SF Mime Troupe: American Dreams: ★ ★ ★

Michael Gene Sullivan is fabulous. We knew he could write, but who knew he could sing? And as he says each year after every show, the Mime Troupe is dedicated as ever to smashing capitalism one musical at a time. 

Every political season gives us a harvest of new lampoonable fruit. 2024's “American Dreams," starring Sullivan, Andre Amarotico, Mikki Johnson and Lizzie Calogero, deals with censorship in Academia and the politics around campus protests. It is timely and, as always, both funny and ludicrous.

This year's music and lyrics are by Daniel Savio. We love “We’re Gonna Make America Great Again, Again,” though it brings our fears about The Big Orange right up to the surface.

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It’s hard to imagine summer in San Francisco without sitting in the park to watch the Mime Troupe, surrounded by the same carnival atmosphere and, more or less, the same audience, aging a bit more each season, but losing nothing in enthusiasm. The shows are free but the bucket gets passed at the end, proving that money still talks, even while making us laugh about it.

RATINGS ★ ★ ★

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division grants THREE STARS to "American Dreams," for writing, performance and music. We would also like to thank the Troupe for Chancellor Quisling. We’re old enough to get that joke. 

The San Francisco Mime Troupe: “American Dreams”

Various parks and venues around the Bay Area. 

See SFMT.org for locations and times

Through Sep. 8

FREE (Donations Accepted)

Evita:★★★

 

We throughly enjoyed San Francisco Playhouse's new production of Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice's "Evita." Amazingly, this show premiered back in 1978. Anyone familiar with politics then and now will see an obvious similarity between the Trumpies of today and the Peronistas of the 1950s. And we know how that one turned out.

There have always been problems with the score to Evita, all the Tonys notwithstanding. As in many ALW shows, we get one song to hum, one to recall, and the others are basically complex melodies designed to fit Rice's lyrics. LOTS of words. But it all hangs together when high standards are met for acting, singing and dancing. In this production, Nicole Helfer's choreography is a delight. The dancers come right at us in the small theater and we love it.

Sophia Alawi plays Evita with energy but she also lets us into the inner drive of this extraordinary woman. Alawi can sing. As for Juan Perón, played by Peter Gregus, he's got a great chin. And in real life, some of Colonel Perón's moves didn't quite hit the note either.

Alex Rodriguez plays Che, the smug, doubting narrator who is not swept up in the mania about Evita. He has the most complex role in the show. 

By this time, "Evita" is an Old Chestnut musical. One goes to see Old Chestnuts to be swept up in the grandeur of a Broadway musical. "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" is enough to keep us in our seats to watch Evita become the revered icon she still is in her home country, seventy years after her death, as she sings: 

"They Need to Adore Me

To Christian Dior Me"

Knowing history, we are also aware that for this snakebite land, she was as good as they were going to get. 

RATINGS  ★★★

The San Francisco Theater Blog Old Chestnut Division grants Three Stars to San Francisco Playhouse's "Evita." It's a night that will make you feel confident about the future of the American musical in San Francisco.

"Evita"

San Francisco Playhouse

450 Post St.

2d Floor of Kensington Park Hotel

Through Sept. 7, 2024

$30-$125

"Who's Dead McCarthy" ★ ★ ★ ★

Kevin Barry stories always have humor and depth. In Word For Word's production of "Who's Dead McCarthy" we get an innovative production, perfect direction and a first-rate cast to pull it off -- you can't ask much more from a night of theater. The stories are more polished now than they were when we first saw an unstaged reading last spring. In addition to "McCarthy" and "The Wintersongs," which we saw then, we also get "The Coast of Leitrim," which occupies the evening's entire first act. In all three, an individual member of the ensemble stands out.

Ryan Tasker (above left) is Seamus Ferris in "Leitrim," a young man with little ambition and less self-confidence, who meets his true love working behind the counter in a coffee bar. Her name is Katherine. She is Polish and "knows her way around a head of cabbage," but he is Irish, expecting doom at every turn. The distance between them seems impossibly great. But have faith. Ryan Tasker was born to play Seamus. I promise you will love the ending.

Speaking of which: If anyone ever asks you how to write the last line to a story, refer them to Kevin Barry.

Stephanie Hunt is a magnificent old lady on a train in "Wintersongs." As loony as her dialogue is ("I lost a kidney in 1988"), her facial expressions are even better. Ailbhe Doherty plays Sarah, the young girl unfortunate enough to be stuck in the seat next to the old lady, but not wishing to be rude by moving. There is a twist. Things are not exactly what they seem. 

And in the title piece, John Flanagan's smile and body language warm us to the inner workings of the village doomsayer: Con McCarthy, the man who knows everyone in the village who has died and exactly how it happened. His need to tell everyone else about it has them crossing the street when they see him coming.  Flanagan (below, left), Hunt and Tasker could easily win awards for their roles in these laugh-out-loud and heart-warming stories. 

RATINGS:★★★★ 

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division grants "Who's Dead McCarthy" Four Stars. Each actor in the ensemble deserves special recognition. We understand them, we root for them, we love them. Best of all, we get to leave the theater smiling about Seamus and Katherine and the weird way the world works. 

"Who's Dead McCarthy"

Z Space-Below Theater

450 Florida Street

Through July 21, 2024

$40-$65