Woody Weingarten

[Woody’s [rating: 4]

I thought deceased playwright Noël Coward was so yesterday.

And I feared 89-year-old Angela Lansbury might fit into that pigeonhole, too.

But “Blithe Spirit,” which originally debuted on Broadway in 1941, proves my pre-show presumptions were way off.

All three are charming — despite their antiquity.

In the small but crucial role of second-generation medium Madame Arcati (at the Golden Gate Theatre), Lansbury is an absolute rib-tickling marvel.

It’s a part that earned her a Tony Award for the 2009 Broadway revival.

Opening night in San Francisco, I found the character actor’s physical comedy — as well as her ability to zoom her vocal elevator from squeaky to bass and back again — delightful.

But major kudos also are due Susan Louise O’Connor, whose comic antics in a secondary part are honed so finely they virtually steal the show.

As maid Edith, she manages to transform her earliest lines of  “Yes, mum,” “Yes, mum” and “Yes, mum” into comedic diamonds.

Laugh-aloud gems.

She’s so good at it, and in becoming a mousey creature stuck alternately in fifth and slo-mo gears, she almost outshines Lansbury in the slapstick-with-pinpoint-timing department.

Almost.

Lansbury had the opening night audience in her palm before the curtain went up.

Director Michael Blakemore deserves recognition, though, for acutely and cutely layering the manifold moments of shtick — and for making at least the first half of a protracted 115-minute two-act play move swiftly.

I can offer shout-outs, too, to Charles Edwards as an ultra-correct, ultra-British Charles Condomine, who asks the medium to conduct a séance in his living room so he can use it in his novel, and Jemima Rooper as Elvira, the churlish, lethal dead wife he summons despite remembering “how morally untidy she was.”

Such phraseology may seem archaic in print, but when used on stage it holds up.

Astonishingly well.

“Blithe Spirit,” which followed otherworldly films such as “Topper” and “The Ghost Goes West” into the public’s imagination and favor, allegedly was written in a week.

But Coward’s velocity doesn’t show through.

His wit does.

Adding to the onstage fun are old-fashioned projections of scene names and action, accompanied by screechy sounds from vintage recordings.

As well as ectoplasmic special effects that peak just before the final curtain.

On a personal note, repeated use of Irving Berlin’s “Always,” ancient enough to have been my parent’s favorite song, hit me right in the labonza.

Angela Lansbury’s 70-year career includes harvesting five Tonys, six Golden Globes and an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement. She starred on Broadway in “Mame,” “Gypsy” and “Sweeney Todd.”

She’s best known, of course, for playing Jessica Fletcher in “Murder, She Wrote.”

Which I never saw.

In spite of the original series being on TV for 12 years (and the cable re-runs still going strong).

She first awed me, rather, in a 1962 Cold War film thriller, “The Manchurian Candidate,” while playing the conniving mother of a potential political assassin.

Her “Blithe Spirit” characterization couldn’t be more dissimilar.

She portrayed Madame Arcati as a bent, cantankerous, peculiar old lady with a distinctive shuffle. But when it came time to take her bows, the nearly nonagenarian’s body was suddenly erect, and she was smiling and sprightly.

Why’d I like her and this play so much?

Maybe because too many shows nowadays are heavy, heavy, heavy.

In contrast, “Blithe Spirit,” which Coward appropriately subtitled “An Improbable Farce,” didn’t require` me to think about it, chew on it, discuss it, worry about it or dissect it.

All I needed to do was sit back and enjoy it.

It and Lansbury, that is.

Last year, the living legend made headlines when Queen Elizabeth aptly made her a dame.

She’d earned the honor.

And clearly, to steal a line from a hit Broadway show she didn’t star in, she’s still up there in the footlights proving “there is nothing like a dame.”

Especially a spry old one.

“Blithe Spirit” will play at the SHN Golden Gate Theatre, 1 Taylor St., San Francisco, through Feb. 1. Night performances Tuesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m. Matinees, Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $45 to $175 (subject to change). Information: (888) 746-1799 or shnsf.com.

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

[Woody’s [rating: 5]

Let anyone refer to “sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll” in the past and I’d probably think of the Grateful Dead.

That may be dead thinking now.

In the future, I’m likely to think instead of “The Cable Car Nymphomaniac,” a clever, bawdy musical comedy by the new FOGG Theatre troupe in San Francisco.

It’s that good. That fresh. That funny.

Its sex component was inspired by real events: In 1964, ex-dance instructor and Michigan transplant Gloria Sykes hit her head on a pole when her cable car lurched. Her suit against San Francisco five years later claimed the accident had caused a “demonic sex urge” that forced her have relations with more than 100 guys. The jury awarded $50,000.

Drugs in the show aren’t prevalent, merely a couple of joints (including one hand-me-down laced with slapstick).

And while the wide-ranging music is unlikely to fascinate Deadheads and is hardly integral to the storyline, its absence would greatly have diminished my enjoyment.

Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll indeed, just not your garden variety.

The situation lends itself to exaggeration, for sure, and being an easy target for parody. So it may surprise that the overriding theme of “Nympho” has less to do with sexuality per se than how a torpid housewife rouses to make her own choices.

(Although a major sub-text is that females are still being vilified for being sexual in the 21st century.)

I must admit, however, that “Nympho” left me a little flustered.

Praising virtually everybody connected with a production isn’t my usual critical style.

But consider, for instance, Tony Asaro.

He’s one of three FOGG founders, and doubles as its artistic director. Here he also deserves major credit for extraordinarily bright and sometimes salacious lyrics (“I’m the bourbon that melts your ice” and “adjust your slacks ‘cause here comes Gloria”).

He’s also composed 17 inventive melodies that gambol from hard rock to doo-wop to dissonance.

At the same time, Kirsten Guenther’s scythe-sharp book keeps the nearly two-hour, intermission-less show thrusting forward.

Director-choreographer Terry Berliner’s ingenuity becomes visible especially via a whimsical tango lesson and when comical angels flap their wings.

Berliner, who utilizes ensemble members in both male and female roles, clearly plays to his seven-member cast’s strengths.

Particularly David Naughton as Bruce, an uptight lawyer trapped in an outmoded morality; Steven Ennis, who excels in several cartoon-like, rubberfaced light-in-the-loafers roles; and Alex Rodriqguez, who wrings guffaws from super-seductive Eduardo and a mega-cheery plastic-ware peddler.

None of the other actor-singers are slouches either.

Take the company’s executive director, Carey McCray, for instance, who portrays hard-edged Esther, Bruce’s intern who contemptuously observes that “there is a system and it works as long as a woman knows her place.”

And who then roars, “Men fix the world — women fix lunch.”

Or Rinabeth Apostol as Gloria, the young woman saddled with constant male vibrations, someone who allegedly “sends out a carnal SOS.” Or Courtney Merrell as Bruce’s wife, Bryce, a gal desperately seeking herself. Or Hayley Lovgren, who energetically fills out the ensemble.

By the way, I found all the singing voices two octaves above adequate.

Supported effectively by Robert Michael Moreno’s keyboard and his four musical cohorts.

Oops! Almost forgot Jeff Rowlings.

His ingenious set design turns three cable car images and four wooden benches into about 217 stagecraft sensations.

I’d also be remiss if I ignored the costuming of Wes Crain, who jauntily contrasts Gloria’s ditzy glitziness with a fortune cookie-spouting guru’s over-the-topness.

FOGG, an acronym for Focus on Golden Gate, wants to examine the Bay Area’s history, communities, heroes, concerns and ideologies. So yes, “Cable Car Nymphomaniac” is indeed San Francisco-centric, including a lyric asserting that Gloria “gets around — from Laurel Heights to Union Square.”

But the locale’s only a backdrop.

I can easily see the musical doing well with sophisticated audiences in New York, St. Louis, London — actually, anywhere people would enjoy originality, wit and assorted music.

If a problem exists with the show, it’s that Asaro and company have set an incredibly high bar for their next production.

And the one after that.

And…

“The Cable Car Nymphomaniac” will run at Z Below, 470 Florida St., San Francisco, through Feb. 8. Night performances, Wednesday through Saturday, 8 p.m. Matinees, Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $25-$30. Information: (866) 811-4111 or www.foggtheatre.org.

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

[Woody’s [rating: 5]

[Woody’s [rating: 3.5]

What might you get if you’d locked Noël Coward and Neil Simon in a room with Margaret Mead after they’d toured Tanzania?

A witty comedy tinged with a hint of sadness.

“Impressionism,” actually written by Michael Jacobs, is embedded at The Barn in the Marin Art & Garden Center in Ross, where I watched standoffish New York City art gallery owner Katharine Keenan (played by Mary Ann Rodgers) and burned out photojournalist Thomas Buckle (Tom Reilly) take eight scenes and 80 minutes to become whole.

But their journey often amused me.

Even though Katherine couldn’t bring herself to sell the gallery’s paintings, and Thomas couldn’t let himself snap pictures.

Even though each permanently hid out in the gallery because of life’s wounds — hers from a series of failed relationships, his from seeing too much of the world’s underbelly.

Director Billie Cox, fastidiously peeling back the pair of human onions, nimbly helped me learn who they were by utilizing flashbacks that shifted not only time but place.

And by brilliantly using “invisible” paintings.

The two lead actors give top-drawer performances, surely not equal to those of Jeremy Irons and Joan Allen in the play’s 2009 Broadway debut but way beyond acceptable for community theater.

Much of the play’s dialogue is sharp.

Katherine snarkily revealed a warped world-view by exclaiming that men, whom she refers to as “you people,” exist only “to knock me over.”

More seriously, she ruled about art that “getting it accurate isn’t as important as getting somebody to feel something.”

Thomas, correspondingly, described the self-imposed constraints on his photographic art this way: “I won’t take pictures of anything that [won’t elicit] true joy.”

And the two adversary-friends playfully debated whether life is Impressionism or Realism.

Nobody wins.

But nobody loses either.

Before the opening night performance Cox had primed me and other critics by explaining that the show may only contain “one-act but it’s about the second act of our lives.”

The main conceit of “Impressionism” is that Katharine has employed Thomas for two years and — shades of Scheherazade — he regularly entertains her with stories about the coffee he brings her each morning.

Though the play is officially labeled a romantic comedy, Jacobs, a writer and producer whose work has been featured on Broadway, TV and in film, has put so many obstacles in the duo’s path — much like potholes in many real African roadways — it can sometimes mean a bumpy ride.

It’s certainly a different breed of big African cat than Cox’s last outing at the home of the Ross Valley Players.

That was “Twentieth Century,” which I called a “shamelessly silly…time-machine homage to Broadway creatures of the night-lights.”

In “Impressionism,” the protagonists are informed by artwork masterfully projected onto the gallery’s rear wall. And scenes are connected by both blackouts and slideshows of paintings most likely familiar to even non-art lovers.

Empty frames on the set walls bothered me a bit, however. I was never sure if they were meant to be symbolic, and I found the device distracting.

“Impressionism” probably shouldn’t be summed up by the following exchange:

Katherine — “I don’t understand anything.” Thomas — “Neither do I.”

Nor could a revitalized Katherine be allowed to condense everything into, “What if I wanted to…be ravished in a chair once in a while?”

But she might summarize the show by observing, of both art and life, “You can’t get it when it’s right in front of you — you have to step back…you have to step back to see it other than splotches.”

“Impressionism” is definitely more than the sum of its splotches.

“Impressionism” runs at The Barn Theatre, Marin Art & Garden Center, 30 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Ross, through Feb. 15. Night performances, Thursdays, 7:30 p.m.; Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m. Matinees, Sundays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $14 to $29. Information: (415) 456-9555 or www.rossvalleyplayers.com.

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

 

[Woody’s [rating: 2.5]

Two long rows of seats bordering the latest AlterTheater stage were so tightly packed it could have been a disaster had anyone needed a bathroom break mid-show.

A single theatergoer’s bad breath, in fact, might have been nearly as bad.

But, thankfully, nothing disrupted the world premiere of “Landless” in a storefront next to Johnny Doughnuts on west 4th Street in San Rafael.

That was a good thing because I, like everyone else opening night, needed all my faculties to absorb the breadth of issues  — and myriad flashbacks — proffered by playwright Larisse FastHorse in a mere two hours.

Enough, actually, to swamp my mind:

Native American heritage, homelessness, racism, bullying, discount stores choking ma-and-pa shops, the proliferation of casinos, and — in case that’s insufficient — friendship, love and benevolence.

It was as if she wanted to probe in two acts every feeling she’d had in her 43 years.

Her thematic pileup parallels the set, a mélange of cartons and racks of outdated and broken dreams from the life of Elise, a worn out and tapped out 68-year-old whose fingers are wedged in a metaphoric post-recession dike at her Matthews Mercantile store.

Not everything in “Landless” is hyper-serious, though.

Or depressing.

FastHorse sporadically uses humor as a leaven.

The play takes place in a small town where a new Walmart is squeezing fourth-generation Main Street merchants. But to find the heart of “Landless,” FastHorse, a member of the Sicangu Lakota Nation originally from South Dakota, interviewed local Indian elders, shopkeepers and business district residents.

Plus the homeless.

Silver makes the drama’s heart pound rapidly by passionately running a proverbial gamut of emotions as Elise.

And Nick Garcia is alternatively childlike, joyous, unhappy and angry as Josiah. a Hispanic-surnamed boy/man Elise had rescued 17 years before, a gay dreamer who’s part of a “landless tribe” seeking federal recognition.

He repeatedly tests the topic of identity.

“Do you know what it’s like to know who you are?” he ponders.

Emile Talbot and Michael J. Asberry fill out the cast by proficiently assuming several supporting roles each.

Mood-heightening lighting by Jack Beuttler also is noteworthy, especially since the storefront windows are left undraped so passersby can sneak a peek.

Bay Area theatrical legend Ann Brebner is an ex-casting director who led the drive to restore the Rafael Theatre and co-founded the Marin Shakespeare Company. Jeanette Harrison co-founded the nomadic AlterTheater in 2004, when the troupe turned a rocking chair store into a performance space.

Jointly, they directed “Landless.”

The two worked extremely well together, Harrison told me, but some rehearsal differences led them to test opposite ways of doing some scenes and then choose.

Opening night jitters, I suspect, can be blamed for multitude lines spurting forth before their cues were uttered.

That problem will undoubtedly get ironed out quickly.

But other flaws are not so easily corrected.

The faint recorded musical backdrop, for example, seems more intrusive than illuminating.

And I found some clichés irritating. Such as “You are not alone.” Or, “I need you to walk out this door and never look back.”

From play to play, the AlterTheater moves from storefront to storefront in downtown San Rafael, priding itself on prompting artists to “dream big, take risks, and push themselves to the limits of their imagination…and then take another step.”

I believe by exploring Indian culture and heritage, certainly not a mainstay of the Bay Area theatrical scene, it again has met that objective.

Now, if it would focus on a couple of the planet’s ills and not try to solve all of them at once…

“Landless” will play at the AlterTheater’s temporary space at 1619 4th St. (at G), San Rafael, through Feb. 1, then at the A.C.T. Costume Shop Theater, 1117 Market St. (at 7th), San Francisco, Feb. 12-22. Evening performances in San Rafael, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m.; matinees, Sundays at 2:30 p.m. Tickets: $25. Information: (415) 454-2787 or www.altertheater.org.

Check out Woody Weingarten’s www.vitalitypress.com blog, or contact him at voodee@sbcglobal.net.

[Woody’s [rating: 3.5]

I normally love playwright David Mamet’s rhythms.

And his caustic humor.

Nor am I put off by his usual torrent of f-bombs.

But “The Anarchist” is cerebral horseplay of a noticeably different color. It’s Mamet soberly executing mental calisthenics, taking both sides of an argument at the same time.

Using longer — and complete — sentences. Without vulgarities or drollness.

And with less of individuals talking over each other.

In a new Theatre Rhinoceros production, Mamet still does what he does best — poke beneath the veneer of characters to exhume the vagaries of human nature.

I see it as an 85-minute double diatribe.

Director John Fisher combines with Mamet to offer an intensely dramatic, philosophical feast that pinpoints a two-woman tug-of-war over rehabilitation, faith and sex.

But they present a dense repast not easily digested.

The storyline?

A lesbian anarchist on the day of a parole interview confronts a female “representative of the state” — perhaps her warden, maybe a prison psychologist, conceivably a parole officer — who will decide whether she should be freed.

The drama stars Tamar Cohn as bilingual, properly educated Cathy, an admitted terrorist killer of two guards in an echo of a real incident involving the Weather Underground in the 1970s.

She performs in tandem with Velina Brown as Ann, Cathy’s interrogator who may have been persecuting her —perpetually.

Both actors are splendid.

Flawless, in fact.

Each steeps her character with flesh and blood, with all the nuanced emotional back-and-forthness humans bring to challenging situations.

Each excels, too, at extracting the most from Mamet’s prose.

Such as Cathy’s pithy, “Neither God nor human worth can be proved.” Or, “The state does not have [the] power to put me on the cross.”

Fisher, meanwhile, magnifies the duo’s conflict by placing Brown, whose height is imposing and whose demeanor is appropriately unbending, next to Cohn, whose smaller, chameleon-like body can shift in an instant from servile to haughty.

Cohn, who lives in Marin County “with a terrific husband and a decrepit cat,” adroitly depicts an inmate who’s served 35 years and become a believer in Christ despite her Jewish upbringing.

Brown, co-artistic director of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, deftly reproduces a bureaucrat plagued with a major decision just before her tenure ends but hell-bent on having the prisoner reveal where her former accomplice/lover is.

Fisher and Mamet are, in a sense, joined at the hip.

Mamet had encouraged Fisher as a young director. And Fisher directed his “Boston Marriage” at The Rhino, America’s longest running queer theater.

When I attended “The Anarchist,” news bulletins became a factor.

I found it chilling that a trio of terrorists murdered a dozen people in the Paris office of a satirical publication the same day.

An anachronistic chunk of recorded pre-show music — Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A’Changin’” — also bothered me. I understood its symbolic value but the tune was jarring because it pre-dates by years the founding of the Weather Underground, whose terrorism had begun at San Francisco’s Ferry Terminal.

I’ve enjoyed Mamet creations for decades — “Glengarry Glen Ross,” which earned the Pulitzer Prize in drama, “Speed the Plow,” “American Buffalo,” “Oleanna,” “Race.”

As I do with Picasso’s diverse periods, I revel in Mamet’s — from his earliest male-oriented works (that emphasize character and the way people really talk) to his middle years (in which plot grows more important) to his latter-day female-oriented plays and their accent on social and political issues.

But “The Anarchist” is by far his thickest, most intellectual, wordiest exercise — and arguably the least entertaining.

The playwright apparently insisted that I — and the young, mostly gay crowd at The Rhino — work harder than I’d wanted.

It was as if I were expected to hold my breath for the duration of the play lest I miss a crucial phrase or concept.

Ultimately, however, the drama merited my full attention — even though critics bashed the original 2012 Broadway offering with Patti LuPone and Deborah Winger.

Causing it to run only 17 performances.

“The Anarchist” plays at the Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson St. (at Front and Battery streets), San Francisco, through Jan. 17. Evening performances, Sundays, 7 p.m.; Wednesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m. Matinees, Saturdays and Sundays, 3 p.m. Tickets: $15 to $30 (subject to change). Information: (800) 838-3006 or www.TheRhino.org

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

Almost all the buyers are incurable addicts.

So are the sellers, who occasionally purchase items when not volunteering.

But don’t be misled: There are no drugs. No booze. No butts.

Used books are their preferred vice.

Some are addicted to romance novels, bodice-rippers and the like. Some are drawn to true murder stories. Some favor volumes about sports or politics or scientific expeditions to the outskirts of civilization.

And some — like my wife — lean toward lighter fare, such as the humor of David Sedaris.

The buyer-fanatics would make the register in San Anselmo’s 20- by 40-foot Town Books ca-ching, ca-ching, ca-ching if the spanking new store had a machine instead of a cash box.

Me? I’ve bought nothing yet.

A voracious book reader into midlife, I’ve since turned to alternate worlds provided by newspapers, magazines, websites and, if you believe my spouse (who insists I’ll read anything), the backs of cereal boxes.

Cinnie Barrows — Friends of the Library stalwart who’s been as responsible as anyone for the shop’s birth — is much more typical.

She got hooked on books when her parents read to her “at a very early age. Then, still pre-school, I started using the library in my small West Virginia hometown. It was above the jail.”

She’s still addicted.

But others involved with the library, she insists, are even more so: “Some of the Friends read all the time.”

Cinnie’s worked her way down to wearing only two hats — “volunteer coordinator, which means I’m in charge of recruiting, and being the Tuesday manager.”

And she’s quick to cite two other Friends instrumental in the store’s gestation, Sue Neil and Shelagh Smith.

Sue, with her daughter Julie, helmed the shop’s design, including racks in the center of the room that clear away for special events.

She’s particularly proud of the shelves.

They were hand-picked, one by one, she says: “They’re all old bleacher benches from St. Louis that were re-purposed — some red, some black, some that had chewing gum on the bottom that had to get scraped off.”

Shelagh, who oversees Friends’ finances, co-wrote the volunteers’ handbook with Joan Boodrookas, the organization’s president.

Unpaid regular Sharon Bluhm commends it.

And says, “Fiction sells well — because it’s what we have most. So do children’s books and cookbooks.”

Early revenues hit between $500 and $600 a week, but they were based on being open only Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays from 10 to 4.

“When you consider most books sell for under $5,” says Sue, “even at $500, that’s a lot of books.”

Sales are expected to rise now because Fridays have been added.

Proceeds will help the library with what Debbie Stutsman, tow n manager, calls “a myriad of…things not covered by the general fund or parcel tax budgets.”

At least two volunteers staff the store at 411 San Anselmo Ave. each morning, two more each afternoon. Each day has a designated manager.

Though Town Books opened mid-September, the official launch wasn’t until last month, when 150 book lovers jammed what once housed Riccardo’s Italian restaurant and its endless empty bottles hanging from the ceiling.

Down San Anselmo Avenue, Michael Whyte, owner of Whyte’s Booksmith, rejects my question about competition. “I feel it’s more collegial,” he says. “The more bookstores in San Anselmo, the better.”

Whyte’s been supporting library projects for 30-plus years — “generously,” comments Cinnie.

Most of Town Books’ stock comes from individuals cleaning out their homes — folks like Lisa Mackey. “My mom is ill, in a nursing home,” she tells me, “and I’m bringing her books here.”

“Here” is the single room, but down the hallway is a 16×22 office where Eli Welber scans non-fiction barcodes to see if they can be marketed on Amazon.

His current online inventory is about 500 tomes. He expects the number to go up exponentially.

The afternoon I visit, a San Anselmo newbie who prefers anonymity scours the place for books dealing with the history of American poetry, while Oliver Kaufmann of Ross surfs the shelves (he’d earlier bought a novel and two nonfiction volumes).

They voice delight.

Some — like Kat Hench, who lived in San Anselmo but now resides in Novato — come to Town Books seeking something specific but don’t find it.

Few leave empty-handed.

But almost all, addicts or not, somehow leave with a smile on their faces.

Check out Woody Weingarten’s new blog at www.vitalitypress.com/ or contact him at voodee@sbcglobal.net.

[Woody’s [rating: 3.5]

When you come right down to it, I’m generally a non-believer.

I haven’t believed in the Tooth Fairy for a long time. Ditto the Easter Bunny and the Energizer Bunny. Double-ditto unicorns and centaurs.

Santa Claus? You must be kidding.

But ask me about a bumbling bozo brought up by elves at the North Pole who reunites in Manhattan with his human birth father and I’ll tell you, with a giant smile, that I wanna believe, brother, I wanna believe.

That’s because Buddy, hero of the gag-filled “Elf the Musical,” is so bouncy, so entertaining, so goofy.

Eric Williams, who plays Buddy in the touring company production at the SHN Curran Theatre in San Francisco, makes it virtually impossible not to like the character or believe in his good-natured, innocent spirit.

But to make sure my senior reaction paralleled those of theatergoers a few decades younger, I checked with the three kids I chaperoned to opening night.

Hannah, my 7-year-old granddaughter, was concise: “I liked the play better than the movie.”

She was referring, of course, to the 2003 comedy-fantasy Jon Favreau directed (starring Will Ferrell as Buddy).

She found the main character in the show “really funny,” but questioned the tale’s modernity. “I don’t believe that Santa has an iPad!” she exclaimed afterwards.

At least one urbane allusion had flown over her head.

Santa supposedly had stopped using reindeer after complaints from PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Questioned Hannah, “What’s a PETA? I know what a pita chip is, but what’s a PETA?”

Hudson, son of Hannah’s mom’s partner, was astute enough at 13 to discern minor blips. “Buddy forgot to button his vest,” he said about one of the many quick costume changes, “and it was obvious when he fixed it.”

He liked the show over all, though, especially its colorful costumes and multiple painting-like sets — despite finding the Buddy character “a little too dumb.”

But he also thought “some of the language might be a little harsh for little kids.”

Hudson’s younger brother, Kota, 11, clearly was the most sanguine of the trio. He appreciated 100 percent “how they integrated the musical numbers with the story,”

I loved watching my young companions’ reactions as much as I seeing the prime performers — all of whom were first-rate (most outstanding, besides Williams, were Harper S. Brady, who played Buddy’s half-brother, Michael, and Lexie Dorsett Sharp as Buddy’s stepmother, Emily).

Brady, who alternates with Tyler Altomari in the role, and Sharp were marvelous in two potent duets — “I’ll Believe in You” and “There Is a Santa Claus.”

Also superb was Maggie Anderson as Jovie, Buddy’s love interest. Her comic solo, “Never Fall in Love (with an Elf),” was brilliant.

A show-stopper.

The two-hour Christmasy musical will end its short local run Dec. 28, although it could easily become a perennial.

Because it oozes with charm.

Its 14-person chorus is as perpetually energetic as the aforementioned bunny, palpable in a scene of multiple dancing Santas and another when the elf-actors dance on their knees and create a Rockettes-like sequence.

Thanks to the combined imaginations of choreographer Connor Gallagher and director Sam Scalamonai.

Upbeat music by Matthew Sklar, lyrics by Chad Beguelin and a nine-piece orchestra conducted by Roberto Sinha help keep things blissful, with drummer/percussionist Aaron Drescher offering up the most perfectly timed, dramatic instrumentation.

For adults such as me, the show — which debuted on Broadway in 2010 — contains just the right amount of clever cynicism.

Such as when one department store Santa complains that today’s kids seem compelled to text while sitting on his lap.

Some adults, however, might prefer to take the family brood to “Nutcracker” again. Or re-read David Sedaris’ tale of his being a Macy’s elf, “Santaland Diaries.”

Some undoubtedly will pay attention to the youngsters.

The 15-minute intermission, Kota gushed, “felt so long — I couldn’t wait for it to end so the show could start again. ‘Elf’ made it onto the charts of my favorite plays. It was quite delightful. I’d see it again in a heartbeat.”

“Elf the Musical” plays at the SHN Curran Theatre, 445 Geary St., San Francisco, through Dec. 28. Evening performances, Sundays, 5:30 p.m.; Tuesdays through Saturdays, 7:30 p.m. Matinees, Sundays, noon; Mondays through Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $45 to $160 (subject to change). Information: (888) 746-1799 or shnsf.com.

[Woody’s [rating: 2.5]

The woman sitting behind me kept laughing so loudly I thought she’d wet herself.

She was an exception.

The woman sitting next to me barely smiled throughout “The Complete History of Comedy (abridged).”

Most of the Marin Theatre Company audience, including me, was somewhere in between.

Which translated on opening night to laughing aloud more than a few times, grinning a lot, and occasionally yawning at professorial explanations that obstructed the rapid-fire delivery of punch-lines and screwball, high-energy performances.

The three-man Reduced Shakespeare Company troupe emulates the way-back zaniness of the Ritz Brothers, Marx Brothers and Three Stooges as well as the way-way-back cerebral intricacies of Chekov and Shakespeare.

They insert pie-in-the-face, rubber chicken and Muppet-like gags.

They deploy limitless props.

Austin Tichenor, a classically trained actor who sports pants intentionally too short, and Reed Martin, a former circus clown who wears his head without hair, are the show’s writer-director-actors.

Dominic Conti, a physically flexible actor who sports cutoff shorts, fills out the trio.

“The Complete History of Comedy (abridged)” starts with the ostensible origin of the genre, a cavewoman who ludicrously distorts the birthing process.

But it doesn’t proceed chronologically.

Instead, the speedy 90-minute romp divides itself into chunks — about clowning, Commedia dell’arte, violence, fooles (ancient and current), the best and worst all-time comedians (with slides and snide commentary) — cemented by a series of marvelous puns that draw loud groans from an appreciative crowd.

Add to that the references, beyond caustically skewering religious and political hypocrisy, to virtually everything relating to comedy.

Like George Carlin and his seven dirty words, minstrel shows, Monty Python and its dead parrot skit, Sigmund Freud and his psychological deconstruction of jokes.

The threesome acts out an Elizabethan rendition of the classic Abbott and Costello “Who’s on First?” routine, presents a two-man Greek chorus, and offers up a solo Abraham Lincoln in the guise of a stand-up comic.

Wigs are plentiful.

Coupled with enough pieces of fabric to facilitate scores of instant costume changes.

So much happens so fast it’s easy to miss something amusing. But you can be reasonably sure something amusing will come around the bend in another split second.

The funniest bit, in my estimation, was a look at the U.S. Supreme Court with each performer manipulating two puppets — vigorously.

Except the one representing Clarence Thomas, who, like in reality, sleeps through the proceedings.

Close behind was a segment in which two theatergoers were dragged onstage, then basically left to their own devices to provide sound effects.

Their lack of skill ended up being hilarious.

Squeezed between the infinite jokes and sketches were a handful of quick but serious moments — such as that provided by an archetypal character, Rambozo the clown, derivative of both Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” and a 1986 antiwar song by Dead Kennedys.

The Reduced Shakespeare Company began in Marin in 1981 as a pass-the-hat troupe at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire in Novato.

Its first actual production was, fittingly, “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged).”

The current original production is the company’s ninth.

Some, I believe, were more successful than this — “The Bible: The Complete Word of God (abridged)” and “The Complete History of America (abridged),” for instance.

The company, which works exceedingly hard onstage, has publicized the phrase “Saving the world one joke at a time.” But it tries to cover too much territory in “The Complete History of Comedy (abridged),” resulting in the show being slightly uneven.

Maybe that’s why, in a theater in which standing ovations are de rigueur, it drew only moderate applause at evening’s end.

“The Complete History of Comedy (abridged)” plays at the Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley, through Dec. 21. Performances Tuesdays and Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Wednesdays, 7:30 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Matinees, Thursdays, 1 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $20 to $58 (subject to change). Information: (415) 388-5208 or marintheatre.org.

 

[Woody’s [rating: 4]

When it comes to worshipping at the altar of pop-rock singer-composer Cyndi Lauper, I’m a late latecomer.

At the height of her popularity in the 1980s, I wasn’t particularly taken with her voice, her compositions or her rebel-punk image.

I wasn’t even enthralled with her first big hit, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” a feminist anthem she reconstructed from Robert Hazard’s original male anthem.

But, then, I’m a boy.

However, when my wife and I saw Lauper perform at the Black & White Ball, the symphony’s fundraiser, on the streets of San Francisco in 2012, we became fans.

And now, having gone to the SHN Orpheum Theatre to hear the LGBT activist’s latest tunes in “Kinky Boots,” which won six 2013 Tonys (including best original musical), our delayed adoration has grown even more.

Others obviously share the attraction.

Those who hand out the Tonys, for example. They gave her one for writing last year’s best original score, making her the first woman to win that honor solo.

The 61-year-old also won a Grammy for this year’s album of the show.

The musical, an upbeat two-hour-plus toe-tapper overflowing with humor, proves that — contrary to Nancy Sinatra’s chartbuster — some boots are made for dancing rather than walking.

Even if you’re hesitant about a show that spotlights a flowing white gown on a man — plus numerous high heels, sequins, feathers and cross-dressers — you’re apt to enjoy this one.

Especially its poignant everyman ballads that mirror difficult relationships between parents and offspring.

The main theme is acceptance of differences (and getting past stereotypes and bias, despite the show being filled with stereotypes and clichés)  — and finding forgiveness.

In San Francisco, where the opening night audience was about 90 percent un-straight, those notions drew mammoth applause and cheers.

Our seats, in fact, happened to be surrounded by drag queens in full regalia, including glitter, whiteface, battery-lighted fuzzy hats and, naturally, high boots.

They made me think that, although the local run is scheduled to end Dec. 28, the musical potentially could sell out in the Bay Area forever.

Its mass appeal may have exceptions, though. Like the four elderly ladies sitting in the rear with dour expressions opening night that may have indicated they’d bought tickets to the wrong show.

The predictable storyline of “Kinky Boots,” based on the 2005 British film with the same title, has Charlie Price, a young Northampton owner of a failing shoe factory, getting help from Lola, a transvestite cabaret star.

They start producing tall high-heeled boots aimed for cross-dressers, so they must appeal to a wearer’s feminine side while supporting a man’s weight.

Kyle Taylor Parker is astounding as Lola, evoking sympathy and compassion while singing in multiple registers, and Steven Booth displays passion, vulnerability and power in the role of Charlie.

Although Parker’s diva rendition of  “Hold Me in Your Heart,” is a showstopper, so is a comedic number, “The History of Wrong Guys,” performed by Lindsay Nicole Chambers as Lauren, an assembly worker with a crush on Charlie.

The raucous “Sex Is in the Heel,” featuring Lola and six backups, The Angels, also is a major crowd-pleaser.

“Everybody Say Yeah” is yet another winner. It’s a gospel-like rocker highlighted by performers dancing, sitting and reclining on a moving — and separated — assembly line.

But the song that touched my heart and sensibilities the most was a tender duet between Lola and Charlie, “Not My Father’s Son.”

Lauper’s lyrics, by the way, are inspirational spirit-boosters — for drag queens, heterosexuals and virtually anyone with a heartbeat.

They can encapsulate significance in a few words.

• “You can’t move on if you’re still in the past.”

• “There’s a roomful of people who need to feel normal — comparatively speaking.”

• “You’re in my fantasy.”

The book by Harvey Fierstein is alternately funny and sensitive, albeit a tad preachy.

Jerry Mitchell deserves plaudits, too, for his direction and vigorous choreography — including a distinctive slo-mo boxing ring scene.

Still, “Kinky Boots” isn’t for everyone.

Those uncomfortable with not hearing every lyric enunciated perfectly, or having to decipher a makeshift English accent, or with in the company of transvestites or others different from themselves are advised to stay home.

For the rest, it’s pretty much a guaranteed evening of good feelings, glitz ‘n’ glamor.

“Kinky Boots” will play at the SHN Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market St., San Francisco, through Dec. 28. Night performances Tuesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m. Matinees, Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m.; Special performance, Friday, Dec. 26 at 2 p.m. Tickets: $75 to $300 (subject to change). Information: (888) 746-1799 or shnsf.com.