"Time Stands Still" ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

War photographer Sarah Goodwin (Rebecca Dines) walks heavily up the stairs and into the Williamsburg apartment that she shares with boyfriend and fellow journalist James Dodd (Mark Anderson Phillips).  They are newly home from a hospital in Germany which followed a tour as journalists in Iraq. She is seriously injured and lucky to be alive. James cares for her but there is something else bubbling under the surface, which begins to come clearer when Sarah's photograph editor Richard  (Rolf Saxon) arrives with his new girl friend, the much younger Mandy (Sarah Moser).

Sarah and James are in trouble. The i.d.e that exploded under her is only part of it.

 This Theatreworks Regional Premiere is a very good one. Dines and Phillips are excellent, but the show is in some ways stolen by Moser's Mandy. We expect her to be vapid. She is anything but. Whereas the other three share a lot of history, Mandy is a newcomer. She is unafraid to speak her mind.

Act Two wanders a bit. James and Sarah's wedding is doomed from the start. The point seems to be that people who experience the rush of combat often are unable to recreate that satisfaction anywhere else. Sadly, in our world of constant war, this is a story we already know. It is very interesting to see how Richard, who lives off people like Sarah who risk their lives to create product that Richard can sell, has become so happy with his young and innocent new love. It's a complicated story that will make you think.

RATINGS: ☼  ☼  ☼  BANG

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Time Stands Still" THREE STARS with a BANGLE OF PRAISE. Leslie Martinson's direction makes us sit still in our seats during intermission, wondering what ending can possibly tie together all these subplots. The BANGLE is for the brilliant writing as James explains how he figured out what was going on with Sarah while they were apart. These are adults here, dealing with problems few of us ever have to face.

------------
"Time Stands Still"
Mountain View Center for Performing Arts
500 Castro Street, Mountain View
Through September 16
$23-$53

Photo Credit: Mark Kitaoka and Tracy Martin

"Triangle" UNRATED

In keeping with our practice of not reviewing shows in their work-up stage, we normally stay quiet after seeing them. However, we wish to alert our readers that "Triangle," a musical written by Curtis Moore, Thomas Mizer and Joshua Scher, playing for only a few performances in the Theatreworks New Works Festival, is a show you will hear a lot about.

What a cast! Bryce Ryness, Jenni Barber, A.J. Shively, Sharon Rietkerk and Kelsey Venter sing as  well as they act. The music never stops, but the best part about it is that it is original, without sloshing down into Broadway musical clichés.

Sure there are holes in the script at this point. They'll fill 'em in. Watch for "Triangle" in the future.

"Upright Grand" ☼ ☼ ☼

When we saw Laura Schellhardt's "Upright Grand" at last summer's Theatreworks New Works Festival, we were staggered with how good a playwright Schellhardt is -- this being her third show in less than two years that we had seen. All are different, heartfelt and filled with raw emotion.

 Of course, there is no better way to insure you will be disappointed than to see the "improved" show you loved when it was new. All the good parts are still here -- the touching relationship between father and the daughter, the innovative (and tightened-up) interplay between the real on stage accompanist (Brett Ryback) and the actors pretending to play the piano, and the constant appearance of the show's true villain -- the inevitable passage of time. Kiddo (Renata Friedman) catches and surpasses Pops (Dan Hiatt), as we know she must, and as she does so every parent in the audience feels an all-too-familiar punch in the gut.

So what's the problem? It may be chemistry. Hiatt and Friedman are both excellent actors but they are abstract with each other, never touching, never really connecting until it is too late. Friedman doesn't seem young, and Hiatt doesn't seem old. In a talk-back after the Wednesday performance, the actors and dramaturg Vicki Rozell claimed the show has changed very little since 2011, but it does not feel that way.

What has improved is pacing and staging; what has not improved is a true connection. Perhaps this is the way Laura Schellhardt and director Meredith McDonough see their two leads, but although we enjoyed this year's production, last year the show tore our guts out.  Then, there were men crying -- yes, men crying in the theater -- all through the house. This year -- well, not so much.

We love the elevation of Brett Ryback's several roles. He acts as well as plays all the piano pieces. He is excellent as a Russian would-be impressario and blind piano tuner, and he obviously knows his Rachmaninoff, Chopin and Henry Mancini.  But perhaps there is a price to pay by adding a third wheel. We knew this show as a duet, a back and forth between Kiddo and Pops. Now it's a trio.

All that aside, "Upright Grand" hits you where you live. This is the World Premiere and they are still working things out -- the Rachmaninoff, for example, was added when the show was already in previews. So give it time. If you are seeing it for the first time you will be entranced. There is never an excuse to miss any Laura Schellhardt show.

RATINGS: ☼  ☼  ☼
The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Upright Grand" Three Stars.  Staging, acting and music earn one star each. We especially liked Pops at the bar. Pops, you shouldn't have quit. Really.

----------
"Upright Grand"
Lucie Stern Theater
1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto
Through August 10, 2012
$24-$73

Photo Credit: M. Kitaoka and T. Martin

"My Fair Lady" ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ Woo Hoo

Last night was the 51st and last Opening Night for San Francisco Playhouse at their Sutter Street addresss. Beginning with the 2012-2013 season in October the company is moving around the corner into their newly renovated and larger quarters in the Kensington Park Hotel, long-time home of the Post Street Theater.


So how better do you go out than with an absolute Five Star performance of Lerner and Loewe's classic "My Fair Lady?" They've stripped it down to two pianos, one on each side of the audience, and filled Nina Ball's unique set with actors who act and sing like they have been doing this show all their lives. Seeing as Eliza Dolittle is played by Monique Hafen, who can't be twenty-five years old (which means My Fair Lady opened on Broadway when she was minus thirty), clearly this cannot be so. Hafen and director Bill English give us a grittier Eliza, far more streetwise than Julie Andrews ever tried to be. They also give us Johnny Moreno as Henry Higgins. We expect Rex Harrison -- a proper (and middle aged) English gentleman, but Moreno gives us a more vibrant, angrier but equally clueless Higgins. This combination could be dangerous, but instead we are spellbound at the energy between the two leads. As an example, take Moreno's "I'm an Ordinary Man" and Hafen's "Just You Wait." It is both a surprise and a pleasure to see what the undertone of class anger can do to these two brilliant songs.

Add in Charles Dean as the swaggering (and staggering) Alfred P. Dolittle, Richard Frederick as Colonel Pickering and Karen Hirst as Mrs. Pearce/Mrs. Higgins, then sit back and listen to perhaps the most brilliant libretto and score ever created for musical theater, and you cannot help but come away feeling you have seen theater the way it is supposed to be seen.

It doesn't hurt that there isn't one word that isn't perfect in Alan Jay Lerner's lyrics ("Move yer bloomin' arse!" is what Eliza is shouting in the above shot), nor did Frederick Loewe ever write one out of place note. Those of us of a certain age who either saw the original Broadway production or have heard glowing first-hand accounts from those who did, must bow our heads and accept that a large Broadway house would bring magic of its own to My Fair Lady. But this reviewer must add that a 99-seat house, where you are no further than a dozen rows in front of the stage, instead of cloistered somewhere up in Balcony Three -- it's priceless.

We are sorry to gush. We know our readers are not used to reading such a rave from the Crusty Curmudgeon. We hope to be feeling better by next season.

RATINGS ☼  ☼  ☼  ☼  ☼ Woo Hoo!
The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards "My Fair Lady" Five Stars with a Woo Hoo! This is as high as we can go without tumbling off the praise precipice onto an earth that is once again flat and filled with Disney Musicals. Those of you who follow SFTB already know we might have a tendency to award Three or even Four stars to your preschooler's Farsi production of "My Fair Lady" or "West Side Story," but Five is a different ballgame.

Think of the Richter Scale -- Five Stars is Ten Megapissles stronger than Four, as Four is to Three. For further instructions, please refer to the Ratings Guide on the right side of this page.

And as for San Francisco Playhouse, who else can follow "A Behanding in Seattle" with "My Fair Lady" and move on to "Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson?" Note from Colonel Pickering to Bill English and Susi Damilano: "You did it."

Now all you have to do is keep it up.

-------
"My Fair Lady"
San Francisco Playhouse
533 Sutter Street, San Francisco
Through September 29
 $30-$70

SF Mime Troupe's "For The Greater Good" ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

The new SF Mime Troupe production "For the Greater Good" got a less-than-sterling review from the local pundits but this reviewer thinks it's the funniest and best-acted show they've done in years. For one thing, Ed Holmes is back, playing Gideon Bloodgood, an investment banker who will stop at nothing to keep from being incarcerated for his crimes. No one ever did Dick Cheney like Ed Holmes, and when, in real life, Cheney finally seeped back under the rocks from whence he sprang, he took away the Mime Troupe's most appealing character. Then came the financial meltdown and now an upcoming election. Gideon Bloodgood is fictional, but when he buys his daughter a congressional seat we get to  howl out our derision.

This is what the Mime Troupe does best: evil scumsuckers.

Let's also include cheers for Lisa Hori-Garcia as Bloodgood's wealthy daughter Alida ("just call me Tanya") who aspires to be a revolutionary, and for the terrific Reggie D. White as Damian Landless, who dresses like the devil as he slinks magnificently across the stage, but is also the head of the last Occupy Wall Street encampment. White is a newcomer to the cast and we hope he sticks around.

But it must also be said that although Landless is the show's slickest character, he is also its most confusing. We have no idea whether he's a good guy or a bad guy. We understand that writer and director Michael Gene Sullivan must be getting tired of writing good good guys and bad bad guys, so it is tempting to try and make us --gasp -- think. But when we're outside in the park, in the sun, surrounded by tie-dyes and frisbees, we really don't want to think too hard. If there is a fault to "For the Greater Good," it's that we all seem to be complicit in -- something or other.

As for the production itself, we love the way the encampment catches fire. The opening number "Even Better Than Alright," sung by the full cast," "What We Deserve," sung by Victor Toman and Lisa Hori-Garcia, and "Place for You Here," sung by the full cast, are excellent. Composer/Lyricist Pat Moran has to fit in a lot of words and some of the singers can handle them better than others. This year's songs are as good as any in the recent past and the band, as always, is perfect.

RATINGS: ☼  ☼  ☼ BANG

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "For the Greater Good" Three Stars
with a BANGLE OF PRAISE. It's very good fun with moments that take the show to the level of the best Mime Troupe shows. We love Mr. and Mrs. Puffy.

NOTE TO SFMT: We Press Types love photos. We know they cost money, but it wouldn't hurt to have a photo of Damian Landless in his devil uniform and of Tanya in her stylish camo. If you should ever add these photos to your site, we will post them immediately. Just sayin'...

---------
San Francisco Mime Troupe's "For the Greater Good"
Various venues throughout the Bay Area
See sfmt.org for schedule
All summer long until September 9, 2012
Free (but why don't you buy a t-shirt?)

"Reunion" ☼ ☼

The reunion that playwright Kenn Rabin seems to be talking about in his two act drama "Reunion" is not the one we think is about to happen. Tom Gillette (Marvin Green) had affairs with two of his high school students while he was their drama teacher. One of them, Valerie (Alexandra Creighton), accused him of rape and had him sent to prison, where he remains; the other, Julie (Lauren English) has continued corresponding with Tom in prison, and is attempting to wring a confession out of Valerie in order to gain Tom's freedom.

It's the developing friendship between Valerie and Julie that is the real relationship here. The two women could not be more opposite but they each have found different ways to deal with what happened to them in High School. The show presents issues that need to be talked about -- for example, when is sex consensual and when is it not -- but the problem with this play is that you'd just as soon never see any of these people again. Tom is pure smarm, Valerie is too stupid for words and Julie's delusional relationship with Tom is, above all, terribly sad.

Greene's Gillette is hard to swallow -- can this obvious a predator fool the prison psychiatrist (Emily Rosenthal) this easily?  Do they really do those penis tests? Are we watching a universe so unlike the one we live in that whatever happens makes sense?

Maybe. Creighton's Valerie is the one who appears to grow -- she's the strongest. The others just seem trapped. This isn't a show you want to think too closely about.

------

RATINGS ☼ ☼

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards division awards "Reunion" Two Stars. As part of SF Playhouse's excellent Sandbox Series, this World Premiere will give playwright Rabin plenty of feedback to work with. We love shows with premises that make us work. If Mr. Rabin can give some more heart to Valerie, Julie and Tom he will bring us into their story, rather than keep us out in the audience, in the dark, happy we're out here and not in there.

-------------
"Reunion"
San Francisco Playhouse
Sandbox Series
533 Sutter Street, San Francisco
Through June 30
$20

"The Scottsboro Boys" ☼ ☼ ☼

John Kander wrote the music and Fred Ebb wrote the lyrics for several of the most popular and long-lasting musicals in American theater history. Cabaret was a brilliant and nostalgic look at the lost world of pre-war Berlin, while Chicago was a sendup of the windy city in the1920s, where everyone was on the take and couldn't wait to sing about it. The Kandernebb (as they called themselves) songs were perfect and the stories made us laugh and sing.

But Ebb died in 2004 while he and Kander were still working on "The Scottsboro Boys." Kander and others finished the show. This time, the nostalgic musical form is minstrel music and the subject is nothing less than racism in America. Making sense of all this is a lot to ask of a composer, a lyricist and a book writer.

The show would be easier to digest if racism in 2012 were as dead as fascism in 1935 Berlin or prohibition in 1930 Chicago. As it is, the stereotypes involved in minstrel music, and the lyrics to the songs, even though we know we're supposed to wink and nudge and know the authors don't really mean it, make us cringe as much as clap. You may love this show but you may despise it. Even we, knowledgeable about the theatrical concept and mindful of the pedigree of these two great American songwriters, aren't sure where we stand.

Of course, Kander and Ebb didn't get to refine the show together, as all songwriting teams do once a show is mounted and takes on a life of its own. This is a pity.

Clifton Duncan, as Haywood, singing "Make Friends with the Truth" and J.C. Montgomery, as Leibowitz, doing "That's Not the Way We Do Things (in New York)" are terrific. There is a too-short moment during "Go Back Home" when Eugene, played by Nile Bullock, sounds like a young Michael Jackson. Clifton Oliver and James T. Lane's "white, Southern girls" -- Victoria and Ruby -- are amazing, and especially in context of the damage these two women did to nine innocent men.

So many fine moments, and yet, though the musical score is evocative, it is strangely subdued. A cast as good as this one could rock the house. But salvation is not the story being told here. You don't get to celebrate with The Scottsboro Boys, because they didn't either.

RATINGS: ☼  ☼  ☼

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division is wrestling with a rating for this show. It has four star moments alongside two star moments. It has painful racial slapstick riding in the same rail car with touching irony. It is the story of a generation's pain condensed into one act of theater. It is not supposed to make you feel good. Not feeling good is not why most of us come to the theater. So be warned. When it's hot, it's hot and when it's not, you squirm.

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

"The Scottsboro Boys"
A.C.T. Theater
415 Geary Street, San Francisco
EXTENDED through July 22
$20-$95