African American Shakespeare Company's "Cinderella": ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG BANG

The African-American Shakespeare Company is a serious enterprise that turns out consistently high quality performances of the works of the Bard. But if you would ask the people who came last night to see the premiere of the company's annual run of "Cinderella," they would tell you they love this one most of all.

And what's not to love? The evil stepmother and stepsisters are so EVIL! Cinderella is so GORGEOUS! The Fairy Godmother is the grandma we all love to remember and everybody knows what happens when the slipper fits. Good trumps evil. The handsome prince carries his bride away to happy land.

But getting there is the best part and they're walking on somewhat different turf than Walt Disney ever did. In this decidedly Afro-centric version of the beloved fairy tale, the sisters are named Zonita and Shaniqua. The tall, skinny Zonita (Martin Grizell) and the shorter, even dumpier (if this is possible) Shaniqua (Abbie Rhone) steal the show every time their size 12s hit the stage. They ramp up the camp without mercy. What Zonita flashes the Prince's pages, when it is her turn to try on the slipper, was definitely not in Walt Disney's playbook.

Belinda Sullivan is the most soulful Fairy Godmother ever, and Melvina Hayes is suitably nasty as the stepmother. The men take second fiddle in this story, but Prince Charming (Detroit Dunwood) is charming enough. The man also knows how to pick the right woman, because Delina Brooks gives Cinderella a smile that can melt rocks.

The theater is filled with teenagers, and in a very nice way. They have come to see the show even though it isn't a cartoon and it is not dumbed down. Adults laugh as hard the kids. It's impossible not to love this Cinderella.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG BANG

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Cinderella" Three Stars with Two BANGLES OF PRAISE. African American Shakespeare has been performing this show for some years now and it's just getting better each year. One BANGLE is for that touching Nat Cole version of "Smile," and the other is for Belinda Sullivan, who not only knows good from evil but is smart enough to keep her granddaughters from fighting with each other...almost.

Everybody looks for a show to take the kids to that the parents will enjoy every bit as much as the kids. This is the one.

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"Cinderella"
African American Cultural Center
762 Fulton Street, San Francisco
Through Dec. 27
$20-$30

"A Civil War Christmas": ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG baub

Paula Vogel's "A Civil War Christmas" was written with her 4-year-old niece in mind and during the first act it shows. The playwright wished to present a heartwarming Christmas story set during a difficult time for our country, but rather than use plot and dialog, which might confuse a youngster, the action is done with simplistic narration. Many new characters are introduced (General Lee, General Grant, Clara Barton, Walt Whitman, President Lincoln and Mrs. Lincoln, Mrs. Lincoln's dressmaker and confidant, etc.), and each one of them speaks a word or two and then breaks into a piece of a period song.

This reviewer was itchy through the first act and but for the courtesy of giving a show the full attention it deserves might have left at intermission. He would have missed the point entirely.

In Act Two all the characters begin to tie themselves together, there is a nicely suspenseful search for a lost child, while at the same time John Wilkes Booth is plotting to kidnap the President and Mrs. Lincoln needs to get her Christmas tree back. The finale arrives with great satisfaction, served with a TON of shmaltz, plus some fabulous gospel music. We see that each actor can not only act but some of them can sing their rear ends off.



C. Kelly Wright, who was so terrific in Theatreworks' production of Tony Kushner's "Caroline, or Change," steals the show with her lead on the spiritual "Balm in Gilead," and she has been equally strong throughout the play in her twin roles as Mrs. Lincoln's dressmaker Elizabeth Keckley and the runaway slave Mrs. Thomas.

Michael A. Shepperd's roles as Decatur Bronson and James Wormley are equally riveting, especially when blacksmith Bronson, whose wife has been kidnapped by retreating Texas Conferedate soldiers, sings "The Yellow Rose of Texas" and ends it with a rap on his anvil that brings the audience to its feet.

Period costumes by Fumiko Bielefeldt are particuarly notable, because each character plays multiple roles and many of them are wearing hoop skirts. Sometimes there's no time to get the skirt off when you change from a female to role, so -- just put on a jacket and a hat, as Elizabeth Palmer is seen doing here.



Perhaps the best part of "A Civil War Christmas" is its telling of history from a more African-American perspective. Vogel has done us all a service in filling in a few blanks over which our history books have traditionally glossed. A slave market three blocks from Abe Lincoln's White House? Are you kidding? No.

The show has faults, principal of which is the ponderous Act One. But let us not undervalue the power of the "Awwwwww!" The audience gets to expend one after another at the finale, smiling after each one, and hankies are universally produced and used. Everyone exits smiling. Hey, it's Christmas.



RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG baub
The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "A Civil War Christmas" Three Stars with one BANGLE OF PRAISE and one bauble of despair. Act Two is so good, but Act One needs shortening, tightening, and -- what's the opposite of dumbing down, smartening up? -- smartening up the dialog and speeding up the staging. If Act Two pays off so nicely now, imagine how it will impact us once we are sorry Intermission has come?

The BANGLE OF PRAISE is for the music. Vogel, along with Musical Director William Liberatore and Arranger Daryl Waters, take us across many lines of American musical history. The black gospel arrangements, especially, bring excitement and power to the production.

The bauble of despair perhaps lands, quivering, at the feet of director Robert Kelley, who seems more in love with the playwright's history lessons than he is with motion and entertainment. This may be endemic to a smaller stage at Lucie Stern Theater, or may in fact be already on the page. Either way -- they need to do more with less, rather than less with more.

"A Civil War Christmas" feels like it wants to become standard holiday fare. With a little work, it may turn out to be just that.



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"A Civil War Christmas"
Lucie Stern Theater
Middlefield Road, Palo Alto
Through Dec. 27
$26-$62

Cirque du Soleil's 'Ovo': ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ !

Cirque du Soleil has really done it this time. For this reviewer, Cirque performances over the years have been coming to resemble Las Vegas productions with a muscular Bulgarian on a tightrope filling in for Wayne Newton. You witness astonishing physical feats but you always plod out of the tent searching for the closest slot machine.

Not this time, Bunko.



Take the six red ants. Here you see them precision-juggling spinning trash can lids but they also toss each other all over the stage while either on their backs or standing on their hands. It's indescribable, really -- and that's only the second act. They follow the blue dragonfly, who balances on one muscular arm while contorting himself into impossible positions. And everywhere you look, there are green crickets.



The costumes -- you have to wonder about costume designer Liz Vandal. Does she have a thing about sensual bugs? Does she look like this?



No, she looks like this.



And she has created a world, along with director and writer Deborah Colker, that is nothing short of insect ballet. The performers have the most finely-honed circus skills on the planet, but they never let you forget they are bugs. They move around the stage like bugs. They jump like bugs. And on the unforgettable Wall act, which is the performance finale to Act Two, there are twenty of them, running, jumping and tumbling on trampolines as they mount and dismount from a 26-foot vertical wall.



Sadly, there is no photo of the man-woman rope climbing team who manage a sensual pas-de-ropes while many feet off the ground. And we never did find out what kind of insect this guy is, but he looks like a soldier in the army of Genghiz Khan, even when he's balancing precariously on a slack wire.



We cannot imagine a finer Cirque du Soleil. Tickets are not cheap, but they are not unreasonable for such an intensely labor-intensive production. Christmas is here. You might think about motoring up the family cocoon and heading on down to Pac Bell Park.



RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ !
The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards Cirque du Soleil's "Ovo" its highest possible rating: Five Stars. No, it's not Hamlet, but you will be moved by the grace of the human body and the ingenuity of the entire production team. You will shake your head and wonder: "Did I just see that? How in the world did he do that?"

After 25 years, Cirque cannot top itself each year, and recently they have not. This time they did. Take your favorite spider and sit down beside her.

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*** ONE WORD OF WARNING: THEY DON'T TELL YOU THIS, BUT THERE ARE VIEW-IMPAIRED SEATS IN THE LUXURY SECTION. TRY TO STAY AWAY FROM THE LIGHT STANCHIONS. ***

We sat behind one and could not see everything, and it didn't really matter in the end, but it would be better to be in the center.

*** BONUS QUOTE: "The largest and CLEANEST outdoor rest room I have ever seen!" (The Reviewer's Wife) ***
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"Cirque du Soleil's "OVO"
Under the Tent at AT&T Park (Giants' Stadium)
China Basin, San Franciso
Through Jan 24
$55-$135

UNRATED: "2009 Eleventh Annual San Francisco Hip Hop Dance Fest"

To most people not familiar with Hip Hop, the very phrase 'Hip Hop' conjures up pictures of boys wearing sideways baseball caps and sagging their trousers down below their rear ends, and heavily made up women in high top sneakers with lots of tattoos. The music has one beat and it is incessant and the lyrics are frequently misogynistic and racist. Skateboards may or may not be involved.

Above all, it is a black art form. Right?

Wrong. Hip Hop has become so mainstream at this point that its style of dress, dance, music and countercultural vibe has taken the entire world by storm. This was easy to see Friday and Saturday nights on stage at the Palace of Fine Arts, where the 2009 Eleventh Annual San Francisco Hip Hop Dance Fest brought in dance groups not only from the SF Bay Area, but also from as far away as England, Ireland, Norway, South Korea and Japan. B-Boy Spaghetti, seen on top, is a hip-hop dancing Persian who comes from Norway. How diverse can we get?



The performers were men, women, young, old(er), black, white, brown and everything in between. They hipped and they hopped but many were obviously trained as well in classical ballet to say nothing of the martial arts and acrobatics. No one appeared to have any elbow or knee sockets. As far as the taped accompanying music, this reviewer had never heard of any of the artists, with the exception of Beyonce and Britney Spears. DJ this and MC that? Daft Punk? Busta Bust? The Muthafunkaz?

But that's what it's all about, isn't it? A new generation's music might be impenetrable to a reviewer whose knees ache just watching these kids dance, but the performers' buoyant spirit, athleticism and artistry explode off the stage. Of the second night's performers, two acts stand out for originality and personality: L.A.'s Versa-Style Dance Company who did an extraordinary piece while seated on chairs as if they were driving on the freeway, and the two person company (Buddha Stretch and Uko Snowbunny) (!) from New York called MopTop Music and Movement whose hip-hopping Super Mario Brothers characters were priceless and infectiously personable. Assuming Snowbunny was the female, she has got one gorgeous smile.




Fun. Nothing but fun. When organizer Micaya brings a new show back to SF next year, it's bound to be every bit as super. Watching these dancers is a treat.

RATINGS: UNRATED

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Awards Division will not rate this show because it is a collection of individual performances with no cohesive theme, unless the theme might be "Dancing in the Face of Disaster," or maybe "...in the Face of your Parents." Whatever. These kids are on the right road. If, as they claim, Hip Hop is a way of life as well as an art form, the next generation is going to turn out just fine.

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2009 Eleventh Annual San Francisco Hip Hop Dance Fest
Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco
Nov 20-22
$35

"Fat Pig": ☼ ☼ ☼

They meet innocently enough at a lunch counter. Tom (Jud Williford) is young and handsome, dressed in a smart business suit and tie; Helen (Liliane Klein) is pretty and dressed equally well, but there is one obvious difference: she is perhaps 100 pounds overweight. He is eating a salad. She has eaten three slices of pizza and has several containers of chocolate pudding. She offers him one, which he accepts with pleasure. They banter back and forth and Tom finds himself attracted to Helen, and she to him.

What follows is partly a discussion of America's warped standards of beauty, and partly a story of doomed love. We can understand Helen's attraction to Tom, and his to her, but it is more difficult to see how Tom, who is a weak person barely able to finish a sentence, will summon the courage to allow Helen to enter into his world of shallow, upwardly-mobile office mates.


Tom's ex girl-friend Jeannie (Alexandra Creighton) is hurt that Tom has apparently broken things off with her without bothering to tell her, but she is absolutely aghast to discover that Tom's new flame is overweight. "Fat pig" is only one of the many vicious slurs she uses to describe this woman, of whom she has only seen one small photograph; weasel-like, conniving co-worker Carter (Peter Ruocco) is far more explicit in his condemnation not only of a woman he doesn't know but of Tom's future with the company if he continues in his pursuit of this obviously unacceptable partner.



The key scene at the company beach picnic drives the message home. We are forced to investigate our own senses of right and wrong. As author Neil LaBute has said, referring to his own dieting challenges: "This remains one of the last prejudices that is largely accepted. People always feel it's fair game to ridicule fat people, because they feel if you really wanted to, you could stop eating so much."

Liliane Klein and Jud Williford are each terrific, Helen outwardly comfortable with her physical sense but inwardly frightened of rejection, and Tom, whose office life is populated by 'friends' who seem happy to make all of his decisions for him. He stands up for himself only twice in the entire play, and both times it is to say no.



We would have liked to have a little more examination into Tom's character -- that he would be self-conscious about Helen is too easily accepted. If this is so, why was he attracted to her in the first place? Why can't he stand up for himself? If "societal pressures" is the only answer offered, we haven't had a chance to grow any more than Tom has.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Fat Pig" Three Stars. Director Barbara Damashek moves the show forward with little wasted space; the discussions are often discomfiting but always heart felt. Klein, Williford, Creighton and Ruocco work well together, and in the end it is shallow Carter who spells things out best for Tom: "you're only young once. Don't take a complete dump on your one moment in the sun."

And there you have it.



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"Fat Pig"
Aurora Theater
2081 Addison Street, Berkeley
Extended through December 6
$15-$55

"She Stoops to Comedy:" ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG BANG

It's 1997. Amy Resnick is just brilliant. Brilliant is what Amy Resnick is. She is a lighting designer. No, she is an archeologist. At one point she is both, at the same time, and then it's while sitting on a bed. But maybe that's in an earlier version. This doesn't make much sense. Let's start again in 1970.

You're just not going to be able to put David Greenspan's "She Stoops to Comedy" into a neat little box. It's a sex farce, a sendup of Elizabethan comedy, a modern discussion of play writing and an examination of gender switching. It's intellectual, it's funny, and despite requiring all your brain cells to be firing at once in order to concentrate on what might actually be happening on stage, the show turns out to be quite touching as well.



Alexandra (Liam Vincent) loves Alison (Sally Clawson), but Alison has gone off to Maine to play Rosalind in a new production of Shakespeare's "As You Like It." So Alexandra decides to make herself look like a man, to audition for the part of Rosalind's heart throb Orlando, and in this way win back her girl friend.

Of course, Liam Vincent is a man to start with, a man playing a woman who is now pretending to be a man. This deception is easy for Alex(andra) to pull off, since we know Alex is actually a man playing a woman playing a man, but Alison thinks Alex, whose supposed stage name is Harry, is nothing but a sensitive man who acts like a woman playing a man.

Get it? Alison doesn't. Or does she? Not so sure.

Amy Resnick's two roles as Jayne Summerhouse and Kay Fein are so beautifully crafted you might not even notice, as this reviewer did not, that they are both being played by the same woman, until both Jayne and Kay appear together in a back-and-forth double monologue, or, that is, only Amy Resnick does, because she is playing both characters, who have a hysterical discussion with each other about life and love. Resnick moves a few inches and totally inhabits first one character and then the other, which is where the brilliant part comes in. She is so good she confuses herself.

Coupled with Scott Capurro's lengthy monologue about being a self-loathing gay man only a few minutes before Resnick's, David Greenspan has given us two astonishing and memorable theater moments back to back. Everybody is good, but these two monologues are both show-stopping.



You walk out of the theater having really enjoyed the show, but you can't help asking yourself: "How DO they remember all those words?"

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG BANG

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "She Stoops to Comedy" Three Stars with Two Bangles of Praise. We have already discussed Resnick and Capurro's Bangles of Praise, but we also have to laud the way director Mark Rucker just loosens the reins and lets this cast go. What a delight. "She Stoops to Comedy" runs all the way through January 9. You shouldn't miss it.



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"She Stoops to Comedy"
San Francisco Playhouse
533 Sutter Street, San Francisco
Through January 9, 2010
$40

"Mrs. Whitney": ☼ ☼ ☼ baub

After seeing "Goldfish," the first of two John Kolvenbach shows playing in repertory at the Magic, we looked excitedly forward to the sort-of sequel "Mrs. Whitney," which expands the story of one of the Goldfish characters. Played in the second show, as in the first, by Patricia Hodges, "Mrs. Whitney" is a far more traditional piece than "Goldfish," and, sadly, seems to have lost excitement and innovation somewhere along the way.

As good as he was playing Leo in "Goldfish," Rod Gnapp is perhaps even better as Tom Whitney, the love interest of not only Mrs. Whitney, who was his first wife, but four other wives as well. Tom's son Fin is played by Patrick Alarpone (Billy Bibbitt in SF Playhouse's recent "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"), in a touching performance with a lot of heart. Arwen Anderson is perfectly insane as Luisa, while Charles Dean's Francis mirrors Margaret Whitney's loss of hope. The difference is that, unlike Margaret, Francis can't think of anything to do about it as he finds himself unable to deflect her romantic illusions.



This is "Mrs. Whitney"'s World Premiere, so it is not surprising that it still feels unsettled, particularly in Act Two. The reason perhaps is direction. Whereas Magic Theater Artistic Director Loretta Greco directed "Goldfish" and filled it with innovative and quirky light and set changes, author John Kolvenbach is directing "Mrs. Whitney," and he is in love with the soliloquy. Every time anything important happens on stage, Mrs. Whitney then faces the audience and pontificates about what we all just saw. The action grinds to a halt. If you wanted to make sure you were distracting the audience from the characters, you couldn't think of a better way to do it.



Margaret Whitney's first lines, with a torch song setting the mood in the background, are: "My name is Margaret Whitney and I'm a romantic." Point taken. But for the show to work, you've got to give her credit for a little more than that. We need to be cheering for the reuniting of Maggie and Tom Whitney. Right now he's a loser and she's...well, she loves torch songs.

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RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ baub

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Mrs. Whitney" Three Stars with a bauble of despair. Those flow-destroying world-weary pronouncements about love might work if Lauren Bacall were spouting them from the top of a piano with Edward G. Robinson in the bathtub smoking a cigar. They don't work here.

Special mention must be given to Tom's description of diet soda: "It's worse than nothing. It's fake nothing."

"Mrs. Whitney" isn't fake, but it doesn't seem real yet either. Give it a little time, though. The pieces are there.



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"Mrs. Whitney"
Magic Theatre
Fort Mason, Building D, San Francisco
Through Nov. 22
$40-$45