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ARTS REVIEW: 'LOVING REPEATING'

Lyrical, Musical Stage Production of Gertrude Stein a Heartfelt Love Story

By: Parimal M. Rohit
January 30, 2011

The theater who brought female-themed biographical musicals to the Long Beach area, including a recent stage production on Ginger Rogers, opened its 2011 season with the glowing insight of the unconventional yet revolutionary life of Gertrude Stein. In Loving Repeating, the International City Theater forges ahead in sharing a unique perspective of one of the world’s most unheralded women whose influence upon the art world was second to none.

 
Love RepeatingA renowned American thinker and writer who spent much of her life in France, Ms. Stein was among the greatest creative minds of her generation and those who followed, not to mention someone who was as fervently opinionated and unconventional as she was “bored” and distracted.
 
Yes, “bored,” as one observes early on in Loving Repeating, it is told that Ms. Stein has an opportunity to make major strides in the world of medicine by completing medical school, but chose not to because she was, well, “bored.”
 
Providing more than a little chuckle to the audience, Loving Repeating is worth enjoying at the International Center Theater for its entertaining overtures as much as its aesthetic surroundings. Upon entering the intimate theater, two remarkable scenes are readily noticeable--the stage floor bearing complete likeness of Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and a pair of trees in the background merging together in the center, the interlocked branches outlining the shape of a Valentine-style heart.
 
It is these two images that set the mood for what is Loving Repeating--a heartfelt, colorful musical bearing new light on a life rarely shared of the woman known as Gertrude Stein.
 
Indeed, throughout the 80-minute production, the audience is taken into a world of defied convention, where Ms. Stein not only challenged the greatest artists and writers of her time, but also did as much with what was, at the time, the most unusual of partners: her wife, Alice B. Toklas.
 
Much of Ms. Stein’s success may indeed be credited to Ms. Toklas, whosoever the loyal partner-in-crime, personally and professionally. It is this very relationship that Loving Repeating focuses on quite intently and, in a way, that is both charming and entertaining.
 
Love RepeatingQuite the love story, Loving Repeating is part narrative and part retrospective. It takes a few minutes to find the rhythm and wavelength of the story’s intent and pacing, what with an older Gertrude Stein (Cheryl David) narrating her life story while her younger version (Shannon Warne) brings the narration to life in the most spirited of manners. Completing the spry love story is Ms. Toklas, of course, portrayed by Melissa Lyons Caldretti.
 
Collectively, the elder Stein’s narration of the passionate love the junior Stein had for and shared with Ms. Toklas serves as a vehicle for telling the audience how she (Ms. Stein) viewed her world. In many ways, Loving Repeating is not only about how Ms. Stein’s view of the world changed with Ms. Toklas in it, but also served to compare and contrast how the forward-thinking lady lived life both before and after the love of her life came into being.
 
With the narration and retrospective fusing together in the form of dream space music told via blues and mini-operetta, Loving Repeating also features five on-stage singers delivering to the audience the exact emotions felt by Ms. Stein throughout every phase of her life which unravels on stage at the ICT. Just the same, Loving Repeating is nothing without its background music, featuring the use of guitar, cello, keyboard, and woodwinds.
 
Directed by Caryn Desai and the final stage production on the clock of artistic director Shashin Desai, Loving Repeating runs through February 13th at the International City Theater, which is located at 300 East Ocean Boulevard in downtown Long Beach. Shows run at 8:00 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, and 2:00 p.m. on Sundays; tickets are $37 and $44. 
 
The theater may be reached at (562) 436-4610 or ictlongbeach.org.