Academy Award nominee David Strathairn (Lincoln; Good Night, and Good Luck; Scorched) utterly captivates in his extraordinarily, complex, solo performance in the stage drama Underneath the Lintel, currently running at A.C.T's Geary Theater in San Francisco.
In his role as an eccentric, Dutch librarian who discovers a mysterious, red Baedeker travel book in a return bin—some 113 years overdue, this exquisite performance takes us on a scavengar hunt, a whirlwind world tour of historic events depicted through a box of personal scraps.
As Artistic Director Carey Perloff says, this is a play: "That would only have been created in an era of real books - and, indeed, real libraries."
She asks: "What does this librarian's story mean to a world obsessed with technology, in which the traces we leave behind are virtual more often than real?"
A.C.T is currently in the process of excavating The Strand, an old San Francisco movie theater in Central Market, half a block from Twitter, Yammer, Spotify and Square HQ's. How will the two worlds of global online platforms and neighboring live theater stages collide?
As a packed house fell in silence for the magic charms of storytelling at its absolute best, we can only hope that such age-old forms of entertainment, communication and knowledge gleaned from as much from books as live performance will stand the test of time.
The set for Underneath the Lintel reveals its own secrets. Painted props, costumes and artifcats from decades and decades of American Conservatory Theater tell their own stories.
Simply one of the best shows I've seen on the West Coast. If you have a chance to see it, don't miss it.
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