Costumes in Momix show are extraordinary. Photo by Sharen Bradford.

By WOODY WEINGARTEN

Momix, a troupe of dancer-illusionists, simply can’t be reviewed like one would an ordinary company of hoofers, or, for that matter, even some exceptionally first-rate ones.

This group was so much better — perhaps because it was so different, so fresh.

At times, the eight celestial, acrobatic performers became movable pawns in artistic director Moses Pendleton’s absurdist Alice, their newest traveling show at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley. They could disappear and reappear into and out of lighting effects and projections. They could slyly, whimsically exaggerate dance moves as avant garde recorded jazz, rock, and choral music also captured the audience’s toe-tapping attention. And they could get embedded in mind-blowing, quirky choreography and costumes.

The performance was salted with somewhat subtle humor, via odd arm and leg movements and imaginative heads of critters and babies, via hidden wires that shot performers into the air, and via costumes that rapidly changed characters from this to that to the next thing.

The show also contained understated sexuality.

It’s unlikely most of the crowd had ever seen anything like the 105-minute, two-act Cal Performances Bay Area premiere, even from Momix, which has matured in its sophistication and its ability to create illusions over the years. The performance had a plethora of slick smoke-and-mirrors, minus the smoke.

Pick a descriptive word; these all fit — spectacular, amazing, magical, unique.Come to think of it, fantastic, with its multiple meanings, might be the most on the nose moniker.

The book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was the inspiration for the 23-number wonderment, with Act 1 carrying a “Down the Rabbit Hole” label and Act II being tagged “Through the Looking Glass.”

The spectacle was too superb to have only one show-stopper — it had three, the best of which spotlighted male performers toying athletically with extra-large mirrors that marvelously distorted reality.

Even if the last time you’d read Lewis Carroll’s stories was 20 or 30 years ago, you would immediately remember and recognize references to such classic figures as the Mad Hatter and the Cheshire Cat (even though their identities here were somewhat fluid).

Exercise balls become dance props in Momix. Photo by Sharen Bradford.

One don’t-miss moment, another of the show-stoppers, was a synchronized bit that proved massive exercise balls could become extraordinary props.

Missing the red aerial silks of “The Mad Queen of Hearts” would have been a shame. The segment might have reminded you of a Cirque du Soleil act but with even more striking beauty and pizzazz.

Also, “Advice from a Blue Caterpiller” provided some charming, light-hearted moves that you most likely haven’t witnessed before.

So, with all those visual vignettes in mind, this sentence becomes incredibly easy to write: Next time Momix appears in the Bay Area, go!

Other dance performances coming up at Zellerbach that are certainly worth checking out are the Mark Morris Dance Group’s “Moon” from Jan. 23 to Jan. 25 and “Graham 100,” the Martha Graham Dance Company’s anniversary year celebration on Feb. 14 and 15.  

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

Zev Rattet of Marin County shares a hug with Korean actress and influencer IU during a backstage visit on her “2024 IU Hereh World Tour” stop in Oakland, July 30, 2024. The 77-year-old Rattet is a K-drama superfan who earned the nickname “Grandpa Uaena” for his fixation with IU and her talent, and his story has been amplified on Korean media. (Framegrab from video via Zev Does KDrama/YouTube)

Zev Rattet in a partial framegrab from video talks about his favorite K-dramas of 2025. At 77, the Marin County retiree runs his own YouTube channel dedicated to Korean television dramas. (Zev Does KDrama/YouTube)

The white-haired Rattet, who cherishes the slightly reverent title IU’s official fan club bestowed on him, “Uaena Grandpa,” has in effect become a mascot whose fixation with the singer-actress and her talent has been retold and retold on Korean media. He impishly explains that Bernadette, his French wife of 43 years, “banned” photos of her from the main floor of their Fairfax home. “She thinks I’m going to run away with IU, but I just think of her as a granddaughter.

Uaena, the name of IU’s official fancafé, basically translates as “you love me,” and IU, singer-actor Lee Ji-eun’s stage name, means “I and you,” which symbolizes the closeness she wants to create with her audiences.

Rattet, a computer programmer who retired in 2018, a year after he started becoming a devotee of K-drama, has turned into a non-stop storyteller — charming, breezy, light-hearted. Some of his brief monologues and videos meander playfully, filled with not only run-on sentences but run-on paragraphs.

“I noticed IU a year and a half into watching, in a K-drama called ‘Hotel del Luna,’” he begins an interview with Local News Matters. “She was the star. I fell in love with her character, so I started looking for dramas she was in. In one, ‘You Are the Best,’ in episode 36 of a 56-hour drama, she sings toward the end of the story. I loved her music.”

Because of that, he searched out other K-dramas with her singing and soon became the oldest fanboy in Uaena. Those actions eventually brought him Korean celebrity — along with his YouTube channel, Zev Does Kdrama, which features videos of “the hug,” of him gushing about IU and her work, of scenes from K-drama, of him being interviewed, and of him cooking Korean dishes — plus a shot of the back of a hoodie that reads “I love IU … and my wife.”

Meeting his idol

After Rattet started posting “something every day, to keep IU in everybody’s consciousness,” her fans and staff kept telling her to check him out. She made contact, inviting him to sit way up front when her tour took her to Oakland. “She sent me an invite online,” he relates. “I dressed the same way I was dressed when she ‘discovered me.’ All through the concert, people waved at me because they recognized me from my channel. Backstage, she hugged me, something the Korean people normally don’t do. She was so gracious, so warm, so humble. She embodies qualities, like being kind, that I really admire. Meeting her was one of the high points of my life.”

Korean officials clearly were interested in publicizing the cross-cultural aspects of Rattet’s enthusiasm. Last year, they offered him “a roundtrip business class ticket to Korea by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (to join) a subgroup with people from all over the world. It was great.”

Rattet became curious about Asian shows on Netflixin 2017, initially watching Japanese films. “But I didn’t feel connected,” he says, “so then I tried Chinese, but they reminded me of American TV. Then I found Korean, which were emotionally honest and culturally engaging. The quality of acting, the production, the story, and the music were all spectacular.

“‘Oh, My Ghost’ was the first one. I was hooked almost immediately. Every time I watched one, I wanted to watch another. I usually describe them as a 16-hour movie, although the length varies. But each story is complete, with an opportunity for character development. I’m closing in on 400 now; I crossed the 300 mark a year ago. That totals 5,600 hours, but I re-watch each one an average of two or three times, which makes it 15,000 hours. My wife’s on her 143^rd, approximately 2,300 hours.”

They’re not all dramas, he notes, despite the K-drama rubric. “I also watch comedies, thrillers, rom-coms.” He views Korean movies as well, and, just for variety, popular animated American films that feature a female action trio, K-pop Demon Hunters.

Endless stories, boundless enthusiasm

Rattet never seems to get bored by his mainstay, K-drama, which we can’t say about his checkered occupational life. Before becoming a programmer, he was a daily newspaper reporter, a training materials designer, president of a software company in Kentfield, an insurance agent, and founder of a publishing company.

A former hippie who’d overcome childhood polio, Rattet describes his life as “non-standard.”

Nowadays, only because he can’t watch K-drama 24/7 on each of 365 days annually, he fills out his retirement by “taking bicycle rides, cooking on what I call Wok Wednesday, having Friday neighborhood get-togethers in my driveway, going on walks with my wife, and spending an hour every day doing something for my channel. And I go to gym every Saturday with my wife and watch K-drama while exercising. I had a knee replacement a few years ago, but I have no serious illness. I expect to live to 114.”

Right now, Rattet’s immersed in “When Life Gives You Tangerines,” a new K-drama on Netflix starring IU in two mother-and-daughter roles.

He sighs, after watching her, remembering another character trait of IU’s he found he liked some time ago.

“I have to mirror her humbleness,” he says.

Susan (Tina Traboulsi), who’s blind, listens to ex-cop Carlino (Rob Garcia) lie about his crooked motives in Wait Until Dark. Photo by Robin Jackson.

By WOODY WEINGARTEN

Wait  Until Dark, a theatrical thriller that’ll run through Dec. 14, proves that nothing can replace live theater. You’re not in front of a two-dimensional movie screen but, instead, you’re right there, close to the characters, close to the scary action, possibly gripping the edge of your seat until the suspenseful drama ends. You’re watching a play that’s often dimly lit or totally blacked out on purpose, nervously expecting the main character, who’s blind, to suddenly be attacked or killed.

The audience at the Barn in Ross, packed with white-haired ladies at a matinee, is kept in the dark, so to speak, as long and as much as the protagonist is.

Superb direction by Carl Jordan and solid acting by a cast of six Ross Valley Players keep the intensity going throughout, overcoming a complicated, dated 2013 script that’s a rewrite of the original 1966 Broadway version.

Jordan ensures that the play’s stereotypical characters aren’t quite caricatures but that their pawn-like movements from the pens of writer Frederick Knott and adaptor Jeffrey Hatcher are followed.

In contrast, Tina Traboulsi is so realistic as Susan, a newlywed who hasn’t adjusted yet to sightlessness caused by an auto accident, you might feel a desire to reach across the stage to keep her from stumbling over furniture that was moved, to protect her from the danger of three intruders who separately enter her apartment without her knowledge, permission, or desire.

Sporadic humor, almost all of it intended, may break through the tension from time to time,

A leather-gloved Roat (David L. Yen) leaves no fingerprints while searching for a valuable doll. Photo by Robin Jackson.

although Susan’s paranoia starts early and builds geometrically as each character enters the stage. She, naturally, suspects everyone, including her husband, of lying to her or plotting something even more evil.

Rob Garcia portrays Carlino, an ex-con, ex-cop involved in a non-theoretical conspiracy with just enough likability to make his otherwise menacing demeanor tolerable.

Portraying a snarly, leather-gloved criminal, whom Susan and you may both believe wouldn’t blink at the need to dispose of someone in his way, is David L. Yen as Roat.

David Abrams inhabits the personality of Mike, who may not be so dead-set on killing — or getting caught.

Coco Brown and Diora Silin, who alternate each performance of Gloria, play a troubled teen who repeatedly drops into Susan’s basement apartment to avoid a mom who entertains a string of men, and Benjamin Vasquez (Susan’s disappearing hubby, Sam) fill out the cast of the murder mystery.

A mysterious doll with something valuable hidden in it becomes the taut focal point of the climax of Wait Until Dark, which was made into a 1967 movie starring Audrey Hepburn and Alan Arkin with different plot points.

It takes almost no time for costumes and furniture that could have existed in the World War II era to quickly pull the audience into the basement digs in Greenwich Village. Gifted sound cues by Billie Cox and equally perfect lighting designed by Frank Sarubbi pinpoint a noir atmosphere that cinematic classics from director Alfred Hitchcock and Hollywood power couple Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall honed.

The plotline may take place in 1944, with occasional references to such past-their-sell-date items as malt-flavored milk mix Ovaltine and radio soap opera heroine Helen Trent, but two hours of intensity in Ross are definitely here and now.

Wait Until Dark will play in the Barn at the Marin Art and Garden Center, 30 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Ross, through Dec. 14. Tickets: $30 to $45. Info: 415-456-9555 or www.rossvalleyplayers.com.

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

Dana Hunt (center) discusses with Tajai Britten (left) and Jonathen Blue his possibility of gay sex. Photo by David Minard. 

By WOODY WEINGARTEN

Perhaps unexpectedly, since the play’s about growing up black and gay, whites in the audience of Bootycandy made up a plurality. But it made no difference. Boisterous laughter frequently erupted from every seat during the opening weekend matinee at the California Theatre of Santa Rosa.

The comedy, which details homosexual intimacy, employs f-bombs and nearly every other curse word you’ve ever heard. It’s belly-shakingly funny.

The top-notch, five-member cast, four of whom are dark-skinned, delivers about 1,738 laughs in less than two hours on the Left Edge Theatre stage (don’t count; you’d probably miss a bunch of gags that way). But, in addition to multiple over-the-top slapstick segments, the audience gets to see black culture through some serious lenses based on a dozen autobiographical sketches playwright Robert O’Hara theatrically threaded.

It takes some time, though, for the Big Reveal to tie the sketches together and transform what initially seems disjointed into something complex but a good deal more linear. In keeping with the offbeatness of the show, no backdrop exists for the actors to play off ­­(or is necessary for the bawdy coming-of-age story) but scene changes are brought to life by substituting chairs, costumes, and props.

Tajal Britten skillfully portrays Sutter, O’Hara’s alter ego, who grows from an awkward kid obsessed with Michael Jackson into a semi-mature playwright. Jonathen Blue, meanwhile, stops the show with an exaggerated, hysterical portrait of a minister who passionately preaches about supposedly wayward choirboys.

Jonathan Blue (right ) provides big laughs in ‘Bootycandy.’ Photo by  David Minard. 

Dana Hunt, Lexus Fletcher and Shanay Howell, who each deserve an award for superlative clowning, fill out the ensemble cast in multiple roles that range from a pudgy male rape victim to a lesbian named Genitalia who goes through a “non-commitment ceremony” that spotlights such smart lines as “wherever you go, I will not follow.”

Director Serena Elize Flores makes sure the sometimes subversive and provocative two-act play zips along so fast that audience members leave with the sensation that it’s much shorter than it actually is.

Because the plotline is thin, the vignettes risk being labeled stereotypical and racist. That viewpoint, however, discounts the text also containing more than a few wonderfully crafted, expository lines like “All chocolate cakes ain’t the same.”

Although the playwright has adeptly fleshed out his male characters, he was somewhat stingy with the women’s personalities.

Bootycandy begins with a dude clad only in white briefs and white socks. It ends with a touching moment with an Alzheimer’s-afflicted octogenarian grandma craving baby back ribs, a poignancy that’s diluted because it’s followed too closely by a wonderfully comic dance performed by the actors after their bows.

Bluenoses and children should stay home. Most everybody else should see this show.

Bootycandy will play at the Left Edge Theatre stage in The California, 528 7th St., Santa Rosa, through Nov. 23. Tickets: $22 to $44. Info: (707) 664-7529 or info@leftedgetheatre.com.