“Art” ★★★★

It’s brilliant, funny and real. “Art,” written by Jasmina Reza, is almost 30 years old now, but hits home for this reviewer in a way most newer “relationship plays” never do. This is a story about male friendship, the way men actually talk, relate, think and act. They are getting older.

They are hotheads, they storm in and out of the room. Each has issues of his own as well as with the other two. But the heart of this story is the strong desire that Marc, Serge and Ivan have to remain friends. 

And it's 1998. It's still a world where you have to be in the same room to fight. No one can send anyone else a nasty text and then ghost him. It feels...refreshing. 

David Sinaiko plays Marc, who feels the way most of us in the audience feel about the painting for which Serge, played by Benoit Morin, has just paid $200,000. Some men, as they hit their forties, take mistresses or buy Porsches. Serge buys a painting, but not just any painting. It is completely white. No frame. No color. A 4' x  5' white rectangle. 

Serge feels it is "art." Marc tells him it's a piece of "shit." 

Meanwhile, Ivan, the third member of the troika, is trying to appease both Marc and Serge. It's not working, primarily because Ivan is being drawn into a marriage he doesn't want and neither do Marc and Serge. This is the one thing about which they can agree.

On the surface, "Art" is about art - what makes it so? Why does an artist's reputation determine its worthiness? And what makes up a friendship? Can you speak the truth, even if it hurts? Does friendship have a frame around it? 

We love the staging of the show along with lights and sound -- the way the characters can break the fourth wall and speak directly to the audience in an echo-y reverb with lights up on the speaker and dimmed on the others. It's effective and funny.

RATINGS: ★★★★

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division gives The Shotgun Players' production of "Art" FOUR STARS, one each for writing, acting, directing (Emilie Whelan) and staging. There is no lead actor-- each member of the ensemble is terrific. We identify most with Marc (David Sinaiko), because, well...he's right about that idiotic painting.

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"Art"

Shotgun Players at Ashby Playhouse

1901 Ashby Avenue, Berkeley

EXTENDED through April 12, 2025

Prices from Pay What You Can to $80

Happy Pleasant Valley: a Senior Sex Scandal Murder Mystery Musical: UNRATED

A few comments:

1.) A musical is a giant puzzle. It is very difficult to write, cast and stage. Someone sitting in an audience can imagine only a fraction of the time and effort writers, designers, producers, directors and actors must invest in order to assemble all the pieces into a flowing work of art.

2.) Nobody is getting rich doing theater in Palo Alto.

2.) Any Opening Night performance, particularly for a World Premiere, is bound to be laden with nervous energy. The theater has been filled with comps and everybody’s parents and boyfriends are there.

3.) Sometimes this nervous energy leads to greatness.

4.) We all have stereotypes. Some are harder than others to break. 

5.) It's easier to fit "Cats" or "Gigi" or "Hamilton" on a marquee than “Happy Pleasant Valley: A Senior Sex Scandal Murder Mystery Musical,” 

5a) So it’s always a good idea, when the title of your show is “Happy Pleasant Valley: A Senior Sex Scandal Murder Mystery Musical,” to make sure the story makes sense, the music is tuneful, the murders are comprehensible and you don’t patronize everyone over fifty in the audience, which at the Lucie Stern Theater pretty much includes the entire roster of season ticket holders. 

6.) Sophie Oda (Jade) and Lucinda Hitchcock Cone (Vicki) are excellent singers and underutilized Miller Liberatore (Dean) appears to be as well.

And that’s my review.

RATINGS: UNRATED

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division, several members being over fifty, is too tired to give this show a rating. We’re going to the potluck and then we’ll need a nap.

Happy Pleasant Valley: a Senior Sex Scandal Murder Mystery Musical

Lucie Stern Theater

1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto

Through Mar 30

$44-$94

"Exotic Deadly: Or the MSG Play": ★★★

Sometimes, a moment in a play can be forgotten, as our memories rush to fill in plot details or mention standout acting or staging performances. For us, one of the concluding scenes in Keiko Green's "Exotic Deadly: Or The MSG Play" has stuck with us for days. This is when the excellent Anna Ming Bostwick-Singer, as the teenage daughter Ami, and Nicole Tung, as Ami's mother, stare into the audience and announce that all our ancestors are looking out for us at all times -- from the first row. The lights come up and there we all are - wait, am I one of these ancestors? Well, why not? I like these actors and I'll be happy to look out for them.

"The MSG Play" is fun and light-hearted, but it makes no bones about MSG, the flavor enhancer that has been shown to be harmless but for some years was trumpeted as the source of the deadly "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome," a claim based on bad science and anti-Asian propaganda. Ami's quest is to discover the original inventor of MSG. The plot thickens.

Francesca Fernandez plays the rebellious new girl, Exotic Deadly, with a lot of soul. Ami would love to be like her, but, you know, not really. 

The show is fun to watch, especially if you remember cultural references from the 90s, as everyone in the audience (except, perhaps two reviewers in the corner) appeared to. Do Ami and Exotic Deadly save the world? Well, look at the ingredients on a package of Instant Ramen. They seem to have succeeded. 

RATINGS ★★★

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division grants "Exotic Deadly: The MSG Play" Three Stars. We loved the energy of the show and the entire ensemble, plus the amazing job by director Jesca Prudencio. Fun and laughter are in short supply these days, but not at San Francisco Playhouse.

"Exotic Deadly: Or the MSG PLAY"

San Francisco Playhouse

450 Sutter Street (2d floor of Kensington Park Hotel), San Francisco

Through 3/8/25

$35-$135

Hershey Felder: Rachmaninoff and the Tsar: ★★★★

We have seen quite a few Hershey Felder solo shows in his Composer Series. There is always a grand piano in the middle of the stage and Felder thinks of a story pertaining to the composer's life, around which he can hang as many musical interludes as possible. He is a magician, one of a kind, a brilliant pianist and actor who has figured out how to play a complex piano repertoire while telling a story at the same time. This is a feat unmatched by anyone else.

Felder's latest show, "Rachmaninoff and the Tsar,"which had its Regional Premiere last night at Mountain View Center for Performing Arts, is a two-hander. It describes a fevered dream occurring to Sergei Rachmaninoff as he awaits his death from melanoma in his adopted home of Beverly Hills, CA. The year is 1944, and the composer looks back on his life which, in his mind, was uprooted by the unconscionable incompetence of Russia's last Tsar, Nikolai Romanov. Jonathan Silvestri plays the Tsar, who, though long dead, having been assassinated by Bolsheviks twenty-six years earlier, dialogues back and forth with Rachmaninoff, as the composer seeks to find a way to forgive the long-dead Russian leader.

The story is historical and accurate, since Felder never makes things up. OK, except for the Dead Tsar Walking.

Musically, Rachmaninoff's compositions shine, with melodies we have all loved whether or not we knew where they came from. If you can't hum the theme to Rachmaninoff's Rhapsodie on a Theme of Paganini -- DA DA DA DA DUMMM! then your hummer needs time in the shop. 

For us, we feel as we often feel as the curtain falls -- we wish we had seen a little less talk and a lot more music, less Hershey and more Sergei, less kvetching and more shpieling, as my grandmother, a Russian immigrant in Southern California herself, may have said. Don’t listen to the two aristocrats, Rachmaninoff and Tsar Nikolai, but dear old Gram, who always loved a good melody. 

RATINGS ★★★★

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division grants Four Stars to Hershey Felder's "Rachmaninoff and the Tsar." He gets one star each for writing, acting and playing, and another for what is now a tradition: the question/answer session at the end of the show. This gives us a real view into Felder as Felder, a brilliant, engaging guy, not anything like, say, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Liszt, Mozart, Beethoven or Irving Berlin. OK, we said it. Mr. Felder: please do Irving Berlin again?

Hershey Felder: "Rachmaninoff and the Tsar"

Mountain View Center for Performing Arts

500 Castro St., Mountain View

Through Feb. 9, 2025

$64-$114

SF Mime Troupe’s “A RED CAROL” ★ ★ ★ BANG

You can’t have Christmas without “A Christmas Carol,” but no one said it has to be the same old-same old. Leave it to SF Mime Troupe to come up with “A Red Carol,” where only Scrooge remains unchanged. Played to perfection by Mike McShane, Scrooge is a banker now, because if there’s one thing the Mime Troupe dislikes, it’s bankers. Don't worry, he is as disagreeably penurious as ever. 

Bob Cratchit (Brian Rivera) is a working man who for unexplained reasons speaks in 21st Century slang. Tiny Tim is a stuffed teddy bear who (spoiler alert) does not live long enough to utter his famous line: “God Bless Us Everyone.” (The line is spoken by other characters.) Every few minutes Bob or his wife or someone else steps to the front of the stage to elucidate us on what Dickens really meant by “counting house” or “work house” or how many children under 10 died of starvation in post-industrial England. 

And yet the show is really endearing. There are always two undercurrents at play simultaneously in any Mime Troupe performance: grand, slapsticky humor and a nostalgia for labor unions and the politics that once accompanied them. Both are in evidence here. Forget Trumpy auto workers of today, feel your heart tug as the cast sings labor songs from the 1930s, condemning capitalism while at the same time passing around buckets to ask for donations. We love the troupe’s idealism as we chuckle at their terrific visual jokes, usually at our expense.

Zounds! What a money-grubbing tight-ass Scrooge is, until visited by three ghosts in succession, after which he begins dealing away his fortune like Bill Gates. That’s all it takes, apparently. We need more ghosts.

Velina Brown is terrific as Mrs. Cratchit. She can really sing, people. 

It all works. It always works. The reason is Michael Gene Sullivan, who wrote and directed this production. The shows are so damned smart. They know exactly what they’re doing and nobody does it better. 

We love the Mime Troupe. Merry Red Christmas to all and to all a good night.

RATINGS: ★★★ BANG

The San Francisco Theater Blog Holiday and Ghostly Apparition Division grants Three Stars with a Bangle of Praise to SF Mime Troupe’s “A Red Carol.” As always, writing, acting and music get one star each and the Bangle is for bassist Guinevere Q.'s wind machine, that she built herself.  It looks like an old-fashioned mangle washing machine, complete with a handle that rustles a spool of fabric. Every time G.Q. turns the handle we hear the sound of a freezing London gale. We can’t wait for the weather to get even worse so the characters will have to walk outside and we can watch her turn the handle again.

San Francisco Mime Troupe's "A Red Carol"

Z Space Theatre

450 Florida St., San Francisco

Through Dec. 29, 2024 

(Masked performances Dec. 22 and Dec. 29)

$ A Little or a Lot. Donations Requested.

Cabaret: ★★★ BANG

We have seen "Cabaret" before, and we have been in cabarets before, but this is the first time we have seen "Cabaret" in a cabaret. Theatre Rhinoceros is a tiny space to begin with, but transformed into a small nightclub in 1930s Berlin, listening to the timeless songs by Kander and Ebb, we get a chance to feel this music the way it might have sounded then.

John Fisher directs the story we are all familiar with -- young American Clifford Bradshaw, an aspiring novelist, finds himself at the Kit Kat Club in libertine Berlin between World Wars, a time and place where sex in all flavors is as popular as pretzels. He falls for Sally Bowles, a performer who has bounced from job to job and from partner to partner. She, unlike Clifford, is refusing to see the Nazi horror show rising ominously on the horizon, a time when the halcyon world of the Kit Kat Club is certain to be eradicated.

We cheered the ensemble cast, especially since they were forced to climb up and down rickety ladders and attempt dance routines with barely room to kick a leg. Our favorite was Stephanie Fields, who plays Fraulein Schneider, who rents rooms in her home in order to survive, and who will face the most difficult choice of all: Love, or survival.  In "What Would You Do?" Ms. Fields's voice is strong and resonates with us as she sings:

"...With a storm in the wind,

What would you do?

With the clock running down,

What would you do?

Would you pay the price?

What would you do?..."

Rudy Guerrero is brilliant as Emcee, far more threatening than the Joel Gray we have grown accustomed to. Kudos as well to Gabriel A. Ross, with his apples and pineapples, as Herr Schultz. And there is a moment at the end of Act One when, for the first time, several patrons at the Kit Kat are seen wearing red Nazi arm bands. Before this, the show is happy, funny, hopeful. From that moment on, we are brought back to a small theatre in the Castro, where we hope tomorrow still belongs to us. 

RATINGS: ★★★ BANG

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division grants Three Stars with a Bangle of Praise to Theater Rhinoceros's "Cabaret." The three stars are for the ensemble cast, for Megan Soledad and Brendan Looney as Clifford and Sally, and for Armando Fox's band. The Bangle is for the theatre's great idea to stage this show in such an intimate and innovative setting. Now, that's chutzpah. 

"Cabaret"

Theatre Rhinoceros

4229 18th St., San Francisco

EXTENDED Through Dec. 29

$17.50-$55

Circus Bella 2024: Kaleidoscope: ★★★★

Who knew? From 2nd Street to the Embarcadero east and west, and Mission St. to Harrison north to south, is a tiny downtown neighborhood called The East Cut. And throughout the holiday season, smack-dab in the middle is a giant and colorful circus tent where Circus Bella has opened their holiday show "Kaleidoscope." 

Thankfully, for those of us who loved the show last year, not much has changed. Clowns, jugglers, chair stackers and contortionists slither up and down poles and across wires while showing off ridiculously strong shoulder muscles and amazing balance. Between each act a trio of clowns runs through routine after routine, accompanied by Rob Reich's fabulous 6-piece All Star Band. Reich also wrote original music for each performer's segment.

Our buddies are back: Veronica Blair on aerial straps whose power and beauty continues to amaze us; Contortionist Elise Hing who manages to bend herself into impossible angles; and, still our favorite: The Super Duper Hula Hooper Natasha Kaluza, who doubles as one of the three clowns, along with Jamie Coventry (tall) and Calvin Kai Ku (short), 

Special thanks to Abigail Munn, Director and Ringmaster. Everyone is always looking for somewhere to take a date or their family during Christmas. Kids and adults will love this show equally. Best of all,  Kaleidoscope runs through January 5. 

RATINGS: ★★★★

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division, whose members would fall on their face trying to balance one coffee cup on their nose, grants FOUR STARS to Circus Bella's "Kaleidoscope." There is something for everyone here and it makes us remember how wonderful it is to live in this extraordinary city. 

Circus Bella: Kaleidoscope

The Crossing at East Cut

Howard and Beale Streets, San Francisco

Through January 5, 2025

$55-$75 (kids $5 off)