San Francisco Chronicle - April 14, 2008
Robert Hurwitt, rhurwitt@sfchronicle.com.

Of all the reasons that no one's discovered an HIV vaccine yet, incompetent researchers is probably the last one you'd choose. Well, perhaps not, but that wouldn't be fair to the hundreds of dedicated men and women toiling over the many aspects of a very complicated problem. It is, however, the most logical conclusion to draw from Kevin Fisher's "Monkey Room" at the Magic Theatre.

That's odd, because Fisher presumably knows a thing or two about HIV/AIDS research. An emerging playwright, he's also a trained epidemiologist who presented a paper on HIV diagnosis in infants at the 2004 International AIDS Conference. The world premiere of his "Monkey" opened Saturday as the latest commissioned piece in the Magic Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science & Technology Initiative, dedicated to the development of plays that bring scientific issues and ideas to life onstage.

That's far from an impossible goal, as demonstrated by such exciting, heady works as Michael Frayn's "Copenhagen" and Tom Stoppard's "Arcadia" and "Hapgood." But the underlying principles of the solar calendar are more central to the plot of "H.M.S. Pinafore" than the science involved has been for most of the Magic's Sloan offerings so far. Though Fisher includes some information about the difficulties of HIV research, and uses one aspect - rather unbelievably - as a key plot twist, most of the science here, as in other Sloan plays, is window dressing for a rather generic drama.

To be fair, the real issue in "Monkey" isn't the science of HIV research but its funding - a subject as dear to the hearts of theater administrators as lab directors. The plot is as simple as the 70-minute play is short. The charismatic director of a research institute has just died. Ava (Lauren Grace), his apparent successor, is at a crossroads in her vaccine tests with monkeys and chimps. Zach (Kevin Rolston), a geneticist, is being a bit evasive about the progress of his own research. But with their leader gone, their funding agency has sent sharp-eyed, condescending and caustic evaluator Neil (Robert Parsons) to make an overnight decision whether to continue supporting their work.

There's more. Zach is in love with Ava, though she's too preoccupied, understandably, for more than a passing fling. There's also a bumbling lab assistant, Freda (Jessica Kitchens), who takes care of the simian subjects in the next room (well represented by Sara Huddleston's sound design).

Fisher writes quick, witty, generally captivating dialogue that flows pretty well. Mark Routhier, the Magic's director of artistic development, stages the action at a quick, entertaining clip on James Faerron's nicely detailed, cluttered lab set. The performances are well drawn and engaging, though Kitchens at times seems to be working in a different production and Grace needs to pay more attention to diction and projection. Some of her lines were unintelligible in the fourth row.

But Grace is engagingly smart and focused, drawing us into the problems with Ava's research and her mixed feelings about Rolston's boyishly impetuous Zach. It isn't her fault that Fisher hasn't developed the character fully, or that he's given Neil most of the best lines, delivered by Parsons with buoyantly sadistic zest (though why Neil is quick to tell her why he got fired from Johns Hopkins is incomprehensible).

More frustrating are all the issues referred to - protocols for treating lab primates, sexism in science, what determines trends in research funding - and tossed aside. But that's not as troubling as the incredibly sloppy program Ava runs, from the appallingly easy access to dangerous viruses and casual handling of infected macaques to a total lack of record keeping on the administration of vaccines or basic preparations for a new experiment. This is one lab that is crying out to be shut down.

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