[Woody’s [rating: 5]

“Peter Pan” is the most age-appropriate musical performed on Mt. Tam in several years.

For my granddaughter’s bracket, at least.

Hannah has now reached the ripe old age of 8.

With minimal prompting, she told me she really liked the dancing, the costumes and the songs.

But best of all, she said, were the special effects.

“It was fun watching them fly. I wish I could have done that.”

“But I didn’t like Captain Hook,” she added, forgetting to mention that she never likes a villain (no matter how droll).

When I complimented her for her behavior throughout the picnic-show afternoon, she rebuked me for calling her “a young lady” because, “like Peter, I don’t want to grow up — it’s cool being a kid.”

Though she generally enjoyed “Sound of Music,” the last Mountain Play she’d attended, it didn’t enchant her as much as this particular show did, and I doubt she’ll be nearly as mesmerized with next year’s Romeo and Juliet update, “West Side Story” either.

At her age, she has no concept that Nicole Heifer was responsible for the Jerome Robbins-like choreography of “Peter Pan,” Heidi Leigh Hanson for the primary-color costuming, or Michael Schwartz the fast-paced direction.

But I do.

So I mentally jotted down that all three deserve high praise.

God or Mother Nature, too, for making the day perfect at the outdoor Cushing Memorial Amphitheatre in Mount Tamalpais State Park on Highway 1 in Mill Valley.

Not too hot. Not too cold.

As the baby bear kept saying, “Just right.”

Although we, as usual, had prepared — by layering — for virtually any weather.

Admittedly, however, I wasn’t prepared to enjoy the musical as much as I did.

I guess that means that in my final analysis, the show must be age-appropriate for grandparents, too.

“Peter Pan,” the Mountain Play, will be performed at 2 p.m. Sunday, June 7, 14 and 21 and Saturday, June 13. Tickets: $20 to $40 (children 3 and under, free). Information: (415) 383-1100 or www.mountainplay.org.

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

[Woody’s [rating: 5]

The new Berkeley Rep farce, “One Man, Two Guvnors,” stirs the most good feelings — by far — of any feel-good show this season.

Despite the play being a throwback to English music hall shtick (with vaudevillian antics, burlesque sight gags, a little male crotch-grabbing, the breaking of the Fourth Wall, an avalanche of alliteration, a spot of audience participation, and skiffle band/faux Fab Four music tossed in just for the fun of it).

All wrapped in a whopping, fluffy cornball.

But the entire theatrical patchwork quilt — and 15-member acting ensemble — made me grin, smile, chortle and laugh — from beginning to end.

Quite a feat considering the first act’s 90 minutes long, the second another hour.

Don Donohue recently played a somewhat serious character, Richard III, in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and has played the villainous Scar in “The Lion King” on Broadway.

Here, as Francis Henshall, he’s what I’ll describe as a farce of nature.

He’s as skilled, exquisitely timed and rubber-bodied a clown as Pickle Family grads Bill Irwin or Geoff Hoyle, which is high praise indeed.

So easily muddled he can convince himself he’s his own alter ego, Francis fights with himself — verbally and physically. And he turns the moving of a trunk, and serving a feast while he’s starving, into pantomine works of art.

Donohue’s magnificently supported by, in particular, Ron Campbell as Alfie, a fright-wigged, off-balance geezer with a penchant for falling down stairs; Brad Culver as Alan Dangle, wannabe lover and wannabe actor always prepared to ham up his imagined lines; and Danny Scheie as Gareth, screechy-voiced food-server and scene-stealer.

Scheie, not incidentally, delivers the funniest pre-show cell-phone/exit instructions I’ve heard in eons.

The zany, simplistic plot?

The protagonist is hired separately but simultaneously by two men — Roscoe Crabbe, a dead gay mobster now being impersonated by his twin sister, Rachel, and Stanley Stubbers, a snooty criminal who’s her lover, her brother’s killer and a guy prone to such inane comments as, “I felt like a floral clock in the middle of winter.”

Francis’ main job is to flit between the two without either learning about the other.

Sounds like a farce to me.

Relying heavily on suspending belief about mistaken identities.

Since it is a farce, I’d expected dozens of slamming doors. Director David Ivers, a San Rafael, native, didn’t disappoint me.

But he manages to inject virtually everything he thought might add manifold touches of silliness — including oodles of slapstick and other visual hocus-pocus, non sequiturs, pure babble and off-center lines (such one from Rachel, who’s terrified of moving to Australia because she’d have to face “a terrible — outdoorsy — life”).

The play, written by Richard Bean, is set in 1963 Brighton. But it’s really an update of “The Servant of Two Masters,” a 1743 Italian Commedia dell’arte  style work by Carol Goldoni.

Almost 300 years old and still hilarious.

Not too long in the tooth after all.

The current South Coast Repertory co-production — which trails the show’s Broadway opening by only four years — features a quartet of lively musicians — two guitarists, a bass and a washboard player — who perform original Grant Olding tunes under the rubric “The Craze.”

Yes, it’s all unabashedly British — but there are definite overlays of rockabilly and Beatles and an estrogen trio oozing glitz.

“One Man, Two Guvnors” ends up being unadulterated joy, and doesn’t miss a comedic trick.

Well, that’s not quite true: I saw no pie in the face.

“One Man, Two Guvnors” plays at the Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theatre, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley, through June 21. Night performances, 7 p.m. Wednesdays and Sundays, 8 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays through Saturdays. Matinees, 2 p.m. Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays. Tickets: $14.50 to $89, subject to change. Information: (510) 647-2949 or www.berkeleyrep.org

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

[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