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Woody Weingarten

Dec 21 2023
Love0

Pick! ASR Film ~~ ‘The Crime Is Mine’ — French Screwball Satire Carves Up Justice, Feminism

By Woody Weingarten

By Woody Weingarten

Screwball comedies satirizing traditional love stories peaked in the early 1940s — after having begun to gain popularity during the Great Depression.

New examples of that romantic comedy sub-genre would manage to pop up every few years thereafter, but they’d usually fail to be as funny or polished as those of yesteryear.

But now comes The Crime Is Mine, a French-language satire (with subtitles, of course) that stands up with the best of them. The one-hour, 42-minute film time-warps back to 1930s Paris and provides a Duisenberg-speed storyline that repeatedly twists and turns as it focuses on a sexy, penniless actress who figures she can become famous by confessing to a murder she didn’t commit.

 … “The Crime Is Mine” ain’t subtle, but delightfully tasty it is …

Scheduled for release on Christmas Day by Music Box Films, the flick lays onto the marvelous comedy, an equally marvelous carving up of feminism, the class system, show biz antics, and courtroom machinations.

In the final analysis, though, within weeks after watching the movie, you’re likely not only to have forgotten slices of the plotline but exactly who is who, especially when it comes to lesser characters such as the judge, the prosecutor, the police inspector, and a boyfriend (even though all are amusing) and exactly what who said to whom.

Nadia Tereskiewicz merrily plays blonde bombshell Madeleine Verdier, a talent-less wannabe who desperately craves stardom and her close-up. She’s aided in her quest for fame by her brunette BFF and starving garret roomie, Pauline Mauléon (played by Rebecca Marder), a young lawyer with no other clients who launches a campaign based on the notion of self-defense against sexual assault.

Supporting their skillful acting chops is Isabelle Huppert, a French icon who, while chomping on the scenery, portrays silent film star Odette Chaumette, the real killer turned blackmailer.

All the main characters, each of whom is self-serving, mug a lot (except the murdered producer) — and every now and then, Madeleine’s combined flightiness and earthiness may remind a filmgoer of Renee Zellweger playing Roxie Hart in Chicago.

 … Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 100% rating

François Ozon’s direction of this adaptation of a 1934 stage play is almost as perfect. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 100% rating with 22 credits so far.

With humor ranging from dry to frivolously farce-like, it’s virtually impossible not to like the film—whether or not you can relate to kooky but intelligent women who easily outmaneuver the men in their lives.

The Crime Is Mine ain’t subtle, but delightfully tasty it is — a cinematic soufflé that never falls.

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ASR Senior Contributor Woody Weingarten has decades of experience writing arts and entertainment reviews and features. A member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle, he is the author of three books, The Roving I; Grampy and His Fairyzona Playmates; and Rollercoaster: How a Man Can Survive His Partner’s Breast Cancer. Contact: voodee@sbcglobal.net or https://woodyweingarten.com or http://www.vitalitypress.com/

Production The Crime is Mine
Directed by François Ozon
Run Dates Opens December 25, 2023
Venues TBA
Reviewer Score Max in each category is 5//5
Overall 4.25/5
Performance 4.25/5
Script 4/5
Pick? YES!

This story was first published on https://aisleseatreview.com, which publishes independent views and reviews on Bay Area arts, destinations, and lifestyle.

Woody Weingarten, a longtime member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle, can be contacted by email at voodee@sbcglobal.net or on his websites, https://woodyweingarten.com and https://vitalitypress.com.

Dec 05 2023
Love0

‘Title of Show’ is OMG! terrific at Santa Rosa’s Left Edge Theatre

By Woody Weingarten

Excellent in Left Edge Theatre’s amusing [title of show] are (from left)Jonathan Blue and Michael Girts. (Courtesy Dana Hunt/Left Edge Theatre)

Then in 2004, two self-described “nobodies from New York” concocted a hilarious autobiographical musical that depicts how two gay buddies wrote a successful four-character play in three weeks (with the aid of two lesbian actress friends) to enter a festival competition.

Their concoction — titled “[title of show]” and detailing every step of what they did (including the use of insipid dialogue from their everyday-speak) — is running at the Left Edge Theatre in Santa Rosa. It’s worth the trip there.

Director-choreographer Serena Elize Flores has created an almost flawless two-act, two-hour version with four superb actor-singers that guarantees you’ll laugh (or at least chortle) a lot at both the clever wordplay and the physical horseplay and mugging.

Jonathan Blue beautifully portrays music-and-lyrics composer Jeff Bowen and Michael Girts does equally well as Hunter Bell, who wrote the book. Both utilize usually broad (and occasionally subtle) expressions that can’t help but entertain. Eating a hot dog, for example, becomes Hunter’s elongated gag in which a mouthful of food becomes a mouthful of giggles for the audience.

The guys’ gal-pal muses are deftly conjured by Molly Larsen-Shine as glorious-voiced Heidi, a wannabe Broadway star relegated to understudy roles, who temps and caters to pay the rent, and Rosie Frater as Susan, who labels her day job as “corporate whore.”

Playing the foursome working on a new musical in Left Edge Theatre’s [title of show] are (from left) Michael Girts, Jonathan Blue, Rosie Frater and Molly Larsen-Shine. (Courtesy Dana Hunt/Left Edge Theatre) 

Language in the show can be prickly, to say the least, with scads of gay and sexual references — all played for laughs.

Repeated bits evoke wide grins, such as: when Jeff condescendingly corrects Hunter’s dance steps and language (“It’s redundant, ATM stands for automated teller machine so you’re saying automated teller machine machine”); when one of the women suggests having the two fellas as her “maids of honor”; when big names are dropped as they mull who’ll star in their show (would you believe Paris Hilton?); when cast members come up with monikers for drag queens (Lady Footlocker, as a for-instance); and when Playbills from a gazillion forgotten Broadway flops are projected onto two vertical screens onstage.

The showstopping song is “Die, Vampire, Die!” a spectacular, incisive look by Susan (and the three others) at fighting inner demons and not compromising when it comes to creativity.

But highly likeable, too, are “An Original Musical,” a comic duet featuring Jeff with Hunter wearing a ludicrous costume as a sheet of blank paper on which they write their original show for the New York Musical Theatre Festival; “I Am Playing Me,” an ideal showcase for Heidi; as well as “Change It, Don’t Change It/Awkward Photo Shoot” and “Nine People’s Favorite Thing” (“I’d rather be nine people’s favorite thing than 100 people’s ninth favorite thing”), both exuberantly mimed and sung by all four performers.

There is no slick scenery design. The set consists of black walls, two upholstered, plastic-covered chairs, two bare-boned others, and an old-fashioned dial phone on top of a stool.

Nothing else in the show, in which the characters continuously deconstruct reality, disappoints.

Left Edge’s “[title of show]” deserves bigger audiences. The musical comedy, which took two years to travel from the New York Musical Theatre Festival to off-Broadway (where the real Hunter and Jeff each won an Obie) and then another two for a crack at the Great White Way, is great fun and, in fact, OMG! terrific.

Left Edge Theatre’s “[title of show]” continues through Dec. 23 at The California, 528 Seventh St., Santa Rosa. Tickets are $20-$29 atleftedgetheatre.com or (707) 664-7529.

 

This story was first published on LocalNewsMatters.org, a nonprofit site supported by Bay City News Foundation http://www.baycitynews.org/contact/.

 

Woody Weingarten, a longtime member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle, can be contacted by email at voodee@sbcglobal.net or on his websites, https://woodyweingarten.com and https://vitalitypress.com.

Nov 29 2023
Love0

PICK! ASR FILM ~~ ASR Film: Hite Documentary Details Woman Sexologist’s Rapid Rise and Exile

By Woody Weingarten

By Woody Weingarten

Cancel culture wasn’t a concept in the 1980s, but slinky sexologist Shere Hite became victimized by something exactly like it.

The feminist author of a 600-page 1976 blockbuster, The Hite Report on Female Sexuality, was not only lambasted as a man-hater because of her writings but partially because, being broke, she’d posed nude for Playboy and modeled for paperback covers and ads that objectified women. She was slut-shamed even though that phrase hadn’t been coined either.

Hite became so distraught at her treatment, mostly at the hands of male critics who felt threatened, she ultimately fled from the states to Europe, mainly Britain and Germany, and relinquished her American citizenship.

Now, The Disappearance of Shere Hite, an R-rated biopic by Nicole Newnham, resurrects the researcher’s life by cobbling together frequent rolling texts of her basic material (and a voice-over by actor Dakota Johnson) with sometimes fuzzy newscasts and archival footage, next to interviews with the Missouri-born writer, her ex-lovers, her detractors, and her friends and supporters, including Kate Millett, author of the groundbreaking Sexual Politics, who bemoans Hite’s public erasure and self-exile and points out that the academic social scientist could no longer earn a living in the United States.

Shere Hite as she appears in new documentary. Courtesy of Mike Wilson. An IFC Films release.

The nearly two-hour documentary strikingly shows Hite being ambushed by tabloid-type television journalist Maury Povich, causing her to leave the interview almost as soon as it started (with the interviewer’s aide forcibly trying to stop her), as well as her haughtily blowing smoke in talk show host Mike Douglas’s face, and trying to cope with a rude, all-male Oprah audience that couldn’t wait to take pot-shots at her research.

It further connects disparate items such as Anita Bryant attacking gay rights, a conference of the National Organization of Women (NOW), Anita Hill testifying at a Supreme Court confirmation hearing that Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her, Hite’s neighbor and KISS co-lead singer Gene Simmons reflecting on her New York parties that collected endless celebrities, and a James Bond poster for the movie Diamonds Are Forever with two sexy women flanking Sean Connery (Hite had posed for both, one featuring her signature strawberry blonde hair, the other with tousling pure blonde tresses).

Disappearance, which is being distributed by IFC Films, also builds a sense of a whole woman by stitching scenes of raw but lovely sexuality with staged images of women with tots, women cooking dinner, women strolling.

The film was written by director Nicole Newnham, who’d co-directed the Oscar-nominated Crip Camp, an amazing, feel-good 2020 doc that had a 100% Rotten Tomatoes critics’ rating after 99 reviews. That flick managed to link a summer camp for the crippled to both the American disability rights and civil rights movements, making sure to note along the way that the disabled are also sexual beings.

The Hite Report on Female Sexuality — which had started as a post-grad thesis at Columbia University — was based on questionnaires filled out anonymously by 3,000 women. Hite, an admitted bisexual, defended the anonymity of her interviewees by insisting the women wouldn’t have been honest had they been required to list their names because they feared negative reactions from their male mates and other men.

That approach, however, gave major ammunition to vilifiers who claimed her methodology was flawed.

The tome drew as much public attention as those by Kinsey and Masters & Johnson and earned a ranking as the 30th best-selling book of all time. It became a key element of feminist history by stressing that most women felt unsatisfied sexually with their male partners, that women achieved orgasm through clitoral stimulation and masturbated often, that rampant infidelity existed, that 95% of women faked orgasm, that sexual equality was possible, and that few people (men and women) knew much about the female genitalia.

Despite her instant best-seller and subsequent titles (including her first follow-up, The Hite Report on Men and Male Sexuality) that were believed to have advanced the so-called Second Wave of feminism, Hite, because of the extended backlash, never reached her goal of overcoming both gender and class bias — even after having sold 20 million books overall.

Shere Hite. Courtesy of Mike Wilson. An IFC Films release.

The sex educator was criticized heavily for virtually everything she peddled, especially such statistics as 84% of women being unsatisfied emotionally and only 13% of women still loving their husbands after two years of marriage.

Whether you think Hite an innovator or fraud, The Disappearance of Shere Hite is fascinating throughout — and offers viewers an opportunity to see how she flaunted her body and flamboyant costumes at the same time as it provides dramatic insight into her original, creative mind.

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ASR Senior Contributor Woody Weingarten has decades of experience writing arts and entertainment reviews and features. A member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle, he is the author of three books, The Roving I; Grampy and His Fairyzona Playmates; and Rollercoaster: How a Man Can Survive His Partner’s Breast Cancer. Contact: voodee@sbcglobal.net or https://woodyweingarten.com or http://www.vitalitypress.com/

This story was first published on https://aisleseatreview.com, which publishes independent views and reviews on Bay Area arts, destinations, and lifestyle.

Woody Weingarten, a longtime member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle, can be contacted by email at voodee@sbcglobal.net or on his websites, https://woodyweingarten.com and https://vitalitypress.com.

Nov 29 2023
Love0

PICK! ASR Theater ~SF Playhouse Bends Genders in Superb “Guys and Dolls”

By Woody Weingarten

By Woody Weingarten

It’s virtually impossible to rate the new San Francisco Playhouse production of Guys and Dolls as anything but almost perfect, not quite as good as God’s long-running comic-tragedy, Mankind.

Sanitized, slang-spouting characters lifted from two 1920s and ‘30s Damon Runyon short stories remain extremely likeable 73 years after the Tony Award-winning musical comedy debuted on Broadway — New Yawk gamblers and gangsters mostly, but also a couple of inept Chicago crooks/crapshooters. And then, of course, there’s Sarah Brown, the Save-A-Soul missionary heroine who proves that love can conquer all.

Frank Loesser’s music (and lyrics) for this rendition — accompanied by a sprightly, hidden-onstage band under the direction of Dave Dobrusky — reaches the epitome of peppy, ideal for the holiday season.

Sky Masterson (David Toshiro Crane, center) and gamblers roll the dice.

Choreography by Nicole Helfer, even if somewhat derivative, hits an exciting high (with each dancer sublimely connected to all the others). Costumes designed by Kathleen Qiu appear both authentic to the era and playful (especially numbers in the Hot Box burlesque hall where Adelaide comically struts her stuff), augmented by sundry wigs concocted by Laundra Tyme—some straightforward, some whimsical.

Adelaide (Melissa WolfKlain, center) performs with the Hot Box Girls (from left, Malia Abayon, Alison Ewing, Jill Slyter, and Brigitte Losey) in “Guys and Dolls.”

The frequently revolving sets by scenic designer Heater Kenyon come across as exceptionally imaginative, a proverbial wonder to behold. Yet it’s the cast of the superb show — which is labeled a fable, but which adroitly delves into how one segment of society has trouble understanding another — that shines brightest.

Audience faces light right up, for example, each time Melissa WolfKlain, who delightfully and deliberately squeaks as Adelaide steps onto the stage, a stripper-star who’s been engaged for well over a decade to Nathan Detroit a guy whose livelihood stems from running a long-haul floating crap game. She’s particularly marvelous rendering “Adelaide’s Lament” (“In other words, just from worrying if the wedding is on or off, A person can develop a cough”), “Take Back Your Mink,” and “Marry the Man Today” (a duet with Abigail Esfira Campbell, as puritanical but seducible Sgt. Sarah Brown).

Campbell sings with a purity that can make most other vocalists jealous. She’s top-drawer on “I’ll Know” and “I’ve Never Been in Love Before,” with her acting chops becoming an ideal accompaniment to her vocals (her slinky drunk scene in Cuba is most noteworthy). Both melodies are performed, by the way, in duet with David Toshiro Crane as charismatic, cocky, sexy gambler Sky Masterson.

Crane gives the Masterson character a sturdiness that makes you believe he can change from a high-roller to a guy high on life and love. His voice, too, soothes while delivering whatever emotion is required.

Joel Roster acts appropriately oblivious to his doll as Nathan Detroit, the guy who can’t bring himself to commit to her but who’s committed to finding a gambling site somewhere.

Kay Loren, who uses the pronouns they/them, rounds out the frontline performers as Nicely-Nicely Johnson, a part usually filled by a man. Director Bill English and casting director Kieran Beccia, in fact, carefully gender-bent other actor-singers (such as having Kay Loren and Jessica Coker play Nicely-Nickely Johnson and Big Jule, respectively). They ethnic-bent, too, with Asian Alex Hsu assuming the slick role of Irish cop Lt. Brannigan.

But it takes only a minute or two for a theatergoer to fully suspended his or her disbelief and enjoy the binary and racial tampering.

Underscoring what unison truly means — musically and with a racial mix — is the praiseworthy chorus.

Sgt. Sarah Brown (Abigail Esfira Campbell, center) tries to enlist sinners for the Save-A-Soul Mission.

The major plot device is about finding a location for that dice game. The subplot feels terribly familiar: Guy meets and courts girl (because he bets the then huge sum of $1,000 that he can); girl is attracted to and then turned off by guy; guy gets girl.

Other don’t-miss tunes include the title tune, “Luck Be a Lady,” and “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat” — and two exhilarating all-dance numbers, “Havana” and “The Crapshooter’s Dance.”

The only thing absent from this two hour-plus version is the thick, unpolished Lower East Side of New Yawk accents — along with the “deses” and “doses” — that instantly tell visitors from Boise, Idaho, that they’re in the Big Apple.

Guys and Dolls has been considered by many as the ultimate musical comedy. The SF Playhouse production shouldn’t disavow that opinion.

Dancers Chachi Delgado and Malia Abayon move fast but sensually in a Havana nightclub.

A Footnote: I’ve told the tale of my wife’s obsession with the show for about 20 years — ever since the last time we saw it.

Before watching a touring company at another San Francisco theater, she’d played the entire score for me on our piano at home. She’d followed by humming most of its tunes during our trip into the city from San Anselmo. And, as I did, she loved the show itself.

But then she inserted a CD of the score on the way back from that performance. I knew she’d adored the show penned by famed theatrical storyline fixer Abe Burrows and Jo Swerling ever since as a pre-teen she’d seen the original with Robert Alda, Alan’s dad, playing Sky Masterson — that final over-the-top fangirl action was much too much for me to handle.

Ergo, I had some trepidation about leading her to the SF Playhouse, even as a MysteryDate, something we’ve been doing for all 36 years we’ve been wed. A MysteryDate, FYI, is an almost-certain way to help keep the sizzle in a relationship — an activity you arrange without your partner knowing where she or he is going until you get there. Or vice versa — that is, one arranged with you in the dark.

After five years of working on it, not incidentally, I’ve just finished writing a book about MysteryDates, one that can double as a travel guidebook while clobbering the myth that long-term relationships are inevitably doomed to become unexciting, monotonous, or drab. The book should be available in January. Check out https://woodyweingarten.com to be sure.

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ASR Senior Contributor Woody Weingarten has decades of experience writing arts and entertainment reviews and features. A member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle, he is the author of three books, The Roving I; Grampy and His Fairyzona Playmates; and Rollercoaster: How a Man Can Survive His Partner’s Breast Cancer. Contact: voodee@sbcglobal.net or https://woodyweingarten.com or http://www.vitalitypress.com/

Nov 22 2023
Love0

Pick! ASR Theater ~~ Delightful, Funny Radio Play of “It’s a Wonderful Life” at RVP

By Woody Weingarten

By Woody Weingarten

I may not believe in angels, especially bumbling ones, but I do believe in redemption. It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Show fits snugly in that concept.

With at least two major wars raging at the moment, the charming 95-minute throwback is, because it’s mostly cornball, a major relief — and totally delightful.

Yes, this buoyant production by the Ross Valley Players — just like its classic Frank Capra holiday film predecessor starring Jimmy Stewart — toys with a viewer’s emotions. And because I welcome a good cry, I give the trip into Nostalgia Land four-and-a-half handkerchiefs.

The heart-warming, intermission-less play still focuses on George Bailey’s tale of love and loss (and, yes, of course, redemption). But this version also emphasizes wacky sound effects that might have been used by a snowbound 1940s radio station.

That makes the whole enchilada a lot funnier.

For a good chunk of Joe Landry’s play, Clarence Oddbody, George’s 292-year-old apprentice guardian angel, is more likeable than the guy he’s supposed to help. As anyone who’s ever turned on a TV set anywhere near the winter holidays knows, he’s sent to Earth to rescue George, whose father had willed him the family’s moribund savings-and-loan business.

For the three people on our planet who don’t yet know the storyline, heed this spoiler alert: Clarence accomplishes his mission by showing George, who’d been champing at the bit to get out of Bedford Falls where he grew up, what the town and his loved ones would have been like had he not been born. And by convincing the suicidal guy to do the right thing, the angel second class also manages to earn his wings because his actions also wrest control of the town from Mr. Potter (a purely evil dude who aims to deconstruct the savings-and-loan).

If for some demonic reason you’re looking to fault Adrian Elfenbaum’s direction, don’t waste your time — it’s almost impeccable. Rarely can a theatergoer be confused by rapid switches from one character to another to another all mouthed by a single actor.

Loren Nordlund takes a break from tinkering with the piano to voice one of 15 characters he plays. Photo by Robin Jackson.

Outstanding in the five-member ensemble are Evan Held, who flawlessly captures George and each of his changing emotions, and Loren Nordlund, who adeptly plays 15 parts and the piano. But the other three thespians — Molly Rebekka Benson, Elenor Irene Paul, and Malcolm Rodgers — are at most a quarter step behind in excellence.

Malcolm Rodgers reads from script of It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Show while Elenor Irene Paul ponders with some sound effects gadgets. Photo by Robin Jackson.

Each actor grabs items from two large tables to concoct sound effects that range from a big tin sheet that becomes a thunderous gong to sundry women’s and men’s shoes that are used to simulate footsteps. The cast’s dexterity not only eliminates the usual need for a Foley artist onstage but adds to the fun of the production by having everybody move hither and yon with fluidity.

In unison, the quintet twice breaks into the storyline to jointly present comic singing commercials — for a Brylcreem-like hair product and a soap that can clean bugs off your windshield.

Forming a chorus in It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Show are (from left) Molly Rebekka Benson, Elenor Irene Paul, Malcolm Rodgers, Loren Nordlund, and Evan Held. Photo by Robin Jackson.

Viewers are entertained, from before the radio show begins (via a recording of a vintage Jack Benny radio program) to a post-show sing-along (with audience participation) with the words of poet Robert Burns’ New Year’s Eve standard, “Auld Lang Syne.” Between those two events, sentimental moments are enhanced by lighting designer Jim Cave dimming the environment while costume designer Michael A. Berg ups audience pleasure with his ‘40s outfits that include vests, a bow tie, and silk stockings with seams in the back.

What also works perfectly is the conceit of the actors’ alternate personas, radio performers holding scripts, a device that helps them cover any lines they may have truly forgotten and could flub. This spin-off from the 1946 film was first performed in 1996 and has had more than 1,000 productions since then.

Ross Valley Players’ It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Show at the Barn Theatre in the Marin Art and Garden Center is clearly a holiday presentation, but its upbeat message transcends any calendar dates and should be fully absorbed by all local theatergoers (and, in fact, everyone else in our divided society).

With apologies to DC Comics and those who hate parallels, I think this Radio Play is a Superplay — dazzling as a speeding moonshot. See it!

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ASR Senior Contributor Woody Weingarten has decades of experience writing arts and entertainment reviews and features. A member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle,  he is the  author of three books, The Roving I; Grampy and His Fairyzona Playmates; and Rollercoaster: How a Man Can Survive His Partner’s Breast Cancer. Contact: voodee@sbcglobal.net or https://woodyweingarten.com or http://www.vitalitypress.com/

Nov 09 2023
Love0

Murder, silliness in Masquers Playhouse’s zany ‘People vs. Mona’

By Woody Weingarten

The cast of Masquers Playhouse’s “The People vs. Mona” includes, from left, Kamaria McKinney, Shay Oglesby-Smith, Steve Alesch, Arup Chakrabarti, Nelson Brown, Michele Sanner Vargas and Harrison Alter. (Courtesy Mark Decker) 

 

“The People vs. Mona,” a zany musical comedy at the Masquers Playhouse in Point Richmond, deserves a needlepoint that labels it laugh-out-loud funny.

Or silly, sillier, silliest.

Because it can be tough to translate visual humor into the words of a review, it is suggested you get to a performance in the cozy (89-seat) theater to see for yourself.

“Mona’s” winning ingredients include exaggerated physical comedy and lyrics that evoke laughter almost every third line; music that ranges from country-rock to gospel (with a marching band tossed in for good measure); a multicultural cast of eight (half of whom play dual roles); a madcap plot by Patricia Miller that features a murder mystery (did Mona Mae Katt bludgeon her honeymooning husband to death with a glitzy guitar?), lots monkey business in the courtroom; and a touch of social commentary about changing an unobtrusive backwater town into a domicile for a shiny new casino.

Enrico Banson, who seamlessly directs the 105-minute “Mona” and inserted tons of unexpected schtick, doubles as an extraordinary musical director who’s onstage with his electronic keyboard throughout.

Michele Sanner Vargas is outstanding in the title role, bringing audience glee with her over-the-top facial and body distortions, not to mention her proficiency twirling a baton. Yet that’s topped by Kamaria McKinney, whose antics as Tish Thomas, a columnist and sex kitten, and blues singer Blind Willy, dare audience members not to smile.

Michele Sanner Vargas plays the title role in “The People vs. Mona” at Masquers Playhouse in Point Richmond. (Courtesy Mark Decker) 

 

Steve Alesch plays Officer Bell with a pseudo-operatic voice and a face so comically rubbery it’s virtually impossible to look away even when there’s another in the spotlight.

Harrison Alter portrays the ninety-something Euple R. Pugh with a flailing level of energy that can make any senior in the crowd jealous.

And Nelson Brown as Mona’s attorney and a hand-waving narrator who involves audience members in rising from their seats, muttering and getting rowdy, also turns in a five-star performance.

The remainder of the cast — Shay Oglesby-Smith, Jeffrie Givens and Arup Chakrabarti — also deserves high praise, as does costume designer Mara Plankers Norleen, responsible for a terrific singing quartet of cats (caps with ears, gloves with fur and imprinted paws, bushy tails) and Mona’s outstanding look with full-length sleeves that replicate tattooed arms and cowgirl boots decorated with butterflies.

Hamming it up in “Mona” are (from left) Arup Chakrabarti, Kamaria McKinney, Harrison Alter and Steve Alesch (Courtesy Mark Decker)

 

Choreographer Katherine Cooper has invented a series of ridiculous moves guaranteed to keep those grins coming.

The production’s location is Tippo, Georgia, in the Frog Pad, a honky-tonk owned by Mona that’s the oldest juke joint in the state and spurring a tune spotlighting a chorus of “Ribbit.”

The show’s campy music and clever lyrics are by the Tony Award-nominated Jim Wann, the primary composer of “Pump Boys and Dinettes,” a 1982 show that jet-streamed from downtown basements to Broadway (with a stopover off-Broadway) and spewed good-ole-boy wisdom via a county rock-pop score.

It’s exciting that the latest incarnation of “Mona” is here. It would be hard to find an Actors’ Equity show that’s better.

While more than few Bay Area theater companies have taken down their curtains recently due to rising costs and diminishing audiences triggered by continuing waves of COVID, “Mona” proves that small, community theaters are not only still viable but can thrive while producing first-rate ensemble entertainment.

“The People vs. Mona” runs through Nov. 26 at the Masquers Playhouse, 105 Park Place, Point Richmond. Tickets are $30 at (510) 232-4031 or https://masquers.org.  

Oct 13 2023
Love0

ASR Film ~~ New Documentary On Joan Baez Shows Three Lives: Public, Private…and Secret

By Woody Weingarten

 

By Woody Weingarten

The documentary film Joan Baez: I Am a Noise appears to check all the right boxes, revealing three lives of the iconic singer/protester and civil rights activist.

The Public:

• Becoming world-famous overnight as a barefoot thrush at age 18 and having Time magazine plaster her face on its cover.

• Being immersed in a relationship with then unknown songwriter/singer Bob Dylan and helping catapult his career, only to have him break her heart (“It was horrible.”)

• Being married for five years to David Harris — an icon in the anti-Vietnam War movement whose outcries led him to be jailed for more than a year — and having a son with him.

• Relishing the marches where she accompanied Martin Luther King Jr. (“Nonviolent action is what I was born for”).

The Private:

• Having at least two mental breakdowns and dealing with decades of almost constant sensations of panic, depression, inadequacy, insecurity, and loneliness (she describes herself as “a personalized time bomb” and her inner life as “dark, dark, dark”).

• Experiencing midlife torment when her “career plunged into the abyss.”

• Agonizing because her two sisters, Mimi (Farina) and Pauline, distanced themselves from her, unable to live in the shadow of a star.

• Enduring racial slurs as a child because her physicist/inventor dad was Mexican and she, therefore, was “half-Mexican” and “thought I was inferior to the white kids, the rich kids.”

• Savoring a two-year lesbian relationship (“She was more feral than I”).

• Accepting the fact that her son, Gabe, still bemoans her frequent absences because she was “too busy saving the world.”

The Secret:

• Finding her father’s alleged sexual abuse (which she unearthed during hypnotherapy) “bone-shattering.”

The film stitches all that together, nearly seamlessly, yet might still leave a viewer with the sense that something’s missing, that some of the in-depth excursions into her psyche dig down only about 85 percent and that the most difficult truths are still covered. It’s not unlike checking out the headlines of a story rather than reading it all the way through.

Truly vulnerable moments are few in Joan Baez: I Am a Noise — the title, not incidentally, stems from a journal entry from her 13-year-old incarnation in reaction to being likened to the Virgin Mary, “I am not a saint, I am a noise.” Two stand out. Most moving is when she lovingly caresses her mother’s face on her death bed. Another is when she’s photographed taking off all her makeup.

But oddly absent from the film — which is distributed by Magnolia Pictures and deftly inserts Baez’s home movies, artwork (her originals as well as someone else’s animations), journal entries, and, surprisingly, therapy tapes — are:

• Her multi-tune appearance at Woodstock.

• Her two-year relationship with Steve Jobs.

• Full-song performances (the doc does contain many, many fragments).

• Humor (one rare inclusion is her imitating Dylan imitating her).

Baez, who’s followed around — almost reality TV-like — during her final tour at age 79 (she’s now 82), admits she likes being the center of attention. Even now, although she says her once pure voice has turned “raggedy.” That craving, the doc demonstrates, is evident when she dances to street drummers when no one else is dancing.

The singer, who attended Palo Alto High School and now lives in Woodside in San Mateo County, also enjoyed making tons of money when she was young, despite her father dissing her because he’d always had to work harder for it. She particularly enjoyed literally tossing $100 bills at him and the rest of her family.

Regarding her dad, who denied inflicting any abuse, she tells the filmmakers — Miri Navasky, Karen O’Connor, and Maeve O’Boyle (who also deserves major accolades for her editing skills) — that if only 20% of what she remembers about the abuse is true, that’s damning enough.

Baez doesn’t only point fingers at her father. She, who says she’s been diagnosed as having multiple personalities, confesses that she’s simply “not great at the one-on-one relationships — I’m great at one-on-2,000.”

When all’s said and done, Joan Baez: I Am a Noise is a fascinating portrait of somebody we thought we knew but didn’t. Though it’s possibly 20 minutes too long, it’s definitely like having a backstage pass into all three of her lives.

The film’s ending is clearly intended to show her finally at peace, but it feels too posed, too contrived, as she dances — eyes closed — with her dog as she recites lines from a Robert Frost poem that indicates she’s not done yet (“…miles to go before I sleep”).

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ASR Senior Writer Woody Weingarten is a voting member of the S.F. Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. Contact: voodee@sbcglobal.net

 

 

Joan Baez: I am a Noise

  • Opens October 13
    Landmark Opera Plaza Cinema in San Francisco
    AMC Metreon 16 in San Francisco
    AMC Bay Street 16 in Emeryville
    Landmark Piedmont Theatre in Oakland
    Rialto Cinemas Elmwood in Berkeley
    Summerfield Cinemas in Santa Rosa
    Rialto Cinemas Sebastopol in Sabastopol
    3Below Theaters in San Jose
    Landmark Del Mar Theater in Santa Cruz
  • Opens October 16
    Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael
    ***** Q&A with Joan Baez following the November 3rd, 7:00pm screening!

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This story was first published on https://aisleseatreview.com, which publishes independent views and reviews on Bay Area arts, destinations, and lifestyle.

 

Woody Weingarten, a longtime member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle, can be contacted by email at voodee@sbcglobal.net or on his websites, https://woodyweingarten.com and https://vitalitypress.com.

 

Oct 08 2023
Love0

Nollywood film about love triangle is central to satirical play in S.F.

By Woody Weingarten

Dede (left) doubts Ayamma’s acting abilities in Nollywood Dreams. Photo by Jessica Palopoli.

First there was Hollywood, an innovative industry that taught Americans how to dream in the 1920s. Then — in the 1970s — came Bollywood, the Hindi cinema that taught Americans how to laugh with an entire cast in a big production song-and-dance number at film’s end.

And in the 1990s came Nollywood, the Nigerian spinoff that now puts out more than 1,000 films each year.

Now, in 2023, a new breezy play at San Francisco Playhouse, Nollywood Dreams, explores Nollywood’s early days — satirically. With overlays of a romance and madcap bits of this ‘n’ that (including but not limited to over-the-top gestures and inflections).

The main thrust of the comedy is to exaggerate the shallowness of both Hollywood and its echoes.

Ghanian American playwright Jocelyn Bioh centers her storyline on a pair of sisters, Ayamma Okafor, who dreams of becoming a movie star despite having zilch experience (“This is my calling”), and shallow Dede, whose main “talents” are is avoiding work, reading gossip mags, and viewing a soap opera.

Director Margo Hall, a Black omnipresence in Bay Area theatrical circles on and off stage who recently was named artistic director of the Lorraine Hansberry Theater, squeezes rapid-fire laughs out of Anel Adedokun’s performance as Ayamma and Brittany Nicole Sims’s as Dede.

They roll their eyes and roll their eyes, wiggle their hips, exaggerate facial expressions and shouts, spell out ellipses as “dot, dot, dot” when reading, and get their bodies twisted in a phone cord. Ayamma hides behind a tall plant; Dede becomes verbally paralyzed when coming in close contact with her idol.

Mostly standard stuff, maybe, but not in the hands of two actors with comic genius to spare.

Adenikeh wears her emotions on her colorful sleeves. Photo by Jessica Palopoli.

More than adequately backing them up are four other gifted members of the all-black cast in Nollywood Dreams, Tre´vonne Bell as shady director Gbenga Ezie who’s casting his “The Comfort Zone” triangle love story; Tanika Baptiste as TV talk show host Adenikeh, an Oprah wannabe; Jordan Covington as Wale Owusu, a more than a little lecherous leading man; and Anna Marie Sharpe as serpent-tongued Fayola Ogunleye, Gbenga’s ex-lover, a faded star once known as “the Nigerian Halle Berry with Tina Turner Legs” whose deep southern accent is devilishly campy.

They all, of course, come across as caricatures. But funny ones. Hall and the actors succeed in making the play more hilarious than the words on a page.

Adding to the audience’s enjoyment of the show are Bill English’s tri-locale rotating set and the imaginative costume design by Jasmine Milan Williams (Adenikeh, for example, needn’t change garb, merely her flamboyant headwear).

It’s clear that the playwright wants to humanize Africans, especially West Africans, despite using a lens more than a little distorted by madcap sequences.

Ayamma (left) auditions for director Gbenga as fading diva Fayola waits her turn. Photo by Jessica Palopoli.

In the final analysis, Bioh provides the ultimate takeaway — a semblance of knowledge about a geographical area and industry we most likely knew little about.

If you’re looking for reality, stay away; if, however, you’re looking for a good time, go see Nollywood Dreams even if it’ll take you a few minutes to discern what the players are saying because of their thick Nigerian accents.

Nollywood Dreams runs at SFPlayhouse, 450 Post St., San Francisco, through Nov. 4. Tickets: $30 to $125. Info: (415) 677-9596 or http://sfplayhouse.org.

Woody Weingarten, a longtime member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle, can be contacted by email at voodee@sbcglobal.net or on his websites, https://woodyweingarten.com and https://vitality press.com.

Oct 03 2023
Love0

Smuin ballet’s 30th season offers salsa, cowboys, flawless synchronization

By Woody Weingarten

Val Caniparoli’s “Tutto Eccetto Il Lavandino” is a highlight of Smuin’s “Dance Series 1” onstage in San Francisco through Oct. 7. (Courtesy Chris Hardy)

 

When you think of dance, you often think of feet, but Smuin Contemporary Ballet’s latest production, marking its 30th anniversary, showcases many splendored hand and arm movements.

They come during the first of three pieces in the show: “Tutto Eccetto il Lavandino” in Italian, or “(everything but the kitchen sink).”

The ballet, created by choreographer Val Caniparoli for Smuin in 2014 to Vivaldi’s sprightly music, takes what might ordinarily be perceived as jerky gestures, even arms that flap like chicken wings, and turns them into flawless, synchronized art.

The variety of lithe, smooth and magical movements in the presentation (as well as countless twists and turns) is equaled only by the variety of dancer combinations (from solos to duets, including man on man, to a cluster of seven, then a group of five couples).

Noteworthy, too, is the athleticism of all 16 dancers in the company.

The 11-part modern ballet is not all straight-ahead. There are more than a few moments of silliness, including a round of hand-covered open mouths spouting “oh” and an unexpected object that glides to center stage at the end of the piece.

Celia Fushille, the troupe’s artistic director who will retire at the end of the 2023-24 season after three decades with the company, says the piece “explores a range of emotions, while pushing the dancers’ technical strength, precision and artistry.”

In the program, she says that the ballet, which has been performed by other companies across the country, “reminds us of the place we hold as an incubator of new work.”

Smuin dancer Terez Dean Orr steps through (L-R) João Sampaio, Brandon Alexander and Ian Buchanan in James Kudelka’s Johnny Cash tribute, “The Man in Black.” (Courtesy Chris Hardy)

James Kudelka’s “The Man in Black,” the middle act of “Dance Series 1,” is based on Johnny Cash’s covers of tunes by the likes of Gordon Lightfoot, Bruce Springsteen and John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

Like “Tutto Eccetto il Lavandino,” it’s a revival; the debut was in 2010. One woman and three men, all clad in cowboy boots, jeans and phlegmatic facial expressions, stomp noisily and incorporate popular county-and-western styles such as step-dancing, square dancing and swing — with some extraordinary syncopation. The quartet works unbelievably hard. When the men forcefully shake their arms, torrents of sweat coat the stage.

Douglas Melini’s artwork is featured in the premiere of Darrell Grand Moultrie’s “Salsa ’til Dawn” in Smuin’s “Dance Series 1.” (Courtesy Chris Hardy)

The third dance, the six-part “Salsa ‘Til Dawn,” a world premiere with choreography by Darrell Grand Moultrie set to the Cuban jazz rhythms of Grammy-winner Charles Fox, doesn’t get fascinating (unless you’re thrilled by women dancing in heels rather than ballet shoes) until the finale, when the full company bounces and slithers in front of a backdrop of three huge pieces of colorful art by Douglas Melini.

During intermission, Fushille accurately suggested to an audience member in the front row that watching it would be like being at a salsa party. Moments earlier, she admitted to another dance enthusiast in that row that a first-time experiment in which narrated auditory devices aimed at helping sight-impaired patrons understand what was happening on stage didn’t work as well as expected.

Virtually everything else did, though.

Smuin’s “Dance Series 1” continues through Oct. 7 at Cowell Theater, Fort Mason Center, 2 Marina Blvd., San Francisco. Tickets are $25 to $89 at (415) 912-1899 or smuinballet.org 

This story was first published on LocalNewsMatters.org, a nonprofit site supported by Bay City News Foundation http://www.baycitynews.org/contact/. 

Woody Weingarten, a longtime member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle, can be contacted by email at voodee@sbcglobal.net or on his websites, https://woodyweingarten.com and https://vitality press.com

Sep 30 2023
Love0

Women’s prison inmates use art to fight for systemic changes

By Woody Weingarten

Chantell Jeannette-Black’s “I Dream” is among the artworks in the exhibit “The Only Door I Can Open: Women Exposing Prison Through Art and Poetry.” (Photo courtesy Minoosh Zomorodinia)

 

 

Chantell-Jeannette Black laments that, as an inmate, she is “100 percent exposed, under constant surveillance” and has no sense of privacy.

Tomiekia Johnson insists she’s imprisoned for an accidental homicide that wasn’t a crime and has been character assassinated. “I didn’t have a fighting chance in court,” she said.

Interviewed by phone, Black and Johnson are artists who use their creations as springboards for activism and co-curators of the exhibit “The Only Door I Can Open: Women Exposing Prison Through Art and Poetry.” The display, which spotlights six artists and three poets, all serving time or recently paroled, will be on view immediately before and after Flyaway Productions’ apparatus-based dance performance “If I Give You My Sorrows” at Project Artaud in San Francisco from Oct. 6-15.

In addition, the collection, which can be viewed on the Museum of the African Diaspora’s website through March 3, 2024, is the subject of a panel discussion at the museum on Oct. 4.

Chantell Jeannette-Black (Photo courtesy the artist)
Tomiekia Johnson (Photo courtesy the artist)

Art in the exhibit was prompted by the question “how is your bed an antidote?” and based on the notion that beds are the only peaceful place about 2,200 inmates at the Central California Women’s Facility at Chowchilla (one of the world’s largest women’s prisons) can find —spots where they “can create the illusion of privacy,” according to the curators’ written statement.

“I Dream,” Black’s acrylic and sand (from the prison yard) painting, reflects missed time with her “precious daughter and family” and features a night sky that is hopeful, she says, “because no matter the distance between us, my daughter and I look up at the same stars every night.”

A strong believer in restorative justice, Black, 38, thinks it is possible, especially for some inmates whose parents sold them for sex or gave them drugs at a very young age.

Meanwhile, Johnson, 44, uses “wordart,” her term, for some of her writing because, she says, it “may not be poetry but may be poetic prose; not fitting in a traditional style, but out of the box.” She focuses on “racism, slavery, false imprisonment, religion, sports, trauma and restorative justice” in her messages.

Johnson, who says working on the exhibit made her feel “valued by people on the outside that I never felt valued before,” is dismayed that the pandemic halted visits from her family.

Anger permeates her poem “Hitting the Bar Ceiling: The Only Door I Can’t Open,” from which the exhibit’s title was taken. It stridently charges, without apparent validation, that “female inmates are getting pregnant, inmates are burying their unwanted fetuses in the ground, diseases are spreading.”

The exhibit, which was established in connection with Empowerment Avenue, a nonprofit formed in San Quentin aiming to “normalize the inclusion of incarcerated writers and artists in mainstream venues,” features artwork for sale ($50 to $250) by Black, Vegas Bray, Elizabeth Lozano, Sarah Montoya, Anna Ruiz and Crystal St. Mary.

Featured poets, in addition to Johnson, are Sydney Whalen and Lovelyocean Williams.

Black, who is Caucasian and has been confined for four years after being sentenced to 91-years-to-life, looks at the juxtaposition of dance with the exhibit “as hamburger and fries. It’s a match made in heaven, two different kinds of art…sort of cake with icing on it.”

Noting that CCWF prison cells house eight people even though they were designed for four, Black supports Empowerment Avenue’s mission to connect “people who were incarcerated with people in the free world, which is what we call the world outside prison, to help humanize us.”

Johnson, who is Black, has become a self-styled “jailhouse lawyer,” she says, not only dealing with her own appeal but helping other inmates legally. Regarding her situation, she says, “I got railroaded,” adding, “I’m a pawn for the system. My case was to further the district attorney’s career.”

She contends the system is rigged against people in the lower socio-economic category, saying, “The prosecution has every resource at their disposal when others have a public defender with very limited resources and too many caseloads. It’s not a fair game.”

Johnson, whose words are part of the musical score for the Flyaway Productions’ performance, has served 12½ years of a 50-years-to-life sentence and has a plea for commutation (accompanied by an online petition with 22,300 supportive signatures) on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk.

Meanwhile, Whalen, a poet, says her style is greatly influenced by her experience as a homeless youth in Hawaii and the culture shock when she left. Another poet, Williams, who identifies as “non-binary trans man,” emphasizes that “although we are incarcerated, we do have hopes and dreams.”

Lozano, who’s been locked up 28 years, says she tries through her artwork to “bring awareness to my status as a 16-year-old that was sentenced to die in prison. I hope to bring more awareness to the long history of mass incarceration, the despair in marginalization.”

Montoya says, “The longer I spend here, the more I feel that I’ve become one with the brick and bars that hold me captive.”

Vegas Bray’s “Vegas in Paradise” is part of “The Only Door I Can Open: Women Exposing Prison Through Art and Poetry.” (Photo courtesy Minoosh Zomorodinia)

And Bray writes of her art: “Although I may be physically imprisoned, my mind and soul are free to evolve, learn, grow and exist outside of these walls.”

Ruiz ponders her art in connection with dreams “of the day that we can run to our families, who are waiting for us outside.”

St. Mary is an outlier. For her, bed represents “a symptom of being depressed…a dangerous river with a vicious undercurrent that constantly threatens to drag me under.”

In contrast, in her artist’s statement, Johnson claims that “Art is power. Art is self-defense.”

Flyaway Productions’ “If I Give You My Sorrows” performances are Oct.6-Oct. 15 at Space 24 at Project Artaud, 401 Alabama St., San Francisco. For tickets, $25-$35 and free for systems-impacted people, visit flyawayproductions.com/upcoming.

To register for the panel discussion “Curating from the Inside: Women Exposing Prison through Art and Poetry” at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 4 at the Museum of the African Diaspora, 685 Mission St., S.F., visit moadsf.org.

This story was first published on LocalNewsMatters.org, a nonprofit site supported by Bay City News Foundation http://www.baycitynews.org/contact/.

Woody Weingarten, a longtime member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle, can be contacted by email at voodee@sbcglobal.net or on his websites, https://woodyweingarten.com and https://vitality press.com.