STAGE REVIEW : ‘Conversations’ by Brecht in a Very Cozy Setting

This weekend, from about 8 o’clock tonight through Sunday at the Big Kitchen Dinner Theatre in Golden Hill, a waiter will launch into a conversation with a customer about fascism, the Weimar Republic, heroism and the nobility of man.

But don’t interrupt, lest you want to be part of the action. The event is “Conversations in Exile,” Howard Brenton’s adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s writings, directed by John Highkin at the new Big Kitchen.

At first glance, this may seem an odd venue for a theater. The 45-year-old eatery, which got its name 15 years ago because the kitchen was its largest part, seats just 23 people--11 around a counter and 12 in booths.

But Highkin makes the space work for the show, giving the production a “you are there” quality.

The conversation takes place in a diner in Finland, and the men are German exiles from World War II--one a concentration camp survivor.

There is contemporary relevance to the philosophical arguments about the love of order versus messiness (“Messiness saves lives,” the customer points out, “when bombers miss their targets”); the nobility of man (“The noblest part of man is his passport,” the waiter says dryly) and the dialectic between bourgeoisie and working class that the two sparring partners represent.

As they speak, the waiter--the concentration camp survivor who can’t afford to eat where he works--slowly and neatly lines up matchboxes on top of the coffee maker, as if to suggest that this person represents a fire in the making.

D. B. Novak smolders in this role as the straight-backed, stiff-lipped angry waiter, and Eric Grischkat provides the perfect counterpoint as the bemused bourgeoisie (a 1940s yuppie) who really does nurse ideals under his love of fine food. Grischkat’s rendering of the line, “Oh, Mommy!” when he discovers the waiter’s communist leanings is a wondrous blend of humor, horror and consummate understanding.

The two make much of the Hegelian principle of dialectic (a thesis attracts its opposite idea; they come together and form a synthesis). They are themselves a dialectic, and, in what has to be an uncharacteristically neat ending for Brenton, the two do achieve an unlikely if friendly synthesis.

Still, if the ending is a bit gluey, that doesn’t take away the bulk of the elegant, thought-provoking show.

The production is nicely complemented by the Big Kitchen dinners, a wholesome choice of chicken or vegetarian entree, with homemade soup and dessert served between breaks in the action, allowing private conversation to take up where the staged conversation leaves off.

The very nature of the Big Kitchen’s space gives it certain limitations. One wouldn’t suggest “A Chorus Line,” even if all of the dancers in the production could fit without knocking their shins on the kick line. But “My Dinner With Andre” might fill the bill quite nicely. Or an adaptation of a story that takes place in a diner, such as Carson McCuller’s lilting “A Tree, a Rock and a Cloud.”

The Big Kitchen has long been an institution among the artists and athletes, whose photos-with-autographs pepper its walls: Bill Walton, Whoopi Goldberg (who once washed dishes here), Lily Tomlin and David Ogden Stiers of television’s “MASH.”

It is nice to see it used not just as a place for artists to earn or eat their bread, but to work at their craft. Here’s hoping for an encore.

“CONVERSATIONS IN EXILE”

By Bertolt Brecht. Adapted by Howard Brenton from a translation by David Dollenmayer. Director is John Highkin. With D. B. Novak and Eric Grischkat. At 8 p.m. Feb. 24-26 and March 17-19. At the Big Kitchen Dinner Theatre, 3003 Grape St., Golden Hill.