Review: DEAL WITH THE DRAGON at Magic Theatre Weaves an Unforgettable Magical Spell

There's no question about it, actor-playwright Kevin Rolston is practicing nothing less than pure sorcery in his newly revised Deal with the Dragon now running at Magic Theatre. He enters a bare stage, save for a straight-backed wooden chair and a clutch of dead branches hanging ominously overhead, and gradually conjures a trio of three beguiling characters out of thin air. By the end of its taut 70 minutes, you will be convinced that you have met them all in the flesh, even though Rolston never changes his anodyne costume of charcoal grey t-shirt and navy jeans. He gives us Hunter, an artist struggling to land a show at a major museum; Brenn, his mysterious German protector/tormentor; and Gandy, his rival for the museum slot. The plot is delivered in a fractured style that is at times rather opaque, but the setup really serves more as a Hitchcockian McGuffin in that its function is to put Hunter's emotional journey in motion rather than to drive a conventional "Will our hero win the day?" narrative.

Early scenes of Hunter and Brenn's creepily ambiguous relationship and Hunter's childhood fantasy world are funny and intriguing, but it is when Rolston introduces the character of Gandy roughly a third of the way through that the play really gets cooking. We meet Gandy as he pretty much hijacks an AA meeting with over-sharing that is impertinently hilarious and unexpectedly moving. Gandy is the type of person who probably came out of the womb presenting to the world as a gay man. He's always a bit much even as he takes delight in both his excesses and his gayness, seemingly free of any internalized shame. True, Gandy may be a drug addict and overly needy, but he's also delicious fun and he knows it.

From Gandy's very first line, Rolston embodied the character so completely that I seriously started to question how the same actor had just portrayed Brenn and Hunter so credibly. It was as if he had totally rearranged his molecular structure to morph into an entirely different being. Every rococo phrase out of Gandy's mouth, every offbeat pause, every shift in his posture seemed to be utterly spontaneous, as if the character were driving the actor, not the other way around.

And from there, rather fascinatingly, Rolston's interpretation of the other two characters grew deeper as well. In the final section, there was what I can only call a ferocious intimacy to the performance that completely sucked me into an alternate reality. By the time Hunter reached the apotheosis of his emotional journey in a way that connected back to his childhood fantasies, it felt like Hunter's breakthrough was ours as well, as if the boundaries between actor and audience had been completely obliterated and we had all been active participants in telling his story. Truly one of the most eerily transporting experiences I've ever had in a theater.

I can point to any number of contributing factors - Rolston's impressive vocal and physical skills as a stage actor, the artfully undetectable direction by M. Graham Smith, the beautifully nuanced lighting by Wolfgang Lancelot Wachalovsky, the gently nervous soundscape by Sara Huddleston, and of course the quirkily elliptical writing by Rolston that delivers a satisfying emotional payoff with nary a hint of sentimentality - but I can't fully explain it. Like I said, pure sorcery.

Between this show and the recent Dana H. at Berkeley Rep, the Bay Area is being treated to some pretty thrilling examples of solo performance wizardry that expand our notions of what the form can be. It may be too late to catch Dana H., but you've still got until August 13th to see Deal with the Dragon.

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