Woody Weingarten

Rita Martin, dressed in the reds and pinks she loves. Photo: Woody Weingarten.

Strokes temporarily stole Rita Martin’s speech.

But it’s back, still a bit tentative but good enough so she can be understood easily.

Her courage, on the other hand, never left.

Recovery, she tells me, is “a little, little, little progress at a time. I couldn’t talk, and then I could. I was in a wheelchair, and then I was walking.”

Rita laughs a lot, which makes it difficult for me not to adore her.

Her overall upbeat attitude makes it impossible.

“I laughed in a Tibetan hospital, and in an Indian hospital, after I’d had the strokes,” she tells me. “And when I couldn’t talk for a year and a half, I laughed.”

She labels the date of her strokes, events that occur when blood momentarily stops flowing to the brain, “stroke-iversaries” — and believes “everyone should celebrate them because they show how much you’ve done.”

I’d first met Rita in San Anselmo at a Pine Street Clinic celebration where she’d supplied healthful hors d’oeuvres.

Her professional catering efforts, there and elsewhere, are usually gluten-free, sugar-free and free, in fact, of anything she deems harmful to the body, mind or spirit.

She tells me she learned culinary arts by watching her grandmother “cook for the whole family, when I was three or four, and she’d make little kids out of challah dough and I’d put the eyes on them.”

Rita also does acupuncture.

She’s been licensed since 1986, after having apprenticed at Pine Street five years. But she hopes to expand her practice and do more acutonics, needle-less acupuncture with tuning forks.

My wife has been patronizing the clinic for 18 years, adding Chinese herbs to her Western “slash, burn and poison” treatments when first diagnosed with breast cancer.

She, too, has a positive attitude.

But she was never sure what worked — and didn’t care.

Just as Rita didn’t care how hard she’d have to work to heal.

Despite skepticism from a slew of Western docs who thought “I’d never talk and would only be able to watch TV and say yes or no after years of therapy,” Rita was certain she could get much better much quicker.

She did.

She now sits in my living room sipping green tea.

A glamorous 62-year-old, she’s clad in the flowing reds and pinks she loves, sporting oversized bracelets and silver earrings shaped like butterflies. It’s easy to picture her as a hippie in the ‘60s.

She was, of course.

She always liked helping others, even considered becoming a doctor until she realized it “wouldn’t be much fun.” So she worked in Albany, New York, for Refer Switchboard, aiding “druggies, runaways, alcoholics, people escaping abusive relationships.”

Then she helped start the Washington Park Free Medical Clinic there.

She chats now about living on and off in San Anselmo since 1979 — with some elongated trips to Taiwan, India and Tibet thrown in, literally, for good health.

Her thought processes sometimes don’t make it intact from her brain or heart to her tongue.

She doesn’t get discouraged though.

It wasn’t always that way. She “got really angry because the doctors thought I wouldn’t get better and I knew I could. Then, six months into it, I got really depressed.”

Usually, however, she’d “be stubborn and figure out how to do it, or think how I could do it differently.”

There are “very few things that I can’t do now,” she says.

She sums up her attitude this way: “Sometimes I feel good, sometimes I backslide, then I feel good again, but all the time I feel like I’m getting better.”

And she has no specific advice for other stroke survivors — except that they should “accentuate the positive.”

She touts an optimistic book by her Mill Valley friend, Alison Bonds Shapiro, “Healing into Possibility,” and its companion DVD, “What Now?”

Alison, who also survived two strokes, says “around 700,000 occur in the United States every year.”

Both women emphasize recovery.

On the DVD, Rita notes she can hike more than nine miles a day without using a brace or quad cane.

What’s ahead?

For others, she wants to do “stroke education, where you realize you can get better.” For herself, she wants to heal what’s still faulty — a right leg that doesn’t function fully, a right arm that’s flaccid.

And she offers herself the same maxim she’d advise any recovering person: “Believe change is possible.

“I’m betting she’ll get what she wants.

Woody Weingarten

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In ““The Pianist of Willesden Lane,” Mona Golabek plays under a projected image of her parents, Lisa and Michel Golabek. Photo courtesy of mellopix.com.

Watching dramas about the Holocaust has been low on my priority list for a long time.

That’s because I spent 23 years editing a Jewish newspaper in San Francisco and, as a byproduct, had almost daily contact with survivors, children of survivors and grandchildren with survivors.

Some of their stories were indelibly courageous.

Almost all were incredibly sad.

And tough to hear.

So I went to opening night of Berkeley Rep’s “The Pianist of Willesden Lane” with more than a little resistance, going mainly because my wife, a professional keyboard player herself, really craved to see it.

I’m glad she convinced me.Although it’s imperfect, the one-woman play is a truly important piece of theater, something I’d recommend to Jews and non-Jews, be they fans of classical music or not.

And I not-so-secretly wish every college and high school student could see it.

What happens onstage is direct enough.

Mona Golabek, a 54-year-old piano virtuoso, relates the true story of her prodigy mother’s escape to England via the Kindertransport, an often forgotten mission that rescued 10,000 unaccompanied European children from Nazi violence and oppression.

It’s a tale of Lisa Jura’s escape to a London hostel.

And her survival despite the Blitz.

And her optimism.

Behind the Steinway that Golabek plays with grace and power are four massive gilt frames into which are projected impressionistic stills and all-too-real newsreel films.

Included are black-and-white scenes of Holocaust victims (thankfully we’re spared shots of emaciated bodies being tossed into mass graves) and the dancing flames of Krystallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass in November 1938 when Nazis smashed Jewish-owned stores, buildings and synagogues in Germany and parts of Austria.They’re disquieting, to say the least.

Golabek, in dark red hair (she’s usually blonde) and nondescript black sweater and skirt, reconfigures her mother as a promising teenage pianist who escapes after her father wins a sole Kindertransport ticket in a card game.

It’s a painful scene reflective of the film “Sophie’s Choice” because her parents can save only one of three sisters.

She accompanies her verbal journey with pianistic snippets of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” Debusssy’s “Clair de Lune,” Chopin’s “Nocturne in B-Flat Major, opus 9,” a few passages from Bach and Rachmaninoff, and even a ditty by Gershwin.But her best work comes on Grieg’s only concerto. At different times, she dips into each of the three movements, ending the show triumphantly with the third.

When Golabek talks early-on about the great composers, she does so in her mom’s youthful voice: “I can hear their music in the stones of these streets and the marble of these buildings.”

The play’s dialogue is sometimes poetic, often melodramatic, now and then banal — as when describing someone with “the softest soul in the world.”

But Hershey Felder, who masterfully performed “George Gershwin Alone” at the Rep this summer, directed the play after adapting it from “The Children of Willesden Lane,” a book by Golabek and Lee Cohen, and, in the process, seamlessly blended story and music.

He, along with Trevor Hay, also was responsible for the sparse but powerful scenic design for the 90-minute, intermission-less show. Andrew Wilder and Greg Sowizdrzal were behind the effective projections. And Erik Carstensen was spot-on regarding the sound design, which ranges from chirping birds to bombing raids.

Golabek, unfortunately, is not a polished actor.

Her impersonations of minor characters don’t ring with authenticity, and her body movements are typically a bit severe. One sequence in which she tries to emulate some folks she’s encountered is particularly awkward.

Still, the poignant, emotional and haunting storyline overcomes any defects.

There have been tons of stories about musicians and the Nazis, including “The Pianist,” an extraordinary film. But this one tends to be better than most.

It made me cry.And bemoan the fact that Holocaust deniers still exist.

It also convinced me Golabek has skillfully underscored a meaningful Jewish mantra, “Never forget!”

In an even broader sense, though, the play is a love story — Mona Golabek’s heartfelt tribute to her mother, to hope, and to music.

Clearly, it’s stirring. And inspirational.“The Pianist of Willesden Lane” plays at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre‘s Thrust Theatre, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley, through Jan. 5. 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.

Woody Weingarten

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Sierra Salin blows bubbles at Fairfax Festival parade. Behind him is his “plastic drag,” a “visual and visceral” political statement about toxic waste and environmental destruction.

Sierra Salin, in one of his artistic boxes at a Fairfax town picnic, wears tinfoil to poke fun at those who refer to some homeless as “tinfoil loonies.”

To say Sierra Salin is unconventional is to state the obvious.

According to a character-reference by former Fairfax Mayor Pam Hartwell-Herrero, it “might be easy to look at him as some sort of wacky, offbeat, troublemaker.”

But that, she said, is because “he challenges the status quo, makes us think about our role in community, and always brings a smile and fresh insight to the dialogue.”

He tells me he’s primarily a carpenter and artist.

But he’s also a photographer, jewelry-maker, environmentalist, documentary filmmaker and playful inventor of words.

Sierra, added Hartwell-Herrero, “is a wonderful family man…ever present at town gatherings and important meetings. He is a…good person who cares deeply for the planet and all the creatures living on it. He volunteers his time on campaigns that benefit the town.”

I find it tough to encapsulate him.

The physical part is easy: He sports shoulder-length, curly dark hair and a bushy gray beard. A gold tooth shines from the rear of his mouth when he smiles.

But when he declares, “I never grew up,” he’s not referring to his six-foot stature.

It’s his man-child passions I can’t boil down.

He usually writes on medical forms, “I am allergic to bureaucracy.”

He frequently scratches that itch.

A recent protest by the midlifer targeted a tower that would facilitate more cell phones. “Why are we filling the air with electrosmog?” he asked.

His street theater in Fairfax Festival parades have included a Styrofoam drone augmented by 20-foot high “homeland insecurity” surveillance cameras; a mock nuclear reactor spewing dry-ice radiation fumes; and a “plastic drag,” a “visual and visceral” statement about waste and environmental destruction.

When I asked about his first protest, he friskily replied, “When somebody didn’t give me milk.”

As we sit now on a log in Bolinas Park, conversationally flitting like fireflies escaping a real blaze, he tells me he recently moved, a stone’s throw from his old place (if you have a strong arm).

But when I first chatted with him, in his old Fairfax backyard a year ago, I ascertained he superimposes original thinking on familiar subjects. He’d created, for instance, a “peace is patriotic” pinball machine for the 2011 Marin County Fair.

His environmental focus seems ingrained, I decided — then and now.

He drives his car “as little as possible,” for example, opting to ride his bicycle.

And he fulminates: “We’ve got fracking here, Fukushima there, we’ve got Gulf Oil spills, we’ve got genetically modified organisms everywhere. I’m really, really distressed about the future.”

When he needs to escape, he puts on headphones and stares at stars. “I like solitude and my own space,” he tells me.

Outside his former home, he cherished his gardens and beehives. Inside, he surrounded himself with what others might call clutter.

I was particularly taken with his wife’s weaving-looms and their huge Buddha (“just your basic garage-sale find”). But Sierra is nothing if not eclectic, unattached to a single dogma. Miniature kitchen flags represented major religions plus Sufi, Gaia, Om, Native Americans.

Fascinating, too, were frames filled with photos of his mother and her shadow.

His art, forever scattered, falls into a pigeonhole of “whatever strikes me in the moment.”

While comforting, neither artwork nor protests are relaxing. So he unwinds by singing tenor in a barbershop quartet, and by playing dulcimer and guitar.

He’s a Drake High grad who attended two colleges and earned certification as an EMT, which he practiced for years. He’s proud he’s “been physically and vocally involved in the schools — Manor and White Hill — and my community for years.”

Sierra was born Lothar Norber George Salin in Marin General but toyed with his moniker ever since. He switched to Sierra, although he sometimes sports Shinybright now, because he adores the land “between Truckee and Whitney.”

Occasionally he uses Tunafish as a middle name. “People remember it,” he says.

His name-switches occasionally bring trouble — and First Amendment tilting at judicial windmills. Such as a skirmish with El Dorado County traffic officials who cited him for using a pseudonym, “Love Heals.”

Ultimately, he was sentenced to 32 hours of community service.

He once signed checks “Bush Sucks!” — “out of frustration with the state of America and the world.” He acknowledges that was “a little confrontational.”

He once stood in front of Good Earth with a dried-out Christmas tree and sixty $2 bills he distributed while suggesting passersby “do something for someone else.”  Many folks, suspicious, ignored him.

He once walked into a police station and said he wanted “to turn myself in because society is a menace to me.” “Scram,” they said.

When I asked, “How do we change the world?” he responded: “Love each other.”

It’s still obvious that the more he talks, the more I agree. Maybe I’m just a bit wacky, eclectic and playful, too.

Woody Weingarten

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Sterling Johnson blows bubbles on White House lawn.

Salvi Durango and guitar. Photo: Tim Bonnici.

Tylor Norwood (left) and Dylan Hurley check monitor on Robson-Harrington shoot.

Students concentrate at Michael Feldman’s art camp in Creek Park.

An escapee from San Quentin, an obsessive-compulsive San Anselmo writer and a tipsy five-legged giraffe strut into a bar.

There’s no joke there, no punchline.

I just wanted your attention.

I was afraid if I told you this column’s about creative two-legged critters encountered in Ross Valley parks, you might stop reading.

Please don’t.

Those folks are almost as compelling as the above trio.

Let’s try it this way: A filmmaker, a singing cowboy and a guy who plays second fiddle to his own bubbles operate fruitfully in local parks.

Why?

Because the parks, and their tranquility, spur creativity.

Tylor Norwood’s a San Anselmo resident I met in Robson-Harrington. He was directing two actors under a white canopy.

One actress exclaiming “my vagina” hooked me even before I spied the surrounding equipment.

Only later did I learn he was polishing a comedic scene for his new full-length feature. Tylor also swims in deeply creative TV waters: The BBC and HBO are commercial clients for his SkyDojo production company.

The 2007 San Francisco State film school grad subsequently informed me about the technological revolution, life on the road (“always hectic, so it’s a comfort to come back here”), and a crew in West Marin attacked by yellow jackets (causing eight adults to run “screaming into this little farmhouse to hide”).

No one fled during the re-shoot.

Sterling Johnson, 67, has been toying with bubbles since discovering them during a high-school science project. Nowadays he can be found with them in Fairfax’s Bolinas Park, near his home.

“It’s a great way to connect with people,” he said.

He’s good enough to make a living with his inventiveness, at least part-time. He’s even been asked to perform twice in Tokyo and once at the White House.

Heady stuff.

But more touching for him was the day “an autistic girl blew bubbles at a Formica-topped table I was working at and just lit up.”

Salvi Durango is a longhaired, white-bearded ex-Sleepy Hollow resident recently encountered in Bolinas Park while writing “Old Singing Cowboys Never Die.”

It’s well constructed, easy on the ears.

Salvi told me he’s been penning songs 33 years, and “playing in small bars and taverns all along the West Coast.”

He’s been name-dropping that long, too — with good reason: He’s been befriended by Willie Nelson (who backs him on a patriotic YouTube ditty, “Bankin’ on the Red, White and Blue”), Johnny Cash, Pete Seeger, Merle Haggard and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott.

He remembers chatting on a San Francisco street with John Lennon, who autographed his birth certificate, the only paper Salvi had on him.

He never sought fame but “never gave up on my dream — just singing for people, like I did for you in the park.”

Michael Feldman, who traded in ad-agency billing pads for a diminutive San Anselmo gallery, uses park benches and tables in Creek Park to facilitate his art camp students spreading their materials and smiles.

He encourages them to “explore different mediums and feel good about themselves through art, rather than copying the masters or doing what teachers demand.”

His prime hope? “That some of these kids will use art in their lives forever.”

Daniel Ezell also utilizes Creek Park’s facilities for classes — for Golden Gate Tutoring Center, which the San Anselmo resident founded with his wife, Celeste. They accentuate geometry, comic art and inventions.

“I get the greatest pleasure from instilling a curiosity in my students,” he told me.

Several weeks ago, for instance, students made an old-style diddly guitar from scratch. Result?  ”A lot of noisy music, a lot of fun.”

Michael Grossman lives in San Rafael but also has started to create music in Creek Park.

A professional classical violinist, he began writing pop songs on guitar “as a catharsis, a result of my wife dying.” He’s completed five so far, and declares he will “share my work in any way that’s share-able.”

He sees “the public park as a sanctuary right down the middle of town.”

I concur.

And the range of park creativity has inspired me to ponder where I put one word after another.

I normally create at a cluttered desk at home. Maybe I’ll venture out, park myself in a park and craft a column in the sunlight.

Woody Weingarten

forallevents.com/reviews/

Woody’s [rating:2.5] 

Jeremy Kahn and Rinabeth Apostol are counterpoints as Bill Gates and Luz Ruiz in “First.” Photo: Kent Taylor.

“First” is a fictional glimpse into the future of today from the yesterday of 1976.

It’s an episodic feast of words and ideas — for geeks, freaks, nerds and eggheads. Or recovering or aging geeks, freaks, nerds and eggheads.For others not obsessed with computers, not so much.

Count me in the latter list.

Why? Because the 105-minute play’s excessively crammed with factoids and history and real icons of the computer and software universe that may make delicious provender for techies but overpower folks like me.

I remember having a friend in the early ‘80s who swore by The Well, a social networking site where co-owner and “First” playwright Evelyn Jean Pine first experienced this ‘n’ that.

My gal-pal constantly regaled me with stories of bulletin boards and other now-obsolete niceties — niceties I couldn’t grok (or sometimes even pronounce properly).

I remember that she’d tell me of the hours and hours she’d spent on this game or that, on locating this obscure piece of trivia or that.

And I recall endlessly discussing such nonsense like whether online should be spelled on-line or OnLine instead.

Mostly, I couldn’t get excited. Then.

But I got hooked on the software and hardware like everyone else (just as Bill Gates and his Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen, and a handful of other technology prophets had predicted).

“First,” which was commissioned and developed by PlayGround and which will play in the tiny Theatre Werx space through Nov. 3, details the origins of the digital revolution.

With drama. And humor.Exactly how much is accurate, how much exaggerated, I can’t say.

But I can say that it’s interesting.

And entertaining.

And amusing.

And that all six actors are competent at worst, excellent at best. The latter category includes Jeremy Kahn as a 20-year-old Gates, a mono-focused, egocentric boy wonder, and Rinabeth Apostol as Luz Ruiz, ex-pot dealer waitress.

Ruiz, the only grounded character, acts as a significant counterpoint to the head-in-the-clouds, persona non grata Gates.Instead of perceiving him as a future-seeking marvel, she sees him as “the kid doing wheelies in the parking lot this morning.”

She speaks in English, he in gobbledygook.

Except for a telling moment when he seriously advises her, “People let you do anything — if you push hard enough.”

The catch-all scene is the first personal computer conference.

There, Gates, a Harvard absentee, faces Ed Roberts (David Cramer) — a real-life guy who manufactured the first commercially successful PC kit, the $397 Altair.

He faces, too, a horde of customers irate because he’s demanding they stop sharing software.

Gates reads hate mail; the throng he perceives is “robbing him blind” boos; and Roberts (“I didn’t know I was inventing the future”) futilely urges him to apologize to the crowd.

Michael French directed this world premiere, and does well for the most part.

He does stumble into opaqueness a couple of times, however — when staging a game of keep-away with a Basic code disc, for example, and when IBM marketer Kevin Panik (Tim Green) does an awkward striptease.It’s also problematic trying to define a flighty character, Georgia Potts (Brandice Marie Thompson), self-taught programmer and computer addict who’s drawn to Valentine Smith (Gregory W. Knotts), visionary-dreamer-philosopher who renamed himself for a character in a sci-fi novel, “Stranger in a Strange Land,” a title that doubles as a “First” theme.

Without the humor or the Ruiz character, this would be a mediocre portrait but plot-less play. With them, it’s notable.

The real Gates might be pleased with his visage here, but he most likely hates that his love-child company may be following the path of IBM into irrelevancy.

And he’d definitely despise that I’m writing this review on an iMac.

“First” runs at Stage Werx, 446 Valencia St., between 15th and Sparrow streets, San Francisco, through Nov. 3. Night performances, 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays; matinees, 2 p.m. Sundays. Tickets: $25 to $35. Information: (415) 992-6677 or www.playground-sf.org.

Woody Weingarten

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Woody’s [rating:5] 

Geoff Hoyle wields invisible cigarette in “Geezer.” Photo: Patti Meyer.

Geoff Hoyle portrayed Mr. Sniff in the Pickle Family Circus in San Francisco, Zazu in The Lion Kingon Broadway, and a bevy of other characters I’ve cherished.

Now he’s portraying Geoff Hoyle.At least a carnival-mirror version of him (and his anxieties about death lingering in the wings).

His autobiographical solo show, Geezer, is again entrenched at The Marsh, an intimate San Francisco theater. In it, he combines mime, vaudeville, English music hall comedy — and transforms into a rubber-faced, rubber-bodied, one-man sound machine.

His lithe movements and physical one-liners are masterfully choreographed.

I smiled. I chuckled. I laughed out loud.

Clad in dark slacks and a red shirt, Hoyle friskily pulls elongated invisible hairs from his ear, nostril and chest before playing “Disease: The Video Game,” which becomes an organ recital that includes varicose veins, an enlarged prostate, gingivitis, degenerating spinal discs, diminishing eyesight, osteoporosis, arthritis and dementia.

But, believe it or don’t, he morphs all that into hilarity — even when proclaiming, “Warning: Your warranty expires in 90 days.”

“Is it death we fear,” he eventually ponders, “or just decline?”

But Hoyle’s body is so agile that he belies his 67 years — except for those moments when he whips out a hanky and wipes his sweaty brow and face. His mental agility lets him turn on a dime from skillful comedy to pathos-packed explorations of serious topics such as mortality.

And the death of his English typesetter father at age 60.

Hoyle, in fact, offers a breathholding moment in which one of his hands becomes his father’s, the other his own. The resultant clasp and bonding are pure poignancy.

His more comic instant personality transplants take the form of a blonde bombshell Latin teacher, an aging Minotaur yanked from Greek mythology, a squirrel in a school play, a metaphorical sparrow, and a whimsical glimpse at unrealized characters from a London sitcom and “Masterpiece Theater.”

The showstopper for me, though, was his interpretation of his belly becoming cat-like. My laughter, my wife’s and the crowd’s shook the rafters and then some. Printed words are inadequate to do justice to the sequence; a video might, however, since you then could see and appreciate it.

Hoyle, who studied in Paris with Marcel Marceau’s teacher, Étienne Decroux, also can make an audience squirm — as when he shows his own discomfort during a visit from his adult kids.

“Sit down,” he tells them, “so I can embarrass myself in front of you.”

Also a bit too close for comfort for geezers such as me is his railing against nursing homes. He focuses on the fictitious “Elderado, the elder commune,” drawing huge laughs along the way from a couple of antique jokes.

To wit: “Last night my wife asked me to go upstairs and make love. I said I didn’t know if I could do both.”

This 90-minute show is a re-run of one that debuted at The Marsh in San Francisco in March 2011. It’s still directed by David Ford, who also helped Brian Copeland and Charlie Varon develop their performance art.

But Hoyle is unique.

He can transform a wooden chair — believably — into the prow of a torpedo-endangered ship caught in a storm, a hospital bed and a walker.

Although he was born in Britain, he’s spent most of his life in America — emboldened by two years working with Ed, “the fourth of my artistic fathers” and a short tenure at a commune in the Ozark Mountains.

All his experiences appear to be fodder for his imagination. Boxing and stroking his shadow, for example.

But he covers each post-birth stage of life, his elastic face capturing each phase flawlessly.

Hoyle, who often makes invisible cigarettes real with his expert mime work, infrequently breaks the fourth theatrical wall and interacts with the audience. On one occasion, he asked my wife to tickle him. She was flummoxed, not knowing if he really meant for her to do it. He then mugged derision, which brought yet another laugh from the audience.

His tour de force — which deserves the standing ovation it draws — is often like attending a master class in mime and minimalism.

What Hoyle evokes is so strong that several people could found doubled over at any given point, and the convulsions of a few more turned their glee into pig-like snorts.

The show should be a must for anyone who cares about the aging process, most certainly any man or woman who’s noticed that first wrinkle.

Geoff Hoyle’s “Geezer” plays at The Marsh, 1062 Valencia St. (at 22nd), San Francisco, through Oct. 26. Performances: 8 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, 5 p.m. Saturdays. Tickets: $25 to $50, (415) 282-3055 or (415) 826-5750 or www.themarsh.org.

Woody Weingarten

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Woody’s [rating:5] 

Mark Junek does reverse striptease in the role of Spike as (from left) Anthony Fusco (Vanya), Caroline Kaplan (Nina), and Lorri Holt (Masha) watch in “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.” Photo courtesy kevinberne.com.

A lot more than once.

No, I didn’t wet myself. But it was a close call during the Berkeley Rep production of the comedy that won this year’s Tony Award as best play.

The Big Apple run starred Sigourney Weaver and David Hyde Pierce. I can visualize their performances as two of the three title siblings named after Chekhov characters.

But director Richard E.T. White conducts his ensemble of actors as if it were a jazz sextet, staging one solo riff after another to extract loud laughter from the audience as easily as a teenager might Google just about anything.Witness, for instance, the brilliance of Mark Junek’s physical antics when his character, the twentysomething boy-toy Spike, does a reverse strip tease.

Or Sharon Lockwood’s breakout as Sonia, imitating Maggie Smith emoting in a screechy British voice on the way to the Oscars (while prancing in a tiara and blue gown on which no more sequins would fit).

Or Heather Alicia Simms’ star turn as Cassandra, a voodoo pi

n-pricking prognosticator, or Anthony Fusco’s Old World passivity as the bearded Vanya.Nor should the other performers be ignored. Both are top drawer, Lorri Holt as narcissistic B-movie star Masha (“I just feel old and vulnerable”) and Caroline Kaplan as wannabe actress Nina, who’s attracted to Spike (“He is so attractive — except for his personality, of course”).

Playwright Christopher Durang’s wit and cleverness can be as swift-paced as a Louis C.K. standup routine, and as omnipresent as his allusions to Shakespeare, the Beatles and Disney’s seven dwarfs.

Durang even spoofs his own reverence for his favorite 19th Century playwright.“If everyone took anti-depressants, Chekhov would have had nothing to write about,” intones one character. “I hope you’re not going to make Chekhov references all day,” pleads another.But the seriousness that lies underneath is countered by the buffoonery that’s pervasive.

Indeed, “Vanya” is an homage, with frequent references to “Three Sisters,” “The Cherry Orchard” and “Uncle Vanya” but if you’ve never seen or read anything by Chekhov you’ll still enjoy the banter, set pieces and character development — not to mention the marvelous costuming by Debra Beaver Bauer (look particularly for the dwarfs), note-perfect sound design by Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen, and the lone set by Kent Dorsey that replicates an upscale country home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where Durang actually lives.

Durang’s characters are skillfully drawn. Sonia and Vanya feel their lives have passed them by, having spent 15 years caring for their Alzheimer’s-plagued parents.

She’s never reconciled her being adopted, and is usually sad and angry, a throwaway spinster who “can’t do anything right.” He laments his life, too, and relishes raving about the glories of yesteryear and the dreadfulness of today’s culture.

Like much of Chekhov’s work, “Vanya” emphasizes people and relationships rather than plot — with everyone working in unison to make sure the audience feels the play is much shorter than its two hours plus.

And when the characters become stagehands and move furniture between scenes, their actions appear to be seamless part of the play.Durang, who is gay, has had a history of dealing with homosexuality, Roman Catholic dogma and child abuse in his previous work (which included “Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You” and “Beyond Therapy”).This one skips the dogma and abuse.

Samuel Beckett, creator of “Waiting for Godot,” is known as the father of the Theater of the Absurd. In a sense, Durang might be considered his stepchild, romping in the same playground although his humor and personages are less abstract, more grounded, more rooted in reality.

Despite all the mugging and over-the-topness.

“Who’d you recommend this show to?” my wife asked me as we left the theater, continuing a verbal game we’ve played for years.

“Everyone,” I replied — “without hesitation.”

“Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” plays at the Berkeley Repertory’s Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St., Berkeley, through Oct. 25. Night performances, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Sundays, 7 p.m.; matinees, Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $17.50 to $89, subject to change, (510) 647-2949 or www.berkeleyrep.org.

Woody Weingarten

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Woody’s [rating:4.5] 

Hannah peeks through maze from the top. Photo: Woody Weingarten

My granddaughter owns a short attention span — except when she’s fascinated.

And then the 6-year-old, like most kids her age (or younger), insists on repeating whatever’s grabbed her, again and again and again. Her recent visit to the new Exploratorium is an unequaled for-instance.

She had nearly as much fun as horsing around with her new rescue puppy.

Hannah had been to the old science museum building in the Palace of Fine Arts multiple times, and loved it. But this time her squeals of delight were louder, her giggles more effervescent.

Repeatedly.

Once upon a time she raced from one exhibit to another, testing each for about half a second. But she was only 5 then. Or 4. Or 3 the first time we took her.

Now, she’s exponentially more mature.

Can the word “sophisticated” fit a first-grader? Yes, of course (though I grant a substantial bias in Hannah’s case).

Anyway, this time she lingered at exhibits. And tested each gain, again and again.

“Self-Centered Mirror” shows Hannah and her grandpa. Photo: Woody WeingartenAnyway, this time she lingered at exhibits. And tested each again, again and again.

She didn’t tire until the beginning of our fourth hour.

Like a white-haired roadie, I trailed her as if she were a rock star whose latest single had just gone viral. And I managed to experience much of her hands-on, trial-and-error experimentation from an analogous child’s-eye-view.

I left believing that had I looked close enough, I could have seen her mind expand.

The new Exploratorium, like the old, is an interactive, two-story science museum. But this one’s indoors-outdoors, a 330,000-square-foot facility with three times the space.It has 40 new exhibits and 560 carryovers, gratifying each of the senses except taste (and that craving might be satisfied at the posh 200-seat buffet-style Seaglass Restaurant or a tiny takeout café, “the seismic joint”).

Because the facility’s bigger, it doesn’t feel cramped or crowded. And it seems a bit less noisy (as well as somewhat less exciting).

But Hannah didn’t think about any of that.

She was too busy running back and forth between two displays — “Self-Excluding Mirror,” which reproduced images but somehow made the person in the center disappear, and “Self-Centered Mirror,” which replicated the viewer over and over.

Before that, near the entrance, she’d became entranced with “A Drop to Drink,” featuring a miniature hand she could manipulate robotically to fill a miniature cup with a lone drop of water, and “Black Sand,” an exhibit that showcased countless metallic pieces that stuck together magnetically. A few times during our visit she returned to both stations.

Hannah enjoyed exhibits carried over from the old building.

One favorite — where images and colors changed when we waved our arms, kicked out our legs and wiggled our torsos. Another was a screen crammed with pins that made different hand shapes and designs as she moved her fingers underneath.

Another echo came as Scott Weaver guided ping-pong balls through his panoramic view of San Francisco and vicinity made from “105,387 and a half toothpicks.” We’d seen it before, at the Marin County Fair, but loved it still.His art-piece only took 37 years to finish.

Hannah was also taken with “Tidal Memory,” its 24 columns of water representing 24 hours of tide data.

I, meanwhile, enjoyed playing “The Visible Pinball Machine,” which showed the machine’s innards. And all of us marveled at “Gyroid,” an outdoor climbing maze Hannah crawled through and atop while we watched.

Leaving, Hannah gleefully said she liked running into and out of an “orange and white spinning circus-tent thing,” spinning a plastic ball on a column of air, and changing the course of a simulated tornado.It’s truly impossible to even mention all we experienced, much less what we didn’t do (like check out the second floor and its observation center).

But we did recognize the Exploratorium features displays for virtually every age, ranging from some aimed at preschoolers to some so technical a doctorate in an esoteric scientific endeavor might help.

I think that translates, in effect, into something for everyone.All that’s required is sufficient time.

Oh, well, there’s always next time. Or the time after that. Or the one after that. Or…

The Exploratorium, Pier 15, San Francisco, is Tuesdays through Sundays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Wednesdays, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Thursday night After Dark cash-bar event for those 18 and older, 6 to 10 p.m. Tickets: $10-$25. Information: (415) 528-4444 or www.exploratorium.edu.

Woody Weingarten

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Woody’s [rating:5] 

San Francisco Symphony conductor Michael Tilson-Thomas

Violin soloist James Ehnes

My wife last heard George Gershwin’s “An American in Paris” played in the flesh 49 years ago in Manhattan.

I heard it in-person much more currently — 33 years ago — also in New York.

Sadly, neither of us can remember a thing about those concerts other than we were there. But the San Francisco Symphony version we caught recently, with Michael Tilson-Thomas conducting with his usual exemplary zeal, is apt to linger in our memories a long, long time.

And not because the music stand of a musician in the last row slipped down with a clunk before the Davies Hall concert began.

But because the performance was as luscious and joyous as the first bite of a truffle.

And then some.

The audience agreed. It gave the musicians — and MTT, of course — a standing ovation.

Tilson-Thomas conducted it at a good clip, conjuring up all the vibrancy possible from Gershwin’s instrumental dialogue — aided, naturally, by the incredible finesse of San Francisco’s finest music-makers.

Together they painted a melodic portrait that evoked the same images and feelings Gershwin must have experienced in the vital, avant-garde Paris of the 1920s.

MTT didn’t settle for just Gershwin, however.

He constructed an amazing program that beguiled the audience, starting with “The Alcotts,” a six-minute rendition of an unexpectedly sweet Charles Ives movement from “A Concord Symphony” — replete with passages that hint of church hymns and Beethoven’s Fifth.

Then, soloist James Ehnes, whose lightning-fast bow was a visual blur at the same time he created stringed exactitude, drew a standing ovation for his artistry on Samuel Barber’s ”Violin Concerto, Opus 14.” Some pundits have found the explosive, ultra-fast third movement disconnected from the first more pensive two, but Ehnes made any previous criticism vanish.

My wife commented of the “Presto in moto perpetuo,” only half in jest, that “his virtuosity made Rimsky-Korsakov’s ‘The Flight of the Bumblebee’ sound like it’s flying in slow motion.”

MTT gently pushed Ehnes back on stage for an encore. Niccolò Paganini’s “Caprice No. 16” earned him another standing ovation.

Tilson-Thomas also paired George Antheil’s “A Jazz Symphony,” a multi-faceted pastiche from 1928, with the Gershwin closer, suggesting Antheil was “deliberately out there, to delight and provoke.”

He urged the crowd to “fasten your seat belts — here it goes.”

The piece, with layered textures, colors and rhythms, with musical pauses as effective as those in a Harold Pinter play, included blow-your-mind riffs from trumpeter Mark Inouye and pianist Robin Sutherland.

One muted horn segment infused its bluesy strains in my mind and heart at once. A brief clarinet segment duplicated that impact.

An ad campaign of the ‘70s and ‘80s repeatedly proclaimed that “When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen.” I suggest the slogan be updated for the 2013-14 season: “When MTT conducts, everyone listens.”

His work so inspired my spouse, in fact, she rushed home to frolic with “An American in Paris” on our Yamaha piano.

She’d never played it before but thought it “would be fun.”

It was.

For her and me.

But in good conscience I must admit the symphony did it a teensy-weensy bit better.

Maybe, dear, it was just because they’d rehearsed.

If you missed this performance, you might want to catch one of these upcoming concerts: “MTT and Jeremy Denk: Beethoven, Mozart, Copland,” Nov. 7-10; Natalie Cole and the symphony, Nov. 25; Dianne Reeves with the orchestra, Dec. 11; Burt Bacharach and the symphony, Dec. 13; “MTT and Yo-Yo Ma,” Feb. 28. Information: (415) 864-6400 or www.sfsymphony.org.

Woody Weingarten

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Film newcomer Thomas Simon stars in the title role of “The Zigzag Kid.”

Nono is an exceedingly spirited, exceedingly imaginative Dutch kid who draws attention through mischievous stunts — particularly when they don’t work.

But he can be disarming.

And so can “The Zigzag Kid,” the coming-of-age film in which Thomas Simon stars as Nono, a 13-year-old two days from his bar mitzvah.

“Zigzag,” the opening-night entry of this year’s San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, will play at the California Theater in Berkeley on Aug. 6 and at the Rafael Theatre in Marin on Aug. 12.

The movie’s storyline is deceptively simple: Nono wants to emulate his dad, whom they both steadfastly believe is the best police inspector in the world, and in the process searches for details about his mother’s death.

Adventures ensue.

Although that may not sound wholeheartedly enchanting, when you add the slickest thief in the world; the inventive secretary-girlfriend of the boy’s father; and a seductive chanteuse marvelously portrayed by Isabella Rossellini (who’s looking more and more like her mother, Ingrid Bergman, as she ages), you find yourself devouring a cinematic stew spiced to please.

The 95-minute film — a fast-paced, subtitled Dutch-Belgian detective puzzler — contains way more whimsy and fantasy than a viewer might expect.

Plus amusing umbrella hijinks. And disguises. And chases.

With a modicum of poignancy.

And that leaves no room to talk about the charming flick’s top-notch production values.

Purists may object to the movie’s blurring of good and bad, but the movie’s magic will make that mindset disappear quickly for most filmgoers.

The SFJFF, the world’s first and still largest Jewish film festival, this year — its 23rd — is screening 74 films from 26 countries in nine Bay Area venues.

Berkeley and Marin screenings both will include an outstanding documentary, “Dancing in Jaffa,” which traces a world-class dancer’s efforts to teach dance to Jewish-Israeli and Palestinian-Israeli youngsters and then pair them in competition.

Another Marin highlight, which also will be shown in Oakland, is “The Trials of Muhammad Ali,” which explores issues of race, identity, power and faith.

A total of 39SFJFF films were slated for the California Theatre, 2113 Kittredge St., Berkeley, between Aug. 2 to 8. Thirteen films will screen at the Rafael Theatre, 1118 Fourth St., San Rafael, between Aug. 10 and 12. Festival information can be found at (415) 621-0523 or www.sfjff.org.

Woody Weingarten

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