livelihood, his wife and his pigs. He projects a sense of frustrated worry from the start, readily marking him as the victim of a nefarious plot.
The production values of this show raise it far above a college-student polemic glorifying adultery, Marxism and swine. On two levels, the action moves from a motel room to the lobby to a café. With a few uncomplicated set pieces the staging by Bill English, Artistic Director of SF Playhouse, clearly delineates each location with quick, fluid scene transitions and keeps the character interactions specifically focused on Assy's ambitions and successes.
The Apotheosis of Pig Husbandry continues through June 12 at SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter Street, San Francisco. Tickets ($30) are available online at www.sfplayhouse.org or by phone at 415.677.9596.
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