Woody Weingarten

[Woody’s [rating: 3.5]

Sarah Ruhl tells anyone who’ll listen she hates that her plays and characters have been labeled quirky and whimsical.

She and her distorted creations are just that, of course.

Need proof? Check out the Ross Valley Players production, “The Clean House.” It’s filled with quirkiness and whimsy.

I’d actually gone there in search of those attributes.

But what I didn’t anticipate was for them to be intertwined so intricately with poignancy.

“The Clean House” is about many matters: falling in love, a search for the perfect joke, cleanliness and clutter, sibling rivalry, friendship and forgiveness, mourning, living life to the fullest.

But Act I evolves at such a slow pace, despite fitful turns, and is so surreal, so Dali-esque, I kept looking for clocks or Apple wristwatches that were melting.

I found none.

I did, however, locate an ingenious multi-leveled set, designed by David Shirk, that allowed me to easily follow characters from room to room, from New England to Alaska, from past to present, from reality to imagination.

It included a screen that projected pithy storyline and relationship summaries, translations of foreign phrases, and shots of falling snow, tossed apples and swimming fish.

True plot points.

But Ruhl, MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” winner, actually consigned her creations to “Metaphysical Connecticut,” whatever that means.

“The Clean House” is the play that put the then-31-year-old on the theatrical map in 2005, when it was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize a year after first being produced.

Ultimately, it centers on a main character being overtaken by breast cancer.

My wife, who’s been free of that affliction for 20 years, found its climactic scenes tough to watch — despite a nuanced, uplifting performance by Sumi Narendran as Ana.

So did I.

But neither of us ditched the show. Nor did anyone else. The drama part of the comedy-drama had become compelling.

Ruhl previously dealt with cancer in her work. Her father had died of it in 1994, and she purportedly wrote “Eurydice,” a 2003 play, to “have a few more conversations with him.”

“The Clean House” is adroitly directed by JoAnne Winter, co-founder of San Francisco’s Word for Word.

She notes in the playbill that “everyone is a mess, broken, needy, and frightened, even the people who seem to have it all together. We may not ever fully understand the jokes life plays on us [so] it is a joy to be reminded…to embrace the messiness of life.”

Though “The Clean House” at first seems to be about disorder, it is, in fact, about putting your house in order.

Its plotline isn’t quite linear, but the evolution of its characters is.

A Brazilian maid, Matilde, who finds feather-dusters, vacuums and other cleaning materials abhorrent, lazes around the home of her employer, Lane (an uptight doctor married to a breast surgeon).

Lane’s sister, Virginia, is a compulsive-obsessive housewife seeking something to do with her life, so she offers to assume Matilde’s cleaning responsibilities and free her to work out “the perfect joke” in Portuguese.

Livia Demarchi makes Matilde believable in spite of the character’s being grounded somewhere in mid-air.

Tamar Cohn appropriately portrays Virginia as ditzy, childlike (innocent and primal) and desperately hungering to be helpful.

And Sylvia Burboeck effortlessly converts Lane into the kind of arrogant, stressed-out doc we all know (“I didn’t go to medical school to clean my own house”).

The sole male in the equation, Lane’s husband Charles, abandons Lane after being smitten by Ana, a patient.

But that ends up nowhere near as unloving as it portends.

Not incidentally, Steve Price runs a beguiling gamut as Charles — from abominable snowman-like seeker of a Yew tree and operatic/choreographic physician to compassionate human being hurt by not being able to heal.

I’m sure I wasn’t meant to immediately get some ruminations within the play.

Or ever.

Some enlightenment might have been expected to arrive hours — or days later. After all, Ruhl originally wanted to be a poet, and much poetry is initially unfathomable or mysterious, right?

Like an elongated Portuguese joke never translated.

I surely wasn’t sure what I thought of the whole eccentric, moving enchilada while watching it, nor instantly after exiting. Yet the next morning I recognized it had a deliciously subtle, flavorful aftertaste.

One that absolutely left me looking forward to the Bay Area’s next show by Ruhl.

“The Clean House” plays at The Barn Theatre, Marin Art & Garden Center, 30 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Ross, through June 14. Performances: Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Thursdays, 7:30 p.m.; Sunday matinees, 2 p.m. Tickets: $14 to $29. Information: (415) 456-9555 or www.rossvalleyplayers.com.

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

[Woody’s [rating: 3.5]

I was barely out of short pants when Ray Bolger starred in Broadway’s “Where’s Charley?” in 1948.

But I remember bouncing around the neighborhood singing “Once in Love with Amy,” the biggest hit from the musical, for anyone who’d listen — even though I knew no one with that name and had no real concept of boy-girl passions.

I just saw the show again, a 42nd St. Moon production at the Eureka Theatre in San Francisco.

It was deliciously quaint.

Keith Pinto, who takes on the title role with phenomenal gusto, is no Bolger — especially when it comes to soft-shoe dancing.

But his comic chops are superlative.

And his mock tango’s priceless.

Director Dyan McBride makes sure the other 13 cast members keep up with Pinto — particularly when it comes to wide-eyed, cartoon-like antics or outlandish melodrama.

The impossible-to-believe but amusing storyline was lifted from a popular 1892 play, “Charley’s Aunt.” What I watched, therefore, was a revival of a farce from the last century that referenced a play from the century before that.

England’s Oxford University is the setting. Chaperones are required for a proper woman to be in a man’s presence.

Charley Wykeham and Jack Chesney (James Bock) want to entertain the women they’re smitten with but Charley’s aunt, who could be the go-between, is late arriving from Brazil (“where the nuts come from”).

Jack convinces his buddy to impersonate the mega-rich relative, Dona Lucia D’Alvadorez (Stephanie Rhoads).

And two elderly male gold-diggers fall for her/him.

Soon afterwards, the real auntie shows up to complicate things.

The show, whose melodies and lyrics were penned by Frank Loesser, who later composed “Guys and Dolls,” tips its musical top hat to Gilbert & Sullivan operettas.

“Charley’s Aunt,” though men had filled female roles for eons, was credited with being the first staging of explicit drag in Western theater. It worked, too, as precursor to such cross-dressers as RuPaul, Dame Edna, Bruce Jenner — and, I guess, J. Edgar Hoover.

Not to mention drag performances in “La Cage aux Folles,” “Pink Flamingos,” “Some Like It Hot,” “Tootsie,” “Mrs. Doubtfire”— and a slew of mediocre movies with Tyler Perry as Madea.

The sweet spot of this revival, however, is the clowning.

Scott Hayes supplements Pinto’s tour de farce via an over-the-top performance as lecherous Mr. Spettigue.

The character repeatedly chases Charley, not unlike the silliness of a Road Runner episode.

An appreciative audience titters.

The crowd laughs even louder at set pieces — Charley awkwardly serving tea, his removing Spettigue’s wandering hands from his knees, and Amy (Abby Sammons) screeching “The Woman in His Room” (with timing as extraordinary as Lucille Ball could have delivered).

A trio singing “The Gossips” provides yet another great comic turn: Rosamund (Noelani Neal), Doretta (Katherine Leyva) and Violet (Marie Mikheyenko).

Musically over all, female voices are exceptional, males not so much.

I particularly enjoyed hearing two women in duets — Kitty Verdun (Jennifer Mitchell) with Jack, her suitor, on “My Darling, My Darling,” and Dona with Jack’s father, Sir Francis Chesney (John-Elliott Kirk) on “Lovelier Than Ever.”

Pleasurable, also, is when Charley breaks the fourth wall, asking the audience to sing along with him on “Amy,” a throwback to what Bolger, who won a Tony for his performance, originally improvised.

And colorfully subdued costumes by Rebecca Valentino are fetching.

Weaknesses, regrettably, appear as well.

The dancing, though mostly precision-like, lacks spark. I suspect the original Broadway movements by George Balanchine were slightly better.

And while accompaniment by pianist Lauren Mayer is appropriately invisible, her choppy overtures aren’t.

British accents rise and disappear with frequency.

And Act 1 feels drawn out (it runs 80 minutes) — like a Carol Burnett sketch that was extended — and extended, and extended.

Ticket-buyers, despite such negatives, expect 42nd St. Moon shows to be positive experiences over all.

They are (and this is).

And they should be: The troupe’s been doing classic musical theater for decades.

And doing it well.

“Where’s Charley?” will play at the Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson St. (at Front and Battery streets), San Francisco, through May 17. Evening performances, 6 p.m. Saturdays, 7 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays. Matinees, 3 p.m. Sundays. Tickets: $21 to $75 (subject to change). Information: www.42ndst.moon.org or 415-255-8207.

Contact Woody Weingarten at voodee@sbcglobal.net or check out his blog at www.vitalitypress.com/

[Woody’s [rating: 5]

As I left the American Conservatory Theatre’s “Let There Be Love,” I noticed an unusual number of men dabbing tears from their eyes with hankies.

Some openly.

But most, a bit embarrassed, swiped surreptitiously. Or prayed no one would witness their glistening cheeks.

Earlier, I’d seen the same guys rolling with laughter.

Stirring work by three actors and inspired writing by British playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah are the reasons why.

And classic jazz recorded by singer-pianist Nat King Cole — juxtaposed with smile-inducing moments triggered by Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” and calypso champion Lord Invader — becomes the superglue that binds characters in the new A.C.T. comic family drama in San Francisco.

Cole’s lyrics particularly enhance the action at critical moments.

The setting — including intentionally mismatched wallpaper — is a contemporary London home that’s grown a tad shabby.

From neglect.

Attention is paid only a wood cabinet-enclosed gramophone that Alfred (an ill-tempered, seriously sick West Indian elder who emigrated to England four decades before) lovingly calls Lily.

Plus an oversized globe that houses a well-stocked liquor bar.

Alfred, in a masterfully sensitive yet nuanced performance by Carl Lumbly, has antagonized his estranged wife and both of his daughters — including Janet, the absent “born-again nut” and mother of his mixed-race grandson, and Gemma, the present but unhappy lesbian (played with appropriate anger by Donnetta Lavinia Grays).

The former goatherd and hospital porter regrets his distancing actions but feels powerless to fix what occurred long ago.

Enter Maria, a young, boyfriend-abused Polish immigrant who becomes Alfred’s caregiver, confidant, nurse, cook, friend and surrogate daughter.

Greta Wohlrabe, whose elastic face runs an expressive gamut that’s never unconvincing or mawkish, is impeccable in that demanding role.

Her solo dancing spurts are highlights, too.

Director Maria Mileaf — differing from most plays staged in the Bay Area (and anywhere else, in fact) — makes sure there are no slack spots in “Let There Be Love.”

No lagging whatsoever. No watch checking.

And no dropped accents.

Alfred isn’t above dropping an occasional f-bomb, though. The word, he insists, “brings a wonderful clarity to my…sentences.”

The play manages to cover a lot of ground in two hours: racial bitterness, social change, end-of-life dignity, redemption — and trips to both the local Ikea and faraway Granada.

While the first act of “Let There Be Love” offers mostly laughs, the second switches into a touchstone of courage and forgiveness.

The climax of the play, which I felt was now and then a bit too pat, is astoundingly sentimental.

But it’s also astoundingly poignant, the very definition of moving.

Which explains why the hankies came out.

Including mine.

“Let There Be Love” plays at the American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary St., San Francisco, through May 2. Night performances: 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. Matinees: 2 p.m. Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays. Tickets: $20 to $85. Information: 1-415-749-2228 or www.act-sf.org

Contact Woody Weingarten at voodee@sbcglobal.net or check out his blog at www.vitalitypress.com

[Woody’s [rating: 1]

Mom’s body and world are in a race to see which will break down first.

Even her garage is collapsing.

But armed with Paul Bunyanesque tall tales of the American frontier, a ukulele and an endless supply of cockeyed optimism, she’s hell-bent on retaining her pioneer spirit.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work.

Nor does the play in which she’s the main character — the Marin Theatre Company’s “The Way West,” which is meant to be a whimsical but serious look at how a Central Valley family of three copes with the Great Recession.

A lot within the production does work, I concede.

The three main actors — Anne Darragh as mom, Kathryn Zdan as her older daughter, Manda, and Rosie Hallett as the younger, Meesh — are first-rate.

Costuming, set and sound all provide ideal trappings, and director Hayley Finn succeeds in keeping the play hurrying toward its abrupt end.

But original songs by Sam Misner and Meghan Pearl Smith don’t add much beyond a copycat Woody Guthrie folky flavor of the Old West — even though the three principals passably strum and sing.

A terminally shallow script by award-winning playwright Mona Mansour is the main stumbling block.

It attempts to tackle serious topics of financial ruin and homelessness and familial relationships but glosses over them with exaggerated, clichéd situations and forced humor.

“The Way West” is the third play on which the MTC has bestowed its Sky Cooper New American Play Prize. First came Bill Cain’s “9 Circles,” which I called “multi-faceted” and “dazzling.” Next was “The Whale,” which I found “touching.”

I suppose that, as the platitude goes, two out of three ain’t bad.

In “The Way West,” a 62-year-old mother has filed for bankruptcy and isn’t doing well physically. Yet she still stares through rose-colored glasses and embellishes already hard to swallow western mythology.

And hopes her daughters will follow her lead.

The kids, however, also are screwed up — and in deep emotional and fiscal trouble.

Mandy has overextended her credit cards and endangered her job back East by overlooking an obscene typo. Meesh has run into a legal hassle peddling stuff online.

“I always try,” Mansour has been quoted as saying, “to be equal opportunity about how messed up the characters are.”

She does accomplish that in “The Way West.”

But messes up the play in the process.

To be fair, the opening night audience laughed often, and a good deal more than I did.

I found most of the humor juvenile — including dialogue that demanded intentional overacting, and including satirical, melodramatic signs that resembled silent movie title cards.

“We are all in this together — and it’s not good,” one proclaimed.

To me, the line might also apply to performers and audience.

Toward the climax of the play, which at times crosses the fine line between clever and insipid, one character says, “Talking creates hysteria.”

The playwright creates stylized onstage hysteria, however, by having her inventions talk incomprehensively over each other — and panic because of a living room fire.

Having just published a book, I fully recognize what tremendous effort and perseverance goes into completing any creative effort, so I’m hesitant to pan any artist — especially a writer.

Sometimes, though, benevolence must give way to conscientiousness.

This is one of those times.

“The Way West” plays at the Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley, through May 10. Night performances, 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays; 7 p.m. Sundays; 8 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays through Saturdays. Matinees, 1 p.m. Thursdays; 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Tickets: $10 to $53. Information: (415) 388-5208 or marintheatre.org.

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

[Woody’s [rating: 4]

When “Head of Passes” ended, a stunned audience forgot to clap for a few seconds.

[Woody’s [rating: 4.5]

I was afraid I wouldn’t like it.

I’ve been going to the de Young Museum’s “Bouquets to Art” for so many years I thought I might be too jaded.

I wasn’t.

What I’d forgotten was that not only is each year’s floral art exhibit different by its very nature, trends spawn even greater changes.

The first time — when my wife had to drag skeptical me there because I was pre-positive it would be neither art nor good — I was totally blown away by how outstanding, how unique, the floral arrangements were.

Oh, how those designs enhanced and enriched the museum’s permanent collection.

That year, as the several before when my wife had gone alone, displays consisted basically of flowers, flowers and more flowers.

And green leaves.

A gadzillion varieties of flora to simulate the paintings and sculptures in front of which they rested.

Not many non-living materials.

Not many foundations.

Not many structures.

But inch by inch, year by year, like osmosis, those elements slipped in.

So it shouldn’t have surprised me that his year’s four-day displays were more structural than ever.

It turns out that that wasn’t a bad thing at all. It just meant more elaborate designs.

More — and more elaborate — eye candy.

And visceral joy.

Such as the Hunter-Lee Flowers’ impression of Picasso’s “Still Life with Skull, Leeks and Pitcher.”

Or life imitating art as a Plumweed Floral and Event Design construction simulated “Lady in Black with Spanish Scarf” by Robert Henri.

The bigger and better designs weren’t limited to displays favoring intricacy or heavy foundations, though.

Consider, for instance, the enormous, chock-full-o’-color bouquet by floral artist Valerie Lee Ow, who was celebrating her 16th year as a participant in “Bouquets to Art.”

It sat in front of “Rhapsody” by Richard Mayhew and, in fact, seemed to overpower it.

Want something a bit whimsical yet still colorful? The answer could be found in a floral peacock created by Natasha’s Designs in front of “The Flora and Fauna of the Pacific” by Miguel Covarrubias.

All in all, the evolved, more complex displays somehow helped my wife and me enjoy the show more than ever.

We can’t wait for next year.

Top billing at the de Young, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive at John F. Kennedy Drive, in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, now goes to the “Botticelli to Braque” exhibit, which displays masterpieces from the national galleries of Scotland through May 31, and “Richard Diebenkorn Prints,” which will run through Oct. 4. Information: 1-415-750-3504 or contact@famsf.org.

Contact Woody Weingarten at voodee@sbcglobal.net or check out his blog at www.vitalitypress.com

[Woody’s [rating: 4.5]

I first saw Alvin Ailey’s choreography when I lived in New York City in 1960.

That was two years after he’d founded his troupe, one year after I’d returned from post-undergrad stints in Mexico and Hollywood — a time for both of us to be experimenting with innovation.

I embarked on a lifelong career as a journalist. He pursued his dream of coupling traditional African-American culture with modern dance.

And he drew upon his memories of his Baptist church upbringing in Texas, integrating traditional spirituals, gospel and blues in his legendary work, “Revelations.”

Now, 55 years later, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s still performing that ballet, still celebrating spiritual exuberance.

When I saw the Cal Performances offering at Zellerbach Hall the other night, it was as captivating, as viscerally exciting as ever.

Maybe more so.

I couldn’t help notice it’s aged without a wrinkle.

Two other reprises were equally compelling — the percussive “Uprising,” by Israeli-born Hofesh Shechter and Vex’d, performed with surging testosterone by seven male dancers, and “After the Rain,” a pas de deux by Christopher Wheeldon that gracefully enhances music by Arvo Pärt.

“Suspended Women” by Jacqulyn Buglisi, danced to music by Ravel, seemed flimsy by comparison with the others — almost like watching 14 ballerinas twirling atop a music box.

“Uprising” was intensity incarnate.

It featured mock wrestling, macho slapping and punching, with guys appearing and disappearing into a shadowy mist.

Riveting.

I found it impossible to look away.

But “Revelations” was the most fun to watch.

The “Wade in the Water” sequence was exceptionally eye-catching, with all its costuming and props white except for one blue sheet-like material that seamlessly simulated waves.

Most rousing were the portions devoted to the familiar — “Sinner Man” and “Rocka My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham.”

The traveling troupe’s performances run only through April 26. But if you can make it, do.

In my book, it’s the best dance troupe extant.

A few folks must agree.

The multi-racial New York City-based company has performed before 25 million people in 48 states, 71 countries and on six continents.

Ailey created 79 ballets for the troupe but long wanted it to include works of others.

It has.

More than 235 pieces by more than 90 choreographers now help constitute a repertoire for the company, which after Ailey’s death in 1989 was helmed first by Judith Jamison and now Robert Battle.

Both would have made him proud.

Upcoming Cal Performances dance dates include “Cinderella,” by the Marlinsky Ballet and Orchestra, Oct. 1-4; and Twyla Tharp’s 50th anniversary tour, Oct. 16-18. Information: www.calperfs.berkeley.edu/ or (510) 642-9988.

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

We reveled in our fantasy.

Instead of deck-lounging in San Anselmo, our minds rocketed to Zanzibar, the semi-autonomous part of Tanzania in East Africa that’s housed humans for 20,000 years.

Why there?

God knows, since neither my wife nor I’d ever thought of going there — even when playing “let’s pretend.”

The mental trip was a lot cheaper than real airfare, of course.

And we definitely needed a break, fast approaching total pooped-outedness because of our typically intense, neurotic scheduling.

“I haven’t spotted a native all day,” I mused aloud, “but I have noticed animals nosing around.” Three deer-in-residence that devour whatever flowers dare pop up in our yard were grazing only a few feet away.

I had no clue what they were fantasizing.

Our compulsiveness made us set rules even for last month’s “impromptu” four-day staycation.

We’d monitor but not answer phone calls and emails. Nancy wouldn’t work on her upcoming piano-and-patter performances, nor I on promoting my book, “Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner’s breast cancer.”

We mulled taking our dog, Kismet, to a West Marin beach, leisurely buying pants at the Northgate Shopping Center, taking out mu shu from Ping’s in San Rafael.

No deadlines. No schedule. No pressure.

The first morning, I asked our Zanzibarian chef to scramble eggs, with diced onions throughout.

When done, I said, “My compliments to the chef.”

“Thanks,” he replied.

Funny how much “he” resembled my wife.

The eggs were perfect. But we decided we’d prefer eating out most of the time, as if we were in a faraway Airbnb instead of at home in Marin County.

Relaxing has never been our long suit, though.

In fact, years ago I tried pulling off a Do-Nothing Day. It lasted under four minutes, after which I found myself checking 13 bookmarked news sites, exercising, phoning my daughter in New York, walking our dog at Drake High, helping Nancy unclog a filing cabinet, hauling a box to our storage shed, writing to an agent, and crafting a column.

We did better together.

One day we even watched a triple-feature in bed.

Best was “Alive Inside,” gifted us by Nancy’s Sausalito cousin, Laura Scott — a documentary about personalized music on iPods breaking through the solitary confinement of nursing home patients with Alzheimer’s and dementia.

It made us weep.

And rush to our checkbook.

The film also made me again appreciate Nancy’s shows. She regularly plays in memory-care and other senior facilities — geographically spread from The Redwoods in Mill Valley to Atria Tam Creek in Novato.

For years she’s told me of residents exiting almost catatonic states to tap their toes and fingers, swing their arms and mouth words from once forgotten tunes.

A two-way blessing, indeed.

Our second staycation day included laughing and crying at a Fairfax matinee of “The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” and slowly strolling downtown in San Anselmo.

That was followed by a day of Nancy dipping into Ann Patchett’s anthology, “This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage,” and my reading Roger Ebert’s autobiography, “Life Itself” — books with mega-positive messages.

But our best “go-nowhere day” was the one in which we went somewhere.

Unscheduled.

We rode past Fairfax and San Geronimo through manifold tunnels of trees to South Beach, where we watched huge waves blithely erase both human and dog prints from the sand for hours.

And we topped off the jaunt with an elongated outdoor lunch at Perry’s Inverness Park Grocery while watching sheep across Sir. Francis Drake Blvd. that were even more tranquil than we.

Wristwatches seemed wholly out of place.

Though we did make it through the staycation without working, we also re-discovered our love for — and addiction to — the endeavors that comprise “our revolving-door lives.”

Well, to be honest, we almost made it.

Our final staycation hours were corrupted by a computer glitch on my iMac.

I gave myself papal dispensation to work it out.

Nancy and I chortled at my obsessiveness — and copped to preferring the excitement of fifth gear to the stability of first.

But even if we never repeat our four-day experiment, we at least learned we can take time off from overload.

Maybe half a day.

Or an hour.

Hey, watch out Zanzibar, here we come again.

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

[Woody’s [rating: 5]

“Danny and the Deep Blue Sea” would merit a rave review were the theatrical company decades old.

But it deserves special acclaim because the two-character, two-act drama is Flynn Spirit Productions’ first outing.

Let’s say, six stars out of five.

Paul Ulloa and Charlotte Garwood, who named their new venture after their son, Flynn, have said they “want to bring risk-taking and [emotionally] moving theater to audiences and artists.”

They’ve fully met both prongs of that goal.

From the git-go.

Ulloa gets maximum credit because he effectively doubles as the play’s star, assuming the violence-prone title role opposite Kimberley Roberts’ power as Roberta, a divorced mother tormented by the ever-present image of an ugly sexual encounter with a family member.

Both tattooed characters in their mid-30s are foul-mouthed, angry, father-hating, tortured souls — the epitome of self-loathing.

Both seek compassion and forgiveness.

And both shout a lot — almost eardrum-splittingly — in the 20-minute first act, which is as intense as anything I’ve seen on a Bay Area stage in many a moon.

Playwright John Patrick Shanley and director Estelle Piper turn down the decibel count a notch for Act 2, which is nearly twice as long — and soften the would-be lovers into something approximating likability.

That let me breathe normally again.

And be grateful for experiencing something fresh, crisp and improbably believable in the 48-seat Phoenix Theater, high up in a building just off Union Square in San Francisco.

What had drawn me there was the playwright, John Patrick Shanley, who’d written two other plays I admired, “Doubt” and “Moonstruck.”

It wasn’t the fact that Danny, a possible killer known to his fellow truck drivers as “The Beast,” believes his inner pain (“everything hurts all the time”) will lead to a heart attack, or that unemployed Roberta thinks she’s nuts, desires punishment and fantasizes about being blissful in jail, and has relegated care of her 17-year-old son to her parents.

It wasn’t that either’s desperate craving for tenderness, for happiness, for love, may appear too rapidly.

Or that they both are momentarily naked.

And it certainly wasn’t that the set reminded me of a seedy neighborhood bar in the Bronx where, on my first newspaper job, I’d frequently guzzled tap beer with locals.

In any case, I’m glad I could watch two downtrodden theatrical caterpillars morph into butterflies.

Despite Danny undoubtedly remaining, as Roberta labels him, “a caveman.”

“Danny and the Deep Blue Sea” runs at the Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason St. (between Geary and Post), Suite 601, San Francisco, through May 3. Night performances, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Matinees, 3 p.m. Sundays. Tickets: $30. Information: www.eventbrite.com.  or (510) 843-4822.

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

[Woody’s [rating: 2.5]

She’s in a dual struggle — to transcend prejudices of her redneck family and to deflect ridiculing of her singsong name, Sally Talle.

He’s in an uphill battle to conquer his fears of remaining an underdog and misfit.

And to neutralize her anxiety about being adversely linked with him.

They’re an unlikely pair of walking wounded, unlikely to triumph over her kin’s biases.

Whether they eventually can is the puzzlement of “Talley’s Folly,” a two-character drama that won a Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1980 and is currently being revived by the Aurora Theatre Company in Berkeley.

I found the new, 97-minute production much like life itself — sometimes electrifying and fast-moving, sometimes sluggish enough to be doze-worthy.

It also made me remember a classic Yogi Berra phrase: It’s déjà vu all over again.

“Talley’s Folly” focuses on circa-World War II differences in religion and class — and on a prickly intimacy achieved through verbal and physical dances of love on the Fourth of July, 1944.

And because it’s replete with a glut of references to barefaced anti-Semitism, it repeatedly jerked me forward to scary 2015 headlines from Europe.

Sally’s family was once one of the two wealthiest in Lebanon, Missouri, a community that happens to be prolific playwright Lanford Wilson’s real hometown.

So the Talleys had severe expectations of her — the gentile princess.

Matt Friedman, a Lithuanian-born Jewish accountant from St. Louis, arrives unexpectedly after a year away — to persuade Sally, a nurse’s aide once fired as a Christian Sunday School teacher, that he loves her and that she should escape with him.

He’s disregarded her not answering his letters.

They verbally fence in her family’s rundown boathouse (the physical folly of the title). They talk and talk and talk, and finally swap secrets (which, in my opinion, dovetail a little too easily).

Insults become part of the mix.

She accuses him, for instance, of not having “the perception God gave lettuce.”

He in turn knocks her family (particularly brother Buddy, who apparently can’t see him as anything but a semi-human outsider/Communist-socialist/traitor).

Lauren English plays Sally with Southern drawl and demeanor intact, opposite Rolf Saxon, who’s utterly convincing as the urbane Matt.

“Talley’s Folly” is a serious play laced sporadically with humor.

Especially funny is Matt’s rambling opening monologue to the audience (which he repeats at breakneck speed).

Imitations of Humphrey Bogart and a repugnant German likewise evoke amusement.

For most of the play, though, Sally and Matt are both awkward, “private people” trapped in their histories and what she might have called their Sunday best.

It’s as if they were pimply teenagers at ages 31 and 42.

And they essentially resemble one of his verbalized thoughts: Because people are like eggs, they must be careful not to bump into each other too hard.

The play was directed by Joy Carlin, a Bay Area theatrical hall-of-famer who portrayed Sally in the 1979 American Conservatory Theater production of “Fifth of July,” the last part of Wilson’s trilogy, which the Aurora will reprise from April 23 through May 17.

Although “Talley’s Folly” — which acts as a prequel within that trilogy — is filled with conflicts, it’s almost action-less.

Which makes Carlin’s task of injecting life nearly impossible.

She actually does amazing well considering the loquacious raw material Wilson provides.

“Talley’s Folly” runs at Harry’s UpStage at the Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison St., Berkeley, through June 7. Night performances, Tuesdays, 7 p.m.; Wednesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m. Matinees, Sundays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $30-35. Information: www.auroratheatre.org or (510) 843-4822.

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