Woody Weingarten

Woody’s [rating:3.5]

Genius.

It’s defined as a person with exceptional creativity, originality or intellectual ability, especially in the arts or sciences.

Triple-threat American conductor-composer-pianist Leonard Bernstein certainly met that standard.

Over and over.

But Hershey Felder, a Canadian triple-threat himself (pianist, actor, director), depicts Bernstein in a new one-man show at the Berkeley Rep as a self-branded failure because he couldn’t compose music that might equal Beethoven’s.

Bernstein was in his own mind merely someone who’d be remembered for trivial melodies from Broadway’s “West Side Story.”

Felder approximates him, but doesn’t impersonate his finishing school speech patterns.

That’s good, because many in the audience — I, for one — recall boyish Lenny images from TV’s “Omnibus” and his Young People’s Concerts.

Felder instead fills the stage throughout his inelegantly titled mini-bio, “Hershey Felder as Leonard Bernstein in Maestro,” with larger-than-life passion.

Plus equal doses of sadness and wit.

He smoothly ping-pongs between triumph and tragedy while honing the essences of multiple characters — including Bernstein’s ultra-Jewish parents and his Chilean actress wife (Felicia Cohn Montealegre, whom the bisexual Harvard grad deserted for a man, though he returned to comfort her when she was dying).

He shines while posing as American composer Aaron Copland, Bernstein friend and benefactor, and a string of European conductors who influenced him.

Felder also injects ooh-aah nuggets, like this recounting of a mentor’s instructions: “It was like watching God sculpt the Garden of Eden.”

The play’s a tour de force, for sure, likely to wring some wetness from your tear ducts — as it did from mine.

I saw Bernstein only once, with New York’s philharmonic, and Felder’s no Bernstein.

But he is a virtuoso pianist and a moving entertainer.

Poignantly lovely is his rendition of Bernstein’s “Somewhere,” which contrasts vividly with slivers of “Emperor Concerto” and other percussive Beethoven works.

Felder also mines brilliance from Copland’s “Piano Variations” and Bernstein compositions ranging from his derivative “Piano Sonata” to the raucous “I Hate Music” to the ethnically inspired “Symphony No. 1: Jeremiah.”

Stunning is a projected image of an operatic excerpt from Wagner’s “Liebestod” synchronized with Felder’s playing of the piece.

Accented by Bernstein’s words defending his acceptance of the German’s anti-Semitism.

But the show isn’t seamless.

The 100-minute, mostly chronological musical drama occasionally becomes a preachy master class not unlike one of Bernstein’s own teaching moments.

Too detailed. Too intricate. Definitely too pedantic.

It also has holes.

It gives short shrift, for instance, to Bernstein’s longtime leftist political activism (though it does capsulize the “radical chic” flap about his civil liberties fundraiser for Black Panther Party members).

Absent completely are Bernstein’s cigarettes (almost as omnipresent as his baton in real life), which led to his demise in 1990 at age 72.

After having battled emphysema for two decades.

No reference, either, to Bernstein founding the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan, with Michael Tilson Thomas — a training school for musicians modeled on Tanglewood and still going strong (it’ll hold a 25th anniversary celebration from mid-July to mid-August).

But Felder, who previously tackled Chopin, Liszt and Beethoven in solo shows, exquisitely captures Bernstein’s arrogance.

And his insecurities.

And his scornful dismissal of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.”

Judicious editing might help Felder jump-start the show, though.

It’s advantageous he doesn’t shy from the conductor’s gay meanderings or his lifelong immersion in Jewishness, but the over-emphasis on the latter heritage at the get-go is problematic — especially the massive infusion of Yiddish and Hebrew.

That said, it should also be noted that director Joel Zwick, helmsman of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” who’s collaborated on Felder’s earlier shows, skillfully guides the single-act play toward the standing ovation it warrants.

In rendering Bernstein, Felder, who’s married to an ex-Canadian prime minister 21 years his senior, Kim Campbell, isn’t as entertaining as he’d been in “George Gershwin Alone.”

Nor is his performance as riveting as the one by Mona Golabek in “The Pianist of Willesden Lane” that he directed.

But his hard work researching, writing and acting pays big dividends on Berkeley Rep’s Thrust Stage.

Thomas Edison defined genius as “one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.”

When I use that yardstick, Felder’s evidently a genius.

“Hershey Felder as Leonard Bernstein in Maestro” plays at the Berkeley Rep, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley, through June 22.  Tickets: $14.50 to $87, subject to change, (510) 647-2949 or www.berkeleyrep.org.

Woody’s [rating:5] 

It felt like a heavyweight champ had whacked me in the solar plexus.

Without gloves.

As intended by playwright Jon Robin Baitz, the startling, climactic secret revealed in “Other Desert Cities” inverted my view of two main characters — plus another who never appears onstage.

But there’s more than one secret in motion at any given time in this complex Ross Valley Players’ production.

Raw nerves, raw feelings and hypocrites are exposed.

Christmas Eve, 2004.

Brooke (portrayed nimbly, from heaving anger to poignant stunned silence, by Jennifer Gregory) comes home shortly before publication of her tell-all memoir that skewers her parents.

Those elders (Polly, depicted in chameleon-like, regal and repugnant glory by Ellen Brooks, and Lyman, ex-movie star and ex-ambassador underplayed expertly by Dick Martin) are ex-members of the Reagan inner circle who live in yesteryear, hiding out in their staid Palm Springs home in the desert.

Also in attendance during an uncomfortable reunion are Polly’s liberal sister, Silda Grauman (with Kristine Ann Lowry excelling at being manic, bitchy and loving as a woman just out of alcohol rehab who harbors a giant secret of her own), and Brooke’s other brother, Trip (Peter Warden being exquisitely inelegant as the producer of a lowbrow Maury Povich-like reality TV show).

All five are believable.

Never theatrical cardboard figures, always fleshed out beings that could be part of your own family.

Or down-the-street neighbors.

Up close and personal, director Phoebe Moyer is an intelligent, articulate, warm human being. And she’s managed to apply all those traits to her stage-work, ensuring that the five-member cast forcefully drives the 140-minute drama while balancing laugh-aloud comedy with family torment.

Her playbill notes indicate she wanted to showcase Baitz’s desire to “find the humor and the humanity within the conflict and pain.”

She succeeded.

Despite having to rein in the prodigal daughter character who, post-hospitalization, is still fighting depression over a broken marriage and internal anguish about Henry, her suicidal anti-war brother/best friend.

Moyer’s proficient direction let me buy Brooke drawing a line in the desert sand and daring the others to cross it.

And it let Brooke, who consistently refers to her estranged parents by their first names rather than mom or dad, ignore the fact that she’s triggering a thermonuclear time bomb by airing family secrets that could blow the holiday off the Wyeth calendar and destroy her nuclear family.

The playwright, meanwhile, allows Polly to counter-attack Brooke, accusing her of having “lots of secrets in her dollhouse.”

He also sneaks in thematic tip-offs with lines such as, “Most people go through their lives pretending.”

Baitz, creator of television’s “Brothers & Sisters,” also introduces the idea that acting and reality “are hardly mutually exclusive in this family.”

Considering all the purposeful camouflage in “Other Desert Cities,” I presumed the title had multiple interpretations, not the least of which was a reference to locales and manifold deaths and the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

But it concretely refers to a sign on eastbound Interstate 10 that indicates the freeway is heading toward “other Desert Cities” — the rest of the Coachella Valley.

In the play, which debuted off-Broadway and then became a Pulitzer Prize-nominated show on the Great White Way in 2011, the environment almost becomes a character. The appropriately genteel set by Ronald Krempetz, in fact, is lighted as brightly as any I’ve ever seen — a not-so-subtle hint of the desert sun?

And everything’s precisely in place, including lined up photos of Barry Goldwater, Frank Sinatra and, of course, the Wyeth buddies, Nancy and Ronnie Reagan.

Only the costumes by Michael A. Berg expose the differences in the people we’re looking at: the elders don fashionable dress-up garb, their adult kids sport insouciant dress-downs.

Although some skeptics might find the play’s O’Henry-like denouement inconsistent with its build-up, I see it as totally in keeping with what’s gone before.

As for that blow to my solar plexus, I forgot to mention “Other Desert Cities” also left indelible marks on my heart and brain.

“Other Desert Cities” will run at The Barn, Marin Art & Garden Center, 30 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Ross, through June 15. Night performances, Thursdays at 7:30, Fridays and Saturdays at 8; matinees, Sundays at 2. Tickets: $13-$26. Informtion: www.rossvalleyplayers.com or (415) 456-9555.

 

OK, I’ll cop to it — I’ve been living in a constricted mind-tunnel of my own making.

Not that strange for a “retiree,” of course.

Many men just beyond my state of geezerhood have no time for anything fresh because they’re too busy shuffling off to a lab where some kid who can’t shave yet takes blood, or too busy sipping tea laced with aspartame with old ladies thrilled that somebody with different plumbing’s still breathing and will keep ‘em company, or too busy hoping they can dribble to an easy layup without inducing a stroke.

I have a radically different agenda, naturally, and it typically involves situating my butt in front of a computer.

Meeting deadline after deadline after deadline.

So I not frequently get overloaded writing reviews, concocting columns and desperately seeking not Susan or Madonna or Miley Cyrus but someone who’ll publish my book manuscript.

Truth is, when it comes to the entertainment world, I don’t recognize the names of three of every thousand performers anymore.

Until a week ago, to be honest, I’d never heard of pianist Kirill Gerstein.

But then I was urged to promote the pianist’s 8 p.m. June 5 concert with the San Francisco Symphony at the Green Music Center on the Sonoma State University campus — in advance.

So I am.

Why? Because I listened to some of his stuff on YouTube, and it’s incredibly good (more about that later).

The Sonoma concert will take place in the state-of-the-art Weill Hall, which, according to the symphony’s website, “boasts outstanding acoustics, artistic wood interiors, and stunning wine country views.”

Sounds good to me.

The 35-year-old Russian-born Gerstein will be the soloist for Beethoven’s “Piano Concerto No. 2,” with frequent San Francisco guest conductor Charles Dutoit, who’s the main man for the London Royal Philharmonic, leading the orchestra.

Shostakovich’s “Symphony No. 10,” composed after Stalin’s death in 1953, fills out the bill.

For those who prefer a more urban setting, three duplicative concerts will take place at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco at 8 p.m. June 4, 6 and 7.

Who’s this guy I’m just beginning to know?

Gerstein at 14 became the youngest student at Boston’s Berkelee College of Music, where he was a jazz prodigy. His classical interpretations, indeed, display moments when that energetic training shines through.

His newest album, “Imaginary Pictures: Mussorgsky, Schumann,” I’m told, will be released around the time of the concerts.

As for the YouTube excerpts, though he’s mostly in the background on “Summertime” as jazz stalwart Storm Large makes the tune her own, you certainly know Gerstein’s there.

And he’s utterly brilliant on “Ophelia’s Last Dance,” an introspective mash-up of classical and jazz, a nine-minute exercise composed specifically for him that blends tomorrow with yesterday and today — and adds a touch or two of humor.

Other YouTube pieces that gave me a glimpse into his excellence include the first movement of Rachmaninoff’s “3rd Piano Concert” and the original 1924 band version of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.”

Winners all.

Bob Dylan knew it decades before I did: The times they are a-changin’. And that’s a good thing.

Tickets to the June 4-7 San Francisco Symphony concerts with Kirill Gerstein run from $15 to $156. Information: and (866) 955-6040 and gmc.sonoma.edu, or www.sfsymphony.org and (415) 864-6000.

 Woody’s [rating:3.5]

To be inventive or not to be inventive, that is the question.

When it’s bandleader-bassist Marcus Shelby doing the asking (as well as the innovating), the answer is a resounding “yes.”

In a Cal Performances concert at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley celebrating Duke Ellington’s 115th birthday, Shelby flaunted his calculated risk of failing — by juxtaposing swinging big-band jazz and Shakespeare.

He didn’t fail.

Instead, he and his 15-member, mostly-brass ensemble evoked toe tapping, applause, whistling, cheers and foot stomping with each section of the obscure but stimulating “Such Sweet Thunder.”

The suite had been popularized by the Duke on vinyl but written by his longtime collaborator, Billy Strayhorn.

Shelby’s sidemen brought out each segment’s uniqueness, helping me see how Strayhorn was in effect trying to cover the entire jazz landscape in a single symphonic work.

And each segment’s pithiness left me wanting more.

Because the music was based on the plays and sonnets of the Bard, it was a big deal but not a big surprise that Shelby integrated soliloquys by five actors from Cal Shakes, more formally known as the California Shakespeare Theater.

While all the spoken-word interludes were top-notch, I found some connections to the music tangential at best and, thereby, hard to distinguish — even given information that “the essence” of Shakespeare’s material was being emphasized rather than any one scene or character.

I did find a few links clear-cut, though.

A Juliet balcony scene obviously bonded with a ballad, “The Star-Crossed Lovers,” and a bluesy waltz-time “Lady Mac” danced a direct path to “Lady Macbeth.”

“Sonnet to Hank Cinq” was, of course, a hip reference to Henry V, and “Sonnet for Sister Kate” might have had a little to do with Willie the Shakes’ “Taming of the Shrew.”

In my mind’s eye, by evening’s end I’d labeled the experiment fascinating and a success.

Even though I’d have liked the music alone.

The pre-intermission set of the concert, which also marked the 15th year of the Shelby group and the 40th anniversary of Ellington’s death, consisted of more familiar melodies.

It was dubbed “The Legacy of Duke Ellington: 50 Years of Swing!”

And swing it did.

For me, the highlight was an unbilled rendition of “Take the ‘A’ Train,” but I was also delighted by “Perdido,” the show’s bouncy opener; “C Jam Blues,” its rousing closer; and “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” and “Hit Me With a Hot Note” in the middle.

The San Francisco-based Shelby, who took only one solo, happily spotlighted other musicians from his troupe as well as his guest stars.

Into the latter category fell scat vocalist Faye Carol (the high-strutting, scat-singing “Queen Bee” who’s worked with Shelby for 20 years), violinist Matthew Szemela (who occasionally kept time with both feet at the same time), sax vet Jules Broussard (whom the bandleader labeled one of his mentors) and trumpeter Joel Behrman.

Perfection was elusive, however.

I couldn’t appreciate a trumpet solo despite Shelby’s explanation that some of its notes were un-trumpet-like.

And I cringed when Carol grew raspy several times on “In My Solitude.”

Duke Ellington composed almost 1,000 pieces of music. The concert only skimmed the proverbial surface. But it did provide a glimpse into the man’s genius — through an exciting evening of standard and not-at-all-standard jazz.

In case you missed the Shelby orchestra, Cal Performances offers other excellent jazz choices. Try, for example, vocalist Mavis Staples on Oct. 30, Irvin Mayfield and the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra on Nov. 16, the Peter Nero Trio (playing Gershwin compositions) on Feb. 8, Cassandra Wilson (singing Billie Holiday tunes), or pianists Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock on March 19. Information: www.calperfs.berkeley.edu/buy/ or : (510) 642-9988.

Woody’s [rating:4]

Racism, as depicted in the apartheid-fouled Johannesburg of “The Suit,” is downright ugly.

And brutal.

Palpably tragic.

Worst of all, it’s reflective of today’s racism in an America that pretends it’s integrated when its all-too solid walls of bigotry remain intact.

It’s a fascinating coincidence that “The Suit” opened at San Francisco’s A.C.T. Theatre only one day after L.A. Clippers’ owner Donald Sterling was fined $2.5 million and barred for life from the National Basketball Association for overtly anti-African American statements.

Though peppered with multiple instances of levity, “The Suit” is a solemn theatrical time bomb intentionally ignited by Peter Brook, an 89-year-old British director.

Brook clearly stages the kind of in-your-face prejudice I’ve always found abrasive and offensive.

Adapted from a Can Themba short story, the 75-minute drama thrusts into the foreground a husband who, after discovering his wife in bed with a lover, insists she take with her wherever she goes the suit her fleeing sex partner left behind.

It becomes, essentially, a scarlet letter, the traditional sign of sin.

Over all, the play exudes a surreal, fable-like quality, abetted by a Dali-esque set consisting of unadorned (yet colorful) wooden chairs and bare clothing racks.

But the extraordinary three-actor cast seamlessly integrates poignancy, music and pantomime.

Nonhlanhla Kheswa, Johannesburg native and veteran of Broadway’s “The Lion King,” is outstanding as the adulterous Matilda. Her body language and elegiac voice unerringly convey how she wears her punishment.

Ugandan-born Ivanno Jeremiah adeptly plays her humiliated, vengeful spouse, Philomen, middle-class wage-slave who’s suffered daily abuse from a system that downgraded a whole black population to second-class status.

New Jersey-born Jordan Barbour skillfully fills in the gaps as he jumps from role to role.

Musical interludes range from traditional African melodies to timeless American jazz pieces such as “Feelin’ Good,” the Nina Simone standard, and the painful Billie Holiday classic about lynching, “Strange Fruit.”

To prevent my review from being disingenuous, I must mention that the touring production from Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord is imperfect.

Even heavy-handed sometimes.

As when the fourth wall is broken by actors who provide the audience with invisible joints, or when folks are invited to represent white participants onstage at a shebeen, a speakeasy-like party.

Additionally, Brook, whose “The Empty Space” has been a theatrical bible for generations, has paced the play so deliberately I twice felt compelled to check my watch.

None of that, however, undercuts the emotional impact of the show.

Besides, “The Suit” contains numerous magic moments.

When, for instance, Matilda puts one arm into the empty outfit and, puppet-like, achingly caresses herself as if it were still being worn by her absent lover. When she sings, in Swahili, an upbeat song that’s crushed by Philomen with only a few words. When she foreshadows crucial action by dedicating a melancholy tune to “each and everyone who cannot get what they want in life.”

Or when the actors pantomime being on a rolling commuter train.

When trumpeter Mark Vavuma wrings every possible emotion from his muted horn. Or when Mark Christine underscores the play’s tragic ménage à trois via a soulful Bach “St. Matthew Passion” on a solo compact synthesizer.

“The Suit” is set in the 1950s in Sophiatown, an overcrowded black appendage of Johannesburg that actually was bulldozed.

With more than 65,000 blacks forcibly removed.

I, frankly, was grateful the stream of real 1950s violence was referenced but not shown onstage. It was surely enough just to envision each of a black man’s fingers being bloodied, and his being shot 34 times.

The first-impression simplicity of “The Suit” is purposefully deceptive, making its vivid ending even more powerful, more numbing.

The opening night audience, in fact, seemed so stunned it took it a few seconds to rise for a well-earned standing ovation — and then it did so almost in slow motion.

“The Suit” plays at the American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary St., San Francisco, through May 18. 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]

Distance can be crucial — ordinarily.

Ergo, as a critic, I try to remain at least one or two steps removed from whatever I’m evaluating.

But I couldn’t help but take “Tribes” — the Berkeley Rep’s comic drama about deafness, identity and love, the need to belong and the need to be heard — personally.

My wife, Nancy Fox, is responsible.

She’s been experiencing a deteriorating hearing loss for eight years, so the play had particular meaning — and discomfort — for her (and, by osmosis, for me).

Emotionally, she related most to Sylvia (sensitively depicted by Nell Geisslinger), a hearing person gradually going deaf.

“She feels different from everyone else, including her boyfriend who’s been deaf from birth,” Nancy observed, “and is distressingly aware of her increasing difficulty. Watching her is painful.”

During intermission, while getting the better fitting headphones instead of the ear buds Berkeley Rep personnel originally had supplied, my wife added, “I’m constantly aware of how my own hearing loss is progressing, having observed it in my mother and grandmother.”

Nancy, a professional pianist, also appreciated Sylvia’s musical predicament.

“When Sylvia was at the keyboard, it underscored the fact that the music she once heard and played was disappearing and eventually would not exist anymore. I can’t imagine — and don’t want to think about — what that would be like for me.”

Nancy was particular touched, too, by the bellowing yet silent outcry of Billy (James Caverly), Sylvia’s boyfriend, when he signs that he’s exhausted from having to say, “‘What?’ ‘What?’ ‘What?’ all the time.”

But she, and I, actually reveled in the aggregate professionalism of the ensemble cast (despite an accent or two slipping from time to time).

In addition to Geisslinger and Caverly, the cast includes the artistry of Paul Whitworth as the burly father, Christopher, self-styled nonconformist who clearly adores that his kids have returned to his home and influence; Dan Clegg as Daniel, Billy’s brother who’s tormented by voices and is terrified Sylvia will whisk Billy away from him; Anita Carey as the mother, Beth, whose nascent novel morphed from being about a therapist to being about a family coming unglued; and Elizabeth Morton as Ruth, the sister who simultaneously craves a boyfriend and a singing career.

British playwright Nina Raine provides one original scene after another, never succumbing to the sentimentality the subject matter might easily prompt.

She’s armed with a full quiver of crisp, deep yet hilarious dialogue — and she uses every arrow in it. She alternates noise-athons and silences as dexterously if she were crafting a symphonic masterwork replete with high highs and low lows.

She focuses on Billy and Sylvia’s relationship, sculpted in bas-relief against a backdrop of an often boisterous, sometimes garrulous, always opinionated family that, as one character claims, is a “hermetically sealed community” — with no one allowed in if they aren’t familiar with Czech composer Antonin Dvořák.

The main tribes of the title are not in dispute: Clearly they’re the deaf community and the ultra-creative clan. That the family is Jewish is scarcely touched upon, a fact that’s arguably ironic because of that group’s tribal heritage.

“Tribes,” an off-Broadway success in 2012, opens with rapid-fire, frequently vulgar banter. It closes with tenderness.

Along the way, it offers as fascinating a glimpse into a world I’m unfamiliar with as the Berkeley Rep did via “Chinglish” in 2012. And, like that one, this commendably uses the device of overhead projections of dialogue.

I’m sure director Jonathan Moscone, best known for his longtime role as artistic director of California Shakespeare Theater, was keenly aware that one out of six Americans has some form of hearing loss when he took the assignment.

But he readily joined with dramatist Raine to make sure both hearing and hard-of-hearing theatergoers get a laugh-out-loud yet profoundly moving theatrical experience.

“Tribes” plays at the Berkeley Repertory’s Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St., Berkeley, through May 18. 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 $99, subject to change, (510) 647-2949 or www.berkeleyrep.org.

Woody’s [rating:4.5]

The focus of “Fences,” Troy Maxon, becomes — like Willie Loman of “Death of a Salesman” — trapped by his own limitations, excuses and misperceptions.

And, like Arthur Miller’s classic everyman creation, this August Wilson character takes too much for granted.

Especially his wife, Rose, and sons Cory and Lyons.

Some of Troy’s beliefs are highly questionable. Such as his not being able to graduate from Negro League baseball to the Majors — even after the color barrier had been broken.

He blames prejudice. Rose more realistically faults his having been too old.

Troy demands Cory not play high school football because he sees it as a futile activity for a black-skinned man — even though his son could win a college scholarship (and a future that might surpass his own).

The frequently confrontational ex-con father, we learn, has been in a lifelong battle again racism, death and the devil.

But that doesn’t excuse his being a hard drinker, a philanderer and a procrastinator — a disheartened 53-year-old who in effect holds his culture liable.

His family, of course, bears the brunt of his anger.

In the powerful Marin Theatre Company revival of “Fences,” the biggest trap for Troy, robustly portrayed by Carl Lumbly, becomes the life he’s settled for: a responsibility-burdened family man, invisible garbage collector earning only $76.20 a week, a raider of his war-injured brother’s checks.

In the process, he manages to disrespect his 18-year wife’s loyalty, and disregard the urgent needs of his younger son.

What he ultimately, and tragically, finds is entombment behind a fence he’s forever building.

The play, set in 1957 Pittsburgh, is a cornucopia of metaphors, starting with a fence that keeps folks in as well as out, ending with baseball lingo that precedes a predictable strikeout.

A quarter of a century ago, I walked out of a pre-Broadway performance of “Fences” in San Francisco before it was done, dismayed by what I found to be stereotypical depictions, an excess of what had yet to be labeled “the n-word,” and an unfortunate emphasis on the failings of males in the black culture.

I couldn’t have been more mistaken.

What I overlooked then was the major historic value of the 90-minute play, the accuracy of Wilson’s reflection of how black life really was. Through this brilliant Mill Valley offering, which coincidentally opened on Jackie Robinson Day, I quickly recognized what I’d missed.

The cast made it easy for me. Each member was superb.

Hours later, my mind can’t let go of the images they created — Margo Hall’s frustrated and flailing Rose, Steven Anthony Jones’ drinking-buddy stint as Jim Bono, and Eddie Ray Jackson’s pained poignancy as Cory.

Adrian Roberts skillfully avoids being cartoonish in the role of Troy’s brother, Gabe, a brain-damaged vet, and Tyee Tilghman effectively fills the role of Cory’s wannabe musician older half-brother.

Superb, too, is a front-yard set by scenic designer J.B. Wilson that features a home facade illustrating economic battles  — plus a makeshift tree-limb batting device that allows Troy, momentarily, to purge his anger.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t cite sound designer Will McCandless’ work, pinpointing between-scene recordings that parallel the storyline and action (from traditional jazz to an edgy crescendo of dissonance, finishing with mournful, almost anti-climactic blues).

The Pulitzer Prize-winning play, presented in association with the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, is the second to be produced by the Marin Theatre Company in Wilson’s 10-play Century Cycle (sometimes called the Pittsburgh Cycle, with each component representing a decade of the African-American experience in the United States).

Jasson Minadakis, MTC artistic director, hopes to showcase the remaining eight as well.

Director Derrick Sanders, who’d worked with Wilson before his death in 2005, carefully built this emotionally charged, physical version so the second act moves incredibly swiftly, albeit a bit fitfully.

After a slow-moving but tension-packed first act, one attendee said, “I’m pretty sure this train-wreck isn’t going to end well.”

He was right, of course, if you consider only the play itself.

But for theatergoers, the experience does end well, exceptionally well.

“Fences” plays at the Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley, through Sunday, May 11. Performances Tuesdays and Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Wednesdays, 7:30 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m.; matinees Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $20 to $53. Information: (415) 388-5208 or marintheatre.org. 

 

I can get really excited about little stuff.

So can Nancy Fox, my wife.

A few days back, for instance, she was bouncing on air because she’d had the vintage knives in our San Anselmo kitchen sharpened.

“Unbelievable,” she exclaimed. “They’re like new!”

I loved her enthusiasm.

Almost as much as I’d loved my own ecstasy when I recalled a guilty pleasure from childhood — a bowlful of sliced sweet gherkins and sour cream.

Others may grimace, but I blissed out again.

Big things can also electrify me.

Such as completing tweak No. 8,957 of “Rollercoaster,” my book manuscript that details how a man can survive his partner’s breast cancer.

I finally believe it’s ready for prime time — after years and years of updating and polishing.

Maybe one of you, my steadfast readers, can nurture the project.

If you know a publisher who might be interested, I’d be interested in your giving me name, rank and serial number. If you’re connected to a foundation and think I could be eligible for a grant, send me the details — pronto. If you know a philanthropist who might help buoy thousands and thousands of male caregivers, email, snail-mail, carrier-pigeon or smoke-signal me the info.

“Rollercoaster” is a 47,000-word memoir-chronicle of my wife’s breast cancer 19 years ago — and my role as primary caregiver (and leader of the Marin Man to Man support group for guys with partners in the same sometimes leaky boat).

Fleshed out by essential “how-to” sequences and information on drugs, scientific research and where to get help.

Because I’m more concerned with getting the message out than in making money, I’m willing to donate all royalties to a breast-cancer research organization or relevant nonprofit.

Time’s a-wastin’ — the stats haven’t improved.

More than 2 million U.S. women live with breast cancer, with almost 250,000 new cases diagnosed each year, one every few minutes.

Hundreds of books are aimed at them.

But their male caregivers (husbands, boyfriends, fathers, sons and brothers) typically become a forgotten part of the equation.

And they, too, need propping up.

The few volumes directed at them and still in print are woefully out of date. “Rollercoaster,” in contrast, is current (with references, even, to last month’s New York Times story on a key study of mammograms).

“Rollercoaster” tracks my bumpy yet uplifting journey from the depths of Nancy’s diagnosis to the heights of our climbing the Great Wall of China. It illustrates that most couples can successfully deal with the disease itself, “slash, poison and burn” treatments, fear, and the repercussions of it all — and that there actually can be light at the end of the tunnel.

I must believe in the book or I wouldn’t have tinkered with it 8,957 times.

I’m primed for a “Rollercoaster” hardcover to appear in oncologists’ and radiologists’ offices, in hospitals and libraries, and in the hands of individual caregivers and patients.

But I truly don’t want to change the text anymore — unless Brad Pitt calls me and wants to write an intro (so, if anyone knows how to get to him, tell me).

And I truly reject the idea of papering my walls with rejection notices.

Northern Californian Jack London got 600 of them before publishing anything. And Gertrude Stein submitted poems for 22 years before one was accepted.

I don’t have that kind of patience.

Nor do I want to be published posthumously.

I do want to help all the male caregivers of breast cancer and other life-threatening diseases that need support — while I’m still breathing.

So I guess I’ll just walk my purebred mutt, Kismet, in downtown San Anselmo while waiting for a fairy godmother to arrive with a publisher in tow.

And settle, for the moment, for being thrilled by the little stuff.

Like my wife creating a Seuss-like rhyming treasure hunt last month, with the Big Prize being a small box of tiny candy hearts.

I loved her reverting to her kindergarten-teacher days and getting me to run up and down stairs so many times I decided to forgo my daily exercises.

“Ten clues are written,” she wrote,

“For Valentine’s Day,”

“To celebrate ours”

“In a new, goofy way.”

Yes, being thrilled is a thrill — whether it’s tiny, silly things or big, important stuff.

 Woody’s [rating:4/5]

Charlie Varon changes his voice and face and characters as fast as Miley Cyrus can twerk.

In “Feisty Old Jew,” his new one-man show at The Marsh in San Francisco, he portrays twentysomething surfers and members of a retirement home breakfast club.

But easily his most memorable character is the cranky Bernie to which the title refers.

Varon being 55 didn’t stop me from totally accepting him in the mind and body of a gutsy 83-year-old determined to go out fighting.

The plot of the comic monologue involves a mega-rich Indian techie reared in California, his best-selling author sister and a white surfer who pick up hitchhiking Bernie in their Tesla, haul him across the Golden Gate Bridge, and watch him try to ride a wave near Bolinas — the outgrowth of an 800-to-1 bet that could net him $400,000.

It’s a droll theatrical exercise grounded in reality, yet encompassing multiple touches of exaggeration that made me smile again and again,

And I was not the least thrown by its surprising, fantastical wind-up.

A Jewish background isn’t necessary to enjoy the show, because it’s more about the changing human and cultural landscape of the Bay Area and the aging process than Jewishness.

Take that as gospel from this feisty old Jew (even though I don’t hate yoga studios or medical marijuana outlets as Bernie does).

Yes, he can seem to be the ultimate curmudgeon, especially during descriptions that indicate he despises young people in general and Tony Bennett in particular (for singing with Lady Gaga).

But Varon insists the play’s “about a city in flux…about what I see when I step out of our theater and walk down Valencia Street — the hipsters, the techies, the restaurants serving truffle butter and pink aioli. When I moved to the Mission District in 1978, my rent was $70 a month. Now people pay $70 a month just for lattes.”

The life-affirming show was developed, like other Varon works at The Marsh over 23 years, with director-friend David Ford.

And with additional heavy lifting from Varon’s life partner, Myra Levy.

The program guide credits no craftspeople for costumes, props, sound effects or lighting — because, as usual, Varon relies solely on his rubbery face, gift for mimicry and ability to write impressively descriptive passages and poetic prose.

This tour de force is similar to previous Varon outings I’ve seen — “Rush Limbaugh in Night School,” “Ralph Nader Is Missing!” and “Rabbi Sam” — in which he narrated tales through numerous characters, all of whom he ingeniously portrayed.

This one is different, though, because there will be future links — he’s working on an entire series of vignettes about geezers.

Indeed, because “Feisty Old Jew” runs only 45 minutes long, Varon added several minutes by performing a portion of “The Fish Sisters,” a work-in-progress featuring Selma, an 86-year-old prankster who’s time-traveled to age 11, peeking through a keyhole at a naked woman dubbed Queen Esther.

The first complete reading of that piece — a two-hour “tale of mischief” — was scheduled to take place March 9.

The night I caught “Feisty,” it was preceded by a dramatic extract of “The Disappearance of Alfred Lafee,” written and performed by Peter L. Stein, ex-TV producer-writer, documentarian, actor and director of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival who, Varon explained, “is finding his legs as a solo performer.”

Stein told me later that he’s been working on it for two years, and expects at least six more months of tweaking — with assistance from Ford, Varon’s director.

But “Lafee” is already enthralling as it uncovers a painfully true story about the secret life of a closeted 22-year-old San Francisco rabbi murdered in 1923.

If Stein’s piece still needs work, the lone problem with an evening with Varon is that street parking near The Marsh borders on impossible (although space normally is available at the nearby New Mission Bartlett Garage).

I’m 117 percent confident, however, that seeing “Feisty Old Jew” is worth the trouble.

“Feisty Old Jew” is scheduled to run at The Marsh, 1062 Valencia St. (at 22nd St.), San Francisco, through May 4. Performances, Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 or 7 p.m. Tickets: $25 to $100. Information: www.themarsh.org or (415) 282-3055. 

 Woody’s [rating:5]

“Hir,” a gender-bending, tragicomic world premiere at the Magic Theatre, is the best Bay Area play I’ve seen this season.

In several seasons, in fact.

And I’ve attended more than a few magnificent shows during that timeframe.

To call “Hir” hilariously riveting would be to understate enormously the impact it had on the opening night San Francisco audience.

Including me.

I don’t have enough superlatives in my word-arsenal with which to praise the writing, direction, acting, set design and costumes.

Describing what’s what may make the play sound bizarre rather than funny. But playwright Taylor Mac keeps the laughter level extremely high.

Niegel Smith is the perfect director for what Mac calls “absurd realism.” Though every gag line draws a laugh, each stammer, brief pause or elongated silence also hits a dramatic bulls-eye.

And Smith’s pacing is spot on.

Paige is the antithesis of the submissive mom that populates so much pop culture. Instead, she’s a tear-down-the-established-routine demon who humiliates her husband with acts of comeuppance that include squirting water into his face as a trainer might to a disobedient kitten.

Nancy Opel portrays her with all the requisite venom. A Tony-nominated actress, she is a comic delight, spewing Mac’s acerbic words like ammo from a Gatling gun.

She informs us the family’s role now — 30 years after building its “starter house” — is to put on shadow-puppet shows and “play dress up.”

The playwright takes dysfunctionality to new heights. Or, perhaps, it might be more accurate to say new lows.

The play, set in a central valley suburb similar to Stockton, where Mac grew up, makes the audience feel good because their fractured families can’t possibly be that screwed up.

Jax Jackson adroitly plays Max, formerly Maxine — a 17-year-old “gender-queer” malcontent who’s been homeschooled and makes Holden Caulfield’s angst look as antiquated and simplistic as something out of a the old-time radio soap opera “One Man’s Family.”

He no longer chooses to be a she or a he but a gender-neutral ze (pronounced zay); in addition, he substitutes hir (pronounced heer) for the pronouns him or her.

A youth whose fantasy is to join an anarchist commune, Max finds his mind somewhere behind the curve of the hormone-triggered gender changes ze has put hir body through with self-medicating experimentation.

He calls himself “transmasculine” and “a fag.” He likes boys. He loves masturbating.

And he thinks he’s “allowed to be selfish because I’m in transition.”

Max goes ballistic about the biblical story of Noah being “transphobic” because only male and female animals were allowed aboard the ark — and because Leonardo da Vinci’s transexuality and that of his self-portrait, the Mona Lisa, aren’t acknowledged.

Actually, it’s not crucial for a theatergoer to “get” all the gender-based phrasing — or even the alphabet soup LGBT has evolved into, LGBTTSQQIAA.

The gist becomes clear through context.

Clear, too, is Mark Anderson Phillips’s performance despite his character barely speaking.

He skillfully portrays Arnold, the stroke-ridden ex-plumber, ex-abuser father who represents a disintegrating culture and who’s typically plopped in front of the Lifetime Channel when Paige and Max go out.

And Ben Euphrat is effectively transparent as Isaac, a Marine vet of the Afghanistan war dishonorably discharged after becoming a meth addict. He may have PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), and vomits profusely, the aftermath of his job of collecting body parts.

Isaac comes back to unrecognizable home and family, and desperately wants to restore them — and himself — to the way everything was when he left.

I missed “The Lily’s Revenge,” Mac’s earlier allegorical play/carnival at the Magic, thinking neither my brain nor my buttocks could handle five acts and five hours no matter how brilliant.

Now I have regrets.

Mac, not incidentally, is a triple threat: Although he’s written 16 full-length plays, he also performs as an actor and singer-songwriter (his most recent outing was as co-star with Mandy Patinkin in an off-Broadway workshop of “The Last Two People on Earth: An Apocalyptic Vaudeville” last December).

While introducing his latest dark, darker, darkest humor showcase to the opening night audience, Loretta Greco, the Magic’s producing artistic director, said, “Buckle your seat belts. You’re in for an incredible ride.”

She wasn’t lying.

“Hir” plays at the Magic Theater, Building D, Fort Mason Center, San Francisco, through March 2. Performances: Sundays and Tuesdays, 7 p.m., Wednesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m.; matinees, Sundays and Wednesdays, 2:30 p.m. Tickets: $15 to $60. Information: (415) 441-8822 or www.magictheatre.org.