"The Pitmen Painters" ☼ ☼ ☼

"Write what you know," they tell you, on your first night in a writer's workshop. "Make our lives art," is the way the miners put it in Lee Hall's excellent "The Pitmen Painters," which is having its West Coast premiere at Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts through February 12.

Hall, who is well known for his film and stage adaptation of "Billy Elliot," is mining familiar turf here. Where Billy was the savant dancer in a world of coal miners, here the miners, or pitmen, have produced from their ranks a group of inspirational painters. The difference is that "Pitmen" is a true story. The Ashington Group was established in 1934 by coal miners from Northumberland. These were men who had quit school at eleven to go down in the mine. They had no formal education and no knowledge of art, and yet they turned out a collection of work which touchingly depicted the miners' lives in the north of England at that time, and lives on to this day.

Judging from the order of bows at the end, Patrick Jones as painter Oliver Kilbourn (seen center, above), and Paul Whitworth as instructor Robert Lyon (following photo), are meant to be the stars. But the entire cast stands out. Jackson Davis as Jimmy, Dan Hiatt as Harry, and especially James Carpenter as George Brown, help us understand how provincial are these men's lives before they learn to paint. Nicholas Pelczar plays two roles, one as a miner and one as a successful painter; Kathryn Zdan is a model whose nude posing practically throws the miners into apoplexy, and Marcia Pizzo's art patron Helen Sutherland shows us, through her would-be relationship with Oliver, how important decisions can change our lives.

The critique with "The Pitmen Painters," is interestingly enough the same critique that Helen gives Oliver in Act Two, about his development as a painter: the work does not dig very deep. There is little passion. Or anger. Or any hint at what would make these men desire to paint in the first place.

Where are the women in the art? Were these men monks? Was it simple lack of technique that never gives us closeups of their faces? If we are to believe Oliver in his turning down of Helen's offer, shouldn't we at least understand what is the great value he puts on remaining in the grubby and dangerous colliery?

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "The Pitmen Painters" Three Stars. We enjoyed how Andrea Bechert's set and Steven B. Mannshardt's lights allowed us to actually view the paintings being discussed in the action below. (From the rear of the house, however, these illustrations were not always easy to make out.) The universal struggle of the working man has its fascinating parallel with the downtrodden role of the artist in society. This has been true through the ages. It is a worthwhile and intriguing discussion.

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"The Pitmen Painters"

Mountain View Center for Performing Arts

500 Castro Street, Mountain View

Through Feb. 12, 2012

$19-$69

Photo credit: Mark Kitaoka and Tracy Martin

Humor Abuse: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼!

This reviewer gets to live in a city where the quality of solo performance is probably the best in the nation. So when a new artist appears with a new show -- regardless of the artist's pedigree -- we are going to judge him against the brilliance of Charlie Varon, Mike Daisey, Ann Randolph, Geoff and Dan Hoyle, Marga Gomez and many others.

Move over, you guys, there's a new clown in town. Lorenzo Pisoni's "Humor Abuse," which plays through February 5 at A.C.T. Theatre, is brilliant. His training, since age two, has been as a circus clown, but this is not Bozo at Ringling Brothers. Pisoni's clowning is contained within a deeply rewarding and inspirational story, which is the story of his life, up to here. And for San Francisco, he radiates a sense of the way things used to be, in the '70s and '80s, when the guerrilla theater of his family performance unit, The Pickle Family Circus, was still alive and prospering.

With the Pickles, Pisoni's father and mentor Larry was not only Lorenzo Pickle on stage but at home with his family too. He drove Lorenzo to learn tricks flawlessly. As a result, the meat and potatoes of "Humor Abuse" are Lorenzo's stunts. Two segments in particular stand out -- the stairway and the ladder. Imagine trying to climb a ladder wearing scuba diving flippers -- and then figuring out how to dive from the top of the ladder into an empty hat. Can't do it, can ya?

This is the kind of show where the artist warns the audience that he is not funny, but no one is listening because they're laughing so hard they keep banging their chins against the seat in front of them.

You'll love the music too -- circus music with a heart, written by Randy Craig -- as well as the old family photos which serve to ground the show in reality. "Humor Abuse" is the perfect length, one long act with no intermission, and takes less than an hour and a half. When Lorenzo is finished you're exhausted.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼!

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Humor Abuse" its highest award: Five Stars. Imagine the old carnival where you bang a sledge hammer on a scale and propel a ball upwards towards a red metal bell which will chime if you've swung hard enough. They've knocked this one off the charts. For writing (Pisoni and Erica Schmidt), directing (Schmidt), staging (Hannah Cohen), music (Bart Fasbender with original music by Randy Craig), and performance -- plus a big splash of old fashioned feel-good-ness, we tip our little red hat and say thanks for this one.

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"Humor Abuse"

A.C.T. Theater

415 Geary Street, San Francisco

Through Feb. 5

$10-$85

"Food Stories: Pleasure is Pleasure" ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

Terrific theater is terrific theater. The extra dimension you get with Word For Word productions is fun. In advance you know they are going to act out a short story or two by authors you know, including all the "he-said-she-said"s. You wonder just how they're going to stage their theatric approach to these literary gems.

The current production is called Food Stories: "Pleasure is Pleasure," and features stories by T.C. Boyle ("Sorry, Fugu") and Alice McDermott ("Enough"). "Sorry Fugu" goes first, and is longer and funnier, but "Enough," which plays after intermission, will stick to your ribs for days.

Everyone is a foodie in our town, and some of us are even critics, so the travails of Chef Albert in T.C. Boyle's story will seem familiar to us. Dreaded restaurant critic Willa Frank, chic, bitter and in love with her own critical adjectives, is able to wreck a restaurant's reputation with a single column. She is coming for her third and final dinner and, in her first two visits, has been singularly unimpressed with all of Albert's efforts to woo her favor. If an audience has ever rooted for an underdog, we are doing so now.

Soren Oliver is a brilliant, oversized Albert, but if he is the main course his side dishes are also fabulous: Molly Benson as Willa (and also the zonked-out Torrey), Gendell Hernandez in many roles, principally Willa's deadened dinner partner The Palate, Rudy Guerrero as the Fabulous Eduardo the waiter, and the wonderful Delia MacDougall whose Marie in "Fugu" will only be topped by her Young Woman in "Enough."

Intermission comes, and you are going to be hungry. Just sayin'.

We get Pat Silver as Older Woman in Alice McDermott's "Enough." This story could be titled The Saga of the Sofa. MacDougall and Silver are able to chart the entire life of a singularly interesting Irish woman -- love, loss, and of course her "troubles with the couch" -- in not much more than twenty minutes. John Fisher's direction could not be better.

The show's subtitle "Pleasure is Pleasure" seems to apply here to ice cream. You never really get enough. You can't get this stunning story's message out of your head. You want more ice cream.

This is Word For Word at its finest. Incidentally, author T.C. Boyle is speaking at the January 21 show -- though it costs extra for a ticket that night.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Food Stories: Pleasure is Pleasure" Four Exuberantly Happy Stars. If I knew Photo Shop better I would paint happy faces on them all. If you're feeling a bit peckish when you go in, you'll come out rubbing your belly with satisfaction.

We have heard that Z-SPace has done a lot of work upgrading the audio -- which is to say you can hear a lot better in the upper reaches of the grandstand-style seating now. Still, we haven't heard this ourselves yet and we recommend you sit as close to the stage as possible.

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"Food Stories: Pleasure is Pleasure"

Stories by T.C. Boyle ("Sorry, Fugu") and Alice McDermott (Enough")

Z Space Theater

450 Florida Street, San Francisco

Through February 5

$30-$55 (discounts available)

"Ghost Light" ☼ ☼ ☼

Judging from reading the reviews from Ashland of Jonathan Moscone and Tony Taccone's "Ghost Light," when it opened last summer at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, we expected something special. The reviewers loved it. (Admission: Moscone is Artistic Director of Cal Shakes and Taccone is Artistic Director of Berkeley Rep.)

The George Moscone/Harvey Milk/Dan White saga was in many ways the most quintessential San Francisco story of the last half of the Twentieth Century. Jon Moscone is the late mayor's son who was fourteen when his father was killed. So he has a window into this piece of history that only someone from his family could ever open. We have to say we wish he had written it, instead of directed it, and that Tony Taccone, a brilliant director himself, would have directed and not written. Because, for whatever reasons, especially in Act One, the show is in denial. It doesn't feel honest because it plays as camp. With such a historical and artistic pedigree, "Ghost Light" gives us a first hour which feels not only overacted but underwritten.

Contemporary Jonathan (Christopher Liam Moore) cannot keep a boy friend and is having trouble with Hamlet's ghost. The young Jonathan (Tyler James Myers) has been traumatized -- he walks through his scenes like a ghost himself. All the men are queens. The one woman (Robynn Rodriguez) is channeling Mary Ann Singleton and loves them all to death.

The ghost in "Ghost Light" appears to be memory. Jon Moscone's grandfather, Mayor Moscone's father, appears as both a terrifyingly fit ghost (Bill Geisslinger) who must be slain to release Jon from his clutches, and as some kind of celestial soldier (Peter Macon), in military dress uniform, whose job is to escort young Jon into his father's coffin and down into the underworld. Grandfather Moscone indeed was a prison guard at San Quentin. Though Moscone has said he never knew his grandfather, he figures in the story far more than the late Mayor.

By far, the most interesting sidelight of this story is Jon Moscone's feeling that Harvey Milk has hogged all the headlines and historical perspective from that horrendous date in 1978. George Moscone, a straight man who was willing to put his career and life on the line to advance progressive causes such as gay rights, has been largely forgotten. It is this memory of the late king, disguised as a ghost, that has haunted his son to this day.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Ghost Light" Three Stars. But if San Francisco history is your bag, you will be disappointed because this is metaphor, not reality. These are fictional characters, though they are based to a substantial degree on the director's life. There are many in-jokes about the theater and somewhat of a connection, though not completely realized, to Hamlet. The show runs two and a half hours, with one intermission, which feels like a lot, though considerably less than the four hour Hamlet.

It took courage to impugn, albeit slightly, the sainted memory of Harvey Milk. Jon Moscone and Tony Taccone have taken a risk here that they could have stepped around. Within this sentiment lies honesty. We could have used more.

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"Ghost Light"

Berkeley Repertory Theatre

Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison Street, Berkeley

Through February 19

$14.50 - $73

" Yes, Sweet Can" ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

We love "Yes, Sweet Can" more and more each time we see it. Although the show is more or less the same since our last review (July, 2009), it has more focus now and is funnier. If possible, the performers have gotten even better.

Each of the four + performers are virtuosi when it comes to performing their particular specialties, but they also have a lot fun performing as an ensemble. This is what we take home more than anything else: they love doing their show. It's infectious. As the night goes on, the audience whoops and hollers along with them.

The show is short -- good for today's U-Tube attention spans -- with each performer having maybe ten minutes for his or her own specialty, in addition to clowning around with the others. Kerri Kresinski swings and suspends herself from fabric...

...Matt White's push-broom dance routine just gets more and more astonishing each year...

...Beth Clarke convinces you she is going to fall off the slack rope -- but doesn't...

...and Natasha Kaluza has one of those faces you cannot take your eyes off. She is tall and graceful and very, very funny. She also happens to be able to do absolutely anything with a hula hoop.

So much fun. The fifth wheel, trumpeter and d.j. E.O. adds a very welcome touch of live music to the performance. There is more of this than previously, and we could use even more. All the music is great, but when E.O. plays along the show is soulful as well.

It's too bad that "Yes Sweet Can" always has such short runs. It's a perfect Christmas gift -- kids will love it, though it's not, per se, a children's show. It's just honest and fun. Everybody loves that.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Yes, Sweet Can" Four Stars, one for each performer/dancer/acrobat. The fact that they keep getting better each year bodes well for their future. Who is our favorite? It's hard to beat that dancing broom.

TIP: Buy the cheap seats. It's a very small theater and it doesn't matter where you sit.

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"Yes, Sweet Can"

Dance Mission Theater

3316 24th Street (at Mission Street)

Through January 1 (but there are two different shows. Check Mission Dance Theater calendar. There are also a few afternoon shows.)

$15-$65

"The Wild Bride" ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ! BANG BANG

We're not sure how you top this one. The Berkeley Rep production of Kneehigh's "The Wild Bride" has everything we expect from both companies at their best. Kneehigh's last production in the Bay Area was the spectacular "Brief Encounter" at A.C.T., and "The Wild Bride" is every bit as irreverent and mode-bursting. It's a brilliant show.

What's the best part? Perhaps it's that the six person cast can all act, sing, play numerous musical instruments, dance and do acrobatics. (We'll bet you suspected, but never knew for sure until now, that the devil is actually a drummer.)

Perhaps it's the performances themselves. As The Girl, Audrey Brisson is almost frighteningly beautiful and innocent.

OK, so she has a little problem in this picture, what with the bloody hands and all the mud, but you can trust us here. Later in Act one, as she grows into The Wild, her part is taken over by Patrycja Kujawska, who confronts the devil with an electric violin solo that seems to have been cloned from "The Devil Went Down to Georgia."

In Act Two Eva Magyar takes over, as The Woman. She is the ballerina. It is her confrontation with the devil that gives us the ending we were hoping for.

In the meantime, Stuart Goodwin plays two terrific parts, as The Girl's Father and then The Prince.

(Hey, Diddle-dee-dee, an actor's life for me!") Stu Goodwin seems to have a great time on stage.

Ian Ross (the Musician) performs on every instrument in the book, sometimes two at a time.

But The Devil himself, played by Stuart McLoughlin (who played the candy vendor in "Brief Encounter"), is as evil as evil can be, while also perhaps the most virtuosic of the performers. We want him to fail miserably, but we also want him to keep mashing that upright bass.

It is a very nice touch that McLoughlin, as the Devil, is so tall, and Brisson is so short, that we fear for her safety the moment we see them together. On his knees, The Devil can stare straight into The Girl's eyes.

For this reviewer, though, the best part of "The Wild Bride" is that the story, if simplistic, has enough meat on it to keep us interested, while allowing our brains to disengage for the evening and pay attention to the shenanigans of this outrageous cast of performers.

It's a short run -- only until New Year's Day. Berkeley Rep has saved the best for last.

(RATINGS PREPARTY)

We know we have never done this before, but The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division is having a lot of trouble rating this show. It could be a Five Star Show. It may be the finest thing we've seen all year, but we also have an Archive Button. We notice that we gave "Brief Encounter" FOUR Stars and FOUR BANGLES OF PRAISE! And Brief Encounter had Noel Coward songs. Stu Barker and Carl Grose's songs in "Wild Bride" are good, but not all that memorable (why are Englishmen always so attracted to that Robert Johnson crossroads story?), though the cast sings the, umm, Hell out of them.

All right, envelopes, please, ladies and gentlemen.

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RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ! BANG BANG

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "The Wild Bride" Four Stars with an Exclamation Point and Two BANGLES OF PRAISE. Truly, the only thing stopping this show from being a five star show is the quality of the songs themselves, and only in comparison to "Brief Encounter." How silly is that? Still.

This is nonetheless a spectacular rating for a spectacular evening at the theater (the reason for the Exclamation Point). Director Emma Rice earns one BANGLE herself for somehow keeping this giant circus in motion. The other is for Stuart Goodwin. Not only does he make us laugh as the Prince while understanding his dilemma as The Father, but he also gets off the best line in the show. It has to do with the Royal Pair. I mean Royal Pears. You'll understand later why it rates its own BANGLE OF PRAISE.

Don't miss "The Wild Bride." Or we're gonna git'cha.

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"The Wild Bride"

Berkeley Repertory Company

2025 Addison Street, Berkeley

EXTENDED Through January 22, 2012

$14-$73

"A Secret Garden" ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

"A Secret Garden" was first published in 1911 by Francis Hodgson Burnett and set in Yorkshire around 1906. In Robert Kelley's TheatreWorks production we get all the trappings of a 'holiday show' -- wealthy Englishmen, innocent children, good people who are good and bad people who are bad. Dear Mom has died and Sad Dad is trying to cope. But don't let that deter you for there is a great deal more to this production.

The welcome difference here is that the music, especially in Act One, is interesting and involving (it doesn't hurt that we get to hear it played live by an excellent orchestra). Every member of the cast can really sing. Little Mary (played by sixth-grader Angelina Wahler) has a voice that matches her grown-up stage presence, while Joe Cassidy as good Uncle Archie, Noel Anthony as conniving Uncle Neville, and Courtney Stokes as Martha the chambermaid all perform stereotypical parts with a great deal of heart, not to mention enormous voice boxes.

The show stealer, however, is the side character Dickon, played by Alex Brightman, who seems to be channeling Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. We wish he were on stage more.

The show has pedigree. Burnett's original children's story was a tremendous hit in England and America when it first appeared. She was already renowned for her extremely successful "Little Lord Fauntleroy" (1886) and "The Little Princess" (1905). "A Secret Garden" became a Broadway musical in 1991, adapted for the stage with book and lyrics by Marsha Norman and music by Luci Simon (Carly's older sister).

RATINGS ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "A Secret Garden" Three Stars with a BANGLE OF PRAISE. It is certainly not overstuffed holiday turkey, you get excellent trimmings besides. If there is one problem it is that the vaguely Irish-Scottish sameness of Luci Simon's music tends to wear thin halfway through Act Two. Still, the marvelous "In Lily's Eyes," sung in duet by Anthony and Cassidy, is a magnificent song and deserving of the BANGLE all by itself.

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"A Secret Garden"

The Lucie Stern Theatre

1305 Middlewood Road, Palo Alto

Through Dec 31

$19 (student) - $71

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Photos by M. Kitaoka and T. Martin