King James: ★★★ Bang

We never see the King but he's always in the picture.

Rajiv Joseph's terrific take on friendship, as seen through the eyes of two diehard Cleveland Cavalier basketball fans, spans the years between Lebron James's arrival on the Cavaliers as an eighteen-year-old phenom through James's "taking his talents" to the Miami Heat and then (after Intermission) returning to Cleveland years later. The friendship between Shawn (Kenny Scott) and Matt (Jordan Lane Shappell) has its own range of emotional upheavals and is the heart of this touching story.

Matt has season tickets to Cavs games that have belonged to his father. He remembers going the arena with his Dad and hates the fact that his financial difficulties have forced him to sell the tickets for this season. Shawn wants to buy them but doesn't really have the money. Not only that, but he is purchasing a pair of tickets and doesn't have anybody to accompany him to the games. 

Next scene: Not only LeBron leaves Cleveland, but so does Shawn. He is accepted into a writers' graduate program in New York. LeBron! How can you leave Cleveland? Shawn! How can you do it too? Matt is left to carry on.

We especially like Kenny, as we're supposed to, but remain suspicious of Matt. Both Scott and Shappell have their characters' mannerisms down. This is a sports fan's dream story, as the whole concept of fandom is examined in light of friendship and our need to celebrate together. We all need friends as well as teams to cheer for. 

Extra kudos to director Giovanna Sardelli and the production team who use music (Gregory Robinson) and lighting (Steven B. Manshardt) to make extensive scene changes into something fun to watch by themselves.

RATINGS: ★★★ Bang

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division grants "King James" THREE STARS with a Bangle of Praise. Directing, Staging and Acting earn one Star each and the cool lighting and music merit a well-deserved Bangle.

"King James"

Mountain View Center for Performing Arts

500 Castro St., Mountain View

Through Nov. 3, 2024

$34-$115

Brian Copeland's "Great American Sh*t Show": UNRATED

We are Brian Copeland fans but we're done with hearing about Donald Trump. Copeland's "Great American Sh*t Show," written with Charlie Varon, was first performed by Copeland and Varon in the runup to the 2020 election. It is all about outrage -- how could America possibly have chosen for President this bad talk-show host and fascist as well?

True that. But it's 2024 and here we are again. There's another election coming up, and, wonder of wonders, the Evil Orange is coming at us again. The problem is the same old outrage doesn't cut it anymore.Yes, he's a psychopath and a racist and a pathological liar, and yes, half of America is likely to vote for him again. We've heard it all before. And there is nothing funny about it.

So we would need Brian Copeland to give us something new, like "The Bucket List" or "Grandma and Me," where there is a story to tell. Even an actor as personable as Copeland can't just keep telling us what we already know, without the show feeling like that uncle at Thanksgiving who won't stop spewing the same complaints you heard last year and the year before.

There are some funny bits: naming the tiki torch-wielding white nationalists at Charlottesville "Orchard Supply Racists" -- and being called the N-word by a man driving a Prius -- I guess these are humorous. And perhaps if you still get perverse pleasure in hearing about Trump's many faults, you'll enjoy hearing about them again. 

Better yet, let us all get down on our knees and pray that in a few months we will never have to see that face and hear that name again, on stage or off.

RATINGS: UNRATED

The San Francisco Theater Blog has chosen not to give Brian Copeland's "Great American Sh*t Show" a rating. In our opinion, this is a step up from a rant and not even close to the brilliant performances we have seen from this normally funny and insightful actor.

Brian Copeland's "The Great American Sh*t Show"

October 24, 2024

The Marsh

1062 Valencia St. San Francisco

SF Mime Troupe: American Dreams: ★ ★ ★

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

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

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

I

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

RATINGS ★ ★ ★

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

The San Francisco Mime Troupe: “American Dreams”

Various parks and venues around the Bay Area. 

See SFMT.org for locations and times

Through Sep. 8

FREE (Donations Accepted)

Evita:★★★

 

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

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

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

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

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

"They Need to Adore Me

To Christian Dior Me"

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

RATINGS  ★★★

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

"Evita"

San Francisco Playhouse

450 Post St.

2d Floor of Kensington Park Hotel

Through Sept. 7, 2024

$30-$125

"Who's Dead McCarthy" ★ ★ ★ ★

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

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

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

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

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

RATINGS:★★★★ 

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

"Who's Dead McCarthy"

Z Space-Below Theater

450 Florida Street

Through July 21, 2024

$40-$65

"Being Alive: A Sondheim Celebration" ★★★ BANG

No one is more beloved in theater circles than Stephen Sondheim, who
passed away in 2021. His musicals such as "Company," "Sweeney Todd" and "Into the Woods" are triumphs within the musical canon. After Sondheim's death, many of his songs became available for licensing. Robert Kelley and William Liberatore have collected thirty-six of these and organized them thematically into a chronology of those complicated relationships Sondheim loves to write about: we meet, lust and get together, followed by marriage, kids, boredom and breakup,  We get an entertaining evening of lightning-fast lyrics and plays on words, brilliantly executed by a super-talented six-person ensemble, 

Solana Husband is excellent as Sally. Her "The Miller's Son" from A Little Night Music is a standout as is "Agony Reprise" from Into the Woods, sung and acted by Nick Nakashima and Noel Anthony. We also loved Melissa WolfKlain's "The Wedding is Off," from Sondheim on Sondheim, She seemed to know what she was talking about.

Many ensemble numbers are skillfully done, like the opening "Invocations and Instructions to the Audience" from Frogs and Putting it Together, and the title tune "Being Alive," from Company.

"Being Alive" succeeds on many levels, but is somewhat hamstrung by conditions placed upon it.

For example, many Sondheim songs were made available, but not all were, and there was a limit of three from any one show that could be used in a new show. In addition, no collaborations were allowed, which meant the glorious and tuneful songs written with composers other than Sondheim himself, such as Leonard Bernstein or Jule Styne or Richard Rodgers, were disallowed.

Sondheim loves melody, such as in "Send in the Clowns," but he loves changing cadences and polyrhythms more. If you already love this material, you will be in heaven. If you don't, you will jump with joy when you hear the few tunes you can sing back in the car. 

RATINGS: ★★★ BANG

Quentin Quarternote, The San Francisco Theater Blog Music Reviewer, is a notorious grump. He always wishes "Into the Woods" was a One-Act, for example. But he loved most of "Being Alive" and is granting THREE STARS for this production. We are adding a Bangle of Praise for the cast, who have had to learn to project challenging lyrics while changing tempos and dancing around a stage. This is tough stuff and all six pulled it off without a foxtrot-up. 

"Being Alive"

Mountain View Center for Performing Arts

500 Castro Street, Mountain View

Through 6-26-24

$$27-$100

Torch Song: ★★★ BANG

 "This Time the Dream's on Me" plays as the curtain rises. Arnold Beckoff wants a normal life, or as normal as a gay, despairing drag queen can aspire to. His mother wants Arnold to grow up and get a real job, a wife an a child. Arnold wants the same thing, or so he says. But the dream is far away and no one is trying very hard.

Marin Theater's two-act adaptation of Harvey Fierstein's 1982 "Torch Song Trilogy," directed by Evren Odcikin, drops a few characters from the original, but the idea is the same. Arnold (Dean Linnard) sees the world through shmutz-colored glasses. He needs everyone to understand and respect him, as long as he gets to behave the way he likes and do the things he does to the people he wants to do them with. His mother (played by Joy Carlin) is still suffering from the death of her husband. Her suffering matters to her far more than Arnold's -- after all, he only lost his boyfriend but SHE lost a husband!

The innuendo is of Jewishness, guilt and suffering, a tried-and-true hat trick of New York  angst that Arnold and his mother's thick matzo-brei Brooklyn/Miami accents are meant to convey. Look! They're wearing the same slippers! 

We also have Arnold's current kinda-sorta love interest bisexual Ed (Patrick Andrew Jones), clearly a gentile because he is repressed and quiet, and Ed's wife Laurel (Kina Kantor), unable to make Ed stop thinking about Arnold, and Alan, the BoyToy, played with panache by Edric Young, and then, in a questionable casting decision, a grown man (Joe Ayres) does his best to convince us he is fifteen year-old David, a troubled gay teenager with the demeanor of an eight-year-old but the face and blue suit of an adjunct professor.

Maybe you just had to be there.

Fierstein's trilogy was a seminally important show for 1982. It still carries a lot of weight in theater circles. But for us, in 2024, this adaptation has big problems. Why would anyone love Arnold? Even Arnold can't stand himself. Why should we care about Quiet Ed? And Mama, for God's sake, Mameleh, is there nothing new that a wonderful actor like Joy Carlin can be allowed to bring into this role? 

There are many knock-out lines, like Mama's at the end: "A problem is never as permanent as a solution." And there are terrific staging pieces, such as the Four-way Fugue in bed, and of course the circular-waving cigarette in the dark back room of the bar. Let's not forget Arnold's fabulous opening (and only) torch song. We wish they would give us more of that. 

RATINGS: ★★★ BANG

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division grants Marin Theater's "Torch Song" Three Stars with a Bangle of Praise for the one torch song we get. Dean Linnard can really lip-synch.

"Torch Song"

Marin Theater

397 Miller Avenue, Mill Valley

Through June 2, 2024

$39.50-$65.50