Get caught in the ‘Rain’ at the Old Globe

By Eric George Tauber

SAN DIEGO — We all have to do what we have to do to get by. Some of us have had it easier than others. Our privileged positions give us the luxury of looking down.

Rain brings us to a boarding house in Western Samoa in 1924. A ship en route from San Francisco to Australia has been quarantined due to an outbreak of measles among the crew. So the passengers must find lodgings elsewhere. This brings them to the boarding house of Jo and Noi Noi. The guests are a New England doctor and his wife and a pair of Christian missionaries. With no closets in their rooms and hammocks instead of beds, it’s not exactly what these folks are used to. Still, they have to make the best of it.

“Opening”–sung by the three wives- is an homage to Sondheim with the three women singing over each other in beautiful harmony.  Then Sadie’s “Thirteen Dollars” opens the door of a speakeasy and brings us into the era.

Sadie Thompson–played by a wolf-whistle sexy Eden Espinosa-blows in like a force of nature. She’s a “working girl” with a smoking hot strut and a flask of “Sunshine.”

“I wasn’t that good, Mrs. Jesus, but like a Chesterfield, I satisfy.”

A working girl has to make a living. But when Sadie tries to ply her wares with a couple of sailors, the preacher’s temper flares with surprising volatility, leaving us to wonder where a man of the cloth learned to take down two drunken sailors.

“The sins I have sinned… Oh, you don’t wanna know.”

The preacher, Alfred Davidson, takes on Sadie as a project, convinced that her lost soul can be redeemed. Sadie suggests that there aren’t a lot of housewives in the Bible, but there are a lot of working girls, Rahab, Delilah, Tamar…. Mrs. Davidson doesn’t like that their “prayer meetings” go into the wee hours with the door closed.

Jared Zirilli is a  man at war with himself as the preacher.  The struggle between the yetzer hara and the yetzer hatov rages within all of us, but his battle is at a fever pitch.

Everyone is haunted by their inner demons. The doctor is a doughboy vet with PTSD self-medicating with whiskey. His wife Louisa sees him slipping away and feels helpless. She has always been the proper New England lady. But Noi Noi gives her a few lessons in being a woman and how a woman keeps her man wanting to come back for more in “English lesson.”

Where Sadie is smoking hot, Marie-France Arcilla as Noi Noi is more like steam wafting up from a hot tub inviting us in for a long soak.  Sadie is a stolen night in a “No-Tell” Motel.  Noi Noi is a mortgage we gladly signed.

The set by Mark Wendland is a work of art. It opens like a dollhouse, rotates, comes apart and gets put back together. A mixture of native architecture and antique Western furniture, there’s something to see from every angle. My Filipino companion said that it reminded him of places you can still find in outer islands.

The sound of thunder–not heard often enough in California–is an everyday occurrence in the South Pacific. The percussion of thunder and native drums is beautifully woven into Bruce Coughlin’s orchestrations that resonate through your bones.

Rain is not a light, toe-tapping musical. It’s a gripping tale about the storm that rages in all of us. We all dwell in dollhouses, living in fear that our walls will be opened and our dark secrets exposed. If you have the courage to face your darker self, then go to the Old Globe and get caught in the Rain.

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Tauber is a freelance writer specializing in coverage of the arts.  He may be contacted via eric.tauber@sdjewishworld.com.  Comments intended for publication in the space below must be accompanied by the letter writer’s first and last name and his/her city and state of residence (city and country for those outside the U.S.)