Woody Weingarten

David Brewer, a cherished friend for two decades and a surrogate brother for the one I never had, died a few days ago.

I’m fragile.

In deep mourning.

And reevaluating my life and priorities.

David’s passing didn’t come as a shock. He’d been battling a melanoma for years, and the resultant metastasis for months.

But death — despite my belief the soul, or spirit, transcends it — feels so damned final.

The empty hole it leaves can seem infinite.

It’s likely you have a friend like David, someone you could be even warmer to — no matter how close you have been.

On his deathbed, my psychologist/consultant buddy, still boyishly good-looking despite being sixtysomething, and still a pigheaded St. Louis Cardinals fanatic, revisited his spiritual feelings.

He re-told me of his “awakening” at 19, when he’d deduced that spirit was an embodiment “of compassionate love” rather than the anthropomorphic being others worshipped.

Though the Novato resident had been brought up an ardent Christian and I a Jew, we’d found a joint comfort zone.

I miss him.

But I consider myself lucky — blessed, in fact — to have had him in my life so long.

As a loving, trusted friend.

As a colleague in a men’s group for 10 years.

As a pet sitter in my San Anselmo home for Kismet, my purebred rescue mutt.

I have fond memories, too, of others who’d been essential parts of my life but, in Hamlet’s words, have shuffled off this mortal coil. And there are many: My parents and grandparents, a woman I lived with in Philadelphia, two first cousins who died in their teens.

All told, death in double digits — more than sufficient for any lifetime.

But David’s death has shifted my perspective.

No longer am I irked by the constant road construction on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard in San Anselmo.

Or the dog poop I barely miss while walking Kismet in Creek Park.

Or the incredibly long wait at The Hub’s traffic lights.

Instead, I linger longer to watch two newborn fawns in my yard, to catch the wonderment of a sunrise from our deck, to see toddlers frolic in a Ross or Fairfax playground.

My wife, kids, grandkids and friends unsurprisingly have leapt anew to the top of my what’s-important list. I vow to phone and email more.

Yet retain my right to not text.

I choose to elevate my sensitivity at Marin Man to Man, my support group aimed at helping guys whose partners have breast cancer or another life-threatening disease.

And to spend added hours with the 11 friends facing severe health challenges.

I intend, too, to fully appreciate that I’m comparatively healthy — still breathing and able to pound my keyboard long enough to cobble columns together.

Did David’s death, or life, mean more than any of the 8,000 killed in Nepal’s late April quake? He and I’d often pondered that kind of question, always concluding life anywhere was equal to either of our own.

I’ll remember him as an imperfect perfectionist who left behind a lengthy string of wives, girlfriends and broken hearts, but moreover that he was himself even in his last moments — exuding life and love.

Shortly before being hospitalized, my pal, the compleat organizer — he was forever arranging a last-second movie group or dinner klatch or something-else cluster — had corralled a small group of friends. In a sense, it was his last hurrah.

He knew the prognosis.

My 8-year-old granddaughter traipsed along. David, child-less, had attached himself to her years before but decided on the spot that day she’d be his “date” for the party.

So he showered her with attention, including the hugs for which he was famous, and bought her a huge cookie.

Too soon afterward he proved that death can incorporate dignity.

And courage. And joking.

He and I and my wife, Nancy, reminisced and laughed several times during our final conversation.

I doubt if he’d primped for our appearance, but he undeniably did for at least two women who followed us individually.

In tribute to his tangible influence on my life, I hope to assuage my sadness with an amped up zest for living and doing. And to continue fighting for the environment, for the homeless, for equal rights.

I’m sure David would approve.

Contact Woody Weingarten at http://vitalitypress.com/ or voodee@sbcglobal.net

This year’s five-day Marin County Fair had something to please almost every Jane and Joe — adult or kid.

With a bonus for me.

Why?

Because not only did I enjoy the ever-better entertainment and art exhibits and midway, and a breeze that made July’s heat tolerable, I got to interview typically “invisible,” behind-the-scenes folks who normally don’t get their names into print.

Take, for instance, Karen Katich of Martinez.

She’s been portraying Princess Leia of  “Star Wars” for years. It’s one of her favorite things.

Why?

“Because I saw the original ‘Star Wars’ 11 times when it first came out, and more than 1,000 times since.”

She loves “kids’ eyes getting the size of saucers when they see me, fulfilling their fantasy.”

Anne Garner owns Eleven Roses Ranch in Clearlake Oaks and brought Clydesdale horses for folks to admire.

Plus a couple of 1,600 pound draft mules.

John, the male, apparently was feeling his oats, to use a phrase about 150 years older than the 74 years the fair’s been running.

He repeatedly tried using his teeth to unknot the rope that tethered him to a gate, and upstaged her by playfully nuzzling her blouse again and again.

She explained that he “enjoys chewing garden hoses, rolling in the dirt, and bullying everybody.”

However, she added, “he’s really a coward, afraid of his own shadow.”

She frequently runs into fairgoers she “saw a year ago,” and especially likes “seeing the little kids so excited.”“It’s fun,” she told me, “because everybody’s happy they’re here.”

Rick Creelman of Fairfax is a ukulele player, a regular at Friday night jamborees at Del Medina’s home in San Rafael.

He came to play with 50 or so UFOs, Ukulele Friends Ohana (which means family or community), though the stage held only about 30 so the rest had to perform while roaming the audience.

This is the group’s fourth fair. They participate, Creelman said, “because it’s fun, a sing-along rather than a real concert.”

It’s also, he noted, “a chance to introduce people to the ukulele and that it’s making a comeback.”

Edward Johnson is a utility worker who lives in Rohnert Park. His fair duties include “doing the trash, keeping the restrooms clean.”

A favorite memory, he revealed, was when he and an assistant supervisor were locking up and unsuccessfully began tugging at a door — from opposite sides at the same time.

Bill Hernandez of Petaluma has been with the Marin County Sheriff’s Department 24 years.

A sergeant, he’s “done one shift a year at the fair” that long. “It’s fun to get out with people who are having fun,” he declared — a contrast with other assignments (patrol, jail, gang enforcement and street crime).

He remembered folks “trying to swim across the lagoon to get to the island” when the gates were shut because the fairgrounds were full.

Christian Williams, a Santa Rosa resident, manned an ice cream giveaway booth.

He and a co-worker handed out, on average, 22 three-gallon tubs each day — one scoop at a time.

Williams was gracious to most freebie-seekers — including me — but flummoxed by a kid who skittered away before I could get her name after she asked, “How much is the free sample of ice cream?”

Emilie Owens of Medford, Oregon, emcee for the pig races, has been doing the fair four years.

She loves how noisy her audience gets.

She recalled cheerleaders forming a human pyramid to embolden their favorite porkers.

And she recollected four pigs sprinting from the trailer onto the raceway to make it an unscheduled eight-pig contest.

Another time, “some pigs got free and just ran around the fairground.”

Zach Lien’s an L.A.-based contractor for Two Bit Circus, which ran the fair’s STEAM Carnival component.

“STEAM,” he elucidated, “is an acronym standing for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math. Our games combine those concepts. We teach kids to work together as well as individually. I personally love to watch them trying to figure something out while playing, and it’s fun to watch adults and kids playing a game simultaneously.”

What’d I, personally, think of this year’s extravaganza, which drew 78,000 people who paid admission and 27,000 more who didn’t?

I relished that there weren’t lines for indoor bathrooms or outdoor port-a-potties, that I could find places to sit on bales of hay, that I could easily spill out the dirt that invaded my shoes.

As always, there was too much to do before I tired. But my best measuring rod was that I’d planned to stay an hour and a half.

And left five hours later.

Contact Woody Weingarten at www.vitalitypress.com/ or voodee@sbcglobal.net

[Woody’s [rating: 1.5]

Ethel Merman died in 1984 at age 76 — after giving more than 6,000 Broadway performances.

So the mezzo-soprano’s been lifeless quite a while.

Sadly, I found “Call Me Miss Birds Eye,” a new revue at A.C.T.’s Geary Theatre in San Francisco that’s a tribute to her career, equally lifeless.

It lacks all the brassiness, bravado and sheer energy the big-voiced, big-haired Merman brought to audiences.

Denise Wharmby — as The First Lady of the musical comedy stage — and her two backup singers, Martin Greenwood and Don Bridges, hit every note correctly.

With more than a hint of their native Australian accents.

But without pizazz.

Except when Wharmby, a San Rafael transplant from Tasmania, impressively holds notes for as long as the long-winded Merman might have.

Critics heralded that Queens, N.Y.-born superstar — who supposedly never took a singing lesson — for her precise enunciation and pitch.

Wharmby imitates both well.

Yet fails to capture Merman’s spellbinding over-the-topness.

Impressive, on the other hand, is that the revue is done entirely in Bel Canto style — that is, without a mic or amplifiers, the same acoustical Italian vocal technique Merman utilized for five decades.

It works, not counting when the guys muffle their voices by facing the wings instead of the audience.

The beauty part of “Call Me Miss Birds Eye,” though, is the songlist itself, with the crème de la crème of American Songbook composers represented.

Socko tunes include Irving Berlin’s “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” Merman’s theme; George and Ira Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm,” from “Girl Crazy,” the thrush’s first Broadway outing; and Julie Styne and Stephen Sondheim’s “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” from “Gypsy.”

And although more than a third of the 33 songs contain astonishingly clever lyrics by Cole Porter, I’d still say the most amusing piece is “New Fangled Tango,” in which the Mutt and Jeff duo use their size difference for comedic effect.

Wharmby’s frequent gown changing can also be entertaining.

Despite my sense that the men occasionally tread vocal water just to give her time to switch costumes.

The 95-minute show would definitely improve via still or video projections, extra props, and choreography not limited to hands.

Instead of merely relying on the changing colors of a huge backdrop caricature of Merman.

Having previews, moreover, might have eliminated missed cues, vocal timing that was off, and an embarrassing moment when an exiting Wharmby almost knocked Bridges over.

Adding continuity would be advisable, too, since details presented about Merman’s life are skimpy — there’s not one allusion to her penchant for telling vulgar stories and dirty jokes in public, and only a quickie reference to four marriages that “wilted as quickly as the wedding bouquets.”

The show’s title, a play on the words of a Merman hit, “Call Me Madam,” refers to the star rejecting a change Berlin wanted to make within a week of opening.

She unnerved him with, “Call me Miss Birds Eye. It’s frozen.”

Merman, who loathed anyone sharing her spotlight, would have loved the idea that when she died every Broadway house dimmed its lights upon hearing the news.

And she’d have loved that 30 years later her fame hasn’t dimmed.

The musical director of “Call Me,” Graham Clarke, doubles as artistic director of Acoustic Voice of Australia, which produced and is presenting the revue. He firmly believes this pre-Broadway outing is a choice vehicle for those who want to immerse themselves in Merman songs and nostalgia.

That’s wishful thinking, I suspect.

Opening night, many patrons were checking watches with regularity — and about a quarter of the crowd left at intermission.

Clearly an audience that reviews a show with its feet.

“Call Me Miss Birds Eye” plays at the American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary St., San Francisco, through July 19. Night performances, 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays. Matinees, 2 p.m. Saturdays. Tickets: $20 to $65. Information: (415) 749-2228 or www.act-sf.org.

Contact Woody Weingarten at www.vitalitypress.com/ or voodee@sbcglobal.net

“What’s a jazz and classical flute player like you doing in a bluegrass sextet like this?”

Because I’ve known Matt Eakle for years, I don’t need to ask: He and mandolin doyen David Grisman blend their distinct virtuoso sounds to make extraordinary music.

Matt’s been part of David’s bands for 26 years.

And he’ll be one-sixth of the Grisman sextet at Sonoma State University’s Green Music Center, Weill Hall and lawn, at 3 p.m. Sunday, July 12 as part of the Dawg Day Afternoon Bluegrass Festival.

Also on that bill are the Del McCoury Band and dobro master Jerry Douglas presenting the Earls of Leicester.

Asked about his favorite from the upcoming playlist, Matt cites “Watson’s Blues,” which is dedicated to blind guitarist Doc Watson, the first performer to invite David onto a stage at age 17.

The tune gives Matt, who delights in stretching musically, “an opportunity to recreate the classic ‘twin fiddles’ bluegrass sound, something flute players don’t get to do very often.”

Another stretch came recently when he performed in Coblenz, Germany, at a 13th century church — a Bach sonata duet with a pipe organist.

Often, Matt also gets to meander into unmapped melodic territory with David, whose bluegrass sextet explores folk, rock, string jazz, Latin music, klezmer-influenced tunes, soul and funk.

Their collaboration dates to 1985, when David “was auditioning bassists for a European tour and I happened to be at a bassist’s house. I’m a good sight-reader because of my classical training so I was able to read all the songs he’d brought on my first try. We both were astonished at the cool sounds mandolin and flute made when they blended together. Four years later, he called me for a jam session and I ended up in his band.”

The 58-year-old’s actually been playing flute since he was 12 — in junior high.

“They only had a piccolo at first, so that’s what I started on. But when they got a flute a month later, I switched. It was so easy compared to the piccolo that I fell in love right away.”

Later musical training included studying with the son of the San Francisco Symphony’s principal flautist and learning “improvisation by the seat of my pants.”

Not to mention playing alongside virtuoso musicians.

And he’s performed with Jerry Garcia, Stephane Grappelli, Chris Isaak, Bonnie Raitt and Linda Ronstadt.

He’s even done a couple of gigs — a benefit for Bread and Roses in Novato and another for homeless men being sheltered in San Anselmo — with my jazz pianist wife, Nancy Fox.

Matt, despite being an environmentalist, lets no grass — blue or otherwise — grow under his feet.

He performs with his own quartet, the Matt Eakle Band; plays with the Murasaki Ensemble, a quintet led by Shirley Muramoto, who excels on koto, a classical horizontal harp-like string instrument frequently used for court music in Japan; puts in tons of freelance appearances; and teaches jazz and classical flute.

The flute player — he’s turned off by the word “flautist” — has sparse spare time.

He runs nearly every day, often barefoot.

Sometimes he runs to the top of Bald Hill, just west of his adopted town of San Anselmo, where he’s lived since 1998 with his wife, Lucia.

He supplements that with pushups and pull-ups (scoliosis forced him to give up standing on his head).

He’s slowed down on yanking out non-native plants from San Anselmo’s Faude Park, however, though he’d done it for years. In fact, as chair of the town’s Quality of Life Commission, I’d handed him a Green Award for his weeding.

Matt’s recorded three albums of his own, from which his favorite jazz piece is “Speak Low.” He admits attributing the Kurt Weill composition “to the wrong person on my CD, ‘Flute Jazz,’ but they don’t care because I send the royalties to the right place.”

What makes him unique as a flute player?

“My emphasis on sound and tone coloration and the fact that I surrender completely to the groove.”

I’ve more than once watched him perform at Iron Springs Pub in Fairfax, where he sways his body like a dancing Spiderman.

That, he explains, is “just my natural reaction, what happens to me, and I try not to interfere with it.”

Future Green Music Center events, in addition to the July 12 Dawg Day Afternoon Bluegrass Festival, include appearances by Jay Leno July 31, Natalie Cole Aug. 1, Steve Martin Aug. 20, Dwight Yoakam Aug. 21, Chris Botti Sept.11, Wynton Marsalis Sept. 17 and Kristin Chenoweth Sept. 25. Tickets: $20 to $175. Information: 866-955-6040 or gmc.sonoma.edu.

Contact Woody Weingarten at www.vitalitypress.com/ or voodee@sbcglobal.ne

 [Woody’s [rating: 3]

Instead of “Detroit,” playwright Lisa D’Amour might have named her Pulitzer Prize finalist play “Metaphor, California.”

Or “Metaphor, New York.”

Or, for that matter, “Metaphor, Anywhere.”

The title surely doesn’t signify the real Motor City. It’s  — dare I say it? — just a metaphoric label for a play that’s a comedic depiction of the fiscal scars the Great Recession left on the suburban middle class American psyche.

D’Amour says she used Detroit because it had become “a symbol to so many people of the American dream drying up.”

That resonates with me.

Seeing a revival of the Obie winner at the Aurora Theatre in Berkeley could seem like witnessing a 100-minute intermission-less dream left too long on a backyard barbecue.

But with more levity than most comedies I’ve watched in several years.

I do have one caveat: None of it sounds funny in print.

And “Detroit” does rank high on my Squirmometer, a personal indicator of how uncomfortable dialogue or characters make me.

Ben (a wide-eyed, slack-jawed Jeff Garrett) has lost his bank loan officer’s job and appears to be toiling feverishly on a website that will launch a startup. Mary (an ultra-solemn, fuming Amy Resnick), his wife, drinks too heavily (to the point of upchucking on a new neighbor) and hobbles because of a painful planters wart on her foot and an even more agonizing burr on her being.

He bemoans accurately that they “don’t have any friends.”

To say their home and lives are broken is to state the obvious.

A big table umbrella unexpectedly shuts on folks beneath it. A sliding screen door won’t open or close properly. A patio chair falls apart.

Financial woes have pushed them way out of their comfort zone.

Still they want to be neighborly so they invite to dinner a pair of rootless recovering addicts who might never have had a comfort zone.

Kenny (Patrick Kelly Jones), who shamelessly admits they have only one towel too dirty to use, and Sharon Luisa Frasconi), who wants “to own up to what I am” — white trash, are a problematic mirror of the older couple’s unease.

As they unveil each other’s secrets, Kenny and Sharon flip the invitation, welcoming Ben and Mary to their digs despite having zero furniture and an equal amount of food (unless you count chips and Velveeta).

Though all four actors do bang-up jobs delineating their characters, Resnick and Garrett radiate, perhaps because their verbiage-laden roles are meatier.

Director Josh Costello effectively stages both antics and melodrama, sharply pulling into focus the question of how we cope with our insecurities when we can’t pay our bills.

The comedy-drama returned my memory to the first home I purchased, a suburban Philadelphia prototype in southern New Jersey created by William Levitt, a man renowned for developing instant all-white ticky-tacky communities out of whole cloth, identical blueprints and tiny plots.

I recalled, too, all the trappings that came with the tract houses.

Which included white picket fences, green lawns, good schools and clothes washed in 99 and 44/100ths percent pure Ivory soap.

But the play impacted my opening night companion more.

Although he viewed it as a flimsy farce and melodrama “rather than something to be considered seriously,” revolving around “unreal characters” he never grew to care about, he somehow let two BART trains pass him by while pondering the significance of “Detroit.”

A lingering, disturbing query: Have we all been living out the Rise and Fall of the American Empire?

Could be.

“Detroit” runs at the Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison St., Berkeley, through July 26. Night performances, Tuesdays, 7 p.m.; Wednesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m. Matinees, Sundays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $16-$50. Information: 1-510-843-4822 or www.auroratheatre.org.

Contact Woody Weingarten at voodee@sbcglobal.net or at www.vitalitypress.com

Can you imagine the front of the four-story U.S. Bank building in downtown San Anselmo as an oversized fish tank?

Dan Thomas can.

And he’s done something about it.

But it’s taken him 40 years to scratch his inner itch about the structure, to shrink his edifice complex.

His weaponry? Watercolors.

And whimsy.

It happened last month, when Dan, my longtime next-door neighbor in San Anselmo, painted “a series of fantasies conceptualizing how the bank branch might improve its look.”

Until then, the high-rise — by town standards, at least — merely aggravated Dan every time he passed it.

His problem?

“The building, which was constructed in 1962, didn’t fit the surrounding environment.”

Dan sits at my dining room table displaying his watercolor sketches. And jabbering like he’s stumbled onto a second childhood.

“Just before I drew the first parody, the fish tank,” he says, “I thought, ‘Let’s see if I can have some fun.’

“Then, for a second I thought maybe I and the bank could be playful. Maybe the bank would let me decorate it for a couple of months. But then I decided the bankers, a serious lot, would be unlikely to see the humor in it.

“All of this, of course, is strictly in my head — it’s all make-believe.  I haven’t approached U.S. Bank at all. I have no real plan to ask the bank to change anything.”

The sketches, Dan tells me with mischievous twinkles in both blue eyes, involve “humor, what-if’s and a play of colors.”

The bank’s window treatment, explains the retired architect, “is six-inch thick concrete, 16 feet wide, 32 feet high, two feet deep. The top and bottom segments form a complete circle. There are eight circles over all. I used to visualize that the only thing that would [help] would be to make window treatments with fish tanks with live fish. The idea stayed with me. So I finally sketched it, to scale, as if it were an architectural rendering.”

His initial plan was only to do that one concept, but he became so motivated he concocted a dozen fanciful sketches in only two weeks.

“My idea was to give the Town Council a humorous view of the building — as a cautionary tale — to remind them you can’t turn back once you’ve made a decision. Had the council gone ahead with its original General Plan, the town would have had 10-story buildings.”

I almost choke on the thought.

I like San Anselmo for what it is, a quaint, little town despite being a refuge for coffee buffs, boutique shoppers and upscale bicyclists.

Noticing my discomfort, Dan placates me — grinning.

“Again, remember this is make-believe, even though a real fish tank actually could be built with Plexiglas and a little bit of cork.”

Once he’d retired, Dan returned to an early love — painting. He worked mainly on landscapes, but now again dabbles in abstracts. He’s good enough to have won prizes, including firsts, at Marin and Napa county fairs — as well as Marin Society of Artists juried shows in Ross.

Now 79, he remembers once painting “full time, mostly allegorical paintings, working my way through my religious upbringing as a strict Pentecostal.”

That, of course, is miles from imagining fish in windows at the 46-feet, 6-inch high site, where for years I’ve banked in the tallest building in town.

One of Dan’s watercolors is tied to “the good economic times” we’re experiencing anew, featuring “drinks on the house — cocktail glasses filled to the brim.”

In another, a series of sunglasses symbolize “warm periods — sunny days.”

Soup cans also became a happy construct. Although the Andy Warhol tribute might allude to soup lines, the artist says he intended to evoke “a ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’ feeling.”

One striking piece is a light-hearted plea for egalitarianism. Faces become a commercial for both bank and tolerance.

“It means, ‘We serve all nationalities,’” Dan says.

Taken as a whole, the sketches comprise his “first attempt at humor in art — I’m a pretty serious character in a lot of ways — although these may have loosened me up a bit.

“I’m working on one right now where I’m putting a hand-painted silk tie right in the middle of an abstract painting that looks like a vest.”

I postulate he’s now in-vested in projecting a less-serious attitude.

Contact Woody Weingarten at voodee@sbcglobal.net or http://vitalitypress.com

[Woody’s [rating: 2.5]

I couldn’t help fantasizing at A.C.T.’s experimental “Love and Information.”

English playwright Caryl Churchill’s plot-less, 57-scene scattergun technique goaded me into it.

I had the distinct impression she’d dreamed — before writing this play — that Samuel Beckett, spouting weighty sentence fragments, was pitted against Harpo Marx’s deadpan and wide-eyed comedic facial exaggerations while Ingmar Bergman flashed myriad disparate images on a split-screen behind them.

“Love and Information,” playing at the refurbished Strand Theater, introduced me to some 140 mostly unnamed characters in 100 minutes.

Through a stellar 12-member cast that magically spun many of the vignettes into gold.

Enthralling.

Yet, finally, a touch frustrating.

As if someone had stolen more than a few pieces of a new jigsaw puzzle I was being asked to put together.

Because so many of the pieces were mere fragments (ranging from a few seconds to a few minutes), audience members got to plug the holes from our personal histories and baggage — though we had to think fast because the next scene always tested our minds instantly after the last, much like one Henny Youngman gagline following another without a breath.

My favorite moments included two men humorously and poignantly misremembering yesterday’s love affair, two teens freaked out because they didn’t know a personal detail about a crush on a guy they both had, two dudes discussing an apparent direct message from God, and a woman reflecting about life and death after being gifted with a red rose.

Not exactly light subjects.

But being inundated with technology was the main target of Churchill’s stylized shorthand, with lust and longing (as opposed to love) finishing a distant second.

By not writing stage directions or character descriptions into the text, and by suggesting vignettes could move from any of the seven segments to another, she gave directors and their whims plenty of latitude.

“Love and Information,” therefore, has varied radically from city to city.

Here, director Casey Stangl did astonishingly well — especially since I occasionally felt as though a carnival mirror had been shattered and I was left to reassemble endless shards.

Introducing the first show produced at the refurbished Strand, Carrie Perloff, the American Conservatory Theater’s longtime artistic director, cited Stangl’s having successfully built the production while the house was “being built around her.”

Perloff also referenced the old Strand, where she teasingly suggested theatergoers might have caught films like “The Rocky Horror Show” or “Deep Throat.”

“Love and Information,” which opened in London in 2012, felt a gadzillion miles from such classic movies — in both tone and concept.

It had no overall arc or linear storyline. Its scenes left the sensation of being almost randomized.

Perhaps because of those elements, the rebuilt 283-seat theater, which cost almost $35 million (and includes an even more intimate stage, The Rueff, which seats only 140), seemed like an ideal venue.

The huge onstage screen in effect became the set. Movable, unattached doors were basically the only addition (except for various tables and chairs used as props).

Before the show on opening night, actors mingled with the lobby crowd and performed shtick such as dancing wildly to plugged-in music, burying oneself almost catatonically in an iPhone, coughing and sneezing loudly and frequently. A huge LED screen flashed brief previews of what was to come inside — plus other glimpses of items relating to communication (such as binary numbers, Pig Latin and a tagger spraying graffiti with gaudy paint).

Inside, the screen at the rear of the stage — which later would feature eclectic images that incorporated photos of Market Street — showed a live feed of the audience itself.

Besides the quasi-trauma of seeing myself projected, I was subjected to a surreal moment:

Early in the play, a patron’s cell phone went off, adding a bouncy pop tune to the ambience. Had I not been sitting next to the guy, I undoubtedly would have thought it was yet another disconnected part of the play.

Unlike Churchill’s “Cloud Nine,” “Top Girls” or “Serious Money,” “Love and Information” might be a perfect fit for anyone with a short attention span.

And maybe — in today’s exhaustingly frenetic fast-everything world in which “USA Today” and “TMZ” head the most-read, most-watched lists — that could apply to all of us.

“Love and Information” plays at the American Conservatory Theater’s Strand Theater, 1127 Market St., San Francisco, through Aug. 9. Night performances, 7 p.m. Sundays, 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, Matinees, 2 p.m. Wednesdays and Saturdays. Tickets: $40 to $100. Information: (415) 749-2228 or www.act-sf.org.

Contact Woody Weingarten at www.vitalitypress.com/ or voodee@sbcglobal.net

 

[Woody’s [rating: 5]

I can’t remember ever feeling as white as when I saw “Choir Boy,” the new Marin Theatre Company drama.

The play, which provides scaffolding for the notion of tolerance, is incredibly powerful.

And incredibly black.

Playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney immediately sets the tone with a black prep school commencement where the words “sissy” and “nigger” are hurled at a gay student.

I thought I’d been color-blind all my life.

I’d banded on civil rights issues in the early ‘60s with militant black attorney Paul Zuber and self-styled radical lawyer Paul Kunstler.

Earlier, I’d joined my father in welcoming into our home in a New York suburb what then were called Negroes. I’d enjoyed rhythmic, bluesy “race records” spun by “Moondog” (deejay Alan Freed) and spirituals by Mahalia Jackson and less famous African American artists. I’d been moved beyond belief by Billie Holiday wailing “Strange Fruit,” a musical lamentation for a lynching.

I thought I’d earned my liberal stripes.

In 100 “in-your-face” minutes, “Choir Boy” showed me I’ve been practically delusional.

Being Caucasian inevitably precludes a total understanding of the black condition.

“Choir Boy” is markedly pertinent today, when city after city in the United States face sharper racial divides than in decades.

During rehearsal of the show, director Kent Gash told his actors: “No play happens in a vacuum…As we have seen in recent events in Baltimore, African American male lives are at risk. It’s hard not to feel like an endangered species sometimes.”

But “Choir Boy” is more than more an eye-opener — it’s a masterpiece.

I’ve seen four previous plays by MacArthur “genius” grant winner McCraney — April’s “Head of Passes” at the Berkeley Rep, and each part of his “Brother/Sisters Plays” trilogy at the MTC, A.C.T. and Magic Theatre.

Each was extraordinary. Each was formidable.

This drama is better still.

Craney seems to be growing exponentially as a playwright as he matures (he’s only 34 now).

“Choir Boy,” a coming-of-age story but so much more, pits a gifted homosexual scholarship recipient, Pharus, against Bobby, a student with current and historic family ties to the Charles R. Drew Prep School for Boys.

That fictional school is based on real black history.

Before desegregation, about 100 such schools existed in the United States (only four remain today), which I hadn’t known.

Jelani Alladin instills vitality and reality in Pharus, a young man caught between a desire to be accepted and one of being himself, a theme that’s also reflected in other characters, particularly David, a conflicted, wannabe pastor played by Forest Van Dyke.

Pharus contrasts sharply with Bobby, hot-headedly portrayed by Dimitri Woods as a privileged rebel.

The play, which premiered in London in 2012, is not without periodic injections of humor. But it’s the anguish and poignancy that are unforgettable.

And mind-blowing.

Each of the seven “Choir Boy” cast members is superb, with each of the six black performers layering individualized vocal chops onto their thespian skills.

Ken Robinson, who plays Headmaster Marrow, a rule-oriented man steeped in tradition, has the richest, deepest voice.

None of the others are vocal slouches, though.

Spirituals — both familiar (such as “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” and “Wade in the Water”) and not — are sprinkled throughout.

They definitely buoy the drama.

Were the originals uplifting and freeing, or did various slave songs include “coded messages”? A cerebral onstage debate may feel like a distraction from the plot yet is a meaningful connection to black history.

So’s the performance of the sole white in the all-male cast, Charles Shaw Robinson, who’s believable as Mr. Pendleton, a compassionate teacher who’d marched with Martin Luther King Jr. and participated in countless sit-ins.

You probably know somebody just like him.

Rotimi Agbabiaka, as Junior Davis, Bobby’s enabler and sidekick in delinquency, is responsible for most of the humor (though the Pharus character has his share).

And filling out the cast is Jaysen Wright as Anthony (“AJ”), a sensitive athlete-scholar.

The play, it should be noted, includes full-frontal nudity.

Alladin — in a post-play “talk-back” response to a question — explained it well: “The nudity is more than about being naked. It’s a moment when the audience is being asked, ‘Are you comfortable in your skin?’”

Most significantly, the play shows that African American men, like all others, are not one-dimensional, not stereotypes, but complex human beings.

It’s a lesson I’m unlikely to forget.

“Choir Boy” plays at the Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley, through June 28. Night performances, 7 p.m. Sundays; 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays; 8 p.m. Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Matinees, 1 p.m. Thursdays; 2 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays. Tickets: $10 to $55. Information: (415) 388-5208 or marintheatre.org.

Contact Woody Weingarten at www.vitalitypress.com/ or voodee@sbcglobal.net

 

Donations of $500 and iPods — from students at San Domenico School in San Anselmo — got the ball rolling.

So residents of WindChime of Marin, a memory-care facility in Kentfield, just over the line from Ross, now can derive pleasure from personalized music playlists on the digital devices.

As a bonus, the portable players typically open what’s been called “a backdoor” to memory and the mind.

I call it a coming-out party.

Stemming from an unpretentious program that can temporarily steer men and women back from the isolation that dementia, Alzheimer’s and other serious ailments sometimes dictate.

“The more specific the playlist,” explained Tanja Obear, WindChime’s activity director, “the more effective it is. And it’s best if songs from the teenage years to the mid-20’s, their ‘fun-time,’ are selected.”

But there’s a wide spectrum of likes, Tanja noted, “ranging

from music of the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s to others — younger — who want to hear Led Zeppelin.”

Gina Pandiani, president of Marin Activity Coordinators (MAC), cleared my attendance at the group’s recent 90-minute meeting at WindChime. There, nine women watched three snippets from a documentary, “Alive Inside,” and discussed how “Music & Memory,” the program that generated the video, could be implemented throughout the county.

I was encouraged.

I’d screened the video about a month before. And wept.

It was that touching, that inspiring.

A clip from it, featuring “Henry,” a dementia patient “awakened” by music from his iPod, has gone viral.

More than 11 million views.

And counting.

A thousand senior facilities and nursing homes have instituted the memory program so far. But the hope is for way more — 16,000 in the United States, 65,000 throughout the world.

WindChime began with only 10 iPods.

By the time MAC met, all but three of 48 residents had playlists (after a three-month process to fully implement the program).

The biggest problem the facility encountered, reported Bradlee Ann Foerschner, its executive director, was “keeping all the iPods charged.”

Not really an obstacle.

The music itself can occasionally be challenging, though.

One meeting attendee encountered “a banjo player who wanted only bluegrass music on his iPod” and insisted he “couldn’t abide Frank Sinatra.”

Marie Van Soest, a WindChime resident who’d previously lived in San Anselmo, differed.

She adores Sinatra.

And oldies like “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” “New York New York” and “Lady Be Good.”

She told me she looks forward to hearing them.

Again and again.

The main aim of “Music & Memory” seems achievable.

That is, to improve the quality of life for Alzheimer’s and dementia patients, for the depressed and infirm, for the lonely, for the elderly in general — by supplying easy access to music they once loved.

“The program’s not going to reverse the effects of dementia,” said Bradlee, “but it’s going to evoke memories from the past — and the joy of those memories.”

Cognitive abilities can improve as well as mood.

I’ve seen both happen, in fact, while watching my wife, Nancy Fox, play piano and provide patter in senior and memory-care facilities in Marin.

Immobilized residents mouthed words from long-forgotten tunes.

And rhythmically tapped their toes and fingers.

I’ve watched deer-in-headlights eyes light up — and stay alert for a while.

“Music & Memory,” I’m also convinced, can cut costs by reducing the need for certain medications. And it can produce residents’ desire to interact with others.

Bradlee gave an example.

One WindChime resident is French and “loves to dance to the music. Her entire playlist is French songs. She’s very sweet to watch, and wants everyone else to hear what she hears, to enjoy what she enjoys.”

Some residents prefer keeping to themselves, however.

Another resident, Bradlee observed, just blissfully and wordlessly “plays invisible piano.”

Virtually everyone involved with the iPod program listed the same caveat: Despite its genuine promise, personalized music is no magical cure.

Still, Gina, who’s also the Community Life Services director at Aldersly in San Rafael, suggested the devices offer “a perfect way for volunteers to step up” since residents need only push a single button to start or stop the music.

Bradlee summed up why she’s sanguine about the program: “I’m always talking quality of life and this program enriches the residents lives.”

One coordinator’s reaction was succinct: “It’s such a great idea — so cool.”

I concur.

Contact Woody Weingarten at voodee@sbcglobal.net or at www.vitalitypress.com/

[Woody’s [rating: 3.5]

Good things come in threes.

Like “Annie the Musical,” which just opened at the SHN Golden Gate Theater in San Francisco.

It has, to start with, bouncy tunes, talented cast and uplifting theme.

It also has a knack of bringing synchronized pleasure to three generations — at least in my family.

My 8-year-old granddaughter, Hannah, loved it.

So did Laura, her mom: mid-lifer. And so did I: geezer.

Issie Swickle, a 9-year-old Floridian whose long brown hair was cut and dyed red for her “Annie” title role, is absolutely professional.

And has a strong voice.

Yet I believe two other performers have even more charisma.

The first, scene-stealing Lynn Andrews, turned orphanage queenpin Miss Harrington into the best villainess since Glenn Close’s portrayal of Cruella de Vil in “101 Dalmatians.”

Andrews, like Melissa McCarthy, uses her plus-sizedness as a hilarious comic prop.

She’s so over-the-top it’s impossible to stop grinning when she’s on stage — whether singing like a snarling witch in “Little Girls,“ embellishing a raunchy song-and-dance trio such as “Easy Street,” or lip-synching a Jello commercial.

Then there’s a challenger to Shirley Temple as cutest kid actor ever, Lilly Mae Stewart, who sings, dances and even cartwheels as Molly, one of seven little orphaned girls.

She’s a teeny 10.

Speaking of cute, Sunny, a 4-year-old rescue terrier mix who plays Annie’s adopted pooch, Sandy, fits that bill.

Hannah, in fact, confided that one of her favorite “Annie” moments was “when Sandy yawned.”

Her others included two numbers, “It’s the Hard Knock Life” and “Tomorrow, “ the show’s optimistic anthem, and the fun idea of bunk beds (though she wouldn’t want to be stuck in a lower).

Laura, meanwhile, “thoroughly enjoyed the show, which can be appreciated on both adult and kid levels.”

She’s right, of course.

Though most youngsters will be clueless about The Great Depression and Hoovervilles, FDR and the New Deal, or, indeed, orphanages, they certainly can comprehend kids’ plaints about drudgery, meanness and a desire to be part of a family.

When “Annie” first appeared on Broadway in 1977, it won seven Tony’s, including best musical.

Martin Charnin, who doubled as lyricist, directed it then. His direction of this touring company is his 19th go-round.

“Annie” spotlights a capable cast of 25 (plus or minus the dog), and an orchestra of 21. And although the girls shine in choreography by Liza Gennaro, particularly a number featuring a Rockettes-like chorus line, their high-pitched voices make words difficult to distinguish.

Some theatergoers might consider the show’s length — about 2-1/4 hours — excessive for younger children.

Others might object to Annie not looking like the original comic strip character.

Until she’s “gussied up” in Act II by billionaire Daddy Warbucks’ minions. That’s when her straight hair suddenly turns curly and she dons the red dress we all recognize.

Some also may find fault with a knife threat, a doll’s head being torn off, and the word “damn” being used repeatedly.

Never, however, is Annie anything but an optimist, spouting such niceties as “You gotta have dreams.”

The show’s an old-fashioned happy-ending creation likely to force you to hum songs by Charles Strouse, who also co-wrote “Bye Bye Birdie.”

A key by-product, by the way, stems from SHN joining the St. Anthony Foundation in its “Socks in the City” campaign. Seat-holders are asked to bring a new pair to a performance and deposit it in SHN Golden Gate Theatre lobby barrels. Collected items will be given the homeless.

Because my family isn’t homeless, Hannah could smile a lot during “Annie.” And Laura could smile while watching Hannah smile.

And I could smile while watching them both.

Hannah’s mere existence gave me an excuse to go in the first place. I probably wouldn’t have without her, and I’d have been the loser.

But I believe after this run is successful, “Annie” will turn up again — tomorrow.

“Annie the Musical” runs at the SHN Golden Gate Theatre, 1 Taylor St. (at Market), San Francisco, through June 14. Night performances, 5:30 p.m. Sundays, 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays. Matinees, noon Sundays, 2 p.m. Wednesdays and Saturdays. Tickets: $40 to $160 (subject to change). Information: (888) 746-1799 or shnsf.com.

Contact Woody Weingarten at www.vitalitypress.com/ or voodee@sbcglobal.net