Tony Kusher's "A Bright Room Called Day" at Custom Made Theatre


Half a decade before he became famous for his two part “Angels in America” in 1991, Kushner wrote “A Bright New Room Called Day in 1987. The drama was based on the fall of the Weimar Republic and rise of the Hitler-led Nazi Party suggested through the experiences of a lively group of artists and activities. This was juxtaposed with the increasing paranoid “interruptions” of a refugee from the rise of 1983- Reagan-lead Republicanism.

“A Bright Room Called Day” is a fatuous drama about a world on the brink of war in 1932 when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party took over the government of Germany. A handful of middle class German artists and film-industry workers are caught in the collapse of the Weimar Republic. Some of the characters seem be a stand in from Sally Bowles and rest of the apathetic, unisexual drifters in Christopher Isherwood’s “Berlin Stories”.

It’s 1990 and Zillah (Maggie Ballard) has left Long Island to lie low in Berlin and she inhabits an apartment that was once owned by actress Agnes Eggling (Xanadu Bruggers). She is concentrating not only the ghosts of Agnes and her friends but an even older seeker of benefactor Die Alte (Shelley Lynn Johnson) who rises from the dead and enters the apartment to test Agnes on many levels.

There are “interruptions” of the 30’s plot showing two young person’s Traum (Nick Trengove) and Paulinka (Megan Briggs) in 80’s Berlin discussing and trivializing the National Socialism of the Third Reich by being equated with the “national senility” of the Reagan era. These are well executed theatrical crosscuttings. The end of the first act the company re-enacts “Faust” by way of a modern dress devil in an informal manner played excellently by Steve Budd. One could almost see him playing the devil in “Damn Yankees.

“A Bright Room Called Day” contains a lot of speechifying and it is accompanied by slide projects relaying the events of the period. It certainly helps if you know about that German period of history from 1932 to 1933 with the confrontation between the Nazis and Communist in Berlin.

Director Brian Katz has ensemble a great large cast to portray these fascinating characters for this three sided stage. The actors are consistently professional in trying circumstances. Monologues are gamely delivered by Maggie Ballard who plays Zillah a contemporary Jew from Great Neck, Long Island who for some unknown reason visits Berlin in 1990. She has a sincere and deeply committed intensity as she evaluates her strange observations, elucidations and conspiracy theories.



Xanadu Bruggers as Agnes, a bit-part actress and would be scriptwriter flirting with communism authentically embodies a woman t0rn between well-being and integrity, action and reaction. Her more energetic and go-getting counterpart Paulinka is vividly rendered by Megan Biggs.
The one eyed cinematographer, Hungarian exile and socialist idealist Malek is forcefully defined by Vahishta Vafadari with a good foreign accent.

Baz who works for the Berlin Institute for Human Sexuality and is homosexual Chris Morrell captures the mystified objectivity of the character. In one scene he contemplates suicide but recovers his will to live in Munich thanks to a sexual encounter in the park. In another outstanding scene he tells of sitting in a movie theatre with a gun in his pocket watching a Dietrich film. Two rows in front of him sit Hitler and two of his henchmen yet he fails to embrace a golden opportunity to assassinate Hitler. Doubling as minor Nazi Party functionaries Nick Trengove and Jessica Jade Rudholm finds an edge of comic relief in their earnest line-toeing conformity and petty Bickering. Nick Trengove is particularly excellent in the modern day’s scenes of Berlin playing Traum speaking German with a great guttural accent.


Shelley Lynn Johnson dons rags to admirably play a symbolic ghost known as Die Alte. Distinguished, blond, Aryan Steve Budd in his one scene as The Devil, posing as Gottried Swetts, an importer of Spanish novelties is wonderful in this small role. When one of the characters asks him if he might be a neurotic manifestation he counters and says “I gave birth to myself”.

Brendan Aanes sound composition and Andrea Schwartz’s lighting design are splendid and Scarlett Kellum costumes help to ground the focal story in time and place. Brian Katz has managed to put on a powerful production along with some timely newsreel movies projected on the outer wall of the 30's raise of Nazi power in Germany.


Tony Kushner’s “A Bright Room Callled Day” runs through April 8th at the Gough Street Playhouse, 1620 Gough Street, San Francisco. Tickets at www.custommade.org