Woody Weingarten

[Woody’s [rating: 3.5]

When you come right down to it, I’m generally a non-believer.

I haven’t believed in the Tooth Fairy for a long time. Ditto the Easter Bunny and the Energizer Bunny. Double-ditto unicorns and centaurs.

Santa Claus? You must be kidding.

But ask me about a bumbling bozo brought up by elves at the North Pole who reunites in Manhattan with his human birth father and I’ll tell you, with a giant smile, that I wanna believe, brother, I wanna believe.

That’s because Buddy, hero of the gag-filled “Elf the Musical,” is so bouncy, so entertaining, so goofy.

Eric Williams, who plays Buddy in the touring company production at the SHN Curran Theatre in San Francisco, makes it virtually impossible not to like the character or believe in his good-natured, innocent spirit.

But to make sure my senior reaction paralleled those of theatergoers a few decades younger, I checked with the three kids I chaperoned to opening night.

Hannah, my 7-year-old granddaughter, was concise: “I liked the play better than the movie.”

She was referring, of course, to the 2003 comedy-fantasy Jon Favreau directed (starring Will Ferrell as Buddy).

She found the main character in the show “really funny,” but questioned the tale’s modernity. “I don’t believe that Santa has an iPad!” she exclaimed afterwards.

At least one urbane allusion had flown over her head.

Santa supposedly had stopped using reindeer after complaints from PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Questioned Hannah, “What’s a PETA? I know what a pita chip is, but what’s a PETA?”

Hudson, son of Hannah’s mom’s partner, was astute enough at 13 to discern minor blips. “Buddy forgot to button his vest,” he said about one of the many quick costume changes, “and it was obvious when he fixed it.”

He liked the show over all, though, especially its colorful costumes and multiple painting-like sets — despite finding the Buddy character “a little too dumb.”

But he also thought “some of the language might be a little harsh for little kids.”

Hudson’s younger brother, Kota, 11, clearly was the most sanguine of the trio. He appreciated 100 percent “how they integrated the musical numbers with the story,”

I loved watching my young companions’ reactions as much as I seeing the prime performers — all of whom were first-rate (most outstanding, besides Williams, were Harper S. Brady, who played Buddy’s half-brother, Michael, and Lexie Dorsett Sharp as Buddy’s stepmother, Emily).

Brady, who alternates with Tyler Altomari in the role, and Sharp were marvelous in two potent duets — “I’ll Believe in You” and “There Is a Santa Claus.”

Also superb was Maggie Anderson as Jovie, Buddy’s love interest. Her comic solo, “Never Fall in Love (with an Elf),” was brilliant.

A show-stopper.

The two-hour Christmasy musical will end its short local run Dec. 28, although it could easily become a perennial.

Because it oozes with charm.

Its 14-person chorus is as perpetually energetic as the aforementioned bunny, palpable in a scene of multiple dancing Santas and another when the elf-actors dance on their knees and create a Rockettes-like sequence.

Thanks to the combined imaginations of choreographer Connor Gallagher and director Sam Scalamonai.

Upbeat music by Matthew Sklar, lyrics by Chad Beguelin and a nine-piece orchestra conducted by Roberto Sinha help keep things blissful, with drummer/percussionist Aaron Drescher offering up the most perfectly timed, dramatic instrumentation.

For adults such as me, the show — which debuted on Broadway in 2010 — contains just the right amount of clever cynicism.

Such as when one department store Santa complains that today’s kids seem compelled to text while sitting on his lap.

Some adults, however, might prefer to take the family brood to “Nutcracker” again. Or re-read David Sedaris’ tale of his being a Macy’s elf, “Santaland Diaries.”

Some undoubtedly will pay attention to the youngsters.

The 15-minute intermission, Kota gushed, “felt so long — I couldn’t wait for it to end so the show could start again. ‘Elf’ made it onto the charts of my favorite plays. It was quite delightful. I’d see it again in a heartbeat.”

“Elf the Musical” plays at the SHN Curran Theatre, 445 Geary St., San Francisco, through Dec. 28. Evening performances, Sundays, 5:30 p.m.; Tuesdays through Saturdays, 7:30 p.m. Matinees, Sundays, noon; Mondays through Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $45 to $160 (subject to change). Information: (888) 746-1799 or shnsf.com.

[Woody’s [rating: 2.5]

The woman sitting behind me kept laughing so loudly I thought she’d wet herself.

She was an exception.

The woman sitting next to me barely smiled throughout “The Complete History of Comedy (abridged).”

Most of the Marin Theatre Company audience, including me, was somewhere in between.

Which translated on opening night to laughing aloud more than a few times, grinning a lot, and occasionally yawning at professorial explanations that obstructed the rapid-fire delivery of punch-lines and screwball, high-energy performances.

The three-man Reduced Shakespeare Company troupe emulates the way-back zaniness of the Ritz Brothers, Marx Brothers and Three Stooges as well as the way-way-back cerebral intricacies of Chekov and Shakespeare.

They insert pie-in-the-face, rubber chicken and Muppet-like gags.

They deploy limitless props.

Austin Tichenor, a classically trained actor who sports pants intentionally too short, and Reed Martin, a former circus clown who wears his head without hair, are the show’s writer-director-actors.

Dominic Conti, a physically flexible actor who sports cutoff shorts, fills out the trio.

“The Complete History of Comedy (abridged)” starts with the ostensible origin of the genre, a cavewoman who ludicrously distorts the birthing process.

But it doesn’t proceed chronologically.

Instead, the speedy 90-minute romp divides itself into chunks — about clowning, Commedia dell’arte, violence, fooles (ancient and current), the best and worst all-time comedians (with slides and snide commentary) — cemented by a series of marvelous puns that draw loud groans from an appreciative crowd.

Add to that the references, beyond caustically skewering religious and political hypocrisy, to virtually everything relating to comedy.

Like George Carlin and his seven dirty words, minstrel shows, Monty Python and its dead parrot skit, Sigmund Freud and his psychological deconstruction of jokes.

The threesome acts out an Elizabethan rendition of the classic Abbott and Costello “Who’s on First?” routine, presents a two-man Greek chorus, and offers up a solo Abraham Lincoln in the guise of a stand-up comic.

Wigs are plentiful.

Coupled with enough pieces of fabric to facilitate scores of instant costume changes.

So much happens so fast it’s easy to miss something amusing. But you can be reasonably sure something amusing will come around the bend in another split second.

The funniest bit, in my estimation, was a look at the U.S. Supreme Court with each performer manipulating two puppets — vigorously.

Except the one representing Clarence Thomas, who, like in reality, sleeps through the proceedings.

Close behind was a segment in which two theatergoers were dragged onstage, then basically left to their own devices to provide sound effects.

Their lack of skill ended up being hilarious.

Squeezed between the infinite jokes and sketches were a handful of quick but serious moments — such as that provided by an archetypal character, Rambozo the clown, derivative of both Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” and a 1986 antiwar song by Dead Kennedys.

The Reduced Shakespeare Company began in Marin in 1981 as a pass-the-hat troupe at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire in Novato.

Its first actual production was, fittingly, “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged).”

The current original production is the company’s ninth.

Some, I believe, were more successful than this — “The Bible: The Complete Word of God (abridged)” and “The Complete History of America (abridged),” for instance.

The company, which works exceedingly hard onstage, has publicized the phrase “Saving the world one joke at a time.” But it tries to cover too much territory in “The Complete History of Comedy (abridged),” resulting in the show being slightly uneven.

Maybe that’s why, in a theater in which standing ovations are de rigueur, it drew only moderate applause at evening’s end.

“The Complete History of Comedy (abridged)” plays at the Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley, through Dec. 21. Performances Tuesdays and Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Wednesdays, 7:30 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Matinees, Thursdays, 1 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $20 to $58 (subject to change). Information: (415) 388-5208 or marintheatre.org.

 

[Woody’s [rating: 4]

When it comes to worshipping at the altar of pop-rock singer-composer Cyndi Lauper, I’m a late latecomer.

At the height of her popularity in the 1980s, I wasn’t particularly taken with her voice, her compositions or her rebel-punk image.

I wasn’t even enthralled with her first big hit, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” a feminist anthem she reconstructed from Robert Hazard’s original male anthem.

But, then, I’m a boy.

However, when my wife and I saw Lauper perform at the Black & White Ball, the symphony’s fundraiser, on the streets of San Francisco in 2012, we became fans.

And now, having gone to the SHN Orpheum Theatre to hear the LGBT activist’s latest tunes in “Kinky Boots,” which won six 2013 Tonys (including best original musical), our delayed adoration has grown even more.

Others obviously share the attraction.

Those who hand out the Tonys, for example. They gave her one for writing last year’s best original score, making her the first woman to win that honor solo.

The 61-year-old also won a Grammy for this year’s album of the show.

The musical, an upbeat two-hour-plus toe-tapper overflowing with humor, proves that — contrary to Nancy Sinatra’s chartbuster — some boots are made for dancing rather than walking.

Even if you’re hesitant about a show that spotlights a flowing white gown on a man — plus numerous high heels, sequins, feathers and cross-dressers — you’re apt to enjoy this one.

Especially its poignant everyman ballads that mirror difficult relationships between parents and offspring.

The main theme is acceptance of differences (and getting past stereotypes and bias, despite the show being filled with stereotypes and clichés)  — and finding forgiveness.

In San Francisco, where the opening night audience was about 90 percent un-straight, those notions drew mammoth applause and cheers.

Our seats, in fact, happened to be surrounded by drag queens in full regalia, including glitter, whiteface, battery-lighted fuzzy hats and, naturally, high boots.

They made me think that, although the local run is scheduled to end Dec. 28, the musical potentially could sell out in the Bay Area forever.

Its mass appeal may have exceptions, though. Like the four elderly ladies sitting in the rear with dour expressions opening night that may have indicated they’d bought tickets to the wrong show.

The predictable storyline of “Kinky Boots,” based on the 2005 British film with the same title, has Charlie Price, a young Northampton owner of a failing shoe factory, getting help from Lola, a transvestite cabaret star.

They start producing tall high-heeled boots aimed for cross-dressers, so they must appeal to a wearer’s feminine side while supporting a man’s weight.

Kyle Taylor Parker is astounding as Lola, evoking sympathy and compassion while singing in multiple registers, and Steven Booth displays passion, vulnerability and power in the role of Charlie.

Although Parker’s diva rendition of  “Hold Me in Your Heart,” is a showstopper, so is a comedic number, “The History of Wrong Guys,” performed by Lindsay Nicole Chambers as Lauren, an assembly worker with a crush on Charlie.

The raucous “Sex Is in the Heel,” featuring Lola and six backups, The Angels, also is a major crowd-pleaser.

“Everybody Say Yeah” is yet another winner. It’s a gospel-like rocker highlighted by performers dancing, sitting and reclining on a moving — and separated — assembly line.

But the song that touched my heart and sensibilities the most was a tender duet between Lola and Charlie, “Not My Father’s Son.”

Lauper’s lyrics, by the way, are inspirational spirit-boosters — for drag queens, heterosexuals and virtually anyone with a heartbeat.

They can encapsulate significance in a few words.

• “You can’t move on if you’re still in the past.”

• “There’s a roomful of people who need to feel normal — comparatively speaking.”

• “You’re in my fantasy.”

The book by Harvey Fierstein is alternately funny and sensitive, albeit a tad preachy.

Jerry Mitchell deserves plaudits, too, for his direction and vigorous choreography — including a distinctive slo-mo boxing ring scene.

Still, “Kinky Boots” isn’t for everyone.

Those uncomfortable with not hearing every lyric enunciated perfectly, or having to decipher a makeshift English accent, or with in the company of transvestites or others different from themselves are advised to stay home.

For the rest, it’s pretty much a guaranteed evening of good feelings, glitz ‘n’ glamor.

“Kinky Boots” will play at the SHN Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market St., San Francisco, through Dec. 28. Night performances Tuesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m. Matinees, Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m.; Special performance, Friday, Dec. 26 at 2 p.m. Tickets: $75 to $300 (subject to change). Information: (888) 746-1799 or shnsf.com.

[Woody’s [rating: 5]

Not everything Bobby McFerrin does musically is a 10. Once in a rare while he descends to a nine and a half.

In 1984, my wife heard a solo cut from his second album on jazz radio. She rushed out to buy “The Voice,” then made me listen.

I became an instant acolyte.

Soon, we caught him live in a Noe Valley church.

He vocalized unusual but pleasing sounds I hadn’t heard and, adding depth and texture, rhythmically pounded his chest in what I didn’t know would be recognized as beatboxing.

Humor was his sidekick.

Later we heard him reimagine all the “The Wizard of Oz” sounds and voices, and later yet watched him during a San Francisco rehearsal of Garrison Keillor’s “Prairie Home Companion.”

Clearly we’d found a musical magician, a guy with a four octave vocal range able to transform his environment with improvisational genius.

Through the years he stretched his talent, his genres and his venues.

He won 10 Grammys and, with “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” reached the top of the pop charts. He collaborated with classical superstar Yo-Yo Ma and jazz hall-of-famer Chick Corea. He assembled an improv vocal troupe, Voicestra. And he conducted the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony and the Vienna Philharmonic.

His conducting debut, with the San Francisco Symphony, took place on his 40th birthday, 25 years ago.

I watched him conduct that orchestra (which is always splendid) and sing George Gershwin this month.

His hair and dreadlocks now are tinged with white. But his talents haven’t aged; they have, rather, expanded exponentially.

His concerts include frolicking galore. He likes to tell people he’s a graduate of MSU — “Making Stuff Up”

McFerrin bent his “Porgy and Bess” set, for instance, to include “I Got Rhythm,” a Gershwin tune that was never part of the jazz opera score; and an improv medley with “A Horse with No Name,” a countrified falsetto duet featuring him and his bassist, Jeff Carney, and a free-form “I Want to Thank You for Letting Me Be Myself Again,” none of which bore any resemblance to Gershwin.

He also playfully superimposed a British accent on “A Foggy Day.”

Periodically switching between registers to create polyphonic effects, McFerrin ultimately managed to saturate the set with “Porgy” tunes based on Gil Evans’ arrangements for Miles Davis: “Summertime,” “It Ain’t Necessarily So” and “A Woman Is a Sometime Thing.”

His superb backup trio, functioning sans symphony, showcased pianist-arranger Gil Goldstein, who’d been an Evans’ protégé, and drummer Louis Cato.

McFerrin, who fingered the mic as if playing the clarinet (his first childhood instrument), also injected a screechy comedic voice that reminded me of Flip Wilson’s character Geraldine.

But “Porgy and Bess” has a special place in the singer’s heart.

His father, a baritone, was first African-American man to sing New York City’s Metropolitan Opera. The senior McFerrin also sang the “Porgy” role in Otto Preminger’s 1958 film, for lip-synching actor Sidney Poitier.

As a child, Bobby McFerrin was inundated with the music of Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Marvin Gaye, Led Zeppelin and Sergio Mendes, then the Beatles and Miles Davis — all overlaid with Verdi and other classical strains.

Plus Gershwin.

So it figures that using his voice as a multi-faceted instrument on “Rhapsody in Blue” might feel natural.

Ditto his conducting “An American in Paris.”

McFerrin’s audience was diverse in ethnicity. And age.

Within seconds, I spied an old man hobbling on crutches and a young girl hobbling on what obviously were her first high heels.

The gender split seemed equal.

I know not what occurred in the ladies room, but several guys were singing his encore — “Our Love Is Here to Stay,” Gershwin’s final composition — at the urinals after the two-hour show.

McFerrin’s been quoted saying, “I try not to ‘perform’ onstage. I try to sing the way I sing in my kitchen.”

He pulls it off.

Onstage at Davies Hall, he appeared at ease. And because he was having fun, his attitude spread over the audience.

Which gave him a standing ovation.

Of course.

Upcoming pop performance at Davies, Grove Street (between Van Ness and Franklin), San Francisco, will include “A New Year’s Event with Seth MacFarlane” Dec. 31, and “Patti LuPone: Far Away Places”(without symphony) Feb. 23. Information: (415) 864-6400 or www.sfsymphony.org.

December is not National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Neither was November.

October was.

So that means we needn’t think about it for the next 10 or 11 months, right?

Certainly every American woman who’s had the disease — all 250,000 diagnosed annually, all 2 million living with it — can relax ‘cause it’ll automatically go into remission until October 2015.

No?

Maybe that’s why I’m angry.

Despite claims that October’s pink ribbon barrage will fill research coffers, I don’t think awareness should be limited to one month-long streak of sentience a year.

I live on a San Anselmo hill with a fabulous woman who contracted breast cancer 20 years ago.

Yes, she’s survived the disease, the treatments, the trauma and the aftermath. But her survival doesn’t for a minute mean she won’t shudder the next time she goes for a mammogram. Or every time she feels a twang in her right breast.

Or the other one.

Or, indeed, each time she gets any kind of ache anywhere.

I’m outraged because I know breast cancer is chronic and can recur anytime and therefore I must spread hope 365 days a year (while some folks revel in making supportive noises one-twelfth of a calendar year).

The truth is, breast cancer hasn’t quite cornered the U.S. market on October awareness.

That month also has been abducted by advocates of sudden infant death and Down’s syndromes, infertility, pizza and liver and popcorn, domestic violence, dental hygiene, LGBT history, blindness, cyber security, mental illness, Hispanics and Americans with German, Filipino, Italian and Polish backgrounds.

Not to mention dwarfism.

All of which seems to spread awareness a little thin, I contend.

I’m livid that pink ribbons — whose main goal initially was to fund research for a cure — have become a marketing tool for all sorts of merchandise that have little to do with breast cancer and a lot to do with profit.

Do I worry about potential repercussions of making my resentments public?

No, especially since I’ve just published a book with a VitalityPress imprint that not only chronicles the downs but the many, many ups of my being a caregiver for my wife.

I’m hoping it will appropriately distribute awareness.

“Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner’s breast cancer” is available at www.Amazon.com. The ebook sells for $9.99, the paperback for slightly less than the $18.18 that I initially established as a salute to the Hebrew word chai, which stands for both the numeral and the word “life.”

It’s a bargain if you want to learn what you might go through as caregiver or patient, what advances has occurred in breast cancer research or meds, or where to get help.

My book’s aimed at men.

You know about us — most believe we can fix anything. We can’t.

Most loathe being vulnerable. But we must be.

And most despise surrendering control. Yet sometimes we’re given no choice — like when our partners get a life-threatening disease.

For 19 years I’ve been running Marin Man to Man, a weekly support group where drop-in members often decode what physicians and other healers say (or don’t).

Along the way I’ve picked up a few to-do’s. I share them in “Rollercoaster.”

• The physical and mental health of a male caregiver is as urgent as the patient’s.

• It feels good to let go of anger at doctors for not having instant answers; at pharmaceutical companies for manufacturing life-extending but not necessarily life-saving drugs; at yourself for not having a magic wand.

• It’s crucial to remember each person is an individual, not a statistic (and that breast cancer couldn’t care less about race, creed, sexual orientation or politics, that it’s the most common cancer among Israelis and Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank).

• Downloading or renting comedies, taking walks, reading or listening to whatever brings you pleasure, encircling yourselves with folks who evoke positive feelings — all may boost your spirits (and your partner’s).

• Living one day at a time is good medicine, but best of all might be doing today what you’ve postponed forever.

Having absorbed those things, I can now sit here in my cozy Ross Valley home and pass along the verbal talisman my sainted Jewish grandmother blessed me with so often:

“Go in good health.”

Check out Woody Weingarten’s new blog at www.vitalitypress.com/ or contact him at voodee@sbcglobal.net.

[Woody’s [rating: 3.5]

Molly Ivins spent her entire life at war.

With her father. With Republicans. With breast cancer and with herself.

She lost them all.

Along the way, however, the acid-tongued writer made readers of almost 400 newspapers that carried her syndicated material laugh.

And reflect what lay underneath the jokes.

For four decades.

Ivins, in fact, caps my personal pantheon of columnists.

Alongside Maureen Dowd and Jimmy Breslin, other wordsmith-provocateurs armed with stylized, barbed wit.

So I was pre-programmed to watch a gravel-throated Kathleen Turner shine in the Berkeley Rep’s one-woman show, “Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins”

And she did.

In nearly every snippet of the 70-minute monologue that whizzes by.

It didn’t hurt that I’d twice before enjoyed her — in the title role of “Tallulah” in 2001 and as Martha in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” in 2007, both on San Francisco stages.

And that didn’t count films in which she truly sizzled, “Body Heat,” “Romancing the Stone” and “Peggy Sue Got Married.”

Turner captures Ivins’ outrage, as well as her battle to corral her emotions.

Ivins, a liberal Lone Star State lone wolf surrounded by a drove of politically conservative Texas sheep, had it tough from the git-go.

Her privileged mom — perhaps referencing Molly’s red hair, tallness and intelligence — labeled her “a Saint Bernard among Greyhounds.” Her right-wing father (“General Jim”) gave her no quarter, no love, but plenty of time at the dinner table to hone her skills at arguing.

But her brains and one-liners boosted her to success in a male-dominated industry.

I first considered not quoting her lines, but decided they bettered anything I could cook up. She admits loving Texas, for instance, but calls the sensation “a harmless perversion.”

While at The New York Times for six years, she declares, “I was miserable — at five times my previous salary.”

And she hopes “my legacy will be to be a pain in the ass to those in power.”

Turner proficiently captures the essence of Ivins, or at least the essence of her wisecracks. But the show, written by twin journalistically involved sisters, Margaret and Allison Engel, is skeletal at best.

Ivins’ siblings, the stuffed armored armadillo on her desk, her involvement with the ACLU and her compassion for African Americans, her cigarette smoking — all get bare-bones mentions, or none at all. Her troubles with the bottle are but fleetingly addressed (and dismissed as par for the newsroom course). Her love affairs (one man died in a motorcycle accident, another in Vietnam) also get short shrift.

And her daddy issues never get resolved (despite a struggle to write a tribute column).

The set is likewise skimpy.

It consists mainly of three castoff desks in the rear, her desk in the foreground (which allows Turner to pound on an antique typewriter), and an Associated Press machine that spits out old columns the character can cite.

Helpful is a large screen onto which black-and-white images are projected from the past: A newspaper library (“the morgue”). A rare female co-worker. A string of Texas politicos.

It’s as if I get to thumb through a fading family album.

The problem is, the photos of the real Ivins, who died in 2007, clash with Turner’s non-matching face.

The shots do depict many of the people she targeted, however, including George W. Bush, whom she knew in high school and subsequently dubbed “Shrub.”

She was not his biggest fan.

Indeed, she wrote, “Instead of 1,000 points of light, we got one dim bulb.”

Turner, who’d starred in the 2010 debut of “Red Hot Patriot,” has obviously gained poundage since her Tinseltown sexpot days. Partly due to drugs to fight years of rheumatoid arthritis, partly to the alcohol she’s consumed to quell pain.

Director David Esbjornson has done what he can to turn the monologue into a play — having her sit on the stage’s edge and its floor.

He even utilizes a silent male stooge as a copy boy, a device he might blue-pencil without loss.

But the brightest element won’t disappear: Turner’s mouth.

All in all, “Red Hot Patriot” is lightweight and fun — unless, I suppose, you’re a card-carrying member of the Tea Party.

And with Jeb Bush being touted as the leading GOP candidate for president in 2016, this lingers: “The next time I tell you someone named Bush should not be president, please pay attention.”

“Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins” plays at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre‘s Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St. (off Shattuck), Berkeley, through Jan. 4. Night performances, Tuesdays and Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Sundays, 7 p.m. Matinees, Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $14.50 to $113, subject to change, (510) 647-2949 or www.berkeleyrep.org.

Woody’s [rating: 4]

Director Mike Nichols’ death saddens me.

His eclectic work ranks high on my all-time favorites’ list, especially the Monty Python musical “Spamalot” and a pair of films, “The Graduate” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.”

Three disparate entertainments indeed.

At the pinnacle is “Virginia Woolf,” the Edward Albee masterwork that ripped the veneer off the institution of marriage.

No director ever pulled more out of Elizabeth Taylor or Richard Burton.

I distinctly remember, too, that Uta Hagen and Arthur Hill had blown me away in the original “Virginia Woolf” on Broadway in 1963.

All that history bounced around in my mind as I walked into the College of Marin’s Studio Theater to watch two cerebral but passionate one-act Albee plays, 1959’s “The Zoo Story” and 1961’s “The American Dream.”

Despite having seen thousands of theater pieces, somehow I’d never seen either.

To be sure, these were campus performances, yet both were equal to the professionalism of any Bay Area community theater — and, in fact, to some of the top nearby stages.

Funny. Intense.

Absurd.

W. Allen Taylor, whose directorial chops leave nothing to be desired here, notes in the program that, although neither play rings “a rational bell,” both clearly address Albee’s “dissatisfaction with [the American emphasis] on material and consumer-driven values.”

“The Zoo Story,” in which human beings eventually mirror a vicious dog and other animals, slowly builds on a foundation of isolation, loneliness, dysfunctionality and non-communication.

The two-man park bench encounter tragically ends in violence.

Supposedly penned in less than three weeks, “The Zoo Story,” which triggered Albee’s reputation as a pioneer of the Theatre of the Absurd movement, was the playwright’s first major drama. Its West Berlin debut was half a double bill with Samuel Beckett’s “Krapp’s Last Tape.”

Its power — and a stunning performance of Skylar Collins as Jerry, a “permanent transient” — actually made me shudder at its climax.

“The American Dream,” in sharp contrast, made me laugh aloud — numerous times.

Despite it dealing with real or imagined adoption, mutilation and murder.

With a spartan set and tasteful costuming appropriately limited to shades of ultra-neutral beige, the background blandness helps exaggerate the perma-smiles plastered onto the faces of flesh-and-blood wind-up dolls, Mommy and Daddy, and their haughty socialite visitor, Mrs. Barker.

Melanie Macri, Jon Demegillo and Isabel Heaviside, respectively, nail the satire with over-the-top looks that pinpoint their faux sincerity and politeness (even to the point of partially disrobing when requested).

And Keara Reardon goes them one better as an absent-minded yet crafty Grandma.

Albee, an 86-year-old, three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, has peppered the play with wondrously insightful one-liners.

Such as: “I can live off you because I married you.”

He has said “The American Dream” is “a condemnation of complacency, cruelty, and emasculation and vacuity, a stand against the fiction that everything [in the United States] …is peachy-keen.”

On the College of Marin stage, though, because of the supreme skills of playwright, director and actors, everything is peachy-keen.

“The American Dream” and “The Zoo Story” will run at the College of Marin’s Studio Theater, 835 College Ave. (corner of Sir Francis Drake and Laurel Avenue), Kentfield, through Dec. 7. Night performances, Fridays and Saturdays, 7:30 p.m.; matinees, Sundays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $10 to $20. Information and tickets: 585-9385 or www.marin.edu/performingarts/drama/contact.html

Contact Woody Weingarten at voodee@sbcglobal.net or check out his new blog at www.vitalitypress.com/

[Woody’s [rating: 4.5]

Back to basics.

That theme might best describe Cirque du Soleil’s “Kurios — Cabinet of Curiosities,” now ensconced in a tent behind A&T Park in San Francisco.

What’s different with this 30th anniversary show is that it strives less for innovation, more for familiar circus acts.

Umpteen acrobats. A jillion mid-air stunts.

Writer-director Michel Laprise has said he was aiming for “low-tech” astonishment — and a blending, of course, of fantasy and reality.

Mission accomplished.

Most of the dozen acts in the two-hour, time-traveling ‘Kurios” have touches of brilliance — despite most of the most being spectacularly unspectacular.

None of which fazed the opening night crowd one iota.

It applauded, cheered and stomped as loudly as audiences at any of the dozen Cirque shows I’ve seen.

Devices and costumes, as always, are amazingly inventive and somewhat mysterious, ranging from a huge metallic hand that converts into an underpinning for contortionists, to freakish nose cones that look like throwaways from an old show in which Madonna utilized them on a different part of her anatomy.

The music meanders, too — from the strains of an invented language, typical for Cirque performances, to traditional jazz, swing and electronic rock.

Tossed in for good measure are bluegrass, klezmer and classical passages.

My favorite interlude was the unique “Theater of Hands” segment in which a puppeteer lets his fingers do the dancing in comedic and poetic ways, projecting images unto a hefty floating balloon overhead.

In contrast, my seven-year-old granddaughter, my plus-one for the evening despite it being way beyond her bedtime, preferred “Invisible Circus,” where a clown leads an unseen troupe in numerous stunts while an equally undetectable lion roars from hither to thither.

The illusion’s sound effects are exquisitely timed.

Oldster and youngster both particularly enjoyed “ChaosSynchro,” staged bedlam with countless arms and legs flailing as two performers drum wildly on suitcases and whatever else’s handy, and its antithesis, “Continent of Doubles,” with a hunky, bare-chested male duo doing sensual, synchronized dancing on aerial straps.

The crowd, meanwhile, favored “Contortion,” with four females twisting their bodies into seemingly impossible positions.

It also reveled in “Upside Down World,” in which a guy negotiates table and chairs dangling from the tent-top while another hand-climbs perilously stacked chairs to meet him.

Burned into my memory, too, are weird curios that exit an oversized cabinet and come to life in a bizarrely mechanized world, and a trampoline that extends beyond than stage itself and lets gymnasts to bounce higher than I’ve ever seen.

My grandchild also was impressed by the three performing artists who greeted ticket-holders by prancing atop the big blue and yellow tent which that houses “Kurios,” which, not incidentally, features 19 nationalities in its cast and crew.

Speaking of other places, only 150 million devotees apparently have watched Cirque du Soleil shows in 300 cities on six continents.

I’m happy to be among them.

“Kurios — Cabinet of Curosities” plays in the big top behind AT&T Park in San Francisco through Jan. 18. Night performances, Tuesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m. Matinees, Wednesdays, 1 and 4:30 p.m.; Fridays and Saturdays, 4:30, and Sundays, 1:30 and 5. General tickets: $53 to $135. Information: (800) 450-1480 or www.cirquedusoleil.com/kurios.

Contact Woody Weingarten at voodee@sbcglobal.net or check out his new blog at www.vitalitypress.com/.

[Woody’s [rating: 2.5]

The legendary Lucille Ball, who played the title role in the fabled 1950s TV series “I Love Lucy” is long dead.

Since 1989.

Even longer gone are her series’ co-stars, real-life husband Desi Arnaz (since ‘86), Vivian Vance (‘79) and William Frawley (’66).

But all four are alive and well again, or at least their spirit and characters are.

A new musical comedy, “I Love Lucy — Live on Stage,” playfully resurrects Lucy Ricardo, Ricky Ricardo, Ethel Mertz and Fred Mertz.

And lets them fumble and stumble accordingly.

In primary colors, as opposed to my first encounter with them on a tiny black-and-white screen 60 years ago.

Opening night they made me grin, chortle and chuckle (while most of the crowd bellylaughed, howled and whooped).

It follows, then, that if you’re one of the multitudes who catch “Lucy” cable re-runs each year, you’ll enjoy the national touring company at the SHN Curran Theater in San Francisco.

And if you’re one of the dozen adults over 40 on the planet who’ve never seen an episode, now’s your chance to see two recreated.

Just prepare yourself for 100 minutes of vintage humor topped with white-bread jingles and choreography.

If you can’t handle nostalgia or ‘50s leitmotifs, you might want to catch something edgier.

Which means, I guess, almost anything else.

The show’s conceit turned the crowd and me into a Desilu soundstage audience that gets to witness Thea Brooks as Lucy (with huge eyes and an even bigger smile that intentionally never leaves her face) and Euriamis Losada as Ricky (whose crooning voice is better than Desi’s was).

As in the original series, Fred (Kevin Remington) and Ethel (Lori Hammel) survive being on the receiving end of Lucy’s convoluted plots and whacky antics.

Those of us seated in the theater could choose to hoot whenever the “Applause” light goes on.

I opted not to.

A company of 10, the most outstanding of which is Denise Moses, ably supports the leading actors. She amusingly exaggerates the role of Mrs. Birdie Mae Figg, an outspoken Oklahoma visitor (plus a quartet of other characters).

The cast breezes through a cartoonish version of “The Benefit,” in which the juvenile, talent-challenged redhead manipulates her tongue-tied Cuban hubby into letting her perform, and “Lucy Has Her Eyes Examined,” where eye drops blend blurred vision and slapstick.

Between those episodes are over-the-top renderings of ‘50s commercials by the Crystaltone Singers, a makeshift sextet that captures the simplicity, innocence and alleged merits of such products as Brylcreem, Alka Seltzer and Halo shampoo — and performs intentionally stilted movements ranging from a goofy maypole dance to rhythmic spasms that more resemble calisthenics than choreography.

Those performers also interject ditties from the long-ago that include hokey tidbits like “Glow Worm” and “Under the Bamboo Tree.”

A special plaque should go to bright costuming by Shon LeBlanc and Kelly Bailey (including an outrageous zoot-suit) and the mega-high energy of Andy Belling’s six-piece band.

“I Love Lucy — Live on Stage” began in 2000 as a 50th anniversary traveling exhibit that paused at state and county fairs, malls and casinos. It included memorabilia, still photos and video montages from the original TV programs.

In 2012, the series was voted “Best TV Show of All Time” in an ABC News/People magazine poll.

This fleshed-out pastiche, friskily staged and directed by Rick Sparks, had premiered in Los Angeles a few months before.

Curiously, neither Lucille Ball’s name nor those of any other original performers are uttered during the performance.

What is inserted, though, are references to wrestler Gorgeous George and other icons and elements of those quiet Eisenhower years. Check out this announcement: “Turn of all transistor radios and other noise-making devices, and that includes your children.”

Before and after the show, a young woman peddling Lucy souvenirs in the lobby had inadvertently obliterated that theatrical time-warp illusion.

She was tattooed from shoulder to wrist, not a female phenom of the fifties.

Then, as I was leaving, a wag suggested he’d have enjoyed the show more had it been done in drag.

I didn’t know what to say.

“‘I Love Lucy’ — Live on Stage” runs at the Curran Theatre, 445 Geary St., San Francisco, through Nov. 23. Evening performances Tuesdays through Thursdays, 7:30 p.m.; Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 6:30 p.m. Matinees, Saturdays, 2 p.m.; Sundays 1 p.m. Tickets: $40 to $135. Information: (888) 746-1799 or shnsf.com.

Contact Woody Weingarten at voodee@sbcglobal.net or check out his new blog at www.vitalitypress.com/.

[Woody’s [rating: 3]

“Party People” is a provocative, adrenaline-charged, flashy ride into history.

But it’s depressing.

The new Berkeley Rep musical, with a fictitious veneer glued atop historical events, is a double-edged examination of good and bad aspects of the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords.

It’s embedded in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Yet it displays a legacy that bumps against 21st century incidents like the Florida killing of unarmed African-American teenager Trayvon Martin by a neighborhood watch captain, and this year’s police slaying of a black teen in Ferguson, Missouri, which sparked rioting.

Or the fatal shooting of Oscar Grant in Oakland that led to a compassionate film reconstruction, “Fruitvale Station.”

The fact that discrimination against people of color and second-class citizenry haven’t disappeared is precisely what makes the play depressing.

Also, as a middle-class, suburban white man, I found the show guilt-inducing, discomforting and a little frightening.

Why?

Possibly because “Party People” — after examining compound facets of racial relations — ends up pushing for new revolution.

The disturbing play, replete with thunderous cries of “power to the people,” clocks back to a time when rank-and-file revolutionaries picked up garbage and provided free food and medical care in black and brown communities — at the same time fighting what they perceived as an oppressive federal government.

But it also shows betrayal, bewilderment and party in-fighting triggered by J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI’s director who’d created Cointelpro, a counter-intelligence program that used tactics of infiltration, surveillance, harassment and assassination.

Hoover had labeled the Panthers, founded in Oakland in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.”

“Party People” suggests the radicals were hardly that.

Rather, a group of complicated human beings with conventional flaws.

The chaotic times clang in my memory.

I recall having major difficulty accepting the assassination of Malcolm X. And, of course, those of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King.

I remember having difficulty, too, sorting through stacks of news reports in an attempt to excavate a capital “T” truth.

Unfortunately, my vision wasn’t cleared by watching “Party People,” which lamentably degenerates into a polemic despite showcasing brilliant acting-dancing-singing performances by an ensemble cast of 12, exciting live video projections that persistently flicker on 17 screens, and loud, heart-pulsing music that rebounds from hip-hop/rap to blues, from gospel to rock.

The exceedingly intense show, based on dozens of interviews, imagines members of the two groups at a modern-day performance-art opening ripe for generational and cultural gaps.

The fantasy was collectively penned by writer-performers William Ruiz (aka Ninja), who runs a gamut of emotions onstage as Jimmy, one of the two artists who shaped the reunion; Steven Sapp (formidable as Omar, a Panther suspected of being a traitor and forced to confess to things he hadn’t done); and Mildred Ruiz-Sapp, who portrays Helita and whose powerful singing voice is mesmerizing.

Liesl Tommy, associate director at Berkeley Rep, revamped the piece after she directed its world premiere in 2012 for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland.

She obviously can relate to what she’s spotlighting because she grew up in South Africa, where her parents were anti-apartheid activists.

Practically everyone, of course, is familiar with the Panthers, who were conceived as the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, aimed originally at monitoring police behavior and challenging police brutality.

A lot fewer West Coast folks will recollect the Chicago-based Young Lords, a Puerto Rican independence-promoting group inspired by the Panthers.

(“We were a social club but the police called us a street gang,” intones one character.)

No one, however, is likely to forget the clenched-fist symbols of “black power,” which are magnificently addressed — along with staccato militaristic and drug-generated shakes  — by choreographer Millicent Johnnie.

The vigorousness of what she’s invented is reflected, figuratively and literally, by the dancers’ sweat.

Humor is not absent.

Sometimes it stems from lighthearted wishful thinking (“The revolution can have its own website), sometimes with a modicum of irony (“This is America — learn to speak Spanish.”)

“Party People” takes pains to pay homage to dead and imprisoned social warriors.

It also tries unsuccessfully to sum up a narrative, in my judgment, can’t be condensed to bumper sticker size.

“The struggle for justice is always worth it.”

“There have to be consequences.”

“You have to ask yourself, ‘What are you willing to sacrifice?’”

“Party People” plays at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre‘s Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St. (off Shattuck), Berkeley, through Nov. 23. Night performances, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Sundays, 7 p.m. Matinees, Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $14.50 to $89, subject to change, (510) 647-2949 or www.berkeleyrep.org.