Woody Weingarten

  Woody’s [rating:5]

Uh, oh!

From the first cagey moments of “Gidion’s Knot,” I knew the play would be grueling to process.

I didn’t, however, expect my mouth to drop open, my heart to hurt.

They did anyway.

My pledge: Because the two-woman play is a disturbing cat-and-mouse game and theatrical Rorschach test, viewers will find it virtually impossible to leave the Aurora Theatre in Berkeley unaffected.

Personal baggage will, of course, determine exactly how and what is experienced.

The tension-filled drama starts with an abrasive, in-your-face single mother — a walking open wound — demanding a constrained teacher tell her why she suspended the parent’s troubled son from his fifth-grade class.

The discussion that follows is often awkward.

But it’s also a fascinating examination of personal responsibility and blame, freedom of expression, the failure of our school systems, bullying and embryonic sexuality.

“Gidion’s Knot” is provocative, powerful and guaranteed to force theatergoers to hold their breath for what seems its entire 80 minutes.

The impact of the gut-wrenching, twist-and-turn tragedy comes when the angry, sarcastic mother, herself a professor used to academic probing, keeps pricking and questioning until she learns the truth.

At least her truth.

A working clock on a classroom wall helps maintain the sense of real time.

And the actors’ breathtaking depiction of passion, thoughtfulness and mood swings help keep the action authentic.

Playwright Johnna Adams demands playgoers think for themselves, so she supplies no pinpoint answers to the questions she poses: Are parents or schoolteachers ultimately responsible for pupils’ well-being? Is Gidion a bullying monster or sensitive, poetic victim? Is classmate Jake the bully or an object of affection?

Neither fifth grader appears on stage.

Nor does Seneca, an 11-year-old friend and note-passer described as having a stuffed bra, nose ring, false eyelashes and dyed platinum hair.

Tossed into the mix are references to censorship, freedom of expression, American society’s litigiousness, and our growing national fear of what’s ahead.

Sadly, “Gidion’s Knot” echoes all too many real-life headlines of recent years about individual tragedies caused by taunting, either in person or through social networking.

And, although it doesn’t reference those situations, it can’t block memories of schoolyard massacres.

Tension is director Jon Tracy’s forté, copious enough to make me — and most other seat-holders — uncomfortable.

Intensity prevails.

Unrelentingly, in fact, all the way to the play’s final moments — except for a few snarky quips that let everyone find a smidgeon of relief through nervous laughter.

Part of the unease, by the way, stems from the two characters (and audience) waiting for someone to arrive.

As “Gidion’s Knot” unravels its multi-leveled conflicts and complexities — from an exploration of Greek and Roman military history and epic poetry to a tale of revenge against teachers and disembowelment — it may require a strong stomach.

I could hear erratic gasps in the audience.

Nina Ball’s set is a deceptively cheery contrast through which she’d dragged me into a 20-desk classroom and its reference maps and academic materials in Anytown, USA.

The setting’s so effective I could almost see the portraits of gods tacked onto an invisible wall explored by the distraught mom, who reveals she could best relate to a demon-destroying Hindu god, Shiva.

Destruction just happens to be another underlying theme of “Gidion’s Knot.

So’s the Marquis de Sade.

Then, of course, there’s the metaphoric Gordian Knot, which — legend tells us — Alexander the Great decided to slice rather than untie. The phrase, of course, has become a means of representing having to face an intractable problem.

What’s absent in this dazzling play is artifice — despite the presence of polemics and diatribes.

What’s present is actors whose performances are flawlessly multi-layered, facilitating my feeling their respective pain.

I flinched as the mother asked disingenuously, “This doesn’t have to be adversarial, does it?”

But the sold-out audience was right there as the mother, Corryn Fell (Jamie J. Jones), and teacher, Heather Clark (Stacy Ross), struggled to untangle the web of what really happened.

Where a playgoer travels emotionally and intellectually will determine whether “Gidion’s Knot” is loved or tagged offensive and too harrowing.

I fall in the first niche, glad I was there despite the work required.

The opening night crowd also had no doubt: In unison, it gave it a thunderous standing ovation.

“Gidion’s Knot” runs at the Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison St., Berkeley, through March 9. Night performances, Wednesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m., Tuesdays and Sundays, 7 p.m.; matinees, Sundays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $16-$50. Information: www.auroratheatre.orgor (510) 843-4822.

 Woody’s [rating:5]

“Man in a Case,” the new Mikhail Baryshnikov star turn, melds uncountable elements.

Radiantly.

But the dramatic Berkeley Rep re-invention of two Anton Chekhov short stories is so complex, so augmented with symbolism and stagecraft, I’m sure a single viewing is insufficient to absorb it all.

And, frankly, I suspect I might feel the same after two or three more times in the audience.

“Man in a Case,” which was adapted and co-directed by the dazzling duo behind the Big Dance Theatre, Paul Lazar and Annie-B Parson, fuses movement, theatrics, music and video.

Parson may deserve the most credit.

She alone was responsible for the piece’s choreography, which not only fit Baryshnikov’s dance and acting chops like skintight leggings but lent itself to integrating disparate elements — projections of titles and 1890s Russian characters re-dressed in modern garb, a quintet of TV terminals blinking in unison, infinite paper caricatures wafting from above, a strobe ball rotating ever so gently, accordion melodies blaring in contrast with scratchy old recordings, and a canopied Murphy bed sliding effortlessly into a wall.

Amazingly, like a perfectly practiced drill team, everything works in synch.

And Parson put it all together with a surrealistic cleverness that made me think she might have been channeling Salvador Dali after he’d stumbled upon Marcel Marceau and Spike Jones in the afterlife and convinced them to come back to Earth and pool their talents.

“Man in a Case” spotlights two modern-day hunters who swap poignant stories after initially wielding their microphones like comic weaponry, as if they were doing early morning drive-time radio.

The first — and longer — tale centers on Belikov, an uptight, reclusive Greek teacher who’s feared by his fellow pedagogues — and, indeed, “the whole town.” He falls for a cheery woman but, calamitously, can’t sustain the relationship.

The second story depicts a guy who grieves for his unrequited love, a married woman.

According to Parson, both Baryshnikov protagonists “have preconceived ideas how to live, even if it means living life in a case…of their own construction.”

She also said, in an interview with the Hartford Stage’s senior dramaturg, that even though the title piece is “prose, not a play, it’s eminently actable.”

Baryshnikov, who’d grown up reading Chekhov stories and plays, validates that notion.

And so do the other six actors in the ensemble cast, especially Tymberly Canale, his dance-and-love companion in both segments.

One stagey conceit of “Man in a Case” is showing onstage what normally goes on behind the scenes. It took me a few minutes to adjust to the “transparency,” but once I had, I found it refreshing.

Exactly what were the two co-directors trying to achieve?

Lazar has said, “It’s Chekhov’s unvarnished contemporary quality and his not feeling at an historical distance that we’re going after.”

Mission accomplished.

Baryshnikov, a Latvia native, started studying ballet at age 9. He became the principal dancer of the Kirov Ballet in 1969, and five years later defected from the former Soviet Union to dance with major companies around the world.

His film work has included “The Turning Point” and “White Nights,” and he appeared in “Metamorphosis” on Broadway.

His most famous role, however, may have been in the television series “Sex in the City,” in which he’s dumped by Carrie Bradshaw for Mr. Big.

In 2012, Baryshnikov starred in the Berkeley Rep  production of “In Paris,” a tragic love story that garnered only mixed reviews. He’d sunk $250,000 of his own money into the project.

Although the actor-dancer recently turned 65, he’s been quoted as saying, “I never celebrate my birthdays. I really don’t care.”

He also said: “Your body actually reminds you about your age and your injuries — the body has a stronger memory than your mind.”

Does his body hold up as he effectively makes the leap from one Chekhov short story to the other?

Absolutely.

Last year, Baryshnikov told the Washington Post, “I have been in successful productions sometimes. And I’ve sucked many times, too.”

Hey, Misha, there’s zero suckage this time.

“Man in a Case” plays at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre‘s Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St., Berkeley, through Feb. 16. Night performances, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Wednesdays, 7 p.m. Matinees, Sundays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $22.50 to $125, subject to change, (510) 647-2949 or www.berkeleyrep.org.

 Woody’s [rating:5]

If you’ve seen one acrobatic troupe, you’ve seen ‘em all — except, perhaps, for an occasional act in Cirque du Soleil.

Or every one of The Peking Acrobats.

I caught the latest rendition of the latter at a Cal Performances matinee the other day at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley.

It was fabulous.

Basing their work on folk traditions that date back to 221 B.C., the youngsters push their balancing and gymnastics beyond anyone’s expectations.

Fabulously.

And the Jigu! Thunder Drums of China company that’s been inserted into the tour for the first time as “special guests” also are fabulous.

The dexterous acrobatic troupe, which first came to the United States in 1986 and currently features performers ranging from 13 to 25, particularly enjoys defying gravity.

And contorting lithe bodies.

And risking youthful life and limb without a net.

Some of the acts are indescribably complex. To be believed, they must be witnessed. Despite seeing them with my own big brown eyes, I still found several unbelievable.

Being human, the acrobats are not perfect. But when they err, they do it again and inevitably get it right.

The showstopper clearly was a young man who put four wine bottles on a tabletop, then carefully balanced the first of eight white chairs on them. After he stacked high the other seven and was almost into the rafters, he performed three handstands, the last on one hand.

Extraordinary. Inspired. Breathtaking.

And fabulous.

His solo was followed by five girls balancing on the same six chairs, stacked not as high but maybe even more treacherously because they were diagonal.

Before the stunning finale, which featured almost a dozen performers perched delicately on a single bicycle, the combination visual-audial cornucopia provided so much more, most of it unique:

A guy who juggled while standing on one leg and while tap dancing on two, a clown who tripled as emcee and tumbler, stunningly choreographed gymnastics and dancing and drumsticks, a young man who stuck four bricks on his head so they could be smashed with an immense hammer, a man held mid-air on the points of four spears, and a lion dance with four dragon-like critters animated by eight males.

Plus, of course, acrobats who jumped from pole to pole, others who danced gracefully on long fabric, females who spun plates while twisting their bodies every which way, foot-jugglers who rotated drums, and a group that playfully juggled hats, hats and more hats.

The center-stage and background music was unusually wide-ranging, from booming synchronized drumming to almost eerie sounds emanating from traditional Chinese instruments such as the erhu, a small bowed instrument with only two strings, and the yangquin, a dulcimer played with bamboo mallets.

Most melodies were unfamiliar, but that didn’t hold true for a medley that included Tony Orlando and Dawn’s “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree” and the Beatles’ “Yesterday.”

The audience, which mainly consisted of young children and bald men, presumably fathers of the kids, applauded everything.

I’d say the crowd found The Peking Acrobats, well, fabulous.

“Calm down,” squeals the moderation-safety valve in my head. “This review’s become an over-gush.” But I can’t help myself — individually and collectively, they’re that good.

A cautionary announcement before the two-hour-plus fast-paced show told us not to try the tricks at home.

For me, that message was unnecessary.

I’m neither double-jointed nor willing to risk breaking every bone in my body.

In case you missed “The Peking Acrobats,” Cal Performances offers other excellent choices for families. Try, for example, Aesop Bops!” with David Gonzalez and the Yak Yak Band on April 6. Information: (510) 642-9988 or www.calperfs.berkeley.edu/.

 Woody’s [rating:5]

“Journey’s End” is no “War Horse.” I saw no fantastical puppets.

“Journey’s End” is no “Apocalypse Now.” I heard no Wagnerian explosions or deafening helicopters.

“Journey’s End” is no “Saving Private Ryan.” I witnessed no gore.

What I did find, however, was considerable poignancy and a tough look at what war does to young men.

Regrettably, it mirrors the many wars across today’s globe.

It’s an exceptional anti-war drama, despite playwright R.C. Sherriff’s insistence — according to director James Dunn — that he didn’t set out to create that type of play.

It’s also the best Ross Valley Players show I’ve ever attended, and that’s saying a lot because I’ve seen many of their shows that were superb.

“Journey’s End” is a saga of disposable lives in the so-called Great War.

Its setting is a 1918 WWI British infantry dugout/bunker near St. Quentin, France, that’s about to be assaulted by German soldiers (“the Boche”). Its twin focus is on the interminable waiting (which may portend death) and a rushed 12-man patrol sent out to seize an enemy warrior.

The protagonist is Stanhope, a captain who drinks a lot to deaden the pain caused by the conflict and his fears that his men don’t respect him.

David Yen brilliantly portrays Stanhope, who originally was played by a young Laurence Olivier. Yen’s facial expressions and eyes become transparent windows to his character’s tormented soul.

His stage bouts with half a dozen bottles are neither over-the-top nor maudlin.

Yen is impressively supported by Tom Hudgens as Lt. Osborne, an ultra-proper officer who’s purposefully morphed into a kindly uncle to the soldiers, and Francis Serpa as 2nd Lt. Raleigh, a young, idealistic ex-school chum of Stanhope who’s stuck in hero-worship mode.

The rest of the all-male cast also is convincing: Philip Goleman as 2nd Lt. Hibbert, a cowering whiner; Sean Gunnell as Pvt. Mason, comic relief as a cunning kitchen worker always scrambling to make up for supply deficiencies; Stephen Dietz, Jeff Taylor and two actors who each assume dual roles, Steve Price and Ross Berger.

Special tribute must go to Dunn and his assistant dialect coach, Judy Holmes, for training the nine actors so well each accent stayed authentic throughout.

And never turn into caricature.

Deserving extra compliments, too, are Ron Krempetz for his set design (from real dirt on the floor to a hint of barbed wire peeking through an opening); Dietz for his sound design (crackling armaments getting closer and closer yanked me right into the action, and scratchy recordings of “Mademoiselle from Armentières” and “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” became instant time machines); and spot-on costumes by Michael A. Berg.

The two-hour play, despite having first been staged in 1928, miraculously avoids the clichés of the hundreds of war dramas, films and teleplays that came after.

There’s no token black, no token Latino, no token Jew.

There’s no super-patriot, no Dear John letter, no townie with a heart of gold.

Most importantly, there are no heroes.

There are, however, little touches that work especially well to break the tension — the awkwardness of a Brit and German trying to scale language barriers, the reading aloud of passages about the walrus and cabbages and kings, and a bizarre description of an earwig race.

By sidestepping most stereotypes and zeroing in on the human condition, Sherriff, who’d won a Military Cross after being wounded in the battle of Passchendaele in 1917, penned a play with multiple layers that retains its meaning almost a century later.

It won a 2007 Tony for best revival.

Dunn now has breathed new life into it by bringing to the production a rich history of directing and teaching theater arts for 50 years, including three decades at the helm of the Mountain Play.

Is war hell?

In the WWI battle of the Somme, 21,000 British soldiers died on the first day, and 38,000 more became casualties. Mankind apparently didn’t learn much from that episode.

Unfortunately, neither “Journey’s End” nor a multitude of anti-war tracts since have had the power to change anything.

“Journey’s End” will run at The Barn, Marin Art & Garden Center, 30 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Ross, through Feb. 16. Night performances, Thursdays at 7:30, Fridays and Saturdays at 8; matinees, Sundays at 2. Tickets: $13-$26. Information: (415) 456-9555 or www.rossvalleyplayers.com.

 Woody’s [rating:3]

I feel like a nine-year-old boy who’s found a crisp new $100 bill on the sidewalk.

Reveling in discovery.

I’ve never been to the Gough St. Playhouse before, but I’ve obviously missed out on a lot if “The Pain and the Itch” is a typical example of what the CustomMade Theatre Company produces there.

“Pain,” a mega-black comedy by Bruce Norris, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer of “Claybourne Park,” proffers a Thanksgiving meal piled high with biting insights into faux family values, racism, hypocrisy, wealth, dementia, a negligent death and, maybe, pedophilia.

When a financially comfortable, liberal, ultra-judgmental and phony family gathers for a Thanksgiving meal in New York, its members and hangers-on munch on Brussels sprouts and long festering resentments.

Norris unhurriedly peels the skin off the family’s smugness as adroitly as if he were wielding a paring knife and onion.

He’s skillful in warding off an audience’s tears but doesn’t avoid the cringe factor as his characters attack each other in overt, sometimes cruel ways.

Sometimes “Pain” is shockingly funny.

Sometimes not so much, like when the wife forces the husband to euthanize a cat to create a hypoallergenic situation for a second child.

 

Norris’ main tool is flashback — an effective freeze-frame device for the most part, but occasionally jarring and confusing.

Both the playwright and director Dale Albright make good use of Mr. Hadid (Dorian Lockett), an African American cab driver, an observer/participant who usually sits on one sideline or another but sometimes asks seemingly oblique questions about the cost of things.

The play centers on the hysteria of Clay (Justin Gillman), a golf-playing, porn-addicted, emasculated house-husband whose young daughter, Kayla (Gabriella Jarvie), has a major genital rash of unknown but possibly creepy origin.

He’s preoccupied by an unseen entity that’s been gnawing at the family avocados.

Clay lives in a world of hyperbole (“Why don’t I just move out? Why don’t I go upstairs and hang myself?”).

His wife, Kelly (Karen Offereins), a standoffish lawyer who tries to hide her own pain behind a cloak of intellectuality, continually puts him down.

Her excuse?

She feels she’s been abused — by “sarcasm” and “neglect.”

Cash (Peter Townley), Clay’s self-centered plastic surgeon brother, the black sheep of the family because he’s a Republican, is involved with a bigoted, coarsely sexual 23-year-old émigré, Kalina (Eden Neuendorf), who’d been repeatedly raped in her native Eastern European country.

The brothers’ condescending, saccharine, baby-talking mother, Carol (Jean Forsman), is a socialist on the brink of dementia.

With the possible exception of Neuendorf, whose accent is so thick it makes some phrases impossible to make out, all the performers acquit themselves rather well. Especially considering that Norris’ words are so barbed and that the actors are asked to talk over each other with great frequency and volume.

“The Pain” isn’t quite as polished as “Claybourne Park,” which it pre-dated by six years. The nastiness in “Pain” verges, in fact, on mean-spirited and vicious.

Moreover, the play shows that Norris (himself Caucasian) is slightly obsessed with ridiculing the hypocrisy of rich, white folk.

Still, the show’s absolutely worth a look-see.

And so is the almost hidden CustomMade troupe, ensconced in a bright but intimate black-box theater with exceptionally comfy seats and dedicated to “producing plays that awaken our social conscience.”

Opening night, more than a few of those 55 seats were empty. That’s a crime: They certainly deserve to be filled for the entire run of the two-hour show.

“The Pain and the Itch” plays at the Gough St. Playhouse, 1620 Gough St. (in the basement of the Trinity Episcopal Church, at Bush), San Francisco, through Feb. 16. Performances Thursday through Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 7 p.m. Tickets: $22 to $35. Information: (415) 798-2682 or www.custommade.org.

 Woody’s [rating:4]

My father wanted me to taste everything that wasn’t life threatening and become a well-rounded member of the literati.

So he took me at age 8 to “Man and Superman,” George Bernard Shaw’s battle of the sexes comedy.

The play was way, way over my head.

And way, way too long.

I eventually became hooked on Shavian wit anyway (though I didn’t learn where the “v” came from when the form of the Irish playwright’s name was changed).

I also became hooked on theater as a whole, and I did understand why: It could instantly transport me into an alternate world or lifestyle, one I’d not experienced before (and might never, in fact, experience in “real” life).

Seeing the new American Conservatory Theater production of Shaw’s “Major Barbara” instantly transported me backward, to those halcyon days of my youth, into a mental place that caused me now to smile throughout the 109-year-old play (which I’d first watched half a century ago).

In short, I enjoyed it.

Yet somehow the talky ACT political comedy — despite impeccable performances, set and costuming — came off as too intellectual and (even with ostensibly passionate speeches) too impassionate.

I had the feeling it too frequently tickled my cerebral cells rather than my funnybone.

Besides, being in a theater for 2 hours and 40 minutes, was slightly more than my hindquarters could comfortably endure — although the play itself didn’t feel long at all.

“Major Barbara” unfortunately proves, however, that not much has changed in 109 years, especially if you consider the growing gap between ultra-rich and ultra-poor, the continued cynicism of business (particularly regarding the manufacture of weaponry), and the blind zeal that religious faith can spawn.

The storyline is straightforward: Barbara Undershaft (Gretchen Hall), daughter of a ruthless millionaire whiskey distiller and bomb manufacturer (Dean Paul Gibson as Andrew Undershaft), is happily saving souls within the framework of the Salvation Army.

But when her father buys favor through a big donation, she quits — even as the plutocrat’s money saves the mission and leads to 117 conversions in a single day.

Her subsequent quest for reconciliation and inner peace shapes what, in the final analysis, becomes the crux of this morality play.

Along the way, the two leads are superbly supported by Kandis Chappell, who steals the show with her hilarious performance of Barbara’s controlling mother, Lady Britomart Undershaft, and Nicholas Pelczar as Adolphus Cusins, who adores and virtually stalks heroine Barbara.

Not one person in the 15-member cast, in fact, is anything but excellent.

Aiding the theatrical illusions, the massive, mobile set by Daniel Ostling is incredibly effective (though sometimes dwarfing the actors).

And costuming by Alex Jaeger leaves no doubt about the era of the action.

The show is a co-production with Theatre Calgary, a Canadian troupe. Its director, Dennis Garnhum, has noted that the result is what happens when “two theaters from two countries…share our similarities and our differences.”

He’s written, too, that he and Carey Perloff, ACT’s artistic director, selected ‘Major Barbara’ for the same reason: its “overwhelming relevance” to 2014.

Good choice.

Garnhum, not incidentally, managed to extract every possible laugh from the script, then added a few of his own via direction that underscores the inherent humor by means of an exaggerated glance or toss of the head.

While most of the themes tackled by Shaw resonate currently, his women display leadership qualities but few touches of feminism. Early on, for example, the matronly head of family states succinctly (while trying to encourage her son to take more familial responsibility):

“I am only a woman.”

Similar to most episodes of “Law and Order,” Shaw outlines both sides of each issue yet, ultimately, makes sure his thought process isn’t left to the fancies of an audience: Consider when the father proclaims that poverty is “the worst of crimes” and that poor people “kill the happiness of society.”

The playwright’s sharpest tools aren’t polemics, though. They’re swift, clever banter between characters, and they’re sarcastic or sardonic outbursts.

Shaw, of course, was an Irish playwright with well-defined opinions, a writer who won both the Nobel Prize for literature and an Oscar (for “Pgymalion,” the film forerunner of the hit Broadway musical, “My Fair Lady”). His creations, it could be argued, cleared the path for latter-day theatrical masters such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Tom Stoppard.

A perfect sidelight: An honest-to-goodness, four-piece Salvation Army band played outside the theater before the show, its familiar strains foreshadowing a major component of “Major Barbara.”

And a last thought: Barbara’s father’s consistent intimidations were strikingly reminiscent of recent bullying by a New Jersey governor.

“Major Barbara” plays at the American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary St., San Francisco, through Feb. 2. Performances Wednesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Tuesdays, 7 or 8 p.m.; matinees, Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $20 to $140. Information: (415) 749-2228 or www.act-sf.org.

 Woody’s [rating:4.5]

It was a one-night stand.

But I’ll long remember it as a theatrical ménage à quatre, which, clearly, is one person better than a ménage à trois.

The harmonious homecoming of the Kinsey Sicks took place at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco. And, as might have been prophesied, the quartet’s social satire was both outrageous and outrageously funny.

And as raunchy as ever.

I hadn’t seen the drag queen tour de farce in more than a decade. My loss.

This go-round, a 20th anniversary bash by “America’s favorite ‘dragapella’ beautyshop quartet,” spoofed — mainly through original lyrics and music — a potty-load of 21st century TV reality series.

The foursome labels its musical comedy “America’s Next Top Bachelor Housewife Celebrity Hoarder Makeover Star Gone Wild!”

I doubt if I’d have laughed harder even if I’d ever seen any of the original reality shows they were lampooning (or if I’d known beforehand that the show was an outgrowth of their having once been contestants on “America’s Got Talent”).

The Kinseys (who wear male attire when not on stage) were, as always, downright irreverent.

No body parts were safe from their wit.

And, naturally, there were endless overt and innuendo references to gay sex, gay sex and, in case you missed it, gay sex.

The Kinsey Sicks website provides a quick rundown of the current cast — “The Boys Behind the Girls.” Its cheeky tone is in keeping with the act, but there are serious undertones.

Ben Schatz (“Rachel“) co-founded the Kinsey Sicks with Irwin Keller and is its chief lyricist. A Harvard Law grad, he started the first national AIDS legal program and was on President Clinton’s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS.

Keller (“Winnie”), who’s responsible for many of the group’s musical arrangements, is a linguist and lawyer who authored Chicago’s gay rights ordinance. He also acts as lay rabbi of a small Cotati synagogue.

Jeff Manabat (“Trixie”) joined the Kinseys in 2004, and Spencer Brown (“Trampolina”) jumped on the vocalwagon in 2008.

The homecoming show also briefly featured Maurice Kelly, who’d originated the Trixie role. She sizzled while doing offering an updated rendition of “Fever” in a white gown that recalled Glinda the Good witch from “Wicked.”

The cavernous Castro has 1,400 seats, and a quick glance showed virtually none was empty. I, in fact, got there somewhat late and was relegated to the last row of the balcony, from which I could hear almost every barbed phrase, many of which (including countless f-bombs) can’t be reprinted by family newspapers or websites.

If lyrics became too dense or too fast to discern, however, I simply tuned into a cappella excellence that the Kinseys’ vocal instruments command.

The throng appeared to be 99.4 percent gay male, with a smattering of lesbians. A handful of others, including me, represented the straight population. If there were any LGBT-bashers, they stayed in hiding.

Parents wisely kept their tiny kids at home.

Pre-show slides on a big screen set the mood. They skipped through the Kinseys’ history, mostly in color but occasionally dating back the full 20 years to black-and-white stills.

The concert-burlesque also included tidbits from old but still vibrant concoctions.

For instance, the two-Jew, two-Gentile, big-haired, big-harmonied quartet offered excerpts from “Oy Vey in a Manger,” which they just presented on the Sonoma State University campus, proving that the Kinseys and their fans prefer naughty over nice.

Highlights of “America’s Next Top…” were retooled versions of “Don’t Rain on My Parade” and “Santa Baby,” as well as aggressive originals that asked the question, “Why the F—k Aren’t We Famous?”

The encores were superb.

One gospel-based piece truly jumped, and the poignant closing tribute to former Kinsey performer Jerry Friedman (and, presumably, AIDs casualties) brought the entire crowd, many of whom had been only one or two degrees of separation removed, to its feet.

Throughout the show, pop and cultural references were rife. Inserted, for instance, were often-snarky mentions of Rachel Maddow, Frida Kahlo, Simon Cowell, Susan Boyle, Dick Cheney and George Clooney.

Throwaway lines rocketed in every direction.

Like an old Henny Youngman routine, if you didn’t laugh at this gag, that phrase, or any specific alliteration or allusion, there’d be another along in a second.

Some were groaners.

Such as: “Van Gogh didn’t have an ear for music.”

After the two-hour show, which featured smatterings of audience participation, came a bonus: Deborah Doyle, president of the California Library Association, moderated a question-and-answer verbal roundelay featuring Kinsey input, serious and not.

The uproarious but thoughtful quartet has appeared in Las Vegas, off-Broadway and in 42 states — and they’ve put out two DVDs and eight CDs.

But the more I think about it, the more I realize that in keeping with their clever, dense-and-dirty delivery, the four drag queens would probably rejoice in my indicating that they’d put out at all.

A 20-year retrospective about the Kinsey Sicks will be displayed at the James C. Hormel Gay & Lesbian Center of the San Francisco Public Library, 100 Larkin St., third floor, from Feb. 8 through July 10. For information on upcoming appearances of the group, check out www.kinseysicks.com or call (415) 326-4679.

Dave Getz and I were relaxing on a stone bench outside Peet’s in San Anselmo’s Red Hill Shopping Center some time ago.

My friend sported his usual: a baseball cap, a mischievous smile and twinkling hazel eyes. He was so excited chatting about his new passion that an hour and a half had zoomed by before we realize our butts ached.

To a stranger, Dave might be an anomaly.

The public face of the longtime drummer for Big Brother and the Holding Company, legendary rock ‘n’ roll group, isn’t sensitivity, introspection and judiciously selected phrases.

But they’re familiar to any who know him.

That afternoon, however, his words reverberated with passion, like quivering cymbals. He was talking about premiering his original melodies instead of replicating those popularized by Janis Joplin.

And he did it, following through with a Global Recording Artists album titled “Can’t Be the Only One” — which also happens to be the name of its lead track, which features Dave’s music and previously unheard lyrics by Joplin.

The CD’s available at WWW.gragroup.com and www.cdbaby.com.

Not so long ago, over lunch on the deck of a Thai restaurant in Larkspur, I listened one more once — to a new jump-start of excitement. Dave again sported a baseball cap, a mischievous smile and twinkling hazel eyes.

The “consummate sideman,” as the Fairfax resident has called himself, had been thinking about a fresh CD — featuring the balafon, a West African instrument that looks like a xylophone made of gourds but plays an uncommon five-note pentatonic scale.

“No one has an album that’ll sound like this!” he exclaimed, his words once again reverberating with passion.

In addition to some traditional African melodies, he planned — and, in fact, is still planning — updates on some antique tunes such as “Buttons and Bows,” an Oscar-winning pop song that appeared in a Bob Hope film of the ‘40s, “The Paleface,”

Dave has long possessed the instrument, but it just as long was relegated to his home — until he showcased it at a Fairfax Library opening of an exhibit featuring the montages of, yes, Dave Getz, fine artist.

Since then, his schedule continually has been overcrowded with gigs, so he had to delay the CD.

Release date: Still undetermined, despite several tracks having been completed.

When it finally comes out, listeners can expect a revelation.

Not unlike the revelation they experienced with “Can’t Be the Only One,” which, just as he had imagined it, became a “progressive, world mix — a little jazz, a little rock, elements of African, some funk.”

All “rhythm-driven.”

I’d chuckled when he’d first used that phrase. What else could anyone expect from the drum guy?

As the sun had bounced off Dave’s white hair and white van dyke back then, I could almost feel his mind racing, hurdling all the simultaneous details required to arrange rehearsals, dodge financial perils and draw an in-person crowd for the debut of The Dave Getz Breakaway.

He had grinned broadly as he told me about the players, who turned out to include Tom Finch on guitar; Peter Penhallow on keyboards; Kate Russo on violin; Chris Collins on guitar; John Evans and Peter Albin on bass; and James Gurley on guitar.

Dave, naturally, was the drummer.

The new group’s lead singer was Kathi MacDonald, a blues diva who died a short time later.

I’d been attentive as Dave painted word-pictures, reeling off the multiple bands his musicians had played in, how he’d jammed and toured with them. He radiated while reminiscing about Mika Scott and him performing, as a duo for five years, “a lot of exotic percussion material.”

But he admittedly was skittish about segueing into bandleader and producer.

“All of a sudden,” he said, “I’m doing the calling, the hiring — in the past, I’ve always been called.”

Obviously, everything worked — after having dreamed “for 10 or 15 years” about cutting loose like that and creating a fresh “vehicle for expression.”

Nowadays, most of his gigs lean heavily on jazz. Upcoming dates include Jan. 18, when his trio will play for the annual 6-9 p.m. “Art from the Heart” auction at the Sonoma State University art gallery; Jan. 19, when his jazz quartet will be playing at the Sleeping Lady in Fairfax from 6:30 to 10; and Feb. 10, when the jazz trio will be at the Panama Hotel in San Rafael.

Being the main man has been a huge shift.

Dave had worked as a sideman himself for five decades, having others (such as Joe McDonald of Country Joe and the Fish, with whom he did two extended tours) “tell me what to do.”

He’d also worked solo — as a painter (after having earned a master of fine arts degree and won a Fulbright), despite unfounded fears that his red-green colorblindness would be discovered.

To be honest, it had felt odd watching his bandleader gland throb; I was used to him being mellow.

I was used to him gabbing breezily about yesterday (including getting his first musician’s card more than 50 years ago, at age 15), not tomorrow.

The stickman’s never been shy about his immersion in a historic cliché — sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. But lately he’s been cutting down on his globe hopping with Big Brother.

The road’s not so easy anymore.

And Dave — who still stays fit by climbing the 88 steps of his Ross Valley home (the same number as piano keys, which he also noodles with) — is always the realist. He accepts, in fact, that he’s “known as a ’60s rock musician and my epitaph will be ‘The drummer who played with Janis Joplin.’”

He also accepts that after all those rock gigs, his hearing isn’t what it used to be.

Dave also knows, though, that he still “can play a lot of styles and cover a lot of people.”

And, clearly, more than one instrument.

  Woody’s [rating:5]

Passion.

Museums have been arousing that sensation in me for seven decades — ever since my mom took me to Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art when I was a gangling suburban kid who knew nearly nothing about anything except how to climb a tree barefoot.

Since then, I’ve eagerly visited museums in dozens of countries, almost always having a top-notch experience.

With my shoes on.

So read what follows knowing that “normal” for me is to wear rose-colored glasses.

But understand, too, that the three exhibits I saw recently at the two Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco would deserve high praise even if I weren’t such an enthusiast. Each provides an opportunity to cavort momentarily inside a painter’s mind, to glimpse his vision from the inside.

Most riveting for me, and edifying, is the “Anders Zorn: Sweden’s Master Painter” display at the Legion of Honor. Most likely because what I’d known about him before could have fit into Thumbelina’s pocket.

Zorn’s watercolor portraits are exquisite, even if they don’t match the genre’s highest echelon.

At first glance they may appear to be detailed yet delicate airbrushed photographs instead of multiple layered paintings. One good example is “In Mourning,” a graceful, pensive 1880 oval creation.

Superb, too, are his land- and waterscapes — showing off his fixation on reflected light. Witness, specifically, 1887’s “Lapping Waves” and 1886’s “Summer Vacation.”

Zorn’s etchings (he produced close to 300 of them) also captivate.

But they’re more vigorous, more dramatic.

His gouache work, meanwhile, is unbelievably powerful — even “Une Premiere (A First),” an 1888-94 work he modified and modified yet still hated enough to cut into pieces (it was restored by an artist friend, who donated it to a museum).

And although Zorn’s oils don’t reach the artistic heights of either his watercolors or etchings, they’re still compelling.

I found particularly intriguing “Omnibus,” an 1891-92 work that delves into the working class by focusing on a milliner, as well as the 1896 entranceway painting, “Self-Portrait with Model,” which experiments with light and shadow.

“Self-Portrait in Red” (1915), in contrast, is a blindingly bright work in which the color of the artist’s coat and vest are so strong they distract from Zorn’s stern, mustachioed face.

The artist lived and worked in Mora, Sweden; London; Paris. He visited San Francisco in the winter of 1903-04 on one of seven trips to the United States. And luxuriated in commissions of society’s elite (and painted portraits of three American presidents).

His oil of President Grover Cleveland, in fact, is one of the 100 pieces (that include a handful of sculptures) in the Legion’s exhibit.

He alone is a discovery emphatically worth a trip into the city.

But, as a bonus, right next to that exhibit in a single room is “Matisse from SFMOMA,” a display of 23 paintings, sculptures and works on paper by the Impressionist color virtuoso — plus six pieces not owned by the modern art institution.

Among the highlights are “The Girl with Green Eyes” (a 1908 oil) and 1916 commissioned portraits of Sarah and Michael Stein, brother and sister-in-law of Oakland’s legendary writer-poet-art collector Gertrude Stein.

The Stein portraits certainly prove there was a there there for Bay Area art patrons.

Why the Legion?

MOMA’s undergoing an extensive expansion and will be closed during construction until 2016. So the facility’s doing joint exhibits with virtually every area museum.

Across town at the de Young, “David Hockney: A Bigger Exhibition,” continues to draw both aficionados and new fans.

Why? Because the 300-piece exhibit is astounding — clearly showing the 76-year-old Brit’s development from 2002 through last year, including his integrating iPhone, iPad and digital movie techniques to create new art forms.

Despite his having a major stroke.

The audio guide, in fact, tells of his turning the resultant speech problems into a boon: By not talking much, he concentrates better.

But there’s too much to even sum up in a review. Oils. Watercolors. Charcoals.

Portraits. Still lifes.  Landscapes.

Homages to and parodies of van Gogh and Picasso.

And it doesn’t take long to discover the “bigger” in the title is fitting (at 18,000 square feet of gallery space on two floors, it’s the largest in the museum’s history).

Size appreciation can stem from viewing a Hockney “Cubist movie” that took 18 different perspectives from 18 digital cameras and synchronized them to comprise a single artwork on 18 screens.

Or from many of the artworks being colossal — including a fascinating strip of 12 portraits with 12 paintings beneath them of the subjects’ hands, an enormous montage of prints tracing art history from 1200 to 1900, colorful 12-foot-high images of Yosemite, and “The Bigger Message,” a 30-canvas re-working of Claude Lorrain’s “The Sermon on the Mount.”

One six-year-old boy visiting with his San Francisco Day School class exclaimed, “Wow! Those are biiig pictures.”I may be three feet taller than he, and about 150 pounds heavier, but I agreed — big time.

“Anders Zorn: Sweden’s Master Painter” will be displayed at the Legion of Honor, Lincoln Park (34th Avenue and Clement Street), San Francisco, through Feb. 2. “Matisse from SFMOMA” will run there through Sept. 7. “David Hockney: A Bigger Exhibition” will be up through Jan. 20 at the de Young, Golden Gate Park (50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive), San Francisco. Details: (415) 750-3600 or legionofhonor.famsf.org  or deyoungmuseum.org

 

If you believe my wife, Ron Ratchford’s middle name should be “Raconteur.”

Or “Boulevardier.”

Or, if all else fails, “Bon Vivant.”

My, my, she certainly has a penchant for French appellations, doesn’t she?

Yet each works.

A raconteur skillfully tells the best stories and anecdotes, sometimes dramatic, other times witty.

Ron’s that, for sure.For two hours one weekday, he regales me on a favorite bench in front of San Anselmo’s Town Hall (another is nearby on the edge of the new Imagination Park) — with stories purloined from his past.

A boulevardier is a sophisticated, worldly, socially active “man-about-town.”

When I spot Ron strolling through a recent art and wine festival, he pauses to chat about what he encountered.

A boulevardier? Surely.

A bon vivant is somebody with cultivated, refined and convivial tastes.

Ron’s that, too, though I can’t swear to his palate for fine wine or gourmet food. And as far as conformity goes, I know he eschews wristwatch, cell phone and landline.

All the years he worked, “usually just to pay the rent,” he felt intruded upon, controlled by such gadgets.

He was a teacher in Appalachia, a buyer for a microbiology company, a social worker, a cook, a mailroom clerk, a waiter and a designer-stitcher for an art group.

“I used to be a scheduler, overburdened by the limits of time,” he remembers.

So, after his last job, he tossed his wristwatch into the ocean.

He feels freer without the devices.

The San Anselmo renter has succumbed to the computer age, however, and is having a love affair with his machine despite it weaning him from legal pad and pen.

On this particular day he wears chinos, a straw hat, sandals, gold-rimmed eyeglasses and a T-shirt featuring his own pattern (“Most of my designs,” he tells me puckishly, “start with stains. I think this one was chocolate”).

He’s obviously more interested in being comfy than being Beau Brummell.

And he’s adamant about nixing fixing a chipped tooth that’s been conspicuous for more than a decade.

He’s also into multi-tasking, steadily knitting (a top pastime) while fielding my questions.

The seventysomething bachelor with a white van dyke dating to the 1960s chuckles a lot. My stories amuse him. So do his.

He playfully skips from this topic to that. “I’m never sequential,” he explains.

One second he talks about toiling as a child-caddy on a golf course and gardener in a cemetery, the next he tells me of Army duty, the moment after that he jabbers about being a financial theatrical consultant.

As befitting a retired gentleman, he’s volunteered with Marin Literacy, teaching adults how to speak and write English.

And he’s tutored at the local library for years — unexpectedly, perhaps, in “Introduction to Computers.”

Admittedly, Ron doesn’t charm everyone. Several in the library’s book-reading group that he attended for years claim — to his face — he hijacked many of the monthly discussions, leaving insufficient time for others.

A voracious reader, he countered that too many believe they, and only they, have the right interpretation” of whatever book is being read.

His favorite activities also include leisure with “coffee-shop friends and old friends from the old days, by email mostly” — and writing at home.

He’s been working for years on his book, “historical fiction, character-driven rather than plot-driven social criticism about passing the status quo from one generation to the next.”

He also keeps a journal/blog consisting of “expanded ideas,” such as musicals based on Flash Gordon or Anne Frank.

Details are, for the most part, secret.

“When people find out I write,” he says, “they start giving me potential plots, plots that usually reveal something about themselves.”

Ron also walks a lot, sometimes twice daily, from downtown to the Seminary and back, and occasionally to Fairfax or San Rafael. He prefers shoe-leather to cars, which “damage the Earth.”

He’s opinionated on everything except TV shows (he doesn’t own a set).

To wit: “There are a lot of people in this area who could be in a book, people who went through the ‘6os but are now the soberest people in town.”

On the other hand, “we have a glut of people here who substitute a nanny for themselves. That’s not good.”

Ron Raconteur Bon Vivant Boulevardier Ratchford —owl- and bird-lover, San Anselmo ambassador without portfolio.

I relish running into this man for all seasons and all seasonings and what my grandmother would have called his “gift of gab.”

To turn an infamous Sally Field quote on its head, I like him, I really like him.

Chipped tooth and all.