Brian Copeland: "The Scion" ☼ ☼

Brain Copeland is stepping out in his new one-man show "The Scion," which is having its World Premiere at the Marsh San Francisco. Copeland is trying to balance on the knife-edge between comedy and tragedy. With the assistance of long-time director David Ford sometimes his blade is sharp, but sometimes it is just plain dull.

There are really two shows going on. When Copeland is in character as himself, ranting about the effect that privilege has upon the people who wield it as well as those who don't, including George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin, he is funny and insightful. But when he attempts to act out the characters in a real-world murder case that took place in San Leandro in the year 2000, the show slows  to a halt. Brian as Brian narrating the whole thing would have us on the edge of our chairs. But his voicings of the actual testimonies of witnesses in the trial are tedious and not very entertaining.

The problem is simple: we care about Brian Copeland. He's our pal, we know him and his entire family from his earlier shows. He shows us our follies and allows us to laugh about them. But we don't care much about the three USDA inspectors murdered by a privileged psychopath, we don't care how many children they had and we don't have any feelings one way or the other about the psychopath himself except that he's crazy. His guilt and conviction are a matter of record so there are no suprises. This leads Copeland into moralizing and moralizing is not all that funny.

He's correct about "Rules are for everyone, yeah, right."  He asks the right questions, such as who gets the benefit of the doubt and who is inherently suspicious? How are we to decide who is dangerous and who will protect us? These are issues with which society is not dealing very well.

Copeland is also right about the windshield and the bug. It's a great metaphor to end the show.

RATINGS: ☼ ☼
The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards Brian Copeland's "The Scion" Two Stars at this point, which is below the Julie Andrews Line (see right sidebar for explanation of ratings). The show is new and feels it. Brian Copeland has raised his own bar very high. We have gotten used to seamless adventure with "The Jewelry Box," "The Waiting Period" and "Not a Genuine Black Man." But those shows have become aristocracy. "The Scion" is still just a kid.

----------

Brian Copeland: "The Scion"

The Marsh

1062 Valencia Street, San Francisco

Thu-Sat through March 1

$15-$60

Jerusalem: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

You ride the Rooster, one way or the other. If you like him, as you will, despite your better judgement, you'll end up being enthralled with Jez Butterworth's Tony-winning three hour three-act opus "Jerusalem." But you won't be able to ignore the small part of your still-functioning brain that reminds you: "This guy is a creep. He deserves whatever he gets."

Johnny "Rooster" Byron is played to confounding perfection by Brian Dykstra. True, he is a dropout, living in a decrepit mobile home rapidly decaying like the rest of the forest in which he has located himself. True, his only friends are the teenagers to whom he provides booze and sells drugs. True, he is studiously avoiding his fate, numbing himself with any substance he can scrounge from his many stashes.

The Rooster is also delusional. But so was Don Quijote. One man's weirdo is another man's prophet. And within his madness there is a level of truth with which we can all identify. Despite his attempt to call in the giants with his drum, we all know that eventually his self-named Rooster's Forest will be leveled and turned into an expansion of the suburb just across the way. We understand his cocksure refusal to come to grips with this knowledge. But we also know there is power in resistance and we want The Rooster to fight it out.

Here is our only problem with this opus -- we love the two act setup. But in Act Three we wait for what we will not receive. We are ready to see Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid leap defiantly into their final fusilade. 

"Jerusalem" is a play about England, with a rural English collection of idioms and cultural terms. You won't understand a small percentage of the language, but it won't matter. Performances are so strong, particularly by Dykstra and Ian Scott McGregor who plays Ginger as Rooster's Sancho Panza, that you will be thrown happily downstream into the action along with the rest of us. Joe Estlak plays the menacing Troy, managing somehow to place his defiant skull a foot in front of the rest of his body, Paris Hunter Paul is Lee, who is smart enough to want to leave his dead-end home, while Christopher Reber is very good as poor sore-foot Wesley.

Bill English's set is masterful. The stage is trashed before the curtain even rises. Characters pop out of sofas, from under the mobile home, or from behind a clothes line. English also directs, which is probably one reason for the measured insanity that is the power of this production.

 So it all comes down to whether or not you believe you are rooting for the underdog if you throw in with the Rooster. Is he a hero? An anti-hero? A bum? One thing is for sure: Jez Butterworth has given us the rare epic, the story that does not pander to the supposed attention-gap lap in theater culture. Stay tuned in and you will find a great deal to cheer about.

RATINGS  ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼
The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Jerusalem" Four Stars. You cannot deny the brash energy of this show. The acting of the entire ensemble is superb. Performance, direction, writing and set all earn one Star each.

Someone please tell Troy to put down the ax. There's another show tomorrow.

-----------

"Jerusalem"

San Francisco Playhouse

450 Post Street (upstairs at Kensington Park Hotel), San Francisco

Through Mar 8

$30-$100

Marga Gomez: "Lovebirds" ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

In a city of excellent solo performers, Marga Gomez stands apart. For one thing, she's been doing it a long time. Her characters and her stories always have a little more depth, her performance is more nuanced and she doesn't hold her audience's hand. In her new "Lovebirds," which we saw in its final Preview before Opening Night at the Marsh, she has sewed all her craft together into a touching tapestry which is also very, very funny.

The show revolves around Polaroid Philly, a lovable photographer who is still working with a Polaroid. She has been around the block a few times but her gift is the kindness she offers to all her customers. We see Philly at the opening, and at the end, and in between we meet Turkey, the manly lesbian who courts Barbara, the politically aware "brand new lesbian" who changes her name to "Dahlia." We meet Barbara/Dahlia's father Orestes, who runs a night club and has fallen in love with his dying-cat-voiced club singer Gladys, who only uses one name, just like Charro and Cher.  There are many other characters too, but our very favorite is Richard Richards, the professor who claims to only need 45 minutes of sleep a night. He is constantly yawning, and believe me, when he yawns, you will too. He is married to Gladys...well, the plot is convoluted and the characters many. 

There is even one character named Marga Gomez, who buys a lot of Cosmopolitans as she tries in vain to pick up Barbara/Dahlia. 

With all of it -- we come back to Polaroid Philly. She knows her polaroids are ancient technology, and that they will fade, as will all our memories. But, despite it all, you can always count on her to keep trying. 

RATINGS ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Lovebirds" Three Stars with a BANGLE OF PRAISE. Gomez gets a star for writing and performing, plus another for Richard Richards. The BANGLE of PRAISE is for Gladys's version of "Besame Mucho," though if she had played it a little louder we may have expired with laughter. If we could give an extra Bangle, it would be for the way Turkey does the Hustle.

-----

Marga Gomez "Lovebirds"

The Marsh

1062 Valencia Street, San Francisco

Thu-Sat through March 15

$15-$35 sliding scale.

"The Pornographer's Daughter" ☼ ☼ ☼

Liberty Bradford Mitchell has a pedigree, children. Actually, she has two. The first, from her mother's side of the family, takes her back to the Mayflower and Boston society. The second, from her father's  side, gave her a close-up and personal ride into the great pageant of San Francisco porn. With a story like this, and a fine sense of how to hold an audience, Bradford Mitchell's "The Pornographer's Daughter" will rivet you to your seat --- the good way.

It's pretty graphic, folks, at least on the video screen above the stage. Bradford Mitchell was born in 1969, the year the Mitchell Brothers opened their O'Farrell Theater as an outlet to screen their home-made pornographic shorts. Her stories of how brothers Jim and Artie catapulted themselves into mainline cinema and a screening at the Cannes Film Festival with "Behind the Green Door," the first feature-length pornographic movie ever made, starring the Ivory-Snow girl Marilyn Chambers, is absolutely priceless. Bradford Mitchell's personal revelations are terrific too -- like how she hated being "named Liberty in a world of Heathers and Jennifers."

The dark side is there, and we get the sense we've only heard the half of it. Her father, Art Mitchell, was arrested 187 times and her uncle Jim 188. Of course, the last time was when her uncle murdered her father. Liberty's last words to her dad must haunt her to this day.

But that's where the show stops being fun and starts being just weird. Nothing made sense in real life and it doesn't on stage either. Bradford Mitchell's behavior at her uncle's trial, and therefore her depiction of those days, make you ask a lot of questions. It's hard to know what to think.

Music is provided on-stage by The Fluffers. Their finest moment is when they play riffs from '60s songs as the show is opening. We could definitely use some more interplay between Bradford Mitchell and the band. Also, she needs to get some of her facts straight -- USC is not in Watts, for example. She needs to check her dates about Francis Ford Coppola.

None of this is to deny the power of this amazing tale. We come away with respect for a woman who has been through a lot and come out on the other end unapologetic for the way her father and uncle made their living. As she says about her family: "We put the fun in dysfunction." 

(And Marilyn Chambers was really beautiful. Just sayin.' )

RATINGS: ☼ ☼ ☼ 

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "The Pornographer's Daughter" Three Stars. It is well worth seeing, but suffers from a believability issue, capped off by her tears at the end. They ring false for the character on the stage we have seen laughing everything off with a wave and a F-bomb. Liberty Bradford Mitchell is a tremendous talent. Who could be surprised if "The Pornographer's Daughter" still has a few kinks?

-------

"The Pornographer's Daughter"

Z Space Below

470 Florida Street, San Francisco

Thu-Sun through February 16

$32 

Silent Sky: ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

In the Northern California debut of Playwright Lauren Gunderson's "Silent Sky,"we get period costumes, rich dialogue and a homage to Henrietta Leavitt, the female astronomer who made pioneering discoveries in the clubby scientific man's world of the early twentieth century. Scenic Designer Annie Smart takes us inside the Harvard Observatory, which ties a satisfying knot at the end of Act Two, and costume designer Fumiko Bielefeldt must have had a lot of fun with the dresses.

In many ways, the heart of Gunderson's story is the relationship between two different sets of women. Elena Wright and Jennifer Le Blanc play Henrietta Leavitt and her sister Margaret. We see two women who, while different in many ways, are still sisters who rely on one another.  In her scientific world, Leavitt has an even more sisterly relationship with her two colleagues Annie Cannon (Sarah Dacey Charles) and Williamina Fleming (Lynne Soffer). The more earthy Fleming and flinty Cannon counsel Henrietta on her work but, more importantly, teach her how to get around the condescending Harvard power structure.

Peter Shaw plays Matt Citron, the Harvard associate who appears to be Henrietta's love interest. But science is this woman's muse as well as her dream. 

"Silent Sky" teaches us about astronomy while giving us a fabulous ending to the story of the woman who in real life discovered more than 2,400 stars. The First Act feels long, but after intermission pays off resolutely.

RATINGS:  ☼ ☼ ☼ BANG

The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Silent Sky" Three Stars with a BANGLE OF PRAISE. The writing, acting and production are all first rate while the BANGLE is for the three hanky finale, which wraps up the astronomer's career and and keeps the audience smiling as we exit. We loved this play and you will too.

---------

"Silent Sky"

 Mountain View Center for Performing Arts

 500 Castro Street, Mountain View

 Through Feb 9

 $19 (30 and under) - $73

Photo Credits: M. Kitaoka and T. Martin

"The Oy of Sex" ☼ ☼

The title of Alicia Dattner's one-woman show says a lot about what you see. "The Oy of Sex" is a play on words, as is much of her show. She has some genuinely funny bits, and some of it, in addition to being hysterically funny, is unlike anything you've seen before. Case in point: the bit about giving Anastasia a very special birthday present in the bar. She is at her best when she is outrageous.

But unlike, say, Sarah Silverman, who prides herself on being raunchy, Dattner is also trying to be the good little girl, especially with a contrived, almost girl-scout ending. Jokes alone, no matter how clever, don't make a show, even if it's about everyone's number one favorite subject.

All that said, we laughed a lot. "How to break up with polyamorous people" was very funny. Lots of memorable quips -- "a one life stand," "a menage a moi," "Cooch 22" -- all sharp and entertaining. And the previously mentioned bar sequence really is a classic.

It's a master bit -- no tongue intended.

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

RATINGS: ☼ ☼
The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "The Oy of Sex" Two Stars. Funny routines from a comedienne who loves taking chances. It's still a collection of jokes, not quite a solo show, but Ms. Dattner has a pleasing on-stage personality. She is sharp and she'll figure it out. We suggest giving her a little time to see what works -- check back in towards the end of the run. We certainly will. Probably won't take Mom though.

----------
"The Oy of Sex"
The Marsh
1062 Valencia Street, San Francisco
Thu-Sat through January 18
$20-$35 sliding scale

"Storefront Church" ☼ ☼ ☼

If you want a blockbuster for the Christmas season, it's a great idea to hire a cast featuring some of the finest and hardest-working actors in the Bay Area. Scarcely a week goes by that we don't see Gabriel Marin or Rod Gnapp on a stage somewhere. Carl Lumbly has had a great year, with superb performances in SFP's The Motherf**ker With the Hat and the Magic's "Terminus." Add in old pro Ray Reinhardt, plus Derek Fischer and Gloria Weinstock and you have a cast that makes you understand why Bay Area theater has become such an ongoing treasure.

Local rave reviews notwithstanding, we're not sure John Patrick Shanley's "Storefront Church" measures up to this cast. As the last of a trilogy (the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Doubt" was the first), "Storefront Church" once again talks about issues of faith and their intersection with the real world. Act One introduces us to Reed (Gnapp, a bank manager) and Ethan (Reinhardt, an old man looking for a loan). We watch them interact with Lumbly's Chester, the depressed pastor of a new storefront church and Marin's Donaldo, the Borough President of the Bronx. Donaldo needs Chester to pay his debts to Jessie (Weinstock), a neighborhood compatriot of Donaldo's. The plot is simple to understand. We get plenty of laughs at the goodhearted expense of religion and politics as we await Act Two.

Granted, it's a Christmas show, so we're supposed to exit smiling and we do. But we also wonder how the action in Act Two became so stilted and the conclusion so improbable? The cast seems off-kilter. Lumbly is too self-assured to be so paralyzed, Marin is too morally conflicted to be Borough President, perhaps the most smoke-filled backroom job ever created, while Tom, while deliciously smarmalicious as the bank CEO, does not seem intellectually capable of pulling off his grand plan, which is to blackmail the Borough President in order to guarantee support on an ill-conceived construction project.

Watching these actors is worth the price of admission. But there are a lot of loose ends. Faith always wins at Christmas. We could have used a little more devil.

RATINGS: ☼  ☼  ☼
The San Francisco Theater Blog Awards Division awards "Storefront Church" Three Stars. We especially loved Rod Gnapp, getting a chance for once to play a more nuanced character. Go for the actors: they're all good. The show is funny and wholesome, but feels like it might have been more.

----------

"Storefront Church"

San Francisco Playhouse

Second floor of Kensington Park Hotel

450 Post Street, San Francisco

Through Jan 5, 2014

$30-$100