SF Theater Blog

"Becky Shaw" ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

2012-01-29T09:51:00.000-08:00

"F**k you, Mom!" she screams into the phone, then begs: "Call me!" Liz Sklar is the tormented thirty-something Suzanna Slater (seen on left, above) who is trying to deal with her difficult mom, also named Suzanna (Lorrie Holt) and her adopted brother Max (Brian Robert Burns), for whom she has developed, to say the least, conflicted emotions.

It's all complicated, but comprehensible, until the moment Becky Shaw walks in the door. Played brilliantly by Lauren English, Becky is the yin to everyone else's yang. She is working class, they are intellectuals. She is working hard to please, they are interested only in themselves. Most of all, Becky's world is basically invisible to these upwardly-mobile young professionals.

This seems to be at least part of playwright Gina Gionfriddo's premise -- the half-hidden American class struggle. But as Act One ends, we realize that simple-girl Becky is not quite so simple. She knows something the rest of these people do not.

Act Two is that rarity in modern theater: the superior Act Two that follows a wonderful Act One. Now we get to see Becky in full force, as she begins to chase her ultimate goal: Max. The beauty of Gina Gionfriddo's writing is when we get to the end, everything finally makes perfect sense.

We can quibble about Amy Glazer's direction and Ewa Muszynska's set -- but it may be that they have no choice, given a relatively small stage. There is a lot of scene changing where the action slows to a halt as they refit the stage behind an actor who is in freeze mode. We don't know how you speed that up -- but in the meantime, Steve Schoenbeck's sound design helps guide us through the pauses.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Becky Shaw" Three Stars with a BANGLE of PRAISE. Acting and production are excellent but the best part is Gionfriddo's writing. You are carried along by the action without realizing where you're going. It is not a short play, but feels like it.

The BANGLE is for Lauren English. Without her this is another rather precious thirty-something psychodrama. But with her we have to reorder our priorities -- who exactly are we rooting for here? The answer is we are rooting for ourselves -- that our best parts might have a chance against our demons.

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"Becky Shaw"

San Francisco Playhouse

533 Sutter Street, San Francisco

Through March 10, 2012

$40-$70

"The Pitmen Painters" ☼ ☼ ☼

2012-01-25T13:12:00.000-08:00

"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: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼!

2012-01-20T17:35:00.001-08:00

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" ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

2012-01-16T09:17:00.000-08:00

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" ☼ ☼ ☼

2012-01-12T09:45:00.000-08:00

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" ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

2011-12-20T11:31:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-08T09:26:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-05T09:14:00.000-08:00

"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

"I Didn't Sign Up For This" ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

2011-12-02T15:16:00.000-08:00

The promise that we felt with Julia Jackson's then-incomplete "I Didn't Sign Up For This," when we saw it back in April, has been excitingly fulfilled. The show, which relates the story of a female couple trying to adopt a baby, features the very talented Jackson playing many characters, including herself, her partner, herself as a small child, people from the adoption agency, the birth mom, the birth mom's mom, the birth mom's boy friend, a therapist, a social worker...and we know we've forgotten more than a few.

She does it all with body language and vocal inflection. Some of her set pieces are of two different characters interacting with each other. She moves in and out of character with no more than a turn of her head or a very minimal light cue. Props: one folding chair.

And what a story. $41,000 for a white baby, $15,000 for a black baby. Trina, the birth mom, who is trying to kick alcohol while Clarence, the baby's father is doing his best to get away from crack. The story kicks you in the gut and then makes it all better with a belly laugh. But none of this would be possible without a performance as strong as Julia Jackson's.

Sadly, the show is done for the year. Jackson hopes for a long run in April, and when that happens we will urge you to run to see it.

RATINGS ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Julia Jackson's "I Didn't Sign Up For This" Four Stars. In a city of standout solo performers, Jackson can hang with any of them. Imagine a combination of Sara Felder and Ann Randolph -- and you come close. She is another of the fine performers honing their craft with W. Kamau Bell at the Solo Performance Workshop. We're sure we'll be seeing "I Didn't Sign Up For This" in the future, perhaps in a larger venue.

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Julia Jackson: "I Didn't Sign Up For This"

Stage Werx Theatre

(NEW ADDRESS:) 446 Valencia Street between 15th and 16th Streets, San Francisco

RUN COMPLETED

"The Soldier's Tale" ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

2011-11-19T13:36:00.000-08:00

When you say Igor Stravinsky you are talking about one of the musical giants of the 20th Century. Stravinsky wrote the music for "The Soldier's Tale" in 1918, as soldiers across Europe were wandering home to villages whose lives had been changed forever. Stravinsky was broke, since the Russian Revolution had removed his royal patronage and large productions were no longer financially feasible. "The Soldier's Tale," written with Swiss librettist C.F. Ramuz, was meant to be a small, traveling show that could be taken around the continent. Meant to reach large audiences, it is a simple story of a soldier who sells his soul to the devil -- in this case, the trade is his violin for her book of economic prognostications.

Played by the quartet Earplay, led by Mary Chun, Stravinsky's score is rhythmically complex and modernistic. It could have been written today. Or tomorrow. The acting is excellent as well. Narrator L. Peter Callender, Devil Joan Mankin and, especially, Puppeteer, Daughter of the King and co- Director of the show Muriel Maffre, bring this fable to life.

If there is one complaint, it is that the translation of Ramuz's book, by Donald Pippin, in the hands of co-directors Maffre and Tom Ross, make our narrator sound like he is speaking to small children. Perhaps the story did not feel simplistic in 1918, or in its original French. But in 2011 this may be an issue.

The story is intriguing, the acting off-beat and excellent and Stravinsky's music brings it to another level. Do not believe the advertising: there is nothing remotely anti-war about this production. It is the story of a puppet and his unsuccessful struggle against his Devil. There are no conclusions offered nor any to be gathered.

"The Soldier's Tale" feels like a Christmas show and what do you know: it runs through December 18. All ages will love it, including children perhaps ten and older. There are no bad seats at the Aurora.

RATINGS ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "The Soldier's Tale" Three Stars with a BANGLE of PRAISE. In truth, you go to hear Earplay (piano, percussion, violin, clarinet) perform this wonderful music. The story is secondary to the music -- perhaps this is the way Stravinsky meant it to be.

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"The Soldier's Tale"

The Aurora Theatre

2081 Addison Street, Berkeley

Through Dec. 18

$30-$48

"Fela" ☼ ☼ ☼ baub

2011-11-17T11:34:00.000-08:00

How do you rate this show? Act One is tremendous, filled with intoxicating and nonstop music, actors and dancers at the top of their game, and costumes and choreography that make you think about the great stage musicals (and concerts) you have seen. The band is smoking! They play for ten minutes before the lights even go down.

Act One is all about the legendary Nigerian superstar Fela Anikulapo-Kuti (played superbly by Sahr Ngaujah).

But in Act Two Fela so loves his mother that he gives her his only begotten musical. In a magical-realism segment that makes you think that if this is Heaven you are definitely going to run outside and lie, cheat and maim just to avoid having to go there, Fela and his Mom do a set piece that will not die. It's a bun-squirmer. In Act One you couldn't sit down and in Act Two you don't dare stand up.

Chiseled and acrobatic Ngaujah as Fela is the show all by himself, though he has capable help in Melaine Marshall as Sandra, Ismael Kouyate as Ismael, Gelan Lambert as JK, Rasaan-Elijah "Talu" Green as Mustafa and Melanie Marshall as Fela's mother Funmilayo.

In Act One we are reminded how we felt when we saw the show in New York. It won three Tonys, but none of the big ones and none for music or acting. Our feeling then was that the stage was too big for this show. But here at the Curran, Fela is intimate, the way he would have been in his own Shrine Club in Lagos. You see him, you feel him and he makes you understand the soul of his music. The first part of Act One, where he explains the origins of the sound he came to embody, manages to be intimate and huge at the same time. The politics of his time make his music feel inevitable. At Intermission we can't wait for Act Two.

In Act Two we realize this is a small stage, there are too many people on it and they have to go through too many hi-jinks to keep themselves in motion, especially with Mama up in Heaven and Fela on a white ladder trying to reach up to her. After "Zombie," the huge worldwide mega-hit that occurs here as Song 3 in Act Two, Fela's part in the show is effectively over. It's all Melanie Marshall from that point on and -- well, the show isn't really about her, is it?

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ baub

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division had an emergency meeting about how to rate this show. Act One truly deserves Four Stars at a minimum, while Act Two would gather perhaps One for "Zombie" and another for "Water No Get Enemy." So this averages out to Three Stars. Three Stars means go see the show.

But tickets are expensive and you must sit in the middle because the sound towers block sight lines for anyone sitting on the sides -- you can't even read the necessary translations which are projected behind the actors so the Nigerian patois can be understood.

The bauble of shame is for the last half of Act Two. If you do not love Fela's mother as much as he did, all the Orishas in the world cannot make you care.

If you want to see fabulous music and understand the life of a world music icon, go see "Fela." Certainly don't miss the standout Act One. What you do after Intermission is up to you.

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"Fela"

The Curran Theater

445 Geary Street, San Francisco

Through December 11

$50-$200

"Annapurna" ☼ ☼ ☼ !

2011-11-11T09:24:00.000-08:00

The more you think about Sharr White's "Annapurna," the more holes open up in the script. But at the time, as you watch the show unfold in front of you, you cannot help but be swept along by the strong sensual attraction between the two characters, as well as the slow pulling back of a disquieting curtain of mystery.

Rod Gnapp plays Ulysses, the anti-hero, a role that Gnapp seems to embrace show after show. Here he is the dissolute poet who has gotten sober after a rocky ten year marriage to Emma (Denise Cormier). We find out that she has taken their then-five year old son Sam and walked out on Ulysses after a particularly stormy night of drinking. Ulysses has eventually disappeared into the Rockies, to live in a squalid trailer community of CDS's (Can't Do Shits).

Emma has tracked him down as the play opens.

"Holy crap," says Ulysses, standing practically naked in his kitchen except for a loin cloth and a backpack that holds his oxygen tank.

"I know," says Emma, and the story begins.

Nobody can remember what happened on the night of their final breakup. Ulysses was too drunk, Emma was at the store and Sam, who may have borne the brunt of Ulysses's drunken rage, was only five at the time and cannot remember either.

We never see Sam on stage, but we come to learn he has a hearing disability. We also learn he is now in his twenties and is determined to come find his father.

Not knowing what happened to his wife and child after they disappeared that night has haunted Ulysses. Not understanding how Ulysses could have done whatever he did, has consumed Emma. In addition, Ulysses appears to be dying from emphysema and lung cancer, and Sam may arrive at any moment. There appears to be only one key that can unlock the box in which both Emma and Ulysses have found themselves: his poetry.

Yes, that's right, poetry, and here is where the story begins to ring false. Emma seems to love Ulysses's poems at least as much as she loves him. When he speaks Emma shies away. But when he recites his poetry she reverts to the fawning young student she was when they met. Emma has been around the block since then so this shedding of one persona for another seems unnatural, in the same hard-to-believe way that Ulysses and his dazzling wit seem unfazed by his mortal illness, except for an occasional nip on his inhaler.

But Annapurna grabs you. You can't take your eyes off the two ex-lovers, continually returning to take the measure of each other. In the end, with all its mystery, we are watching the best kind of love story: hot, doomed and captivating.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ !

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards division awards "Annapurna" Three Stars with an Exclamation Point! Loretta Greco's direction gives the story pacing, which isn't easy to do with only two actors and a thickly dramatic script. Gnapp and Cormier are both utterly believable, even when saddled with the rather hackneyed 'Ivy League Girl' and 'Cowboy Poet' roles. The exclamation point is a thank you to Andrew Boyce for his intriguing (but hard to clean up) set and to Jake Rodriguez for music that keeps us on edge. This is a World Premiere. The show will only get better.

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"Annapurna"

The Magic Theatre

Fort Mason, Building D, San Francisco

Through December 4

$45-$65

"Honey Brown Eyes" ☼ ☼ ☼

2011-10-29T14:35:00.000-07:00

It's in your face for sure -- war is like that. We're talking about the civil war in Bosnia in 1991, where the six characters in Stefanie Zadravec's "Honey Brown Eyes" intersect. Act One concerns Dragan (Nic Grelli), a Serbian paramilitary, Alma (Jennifer Stuckert), a Bosnian caught alone in her kitchen while attempting to hide her daughter from the rape and genocide on the streets below, and Branko (Cooper Carlson), a terrifying Serbian soldier. It is through Branko's aggressively evil nature that we understand that Dragan, who really only wants to play rock and roll, is in a difficult situation himself.

Poor Alma. She is the beautiful girl who Dragan and all his friends once called Honey Brown Eyes, back in the days when the boys were in a rock band and Alma's brother Denis (Chad Deverman) was the brilliant lead guitarist. In those days in Visegrad, everyone got along. But now the Serbs are murdering Muslims, music means nothing, the world has turned upside down and Zlata (either Madeleine Pauker or Rachel Share-Sapolsky), who is Alma's daughter, is hiding in the heating ducts.

In Act Two we meet Jovanka (Wanda McCaddon), the grandma who attempts to shield Denis from the Serbs.

Her Sarajevo kitchen appears to be the only safe zone in the universe. We also move to a split/stage format where two scenes are acted out simultaneously -- Dragan, Alma and Zlata on one side in Visegrad and Denis and Jovanka in Sarajevo on the other. The juxtaposition is effective, thanks to Kurt Landisman's lights which show us on which side of the small stage we are supposed to be concentrating.

Denis is a casualty of war already. He begs Jovanka to slit his throat. She, knowing she has survived one war and can make it through this one too, refuses.

Stefanie Zadravec and "Honey Brown Eyes" received a Helen Hayes award in 2009 for Best New Play or Musical. It is a riveting show, but it is also loud and intense. This may be one of those rare shows where you want to sit in the back. But don't miss it.

RATINGS ☼ ☼ ☼

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Honey Brown Eyes" Three Stars. Grelli and Stuckert grip us -- the girl trying to survive and the soldier himself caught up in a war not of his making. But what happens between Dragan and Alma is hard to fathom. And why does Denis choose to leave the safety of the kitchen? Perhaps this is the author's intention: war makes no sense. You just react, or, like Branko, end up watching Alf on a pilfered TV.

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"Honey Brown Eyes"

San Francisco Playhouse

533 Sutter Street, San Francisco

Through November 5

$30-$50

"Race" ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

2011-10-28T13:57:00.000-07:00

If you doubt that issues of race permeate our lives, the first fifteen minutes of David Mamet's excellent "Race" should change your mind. The show opened on Broadway in a two act version in 2009, but has been trimmed with excellent results to an 85 minute one act in the current ACT production. It is precise and crisp, with perfect casting and issues that you will revisit for days afterwards.

Jack Lawson (Anthony Fusco, on left above) and Henry Brown (Chris Butler) are law partners. They smell a big case when Charles Strickland walks in their door, asking for representation in a case where he has been accused of the rape of a black woman in a hotel.

Strickland (Kevin O'Rourke) looks like Mitt Romney. He is everything a jury will dislike: rich, aloof, entitled and, worst of all, white. He appears to be guilty, though he proclaims innocence, something the experienced lawyers know has nothing to do with conviction or acquittal. The legal system is about only three things, says Lawson: "hatred, fear and envy." A jury will automatically hate and fear their wealthy client.

A third lawyer in the firm is Susan (Susan Heyward), whose position becomes more and more convoluted as time goes on. She is an attorney, but she is also a black woman who is convinced Strickland is guilty. She knows in her heart that due to his influence her client will probably walk. This puts her in an uncomfortable situation.

Mamet's dialogue is brilliant and incisive. It is hard to know which pillar of American values is being hit hardest -- the law, sex, race, privilege or just plain humanity. All people are stupid and prone to blindness, Lawson says. Jews feel guilt. Blacks feel shame. It's all about feelings of inferiority or guilt about superiority. The lawyer's job is to simply tell a better story to the jury than the other lawyer does.

Whatever David Mamet is feeling these days, we are sure of one thing: we wouldn't want to be his lawyer.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Divison awards "Race" Four Stars. It is brilliant theater -- the cast (especially Butler and Fusco), Irene Lewis's flawless direction and Chris Barreca's law office set (another of those A.C.T. sets that makes you smile in anticipation the second you turn the corner and see the stage) couldn't be much better. Most of all, Mamet's plot leads us towards an ending we do not expect, while at the same time forcing us to face uncomfortable truths about ourselves and our world.

It is interesting to this reviewer, and a point to consider for a perspective audience, that many reviewers across the country have not been enthusiastic about this show. It is hard to see how that could be, unless possibly the subject matter -- race, especially -- is just too uncomfortable. Perhaps lines like this one -- when Henry reminds Jack that a preacher's testimony will not be able to be impeached because "white clergymen are allowed to say fuck, nigger and bitch in one sentence" -- are too much for us still.

Don't miss "Race." Maybe you'll figure out who's winning.

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"Race"

A.C.T. Theater

415 Geary Street, San Francisco

Through Nov. 13

$10-$85

"Hair" ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

2011-10-27T10:03:00.000-07:00

Broadway has always seen its purpose as entertainment, entertainment, entertainment. When 'Hair' hit the big stage in 1968 (after opening at Joe Papp's off-Broadway Public Theater a year earlier) it caused an uproar. Nudity! Social issues! Race! Gender! What will the neighbors think!

The neighbors loved it. Gerome Ragni, James Rado and Galt MacDermot's little show grew to become a time piece and the icon of an age, encapsulating an era when speaking these issues aloud was still unheard of. It didn't hurt to have several show songs become world-wide smash hits. Still today, when we hear "Good Morning Starshine" and "Aquarius," our hearts are filled with peace and light. "Aquarius" is one of the best musical opening numbers we have ever seen.

What is surprising today is how subversive this show was and is. Songs like "Black Boys" and "White Boys," as well as "Sodomy" and "Hashish" would probably not be seen on a stage now, and the PC police would surely temper the constant sex and psychedelia references. In 2011 you would be unlikely to hear "we've got the white man sending the black man to fight the yellow man so we can defend land stolen from the red man" unless it were a toss-off joke in a sit-com.

And of course, you can't escape looking at the political message of 1967 -- cops beating kids over the head as they protested the war in Vietnam -- contrasted with today -- cops beating kids over the head as they protest America's economic inequities. The fact that so little has changed makes you squirm a little in your seat as you watch 'Hair' 40-some years after it was written.

This current production of "Hair" has two very strong moments: the beginning and the end. "Aquarius" opens and the surprising and touching "Let the Sun Shine In," which closes the show, with the actors marching up the aisles as we see the terrible detritus of what remains on the stage -- still leaves the audience aghast. These are beautiful sections, worthy of the best of Broadway.

Sadly, the rest of the show drags a bit. There are forty musical numbers listed in the playbill, but most are short, almost like a variety show where every actor gets to sing a chorus of his favorite song, and you can't easily understand the convoluted lyrics on most of them -- especially when the ensemble is singing. The stage at the Golden Gate really is too small for all these people, and the miking makes it next to impossible to pick out who is singing.

The band is terrific and there are more than the two standout songs: "My Conviction" and "Hare Krishna" in Act one and "What a Piece of Work is Man" and "Good Morning Starshine" in Act Two stand the test of time.

From the national company, Sheila (Sara King) makes us sit up and pay attention every time she sings. The others are good...but not little man jumping off his chair. It is not their fault -- this is a show about the power of the group, not the leadership of a few. Sound familiar?

RATINGS ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards 'Hair' Three Stars with a BANGLE OF PRAISE. One star is for the opening, one for the closing and one for all the color. The BANGLE is for hiring that great ten piece band (five horns! Hallelujah!) and employing all those tie-dyers. As a legitimate Broadway event, 'Hair' stands up after several decades, and proves that a few beautiful songs can transcend the aging process.

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"Hair"

The Golden Gate Theater

Market Street at Golden Gate Avenue, San Francisco

Through November 20

$31-$95

Word for Word: Two Short Stories By Siobhan Fallon: STAGED READING ONLY

2011-10-26T11:32:00.000-07:00

On Monday night, October 24, Word for Word brought six excellent actors to Z Space to do a staged reading of two stories from Siobhan Fallon's "You Know When the Men Are Gone." The idea is to try the stories out in front of a live audience and then get feedback as to whether or not to take these stories into full Word for Word production.

For our money, the answer is a resounding YES. Fallon's stories about vets returning from Iraq, written from the perspective of a writer married to an Army Major and currently living in Amman, Jordan, are heart-rending and theatrical. We hope we get to see more.

RATINGS

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division says YES, PLEASE. And also: Maggie Rastetter was a standout in story two.

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"Word for Word Staged Reading of Siobhan Fallon's "You Know When the Men Are Gone"

Z Space

450 Florida Street, San Francisco

ENGAGEMENT PASSED. NO PHOTOS OR TICKETS AVAILABLE

Don Reed: "The Kipling Hotel" ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

2011-10-23T10:58:00.000-07:00

Whether he's a young waiter serving breakfast to the elderly, or a developmentally challenged friend in a bar, or his uncle in prison, or E.T., or dozens of other characters whose identity he assumes during his new show "The Kipling Hotel," Don Reed crawls into the faces of each character and becomes them. His own face must be made out of silly putty.

As part of the autobiographical arc that began with Reed's previous solo show "East Fourteenth Street," the Oakland native takes us through his beginnings in show business, starting with his acceptance into UCLA on a partial scholarship ("what partial scholarship means is 'not enough f___ing money"), through his attempts to find a place to live (ending up with his brother's friend T ("a tall, black squirrel on coke"), and into his discovery of a live-in job at the retirement hotel that is the title of the show. The elderly residents of the hotel, as well as the staff, become Reed's principle characters.

Got to love his boss with the flip curl.

The show is brand new and is bound to change a lot -- though all of the bits are funny, there is a little too much reliance on partying right now. His reflections at the end seem a bit forced after all that, but wouldn't if they were mixed in more organically with the story.

Reed flows in and out of character with a rub of his shaved head. His impressions are so effective that we stay with them longer than he does. If he didn't do the rub to show us he had left the previous character we might not realize it. We loved Michael Jackson's shades and the yellow Opal that wouldn't go into reverse.

Right now the show is very funny with not a lot of depth, but like George, one of the hotel residents, said to Reed: "you're a mensch." He is. It's all there, he's just got to put it all together. Nobody else can write lines like:

"Ungawa! Black powa! Yo mama didn't take no showa!"

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards Don Reed's "The Kipling Hotel" Three Stars with a BANGLE OF PRAISE for E.T. How DO you make your face do that?

We predict that this will be a four star show very soon. Right now it's a fun night at the theater and you walk out laughing and repeating the jokes.

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Don Reed: "The Kipling Hotel"

The Marsh

1062 Valencia Street, San Francisco

EXTENDED Through Dec 18

$20-$50

"How to Write a New Book for the Bible" ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

2011-10-22T23:32:00.000-07:00

This reviewer has an elderly mother in declining health. Many of the issues in Bill Cain’s “How To Write a New Book for the Bible” hit home, especially as concerns the relationship of the mom, Mary (Linda Gehringer) with her younger son, thirtiesh Bill (Tyler Pierce), who has moved back home to care for her. Bill is a priest, but he is a son first. With all his theological underpinnings, Mom exasperates him. And when she says “it seems a shame to have gone through all this pain and not to have gotten better,” Bill and the rest of us all know exactly what she means. Life’s a bitch and then it’s over.

The four-person cast is excellent. Linda Gehringer steals the show, alternating seamlessly between the pain-ridden, aging woman and the younger wife and mother. Pierce is as sincere as his brother Paul (Aaron Blakely) is aloof. Leo Marks plays several key roles, including the dad and various doctors. Director Kent Nicholson moves the actors around the stage cleverly – props fall from the sky, lights pop up from the floor and the cast keeps the action moving forward without a hitch.

We love the illustrations of Mary and Pete's early years -- in many ways the backstory is as interesting as the current one.

Genius? Maybe not. It’s touching, but not particularly edifying. We know very little about Bill -- his explanation that he became a priest to take care of his functional family doesn’t make a lot of sense. Their are holes in the story that the author attempts to fill by philosophy which feel an awful lot like sermons. As in: here are my parents. They were happy. I believe this makes God happy.

But you never lose interest. Mom’s going to die – we know that already, from what Billy says early in Act 1 – and we wait to see exactly how. In the end, like she has done throughout her life, she makes out a list and executes it:

1) Get Billy Out of the House.

2) Get Paul Home.

3) Die.

Curtain.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards “How To Write a New Book for the Bible” Three Stars with a Bangle of Praise for Linda Gehringer’s ability to distill her lines into her facial expressions. She is a complex actor playing a complex role – it’s easy to see why Billy loves his mom as much as he does.

The biblical overtones to the story are the weak link. The story either doesn’t need them or needs more of them. We never do really get what the new book of the bible is or what it says or what its purpose would be. We’d like to know, or just call the show "Mom."

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“How to Write a New Book for the Bible”

Berkeley Rep, Thrust Stage

2025 Addison Street, Berkeley

Through November 20

$14.50-$73

Marga Gomez "Not Getting Any Younger" ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

2011-09-16T09:33:00.000-07:00

Marga Gomez may not be getting any younger but her funny bone is stronger than ever. In her new one-woman show "Not Getting Any Younger," Gomez has the audience in hysterics with her takes on salesgirls who say "uh huh" instead of "you're welcome," why she pays extra for soy milk in her latte at Starbucks ("my white friends made me lactose intolerant"), can't-miss dance moves at clubs and her vision of how men see women's conversation ("woman talking. Must sleep").

Best of all are her remembrances of her childhood, which seems to be a limitless resource for Gomez who has already done shows about her parents ("Los Big Names" and "Memory Tricks"). Taking the subway and bus to the old Freedomland in the Bronx turns into wonderful commentary on a bad business decision, as well as a terrific story about her Mom winning the Chubby Chucker twist contest.

The show is perhaps a little long, not because it isn't always funny, but because there are so many great endings. You figure she can't keep going -- but, sure enough, she's off into another set of stories.

Our favorite bit was Marga's description of going to her childhood friend Lisa's birthday parties, where the chaperone was Lisa's father, who had been kicked out of the Marines for being too aggressive. It's this same Lisa whose idea to torment old people leads to Marga's classic Old People Helper club, which might have done better if it didn't sound like Hamburger Helper. The gags just keep on coming and we can't get enough Marga Gomez.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Not Getting Any Younger" Three Stars with a BANGLE of PRAISE. Solo performers have to make us believe each character they create, but they also have to make us love them when they're playing themselves. Because Marga makes us laugh so much we love it when she plays her tormenters -- like the old lady with the pot of water or all the schoolkids in Starbucks. Most of all, though, and the recipient of the BANGLE, is Máma Gomez. Marga's mom steals the show at Freedomland and gives us a vision we will always remember, every time we hear "Let's Twist Again."

Marga is still hiding from her criminal friend Lisa -- upstairs at the Marsh. It's a really small space, so get tickets quick and buy the cheapest ones. You laugh just as hard in Row Three.

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Marga Gomez "Not Getting Any Younger"

The Marsh

1062 Valencia Street, San Francisco

Thu-Sun EXTENDED THROUGH February 25

$15-$35 sliding scale.

"A Delicate Balance": ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

2011-09-11T09:19:00.000-07:00

You can't help but think of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" when you see the Aurora Theater's new production of the play Edward Albee wrote right after it: "A Delicate Balance." Whereas 'Virginia Woolf' deals with the deep fury of awful people trapped within an alcoholic nightmare, 'Delicate Balance' presents more sublimated anger, along with a little farce to underscore each character's hidden frustration.

What astonishing writing and acting! More than two hours of stage time fly by in an instant. It's terrific theater, and the two short intermissions allow us to collect our thoughts before diving back into the insanity.

The well-off suburban drawing room of Tobias and Agnes, with an empire sofa and coffee table, the familiar big brown Aurora easy chair in the corner for various characters to crumple into at various times, and of course the liquor cabinet, is where all the action takes place. Agnes (Kimberly King) opens the show musing about how she could very possibly lose her mind as she gets older, while her husband Tobias (Ken Grantham) half-listens. It seems incongruous for her to be concerned with such a morbid issue, but by the time the play ends, and she revisits her opening speech, we see this has been Albee's point: how do we keep our lives in balance, given our own personal insanities and fears of decline?

Agnes's sister, the drunkard Claire (Jamie Jones), has a twisted sisterly relationship with Agnes -- they hate each other -- but Claire is living in the house anyway. The three seem to have found their instrument of equilibrium -- booze -- that is, until Harry and Edna arrive. Harry (Charles Dean) and Edna (Anne Darragh) are best friends with Tobias and Agnes, but they have clearly gone off their rockers. For some unspoken reason Harry and Edna have become terrified to remain in their own home so they've just moved in with Tobias and Agnes, occupying the room of daughter Julia (Carrie Paff). No one asks why. No one asks anything. The problem is that Julia has just split up with her fourth husband and returned home to find her room occupied by Harry and Edna. No one really knows what is going on.

Albee chose the perfect title, though we don't realize it until Act Three. Acts One and Two present the seemingly insoluble neuroses of all the characters, as everyone waits for the solid Tobias to DO something. His aria-like monologue in Act Three, as he finally is able to express to Harry how he feels, albeit in tortured gasps, is worth the price of admission by itself. Only then do we see the lines drawn for a possible new balance in the future.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "A Delicate Balance" Four Stars, one for writing, one for Tom Ross's direction, one for acting and one all by itself for Kimberly King's Agnes. She gives us someone on one hand horrid to her child and overly concerned with what the neighbors might think, but on the other hand someone who has been deeply injured herself. In Albee's universe, where no one is willing to confront anything important, we have to find truth somewhere. We find it in Agnes. In the end, she is the delicate balance and Kimberly King makes it all possible.

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"A Delicate Balance"

Aurora Theater

2081 Addison Street, Berkeley

Through Oct. 9

$30-$54

"Unveiled": ☼ ☼ BANG

2011-09-09T20:35:00.000-07:00

Chicagoan Rohina Malik plays five different women in her new solo show "Unveiled." Maryam, Noor, Inez, Shabana and Layla each have different stories to tell, and each is represented by a different cup of tea. Maryam's chocolate chai represents fusion of cultures; Noor's Moroccan green tea is drunk very sweet to counteract the bitterness of prejudice in her adopted country; Inez's bitter tea has the opposite purpose, to make her remember; Shabana's Kashmiri chai is part of a terrific rap: "When the shit went down in Oklahoma, you blame McVeigh, not Christian preacha, nobody say that's what Bible teacha..." Layla owns a restaurant and serves her customers sage tea, to make their wait more tolerable.

Malik is a performer at heart. She tries to give each character a different body language and personality, but she has a problem. All five women are wearing hijab. They all insist that the hijab is between them and God and has nothing to do with anyone else. The problem is that this attitude may make for spiritual awareness but does not necessarily lead to great theater. We want to get inside our performers, to understand them, to feel their plight. But Malik's characters draw a line between them and us and it feels like more than just fabric. This would be true if they were wearing a nun's habit or the gabardine coat of an Orthodox Jew.

We especially enjoyed Shabana, the London rapper. Her energetic discussion of her mother's obsession with whiteness was especially revealing, as was her definition of wearing the hijab as her own declaration of feminism.

Right now each character wants to let us know she is not our enemy, that the Allah she believes in is peaceful and that she and her family have suffered too. Perhaps in the future Malik can take these characters a little further.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ BANG

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Unveiled" Two Stars with a BANGLE of PRAISE. What we want to know is if there is more there, aside from being tolerant women of faith.

The BANGLE of PRAISE is for Malik herself. She is a gifted performer and has an important story to relate. Time will tell if her stories can include a little more nuance.

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"Unveiled"

Brava Theater

2781 24th Street at York, San Francisco

Through Sept 17

$10-$25

Rita Moreno: "Life Without Makeup" ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

2011-09-08T08:55:00.000-07:00

If you're wondering what you want to do when you grow up, go see Rita Moreno's "Life Without Makeup," which is having its World Premiere at Berkeley Rep. Your answer, my answer, everyone's answer has to be: "I want to be just like her." It is 2011. The woman was born in 1931. Add it up. Rita Moreno is a marvel and her one woman show, with the help of two male dancers and a crackerjack four piece band, is an absolute tour-de-force.

We want to say: don't wait. She's 80. Can her knees last an entire run? Well, yes, probably, because she seems to be a freak of nature. As she tells the story of her life, beginning with coming from Puerto Rico to New York on a storm-tossed steamer in 1936, you notice that she holds on to things -- a railing, a shoulder -- and she keeps it simple. This is the beauty of her piece -- it is honest and intimate. Rita Moreno isn't trying to be 18 any more, but she can sure tell you what it felt like.

And what a story she has to tell. The MGM movie set in the '40s and '50s? Clark Gable? Elizabeth Taylor? All her auditions, all her b-movies, her successes and her failures, told with alma and corazón. Heart and soul. Plus, she's funny as hell.

In Act One we get the early days -- did she really have a long-time fling with Marlon Brando and make him jealous by dating Elvis Presley? Five years on The Electric Company with Bill Cosby and Morgan Freeman? You'd forgotten that was her bouncing around with Jack Nicholson in Carnal Knowledge? Act One is fascinating and totally absorbing, but that's only because she hasn't gotten to Act Two and West Side Story yet.

After the intermission, we hear stories about the behind-the-scenes craziness during the filming of that iconic musical -- followed by a brilliant trip through several ballet scenes using her two stage-mates as Sharks and Jets -- it doesn't get any better than this, amigos.

We still say go sooner rather than later. But go. Everything is coming up rrrrrrrrr-roses!

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards Rita Moreno: "Life Without Makeup" it's highest rating: Cinco Estrellas Gordas. Five Fat Stars. Miss Moreno, her fabulous dancers (Ray Garcia and Salvatore Vassallo), the amazing band with Cesar Cancino's piano, Tony Taccone's writing and David Gallagan's perfectly staged pacing, the choreography, the costumes -- but most of all, a performer who loves every minute of the evening as much as we do -- these shows don't come along twice.

One more word: you don't have to sit up close. This is one of those rare occasions when the cheap seats will be fine. The Roda is a small theater, so higher up is fine -- but try to stay in the center.

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Rita Moreno: "Life Without Makeup"

Berkeley Rep, Roda Theatre

2015 Addison Street, Berkeley

EXTENDED Through November 12

$14.50-$73

"Why We Have a Body": ☼ ☼

2011-09-07T10:00:00.000-07:00

Premieres of shows are always fun. You stand in the lobby, drink wine or champagne out of plastic cups and hobnob with other reviewers, an actor or two, a playwright whose last show you loved. The house is comped with theater sponsors and friends of the actors. The theater world is small. The mood is upbeat. It's nice to fit in.

Then the show starts and sometimes that overly-familiar audience can be a hindrance. Last night's premiere of Claire Chafee's "Why We Have a Body" at the Magic was one of those nights. The audience laughed at every line, funny or not. The words coming from the actors were wry and often comical, but mostly the story is an introspective one. It was as if a portion of the audience thought they were at the Gong Show and someone told them their voices would be heard on national TV.

Perhaps as a partial result, or perhaps just because of the eighteen years that have passed since 1993 when "Body" first premiered and was probably considered controversial -- the show today feels a bit fragmented, even shopworn. We have Lili, a declared lesbian, who is miserable; Renee (Rebecca Dines), separated from her husband, who meets Lili on an airplane and decides to try her out; Mary (Maggie Mason), the sister of Lili and a sexual question mark (she dresses in oversized coats and holds up 7-11 stores); and Eleanor (Lorrie Holt), the mother of Lili and Mary, who is off in the forest seeking some kind of inspiration, as long as it doesn't include returning home to Lili and Mary.

Mom is the only one who seems content. Her daughter Lili never smiles. Her daughter Mary never stops smiling. Renee goes both ways. Sometimes she's happy, sometimes she's sad. And sometimes she insists on showing Lili her baby pictures.

The main problem with "Why We Have a Body" is there is no plot. Lili and Mary are waiting for their mom at the opening and still waiting at the end. Mom is seeking but not finding. Only Renee moves at all. She leaves her husband in Mexico and we could all see that coming from back here in San Francisco.

As a result it is difficult to decipher what the show's point is. What's up with -- anybody? Why is Mary so quirky? Why is Lili so dour? Why is Mom so flighty? Why don't we get any backstory?

"Ha ha ha ha," goes the audience, slapping its knee.

Lorrie Holt and Maggie Mason make us smile. They hold our attention while they are on stage. Lauren English seems ready to burst out of her business suit until Rebecca Dines finally drags her back to her cave. But even this is so --- measured. We have seen all these wonderful actors many times in other roles, so we know it must be direction or story that are holding them back. We want them to explode and -- well, entertain us. Maggie Mason does it a few times. We could use more.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Why We Have a Body" only Two Stars. It's a shame that this stellar cast has not been given a vehicle that would give them more of a chance to take the wraps off. Like Mary says at the end: "I like a bonfire. I like a good bonfire." So would we.

___________

"Why We Have a Body"

The Magic Theatre

Fort Mason, Building D, San Francisco

Through October 2

$30-$75

"Sense and Sensibility": ☼ ☼ ☼ baub

2011-08-28T10:10:00.000-07:00

Jane Austen's first published novel, "Sense and Sensibility" was brought out in 1811, only five years before the author's death. Her career was short but her influence has been great, as her novels "Pride and Prejudice" (1813), "Mansfield Park" (1814) and "Emma" (1815) have cemented her reputation, not only as one of the first great female novelists, but as a chronicler of the tribulations of the young heroine in upper class Georgian England.

Austen's novels are complicated, so Roger Parsley and Andy Graham's adaptation of "Sense and Sensibility", which is having its American Premiere at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, has been greatly simplified. If you love Jane Austen, if you have always had a soft spot in your heart for free-spirited Marianne and her strong sister Elinor, you will feel at home here.

Also excellent are Stacy Ross (who was so good recently in SF Playhouse's "Coraline") as Aunt Jennings, whose primary interest is digging up and distributing gossip; and Mark Anderson Phillips as Colonel Brandon, the older patrician who feels he has no chance with Marianne. Rounding out the cast are Thomas Gorrebeeck as Elinor's suitor Edward (Mr. Good) and Michael Scott McLean as Willoughby (Mr. Bad).

In Jane Austen's day, the eldest brother inherited the family estate and all other children were left on their own. So for young women, the procuring of a husband of wealth was their only means of retaining the lives they had known as children. These men needed to be judged by the standards of the day. If we may compare the three men in the story to bears, we would say that Austen feels Willoughby has too much porridge, Edward too little and the Colonel's is just right.

Every costume designer must dream of working on a Jane Austen novel with so many elaborate period costumes. Fumiko Bielefeldt's gowns -- and the boots! -- are perfect.

But -- and this is something they will have to deal with -- the music! Director Robert Kelley and Sound Designer Cliff Caruthers have chosen to insert songs into the production that they imagine Jane Austen would have loved. This decision might not be a bad one if they didn't also decide that Marianne should sing most of them. So we have the poor distraught young lady, heart in hand as her suitor departs forever, repairing to the pianoforte to sing a jaunty little air. Again and again she turns to face the audience and croon a hey nonny nonny. The mood is shattered each time.

When the ensemble sings together, as on the opening number in Act Two, everything works. But the heroine should not be the chanteuse -- at least, not this heroine. It bogs things down, especially in Act Two which plays long.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ baub

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Sense and Sensibility" Three Stars with a bauble of despair. The actors, staging and costuming earn one star each. But the bauble -- that decision to add warbling songs into the mix -- at this point is a fatal one.

-------------

"Sense and Sensibility"

Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts

500 Castro Street, Mountain View

Through Sept. 18

$19-$69

Photo Credits: Tracy Martin and Mark Kitaoka

"Stuffed and Unstrung: ☼ ☼

2011-08-19T16:49:00.000-07:00

There can be few people who were either children or parents of children during the long era of Sesame Street who do not have a soft spot in their heart for muppets, as well as the for the names Jim Henson and Frank Oz, the creators and popularizers of all that marvelous entertainment. Henson and Oz, along with their crews and designers and puppeteers, applied a new, shiny veneer of hipness onto the ancient art of puppetry.

So we looked forward to laughing and feeling young again when we saw the new Henson Alternative "Stuffed and Unstrung" on our calendar, with Brian Henson in charge of a live cast of puppet masters, along with a Master of Ceremonies (Patrick Bristow) to move the whole show along.

It is SO dreary.

The idea is that the muppet audience has now grown up and wants to hear Bristow lob the f-bomb over and over again, wants to hear deafening music during the intermission that drives everyone out into the lobby, wants to have the muppets stuck on lame joke after lame joke about sex and wants to put the whole thing in the hands of an m.c. who manages to be both manic and unfunny at the same time.

The format is "Whose Line is it Anyway? -- the audience throws suggestions at the actors and the actors, holding their puppets high to make them visible on two large tv screens, act out the suggestions, the aim being to show us the magic of puppets and improvisers working together. The tech is fabulous, the gimmicks world-class, the puppets and puppeteers terrific. But it's also exactly what you expect from improv comedy -- some of it works, much of it doesn't, and all the technology in the world cannot make humor out of pretending a muppet has a penis.

They really do need better jokes. Maybe they can find Henny Youngman's muppet somewhere. If they want to give us Borscht Belt raunch it really should be funnier.

But who knows? Maybe this reviewer spent too many years caring for the now-geriatric Oscar, Miss Piggy, Kermit and The Count, even the later, gentler generation of Fozzie and Elmo. Maybe people who spend most of their time at comedy clubs and in pickup bars will find this stuff entertaining. And on that magic night when all the routines work, Bristow calms down a little, the audience produces fascinating characters, they make the screens bigger and the sound system audible enough so you can hear most of the improv lyrics, the show could be brilliant. It could happen.

-----------------

RATINGS ☼ ☼

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Stuffed and Unstrung" Two Stars for the technology. The two segments with people from the audience brought up to stage worked better than most of the planned numbers. There was one wonderful bit: the one with the computerized puppet interplaying with the actors on stage. We could have watched that all night long.

Jeez, you can't shut this guy up: the music -- the tinkly synthesizer player -- wow.
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Henson Alternative "Stuffed and Unstrung"
The Curran Theater
445 Geary Street, San Francisco
Through August 27
$30-$65

"Fly By Night": ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG !

2011-07-17T09:59:00.000-07:00

The scores are in for the Opening Night World Premiere of Kim Rosenstock, Will Connolly and Michael Mitnick's new musical "Fly By Night."

Story: Very Good
Acting: Terrific
Music: Pretty Good

Act One is novel and exciting. The music pays off the action, there is plenty of humor and by intermission we still don't know what is going to happen. The table is set perfectly for Act Two.

Right now, Act Two takes a long time to get where it's going, but the blackout scene at the very end ties up most of the loose ends. The show's most meaningful song comes at the end, and you get to exit the theater humming the one riff from Act One that reappears constantly throughout the show. That a fortune teller would be the one who composes the riff makes perfect sense in the fantasy world presented.

We have a love triangle, composed of actress Daphne (Rachel Spencer Hewitt), her kid sister Miriam (Kristin Stokes) and sandwich maker Harold (Ian Leonard, who was so fantastic in TheaterWorks' recent [title of show].

We also have the aptly named Crabble (Michael McCormick), who owns the sandwich shop where Harold works; and Mr. McClam, Harold's father, whose ode to his deceased wife Cecily is the show stopper. Keith Pinto has a smaller part as Joey Storms, the failing playwright.

But good as they all are, the show is stolen -- hijacked -- run away with -- by Wade McCollum, who plays The Narrator. He narrates but he also sings, plays several characters, and puts his stamp on every bit of action. He is seldom off stage. Without the Narrator there is a simple love story; with him we are twisted into a different way of looking at the world.

It's a World Premiere, so there are problems. Right now the show is fantastical, but the music is not. Lyrics are clever, but the four piece rock and roll band isn't given much to play. This isn't fuddy-duddyism -- we love rock and roll as much as anyone and have the blown ear drums to prove it. We'd just like a few more songs as good as the last one.

RATINGS ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG !

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Fly By Night" Three Stars with a BANGLE of PRAISE and a Big Fat Exclamation Mark. Having just seen Kim Rosenstock's "Tigers Be Still" we can feel her novelistic touches all over this libretto. The way the story weaves in and out of time is brilliant. The cast, with a special nod towards McCollum, is excellent and so is Bill Fennelly's direction, though we could see them taking a few more chances as time goes on, to match the off-world sense of the plot.

The BANGLE OF PRAISE is for the way they keep Mr. McClam from telling his story for almost two full acts. He tries, nobody will listen. We, like they, think he is just another tired old man living in the past. When he finally gets a chance, he turns out to have not a sleepy story but an incisive and heartfelt song to sing. The way they pace this moment is the stuff of terrific theater.

And the exclamation point: thanks to TheatreWorks for giving new shows a shot, first with the New Works Festival, where "Fly By Night" appeared in 2010, and then working with them to earn a place on the main stage.

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"Fly By Night"
Lucie Stern Theatre
Middlefield Road, Palo Alto
Through August 13
$19-$69

(press photos by Mark Kitaoka and Tracy Martin)

Marin Shakespeare: "Macbeth": ☼ ☼ ☼

2011-07-16T11:31:00.000-07:00

"A drum, a drum, Macbeth doth come." From the mouths of the Scottish royalty tumble one famous phrase after another, many of which have embedded themselves in our everyday English language. Flawed Macbeth and evil Lady Macbeth, loyal Banquo and the batty three witches are characters we know as well as any in all literature. As we hear "out, damned spot," "double double, toil and trouble," and "the milk of human kindness" we shake our heads and marvel at how one man could have had so much influence on the way we speak to our world.

And then, when Opening Night is over, the voice of the asp whispers in our ear: if this weren't Shakespeare, if "Macbeth" had been written by the unheralded Joe Plotnik, would we be gushing so over a plot where character development is nil and there are only one emotion (anguish), one motivation (revenge) and one action (slaughter)?

Well, if Mr. Plotnik had written "false face must hide what the false heart doth know" or "Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," we probably would.

How many tens and tens of thousands of Macbeths, of Banquos, of King Duncans have there been? For our money, Marin Shakespeare's William Elsman is the craziest Macbeth yet. Under Lesley Schisgall Currier's direction, Elsman infuses Macbeth with great power and presence, but there is little underneath. The eternal question of why a noble Lord would travel so quickly from successful general in battle...

...to ambition-fueled insanity...

...must be answered not by words but by the actor's performance. A Macbeth this pathological gives us no clue and therefore little to pity.

Darren Bridgett's Banquo is loyal and solid, Alexandra Matthew's Lady Macbeth is evil incarnate at the outset (but strangely passive as time goes on) and Scott Coopwood's Macduff makes us all think that he's the only thane with a brain, the guy we would follow into battle. After all, he with the strongest voice and most dynamic stage presence should be King, shouldn't he?

In the supporting roles, James Hiser's murdering presence is perfectly drawn as well as Madeline Harris's Seyton and Third Witch.

Abra Berman's costumes are fine, as is Mark Robinson's spartan set design. It all comes down to what you think of Macbeth, the man who would be King, and then is, and then isn't. And as for his wife: "look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent underneath."

RATINGS ☼ ☼ ☼
The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards Marin Shakespeare's "Macbeth" Three Stars. It's hard to beat listening to fine actors performing classic Shakespeare, while sitting outside in a small, wooded amphitheatre. Macbeth is not King Lear or even Anthony and Cleopatra. But it grabs you, if only by the majesty of its language.

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"Macbeth"
Marin Shakespeare
Forest Meadows Amphitheatre, Dominican University
1475 Grand Avenue, San Rafael
Through Aug. 14
$20-$35

San Francisco Mime Troupe: "2012-The Musical": ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

2011-07-05T11:50:00.000-07:00

You always get what you pay for with San Francisco Mime Troupe, but this year you get even more. They trashed Dick Cheney until it was scarier than funny. Now they've got Barack Obama to laugh at and, once again, they're back on course. For our money, the troupe's 52nd season's offering "2012-The Musical" is the best work they've done in years.

Newcomers Cory Censoprano and Siobhan Marie Doherty are both terrific additions to the show, and writer and performer Michael Gene Sullivan takes on an even larger set of roles than he usually does. Lizzie Calogero and Keiko Shimosato, as political theater director and "green" corporate donor are chillingly real, and Victor Toman's singing and dancing are perhaps the best of all. As always, the plot is secondary to the message: Power to the People and Death to the Pigs, of course, but also, as refers to corporate largess: "A Girl Can Get Used to it."

Pat Moran and Bruce Barthol's songs, especially early in the show, are better than ever, particularly Moran's "It's All Dirty Money" and "A Girl Could Get Used To It," and Barthol's "Chains of Regulation." The three band members, who seem to play ten instruments at once, are their usual fashionably virtuosic selves.

A few suggestions for the rest of the season: This year's Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence warmup felt like it went on for days: maybe all their silly puns about dykes and queers have gone the way of Dick Cheney and it's time to come up with something new.

(Although we did love the couplet:
Eight, Six, Four, Two
We're tough dykes and we don't have to rhyme.")

You might think about posting a guard at both sides of the stage to keep the foulmouthed crackheads away. There seems to be one every year. The 2012 model took a full five minutes to scream "get out of my fffff__ing way!" as he passed stage right to left. Yes, we know. Crackheads are people too, but...

And please don't touch Raoul Brody's twisted Star Spangled Banner. This is the best singalong in hootenanny history.

As always, you leave a Mime Troupe show with mixed feelings. One, everything they said was correct, except for the things that are just loony. Two, this is an astonishingly talented cast of actors, writers, producers, singers and performers. It's hard to imagine San Francisco without them.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG
The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "2012-The Musical" Three Stars with a BANGLE of PRAISE. The show is entertaining and, for a free show, not too expensive. (You can't NOT throw donations into the various buckets that come 'round before and after the show. And you HAVE to love that t-shirt.) This year's music is better than ever. Of course they take on too many themes. Of course they do.

The BANGLE of PRAISE is for this line: "The Revolution Will Not Be Downloaded." And blessings to brother Scott-Heron, who will have enjoyed that tribute.

---------------
San Francisco Mime Troupe: "2012-The Musical"
Various parks and venues throughout the Bay Area
Through August 28
(see sfmt.org for complete schedule)
$ FREE FREE FREE

Matt Smith's "All My Children": ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

2011-07-03T10:45:00.001-07:00

Seattle's Matt Smith is a polished performer with many earlier monologues to his credit. Yarns spin effortlessly off his tongue, somewhat in the Garrison Keillor mode, but without any mention of Lutherans. In Smith's new solo show "All My Children," we hear the improbable tale of a man, now in middle age, who looks back on the six most prominent and failed romances of his youth, and after a bit of Googling discovers:

1) His exes all married their next boy friend, and

2) Within three months of breaking up with Matt Smith, each ex was pregnant, and

3) Each ex had one child, and, most importantly,

4) The kids and most of the exes are accessible on Facebook.

Smith's unflappable and affable delivery makes you almost believe that there is a human being on this or any other planet who would actually do what he then did, armed with the above information: he called up every one of the children of his exes and tried to convince them he was their real father. If anyone could make you believe this is a true story, Smith could. But, in the end, as uniquely enjoyable and at all times humorous a tale as he spins, its sheer unlikelihood makes it really hard to believe a word the man says.

Now then, nobody has to believe that Dan Hoyle's stories are word-for-word true, but you can imagine he actually did travel around the country talking to citizens. You can believe that Jeff Greenwald shaggy cow tale about the clerk at the Calcutta Airport. Ann Randolph's Frannie is just plain nuts. Of course she would do what she does.

But calling your exes' children and telling them...no, no, nah. Nobody could POSSIBLY be this stupid -- especially somebody as cool and collected and, seemingly, held together without any visible welds, as Matt Smith appears to be.

So you don't buy it, but you still love listening to it. The characters he talks about (he does not try to imitate their voices) are fascinating, especially once his "daughter" Rita bursts into the picture. You love Mitsuo and Carter. You recognize yourself in Boyd. The story ratchets up when the characters actually begin to interact. And the $100 Koobie Doobie is absolutely priceless and worth the price of admission all by itself.

After the show, this reviewer's friend said to him: "Why would a man actually DO something like that?" The answer, of course, is "WELL, HE WOULDN'T!" But so what? The idea is incongruous but you still can't get enough of it.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards Matt Smith's "All My Children" Three Stars with a BANGLE of PRAISE. We have the strong sense that if Smith wishes to take this story deeper it could become a classic. Who were the moms? What was going on during his flings with them? Do we recognize the kids in their moms? And how could the kids interact more, and for what reasons of their own? Above all: what possessed this man to do it in the first place? "All My Children" is a brilliant idea and perhaps it will become even more so as time goes on.

The BANGLE of PRAISE is for both incidents involving Koobie Doobies. You have to close your mouth before you start to laugh and then you can't stop.

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"All My Children"
The Marsh, Berkeley
2120 Allston Way, Berkeley
$20-$35
Through July 23

"Billy Elliot": ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

2011-06-29T09:28:00.000-07:00

In the world of entertainment, the hardest thing to do is write a story that can be explained in one sentence. But try this: "English lad from coal country wishes to be a ballet dancer instead of a coal miner." And there you have Billy Elliot, the Musical, originally a film and now a stage show, with music by Elton John and book and lyrics by Lee Hall. The show was a well-deserved smash on Broadway and is now touring across America.

You are pretty much guaranteed to love the show, if you meet the following qualifications:

1) You like underdogs
2) You like underdogs who can dance
3) You like underdogs who can dance and are sweethearts.

It will help, but it is not absolutely essential, if

4) You can understand a word of Northern English dialog.

If you meet qualifications 1-3, Number 4 is not a deal breaker. Obsolootly nowt.

This is a long show (nearly three hours) and the the role of Billy is an arduous one. For this reason, and perhaps also due to child labor law, they have five different actors on board to play the title role. On opening night we saw 15-year-old local hero J.P. Viernes. He is an excellent actor, if perhaps a bit of a nervous dancer in front of the hometown crowd. His friend Michael (Jacob Zelonky, age 12), in a far more abbreviated role, was funny and fabulous, as were dance instructor Mrs. Wilkerson (Faith Prince) and Billy's Dad (Rich Hebert).

If you are among those who see Elton John's name on the music credits and fear you will be getting more dumbed-down Disney, fear not. The songs in Billy Elliot, particularly in Act One, may make you love Sir Elton again. The first four numbers in the show are all knockouts, from the impressive opener "The Stars Look Down," through "Shine," the emotional "We'd Go Dancing" (sung by Patti Perkins as Billy's grandmother) and the exceptional "Solidarity," which does what Broadway used to do: the song involves your heart while the choreography, where a child's dance class intermingles with angry striking miners and hardnosed police, brings you to your feet.

There is much to enjoy about Billy Elliot. The success of the show depends on how much you identify with little Billy. On Opening Night this was easy, but there are four other Billys waiting in the wings. Some will be stronger dancers and some will be stronger actors. The role needs both. Billy Elliot will dazzle you.

RATINGS ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼
The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Billy Elliot" Four Stars. It's a show you don't want to miss. The ratings would perhaps have been somewhat higher if the size of the Orpheum stage had permitted more fluidity and range of motion from the dancers. This is probably one of those shows you'll wish you got to see in New York. But it is still a solid four star production and worth every quid.

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"Billy Elliot (The Musical)"
Orpheum Theater
1192 Market Street, San Francisco
Through September 17
$35-$200

"Tigers Be Still": ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

2011-06-26T09:21:00.000-07:00

We had a slightly disconnected feeling while watching Kim Rosenstock's "Tigers Be Still," which is having its West Coast premiere at SF Playhouse. The laughs seem to be coming a mile a minute, judging by the enthusiastic audience reaction, but there is a sad, unsettling underscore to the entire four-person, one-act and character-driven show. And then comes the scene at the end -- in a shoe closet, no less -- that puts everything into perspective and gives heart and soul to what had felt, up to that point, like a pleasing but rather lightweight tale.

The cast is so good we could have happily bought a cookie and sat back down to watch them do another show, any show.

Sherri (Melissa Quine) is perky and her sister Grace (Rebecca Schweitzer) is the Anti-Perky. Both are delightful, with slovenly Grace getting most of the laughs. She has been lying on the sofa sipping Jack Daniels and watching endless loops of Top Gun since being dumped by her fiance Troy. (Small dog lovers beware: Troy has left his chihuahuas in Grace's care. Bad idea.) Sherri, meanwhile, is gamely trying to get up and go to work as an art therapist at the local middle school.

She has gotten her job as a favor to her mother (the unseen Wanda) from Joseph (Remi Sandri), the school's principal, who was once Wanda's high school flame. Sherri's first assignment is to work with Zack (the fabulous Jeremy Kahn), Joseph's son, whose face would be blank with teen angst and boredom if his dancing eyes didn't betray him. Though Zack is supposed to be a troubled teen, his spirit is what allows Sherri to realize her own worth, and she in turn is able to begin to turn her family around.

There's a lot here. And it's very funny. It may be that a little more soul at the outset, instead of vaguely disconnected gags and set pieces, may help us care a little more about the characters from the beginning, rather than needing to get to the end to sit in our seats as the lights come up, saying to the next person over: "Yeah! Now I get it! Fantastic!"

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Tigers Be Still" Three Stars with a BANGLE of PRAISE. The cast earns two stars for themselves, for doing what great actors do: managing to wring every ounce of laughter from a play that sometimes feels a little thin. The third star is for the set and direction -- it is intriguing to watch how director Amy Glazer has the actors maneuver through Bill English's single set which never changes even as the scenes and locations shift constantly. They use the whole stage, plus the stairs -- and it's all quite effective.

The BANGLE of PRAISE is for the shoe closet. C'mon. It's too good. This scene, where Sherri and Zack finally are forced to go a little deeper, is the one we will remember when we are watching new Kim Rosenstock shows in the near future.

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"Tigers Be Still"
San Francisco Playhouse
533 Sutter Street, San Francisco
Through July 30
$30-$50

"Metamorphosis": ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

2011-06-21T08:35:00.000-07:00

Alexander Crowther is a gifted physical actor. It's a good thing, because it takes strength and balance to act the role of Gregor Samsa in the Aurora's production of "Metamorphosis," by Franz Kafka. The story is pushed forward a generation here, into the 1930s (Kafka wrote the story in 1912, at age 29), with Gregor doing most of his work on a slanted section of stage high above the other actors. He climbs, he runs around on all fours, he hisses, he hides under a bed in plain sight. He behaves like a well-dressed insect.

No one, including Gregor, has the slightest idea how his metamorphosis has taken place, seemingly overnight. Gregor went to sleep as a young, aspiring if overworked traveling salesman and woke up as a bug who cannot leave his room. No one notices at first -- until sister Grete realizes that Gregor never caught his train to work that morning. From that moment on, everyone's life has changed.

Kafka, in the only novella published during his lifetime, is not only critical of the staid, middle-class world of Gregor's sister and parents, but foresees the coming storm of fascism which would engulf all of Europe. Kafka used the word "ungeZeifer," to describe Gregor, which has been translated as "insect," but "ungeZeifer" was also the word used colloquially to refer to a Jew. Kafka, a Czech Jew, knew well the various meanings of that word.

Gregor's sister Grete (Megan Trout) gives us another, perhaps even more interesting metamorphosis -- from sweet, adoring sister to hard-nosed realist, chilling in those blond, Teutonic braids. Patrick Jones plays two roles, a smaller one as Gregor's supervisor and a larger, more important one as Mr. Fischer, a potential boarder for the Samsa family. Mr. Fischer is the barely-veiled Fascist in the room.

Filling out the cast are Gregor and Grete's parents, Madeline H.D. Brown as Mother and Allen McKelvey as Father, both helpless players in the larger drama being played out in their living room.

Kafka's story is timeless and the Aurora production is innovative and modern. Directed by Mark Jackson, the show is based on the adaptation by David Farr and Gísli Örn Gardarsson in 2006, which played to great success in London and New York. Nina Ball's set gives Gregor a chance to act like an insect while looking like a human, and the story is helped greatly by excellent musical choices by Matthew Stines which enhance the flow during fairly long silences in the action. The music is classical and violin-based, though in this production sister Grete is a dancer instead of a violinist as Kafka originally wrote.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼
The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Metamorphosis" Four Stars, one each for acting, directing, staging and adaptation. It is brilliant theater as well as a chilling reminder that, as humans, our attitudes take a long time to change.

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"Metamorphosis"
Aurora Theater
2081 Addison Street, Berkeley
EXTENDED through July 24
$10-$45

"Geoff Hoyle's "Geezer": ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ !

2011-06-08T12:13:00.000-07:00

They ought to re-name the Marsh Theatre "According to Hoyle." Geoff Hoyle and his son Dan Hoyle have both created marvelous solo shows, both of which have hit the Marsh calendar at the same time. Geoff's "Geezer," which has been extended through July 10, is one of those rare theater experiences that will have you laughing your head off while grabbing for your prostate.

Ha ha, no, just kidding. Sort of.

Hoyle is such an intriguing combination of story teller plus clown, mime and stand-up comic. "Geezer" is the story of his life as well as an up-very-close glimpse into the aging process. So how does the Venerable Bede fit into all of this? Don't ask, but Hoyle's twenty second interpretation of The Bede's philosophy is one of the funniest moments of the night.

And there are many. His Mom and Dad in Yorkshire, when he returns home with his American wife, will have you in stitches until you see Hoyle himself as a parent when his own children bring home their friends and he feels it imperative to embarrass them all to tears.

Speaking of parenting, he's right about one thing: "If you cook it, they will come."

And his views of his own Dad, central to his life, are both heartbreaking and incisive. We are spellbound by the U-Boat attack on his Dad in the North Atlantic -- Hoyle Senior is plunged beneath the ocean as we watch him gasping for air -- and in the next moment, Geoff is into a new character with another facial expression and new, unique body language.

The man is a trained mime, clowned with the Pickle Circus for many years and has acted in many Bay Area shows (including the terrific Lemony Snicket show last Christmas), but he has perhaps never allowed us to get this close. "Geezer" will make you laugh and it may make you cry (as it did to the woman in the next seat over). For sure it is first-rate entertainment.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ !
The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Geezer" Four Stars with an Exclamation Mark! One star is for writing, another for acting, a third for Woody Woodpecker (what a laugh!) and a fourth for Hoyle's assessment of healthy food: "Who wants to eat carboard and drink rice milk to earn two extra days in hospice?"

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"Geezer"
The Marsh
1062 Valencia Street, San Francisco
EXTENDED through July 10
$25-$35

[title of show]: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ !

2011-06-05T11:42:00.000-07:00

Holy Ioncesco, Theater Man, talk about a bolt from the blue. When Hunter Bell and Jeff Bowen first conceived of [title of show] in order to have something to submit to a new musicals contest in New York, they had no ideas and few expectations. When they finished three weeks later and turned it in, they had written nothing but their own story: a 90 minute show with four actors, a piano player, no scene changes, no costume changes and no production values, about two guys writing a show to submit to a contest. The show's title refers to the fact that they had to put something on the line on the contest submission form where it said [title of show], so that's what they called it.

What did they get? An impossibly wonderful, heart-filled romp through the creative process, with a totally unique presentation and song after song that either crack your funny bone in half or give you shivers of pleasure, and usually both at the same time.

Five Stars! Do you hear that, Jersey Boys? We love love love this show, from the opener "Two Nobodies in New York" to the closer "Nine People's Favorite Thing" with the chorus: "I'd Rather Be Nine People's Favorite Thing than a Hundred People's Ninth Favorite Thing."

What an ensemble cast. Who is our favorite? Probably the 'Hunter' character, played with depth and brilliance by Jamison Stern, but then again Ian Leonard (his co-writer Jeff) is refreshing and wonderful too. Each of the two women: Laura Jordan (Susan), the wisecracking downtown gal and Farah Alvin (Heidi), the delightful and big-voiced uptown gal have their own moments to bring down the house. Together, the four actors sound like the vocal group from your favorite dream.

Yes, there's a dream sequence. And a song about killing those parts of you that keep you down ("Die, Vampire, Die!") and a great one about the two girls wanting their moment in the sun ("Secondary Characters") and a terrific one ("Change it, Don't Change it") about how once you have a little success everyone wants to throw their two cents in.

Perhaps Bell and Bowen didn't realize it, but they have essentially written a primer, a Musical Theater for Idiots book. The summary of that book would be: keep it simple and on point, write fantastic, simple songs with plenty of room for terrific singers to sing them and make the audience love you, root for you, cheer for your success and feel, when it comes, like its their success too.

How DO you do that? On Opening Night the audience stood and cheered for five solid minutes. The four actors standing on the edge of the stage had no idea what to do with this much applause. Afterwards, Ian Leonard told us "I figured this may never happen again so I thought I'd just stand there and take it all in." It's the real deal, folks. You can't buy the book so hurry down to Mountain View and see this show.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ !
The San Francisco Theater Blog Award Division may have had vampires steal its grinch filter, but it awards [title of show] FIVE STARS! There is no higher rating! Some may not agree, but The San Francisco Theater Blog would rather be nine people's favorite source for theater reviews than a hundred people's ninth favorite source for theater reviews.

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[title of Show]
Mountain View Center for Performing Arts
500 Castro Street, Mountain View
Through June 26
$24-$42

Photo Credits: Tracy Martin and Mark Kitaoka

Anna Deavere Smith "Let Me Down Easy": ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG BANG

2011-06-02T10:42:00.000-07:00

We have followed Anna Deavere Smith for years, always in awe of her prodigious talent and ability to not only get into character but tug at the heart. In her new one-woman show "Let Me Down Easy," although the content and central themes are complicated, the heart has not skipped a beat.

The core of "Let Me Down Easy" is health -- unless it is life and death -- or the health care system -- no, it's death. Or life.

Smith has done interviews with many people, most of whom have experienced bouts with cancer or other serious illness, and she has turned these interviews into monologues with Smith playing the interview-ee on stage. We see famous people like Lance Armstrong, Lauren Hutton and Governor Ann Richards, plus others whose stories are even more compelling, including a tear-inducing representation of Smith's own Aunt Lorraine Coleman, a painfully honest reflection by Doctor Kiersta Kurtz-Burke who was an attending physician at New Orleans's Charity Hospital during Hurricane Katrina, and a fascinating journey into motivation from heavyweight boxer Michael Bentt who spent three days in a coma after being knocked cold.

Rodeo Cowboy Brent Williams gives Smith a chance to wear that hat and swig that beer.

If the show has a fault, it is that Smith occasionally brings us so vividly into the lives of her characters, that we want very much to see them again. You can't help but love Old Miss Effie, in the hospital, and though you don't like Lauren Hutton's view of who gets what in America, you also know she's right.

Maybe what we are saying is we want Anna Deavere Smith to give us Act Two -- to basically kill herself performing -- and bring a few of these people back with a final message. That's not asking too much, is it? It is?

The overhead projection that tells the audience the name of the character Smith is portraying is helpful. The staging is good. But, in the end, what we really want is for Anna Deavere Smith to tell us everything is going to be all right. She's not about to do that.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG BANG

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Let Me Down Easy" Three Stars with Two BANGLES of PRAISE! One Bangle is for putting those hands under Momma's arms to warm them up. You'll know what we mean. The second BANGLE is for Joshua Redman's original music, of which we could use a great deal more.

This is a show you do not need to be up close to appreciate. The less expensive seats in the Roda Theatre will be fine.

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"Let Me Down Easy"
Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre
2015 Addison Street, Berkeley
Through July 10 (THE SHOW HAS ALREADY BEEN EXTENDED AND MUST CLOSE THEN)
$17-$93

Photo credit: Joan Marcus

"Tales of the City": ☼ ☼ ☼

2011-06-01T10:01:00.000-07:00

When was the last time your Press Pack came with a little plastic bag containing matches, rolling papers and a condom?

And how long have San Franciscans been waiting for this? It's our city, our story, our show! Armistead Maupin probably didn't intend to become Tony Bennett, the late Twentieth Century prophet of our city high on a hill, but that's what happened when he started writing "Tales of The City" as a five-columns-a-week series in the SF Chronicle in 1976.

Thirty five years later, the newspaper column that was spun into several popular novels and a classic TV series, has become a musical. The entire story has been condensed into nearly three hours of songs with a little dialog. The assumption seems to be that everyone in the audience already knows every character, so we'll just face the adoring crowds, stand there and sing about it.

From the moment the curtain comes up and we hear Betsy Wolfe as Mary Ann Singleton bidding good-bye to her mother in Cleveland ("Nobody's City") in front of Douglas W. Schmidt's multileveled 28 Barbary Lane, we are transported back to the Good Olde Days, when "Tales" first came out and our lives felt so extraordinary.

That's why it's a little disappointing. The show is more than ordinary, but it's not extraordinary yet. It has standard show tunes and characters that, without time for development, feel cliched. Not that Jake Shears and John Garden haven't written a few clever and funny songs, especially those that are campy and gay ("Crotch" and "Homosexual Convalescent Center" are true standouts), and not that there are not excellent performances, especially by Wolfe, Judy Kaye as Anna Madrigal, Richard Poe as Edgar Halcyon, Mary Birdsong as Mona Ramsey, Kathleen Elizabeth Monteleone as DeDe and Diane J. Findlay in a fabulous smaller role as Madrigal's Mother Mucca -- but the show drags at the beginning. It takes until Act Two to get rolling.

Let us add that this is a World Premiere and it is certain to be a big hit in San Francisco so they'll have plenty of time to tweak it. But high expectation can be a killer. They chose to make "Tales" into a musical, so we want nothing less than "I Left My Heart in San Francisco." Yes, this is asking a lot.

Mouse (Wesley Taylor) sings one heart-rending song ("Dear Mama"), but otherwise is barely part of the action. "Paper Faces" is good and "Ride 'em Hard' is raucous and raunchy. All three are in Act Two.

Dramatically, they only have a few hours of stage time so they had to choose a story upon which to focus. The decision is to make Anna Madrigal the focus of the show instead of what really drove the original version -- the exotic world of Mouse and Mona and Mary Ann, which is to say the late 1970's agony and ecstasy of being young and gay, or gay-tolerant, or a Fag Hag, in a world that was awakening to liberation.

But the real star always was San Francisco. In the musical version, the story could take place anywhere.

Perhaps this is all inevitable. It's like trying to condense the Bible. You can't help leaving out somebody's favorite chapter.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼
The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Tales of the City" Three Stars. It is a show you should see, especially if you live in Baghdad by the Bay. But you probably need to be close to the front to be able to hear the music (it seemed quite subdued from the back of the orchestra) and tickets are not cheap. As the run continues it will tighten, and new songs may be added and some deleted. They will have to decide whether to be campy or soulful. Right now campy works, but we could use a little more heart.

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"Tales of the City"
A.C.T. Theater
415 Geary Street, San Francisco
Through July 10
$40-$127

"Blue Man Group": ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

2011-05-27T15:22:00.000-07:00

Blue Man Group is fabulous. It's funny, silly and certainly juvenile but with a lot of heart. What is it? Three guys doing --- stuff, their faces and hands caked in blue so they look like robots, except for their expressive eyes and mouths. They play percussion instruments too and there is a very loud backing band up in the wings that helps along the high energy nature of all their bits.

The act started out in New York more than twenty years ago, and the local press seems to think the earlier shows in a smaller venue were better. Well, if you didn't see those, and maybe even if you did, this one at the Golden Gate feels just fine.

Our favorite bits were the take off on the IPAD (the enormous "Gi-pad"), the way they played with the differences between 2-D and 3-D, of course the monumental boy-humor of tossing, catching, eating and vomiting all those gumballs -- and let us not forget the artwork of Sergei Pretencione.

When a show gives you belly laughs, it's good. When you can clap to the music, it's good. When you feel great leaving the theater, it's good. Nothing against Sartre and Beckett, whose works seem to be filling local theaters these days, but if we have a choice between existential angst and Twinkies, tonight we're going with the Twinkies.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼
The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards Blue Man Group Four Stars. We'd take our kids, our friends and our grandkids. It ain't cheap, but it's a huge production and pure entertainment. It's sure to make your brown eyes blue.

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"Blue Man Group"
Golden Gate Theater
Golden Gate Avenue at Market Street, San Francisco
Through June 19
$50-$200

"As You Like It": ☼ ☼ ☼

2011-05-15T12:52:00.000-07:00

A lot of people will probably choose to put their theater dollars in other places than the A.C.T. Master of Fine Arts Program's production of William Shakespeare's "As You Like It," and this will be their loss. The experience of watching Shakespeare is always improved by the combination of close seating (Zeum is a terrific space to watch anything) and youthful exuberance.

Gregory Wallace as Jaques, and Anthony Fusco as Touchstone, come from the A.C.T. core acting company and they both add a dimension of maturity and craft to the cast. Max Rosenak could not be a better Orlando and Ashley Wickett is an equally good Rosalind, while Rosalind's cousin Celia (Marisa Duchowny) often steals the show with her animation and good cheer.

This is Shakespeare, after all, so we can't hardly critique the writing -- but Act Two is complicated and plays long. Go tell it to the Bard. Meanwhile, enjoy Callie Floor's terrific costumes and Liliana Duque-Pineiro's innovative set which makes Arden Forest look a little like the floor of a gymnasium, with trees.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "As You Like It" Three Stars. It's a production you will enjoy with a nice mix of old and new. And you get Gregory Wallace saying:

"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."

One question you may not be able to answer: Tickets are $20.50. Wouldn't twenty bucks be easier?

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"As You Like It"
Zeum Theater
Yerba Buena Gardens, San Francisco
Through May 28
$20.50

"Reborning": ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

2011-05-08T11:28:00.000-07:00

There is so much going on under the surface in Zayd Dohrn's new "Reborning," which had its World Premiere last night at San Francisco Playhouse, that the play itself, which is frequently brilliant, can be taken prisoner by the overwhelming weirdness of its true-to-life subject matter.

"Reborning," the play, deals with the real-life practice of reborning, an art form where women who have (usually) suffered the loss of a small child go to dollmakers, the 'reborning' experts, who craft unbelievably lifelike replicas of these lost children. They are dolls, made out of silicone and other materials, but they are so lifelike we defy you to realize these are not live children, when dressed in baby clothes and strolled or carried in arms by the mother.

How do we know this? Michelle, who created the Eva doll used in the play, came to the show opening and displayed Eva at the post-opening cast party. They told us it was a doll. We knew it was a doll. But it looked so real it gave us -- there is no other way to put it -- the creeps.

Dohrn's story is a fascinating psychological drama featuring three actors. The principal character is Kelly (Lauren English), an artist who has fallen into the design of these lifelike dolls. She is teetering on the edge of psychological breakdown herself, the reasons for which the author allows us to discover a little bit at a time. Her boyfriend Daizy (Alexander Alioto) is also a sculptor: he manufactures (and walks around displaying) realistic dildos.

Enter Emily (Lorri Holt, who was so good in SF Playhouse's "Animals Out of Paper"), who has hired Kelly to make her a doll in the likeness of Emily's lost child Eva. But Kelly cannot satisfy Emily's need. No matter how real Kelly makes her Eva doll, it is never enough for the bereft mom. "I can't sculpt your memory," Kelly says, as she labors in vain to make the doll even more lifelike.

So we have the reborner living with the dildo maker, two people whose jobs are to blur reality for their customers. Then Kelly has her artistic breakthrough and the plot explodes. Too much reality is more than any of the three can handle.

We get excellent acting, plenty of drama with an equal amount of humor, skillful writing and spot-on directing. There are no slow moments. Be warned that the Creep Factor cannot be ignored and that may influence how you feel about a show that feels astonishingly well crafted for a World Premiere. The dolls made us squirm. But we loved "Reborning."

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Reborning" Three Stars with a BANGLE OF PRAISE. Lauren English and Lorri Holt were spellbinding; Alexander Alioto's Daizy could have been developed a bit more (the art school graduate who manufactures dildos seems awfully mom-and-pop-apple-pie right now). But the show grabs you and doesn't let you go -- seventy five minutes with no intermission pass in a heartbeat.

The BANGLE OF PRAISE is for the audacity of this show. Mr. Dohrn is writing for TV now, and we can see "Reborning" having a future there as well.
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"Reborning"
San Francisco Playhouse
533 Sutter Street, San Francisco
Through June 11
$30-$50

"The Lily's Revenge": ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ??

2011-04-28T09:19:00.000-07:00

Reviewers sit around their impeccably furnished cybercaves and bemoan the current state of the theater. "Mostly," they type, "it's the same damned thing over and over." Then they go see Taylor Mac's "The Lily's Revenge."

Well, Toto, it ain't Kansas anymore, though Lindsay Davis is from Kansas City. Davis designed the showstopping and eyepopping costumes which, like every other animate and inanimate object in this production, are so over the top they begin to look normal. Davis's five flowers -- make that, revolutionaries (poppy, pansy, rose, lilac and tulip) who are working for the restoration of the empire of dirt (the second child of Time), and who need to enlist gender and species-bending Lily (played by the spectacular Mr. Mac) into their cause -- oh, forget it. The flowers are brilliant. And you can't explain this story.

(Aside: Poppy is played by Carlos Aguirre, who was so good in Oedipus El Rey.)

Here's the bottom line: Lily wants to marry a human woman, so he has to turn into a man, kind of, in a manner of speaking, sort of, a little bit, but not too much.

FIVE acts later, Lily's quest is over, he has lost all his petals and he's wearing a tuxedo. As the lights go out and the curtain comes down, he asks the audience a simple question. You are to purse your lips if you say yes (you liked the show) and do nothing if you didn't. This reviewer astonished himself by not only pursing his lips but standing up to cheer, and this is after THREE intermissions and nearly FIVE hours, seat and theater changes and dinner in a box.

You can't help but compare Taylor Mac, the performer, with Freddie Mercury -- he's got that huge pop-Broadway voice.

(He really looks like this:)

The other terrific singer is the Bride Deity (Casi Maggio, who in addition to having pipes is also very funny). But there's not enough music in the show for it to be called a musical -- there are only two real songs (Maggio's "Love Me? Love Me Not?" and "Teetering on the Edge of Too Little, Too Late"). Mac sings a lot. But what does he sing? Sorry, can't remember.

OK, haters, on your marks, get set: "The Lily's Revenge" is like the gay "Hair." (The last time we invoked 'Hair,' we got more hate mail than Mohammar Qadaffi.) Both shows are about stretching boundaries and sexual freedom, in life and on stage. But there was a war going on in 1968. In 2011 it's all about fun and the bottom line is still sex -- you can pull up anybody's skirt or pants and pretend to lick his or her private petals.

The Great Longing (Mollena Williams) gets naked. There is a Pope named Baruch Porras-Hernandez and he is involved in some kind of hijinks but you can't really follow it with so much else going on.

SO much going on. Five acts and six directors. A cast of forty. Vaudeville acts during intermissions that could take place only in San Francisco without engendering police sirens. (Massages with large dildos? Yup.) That this show could feel as complete as it does is a tribute to Loretta Greco, Artistic Director of the Magic, and to the vision of Taylor Mac.

But it's really long, not just a little self indulgent, and doesn't add much to the discussion on sexism or homophobia or gay marriage or even sexual identity. "Angels in America" it ain't. But perhaps this misses the point. Lily's strongest statements seem to be about corporate America's packaging of all things beautiful -- the emasculated white rose in the plastic wrapper, for example, is a lasting metaphor. The animated film in Act Four illustrates this brilliantly.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ??
The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "The Lily's Revenge" the first-ever Four Star Two Question Mark rating. The show is too good for just Three Stars, but you probably really have to love going to the theater to want to endure all the standing around during all those intermissions.

Sorry, but it's annoying. You want to grow roots in a show -- become attached to your seat, for example. Having to leave the theater and take all your belongings is kind of cute the first time, and the novelty acts in the lobby are fun, plus you can buy dinner. When you come back in and everything has changed you feel like the cheshire cat. You smile. But after Act Two there is no dinner and if you don't happen to stand in the right place in the lobby you will get stuck behind a post in the brand new theater you sit in for Act Three. And the third intermission is just a drag. You can just drink so much wine in a plastic cup.

Taylor Mac is something else, though. He earns Star One as a writer and Star Two as an actor. He is also responsible for one Question Mark, which is for the endless dream ballet (Act Three). It was like a bad wedding -- complete with an emcee trying to cajole you into getting up and dance -- to a drummer and cellist. "Get the f___ up!" he screams. Question Mark Number Two.

Lindsay Davis's costumes earn Star Three for themselves and Loretta Greco brings home Star Four with a smile of gratitude from the committee. Herding six directors into one production had to feel like having her own petals pulled off one by one, but she did it. Mounting this ultra-ambitious project is a triumph for Loretta Greco and for the Magic.

___________

"The Lily's Revenge"
The Magic Theatre
Fort Mason Center, Building D
Through May 22
$30-$75

"Lisick, Ali and Jackson": UNRATED

2011-04-25T09:03:00.000-07:00

Three solo performers were on the bill for April's "Solo Sundays" at Stagewerx Theatre. Author and story teller Beth Lisick opened with a very funny (and brand new) piece on shooting a bank commercial -- she is forced to try and deal with inane suggestions from the producers ("who wants to see a forty year old woman freestyle a rap about a bank?"). Her second offering, which was basically a riff on embarrassing moments she has endured in her life, was more of an ad-lib jazz solo, with humor but not a lot of focus.

The second performer, Jawad Ali, is a relatively new performer. His "NATO Love Parade" is told with a sense of incredulity. It is his account of an e-mail mixup between him and NATO, who confused this Pakastani native for a Pakistani official with the same name. It's a little hard to follow -- he will want to make some of the connections clearer.

They saved the most memorable for last. Julia Jackson's "I Didn't Sign Up For This" is a heartfelt account of a same-sex couple attempting to adopt a baby. Jackson plays a lot of characters, including her hysterical sports-loving self and her ooh-wah partner feuding in Target ("hey, we're just your average mixed race lesbian couple having a fight."), the adoption agency sales agents, the birth mom (a very touching depiction), the birth mom's own mother, the birth mom's boy friend...and she was just picking up steam when the show ended. After the set, Jackson said she has two more scenes to write before the full show will debut in November. Julia Jackson lets it all hang out on stage. If you haven't heard of her yet, you will.

RATINGS: UNRATED
The San Francisco Theater Blog Ratings Division has chosen not to give a rating to these three performers because their shows are still unfinished. There is a lot of talent there, though, and we will be very excited to see how the shows develop.

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"Beth Lisick, Jawad Ali and Julia Jackson"
Stagewerx Theater
533 Sutter Street (cabaret downstairs), San Francisco
No further shows scheduled for the moment

"Snow Falling on Cedars": ☼ ☼ ☼

2011-04-16T10:26:00.001-07:00

It probably helps if you've read the book before you see Theatreworks' Regional Premiere of David Guterson's "Snow Falling on Cedars." The show was originally adapted for the stage by Kevin McKeon and Seattle's Book-It Repertory Theatre, which means it is a fascinating hybrid: the actors quote passages from the book as well as act out well chosen scenes. Guterson's best seller from 1994 is filled with many poetic passages and it would be a shame to miss them; at the same time the cast is excellent and they get a chance to act as well as narrate.

Andrea Bechert's Scenic Design is another hybrid -- a lovely cross between a Japanese woodcut and a busy courtroom in Puget Sound, Washington, circa 1954.

Maya Erskine plays Hatsue, the young Japanese-American girl whose world falls apart as the aftershock of Pearl Harbor hits the West Coast of America. It doesn't help that she has had an innocent romance with Ishmael Chambers, son of the local newspaper publisher. When Hatsue's family is relocated with all other Japanese-American families to Manzanar in the Mojave Desert, and Ishamel is drafted to serve in the Pacific, events are put in motion that culminate in the trial for murder of Ishmael's long-time friend Kabuo Miyamoto (Tim Chiou), who has met and married Hatsue in Manzanar.

We get excellent performances as well by Molly Benson as Susan Heine, wife of the murder victim and Edward Sarafian, as the older lawyer defending Kabuo Miyamoto. But the heart of the story is the relationship between Hatsue, Ishmael and Kabuo. If this production has a flaw it is that we understand Hatsue and Kabuo, but Ishmael remains underdeveloped.

Though supposedly the same age, Collyer plays Ishamel like a boy, and Chiou's Kabuo is a man. It would be curious to see what would have happened if they'd cast it the other way around -- but the way it is, we can't see how Hatsue could pick differently, even without the racial prejudice of the world in which she lives. Sadly, it is Ishmael's story and relationship with his father, so interesting in the book, which has been condensed out of the theater version.

Mia Tagano and Randall Nakano are fine as Hatsue's parents, and Mark Anderson Phillips is a perfectly pompous prosecutor, though he would be more effective if we didn't keep seeing him as Richard Hannay in The Thirty Nine Steps. That's what happens when you're so good in one role -- the critics won't leave you alone.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼

The San Francisco Theater Blog awards "Snow Falling on Cedars" Three Stars. It was fascinating to watch, involving from beginning to end and had several knockout acting performances. The lack of Ishmael's character development hurts the story, but perhaps only to those of us who loved the book. Robert Kelley's direction moves us quickly from scene to narration and back again. It's all about the story, which is how it should be.

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"Snow Falling on Cedars"
Mountain View Center for Performing Arts
500 Castro Street, Mountain View
Through April 24
$24-$67

Photo Credit: Tracy Martin and Mark Kitaoka

"The Three Sisters": ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

2011-04-14T12:14:00.000-07:00

Irina (Heather Wood), in white, stands dreamily at the upstairs window; Masha (Natalia Payne), in mourner's black, sits in her chair staring at her knitting; and Olga (Wendy Rich Stetson), in blue, paces back and forth holding her notebook. From this opening scene we understand the glue which holds Anton Chekhov's drama together: sisterhood. Life may not turn out like we planned it, but we will always have each other.

Playwright Sarah Ruhl has taken a literal translation by Elise Thoron, with Natalya Paramonova and Kristin Johnsen-Neshati, and developed a new, more literal interpretation of Three Sisters. Those who know Chekhov in and out (which is to say, every theater major around the world) may notice Director Les Waters's somewhat lighter hand, but what most will appreciate is Chekhov's timeless cadences, eternal Slavic angst and the inward discoveries each character is forced to make.

The men - especially Officer Vershinin (Bruce McKenzie), Baron Tuzenbach (Thomas Jay Ryan) and brother Andrei (Alex Moggridge) serve as foils for the women, while the excellent Natasha (Emily Kitchens, who was so good in A.C.T.'s Clybourne Park), tall, gangly and hopelessly out of style, helps us appreciate the personal dilemmas of Irina, Masha and Olga. You can't say too much for Scenic Designer Annie Smart, who has built us a house we could all live in, as long as we got to wear Costume Designer Ilona Somogyi's Russian army uniforms and/or floor-length gowns.

Bear in mind that this is Chekhov: it's long, a full three hours with one intermission, and Act Two tends to stretch on a bit, seeing as we have already identified the bad guy far in advance and can see exactly how the story is destined to play out. Perhaps in 1902, when The Three Sisters premiered, the story could keep audiences on the edge of their seats, but by 2011 we have seen too many horror movies. "Dance, you fools! Don't do the duel!" we shout, but...nyet. No luck.

So you make an investment of time, but one that pays off handsomely. Chekhov is beloved because he makes you laugh, he insists that you think about your own life and he gives you the gift of a window into a long ago world in a faraway empire. Irina is right: we will all be dissolved by light, but before that we can hold our sisters' hands and dream of a better day.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG
The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Three Sisters" Three Stars with a BANGLE of PRAISE. The actors, set and story earn one star each, while the BANGLE is given for especially noteworthy performances by Ryan, Kitchens and each of the three long-suffering, endlessly-wintering, never-getting-back-to-Moscow sisters.

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"The Three Sisters"
Berkeley Repertory Company
2025 Addison Street, Berkeley
Through May 22
$34-$73

"Wirehead": ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ (!)

2011-04-10T10:38:00.000-07:00

First off, go see "Wirehead" at SF Playhouse. Then, when you're standing on line for the brain transplant from the Chinese corporation engaged in destroying humanity as we know it while elevating intelligence to unheard of levels so we can create a cigarette that doesn't cause cancer while treating the humans who can't afford the operation as worthless pets so that...oh, hold on.

That's what the show does to you, though. Matthew Benjamin and Logan Brown's "Wirehead" is one of the meatiest, most thought-provoking shows to come along in a long time, and it doesn't hurt that it is hysterically funny too, although it's hard to laugh with your jaw dropping to your knees most of the time.

Scott Coopwood's Shock Jock perches high above the stage and his commentary helps us remember we are in Future World here, although it is not all that far-fetched. Gabriel Marin (Destry) and Craig Marker (Adams) play beautifully off each other, as the befuddled office workers who realize their previously-dense co-worker has just had "the operation" and is now a brilliant genius who is taking over their jobs. The two women in their lives, Monyca (Madeline H.D. Brown) and Laura (Lauren Grace), one ditzy and one overly ambitious, are good too but their roles are less fleshed out.

The show is stolen by Cole Alexander Smith, who plays three roles. In the first of these, as Hammy, the first recipient of the new brain-enhancer, he seems to have re-channeled a young Michael Keaton in Beelzebub. You may not think so in this photo as he sits between Marin and Marker, but that's just because your antiquated human brain/eyeball connection is inadequate in its current configuration.

Give director Susi Damilano the most credit of all: you don't ever feel her little humanoid finger in the production. The show flows along for 90 minutes with no intermission and you are on the edge of your seat the whole way.

I want a new Z-Drive! Die, humans! (Evil cackle.)

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ (!)

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Wirehead" Four Stars with the addition of a possible Exclamation Point. The Four Stars are for writing, direction, acting and the cool music design (Scott Schoenbeck) and set (Bill English). Special thanks for the terrific phone call set piece between Marin and Marker as they begin to realize what is going on around them.

The (exclamation point) is just so this reviewer can get his Z-Drive before Robert Hurwitt gets his. It never hurts to ask.

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"Wirehead"
San Francisco Playhouse
533 Sutter Street, San Francisco
Through April 23
$30-$50

Randy Rutherford "Singing at the Edge of the World": ☼ ☼

2011-04-09T09:48:00.001-07:00

Randy Rutherford's autobiographical one-man show "Singing at the Edge of the World" is strong when it is heartbreaking. One feels empathy with the singer/guitar player who lost his hearing mid-career, in his early thirties; sadness when he reunites with his old girl friend, Molly; and even a little self-understanding when Rutherford quotes Helen Keller: "A blind person loses connection to things, but a deaf person loses connection to people." That'll make you count your blessings.

As a story of one man's triumph over a musician's nightmare, you have to love Randy Rutherford. But as a play: not so much. The lead character is passive to the point of inaction and his whininess makes us wonder why either he or his girl deserve ten minutes of our attention. He's depressed, she's a ditz.

A beautiful ditz, to be sure, we are told...and he was once a fine guitar player and singer too, we are also told. But we can't see Molly and the music that Rutherford performs, though commendable, sounds like it is coming from someone who is relying on digital hearing aids.

Within that framework he is astonishing, really, but what feels more astonishing is how they have chosen to focus almost the entire show on the doomed love affair, which had no chance from the moment Randy met Molly, and not on the agony and details of the singer's loss of hearing and how it has affected his subsequent career as an artist, or on the nuts and bolts of trying to sing when you cannot hear yourself clearly. This feels like a David Ford (director) decision but perhaps it is the author's wish. Either way, it's a little hard to fathom. It may be what that raven is whispering in his ear.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼
The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Singing at the Edge of the World" Two Stars. We'd love to hear Randy Rutherford tell us his interesting story over an elk burger and a six pack at the Fancy Moose in Anchorage, without the constrictions of trying to fit it into scenes and light cues, which don't really work. We get the feeling that if they let this man just talk he could blow us away. Perhaps that will happen down the line.

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Randy Rutherford: "Singing at the Edge of the World"
The Marsh, BERKELEY
2120 Allston Way, Berkeley
Through April 16
$15-$35

"The Homecoming": ☼ ☼ ☼

2011-03-13T18:19:00.000-07:00

First performed in London on June 3, 1965, Harold Pinter's "The Homecoming" always seems on the surface like Theater of the Absurd. The characters are impossible to picture in real life, the situation is unimaginable and the way everyone is simply reacting, not interacting, makes you wonder upon whom Pinter could have based his story? Is there another family in East London like this one? Could there be?

It is certainly a brilliant production. A.C.T.'s core company does itself pround, with Jack Willis in particular turning himself with relish into the ultra-crochety patriarch Max. Rene Augesen's Ruth and Anthony Fusco's Teddy are the principal couple. You immediately realize that all the others, including Max's brother Sam (Kenneth Welsh), middle son Lenny (Andrew Polk) and youngest son Joey (Adam O'Byrne) are playing their hands with several cards missing from all three decks, but you're counting on Ruth and Teddy to make sense of the situation. Don't do it.

Pinter plays are like trips to a literate zoo. You can love the dialog, laugh heartily at the absurd situations, laud the playwright in your mind for his examination of each character and perception of each's fatal flaw, but you can never quite answer the question: why are we here? These are creatures unlike any of us. Why did he write about them? Why should we care?

The answer appears to be that we care because Pinter makes us care. Not unlike viewing a large collection of flamingos in their native habitat, plumage on fire, we observe this family homecoming in all its native insanity, beautiful in its way, but we know those fragile limbs can't hold these daft birds upright forever.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "The Homecoming" Three Stars, but it's a guess. If you love Pinter, you may give it four. The acting is that good. If you're really depressed you may give it five because this bunch has to make your world look sweet as whipped cream on plum pudding.

We're settling on three. You'll want to punch Max, shake Ruth, shy away from Lenny and Joey, smack Teddy a few times on the butt and hug Sam. Pinter died in 2008 so he's no help to us now. We've got to slap our way through this one on our own.

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"The Homecoming"
A.C.T. Theater
415 Geary Street, San Francisco
Through March 27
$10-$85

"The North Pool": ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ! BANG

2011-03-13T16:47:00.000-07:00

With but one scene and two actors, Rajiv Joseph's new 'The North Pool' does everything a play is supposed to do. It involves you, tricks you, gets you rooting for first one, then the other character, makes you figure out what is going on, and then you see the fallout shelter, and the bird containers, and the truth is you don't know anything, do you? Then we rip off in a different direction and the thunder begins. Joseph's dialog -- after all, this is all there is -- is stunning, the characters fully developed and in the end our hearts would be broken, if we weren't a little awe-struck.

Strong words from The Reviewer Who Didn't Like Rock of Ages? (Will you please stop throwing that stuff!) Yes, indeed. This Theatreworks production, directed by Giovanna Sardelli, is a World Premiere in Palo Alto, and we can scarcely imagine how much stronger it can get as the run continues.

Khadim Asmaan (Adam Poss) is a high school student who has been called into Vice Principal Danielson's office. Scenic Designer Erik Flatmo must have spent a lot time there himself because he got it right: the map behind the desk, the American flag, the too-small chairs, the trophies in the trophy case, the view through his window to the lockers behind. It gives you the shivers.

Dr. Danielson (Remi Sandri), middle aged and balding, starts off with a lot of banalities, but he has an agenda. It's not what you think it is at first, or second, but you come to understand he is seeking something important from Khadim. For his part, Khadim appears to be a perfectly normal, well-adjusted and intelligent kid, but soon you realize he is lying through his teeth. After that the map comes down and we see what's behind it. Now the real story gets rolling and you don't know where it will stop.

We'll give you a hint: Playwright Joseph is not writing about racism, but the other r-word: redemption.

RATINGS ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ! BANG

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards "The North Pool" Four Stars! with a BANGLE of PRAISE. The four stars are for the four monster performances, by Poss, Sandri, Director Sardelli and Author Joseph. The BANGLE has to go to Adam Poss for Khadim's remarkable confession scene -- and that is followed by one of almost equal emotional power from Sandri's Vice Principal. We see two people, alone in the world and carrying a terrible burden, from whose clutches only one can relieve the other. This is quite an achievement for a One Acter with two characters and no car chases. Congratulations to everyone.

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"The North Pool"
Lucie Stern Theater,
1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto
Through April 3
$24-$67
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Photo credits: Mark Kitaoka and Tracy Martin

Word 4 Word "The Islanders": ☼ ☼ ☼

2011-03-11T10:37:00.000-08:00

You won't get to see Word 4 Word's presentation of Andrew Sean Greer's "The Islanders" unless you hurry to Z Space this weekend. The short run is a tune up for the company as they head off to France. Sheila Balter directs the story of friendship between two American women in their forties as they travel through the countryside of Ireland.

Nancy Shelby is Maddy, the more introspective one, and Stephanie Hunt is Cat, her loquacious and slightly loony old friend. We learn about them both, Cat behind the wheel and Maddy reading the guidebook, each somewhat irritated by the other, until the final incident when Maddy's life is in danger and Cat blows the whistle.

As always, Word 4 Word ensembles are every bit as entertaining as the main characters, with Paul Finocchiaro, Delia MacDougall and Joel Mullenix singing Irish songs, pretending to be trees, rocks and bandits, while illustrating each bit of Greer's story exposition with over-the-top antics. This company is such a pleasure to watch as they go about their work as effortlessly as if they and the audience were all drinking beer in a local pub.

But there's a lot of Andrea Weber's choreography going on that you don't notice, and Joshua Raoul Brody's sound design helps keep the show flowing. Ms. McDougall has a beautiful Irish voice -- we could use more songs from her and Mr. Finocchiaro.

Bon chance, mes amis. Do they speak English in France? Or Ireland, for that matter?

RATINGS ☼ ☼ ☼

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Word 4 Word's "The Islanders" Three Stars. It's a short story -- the presentation lasts only one hour, including songs at the start -- but a sweet one. We love it when "unceremoniously, the video presentation ends." We've all been there. Our question is: do the Irish ever sing about anything except liquor, lost love and sadness, in reverse order?

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"Word 4 Word "The Islanders"
Z Space Theater
450 Florida Street, San Francisco
Through Mar 12 ONLY
$25-$40

"Rock of Ages": ☼ ☼ BANG

2011-03-10T08:59:00.000-08:00

It is easy to lampoon Rock of Ages, the silly story wrapped around '80's rock music that opened last night to an enthusiastic audience at the Curran. But first you've got to decide whether they're serious or not. Is this a parody of the mid-'80s music scene in Los Angeles, or is it, in fact, a tribute to Whitesnake and Journey and Foreigner and the various other rockers whose songs are featured?

We suppose it is probably both. As a parody it lacks practically everything -- story, humor, interest -- and spends most of its time laughing self-consciously at itself. But as a tribute "Rock of Ages" at least attempts to kick some serious butt. If you loved "I've Been Waiting for a Girl Like You" or "We Built This City (on Rock and Roll)" when they first came out, you'll enjoy the powerhouse four piece band and thank the show's lead singers who at least make us realize how good the original singers were.

Constantine Maroulis is the lead. He plays the poor boy who makes good. Maroulis was a finalist of some kind on American Idol, just to let you know. His love-interest counterpart is Sherrie (Elicia MacKenzie), who has been rejected by her parents in Kansas because she wants to be a star in L.A. The two would-be lovers have an astonishingly imperceptible amount of chemistry going on between them, but it might have something to do with their hair: Maroulis's is longer than MacKenzie's.

We mention hair because it is an icon of the show. But that's hair with a small h. "Rock of Ages" would love to be mentioned in the same breath with the original Hair -- in its casting, its costuming and its vibe. But Hair had fabulous original music and it was about an age. "Rock of Ages" has 25-year-old music and is about -- well, having a good time. Nothing wrong with that.

We also get terribly bad-taste jokes about drugs -- and poop too -- but the show's writers give us nothing about what the music meant to the period.

This is what is so irritating. These were great songs, whether you were into them or not, with amazing bands and astonishing lead singers. The current "Rock of Ages" seems to be right on schedule with the state of rock and roll in our American Idol world -- lots of people who have practiced to find notes in the proper range, but without any sense of the feeling that first imbued this music with so much life.

The audience around you will be young. They will be cheering. Don't leave at intermission -- Act Two is a lot better than dreary Act One.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ BANG

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Rock of Ages" Two Stars with a BANGLE OF PRAISE. The Two Stars are for the three characters who steal the show: Nick Cordero as Dennis, Casey Tuma as Regina and Travis Walker as Franz. Cordero has a voice for the ages, plus a stage presence none of the others possess, including the narrator Lonny (Patrick Lewallen) who tries really, really hard to be Jack Black; Tuma's Gilda Radner-esque protester is winning and eye-catching; and Walker's line as Franz, the fey-ish son of the evil real estate developer, wins the BANGLE OF PRAISE: "I'm not gay! I'm German!"

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"Rock of Ages"
Curran Theater
445 Geary Street, San Francisco
Through April 9
$40-$200

"Ruined": ☼ ☼

2011-03-03T09:08:00.001-08:00

Lynn Nottage is hot now. We loved her "Intimate Apparel" a few years ago, and since her new show "Ruined" has won a Pulitzer for Drama and many other New York theater awards, we looked forward with excitement to this new production at Berkeley Rep.

Our subject is rape in the Congo. In the real world there are many women whose lives have been destroyed by bands of militia roaming the African countryside. In Nottage's story, several of these women end up in Mama Nadi's bar/whorehouse. Mama Nadi herself (Tonye Patano) is a large, effusive women who attempts to peddle whiskey and sex to all comers -- which is to say miners and soldiers from all sides of every struggle. Guns must be emptied and ammo clips stored behind the bar before you're allowed to sample any of the wares in Mama's, which tells us Mama is the only glue holding this conflicted part of the world together. (Think Rick in Casablanca.)

The story line belongs to the girls, Salima (Pascale Armand), Sophie (Carla Duren) and Josephine (Zainab Jah).

They are the ones who have suffered the most. Salima's history is particularly gruesome -- kidnapped and shackled to a tree by the ankle, she was raped repeatedly for five months by soldiers in the jungle. "I was soup before dinner, everyone take a taste," she says. Then, when she finally escaped, she was rejected by her husband and family because now she was damaged goods. In other words: ruined.

Everyone is trapped. Our hearts are broken for these women -- in real life, anyway. But the play is leaden. The playwright pontificates, the direction is heavy-handed and the set is filled with so many African objects all the actors barely have room to move, let alone stomp their feet. The language spoken is an African/English patois, mixed with French we are guessing. It is very difficult to decipher, let alone comprehend, more than a percentage of what any character says.

Even the Congolese music falls short, and this is difficult to do to such a catchy and danceable style. Although the two-person band has a superior musical pedigree (guitarist Adesoji Odukogbe played for five years with superstar Fela), their tunes never go anywhere. The guitarist noodles, the percussionist doodles and Carla Duren sings in a reedy voice that we suppose is meant to convey her discomfort and unhappiness. It doesn't help that the songs, like the dialog, are in a dialect we cannot follow.

Only at the very end, when the happy-in-quotes ending we knew was coming finally arrives, and Duren and Armand sing a lovely duet together, do we see what a difference taking the wraps off this irrepressible music might have made for Nottage's story, if not for our comprehension, then at least to convey the sense of inner beauty the playwright feels for this forgotten center of Africa. As it is, "Ruined" is mostly about tragedy and it is unremitting.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Ruined" Two Stars. The baddies are truly bad (Adrian Roberts as Commander Osembenga makes you want to duck under your seat so he can't find you) and that's always good. Tonye Patano can really sing (but you only get to hear her in one little chorus). Oberon K.A. Adjepong as Christian guzzles an entire Fanta as the show starts (we hope he doesn't have to do matinees too). He gets another Fanta in Act Two, but only takes a few sips.

Sadly, the show starts and ends in the same place. Mama Nadi's surprise is telegraphed a million miles away, and all we have to cheer for is the hope that these few women, out of the tens of thousands of others in the real word, can find a Mama to help them. They'll still be selling sex to survive, but at least they'll have enough to eat. Don't look for answers here. Neither the world nor playwright Nottage have any for you.

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"Ruined"
Berkeley Repertory Company
2025 Addison Street, Berkeley
Through April 10
$34-$73 (half price to anyone under 30)

"Pidge Meade: Forty Pounds in Twelve Weeks": ☼ ☼ ☼

2011-02-27T10:22:00.001-08:00

When Pidge Meade came home for the summer after she had put on forty pounds as a college freshman, her gymnastics coach Dad told her she had to lose that weight before he would pay a penny for her Fall semester. In "Forty Pounds in Twelve Weeks" the young Pidge is faced with a monumental task -- and it is made so much harder by her father's consistently cruel commentaries on her progress. Meade, the average-sized performer, makes us root for the success of Meade, the young overweight woman. This is not such a simple task since we can already see the results with our own eyes.

Meade plays all the parts of her story -- herself, her ex-roommate in college, her father, her mother, a Carnival barker (possibly the best of all these roles), the guru of weight loss and others. Charlie Varon directs, so we can be sure there will be no wasted dialog. Meade hits her musical cues with precision and when you get done with the evening you leave with new appreciation for all the people portrayed in her show -- her parents, trying to help but helpless; her friends, dying to have her 'secret,' except that there isn't one; and most of all the plight of so many among us who face a far more daunting task to lose that weight than the rest of us ever imagine.

We loved Meade's portrayal of her parents and her side characters. We will never hear "the proof is in the pudding" again without flinching. But if the show has an Achilles heel it is that the central character, the young Pidge Meade, is not as enthralling as the others. Since the show is basically one long flashback and we are looking at the end result in front of us, we can't root as hard for her as we might if we saw her start out heavy and end up thin. So what we have is basically a travel story -- her journey matters far more than her destination. We would like her portrayal of herself, true or not, to give us a little less hand-wringing and a few more brilliant moments like the scene in the car with her Dad.

Perhaps that scene most typifies Meade's power. She is forced by her Dad to sing the show tune with which she auditioned for the lead in a school play. Pidge Meade can sing, friends! What a glorious voice -- but of course, she did not get the part and we all know why. This simple scene illustrates what so many words could not. A few more scenes like this one will take "Forty Pounds in Twelve Weeks" to another level. Pidge Meade is the real deal.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Pidge Meade: Forty Pounds in Twelve Weeks" Three Stars. It's a lovely show that has only now graduated to the bigger stage after Meade won the Marsh's Performance Initiative Competition. We are certain the show will grow in power as she grows out of her memory and into the hearts of her audience.

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"Pidge Meade: Forty Pounds in Twelve Weeks"
The Marsh
1074 Valencia Street, San Francisco
Through March 26
$15-$35 sliding scale

"Christopher Titus: Neverlution": ☼ ☼

2011-02-16T09:37:00.000-08:00

"Lady Gaga is proof that David Bowie married Carole Burnett." Comedian Christopher Titus's new solo show "Neverlution" is full of lines like that. The show has some brilliant moments but it's unsettling. You never quite get over the sensation that people younger than you are laughing 'way louder than they should be laughing.

Titus stands on the stage and rants about various things. His idea about late-term abortions (they should be legal up to the age of 22), and his comments about America being addicted to prescription drugs are really funny. His experience at the DMV where an out-of-control obese five year old manages to make the DMV even worse, which segues into Titus's view on child-raising in modern America, make your head smack back in your seat as the laughter flows. His ideas and delivery are excellent and some of the gags are truly novel. It's all good.

But -- honestly -- why would you want to pay theater ticket prices to see a comic who is doing little more than his night club act? Wouldn't you rather get two drinks for your money at a comedy club?

But Titus is not appearing at a comedy club, he's standing in the middle of a theater stage lampooning modern culture. And yet, that's the only reason he's got an audience. He's been on TV. That makes him worthy. It rubs us the wrong way to hear about his humble East Bay roots -- OK, he never got an A in his life, wow that's GREAT Chris! That means it's OK to charge $42 for a ticket and $4 for a bottle of water at intermission. Got it.

It may be generational. The twenty and thirty-somethings who were laughing the loudest probably were closer to the source of Titus's rampages. He's a funny guy.

RATINGS: The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Christopher Titus" Neverlution" Two Stars. There are lots of great bits. If you're into contemporary culture you'll enjoy watching Titus rant about it.

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"Christopher Titus: Neverlution:
Marine's Memorial Theater
609 Sutter Street, San Francisco
SHORT RUN: Four more performances ONLY, through Feb. 19
$42

Sarah Felder: "Out of Sight" ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ !

2011-02-14T09:17:00.000-08:00

It is an undeniable truth that even the most experienced reviewers sometimes see shows dealing with subjects with which we cannot relate. In those cases we do our best to concentrate on the theatrical aspects of the presentation in front of us.

Then comes the rare show that talks about, basically, the reviewer's life. Sarah Felder's "Out of Sight" is one of those. Take away the Lesbian part and the female part and you've got a middle aged Jewish protagonist with an elderly almost-blind mother with whom she can talk about almost anything, as long as it's not Israel.

Mom, you're not reading this, are you? No, you can't. You're almost blind.

Sarah Felder is a genius. She is also a juggler. Every time her show gets to an emotional crisis, she starts to juggle. It might be lemons, it might be scarves, it might be passing a little red nerf ball back and forth between her arms and shoulders and chin with grace and tenderness. She uses shadow puppets to great advantage, especially at the end. And when she is talking about her time as a college student visiting Israel, and she saw that her mother's beloved Israel was in fact flawed and full of hypocrisy, she is standing on a long board balancing on a beach ball as she juggles three large and nasty looking knives. She is caught in that all-too familiar balancing act, whenever she must discuss the tough stuff.

Our favorite scenes: her mother at the opera. Her friend Norman and his conversion. The way she describes falling in love for the first time with a woman she meets in Israel: "She knows about Israel supporting apartheid in South Africa, and the contras, and Pinochet, and taking away the rights of the Palestinians. Wow, she's hot!"

Our city is filled with amazing solo performers. Only one juggles. Sarah Felder has just been extended at the Marsh for five more weeks. You don't have to be Jewish or gay or a juggler to love this performer. We could not recommend her more highly.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ !

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards Sarah Felder's "Out of Sight" Four Stars and they are gleaming (!). You get eighty minutes of a story filled with laughter and love. She gives you lemons and makes you the lemonade. Above all, she makes it look easy. Don't miss Sarah Felder.

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Sarah Felder: "Out of Sight"
The Marsh
1062 Valencia Street, San Francisco
Through Mar 27, weekends only
$20-$35 (very small theater. NO bad seats.)

"What We're Up Against": ☼ ☼ BANG

2011-02-10T14:40:00.000-08:00

In her third Bay production in four years, Theresa Rebeck appears to be on a roll, Her basic theme is unchanged: power and politics in interpersonal relationships. Whereas 2008's "The Scene" was about the entertainment biz and 2009's "Mauritius" about a struggle between sisters over an estate, "What We're Up Against" deals with sexism in the workplace.

There are many interesting sidelines to the story of the new female hire in the architecture firm, Eliza (played by Sarah Nealls). She has been shunted to a rear office and given no assignments while the young pretty boy Weber (James Wagner) receives every opportunity to excel. Eliza's boss Stu (Warren David Keith) and her co-workers Ben (Rod Gnapp) and Janice (Pamela Gaye Walker) are not sympathetic to her plight, as they are caught up in insecurities about their own jobs.

Stu is a drunk. Janice is the good little girl. Eliza is a bitch. Weber is an idiot. Ben is --- well, Ben is Rod Gnapp, slightly dyspeptic, world-weary and in the end always the diamond in the rough. We like Ben. We don't much care for any of the others.

As with "Mauritius," it is hard to call "What We're Up Against" a comedy but harder still to name it a drama. It is too entertaining to be called a polemic but there is too little motion to call it great theater. The characters remain unchanged by the final curtain and their problems have not been dealt with. The best we can hope for is that Ben and Eliza go out for dinner and don't strangle each other.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ BANG

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "What We're Up Against" Two Stars with a BANGLE of PRAISE. Though this rating falls slightly below the Julie Andrews Line (see sidebar on right for explanation of ratings), you will enjoy Warren David Keith (brilliantly seamy). Sarah Nealls is good as the pretty girl everyone figures is sleeping with the big boss David (never seen). And you'll root for Rod Gnapp to figure it all out.

The BANGLE is for Stu, who is just plain bewildered by women. He makes us think he means it when he says "She tricked me. But I wasn't fooled."

Could James Wagner's Weber REALLY describe a shopping mall as "...the human heart meets the void in those places and shops anyway." Could Pamela Gaye Walker's Janice actually fawn THAT fatuously, and either of them still be employed the next day?

Apparently. The critic's wife, who worked for many years in an environment like Rebeck's architecture firm, assures him that not only is every word in this show true but in real life it's even worse. Way worse. There's your tragedy.

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"What We're Up Against"
Magic Theatre
Building D, Fort Mason Center, San Francisco
Through March 6
$44-$60

"Collapse": ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

2011-02-04T20:58:00.001-08:00

What a fine story. Allison Moore's "Collapse" has everything -- a perfect cast of four, craziness, love, a sex addict support group, a collapsed bridge, a marriage heading for the deep water, even a happy ending. Well, not happy ha ha but happy ai yai yai.

Plus, you get Amy Resnick, who is the nut in charge of the fruitcake. She plays Hannah's sister Susan (we'll get to Hannah in a second). Susan is trouble, wrapped up in a layer of delusionary psychobabble. Hannah, played with equal brilliance by Carrie Paff, is falling apart, while maintaining the veneer of control.

Meanwhile, Hannah's husband David (Gabriel Marin), has suffered a tragedy which has rendered him emotionally impotent, but sexually potent, apparently, while Ted (Aldo Billingslea) has had prostate cancer which means he can emote like mad but no longer do the deed.

The laughs come a mile a minute, but they make you think too. Susan's final line "OK, but you're buyin' the pancakes" is very funny, but Hannah and David's final couplet really defines the show:

David: "How do we keep from collapsing?"

Hannah: "Maybe we don't. Maybe we just figure out how to fall together."

Paff, Marin, Resnick and Billingslea are fabulous, the writing is perfect and the small Aurora stage makes you feel like you're right in the middle of it all. Special shout-out for the original music, written and recorded by James Mitchell, Adam Thompson and Neil Wadhawan.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Collapse" Four Stars, one for the writer, two for the actors and director Jessica Heidt and one more because this show just makes you feel good. Even a theater critic needs a good laugh and "Collapse" delivers them in bunches.

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"Collapse"
Aurora Theater
2081 Addison Street, Berkeley
Through Mar 6
$34-$45

"Harper Regan": ☼ ☼ ☼

2011-02-01T14:19:00.000-08:00

In each pivotal scene in Simon Stephens's "Harper Regan" we see Harper herself, played with finesse by Susi Damilano, alternating between sad and sadder. She is on the run, even when she's home, and when she leaves home she longs to be back. The San Francisco Playhouse production is a Western Premiere and bills itself as a physical odyssey through England, but it is nothing of the sort. Harper's journey is an internal one and could take place anywhere, as she winds herself through three men, a bar, a bridge, a hotel room and a leather jacket.

Damilano, in her finest role to date at SF Playhouse, gives her heroine depth simply by her facial expressions. The corners of her mouth turn down when she's glum, but her eyes always betray the hope of finding something or someone new.

It won't be her boss or Mickey (both played with pizazz by Richard Frederick), worthless reprobates, and not the young boy at the bridge (Daniel Redmond), and certainly not her mother (Joy Carlin). Harper's husband Seth and her fast fling James (both played by Michael Keys Hall) don't seem to help much either. What Harper Regan wants, more than anything else in the world, is to talk to somebody.

We might quibble with Joy Carlin's role as an English grandmother -- though we have loved Ms. Carlin in countless works through the years, this play seems to have a strong subtext about the English class struggle. Carlin does not sound English nor does she appear to embody whichever social class the author expects us to find in her. Mum is supposed to be distant, we imagine, but really she isn't all that bad.

Special notice goes to Monique Hafen, who stands out in both her roles as Harper's disaffected teenage daughter (is there any other kind?) and as a nurse in the hospital where Harper's father has just died. She brings a lot of life to the stage.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Harper Regan" Three Stars. It is worth seeing, though Stephens's story still feels a little like a work in progress, with loose ends and plot points (for example, all the idle chatter about porn) that don't seem to go where they should. Damilano and Hafen are terrific as mother and daughter. We hope they are on stage together again soon.

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"Harper Regan"
San Francisco Playhouse
533 Sutter Street, San Francisco
Through March 5
$30-$45

"Clybourne Park: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

2011-01-27T08:55:00.000-08:00

You know something is happening when they extend a show before it even opens. Bruce Norris's "Clybourne Park," which is barely a year old but has been winning prizes everywhere it goes, opened last night at A.C.T. and delivers on every promise.

Though originally from Dallas, Texas, Norris is considered a "Chicago playwright." Clybourne Park is a neighborhood in Chicago -- not a real neighborhood, but the very one invented by Lorraine Hansberry in her epic 1957 drama "Raisin in the Sun." In "Raisin" we watch what happens when a black family wants to move into the white neighborhood of "Clybourne Park," and now Bruce Norris tells the story of the house itself, and what happens as time passes and demographics begin to change.

Act One takes place in 1959. Russ (Anthony Fusco) and Bev (René Augesen) are moving from their white neighborhood. Their living room is filled with packing boxes and memories (the nature of which become increasingly important). It turns out their house has been sold to a black family (the fictional "Raisin" family), which engenders an exceedingly uncomfortable half hour in which we must revisit a world we all hoped to leave far behind us.

You might practice squirming at home before you see Act One. If Richard Thieriot as Karl Lindner doesn't rattle your brain with his supercilious racial stereotyping, then you're just not old enough.

In Act Two the year is 2009 and the same house has been sold to a young white couple, Lindsey (Emily Kitchens) and Steve (Thierot), who want to tear it down and build a 'nicer one.' They are in conflict with Lena (Omozé Idehenre) and Kevin (Gregory Wallace), a black couple who, though obviously upper middle class themselves, have familial ties to both the neighborhood and the house itself.

And then there's the house's secret. But this secret, which unfolds as the play continues, is no more secret than the unspoken fears about race that no one can allow himself or herself to verbalize. In 1959, the neighbors are just plain oblivious, while in 2009 they ought to know better, but they don't. If there is blame it is shared: no one is willing to speak from the heart.

Until the jokes start. Well. Do you know why a white woman is like a tampon? Ask Lena. Do you know what is long and hard for a black man? Ask Steve. Once these scabrous and hysterical jokes start flying around the room, laughter can begin. And despite the surprisingly sad conclusion, the author leaves us with the sense that with laughter we can overcome a lot, especially when we step back and laugh at, and with, ourselves.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Clybourne Park" Four Stars with a BANGLE OF PRAISE for excellent writing. It's just a great play, one that surprises you, shocks you, makes you cringe and then pays it all off. Playwrights often throw all their best stuff into Act One and then fizzle out in Act Two. Norris sets the stage in Act One and then writes the book on how to construct an Act Two.

Along with Jeff Mockus's Sound Design (great song choices) we also want to recognize director Jonathan Moscone for perfect pacing. A ponderous Act One might be too much to bear. Moscone (and the cast) are just laying a foundation to build on in Act Two, like good plays and strong houses are supposed to do.

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"Clybourne Park"
A.C.T. Theater
415 Geary Street, San Francisco
Extended through Feb. 20
$10-$88

Photos by Erik Tomasson

"The Thirty Nine Steps": ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG BANG

2011-01-24T10:51:00.000-08:00

If, like handsome, suave and debonair Richard Hannay, you long for something mindless, trivial and utterly pointless, but also a load of laughs and a ton of fun, we recommend the new Theaterworks production of "The Thirty Nine Steps" at Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts. An homage to Alfred Hitchcock films, the show is a collection of sight gags containing Hitchcockian bits, English drawing room humor and Monty Pythonesque slapstick. Above all we get brilliant performances from Mark Anderson Phillips as Hannay, and Dan Hiatt and Cassidy Brown who play all the other roles, and there are many, which are not being portrayed by the glorious Rebecca Dines.

Oh, there are train chases (a real one and a toy one), and a puppet or two, and a murder, sort of, and true love, in a way, and a bullet stopped by a hymnal (that's Sherlock Holmes, isn't it?). But it's not the journey we care about --it's how the production takes us there. Our favorite bits are where the small cast takes odds and ends (like chairs, hooks, a podium, hats) and turns them into a train compartment or a motorcar or a hotel room. The show is at least as much fun to watch as to hear.

Every star should get a supporting cast like Dines, Hiatt and Brown. Two scenes stand out among many -- the hat sequence on the train, where a simple turn to the rear and change of hat allows all the characters to switch roles in an instant, and then switch back in another instant; and the bedroom scene in the Scottish inn where the innkeepers flit in and out.

In fact, we loved everything where there are Scots. Why are Scots so funny? Perhaps because the shows about them are always written by Englishmen.

Special kudos to Costume Designer B. Modern for all those period costumes (there are over 60 costume changes between Mr. Hiatt and Brown alone), and to lighting designer Steven B. Mannshardt for his clever cues which help us keep our eyes on the important stuff and off where everyone is frantically changing clothes and hats.

Thirty Nine Steps has been in the Bay Area at least twice before and it keeps coming back because people love it. So will you.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG BANG

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "The Thirty Nine Steps" Three Stars with two, count'em, two BANGLES OF PRAISE. One star is for the cast, another for the production and a third for Robert Kelley's lighting fast direction. The first BANGLE is for the way Phillips extricates himself from under the dead Fraulein Schmidt. We could watch that scene over and over. The other BANGLE is for the hats. Oh, and the handcuffs!

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"The Thirty Nine Steps"
Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts
500 Castro Street, Mountain View
Through Feb. 13
$19-$56

Photo Credit: Mark Kitaoka and Tracy Martin

Mike Daisey: "The Agony and Ecstacy of Steve Jobs" ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

2011-01-23T22:31:00.000-08:00

It's almost impossible to compare "The Agony and Ecstacy of Steve Jobs" with "The Last Cargo Cult," both of which are written and performed by the monologist Mike Daisey, and are playing in repertory at Berkeley Rep.

In both, Daisey sits behind a desk and spins his story, but whereas in "Cargo Cult" you hear a story that is fun but played for laughs, "The Agony and Ecstacy of Steve Jobs" hits you in the gut. It is still very funny, but the world you live in changes after you see this show.

The difference between the two shows is easy to see -- this one hits Mike Daisey where he lives too. He is a true techno-file, and has been an Apple maniac since his first Apple 2C. The narrative is divided into two alternating story lines -- the first, which is a veritable history of the computer industry with an emphasis on Apple and its co-founder Steve Jobs; and the second, which is a first-hand report of a trip Daisey made to Southern China and the appalling and eye-opening conditions he found existing in the factory where "they produce 52% of the electronics in the entire world. That means half of all YOUR shit."

We get fabulous images, told by a man who is more than a tourist (which is how he comes across in "Cargo Cult"). He is a true believer who is trying hard to hang onto his faith. We see the Hong Kong markets "where cell phones hang on wires like freshly caught fish," the godawful city of Shenzen, only a few decades ago a fishing village with seven thousand people but now the third largest city in China with more than fourteen MILLION inhabitants; and we hear about the grinding daily lives of the workers who turn out to be anxious to speak with the large American in the Hawaiian shirt.

In between we get a fascinating story about Steve Jobs himself, the mad genius who built Apple but was impossible to work with, and what happened to him and to the corporation when he was removed from power and then rehired a dozen years later. In Daisey's blog he speaks about his sorrow at Jobs's current resignation from Apple for health reasons, and how no one can imagine the company continuing without him.

These are words from someone who drank the Apple Kool-Aid a long time ago but is asking all of us to at least consider the cost in Chinese lives, before we plunk down many hundreds for more new, slick, well-designed gadgets. We have to report that we too found ourselves staring differently this morning at our snappy and shiny MacBook Pro. (Sigh. It sure is nice, though.)

Go see this show. Put DOWN the I-Pad. Go.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards Mike Daisey's "The Agony and Ecstacy of Steve Jobs" Four SOLID stars, and if he wants to add a few musical numbers we will think about raising it. One comment he makes at the end of the show (and remember, this is a long evening -- two hours with no letup, no costume changes, no car chases and no intermission) has stuck with us all day: with all the complaining and whining in the first world about how machines have taken over our production, the fact is that the most complex electronic gizmos in our world are basically made by hand in China by workers laboring like they did in cloth factories in England in 1850.

That's what we get with "hand made." It makes this reporter wonder where is the Chinese Charles Dickens?

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Mike Daisey: "The Agony and Ecstacy of Steve Jobs"
Berkeley Repertory Theater, Thrust Stage
2025 Addison Street, Berkeley
In repertory with "The Last Cargo Cult," through February 27.
$34-$73, many discounts available

"Mike Daisey: The Last Cargo Cult": ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG baub

2011-01-14T09:16:00.000-08:00

The lights come halfway up on Mike Daisey, a heavy-set man sitting behind a wooden desk, glass of water to his right, hand towel folded in back of the glass, a few sheets of yellow paper in front of him. He inhales, places his palms gently on the desk, then the lights come up and Daisey goes ballistic. He yells, screams, rants, f-bombs, wipes acculmulated sweat off his face with his towel, looks right, looks left. He is infuriated. He is humiliated. He is terrified. He is out of patience. And then Part One is over.

He folds over one piece of yellow paper and glances at the one underneath it. He takes a deep breath and starts screaming again. This is Part Two.

Seven Parts and two full hours later we have heard about the islands of Vanuatu and Manhattan, a cargo cult religion called John Frum, a volcano, problems with where to send your kids to school, the way his wife drives and the way our culture values our "awesome shit" -- that is, our cargo. We have heard about fermented yam paste, and the history of America. MOST OF ALL we have listened to a man rant about money. Money causes nothing but grief but everyone wants more. Mike Daisey wants more. This seems to be at the heart of his schtick. He needs more awesome shit.

He sits in front of a massive row of accumulated gift boxes, from every major retailer, except they are all empty, which appears to be an apt metaphor. If the box is empty, you need to go buy another box with something in it.

It's hard to like Mike Daisey, the character, but this is his choice. He works hard at keeping the viewer at arm's length. Warm and fuzzy he's not. But you have to love Mike Daisey, the actor. He is fascinating. And hard working. And if you don't mind being screamed at, or hearing the f-bomb used so much it loses all meaning, or if you can find truth in his simplistic view of economics ("everything in your culture has a price but nothing has any value") -- you may find a kindred spirit in "The Last Cargo Cult."

The show is very strong but, for us, could use editing. Two hours is a very long time to watch a young man schvitzing behind a desk. At an hour and a half this may be a brilliant show. At two hours you are, more than anything else, astonished that the performer can expend this much energy every night.

They do interesting things with lighting the boxes, and there are a few musical cues here and there, but "The Last Cargo Cult" is all about Mike Daisey, period. His performance takes your breath away, and his too.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG baub

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Mike Daisey: The Last Cargo Cult" three stars with a BANGLE of PRAISE and a bauble of despair. The BANGLE is for his description of IKEA ("their boxes warm our hearts like their meatballs warm our stomachs"). And we agree with his definition of money as 'liquid power.'

The bauble is an easy one to fix. The show is currently too long. In our opinion the natural ending is at the volcano. But that's just one idea. Take away one or two yellow pieces of paper and "The Last Cargo Cult" would knock us over the head with its power, rather than scream us into submission.

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Mike Daisey: "The Last Cargo Cult"
Berkeley Rep, Thrust Stage
2025 Addison Street, Berkeley
In repertory, through February 27.
$34-$73, many discounts available

Jeff Greenwald: "Strange Travel Suggestions": ☼ ☼ ☼

2011-01-09T10:03:00.001-08:00

It's tricky business to see one of Jeff Greenwald's "Strange Travel Suggestions" shows, playing currently through January 22 at the Marsh Berkeley. You listen to him talk of faraway places and part of you wants to stand right up, throw down your pencil and get on the next plane to anywhere. Everywhere. Whatever, let's go.

Then he gets to the luggage carousel at Calcutta International Airport and you sit back down, thinking: "Maybe let's just sit on the sofa and rent a movie about it."

Seeing Jeff Greenwald is like renting the movie. He talks, you listen. Greenwald is a gifted storyteller. The best travel stories, like the best travels and the best stories, usually involve something weird popping up unexpectedly, and Greenwald doesn't disappoint you. You wait for the weirdness. You're ecstatic when he crosses his legs and drops the chicken. You love the leather-bound "COMPLAINTS" book. You prefer it when he has some attitude, and somewhat less when he is simply describing something gorgeous, as in his dawn scuba dive in the Philippines.

This is the yin and yang of Jeff Greenwald. He's the kind of guy you want to come over for dinner. You want to listen to him laugh and spin his tales, even though you know perfectly well that the details change over time. He's a little preachy, tossing off little nuggets like "I spoke Nepali quite well," as if you should just accept that a Jewish guy from Oakland would OF COURSE speak Nepali, but he is also respectful of the local cultures he is visiting, and of his place in them.

Above all he's funny and fun. An evening at the theater listening to Jeff Greenwald makes you remember that the world is divided into travelers and visitors. Listening to Jeff you are a visitor, but he makes you want to get out there and hit the road.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards Jeff Greenwald's "Strange Travel Suggestions" Three Stars. It's a low-key affair, with Greenwald taking audience volunteers to spin the travel wheel which will more or less determine the story he chooses to relate. It is less satisfying when you end up hearing the same story you have heard before at a previous show, because it was a lot funnier when it was new.

Maybe Greenwald should sell Story Cancellation insurance. If he tells a story you have heard him tell before, you get a free cookie. Hey, it works for the airlines.

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Jeff Greenwald's "Strange Travel Suggestions"
The Marsh (Berkeley)
2120 Allston Way, Berkeley
Through Jan 22
$20-$35 sliding scale

The Doug's List 2010

2011-01-01T13:29:00.000-08:00

When you see as many shows as we did in 2010 it's easy to allow a gem to fall through the crinkly cracks of our diminishing human RAM. Which is to say when we take the time to review what we saw last year, we are astonished at how many standouts there were.

From January's brilliant "Animals out of Paper" at SF Playhouse through December's innovative masterpiece "Lemony Snicket: The Composer is Dead" at Berkeley Rep, we saw musicals, dramas and comedies on big stages and little stages, under tents, in playhouses and in the park. Some companies lavished $$Big Bucks$$ on their productions and some barely had money for extra shoe laces, but rich or poor, with casts of 1 or 40, the common denominator was excellence. What a great year.

Here are our favorite shows of the year 2010, by month, with links to their reviews. Some months there were several bedazzlers but we have restricted our list to a dozen. Thank you to all the brilliant actors and playwrights, artistic directors and producers, lighters, stagers, costumers and musicians. Thanks, too, to our fellow reviewers. Our opinions are not always the same but we all have a profound appreciation of the immensity of the task at hand: to unearth a great story and let the audience in on the secret.

Here we go:

January: "Animals Out of Paper" at San Francisco Playhouse.

February: "Oedipus El Rey" (adapted by Loretta Greco) at the Magic.

March: "The Real Americans" (Dan Hoyle) at the Marsh

April: (no winner)

May: "Peter Pan" under the tent on the Embarcadero

June: "The Tosca Project" at A.C.T.

July: "Auctioning the Ainsleys" at Theaterworks

August: "The Light in the Piazza" (Adam Guittel), also at Theaterworks

September: "Olive Kittredge" (Word 4 Word) at Z Space

October: West Side Story" at the Orpheum

November: "Or" at the Magic

December (2): "Shrek" at the Orpheum and "Lemony Snicket: The Composer is Dead" at Berkeley Rep.

There are others good enough to have made the cut had the competition not been so stiff. Several that stick in the memory are Alice Childress's "Trouble in Mind" at the Aurora, Terrell Alvin McCraney's "The Brothers Size" at the Magic and Steven Adly Giurgis's "Den of Thieves" at SF Playhouse.

How good is that? And it's only going to get better. See you all next January One.

-- Doug

African American Shakespeare Company "Cinderella"

2010-12-06T10:17:00.000-08:00

When it rains it pours, and when it pours it floods, at least at the African American Cultural Center. What a shame -- yesterday's crowd for "Cinderella" was large and filled with children, and Act One was received very well. Then came the announcement that backstage was flooded, the bathrooms were flooded, the lobby was wet and they would have to cancel the rest of the show.

So they brought the entire cast out onto stage, in costume, and fielded questions from the rapt audience, with Artistic Director L. Peter Callender leading the questioning. Everyone was sad not to get to see Act II, but with The Handsome Prince sitting next to Cinderella in her white ball dress, it was easy to see where the story was going.

This is the eighth year for African American Shakespeare Company's "Cinderella," and it keeps evolving. But you've always got good kids, and bad kids, and good adults, and bad adults, and fairies and pumpkins turning into coaches. The show runs through December 19 so we say give 'em a few days and then try again.

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"Cinderella"
African American Cultural Center
762 Fulton Street, San Francisco
$10 and up
Through December 19

Lemony Snicket's The Composer is Dead: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

2010-12-03T09:27:00.000-08:00

We are going to recommend that you run across the bridge, any bridge, to get to Berkeley Rep, which here means "a theater company willing to take risks certain to destroy the world as we know it," in order to catch the fantastic World Premiere of "Lemony Snicket's The Composer is Dead." That is, as long as we don't have to tell you what in the world it is.

It's easier to tell you what it's not. It's not a puppet show, though puppets by Phantom Limb steal the show. It's not a vaudeville act, though the M.C.'s hairpiece suggests otherwise. It's not a film, though the principal action does take place on, behind, in front of and under screen.

What it is, is living, breathing theater, where everything that could go wrong does. Geoff Hoyle plays both human roles and the whole thing is done with a skeleton crew. Ha ha, you won't get that right now.

We can also tell you this: there is an entire orchestra full of astonishing puppets and the world greatest living composer has been murdered. Everyone is a suspect and every member of the orchestra has a motive. The violas, for example, who are jealous that nobody ever knows what they play. Or the French horns, who are, after all, foreigners.

Or the concert master, who hates the conductor, because concert masters always hate the conductor, or even the conductor himself, because conductors have been murdering the works of composers for years.

Of this we are certain: the composer is dead. He is now decomposing.

The evening is actually made up of two Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket stories: "The Composer is Dead" seamlessly follows "The Magic of Living, Breathing Theater." It takes you a few minutes to get into the first, but if you are a theater buff you will appreciate every scabrous slur. Once we see the orchestra of puppets awaiting Geoff Hoyle's classically vain English inspector, the evening ramps up from fun to eye-popping.

We are grumps here, remember? We don't use these terms lightly. Kudos to real-life composer Nathaniel Stookey, artistic director Tony Taccone and the creative team, especially Jessica Grindstaff and Erik Sanko, who created the puppets. It's short, sweet, funny and exceptionally ambitious.

Of course, the show, theater company and city of Berkeley are destined to fail. We're doomed. Somebody call the police.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

The San Francisco Theater Blog awards "Lemony Snicket's The Composer is Dead" Four Stars with a BANGLE of PRAISE. Berkeley Rep has taken a lot of chances with this production, remaining true to Handler's prose and deprecating humor while creating a visual feast for the eyes. Geoff Hoyle is as wonderful as always -- we loved both his roles. We fear that in real life he comes down to breakfast with Mr. Fuzzles.

Our BANGLE of PRAISE is for the brilliant orchestra, both in terms of puppetry and composition. The show is fun to listen to as well as watch.

Everybody won't love Lemony. But we do.

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"Lemony Snicket's The Composer is Dead"
Berkeley Repertory Theater
2015 Addison Street, Berkeley
Through Jan 15, 2011
$14.50-$73

"Shrek The Musical": ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ PLUS! BANG BANG

2010-12-02T09:30:00.001-08:00

In the interest of full disclosure, may it be admitted here that this reviewer is one of the few people in America who has never seen a Shrek movie, knew nothing about the story in advance and went to the show only because it is his job. He figured it would be Green Disney and he'd be miserable by intermission.

He also didn't know that "Shrek," the original children's story, was written in 1990 by William Steig, who wrote so many of the reviewer's favorite children's books, including "The Amazing Bone," that he just happens to know backwards and forwards.

So, Shrekky, move over because this dude is jumping on the bandwagon. "Shrek, the Musical" is one of the finest adaptations we have ever seen and without question one of the best shows of the year. It has everything for everybody. The kids in the audience were jumping with the high energy music, the adults were laughing their heads off and the characters on stage seemed to be having the times of their lives. What a tour de force.

To start with, Shrek himself (Eric Petersen), encased in a fat suit with green makeup, makes his ogre with the heart of green into a loveable everyday guy with a Scottish accent and a voice that can break hearts as well as knock over buildings. His counterpart, Princess Fiona (Haven Burton), plays it for laughs and gets them. Her character is more in line with, say, the heroine in The Wiz, which is to say witty, perky and a wise-ass. She is also a great comic and her voice can (and does) break bird's eggs. Petersen and Burton are the perfect once animated-now real stage couple.

The sidemen are, if possible, even better. David F.M. Vaughn's Lord Farquaad, played on his knees to make him seriously short stuff, is absolute genius. We laugh every time he hunches across the stage. By the end of the show he has become totally fey, bringing no end of joy to the audience, but this is in the Steig tradition, which is to say adult comedy that sails happily above kids' heads. What children love is Farquaad's harmless venom and grand comedy.

They also L-O-V-E the fart song. (We did too.)

Don't forget Pinocchio (Blakely Slaybaugh). Does Blakely Slaybaugh have knees? And that dragon. How in the world do they do that?

You won't see better and more creative staging anywhere. Tim Hatley won a Tony for his costuming and it's easy to see why. You need to see this show, friends. We've got to keep Pinocchio working.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ PLUS! BANG BANG

This is a Five Star Show with a Five Star Cast, Five Star Staging and Costuming and maybe even Five Star lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire -- but you'll notice Four Stars Plus. Look, everyone can't be Leonard Bernstein but we just saw West Side Story. Jeanine Tesori's music is meant for children, so it is simple to a fault. But the songs are still head and shoulders above the drek you find in 90% of adult musicals and 100% better than Alan Menken and Howard Ashman. Sorry, Little Mermaid, but Shrek eats your lunch. Fabulous songs, both innovative and touching, include "Big, Bright Beautiful World," "Story of My Life," "Who I'd Be," "I Think I've Got You Beat," and the very beautiful "When Words Fail."

Give us "When You Wish Upon a Star" and you've got Star Five.

The first BANGLE of PRAISE is for the rats. You'll see. And the second is for Farquaad. David F.M. Vaughn is amazing.

This reviewer realizes he must find fault or else he will lose his Frequent Whiner Card, so let's say that the donkey (Allen Mingo Jr.) is so stereotypically Mammy-black as to make us vaguely uncomfortable. It is probably a good sign that only the aging liberals in the crowd kind of gritted our teeth when the donkey followed his directorial orders, probably to be 'cute.' We hear Eddie Murphy does the same thing, playing the donkey's voice in the movies. Maybe he does. Just sayin'.

Go see Shrek. And don't be embarrassed when you fall in love with this production, like the five year old in front of us who never sat down for two and a half hours. It's that exciting.

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"Shrek The Musical"
Orpheum Theatre
1192 Market Street (at Grove Street), San Francisco
Through Jan. 2
$30-$99

"Coraline": ☼ ☼ ☼

2010-11-21T08:58:00.000-08:00

It's funny and it's creepy, it's exciting if a bit plodding, it's a musical with clever lyrics but almost no music, it features bravura performances and songs that are meant to make you chuckle but not touch the heart. The truest thing we can say about "Coraline," by David Greenspan and Stephin Merritt, is that it is wonderfully different and refreshing because of it. You are never bored, even when you're not sure what just happened.

Much of this is due to the remarkable performance of Maya Donato, an eleven year old who has already been acting for seven years. She is the perfect Coraline, a thoughtfully whimsical child whose boring life in a new home leads her to discover her 'other' family, with her other parents, her other fellow house dwellers, and even her other cat, who now talks.

Our regular reviewer would never stop here to mention Brian Yates Sharber's excellent performance as the cat, but our 'other' reviewer is doing so. Sharber may have typecast his way into a career of graceful animals with cool shoes who can clearly sing like a bird when requested.

Coraline's fellow dwellers in her new home include Miss Forcible and Miss Spink (Susi Damilano and Maureen McVerry), Mr. Bobo (Brian Degan Scott), and of course Coraline's mother and father (Stacy Ross and Jackson Davis). Ross, in particular, brings down the house with her final wicked witch number "Falling...Falling."

This Wizard of Oz comparison is not accidental. Dorothy and Coraline both fantasize about living in that other world just over the rainbow, or in this case, through the locked door. And both are so happy to come home to Kansas.

You're going to enjoy Stephin Merrit's music, but the songs are barely songs. Short, sweet or wry, always clever but never emotional, the turns of lyric phrases and off-center rhymes will make you smile. But you'll find it hard to believe you just heard twenty five songs (some reprises). There's the one about the toys, and the rats, and the two old actresses' song, and "Falling." And there's one at the end that the whole cast sings.

You may or may not enjoy the fact that all the music comes from plunkings on toy or composed pianos. You won't get to clap much -- because the music feels like an afterthought, like an optional side dish where the main course is clever lyrics, and they clear 'em away in a hurry.

But this is not your mama's musical, though the story recalls many older fairy tales. Neil Gaiman's novella is well known and has already been made into an animated film, so you may be familiar with it already. We liked it. Our 'other' reviewer likes music in musicals so he is not so sure -- but we both think you should go see "Coraline."

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Coraline" Three Stars. Maya Donato, Stacy Ross and Brian Yates Sharber earn a star apiece, with special mention for Bill English and Matt Vuolo's stage design team whose clever set made a lot of action possible within a small space.

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"Coraline"
San Francisco Playhouse
533 Sutter Street, San Francisco
Through Jan. 15
$30-$50

"Cavalia": ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ baub

2010-11-17T08:22:00.001-08:00

You have never seen anything like Cavalia. A combination of horse show and Cirque du Soleil, the horses grab the limelight but the humans managing them are astonishing as well.

Cavalia takes place in a tent near the UCSF Medical Center. They have built a stage wide enough for the horses to work up a full head of steam as they thunder across. A city person cannot get enough of it. But the horses do so much more than run. They balance, they canter, they dance. They stand on their hind legs like the Lone Ranger. They nuzzle each other on cue. The amount of hours that must go into training these animals staggers the imagination.

And don't forget the acrobats. They ride the horses right-side up and upside down, on the sides of their saddles, under them, bareback, barefoot, they do flips and pommel-horse moves on them as the horses are at full speed. They ride on two horses at once, or four, or six, or eight. Aerialists suspended from wires dance, fly and pirouette around gracefully cantering animals.

Sylvia Zerbini's Grande Liberté - well, you won't believe it, that's all we're going to say. It takes up most of Act Two.

Everything doesn't work so well -- the ballets, for example. White horses, white flowing gowns, white flowing manes, blonde flowing hair, it's Elrond and Arwen at the Gates of Rivendell. You expect elves and wizards.

Which is the other part of the Cavalia experience: creator Normand Latourelle was the founder of Cirque du Soleil. So all of those irritating things about Cirque are also omnipresent in Cavalia: the music, for example, that sounds like a French Soft Jazz History Network Special. The costumes -- the beefcake and cheesecake we understand, this is show business. But why would daredevil horsemen and horsewomen be dressed in leaves like Peter Pan? Oh, and the smoke machines. The leaves and snow falling from the ceiling. If each of the horses could light a candle, they would.

But they don't. They just run and dance and nuzzle. In the end it's all about them, and their riders. And Sylvia Zerbini.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ baub

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Cavalia" Four Stars with a bauble of despair. The show rates four stars for its uniqueness, and it is easy to overlook its crass commerciality. You really should see it.

But we add a bauble because if you want to take your kids, and you do, you are going to have to cancel those Corian counter tops. This is not an inexpensive production to mount, but the bottom line is Cavalia is designed to be a world-class attraction, with glitz and smoke machines to match. Somebody has to pay for it. Do you take your family to Cirque du Soleil? If so, Cavalia's prices will not seem out of line to you.

A word to the wise: PARK IN CAVALIA'S OWN LOT. There is no street parking, the nearby parking lots have broken meters and rapacious parking ticket motorazzi on the prowl. You will not escape their wrath.

If you have a horse, saddle him up. But definitely don't park him on the street unless you are willing to sit on him until the last metermaid cruises by at 8 o'clock, when the show is already starting.

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"Cavalia"
White Big Top, China Basin, San Francisco
Through
$64.50-$139.50. Some special pricing available.
Open-ended run

Marilyn Pittman: "It's All the Rage" : UNRATED

2010-11-15T11:40:00.000-08:00

"Heartbreaking and hilarious," is how comic Marilyn Pittman's new solo show "It's All the Rage" is subtitled. Sadly, it's neither. Her personal tragedy was a real one, but an audience has to empathize with any actor who wants to go up on stage and talk about it every night, albeit with deserving angst and several deliberate walks across the stage to the lighting cue, a la David Ford's direction.

Pittman plays several characters. Perhaps the most visual is her arthritic mother, whose gnarled hands in front of her body reflect her repressed helplessness. Pittman's father is also done well, a caricature whose anger will play itself out in the central action of the show.

But the character who has the hardest job is the narrator herself. Marilyn Pittman is angry and the show is about that anger, reflected in her tough gal attitude. At one point she says "I never talk about my brother. Let me tell you something about him." We then hear how much she dislikes her dysfunctional Cuban sister in law.

Anyone who is going to see this show, after all, has read the promo material. We already know about the tragic events that took place in 1997. On stage, Pittman attempts to keep it a secret for awhile, but we know. It is the performer's job, in this reviewer's opinion, to make us care a little more, to have some kind of window into the story teller's reasons for telling this macabre story.

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RATINGS: UNRATED

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division has chosen not to rate "It's All The Rage."

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"It's All the Rage"
The Marsh
1062 Valencia, San Francisco
Through December 5
$20-$35