Annunciation

Annunciation 

Lauren Groff

Word for Word and Z Space

“It is only now when I know myself to be good and bad in equal measures.”  That announcement of sorts — or “annunciation” — comes after our unnamed narrator has recalled a year much earlier in her life post college graduation when she headed across the country to land initially in San Francisco, California with little money and no plan but to live and to survive.  In that year, she relates how she wrestles with “the god and animal within” as she seeks to define who she is.  Later, she looks us directly eye to eye, leaving us with what seems to be a life learning important to be shared: “Grace is a gift undeserved yet given anyway.”  

What we come to understand is that the incredibly mesmerizing story we have heard with rapt attention has been the woman’s journey to forgive herself for a choice she once made as a young twenty-something, much later finally to find a place of inner peace.  Her recounting of that first year in California is the core of Lauren Groff’s tender short story full of both heart and humor, Annunciation — a work of prose brought to the stage in the unique, fascinating, and fully captivating verbatim manner that San Francisco’s Word for Word has utilized in wowing its audiences for over thirty years.

Rosie Hallett is jaw-dropping astonishing in the role of our narrator, hardly leaving the stage for more than a few seconds of the evening’s hundred minutes that seem to fly by much too fast.  In the intimate Z Below theatre, it is as if she is telling her story privately to each of us who hardly dare move or even breathe in order not to miss a word or any one of the scores of messages projected solely in her countenance.  With eyes that widen in both wonder and fear, with a face that beams in curiosity  and freezes in deep thought, and with a manner of being one moment the neutral narrator and the next, an explosion of action and emotion, Rosie Hallett embeds in our memories The Woman that surely Groff had in her mind as she first penned her work.

We learn after heading across country in a jalopy inherited from her grandfather that the recent college grad first lands in a San Francisco hostel where she nearly gets drawn into a threesome with a hot Brazilian couple sleeping in the bunk below her.  The decision not to participate leads her now to admit to us a bit sheepishly, “I regret all the times in my life that I turned away from living.”  

But as we soon learn, living she did as she ventured down to the Mountain View to rent a small but magical cottage from an old woman who, upon our first glance, could be straight out of one of Disney’s fairytale animations.  With “skin [that] had wrinkled into a topographical map” and “blunt inky bob” of hair “held back on one side with a plastic barrette,” the old German-born Griselda comes to full life in scores of ways delightful, hilarious, and heartwarming as played so magnificently by Patricia Silver.  Living meagerly on a huge plot of prime real estate, the wizened, heavy-accented Griselda soon warms up to her young renter, bringing almost daily to her a half-filled jar of honey, a bottle of hot sauce, or a jar of face cream that she has found among the garbage of her neighbors.

With “a gorgeous smile that was like an explosion on her face,” Griselda also bestows on the young woman a wealth of life stories that are too fantastical to be believed but always capture the younger one’s full attention.  Stories of her stint as a famous model wined and dined by the likes of David Bowie and Andy Warhol, as a Princeton philosophy professor, or even as a female bull fighter are just a few of the far-out memories that play out for us as audience by the other four cast members who pop in and out of the crevices of the two side stages.  Together, they play at least fifty different parts throughout the evening … parts that range from those mentioned above to others as wild as a bee man with his face covered in panty hose, a Puck from Shakespeare, jealous sisters screaming at each other, or two attacking sharks.  

As in all Word for Word productions, all cast members hand off to each other the next few words of the exact narrative — often in mid sentence — as they whisk by on bicycles, come out from under a broken car as a mechanic, or serve a martini as a waiter in a fancy bar.  Directed by Joel Mullennix with acute accuracy in oft rapid-fire appearances and switches of roles, these four cast members also are in a constant change of dress, as Nola Miranda’s array of designed costumes number a dizzying amount.

Each of the other cast also has among their many others at least one primary role that deserves special notice.  Part of the young woman’s rent due Griselda is to clean the piles of huge poop and to wash regularly the smelly body of a very large, two-hundred-pound dog — The Mastiff with huge, clawed paws so fabulously embodied by Brennan Pickman-Thoon.  It is difficult to turn our attention away from the big pooch when on stage with his big mooning eyes, know-it-all dog smirks, and numerous versions of being a plopping heap on the ground.  And how can we not be endeared to a dog who can only mouth a silent bark, since his owner decided once to remove his voice box so not to disturb the neighbors.

When our narrator finds a job at the Department of Human Services in Redwood City, she is paired with another woman of an uncertain age who has a “thick funk” to her, “unkempt hair,” and an outfit “that would not have been fashionable in the seventies, when it was first imposed on the world.”  At first mostly avoiding each other, Anais and she slowly become almost friends, especially as the young woman shares some of her precious fresh fruit she could barely afford and finds out that Anais lives in a vanagon with her three-year-old daughter, Luce.  The more Anais shares about an abusive past, a devotion to a charlatan evangelist, and her daughter’s life at daycare, the more the young woman becomes invested in her friend’s life and well-being — an interest that becomes a regrettable invasion.  As Anais, Molly Rebekka Benson provides many stunning moments with her own collage of expressed emotions that at times barely reveal themselves and at other times, pour out in great waves.  

JoAnne Winter is the narrator’s Mother who has no time for her daughter’s graduation but does show up for a three-day, whirlwind tour of San Francisco with laugh-out-loud photo stops from a cable car ride to a vista overlooking the Golden Gate.  Among at least a dozen other appearances, she also is another of the young woman’s co-workers, Shelley, who is all listening ears but with a hidden big mouth that has big consequences for our narrator.

The many stories of Griselda’s younger days become avenues for Monica Rose Slater to shine in quick glimpses as Young Griselda that range from sexy to exotic to daring and dangerous.  A host of other roles provide her — like actors Benson, Winter, and Pickman-Thoon — multiple opportunities to display ages, personalities, professions, and quirks galore.

Moods of contemplation, self-exploration, and just simply being in the moment are accomplished not only by Rosie Hallett’s superb acting skills but also through the lighting artistry of Jim Cave, the occasional background music and effects of Drew Yerys’ sound design, and by the simple but impactful scenic design of Kate Boyd.  Five rectangular screens that are shaped and arranged like a Mondrian painting become a landscape for subtle shifts in colors and images as well as the bold limbs of a great oak in Griselda’s yard that becomes a peaceful refuge for her young renter.

Having read Lauren Groff’s short story prior to the production, I felt I had a firm grasp of its magnetic draw and its power of message.  However, I could hardly predict the profound impact Word for Word’s personification of those same words would have on my seeing this company of six bring all those words to full life on the stage.  To miss any Word for Word production is a great shame; to miss Lauren Groff’s Annunciation would be a near sin.

Rating: 5 E

A Theatre Eddys Best Bet Production

Annunciation continues through July 13, 2025, in a one-hundred-minute (no intermission) production by Word for Word at Z Space’s  Z Below, 450 Florida Street, San Francisco.  Tickets are available at https://www.zspace.org/.

Photo Credits: Jessica Palopoli