The gods of comedy (Dionysus and Thalia), down from Mount Olympus, introduce themselves with a flair. Photo by Mike Padua.

By WOODY WEINGARTEN

Daphne Rain, a workaholic classics prof played impeccably by Anna Wesner, is mouse-like and straightforward, and early-on declares “I don’t need a boyfriend; I need tenure.” But she’s also fickle, flirtatious, and frisky.

Ralph, her male counterpart classics professor, is portrayed brilliantly, hilariously by Paul Bisesi as gawky yet lovable. But, nevertheless, he’s fickle, flirtatious, and frisky.

And Dionysus, one of two larger-than-life spirits who hustle down to Earth from Mount Olympus in The Gods of Comedy at the Masquers Playhouse, is rollickingly characterized by Jeffrey Biddle. But he, as well, is fickle, flirtatious, and frisky.

This screwball 2019 comedy by playwright Ken Ludwig, celebrated creator of Lend Me a Tenor, is crammed with sexual wordplay, sexual movements, and single entendres — with partners changing as often as those in a bad French movie that somehow never stoops to boring.

The most sex-crazed character, however, is none of the above. It’s Liddy Freeman as slithering bombshell actress Brooklyn De Wolfe, who, with apologies to Will Rogers, apparently never met a man she didn’t like.

That said, sex makes up only about 3% of The Gods of Comedy. Indeed, the farce is at once laugh-out-loud-funny, cartoonish, silly, clever, and witty. It’s filled with slapstick, mistaken identities, exaggerated mugging, buffoonery, gags coming as fast as gatling-gun bullets, and copious physical comedy.

A handful of costumed production numbers, moreover, guarantee keeping your family Grouch or Dr. Seuss’ Grinch away.

Two classics professors, Ralph and Daphne, cradle a lost Euripides play, Andromeda. Photo by  Mike Padua.

The plot itself — mainly a frantic search for a re-lost manuscript of an unearthed edition of as Euripides play, Andromeda — almost doesn’t matter.

It also makes no-never-mind ha the show features tons of champion on scenery as well as third-grade level clowning (that tickles adult funny-bones much better than red noses and floppy shoes might).

Think, too, about the impossibility of not laughing at the running gag in which costumed-to-the-nines Dionysus and the muse, Thalia (Melody Payne Alonzo), constantly re-introduce themselves as “The Gods of comedy” with a flourish, a pause, and arms thrust outward, followed by an over-the-top “Ta da!”

Theatergoers also chuckle at Ares, a narcissistic, oversexed god of war (played by Paul J. White, not Pete Hegseth) who responds when asked what he does for a living, “Rape and pillage.”

Awe is another frequent crowd reaction, especially to the most spectacular visual scene: Dionysus juggling, Thalia twirling batons, and projected fireworks going off on the backdrop.

Awe is also appropriate for most of the costume designs by Lynda Hornada, who’s done that work on Broadway and for the New York Shakespeare Festival.

The sets also deserve accolades. They range from a full-blown look at a college office to a naked curtain. It all works seamlessly.  

There are flaws in this community theater production, however, not because of any performances, not linked to the direction, the sound, or the lighting.

The two-act show is often uneven, because there are so many jokey moments the odds are, a bunch will fall flat. In addition, between sight gags that draw major giggles and squeals are a few slow moments when the dialogue is drab and audience silences are awkward.

And while there are topical references to the Marvel series of film franchises, there also are weird, outdated mentions — to an ancient television series, “I Love Lucy,” for instance.

Director Ronnie Anderson, who keeps the two-hour pace at unrelenting, breakneck speed, writes in the program, “I am thankful the Gods were smiling on me, when casting.” Clearly, they were: The entire ensemble is not only superlative but sustains as much fun on the Point Richman stage as anyone’s likely to see.

Anderson utilizes a successful device that allows the minor god-like characters to instantly change personalities. They also shift from invisible to visible and back again.

Not incidentally, each of the play’s characters consistently seeks either an adventure or “a happy ending.” They get one or the other. Or both. And, no spoiler alert here, so does the audience — despite the “pure chaos” that frequently colors the stage.

The Gods of Comedy will run at the Masquers Playhouse,  105 Park Place, Point Richmond, through May 17. Tickets: $15 to $35. Info: 510-232-3888 or info@masquers.org.

Sherwood “Woody” Weingarten, a longtime voting member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle, can be contacted by email at voodee@sbcglobal.net or on his websites, https://woodyweingarten.com and https://vitalitypress.com. His books include Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner’s breast cancer, aimed at male caregivers; MysteryDates — How to keep the sizzle in your relationship; The Roving I, a compilation of 70 of his newspaper columns; and Grampy and His Fairyzona Playmates, a whimsical fantasy intended for 6- to 10-year-olds that he co-authored with his then 8-year-old granddaughter.

Chip Fuller (played by Woody Harper, left) and Dan Drake (David Kudler) whoop it up as sports radio talk show hosts. Photo by Robin Jackson.

By WOODY WEINGARTEN

A new play with an enigmatic title, Value Over Replacement, features sometimes confusing flashback and dream sequences. But it’s the specter of famed but un-hall of famer Barry Bonds, star homer hitter and alleged steroid user, that hovers over everything.

The dramedy by San Rafael resident Ruben Grijalva is a morality play that makes sure to sprinkle in enough laugh-guaranteeing lines to lighten the heaviness.

Many questions are posed but answers never become available — even by pondering long after the seven-member cast has taken its collective bows.

That said, Oscar “Woody” Harper is superlative as Ed “Chip” Fuller, a Triple-A minor leaguer who’s convinced he can still permanently make it to The Show, the major leagues, despite being short on talent, comparatively long in the tooth, and the long-time bearer of a bad knee.

Harper’s face projects a gamut of emotions as Chip goes through a series of introspections and causes a publicity surge by belatedly copping to injecting himself with Human Growth Hormone and other illegal substances.

The playwright — comments director Ken Sonkin in the program guide — “maps…one man’s tortured pursuit of a boyhood dream. [The play] doesn’t ask that you exonerate him, only that you hear him out.”

Sonkin’s encapsulation, not incidentally, links to Chip asking, “How many years would you be willing to trade to be exactly what you wanted to be when you were ten years old?”

David Kudler believably portrays Chronicle writer Dan Drake, Chip’s nemesis/friend/radio sports talk co-host on fictional San Francisco station KSFP, who cunningly prods him into a high-ratings moment — a confession.

By being onstage, Kudler, an Equity performer, ends a self-imposed theatrical absence of 19 years. And makes the audience hope the gap is forever closed.

Erik Forst, sitting in the bleachers, contemplates being a seasoned ballplayer. Photo by Robin Jackson.

Schoolgirl Amelia Stafford artfully switches genders as Alex, the Fuller’s son, especially agonized in a scene where he’s abused by his baseball-obsessed dad, and schoolboy Erik Forst is wordless but potent in dual bit parts as a young fan and young Chip.

Rachel Ka’iulani Kennealy (as Chip’s wife), Jennifer Reimer (as the mother of a boy who committed suicide after taking steroids), and David Schiller (as Jack Fuller, Chip’s late father, and as Mike Clawson, Chip’s drug supplier) fill out the cast. Effectively, all.

Value Over Replacement, a Ross Valley Players community theater production that’s part of its annual RVP New Works series, doesn’t depend on a deep knowledge of baseball to enjoy it — it’s a play about people, after all, not the math of statistics — but it might help if a theatergoer comes in knowing something about Bonds, the archetype for the never-seen character, Ken Hobbes.

Chip, meanwhile, is in effect a stand-in for all 27 players that allegedly received performance-enhancing drugs from the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO).

The wonderfully familiar crack of a bat hitting a baseball is skillfully provided by sound designer Bruce Vieira, who never misses a beat when Chip’s father endlessly practices with his son.

Benicia Martinez merits praise for the striking, spare set that includes bleachers and a corner that serves as a fill-in-the-blank area ranging from a spot where the autistic Alex incessantly practices slamming a ball against a wall to a spot where multiple characters testify before Congress.

The title, usually shortened in real-life to VORP, stems from an obscure sports stat that supposedly can evaluate a player’s contribution when compared with a real or imagined player of the same level and position. There’s but one reference in two acts and two hours to the statistic, though, so a new title could be more informative to a potential theatergoer.

Grijalva has written a first act that drags with excessive exposition and choppiness and a second that sprints and is sprightly, a first that borders on boring and a second that’s jammed with enough emotion to fill two acts. A bald senior in the first row could be heard at the end of an opening weekend matinee suggesting, correctly, that a sharp editor might cut it down to a more compelling one-act show.

Chip Fuller (Woody Harper) consoles his wife, Emily (Rachel Ka’iulani Kennealy). Photo by Robin Jackson.

The playwright nevertheless needs to be lauded for inserting lots of Bay Area references and such thought-provoking lines as, “If heart were a thing, there would be a stat for it already” and the Death of a Salesman-like “Steroids never killed anybody — disappointment, that’s the thing that kills everybody.”

He deserves kudos, too for a lengthy, uproarious, lowbrow segment on farting, almost as funny as Mel Brooks’ notorious cinematic scene in Blazing Saddles.

Grijalva has written that his “theatrical worlds are full of abstract hopes colliding with concrete frailties. The resulting debris can be beautiful, grotesque, and often — thank God — hilarious.”

That, indeed, does sum up the best of Value Over Replacement.

Stylishly.

Value Over Replacement, part of the Ross Valley Players RVP New Works, will run at the Barn Theater at the Ross Art and Garden Center, 30 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Ross, through April 12. 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.

L-R, Susan Zelinsky and Morgan Olson appear in Marin Theatre Company and Novato Theater’s co-production of “Jagged Little Pill: The Musical” onstage in Novato. (Katie Wickes via Bay City News)

By WOODY WEINGARTEN, Bay City News

When is a jukebox musical more than just that? When its story covers issues from the 1990s that remain problems today, like fentanyl addiction, rape and gender and racial identity.

Canadian alt-rock singer Alanis Morissette’s smash 1995 album “Jagged Little Pill” is the inspiration for the 2018 musical onstage in a Novato Theater and Marin Musical Theatre co-production through April 12. It reveals how a seemingly picture-perfect white suburban Connecticut family—mom, dad, son and adopted Black daughter with hidden plights—is truly dysfunctional. It takes place over one year, beginning with the mother writing a sanitized Christmas letter, followed by a darker one the next.

This community production, co-directed and choreographed by Katie Wickes and Jenny Boynton, is exciting from its loud start to its unexpected, haunting finish.

Susan Zelinsky, as Mary Jane Healy, the pill-popping supermom, carries much of the show on her slim shoulders. But Evvy Carlstrom-March, who portrays Jo, the lesbian lover of Frankie, the Healy daughter who’s unsure of her sexuality, has the cleanest vocal chops. Imri M. Tate as the rebellious teen Frankie, is easily the most animated.

L-R, Evvy Carlstrom-March and Imri M. Tate are among the excellent cast of Marin Theatre Company and Novato Theater’s co-production of “Jagged Little Pill: The Musical.” (Katie Wickes via Bay City News)

Sean O’Brien as Steve, the frustrated dad who’s heavily into internet porn because his addicted wife has lost her libido, also has a strong voice.

Morgan Olson doesn’t need to sing. As a symbolic dancing shadow of Mary Jane, she’s graceful and eye-catching, whether twirling or flying from one mark to another on her toes or stone-facedly caressing MJ’s face and handing her opioids.

Music director Megan Schoenbohm and top-notch musicians keep the sound at a level that mostly doesn’t drown Morissette’s lyrics, which are potent, honest, biting, coarse, caustic and humorous. Occasionally, the chorus sounds mushy and the words are hard to discern; it’s the lone sour note in the passionate 2½-hour show.

Among the show’s many high points are Morissette’s classic tunes “All I Really Want,” “Hand in My Pocket,” “Ironic” and “You Oughta Know,” as well as “So Unsexy,” “Forgiven,” “Unprodigal Daughter,” “Predator” and “No.”

This examination of female introspection and angst boasts a book by Diablo Cody, who won a Tony Award. Glen Ballard composed some of the music with Morissette.

“Jagged Little Pill: The Musical” opened on Broadway in 2019 but closed soon after during pandemic shutdowns in 2020. Happily, it came back successfully.

Marin Musical Theatre’s Wickes and Boynton follow with another winner after their electrifying “Cabaret” last year featuring Carlstrom-March as Sally Bowles. This show, too, is worth a trip to Novato. It’s likely to make an impact on theatergoers coming from myriad places, both geographically and emotionally.

“Jagged Little Pill: The Musical,” a co-production of the Marin Musical Theatre Company, runs at Novato Theater Company, 5420 Nave Drive, Novato, through April 12. Tickets are $37 to $50 at novatotheatercompany.org.

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.