"Auctioning the Ainsleys": ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

The World Premiere of Laura Schellhardt's "Auctioning the Ainsleys" is so original, fresh, funny and eye-grabbing that it sent the reviewer scurrying through his archive of reviews to find the last Schellhardt play he had seen. Not surprisingly, he loved that one too.

Punch here for review of 'K of D' from September, 2008.

Schellhardt, currently in charge of the undergraduate playwrights at Northwestern University has managed to top herself here. "Auctioning the Ainsleys" is even more original than "K of D" and this time includes a six person cast of inspired crazy people, all playing characters with first names that start with 'A.'

The Ainsleys are all auctioneers. Alice Ainsley (Diane Dorsey), the mom, appears to be the sanest voice in the room, though her refusal to react to the abuse of her children by their deceased father appears to be at the heart of the drama.



Her four children, Avery (Heidi Kettenring), Annalee (Molly Anne Cogan), Amelia (Jessica Lynn Carroll) and Aiden (Liam Vincent) are all as nutty as $100 bags of M&Ms and we see their flaws in auctioneer images. Avery, for example, the eldest and once daddy's favorite (including being his chief target of abuse), speaks in the auctioneer's fast-lipped patois but is overcome with guilt and anger. She pounds her podium with her own hand instead of a gavel. Annalee is the organizer. She believes having an impossibly complicated filing system can keep things on an even keel, just as her sister Amelia must organize all items in complimentary groups to attempt to keep them in balance. Aiden both refinishes and ruins items -- some people like 'em clean and some like 'em dirty -- but in his private life he wants possession of no clutter whatsoever, including other humans.



As Arthur, who Alice Ainsley has hired to catalog her treasured keepsakes as her diminishing memory threatens to obliterate their histories, Gardner's performance is both off the wall and heartfelt. "Write quickly, Arthur," Alice keeps telling him. Shy and bookish at first, he gradually begins to understand this crazy family and allows us to take the journey with him.



Meredith McDonough's direction is razor sharp and the set is one of the best we've seen at Theatreworks in many years: a revolving three scene apparatus with Amelia's carriage house on one side, Annalee's office on the second, and the rest of the house, including Mom Alice's upstairs getaway and Aiden's basement, takes up the third. It really is inventive -- and characters are constantly walking up the stairs or through a door from one room to another as each new scene is rotated towards the audience.



We love this show. If the World Premiere was this good we should be lucky enough to be seeing the Ainsleys on many stages for a good long time.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Auctioning the Ainsleys" Four Stars. All the elements are here: surprise, story, acting, direction, set. We might quibble about Cliff Caruthers' rather annoying plinky-plunky keyboard music used to signal scene changes, but -- well, we just did, didn't we?

But the show is fabulous. It always starts with the writing and Laura Schellhardt is a gem. If the rest of the 2010-11 season can match this one we are all in for a series of great discoveries.



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"Auctioning the Ainsleys"
Lucie Stern Theatre
1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto
Through August 8
$19-$67

SF Mime Troupe: "Posibilidad, or Death of the Worker": ☼ ☼

Where's Dick Cheney? Somebody call Dick Cheney!

The one thing you could truly say for our former vice-president was he was easy to hate. Without Cheney, played for several years by San Francisco Mime Troupe veteran Ed Holmes, always to enthusiastic hisses and heartfelt boos, the Mime Troupe has no spectacular villain to kick around. The troupe has been forced back to its same old story: bad capitalists, good collectivists, bad factory owners, good workers.

Even if you agree with the politics, as many in sun-baked Dolores Park always do, the concept seems to have lost some of its lovin' feelin.' The 2010 show is called "Posibilidad, or Death of the Worker," and features telenovela-watching factory workers being displaced by corporate stooges. Rotimi Agbabiaka's Ernesto is a slimy enough bad guy, but he's little! And he's not bald! Lisa Hori-Garcia's Sofia and her mother Claudia (Velina Brown) have several funny scenes, especially when arguing over football instead of sex, but the jokes are few and the scenes are long. There is nobody to shoot somebody else in the face with a hunting rifle.

Who knew we'd miss Dick Cheney so much?

So it's long, there is less music than usual, and there are no real bad guys. What a pity the gulf oil spill didn't start sooner -- THERE are some stooges we could have a lot of fun despising.

But it's always fun to be out in the park to see one of San Francisco's truly pioneering theater companies, and although the Mime Troupe's donations are down during the economic downturn, the show is still free. As for "Posibilidad" -- believe me Troupe fans, you've seen this one before.



RATINGS: ☼ ☼
The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Posibilidad, or Death of the Worker" Two Stars. NO BANGLES of Praise, no baubles of despair. It's fun. It's OK. We still love you, man.

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SF Mime Troupe: "Posibilidad, or Death of the Worker"
Various Parks throughout the Bay Area
Mostly weekends through Sep. 19
FREE

"Young Frankenstein": ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

The jokes keep right on coming. "Young Frankenstein" is Mel Brooks's newest venture into the movie-becomes-musical genre, and Brooks hasn't changed his humor since he wrote for Sid Caesar in the 1950s. (Those old enough to remember can't help but see Caesar's famous Count Dracula when Drac makes his appearance at the end of Act Two, negotiating to buy the castle from Dr. Frankenstein.) This is old-time Broadway at its spoofable best - the characters take a few steps then launch into another song or dance. And Brooks never seems to run out of long schlong gags. Remember, Luke: Use your Schwartz!

Funny, but it don't look Newish. It's certainly not The Producers, which had an innovative story at its core -- write the world's worst musical and you'll get rich. Young Frankenstein was a spoof as a film and it is really tough to spoof a spoof. If anyone can pull this off it's Mel Brooks.



What fab-u-lous performances! Roger Bart as Frederick Frahnk-n-STEEN might not be Gene Wilder but no one is. Bart is funny as hell and he can sing and dance too. Brad Oscar is a showstopper as the blind hermit and peg-legged inspector. (Interesting note: in the film these two roles were played by two characters who weren't exactly chopped monster: Gene Hackman as the hermit and Kenneth Mars [the crazy Nazi in 'The Producers'] as the inspector.)

Joanna Glushak's Frau Blucher is the best of the best and she sings the show's most unforgettable song: "He Vas My Boyfriend." But we can't forget Beth Curry's "Please Don't Touch Me," Bart and Anne Horak's "Roll in the Hay" and all the villagers crooning and tapping out "Transylvania Mania."

Did we mention Shuler Hensley's fabulous monster-turned-song-and-dance-man?



Jokes. Dancing. Singing. Loveable characters. What is not to like, you self-loathing theater critic, you?

Maybe it's my rheumatism. Lots of time has passed. With all its enthusiasm, "Young Frankenstein" feels dated. Brooks's music is supposed to feel old fashioned, but it drags. Every song sounds the same, harmonically. The lyrics are very funny, but you can't catch them, especially at the start.

The show does not lack for trying its hardest. The actors are all top drawer. If there is a flaw, perhaps it is in the frenetic pacing. Brooks not only wrote the whole shmear but directs too. Next time maybe he can also build the theater.

The show already played 14 months on Broadway so it's not gonna change. It is a lot of fun and if you love Mel Brooks you'll find a lot to smile about.


RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Young Frankenstein" three stars with a BANGLE of PRAISE. What a production! Lights (Peter Kaczorowski), sets (Robin Wagner), costumes (William Ivey Long) and orchestra under Robert Billig are absolute first class.

A special BANGLE OF PRAISE goes out to all the actors who realize they have to fill enormous shoes -- especially Roger Bart with Gene Wilder hanging over his every look of big-eyed disgruntlement. It is a testament that Bart, Glushak, Curry and company make us forget all those earlier ghouls we came to know and love.



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"Young Frankenstein"
Golden Gate Theater
1 Taylor Street, San Francisco
Through July 25
$30-$99

"The Fantasticks": ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

How many times have seen "The Fantasticks?" Hmmm...three, no four, no five! There probably weren't too many people (over the age of thirty) in the audience at last nights Premiere of the 50-year-old Harvey Schmidt/Tom Jones classic who hadn't seen it at least once before.

Why would this be so? It's simple: boy meets girl over the garden wall. He can't have her. Ooops, yes he can. Oops, no he can't. But in the end: Awwww. Is there a better formula than this? Add timeless songs into the mix (that can be played with one piano) and there you have it, brother and sister: a hit.

No, more than a hit. "The Fantasticks" ran from 1960 through just after 9-1-1. It is the longest running musical in history. Chew on that awhile.

Director Bill English has taken the show in a somewhat different direction, with a post-apocalyptic set which suggests there is a theater group in the dismal future which goes around the countryside performing this sweet play for people whose worlds have little pleasure remaining in them. The idea works. But - really - it doesn't matter all that much. Parents are still parents and kids are still kids and love -- well, everybody still needs it.



The cast is terrific. Jeremy Kahn as young Matt and Sepideh Moafi as Luisa not only look their part but they can sing! Louis Parnell and Joan Mankin are very funny as the kids' parents, Ray Reinhardt and Yusef Lambert shine as the aging actor (Henry) and his squire (Mortimer) who does all the death scenes and Tarek Khan is a perfect El Gallo, the bandit Luisa thinks she needs to find. It's hard to pick out a favorite, but the young leads must grab your heart if the show is to succed, and Kahn and Moafi do it with grace.



Corny? Oh God yes. If you plant this radish, you'll get this radish. Don't come see "The Fantasticks" if your idea of a great show is "Urinetown."

But this ain't Mary Poppins either. "The Fantasticks" is really quite a bit darker than anyone ever remembers. Some of its music recalls Leonard Bernstein -- remember that West Side Story opened in 1957 and The Fantasticks in 1960 -- but the songs you are sure to walk out of the playhouse singing are the sweet ones like "Try to Remember," "Soon It's Gonna Rain" and "They Were You."

Here is an interesting note: Author and Lyricist Tom Jones played Henry, the old actor, when the show opened in 1960. Fifty years later Jones is playing Henry again in a current Broadway revival, only this time he really is an old actor.



RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "The Fantasticks" Three Stars with a BANGLE of PRAISE. It's a show where the audience's imagination is everything, so it is crucial not to overproduce it. English's direction and Nina Ball's set and costumes give suggestions, but never get in the way. You'll love the kids. You'll love the codgers. And you'll hum the music for days. What's not to like?

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"The Fantasticks"
San Francisco Playhouse
533 Sutter Street, San Francisco
Through Sep. 4
$30-$40

The Marsh's Twentieth Anniversary: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

Twenty Stars with many BANGLES OF PRAISE for the Marsh on its Twentieth Anniversary. The awful red seats are at least that old but Stephanie Weisman has promised new seats by the time her third grandchild is born.

What a day it was at the theater on June 20, running into old friends and seeing so many familiar faces. To paraphrase performer Jeff Greenwald, the Marsh is the sourdough starter that gets the whole process rising. So many talented people have come through these doors, and yesterday, like lemmings on fast rewind, many came back to do fifteen or twenty minutes as a Thanks, Yo to Stephanie and the Marsh.

In one two hour stretch we saw shorts by Wayne Harris, Mark Kenward, Dan Hoyle, Mark McGoldrick, Jeff Greenwald, Josh Kornbluth, Scoop Nisker and W. Allen Taylor, and that doesn't include Charlie Varon and Ann Randolph and Marga Gomez and so many others that kept the candles lit up brightly all day and into the night.



Thank yous aside -- there is something amazing that happens when solo performers become part of a Greatest Hits show. One feeds off the other and nobody wants to be outdone. Performers like Kornbluth really excel at stream of consciousness, while everyone else brings out their very best fifteen minutes, or Act One of their current or past show. This reviewer wants to buy that Greatest Hits album. Are we listening, Stephanie Weisman? The proceeds might buy a new red seat or two.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards The Marsh's Twentieth Anniversary Marathon Twenty Stars with many BANGLES of PRAISE. Seeing as Five Stars is as high as we go, you can decide for yourself what it means.

To us it's simple: The Marsh gives our city community-based theater that is first rate. Performers get an audience and an audience gets a shot of on-stage magic. Make jokes not war. It sounds simple, but it's not. That's why you get a BANGLE. That's why we love the Marsh.



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The Marsh Theater
1062 Valencia Street, San Francisco

"Speech and Debate": ☼ ☼ BANG baub

The Aurora Theater's new production of Stephen Karam's "Speech and Debate" shines when Jayne Deely's Dewata (the girl who is always auditioning) is speaking. Her story, about a high school girl continually turned down for the school play, is a resonating one. She has all the great lines and 99.8 percent of the show's charisma.

The show sags with the lack of development of the two male characters, the queeny boy who came out at age ten (Howie, played by Maro Guevara) and the closeted boy (Solomon, played by Jason Frank) who is fighting the usual demons -- religious parents, society who doesn't care and so on). There is little about their plight that makes us care one way or the other about them -- in fact, it appears that after all the angst of Solomon's self-discovery, the lesson we are all to draw is that he is now free to access a gay chat room.

Deely is an absolute delight. As she sits cross-legged on her desk broadcasting her live podcast, in which she inadvertently tosses in personal information that may come back to haunt her, she sings, she chants, she jokes and she draws us toward her. That her drama teacher doesn't want to cast her seems as implausible to us as it does to her. It must be a school full of Mary Martins.

But perhaps this is the author's point -- adults are dumb. They won't talk about politics, or religion, or sex, which is all the kids want to talk about. It's a cyber world now, but the coming-out drama doesn't seem to have changed much through the years. Howie is out and Solomon will be. We get it. They really need to have something new to say to justify the length of this show.



RATINGS: ☼ ☼ BANG baub

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Speech and Debate" Two Stars with a BANGLE of PRAISE and a bauble of despair. This review means the show comes up short but Jayne Deely's performance is so good you may want to see her right now, because you're definitely going to be watching her in the future. Also very interesting are the production effects and cyber language. When this cast sings together -- The BANGLE is for the musical numbers, too short and too few -- you see how exciting they could be with a different vehicle.



But that ending? OMG. HELP.

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"Speech and Debate"
Aurora Theatre
2081 Addison Street, Berkeley
Through June 17
$34-$45

"The Tosca Project": ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

A.C.T.'s new 'The Tosca Project' is brilliant, fascinating and intriguing-- brilliant for its audaciousness as a dance/theater hybrid; fascinating, especially for a San Franciscan, because you have in front of you the history of more than half a century in North Beach; and intriguing because one comes to the theater expecting theater and doesn't get it -- yet still loves it all.

'Tosca' is an interpretive memoir, centered on the locally famous Tosca Cafe, that today would be called a hipster bar, where for decades artists, dancers and divas from all walks of life hung out together. It has been created by A.C.T. Artistic Director Carey Perloff and San Francisco Ballet's Val Caniparoli. Do not expect dialogue nor character development. Unless you do a bit of reading beforehand you won't have the slightest idea who these characters dancing around on the stage are supposed to be, and you may find yourself frustrated as you yearn to know what is going on.



But trust someone who would normally prefer to sit on hold with Comcast Customer Service in India than attend a dance concert: 'Tosca' will grab you and never let you go. You may not know who but at least you know when -- Robert de la Rose's flapper dresses, diva frocks and beat generation jackets leave no doubt as to the decade.



Robert Wierzel's lighting is filled with clues as well -- the old Italian bartender's lost love not only appears in a bright red dress but whenever her memory is invoked a mysterious red light appears somewhere on stage. This is very satisfying for an audience straining a bit for information from a show with no dialogue.



All the dancers have beautiful moments -- Caniparoli's choreography even manages to make Jack Willis (the bartender) and Gregory Wallace (the musician who arrives and never goes home), two standout actors from the A.C.T. stable, appear graceful. Really.

Several pas-de-deux's stand out: Pascal Molat and Lorena Feijoo's sailor and girl about to be left behind...



...and also the terrific business man/ballerina seduction dance featuring Sabina Allemann and Peter Anderson.



You get social commentary as well -- the silliness of prohibition, and later the old bartender's dislike of the new beats -- and then there is the Rudolf Nureyev character having a questionable seduction-dance with two other men.



A suggestion: there are lots of liner notes. Get to the theater early, go downstairs and read them all while you drink a glass of wine. This will enhance the feast you are about to experience on stage.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "The Tosca Project" Four Stars and is happy to do so. Often, the premieres of shows developed for the theater in which they are performed end up over-hyped and under-delivered. Not so here. Once you accept you are watching dancers with a few actors and not the other way around, which is to say once you turn off your niggling little theater-brain, you realize you can survive a night without plot, character, even understanding. Take a deep breath. 'Tosca' is a show to sit back and savor.

One last note: there are several arias from Puccini's opera 'Tosca' included in the sound track. Gorgeous.

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"The Tosca Project"
A.C.T. Theater
415 Geary Street, San Francisco
Through June 27
$17-$89.