Woody Weingarten

[Woody’s [rating: 5]

I’m an itsy-bitsy old-fashioned: I’d rather use a Post-it than an iPhone.

So I ring my iMac with instant reminders, to-do lists and quick- or slow-witted brainstorms — as I’ve been doing forever (no, none of them date back 20 years).

The yellow stickies also sit on my desk in three piles (do-it-now, do-it-asap, and fergettaboudit!).

And I usually have a pad in my pants pocket, in case.

Though the mini-notes don’t define my universe or my San Anselmo homestead, they do let me prioritize them.

They also frequently offer pleasure or amusement.

Such as a verbal bon-bon from Nancy Fox, my wife, I reproduced: “I’m counting my blessings — and you’re a lot of them.”

From a source I can’t remember: “Hyperventilation is proof we’re still breathing.”

Sometimes the notes are edgy:

“Overheard geezer telling companion in San Anselmo Library, ‘My wife accuses me of being a pochemuchka, which is a Russian word for someone who asks too many questions.’”

“Friend bemoans steady San Francisco Opera diet of Italian offerings: ‘It’s pasta, pasta, pasta all the time,’ he complains.”

In contrast, some Post-its merely give me a chance to vent:

“Recent 5-4 right-wing rulings o f the U.S. Supreme Court don’t pass my personal stink test.”

“With tech support being what it is — outsourced and understaffed — I spend way too much time on hold with the Philippines or India.”

Sometimes I question the so-called evolution of our society: “When did ‘a learning experience’ get replaced with ‘a teaching moment’? And why?”

Or ponder what just happened: “Was standing in our backyard when gray squirrel mistook me for a tree and ran up my pants leg, then my arm. I brushed it off, then shook as, watching it scamper up a real trunk, I realized it might be rabid.”

Because I’m so fond of word play, I’ve enjoyed glancing at this one: “Overheard, from moped-walking young woman on the Parkade in Fairfax — ‘He makes so many mistakes his life is a reign of error.’”

Perfect for a musician? “Nobody knows the treble I’ve seen.”

Perfect for a difficult non-musician? “He’s not hard of hearing, he’s hard of listening.”

More than a handful of stickies are personal.

“Because I often write about my songwriter-wife, she’s threatened that she may start creating songs about my foibles.”

Or, in a moment of 117 percent syrupiness, “Nancy’s so charming and persuasive she could make The Devil don a halo.”

But then comes the moment I flaunt my ignorance:

“I didn’t even know vaulting existed as a sport until Hannah, my seven-year-old granddaughter who apparently can grow taller while I’m standing there talking to her, climbed onto a horse’s back and blew me away by doing the gymnastic exercises.”

After scrutinizing a gossip website a few weeks ago, I jotted down, “Just found tidbits about Mya, Ciara and Kesha, three one-name singers I’ve never heard — or heard of.”

Some Post-its are whimsical:

“How do you really feel about kohlrabi?”

“Hannah the other day stupefied her mother by saying, ‘Mommy, I’m stupefied.’”

And some are wholly unencumbered phrases or words I might someday use in a column (not unlike this one):

“A mental gulag.”

“Critter-sitter.”

“My inner cubmaster.”

“Puleeeze.”

“Donna Quixote.”

And then there are scads of items I don’t know quite know what to do with:

“’I-spy’ moment causes me to question what I saw — red-haired guy jogging barefoot, and bare everything else, on Fourth Street sidewalk toward downtown San Rafael.”

“Random notion: How’d I feel if I told an actor to ‘break a leg’ and he/she did?”

“War — does it have three letters or is it a four-letter word?”

“Kick-the-bucket-list: Things to postpone until after I’m dead.”

But, if forced at gunpoint to choose, the stickie I relate to best is a summation:

“I’m an addict. Dependencies, in order of import, include my wife and kids and grandkids, my iMac (incongruously combined with being a Luddite), Diet Pepsi Wild Cherry, High-Tech burritos, films, jazz, taking digital photos and inserting prints into old-fashioned albums, and binge-watching ‘Law & Order’ re-reruns.”

Oh, I forgot: And Post-its.

Contact Woody Weingarten at voodee@sbcglobal.net

 

[Woody’s [rating: 4.5]

Charlie slowly has been committing suicide by food.

Ounce by ounce.

He’s now somewhere between 550 and 600 pounds.

Playwright Samuel D. Hunter, 33, just last month was named a $625,000 MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” fellow — in part for creating “unlikely protagonists.”

Charlie, front and center in a new drama at the Marin Theatre Company, certainly fits that category.

He’s not a character I’ll soon forget.

Yet “The Whale” also deals with a mysteriously dead lover; a woman who’s become the protagonist’s friend, nurse and enabler; a missionary seeking to relocate his faith; and a daughter Charlie abandoned when realizing he was gay.

Plus wide-ranging targets: faith, death, parenting, teaching, obesity, truth.

Hunter, of course, has a resume jammed with plotlines that are upsetting, sad and profoundly stuffed with gravitas.

Including the enigmatic, dark and edgy comedy about faith and forgiveness, “A Bright New Boise,” which was produced at the Aurora Theatre in Berkeley last year.

“The Whale,” an intermission-less drama a few minutes short of two hours, is never easy to watch — even with the persistent injection of quirky humor that makes the audience laugh nervously.

But, like the many references to biblical Jonah and fictional “Moby Dick,” that’s no surprise.

The minute I walk into the theater I know what’s ahead could be bleak: The set by Michael Locher forewarns me.

A grungy, overstuffed couch rests on chipped cinder blocks. In front are king-sized food and drink containers. Piled high all around is clutter. A coat of fresh paint wouldn’t help the dingy walls.

Effectively depressing.

Yet nothing could prepare me for the powerful, spot-on performance of Nicholas Pelczar as a lumbering shut-in who’s perpetually apologizing and eating himself to death because he’s grieving for his boyfriend.

For me, it’s unquestionably the best acting job of the year.

Pelczar convinces me, in spite of his average-sized head in a gigantic fat suit, that Charlie’s insatiable appetite is authentic.

How?

By obsessively wolfing down mounds of Kentucky Fried Chicken and chunks of a Subway foot-long while slurping an oversized soda.

Wheezing with every other word.

While struggling to get up so he can shuffle to the bathroom clinging to his walker.

Pelczar makes me believe, too, in Charlie’s rigidity (“I don’t go to hospitals”) even as his blood pressure climbs to a sky-high 238 over 134 and he’s plagued with heart problems and endless other ailments.

He also persuades me to accept the character’s divided persona: an emotional devastation coupled with shameless optimism.

The supporting cast also dazzles.

A 17-year-old novice actor, Christina Oeschger, adroitly captures Charlie’s antisocial, estranged daughter, Ellie, who’s failing her classes and busily posting a “hate blog.”

She spits out her misery: “Just being around you is disgusting,” she tells the dad she hasn’t seen since she was two, a man who’s bribed her to visit.

And in a chorus of pain, Adam Magill aptly flounders as Elder Thomas as Charlie’s caregiver becomes almost too intense to watch because of Liz Sklar’s performance skills.

Michelle Maxson isn’t on stage much as Mary, Charlie’s ex, but when she is, her acting chops are quickly visible.

Jasson Minadakis, the company’s artistic director for nine years, is once again at the helm. His work on this touching play, which ran off-Broadway in 2012, shows how impressively he’s matured.

Try as he may, however, he can’t keep the audience — before it feels compassion — from wincing collectively at the seemingly grotesque main character.

On the other hand, the climax of “The Whale” is so potent the opening night crowd, totally stunned, didn’t applaud for several seconds.

A thunderous tumult then rocked the place.

“The Whale” plays at the Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley, through Oct. 26. Performances Tuesdays and Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Wednesdays, 7:30 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Matinees, Sundays, 1 or 2 p.m. Tickets: $10 to $58, subject to change. Information: (415) 388-5208 or marintheatre.org. 

Woody’s [rating: 4]

“Pippin,” fittingly touted as “Broadway’s high-flying musical,” is a seamless balance of acrobatic circus acts and theatrical extravaganza.

It blends impeccable singing and high-kick dancing with plentiful comedic interludes.

It spotlights droll magical illusions — and a cute dog trick guaranteed to keep your memory bank warm.

If only the show had a linear, cohesive storyline.

Still, the 2 hour, 20 minute fantasy-fairy tale at the SHN Golden Gate Theatre in San Francisco roughly based on historical realities won’t disappoint.

“Pippin 2.0,” my artificial designation because it’s so different from the 1972 original, is precisely what I expected from a touring company of the 2013 Tony winner for best musical revival:

Inventive. Glamorous. Spectacular.

What I couldn’t foresee, however, were the perfectly timed sound effects by percussionist Ken Bergman, who used a tiny 3×5 screen to monitor the stage action so he could sync everything without missing a proverbial beat.

He counted out for me during intermission the 31 instruments he utilized (including a small washboard).

“This is difficult,” he said. “Usually there’s a point where you can relax, but in this show, there’s always something coming up.”

True.

Bergman’s equipment is so expansive he requires a space of his own in the orchestra pit.

The other dozen-plus musicians (mostly locals) need something else: a net — in case plummeting detritus, runaway hoops, oversized balls or errant gymnasts fall onto them.

The curtain for “Pippin” gives the impression of a circus tent. When it first parts, an interlocutor/narrator (Sasha Allen, filling a role similar to Joel Gray’s emcee in “Cabaret”) quickly creates the illusion of a show within a show.

Her words, and a portion of others (including those of the mega-vibrant chorus), sometimes can’t be easily discerned. But that doesn’t matter.

The overall effect is so dazzling it etches a perma-smile on my face.

The plot’s basics?

A king — Charlemagne (played vigorously by John Rubinstein, who’d starred as the title character in the original) — wants his soldiers to unite Europe, at any cost.

His son, Prince Pippin (a charismatic Matthew James Thomas, who showed off his plentiful vocal, dance and gymnastic talents in the same role for the revival), is more concerned with uniting the wobbly parts of his personality.

Although he claims to seek the meaning of life, he’s really searching for the meaning of his life. He repeatedly gripes about being “empty and vacant” — even after a wild intro to sexuality.

Sabrina Harper (likewise from the revival cast) also turns in a top-notch performance, as Fastrada, Pippin’s manipulative stepmom.

But the showstopper is the sole property of Lucie Arnaz,.

The svelte 63-year-old daughter of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz plays a gyrating granny, Berthe, with enough raw energy to light half the spotlights by her oomph quotient alone.

The audience applauded and cheered. Loudly.

I heartily approved of the outburst.

I also appreciated the fact that director Diane Paulus and circus creator Gypsy Snider, who began her career in San Francisco as a child of the Pickle Family Circus, insisted the acrobats/tumblers/trapeze artists learn dancing and the dancers learn gymnastics.

Paulus, who also was brilliant at the helm of “The Gershwin’s Porgy & Bess” and “Hair,” won a Tony for the revival.

Snider, who’d led her Montreal-based 7 Fingers circus company (officially known as Les 7 doigts de la main) to global success, plucked several of her top performers from it for the “Pippin” revival.

So I wasn’t surprised to find I liked this production more than 1972’s — despite Bob Fosse’s direction and choreography.

This version features dances cobbled by Chet Walker, a Fosse protégé who follows his mentor’s style but adds novel turns of his own. His sexually oriented dance, highlighting a simulated ménage a trois, may not ignite the audience’s fire, but almost everything else he conceived does.

What didn’t work for me?

Scenes like one in which dancers do infantile comedic turns as pigs and chickens. Or an über-melodramatic sequence in which the narrator demands the set be shut down.

Moreover, tunes by Stephen Schwartz, famed for “Wicked” and other Big Apple triumphs, failed to make me leave the theater singing or humming..

Or even thinking about them.

Another minor fault is that the second act, which slows considerably, becomes disjointed as it moves toward a finale that tries to determine if Pippin will settle for something other than his dream of “magic shows and miracles.”

But even with these minor fault-lines, the musical is unique.

And fun.

“Pippin” runs at the SHN Golden Gate Theatre, 1 Taylor St. (at Market), San Francisco, through Oct. 19. Night performances Tuesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m.; matinees Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $45 to $210 (subject to change). Information: (888) 746-1799 or shnsf.com.

Woody’s [rating:2]

You can be sure when a critic emphasizes costumes and set early in a review, giant imperfections stifle the production.

That being said, let me state unequivocally that costumes designed by Michael A. Berg in “The Fox on the Fairway,” the Ross Valley Players’ latest production, are first rate.

They instantly differentiate the characters.

And the 19th-hole set — including frequently swinging doors that become a focal point of the farce — accomplishes precisely what designer Ken Rowland intends.

Acting by each member of the six-person cast is admirable as well.

And director Julianna Rees keeps the pace so frenetic that the 100-minute show whizzes by.

The night I went, the RVP audience showed appreciation with sporadic laughter and vigorous applause at the end.

Yet the script of “Fox” is riddled with holes (and I’m not talking about the cups golf balls fall into) and predicable bits of business.

With cliché heaped on cliché.

Credulity in farces is often strained, but here it’s stretched as thin as a piece of limp Swiss cheese left too long in the sun.

Lightweight playwright Ken Ludwig, whom many once believed would be an appropriate successor to Neil Simon as the theatrical world’s comedy king, has become a master of playing it safe.

Perhaps that’s why his work has been seen in 30 countries in more than 20 languages, often in community theaters similar to that of the RVP.

Yes, his original “Lend Me a Tenor” and his adaptation of “Twentieth Century” did provide amusement (both were staged by the RVP). And  “Leading Ladies” (the Novato Theatre just did it) was enjoyable to watch.

But “The Fox on the Fairway” relies on old saws such as endless malapropisms and precious sexual innuendos, a lost engagement ring, the threatened destruction of a valuable vase, continued links between ex-spouses, a melodramatic revelation about parentage, and, of course, the making of a 90-foot putt.

All that and I’m still not sure who or what the fox is.

I do know, however, that the convoluted plot twists, as most farces are wont to do, come fast and furiously.

The president of the Quail Valley Country Club, Henry Bingham (played by Louis Schilling with suitable bluster) learns the golfer he thought could deliver a grudge match victory over Dickie Bell (Javier Alarcon), who heads the rival Crouching Squirrel facility and wears one ugly sweater after another, has switched loyalties.

Bingham, who’s made a six-figure bet he can’t afford, recruits Justin (an appropriately wide-eyed and awkward Derek Jepsen), a newly hired assistant, and engineers his club membership.

The hotshot, unfortunately, breaks his arm after building up a nine-stroke lead, so…

And while a non-logical frenzy swirls about everyone, Jepsen as a befuddled almost-hero, Eileen Fisher as a lust-laden Pamela and Sumi Narendran as a testosterone-oozing Muriel turn in exceptional performances.

“Fox,” first staged in 2010, was written in reverence to the English farces that began in the 1880s and flourished in the ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s.

Maybe that’s why it sometimes feels as if its use-before date has passed.

“The Fox on the Fairway“ will run at The Barn, Marin Art & Garden Center, 30 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Ross, through Oct. 12. Night performances, Thursdays at 7:30, Fridays and Saturdays at 8; matinees, Sundays at 2. Tickets: $14-$29. Information: www.rossvalleyplayers.comor (415) 456-9555.

 Woody’s [rating:3.5]

“Fool Moon,” a Tony Award-winning show with Bill Irwin and David Shiner clowning up a comedic storm, made me blissfully happy.

So I impatiently waited for an encore  — for 16 years.

Finally, the baggy-pants pair is back, in a mostly non-verbal collaboration at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, “Old Hats.”

Though Irwin and Shiner are no longer chronologically young (they might be called middle-aged if they plan to live to 120), their bodies seem as rubbery, as lissome and acrobatic as ever.

And their inventiveness is nearly as agile.

They easily, and almost continuously, induce laughter with old-style chapeaus and new-style bits.

With a slew of newfangled technology tossed in.

This production, in conjunction with New York’s Signature Theatre, is quite different from their first go-‘round: Original musical interludes (heavy on country rock) by singer-songwriter-pianist Shaina Taub separate, and then overlap with, the twosome’s individual and dual segments.

Irwin and Shiner are, in effect, theatrical Renaissance Men.

They create hilarious comedy and prickly poignancy, they invent silent but sympathetic characters, they dance and play instruments and sing, they improvise and they inveigle audience members to play along fully with slapstick shtick.

I saw Pickle Family Circus co-founder Irwin not that long ago at the San Francisco Opera House, where he stole the show in a presentation of “Showboat.” I’d also thoroughly enjoyed his work in A.C.T.’s “Endgame” in 2012.

As for Shiner, a grad of Cirque du Soleil, he also starred as The Cat in the Hat in Broadway’s “Seussical: The Musical.”

Both are masters at the characters they assume — Irwin the good-natured schlub, Shiner the darker, more aggressive onstage persona.

Their 105-minute show is somewhat uneven, but its high points are extraordinary.

• Such as “Mr. Business,” spotlighting Irwin’s exquisitely timed playfulness with his own images on a tablet (my writing about it can’t compare to my joy watching it).

• Such as Shiner’s goading and mimicking four audience members in an extended bit about filming a mute old-fashioned Western, the side-splittingly funny “Cowboy Cinema.”

• Such as the opening number, “Old Hats,” which features projections that envelop the two spotlight-craving clowns as they flee an explosion in space.

• Such as “The Encounter,” with two guys waiting for a train initially badgering each other in highly amusing ways, then finding commonality via the sharing of pills.

• Such as an excursion into the sublime, similar to a lightning-fast riff by the late Robin Williams, when they break their silence barrier and convulsively swap lines from “Who’s on First” and “Over the Rainbow,” with a couple of quotes from Shakespeare added to the mix.

Alas, not everything is a 10.

Shiner’s “Hobo Puppet Waltz,” a solo set piece that finds a tramp getting more and more depressed as he jerks a predicable series of broken items from a trash bin can’t be saved by his imaginative creation of a woman companion from a white fabric.

And “The Debate,” a sketch about a political face-off, is filled with all-too-familiar lowbrow humor and standard pot shots.

But, overall, director Tina Landau ensured that “Old Hats” was an evening’s entertainment that kept me smiling.

And she proved that old clowns never die — they just slip into baggier pants.

“Old Hats” plays at the American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary St., San Francisco, through Oct. 12. Performances Wednesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Tuesdays, 7 or 8 p.m.; matinees, Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $20 to $120. Information: (415) 749-2228 or www.act-sf.org.

 

 Woody’s [rating:4.5]

Expect the unexpected.

And Meow Meow, leggy brunette bombshell and mock diva, will energetically provide it at the Berkeley Rep.

She’s fabulous — in all meanings of the word: mega-excellent; larger than life-sized; and a spectacular invention, in the fabled sense.

She’s half wildcat, half wild card.

With ersatz desperation, the combo singer-comedian-actress-dancer weaves her innate talents and cleverness into a triumphant 90-minute patchwork-quilt, musical-spoof that’s headed for Broadway.

She also parades as a wannabe revolutionary and philosopher (“Is there a God?”).

But her main shtick is to pull male theatergoers onstage and womanhandle them during “An Audience with Meow Meow,” a title with multiple interpretations.

Not for a second did I envy folks dragged from the front rows to paw her legs, grope her torso and act as comedic chairs and foils.

But those repeated gambits, albeit somewhat cheesy, are extremely funny.

Meow Meow — whose given name is the slightly less glamorous Melissa Madden Gray — along the way dices and slices diva and cabaret mythology, turning theatrical clichés sideways and upside down.

She revels in taking risks.

She satirizes superstars who thrive on flowers tossed at them, who physically toss themselves onto their fans, who praise to the rafters whatever venue they’re in.

With hints of, and homages to, Marlene Dietrich, Edith Piaf and Lady Gaga.

And I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn she’d secretly viewed re-runs of Carol Burnett and Lucille Ball’s televised physical antics.

Or been addicted to the black-and-white slapstick of Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton.

Meow Meow, who as a small girl wanted to be a ballerina but ended up getting a law degree instead, isn’t above making cabaret standards her own.

She particularly excels with Jacques Brel melodies and Harry Warren’s “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.”

But the show-stopper becomes an antique Bobby Darin novelty hit, “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini,” with which she lampoons genre after genre after genre.

Her being exceptionally limber, agile and gymnastic also allows a self-serving self-reflection: “Is art a woman killing herself?”

Meow Meow says she especially loves entertaining audiences who’ve grown tired of green witches, jukebox musicals and singing Mormons.

I’d say the entire opening night crowd — including me — fully appreciated her creative efforts in that regard.

A multi-lingual international star (she’s been a headliner in Berlin, Sydney and Shanghai), she was ably supported by two boy-toy dancers, a four-piece band and a white-mouse puppet.

And competently directed by Kneehigh Theatre’s Emma Rice, previously represented winningly at the Rep by “The Wild Bride” and “Tristan & Yseult.”

Meow Meow, whose fame skyrocketed while performing in Michel Legrand’s “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” in London in 2011, slyly tries to be mysterious and cloak her origins, purposefully referring both to Moscow and Berlin.

But she’s really an Aussie.

I couldn’t determine, however, if she adopted her stage name before or after meow meow, the street drug, gained popularity. Mephedrone, that potent designer amphetamine, has become a British rave favorite because it produces effects parallel to cocaine and ecstasy.

Meow Meow, the performer who’s also credited with writing her show, supplies a public wave of ecstasy as an alternative.

Consequently, I might hate myself in the morning for using what may be a cat-astrophic ending, but I really can’t stop myself (she instantly turned me into a fan, you see):

Meow Meow’s act may not reach purr-fection, but it does come as close as a whisker.

“An Audience with Meow Meow” plays at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre‘s Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St., Berkeley, through Oct. 19. Night performances Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Sundays, 7 p.m.; matinees, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $14.50 to $89, subject to change, (510) 647-2949 or www.berkeleyrep.org.

 

Fifty-six years ago I asked my first man-in-the-street question for a weekly newspaper.

I don’t recollect what it was, but it was shallow.

After all, I was a wet-behind-the-ears 21-year-old know-it-all who knew next to nothing. So it was appropriate that neither the query nor answers published in the Bronx Press-Review stirred any emotions.

The feature drew an unadulterated response:

Diddly-squat. Bupkis. Zilch.

Several weeks ago, hoping I’ve learned a speck or two in the interim, I decided to repeat the exercise. I expected, naturally, that my much deeper person-in-the-street probing would elicit vastly more profound responses from strolling passersby.

I was right.

Back in the day, I was forced to discard close to two-thirds of the replies I’d extracted.

They were unfathomable. Vacuous.

Or gibberish.

This time around, on picturesque San Anselmo Avenue rather than the hustle-bustle of a New York City street, I needed to trash only a few reactions (and then because they mirrored others).

My question prompted self-awareness, sensitivity and vulnerability: “Pretend I’m handing you a magic card. With it you get to do over any one thing in your life — not re-live, but do differently. What would your revision be?”

Most folks came up with their answers speedily.

But one guy went so far inside himself for such an elongated time I feared I’d have to summon either a shrink or a crew of paramedics.

Was there one predominant response?

Nope.

But the most prevalent had to do with education and academics.

The thought-provoking winner from that grouping, in my estimation, was what San Anselmo’s Katherine Willman, who categorized herself as “middle-aged,” conjured up.

Without hesitation, she said he’d have taken her “son out of public school and put him into a private school — because private schools promote individuality and independent thinking better.”

Spencer Hinsdale, 47, another San Anselmo resident, would have “chosen to study Spanish because I spent more years studying French than the number of French speakers I’ve met in this country. Meanwhile, everyone’s speaking Spanish.”

His choice made me ponder my own.

In retrospect, Latin and German didn’t quite turn out to be as valuable on a daily basis as I’d thought they might.

Erika Mott, 15, of Kentfield, wished she’d “have studied harder for my finals freshman year because it dropped down my Grade Point Average.”

Ronald Brozzo, 71, also of San Anselmo, said he’d “have finished college instead of going for only a year and a half. It would have helped me a lot later in life.”

And Josette Dvorak, a 48-year-old Mill Valley woman, mused that she’d “have spent a college semester abroad, at Oxford, so I could have experienced life in England.”

Others who were questioned provided a wide gamut:

• Amy Castagna, 58, Novato: “I would have gone home to Pennsylvania for my grandmother’s funeral. It’s my one big regrets in my life.”

• Alex Swanson, 32, Larkspur: “I’d have started investing in index funds, purchased my first rental property earlier, and learned to live on 50 percent of my income — so I could have been financially independent.”

• Yuko Fukami, 54, Berkeley: “I wouldn’t have become an architect but would have done something else — maybe become an artist.”

• Carlos Mock, 43, San Rafael: “I would have traveled more, all around the world, instead of being so responsible.”

• Mona Philpott, 63, San Anselmo: “I’d have taken my music lessons more seriously. My parents wanted me to, but I fought the practice.”

• Lynne Ashdown, 75, Novato: “I would have had one more child. I have two sons and I’d have liked to have a daughter.”

Several respondents declared they’d change nothing — folks like 61-year-old Cindy King of Mill Valley, visiting 57-year-old Yatra Sherwood from the United Kingdom and 35-year-old Mila Kronick of San Anselmo, who asserted “I’ve liked everything I’ve done.”

But my favorite answer came from Heather Richer, a 38-year-old San Anselmo resident — because of its levity. “I wish I’d have brought my Bed Bath & Beyond coupon with me to the store.”

When I posed the Big Question to myself, I thought that instead of becoming an editor and writer, I might have tried life as a cartoonist or actor.

The downside, of course, would be that this column, The Roving I, wouldn’t exist.

Hmmm…

Woody’s [rating:5]

When I watched him transform into George Gershwin in a one-man Berkeley Rep show in June 2013, I’d never heard of Hershey Felder.

Still, I reveled in his virtuosity as a pianist, actor and writer.

And wanted more.

When last fall I witnessed his puissant direction of Mona Golabek as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor in “The Pianist of Willesden Lane,” I basked in another of his talents.

I craved more.

And when I saw him morph into conductor-composer Leonard Bernstein in June of this year’s “Maestro” musical bio, I couldn’t wait for what came next.

Next is now.

“Monsieur Chopin,” also a solo show, is a bio and concert predictably more romantic than the others — musically, at least.

Some of Fryderyk Chopin’s melodies will be as instantly recognizable by classical music buffs as quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s tattoos would be to 49er fans.

But director Joel Zwick, who guided the Gershwin and Bernstein shows as well as the film “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” proficiently has the keyboardist-playwright intersperse less familiar strains.

“Hershey Felder as Monsieur Chopin,” which runs at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre through Aug. 10, transports audiences to the 1848 Paris salon of the “Polish poet of the piano.”

There he hunkers down with an enigmatic, volatile author, George Sand, and entertains painter Eugene Delacroix, a sometimes bff.

And there, I, and an audience that leapt to its collective feet at the two-hour opening night’s conclusion, could appreciate Felder’s piano dexterity and a characterization that overcomes a heavy accent and feels authentic.

His Steinway tones range from ultra-soft to thunderous.

He nimbly plays all or parts of more than a dozen pieces, including three Polonaises (emphasizing their “rise to glory”), a handful of preludes and nocturnes, “Mazurka in A-Flat Major, Opus 50 No. 2,” “Marche Funébre, Opus 35” and “Romanza, E-Minor Concerto.”

Credit goes to lighting designer Richard Norwood for creating instant mood changes, and scenic designer for fashioning a period setting with just an upholstered chair, end tables, mirror and trinket-laden mantle.

Norwood’s pièce de résistance, however, is a gilded frame that borders the stage and heightens what occurs within: historic legitimacy, histrionic biography.

Felder injects heaps of humor, from the play’s get-go to the end of a 30-minute coda with the house lights on (in which he quick-wittedly answers questions from the crowd in character, cleverly improvising occasional anachronistic jests about cell phones and other today-technology).

He’s especially laugh-inducing when Chopin, a child prodigy and adult genius who died prematurely at age 39, sneers at Franz Liszt’s piano playing and works (“scales and arpeggios and so much noise”).

But pathos is even more prevalent.

From the performer’s description of the death of Emilia, Chopin’s sister, to the composer’s frequent sidekick, melancholia (in modern terms, depression).

And from his obsessive hand-washing to his semi-romantic proclivities (focusing on an eight-year relationship with the pseudonymous Sand, a woman he first encounters dressed in man’s clothing and smoking a cigar).

The playwright’s major conceit is to address the audience as if it were a Chopin class, a theatrical device that’s slightly awkward.

But some of his teaching moments are pithy and poetic:

“You must dust the keys with your fingers as if you were dusting them with your breath.”

“Forget your lunatic family and play as if you are playing for God.”

Felder, who’s been a scholar-in-residence at Harvard’s department of music and is married to Kim Campbell, former Canadian prime minister, apparently cannibalized “Monsieur Chopin” from his own, original three-performer construct, “Romantique,” first performed 11 years ago and skewered by critics.

He obviously rewrote, fixed and honed it.

And salvaged it.

So much so that, nine years after its debut, he’s performed “Chopin” more than 800 times to more than 250,000 theatergoers.

So much so that now it’s become a masterwork, a near-perfect integration of recital and biography.

“Hershey Felder as Monsieur Chopin” plays at the Berkeley Rep’s Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley, through Aug. 10 and then returns for encore performances Sept. 16-21. Night shows, 8 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays through Saturdays, 7 p.m. Wednesdays and Sundays; matinees, 2 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays. Tickets: $14.50 to $87, subject to change, (510) 647-2949 or www.berkeleyrep.org.

You can contact Woody Weingarten at voodee@sbcglobal.net.

Woody’s [rating: 2.5]

The more things change, the more they stay the same — except they droop.

That’s the greeting card text I wrote 30 years ago.

My gag line again came to mind as I watched the Ross Valley Players’ new production of Wendy Wasserstein’s “Old Money.”

The play’s all about social climbing, generational gaps, moolah, art and real estate — with dual roles for each of the eight actors. But it feels stodgy and stilted despite the playwright’s renowned skill with barbed dialogue.

Her construct may be too clever, her play too New York.

Wasserstein invites us into a lavish mansion on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

There we witness two dinner parties.

Jeffrey Bernstein, an arbitrage kingpin played as a man of equanimity by Geoffrey Colton, hosts the first — at the beginning of the 21st century.

The second, nearly 100 years earlier, spotlights Johnny DeBernard as a boisterous robber baron, Tobias Pfeiffer.

Colton doubles as even-tempered retail tycoon Arnold Strauss, and DeBernard also personifies Sid Nercessian, a Tinseltown director who repugnantly spews an f-bomb every fourth word.

All the actors do well, no mean feat considering they’re burdened with a plot unnecessarily complicated and convoluted.

Director Kim Bromley admittedly struggled with the plotline complexities and mélange of Wasserstein characters (“I had to read it three times to grasp the scope of it,” she writes in the program).

She suggested opening night reviewers feel what the characters feel.

I couldn’t.

Perhaps because Wasserstein — known for her intelligent, independent but self-doubting female characters trapped by male power — thwarted me by pricking too many heavy subjects.

Relentlessly, she tackles youthful rebellion and self-destruction, aging and death, legacy and immortality, Jewishness and assimilation, platonic relationships and sexuality, snobbery and acceptance.

Which almost bury all her valiant attempts at humor.

The script of the two-hour, two-act comedy of manners, which premiered off-Broadway in 2001, immediately tells theatergoers what they’re watching — an examination of how new money becomes old money (and what impact that evolution has on its wealthy stakeholders).

The problem is that the theme gets underscored over and over.

Mind-numbingly.

A single summation, such as the scene in which Bernstein and Pfeiffer engage in a verbal mine’s-bigger-than-yours debate about influence, would have sufficed.

Striking, however, are spot-on costumes by Michael A. Berg that range from elegant to flamboyant and instantly allow audiences to know which characterization an actor in inhabiting, and a ideal set by Michael Walraven, replete with large paintings and a massive always-needing-polish wooden railing.

Wasserstein, who won a Pulitzer and a best play Tony in 1989 for “The Heidi Chronicles,” isn’t above contrasting schmaltziness and whimsy. Check out, for instance, her having one actor stylishly dance the Gavotte but later prance in a lobster costume.

The playwright’s signature one-liners are numerous:

• “If the rich aren’t happy, who the hell will be?”

• “I like the opera. Big girls with elephants. Isn’t that enough?”

• “I’m having trouble ignoring you tonight.”

Top-notch performances are turned in by Gillian Eichenberger as both silver-voiced servant and self-destructive daughter; Robyn Wiley, as outdated as the figure sculpted by her character, Auntie Mame-ish Saulina Webb; Karen Leland as strident publicist Flinty McGee; and Jesse Lumb as sons of both Bernstein and Pfeiffer (and part-time narrator).

Add to the mix Wood Lockhart, who may hold the record for most RVP performances and is wistful as Tobias Vivian Pfeiffer III, and Trungta Kositchaimmongkol, snarky as underwear designer Penny Nercessian.

“Old Money” has many amusing and edifying moments yet, in the final analysis, couldn’t excite me.

And it somehow felt both long and long in the tooth (though not quite as antiquated as Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s “The Rivals,” the 1777 play it references) — despite anachronistic references to Jennifer Lawrence and Silicon Valley.

If asked to stick my two cents in, I’d have to say earlier works by Wasserstein — who died of lymphoma at age 55 in 2005 — were much easier to bank on for laughs or insights.

The RVP recently produced some incredibly good entertainments.

This wasn’t their best choice.

“Old Money” will run at The Barn, Marin Art & Garden Center, 30 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Ross, through Aug. 17. Night performances, Thursdays at 7:30, Fridays and Saturdays at 8; matinees, Sundays at 2. Tickets: $13-$26. Information: www.rossvalleyplayers.com or (415) 456-9555.

You can contact Woody Weingarten at voodee@sbcglobal.net.