"Buried Child" ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

It seems like every time there is a role in the Bay Area for a character who is deranged and damaged beyond redemption (but still erudite), someone rings Rod Gnapp's bell. This time, Loretta Greco at the Magic Theatre tapped Gnapp to play Dodge, the central figure in Sam Shepard's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama "Buried Child." Dodge is deranged, all right, but everyone else in his family is several bolts short of a bridge as well.

Shepard wrote this play while in residence at the Magic in 1978, then re-wrote it for a 1996 Steppenwolf production. We see this later version, with a 2013 cast to do it proud.

You never want to walk into a dark alley with any character in a Sam Shepard play. You have relatives like them. Denise Balthrop Cassidy plays Dodge's wife Halle who oozes deliciously hypocritical religious prattle while carrying on with the local minister. Dodge and Halle's two surviving sons, Tilden (James Wagner) and Bradley (Patrick Kelly Jones) are each shattered wrecks, the detritus of an unspoken family secret. Bradley has lost a leg and Tilden his mind.  

Then Tilden's son Vince (Patrick Alarpone) and his girl friend Shelly (Elaina Garrity) enter and upset the applecart. Garrity comes close to stealing the show. With her initially vapid L.A.-girl persona, she is an outsider, and therefore the only person who can engage Dodge -- and finally get him to confess about what really happened all those years ago. 

The story is thick, the plot thicker, and, for a Pulitzer winner, there are some holes in the second act. But this is an actor's show and the cast brings life to Sam Shepard's desperate Illinois world. 

Special mention to costume designer Alex Jaeger. Tilden's final costume looks like he has gone down to hell and come back up. Which isn't far off.

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RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Buried Child" Four Stars, all for the acting. The play itself is a little obtuse -- what would have shocked an audience silly in 1978 just looks like another night on reality television in 2013. But Shepard's words make all the difference. We hear the playwright, as Halle speaks at the end of the show:

"...You can't force a thing to grow. You can't interfere with it. It's all hidden. Unseen. You just gotta wait 'til it pops up out of the ground." 

"Buried Child"

The Magic Theatre

Fort Mason, Building D, San Francisco

EXTENDED Through October 13

$20-$50

Word for Word: "In Friendship" by Zona Gale: ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

The expressions of Patricia Silver and Joanne Winter notwithstanding, Word for Word's latest presentation of five short stories by the early twentieth-century author Zona Gale is absolutely charming. It takes its time to get going, but by the last story "Covers for Seven" we are wrapped up happily in the small town world of Friendship, Wisconsin, somewhere around 1910.

"Friendship," "The Java Entertainment" and "The Cold Shoulder" start us off by presenting the townspeople going about their daily routines.  We love Mrs. Postmaster Sykes (Nancy Shelby), the town's society lady, Miss Amanda Toplady (Amy Kassow), who is trying her best to go with the flow, and you can't help but relish Joel Mullenix's voice as Timothy Toplady. The entire cast keeps us laughing and moving forward towards Act Two, when "Nobody Sick, Nobody Poor" and "Covers for Seven" create one of the most heartwarming Thanksgiving stories we have seen in years. This show could become a Thanksgiving staple, in much the same way we look forward to Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory" each year.

Special kudos to Jeri Lynn Cohen as Calliope Marsh, Ms. Gale's true voice of reason, and, as always, for the precise choreography of the Word for Word team. We never get enough of this company.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "In Friendship" by Zona Gale Three Stars with a Bangle of Praise. The story, cast and direction deserve one star each and the Bangle is for those wonderful firemen, who manage to disassemble a fire station that doesn't even exist. Great stuff.

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Word for Word's "In Friendship" by Zona Gale
Z Space Theater
470 Florida Street, San Francisco
EXTENDED through September 13
THE SHOW IS CURRENTLY SOLD OUT
PLEASE CHECK BOX OFFICE FOR CANCELLATIONS

"After the Revolution" ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

A fascinating and multi-layered drama, Amy Herzog's "After the Revolution" is at it's heart a relationship story about a young woman and her family. The Josephs are a multigenerational clan involved with revolutionary politics, stemming from their late patriarch Joe, continuing through his son Ben and now Ben's daughter Emma. Rolf Saxon and Jessica Bates play Ben and Emma. We hear about all the special circumstances surrounding the Joseph family history (red-baiting, McCarthy trials, blacklisting) but above all we are drawn to the personal stories of Ben and Emma, she a modern woman torn by the realization that old Joe Joseph wasn't the saint he has been made out to be, and he, both son and dad, trying to keep his family and his ideology in balance.

Victor Talmadge turns in a perfectly measured performance as Leo, Ben's older brother, as do Pamela Gaye Walker, as Ben's partner Mel, and Sara Mitchell as Jess, Emma's sister. The cast is completed by Morty (Peter Kybart), a voice of old-school reason, Vera (Ellen Ratner), a grandmother who seems somewhat too young for her role, and Adrian Anchondo as Miguel, Emma's boyfriend.

Along the way we get barbs at the uninvolved younger generation as well as a few choice comments about how the radical older lefties view modern issues such as homosexuality and minorities -- one view for the world, perhaps a different view for their own family.

When was the last time you heard people singing along to the pre-curtain music? This is what you get with a Berkeley audience and a Pete Seeger soundtrack.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼
The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Before the Revolution" Four Stars. We love being graced with both plot and first-class acting. Joy Carlin is the perfect director for this story and Amy Herzog deserves praise for a script schooled in history as well as heart.

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"After The Revolution"
Aurora Theatre
2081 Addison Street, Berkeley
EXTENDED Through October 6
$32-$50

"The Loudest Man on Earth" ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

This is a difficult review to write, because Catherine Rush's "The Loudest Man on Earth" is not about words, but about emotion. And communication. You won't see or hear anything else this season remotely like it.

Performed in a combination of sign language and mime, plus spoken language from the three speaking cast members and the strained sounds of the fourth, who is deaf, this brilliant show makes you work hard just to follow. But half an hour or so through the evening you realize you are getting it. And from that moment on the payoff is tremendous.

Adrian Blue plays Jordan White, a successful theater director despite his deafness. He falls for Haylee (Julie Fitzpatrick), who has been sent to interview him. He's a New York Jew, she's a Connecticut brahmin, he is deaf while she knows a little sign language, but despite their differences they move in with each other. Their means of communicating not only intrigues but involves us, as we guess to decipher what Jordan is trying to say.

Fitzpatrick is nothing short of brilliant, as she moves back and forth from speaking to signing, from being Jordan's lover to his protector, from trying in vain to get him to trust her more deeply to having to face her own insecurities about their relationship.

After each emotional situation, Jordan comes to the side of the stage and mimes writing a letter, into which he is obviously pouring his heart. We guess what he is saying -- but really have no idea what he is going on about -- until we do.

Cassidy Brown (Men) and Mia Tagano (Women) play half a dozen characters each, switching costumes and characters on the fly. Their job is to show us the daily embarrassments and difficulties a deaf person must endure in his daily life. We particularly loved Brown and Tagano's depictions of Jordan's parents, who Jordan despises, but we find almost touchingly tragic.



"The Loudest Man on Earth" was a crowd favorite at last year's TheatreWorks New Works Festival and appears here with the same cast. Catherine Rush is Adrian Blue's real-life wife, so she knows what she is writing about. By the show's end we are ready for more. How often do we get to say that?

RATINGS ☼  ☼  ☼  ☼
The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "The Loudest Man on Earth" Four Stars. Writing, acting, directing and staging are first rate. We think this show is going to be around a long time.

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"The Loudest Man on Earth"
Lucie Stern Theatre
1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto
Through August 4
$19-$73

Photo credits: T. Martin and M. Kitaoka

Don Reed: "Can You Dig It?" ☼ ☼ ☼

In his new show, "Can You Dig It?" Don Reed takes us back to East Oakland where he grew up. In his earlier show "East Fourteenth Street," we met his Mom, his Dad, his brother, sister, two stepbrothers and his father's crazy friends (including the amazing Trout Mouth). Now, we get to meet them again, but in an earlier time period, when his mom and dad were still married and living together. Since this makes "Can You Dig It" a prequel, Reed must make sure people who are not familiar with him are laughing right along with his fans who already know these characters well. He pulls it off. The characters he has created and Reed's ability for physical comedy are funny enough that we are quite happy to say hello to them all again.

But "Can You Dig it?" has a little more angst to it. We feel the pain of his father watching Martin Luther King's assassination on TV (great choice of Sam Cooke music here). We see that his Dad was a pretty decent pimp, but also understand why his mom had to get away. It's easy to see why his mom took up with his Jehovah's Witnesses stepdad. We already know how that turned out for little Donnie because going door-to-door and not celebrating Christmas was a central theme in "East Fourteenth Street."

The stutter and nervous tics that Donnie had as a child are eclipsed only by those of his friend Waddell, who also jumps up and down before he talks. We love Waddell and Donnie together. They could have their own sit-com, with Double Dutch Tony as their enforcer and Trout Mouth as cultural attaché.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Can You Dig It?" Three Stars. It is a very funny show. But we would rate it higher if he gave us a little more. Don Reed can do amazing things with his face but he creates bits that leave us hanging.  What happened in the talent contest? Who won? What did he say to his dad when MLK died? When he and his mom got close toward the end of her life, what did they talk about?  Why did they go shopping so much? The hysterical bit when he and his younger brother are shacked up in a motel with two girls -- how did that end? And when he talks, as a postscript, about what happened in real life to these characters, so many appear to be dead. These were young people. How did that happen?

Which is to say we really love Don Reed's shows. He makes us laugh while he is setting us up for something deeper. When he wants to go there we'll be happy to come along too.

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PARKING ALERT: They have steeply raised the price of the nearby New Mission Bartlett Garage. It is no longer an inexpensive option. 

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Don Reed: "Can You Dig It?
The Marsh
1062 Valencia Street, San Francisco
$15-$35 sliding scale
Saturday and Sunday through August 25

Camelot: ☼ ☼ ☼

Arthur, the once and future King, seems firmly in charge of the Kingdom of Camelot, though if it were up to us we'd side with Lancelot. In this 2013 revival of Lerner and Loewe's 1960 "Camelot," which has become inextricably linked with the early days of the Kennedy administration, King Arthur (Johnny Moreno) is pictured as a dreamer who has come up with a really good idea (the round table) but afterwards has become imprisoned by his own ideology. His relative malaise makes it easy to understand how lovely Queen Guenevere (Monique Hafen) could become infatuated with the French knight and zealot Lancelot (Wilson Jermaine Heredia). You've got a king who talks versus a knight who fights. In the words of a don from a future generation (Michael Corleone): "It was the smart move."

The problem that Lerner and Loewe always had with "Camelot' is that it followed "My Fair Lady." Nobody writes a "My Fair Lady" twice in a row and neither did Lerner and Loewe. So a lot of the music, while pretty good, feels like an out-take from the earlier show. You see Henry Higgins in red velvet whenever Johnny Moreno sings those clever-to-a-fault Broadway lyrics. Like Nina Ball's ruined castle walls on stage, the songs feel a little ancient.

Welcome additions are two tunes that have been restored from the original stage production: "Fi on 

Goodness," sung by all those slovenly Knights who look like they are about to shout "What's in YOUR Wallet?" and "Then You May Take Me to the Fair," where Queen Guenevere is attempting to turn the local lords against the French usurper Lancelot. For us, the other standout is Lancelot's fabulous "C'est Moi," where he manages to tell the world of his incomparable greatness without feeling the least bit self-conscious. Heredia owns this song, as, in many ways, he owns the entire production.

Charles Dean is also excellent, both as Merlyn and King Pelinor. The show is terrific from the opening through most of Act One. After that, it begins to drag. The ending feels abrupt, though in character for a King who seems to prefer being just about anywhere else but in charge.

"Camelot," which was Lerner and Loewe's last stage collaboration and as such harkens back to the golden age of Broadway, is always a must for theater-lovers. We would like to see Johnny Moreno, who was so good in last year's SFP production of "My Fair Lady," a little more dialed in. Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Monique Hafen and Charles Dean are perfect. It's a long summer run and everyone's sword will get a little sharper.

RATINGS:   ☼ ☼ ☼

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Camelot" Three Stars. We get squabbling knights, political ineptitude, sword fights and betrayal: perfect summertime entertainment.

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"Camelot"

San Francisco Playhouse

450 Post Street, San Francisco

(second floor of Kensington Park Hotel)

$30-$100

Through September 14

"So You Can Hear Me" ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

Daughter of a jazz musician father and dancer mother, Safiya Martinez inherited a lot of music and motion. A native New Yorker, she grew up on the Lower East Side and then moved to the Bronx. Somehow, with no experience or training, she ended up teaching Special Ed at a Bronx high school where even the cab drivers were afraid to go. Her fantastic solo show "So You Can Hear Me" introduces us to nine of her students, all of whom speak in a Latino Bronxese filled with humor, sadness and a lot of life.

We loved all her characters, some little more than sketches and some more lengthy. Perhaps no pastiche is as memorable as her mother dancing with pleasure around her apartment, after she has just cut off her own bandages after breast cancer surgery. Let's not forget the vibrators in the East River, nor every word out of the mouth of her down-but-not-out student José.

In a town filled with some of the best solo performers in the world, young Safiya Martinez does something we have never seen before. Most solo performers come out of character, smile and let you know they're back to their narration. But Martinez draws it out -- she might take several seconds to remove that hoodie, staring intently at the audience all the while. It is unnerving at first, but very effective as the evening draws on.

She's going to be a star. This is a fabulous show you should not miss.

RATINGS: ☼  ☼  ☼  BANG

The San Francisco Theater Blog awards "So You Can hear Me" Three Stars with a BANGLE OF PRAISE. Her writing, performance and craft earn one star each. As her show matures and we come to know a little more about her own life, her characters will acquire even more richness. We give the BANGLE for how good Safiya Martinez is already. We can't wait to see more.

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"So You Can Hear Me"

The Marsh

1062 Valencia Street, San Francisco

Thursday, Friday and Saturday through July 20

$10-$20 sliding scale