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May 29 2015
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You can’t top ‘Anything Goes’ at Center REP

By Judy Richter

Audiences for Center REPertory Company’s production of Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes” are in for a real treat.

Artistic director Michael Butler, who directs, has assembled a stellar group of performers and designers, resulting in a thoroughly entertaining show from start to finish.

The indisputable star is Molly Bell as Reno Sweeney, a role originated by Ethel Merman in the 1934 Broadway production. While Merman put her own inimitable stamp on the role, Bell has a different style that’s equally effective. She’s a triple-threat dynamo who can sing, dance and act with equal ease.

Reno is a brash nightclub “evangelist” who’s the featured entertainer on a passenger ship sailing from New York City to London.  She’s romantically interested in Billy Crocker (Joshua Hollister), who works for a Wall Street investor. Billy, though, has his heart set on Hope Harcourt (Brittany Danielle).

However, she’s engaged to a wealthy English nobleman, Sir Evelyn Oakley (Jeffrey Draper), a good-natured but naive sort who’s fascinated by American expressions.

With Billy as a stowaway, they all wind up on the S.S. American along with an assortment of other passengers and crew. Complications arise, but all get sorted out.

Porter’s music and lyrics have made this show a classic of the American musical theater. The long list of memorable songs includes such treasures as “I Get a Kick Out of You,” “You’re the Top,” “Friendship” “It’s De-Lovely,” “Blow, Gabriel, Blow” and of course the title song. Closing the first act, it showcases the versatile choreography of Amanda Folena, artistic director ofRedwood City’s Broadway By the Bay, with a tap extravaganza.

As Billy, Hollister sings the show’s most difficult song, “All Through the Night,” better than almost everyone else I’ve heard in the role.

In addition to great singing and dancing, this production provides ample laughs, many of them triggered by Colin Thomson as Moonface Martin, a gangster of sorts, and by Lizzie O’Hara as Erma, his gal pal. She can sing and dance, too.

The show is a visual feast thanks to costumes by Victoria Livingston-Hall, who has given the women one delectable outfit after another.

The serviceable set by Michael Locher (lit by Kurt Landisman) places the 11-member orchestra (including musical director Brandon Adams on piano) on the top deck. If there’s one drawback in the show, it’s that the sound design by Jeff Mockus sometimes can’t compete with the orchestra.

Everyone in the 23-member cast does an outstanding job no matter how small the role. However, the one who makes this production especially memorable is Bell. She’s the top.

Running about two and a half hours with one intermission, “Anything Goes” will continue through June 27 at Center REPertory Company, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek. For tickets and information, call (925) 943-7469 or visit www.centerREP.org.

 

May 29 2015
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Fear and Loathing on the English Coast in THE BIRTHDAY PARTY

By Test Review

A dirty joke, a poignant insight, an absurdist yawp, an unexpected reversal, a shocking confession and a stream of ironic badinage erupt one after another—and sometimes all at once. Full of loaded banter, veering from nail-biting confrontation to wildly cathartic caricature, Pinter’s controversial play, The Birthday Party, remains a text of unique and overwhelming power. Its unique and overwhelming power lies in this rapid oscillation; this sudden shift of mood; the abrupt embrace of tranquility and nonsense, the pleasant familiarity of cliche and the horror of senseless brutality. “Dark comedy” does not even begin to describe it.

Stanley (Adam Simpson) and Meg (Celia Maurice)

Off Broadway West Theatre Company’s performance of The Birthday Party summons this grimly ridiculous and genuinely terrifying world, a world cleverly disguised as a routine morning at a rundown boarding house in the least fashionable quarter of an English seaside town in the 1950’s, where we find British-born Graham Cowley, as Petey, munching his cornflakes in a fog, aloof.

Petey’s wife, Meg, dotes on him with unwelcome playfulness. As Meg, Celia Maurice embodies dotty sentimentality and loneliness. Ms. Maurice trained at Stanford University, with the A.C.T. Young Conservatory. In New York, she worked at the Lincoln Center with the New York City Opera, and The Birthday Party marks her debut performance with OBWTC. In this, she is magnetic: One moment, Meg is soaring away on a fantasy of escape, and, in the next, she is a dowdy husk of a human being. Humdrum chit-chat suddenly becomes brisk and riveting. This ordinary breakfast conversation, like one of our own, is now electrified—an everyday relationship catastrophically, irrationally infused with epic power struggles, violent upheavals, and dizzying bouts of confusion and regret.

At the breakfast table, still wearing his dressing gown and pajamas, the insanely demanding lodger, Stanley (Adam Simpson), heaps contempt on Meg. Later, the next-door neighbor, Lulu (played with smoldering sultriness by Jessica Lea Risco), asks Stanley, “You want to go for a walk?”
“I can’t.”
“You’re a bit of a wash-out,” she says.

Words are weapons, and, in time, they rip Stanley apart. The main drama here is his complete disintegration, from the youthful piano-playing phenom to the older and bitterly obscure lodger to… Something else entirely, something that must be seen to be believed.

Into this world drop the dapper Goldberg, and his Irish henchman, McCann. With their double-breasted suits, their black broad-brimmed hats, and smooth urban cynicism, McCann and Goldberg might as well be Martians. Keith Burkland, an OBWTC veteran, plays Goldberg. His sidekick, McCann, is played by James Centofanti, who appeared alongside Mr. Burkland last year in OBWTC’s Betrayal—another Pinter play. In this performance, their powerful chemistry crackles mercilessly, and spits sparks.
With oily, machine-like relentlessness, they advance on Stanley—and drive him to madness. McCann rips up a newspaper meticulously. For no apparent purpose. With a dead-eyed gaze, McCann regards Stanley coolly. He takes in this bizarre, overgrown boy, and says, “You’re in a bad state man.” Lulu is nothing but a “big, bouncy girl” to Goldberg. Goldberg is, himself, a London Jew, and a preachy raconteur (“You’ve always been a true Christian to me,” says McCann). Their neatly choreographed interrogations make a picture of menace.

Meg has no idea she is being ridiculed by Goldberg. Stanley’s face contorts in vexation and fury. He paces erratically, and beats his birthday drum like a maniac. The audience wonders: Is it OK to laugh at this? At the climax, in a scene like the cartoon version of the nightmare of a paranoiac, a game of “blind man’s bluff” unleashes a sinister, grasping golem; a stupid bacchanal spirals into oblivion with all the desolation of a drunken black-out; and Goldberg and McCann, once dapper sharks, are reduced to mere lecherous buffoons. Stanley is reduced to twitchy catatonia. Meg and Lulu are each reduced to a “walk of shame”. And Petey suffers more than he ever knew that he could suffer.

Goldberg (Keith Burkland) at center, with his henchman, McCann (James Centofanti)

A richly evocative sea-worn set—scarves and jackets and curtains pegged up like damp rags—renders an off-beat and dilapidated “boutique hotel” from the Fawlty Towers era. Anglophile fans of television shows like Doc Martin and QI will love the wittily suggestive back-and-forth repartee.

OBWTC’s The Birthday Party plays at San Francisco’s “The Phoenix Theatre” at 414 Mason St. (6th floor) until June 27th, 2015, with performances Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 8pm, as well as a pair of Sunday matinees (at 3pm) on May 31st and June 14. The Birthday Party is an all-out assault — a true tour de force — and it is not to be missed!

May 27 2015
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About Elly — Movie Review

By Joe Cillo

About Elly

Directed by Asghar Farhadi

This is a contrived, manipulative, ridiculous piece of melodramatic fluff that provides a very uncomplimentary depiction of Iranian culture.  If you think American culture is bad — and I do — this is much worse.  No wonder a simple weekend outing turns into a grotesque nightmare.  These people are intolerable.  They can’t do anything right.  Everything they do is stupid from beginning to end.  Part of the problem is that the filmmaker seems to be improvising the story line as he goes along.  He’s got a boring subject with boring people and he keeps looking for ways to jazz it up and keep the audience from falling asleep or getting up and leaving.  Nothing is convincing, though, and the outcome does not make sense and is so unconvincing that I would argue that Elly is not really dead and the idiot that looked at her body in the morgue misidentified her.

The film is Iranian.  It is in Persian with subtitles.  One of the features of Iranian culture that I discerned from this film is that it is a group culture, where one’s participation in the group is more important than one’s individuality.  It is a busybody culture where the group knows everyone’s personal business and is very much involved in regulating and directing the personal life of each member.  I wouldn’t be able to stand it, and in fact, it is exactly that feature of this group culture that gives rise to all the conflicts that make up the substance of the film, if you want to call it that.

Another difficulty, from a western observer’s point of view, is that this group culture makes it difficult to get to know the members of the group as individuals.  You come away from this film not really knowing who the characters are, with one exception that I will mention later.  Everything is done in a group and even conversations are group conversations.  The conversation goes on with all members of the group participating at once.  So when you read the subtitles, it is hard to connect the subtitles to the particular individuals making the utterances, because they are coming so fast and almost at once.  As the film goes on, individual personalities begin to emerge, but “character” in the usual sense that we understand in a western film is decidedly downplayed.

The subtitles must have been done by someone who is not a native speaker of English.  What gives this away is a discussion they had about someone “ululating” during some horseplay the night before.  How many Americans know what “ululating” is?  It suggests that somebody found the word in the dictionary, but didn’t really understand how (rarely) it is used.

The film is marred by a number of arbitrary turns whose only purpose seems to be to create melodrama, like leaving young children unattended on a hazardous beach when there are about eight adults present who could watch them.  This is what I mean about these people being dumb.  They’re careless, shortsighted and irresponsible — not to mention manipulative and deceitful.  They have all kinds of hang-ups about women and personal relationships.  They get into these huge squabbles over small interpersonal trifles.  It’s very tiresome.  They’re uncivilized.  If you want to watch a bunch of morons argue and bicker and fight amongst themselves about a bunch of nothing, then this is the movie for you.

There is one beautiful woman who has potential as an actress in this film.  Golshifteh Farahani who played Sepideh in the film is a gorgeous woman with beautiful captivating eyes.  It is unfortunate that she had to play this badly written role in this lousy movie, but she has the magnetism and the physical presence as well as the skill to be a heavyweight in a really good film.  But she is not enough to make this film worth sitting through.  I hope she will get a better chance in something else.

 

May 27 2015
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ANYTHING GOES a knockout hit at Center Rep.

By Kedar K. Adour

Molly Bell (center) her angels and cast belt out “Blow Gabriel, Blow” in Center Rep’s hit musical Anything Goes.

ANY THING GOES: Musical. Music & Lyrics by Cole Porter. Original Book by P.G. Wodehouse & Guy Bolton and Howard Lindsay & Russel Crouse. New Book by Timothy Crouse & John Weidman. Directed by Michael Butler. Center REPertory Company 1601 Civic Drive in downtown Walnut Creek. 925-943-7469, or www.CenterREP.org.

May 26-June 27, 2015.

ANYTHING GOES a knockout hit at Center Rep.  [rating:5]

Ethel Who? That would be Ethel Merman who made Reno Sweeny her signature role in  the musical Anything Goes that sailed onto the Broadway stage in 1936. . . at a time when ‘anything goes.” You can forget Merman if (when) you go to see Molly Bell’s Reno Sweeny and a fantastic cast under Michael Butler’s non-stop direction of  Anything Goes that earned a standing ovation opening night at Center Rep stage.  It is a charming, sparkling, energetic, hysterical humorous, song filled, spiritedly danced and corny/loveable musical.  Porter’s classic, vivacious, witty and naughty songs will keep a smile on your face as you hum the tunes long after you leave the theatre.

All the previous adjectives, starting with charming, describe Center Reps’ staging with a cast of 25 cavorting on a fantastic shipboard set with a 10 piece onstage orchestra being led by the multi-talented Brandon Adams who even comes down to center stage to lead an acapella rendition of “Public Enemy #1.”

Although Reno (Molly Bell) is a major player in the high jinxes that come fast and furious, she has to share the stage with an eclectic bunch of characters portrayed by a great cast. First we meet a Yale alumnus, and heavy drinker, financier Elisha J. Whitney (Michael Patrick Gaffney at his best) and his stock broker Billy Crocker (handsome tenor Joshua Hollister) who is love struck by Hope Harcourt (beautiful Brittany Danielle) betrothed to Sir Evelyn Oakley (great comedic timing by Jeffrey Draper). Then there is Public enemy #13 Moonface Martin (scene stealing Colin Thompson) with a great desire to be #1 and his moll Erma (bright, bouncy Lizzie O’Hara). Reno, an evangelist turned cabaret performer is traveling with her four ‘angels’. These are the major characters that all end up on the USS America bound for England.

As with most musicals of the 30s, the book is secondary and the writers say, “Enough of this dialog, it is time for a song or a dance.” So it is with Anything Goes. Molly Bell makes her presence felt belting out “I Get a Kick Out of You” before the sailors decked out in sparkling white uniforms invade the Bon Voyage Cocktail Lounge to shuffle off to Buffalo with “There’s No Cure Like Travel” before the entire company send the ship off to the high seas with a song and dance “Bon Voyage.” Now how’s that for two opening scenes? But you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.  Porter inserts two more great songs, “You’re the Top” for Reno and Billy and “Easy to Love” for Billy and Hope. And we are only half way through the first act.

Cherubic Colin Thomson as Moonface Martin, gets his turn to show his stuff with Reno in the rollicking “Friendship.” Joshua Hollister and Brittany Danielle are a perfect match as their love interest emerges with “It’s De-Lovely.”  By this time it is one hour and twenty minutes into the show and time for a show stopper.  What a show stopper it is with the crew and passengers praising Moonface as “Public Enemy Number One” in the signature song, “Anything Goes.” Bell is at her best with the full company as back-up in the spirited tap routine to end the first act.

The second act is a continuation of the improbable mix-ups with disguises that you won’t believe to keep you entertained. The energy continues when Reno and her Angels (Ariel Daly, Jenna Harris, Amanda Sylvia, Mary Kalita), step out of their white robes into revealing red costumes belting “Blow, Gabriel, Blow.”  Molly Bell is a whirl wind with a voice to match her great dancing. The dancing and dancers are a marvel performing Amanda Folena’s stunning choreography.

Before the two hour and 30 minutes (with intermission) are over Lizzie O’Hara belts and dances up a sexy maelstrom storm in “Buddie Beware” with the sailors as back up. Colin Thomson steals another scene with “Be Like the Bluebird”, Jeffery Draper shines with the tongue in cheek “The Gypsy in Me” and Brittany Danielle and Joshua Hollister are pitch perfect with “All Through the Night.” The evening ends with a reprise of “I Get a Kick out of You.”

The set is a creative beauty art deco main deck with semi-circular stairways surrounding a central revolving area that allows expeditious scenery changes in sync with director Butler’s torrid pace without missing a beat. All phases of what musical theatre should be are on display: Fantastic music and lyrics, powerful dancing, great orchestrations, costumes to die for (Victoria Livingston Hall), great singing, a plethora of humor and of the shining star of Molly Bell making the character of Reno Sweeny her own. Ethel Who? HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

CAST: Molly Bell, Justin Travis Buchs, Ryan Cowles, Ariel Daly, Brittany Danielle, Lynda DiVito, Caleb Haven Draper, Jeffrey Draper, Michael Patrick Gaffney, Jenna Harris, Joshua Hollister, Mary Kalita, Christine Macomber, Scott Maraj, R. Martin Newton, Lizzie O’Hara, Neal Pascua, Jason Rehklau, Anthony Rollins-Mullens, Nathaniel Rothrock, Amanda Sylvia, Colin Thompson, Michael Verzosa.

CREATIVE STAFF: Director Michael Butler; Choreographed by Amanda Folena; Music direction Brandon Adams; Set design, Michael Locher; Costume design, Victoria Livingston Hall; Lighting design,  Kurt Landisman; Sound design, Jeff Mockus;;

Kedar K. Adour MD

Courtesy of www.theatreworldinternetmagazine.com

Jason Rehklau, Caleb Haven Draper, Anthony Rollins-Mullens, Ryan Cowles, Justin Buchs*, Lizzie O’Hara

May 26 2015
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“The Taming of the Shrew” – Theater of Others

By Joe Cillo

Presented by Theater of Others.

Director Glenn Havlan’s “Taming of the Shrew” is not your usual “Taming.”  Havlan has created a most outrageous, boistrous, raucous  version of Shakespeare’s comedy through costuming and staging.  He has rearranged the auditorium at the Kelly Cullen Community Auditorium on Golden Gate Avenue in San Francisco to accommodate his free-wheeling, in your face (literally) cast of fifteen.  The audience sits on folding chairs, angled off to the side on the floor where most of the action takes place, while in the Induction (Scene I), the tinker Christopher Sly (Mason Waller) and his “lady” are ensconced on a chaise lounge on the stage.  The Players below  are welcomed by the chiseled,  stentorian-toned, Lord of the Household (Greg Gutting); his huntsmen played by Richard Gutierrez and Paul Seliga, and his Page, Zach Simon, who also plays Sly’s “lady.”  Thus the play begins.

Maria Graham offered costume assistance, working with the actors to come up with inventive attire, from rag-tag to formal with matronly and cocktail somewhere in between.  What is a Shakespeare’s comedy without switching or mistaking identities, gender confusion, and a long lost heir suddenly being revealed.  Basically Baptista (Irving Schulman), a gentleman of Padua, must marry off his eldest daughter, Katherine,  before the younger, Bianca (a sweet, comely Alaish Wren).   No one wants to marry headstrong, feisty Katherine (aptly played by Nitika Nadgar).  Outstanding suitors for Bianca are Hortensio. who is to prove his worth in the arts but has no talent.  And  Gremio- the three “Rs”; and he woos her in Latin.

Petrucio, a gentleman of Verona, is Katherine’s suitor, the only man willing to take her on.   Petrucio is played by a very physical Dan Mack, whose red hair signals a well-suited temperament for the role. He appears mostly in formal dress, yet his wedding outfit comes as a delightful shock and surprise.  Other “players” Are Lucentio (Edwin Jacobs), a Gentleman of Pisa, his servent, Tranio (Lijesh Krishnan); Biondella, Lucentio’s dithering secretary (an understated and subtly comic Kristin Anundsen).

As in Shakespeare’s time, the audience becomes part of the play.  Half the fun is interacting with the actors when they purposely break the “fourth wall” to make you part of their act.

Final performances: Fri May 29; Sat, May 30, 8PM; Sun May 31, 2PM $10.00 or Pay what you will.

Kelly Cullen Community Auditorium

220 Golden Gate Auditorium,SF, CA

38 Geary, BART, 19 Polk.

 

May 26 2015
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THE CLEAN HOUSE at RVP Scores As Best Play of 85th Season!

By Flora Lynn Isaacson

With thanks to expert Playwright Sarah Ruhl and the artistic talent of Director JoAnne Winter (Co-Founder and Director of Word for Word Performing Arts Company ), and Set Designer David Shirk’s Academy Award-winning (Visual Effects) design experience, as well as a talented cast, The Clean House is a big hit!

A 2005 Pulitzer-Prize-finalist, The Clean House, is a comic drama that mixes fantasy and reality as it tells the story of five dissimilar people.  Throughout the play, the actors address the audience to talk about themselves or imagine situations involving other characters.  The play opens with three characters coming out to address the audience.  Matilda (Livia Demarchi) comes out first, with a tantalizing untranslated joke told with an exuberance that transmits a fair amount of its humor.  As we learn, she is from Brazil.  Some of the jokes and comments are translated for the audience on a projection screen at the back wall of David Shirk’s elegant white set, which also includes a small stage behind a painting which is lifted to enact Matilda’s description of her parents.  Matilda tells us in her long opening monologue that when she’s not thinking of jokes she gets depressed, and, when she get depressed, she doesn’t like to clean. 

Next, Lane (Sylvia Burboeck), a doctor in her 50s, comes out to explain that Matilda, her Brazilian maid, is depressed and has been failing to clean her house.  She is followed by Virginia (Tamar Cohn), Lane’s older sister, a housewife who argues that people who do not clean their own homes are “insane.”

Virginia persuades Matilda to let her clean her sister’s house on the sly, thereby setting in motion a series of events that gradually re-orders and deepens the relationships among the play’s other characters, who include Lane’s husband Charles (Steve Price), a surgeon, and his new mistress Ana (Sumi Narendran), on whom he recently performed a mastectomy, just after instantly falling in love with her during a breast consultation.

The Clean House is a play that keeps revealing surprising secrets and layers of rich feelings as it goes along.  Director JoAnne Winter blends its contrasting tones with subtle precision.  Her cast displays a keen understanding of Sarah Ruhl’s ability to see the absurdity in extremes of emotions with authenticity.  We may never come to a full understanding of the jokes life plays on us, but the wisest and possibly noblest response is to have a good laugh, anyway.

The Clean House will run through Sunday, June 14th. Thursday shows are at 7:30 p.m.; Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 p.m.; Sunday Matinees at 2:00 p.m. All performances are at the Barn and Theatre, home of the Ross Valley Players, 30 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., in Ross. To order tickets, call 415-456-9555, ext. 1 or online at www.RossValleyPlayers.com

Coming up next at the Ross Valley Players will be Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance,  from July 17 through August 15, 2015, directed by James Dunn.

Flora Lynn Isaacson

Photos by Ross Valley Players

May 25 2015
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Compleat Female Stage Beauty is a histrionic history of Restoration theatre @ NCTC

By Kedar K. Adour

 

Stephen McFarland as Kynaston, Ali Hass as Nell Gwyn, Matt Weimer  King Charles II, Justin Liszancie as Villiars, Elissa Beth Stebbins as Margaret Hughes Photo by Lois Tema

Compleat Female Stage Beauty: Comedy/Drama by Jeffrey Hatcher. Directed by Ed Decker. New Conservatory TheatreCenter(NCTC)25 Van Ness Avenue@ Market Street, San Francisco, CA. 415-861-8972 or www.nctcsf.org.

May 15 – June 14, 2015

Compleat Female Stage Beauty is a histrionic history of Restoration theatre [rating:3]

To close out their 2014-2015 season the New Conservatory Theatre Center (NCTC) has elected to mount a histrionic capsule history of theatre in the 1660s at the beginning of the Restoration Period. The play was suggested and mostly based on entries from Samuel Pepy’s diary about Edward Kynaston (Stephen McFarland) who was the leading male actor of that period performing female parts during the Puritan era when women were not allowed on the stage. All that was about to change when King Charles the II (Matt Weimer) signed an edict allowing females to perform and banning males from playing female roles.

The play is appropriately bookended with an audience address by Pepys (Patrick Ross) while all the characters dressed in period costumes perform a tableau.  In the bodice-ripping production of the play Or in 2011 at the Magic theatre the emphasis was on the life and times of women entering upon the stage.  Hatcher has elected to dramatize the edict’s effect on the males who were banned from playing women and forced to play males. That transition apparently was traumatic for many but even more so for Hatcher’s protagonist Kynaston whose fall from his elevated stature to one of ridicule was devastating.

The first act sets up Kynaston’s egocentric life before the fall. His performance of Shakespeare’s’ tragic ladies were an apotheosis especially his Desdemona death scene that was the standard by which even the ladies were to be judged. Before female actresses became legal Margaret Hughes (Elissa Beth Stebbins) and Kynaston’s dresser Marie (Sam Jackson) were giving illegal and inferior performances of his famous “death scene” and attracting paying audiences. Amongst those audiences were King Charles II and his mistress/actress Nell Gwynn (Ali Hass) that may have been a stimulus for the edict that changed the stage forever in England.

Kynaston was also the secret “mistress” of powerful George Villiars who visualized him during their sexual dalliances as the women he had portrayed, refusing to recognize him as a man. Thus the loss of fame, finances and “love” was the start of his degradation and the seed for revenge.

Hatcher populates the play with characters that exemplify the 1660s and clothes them in appropriate period dress (costume design by Keri Fitch). However, there is a dramatic shift in the tenure of the show after the intermission of this two hour and 25 minute play. Whereas act one is upbeat, satirical and at times very humorous, after the intermission deadly seriousness kicks in as Kynaston has to drag himself physically and mentally from the depths to which has fallen in order to re-invent himself.

Director Decker has elected to stage the play with minimal props and scenery that reflect the productions of the 1660s. Simple boxes are moved about by the cast and a cloth curtain on rear stage opens revealing a change of place. He deftly moves his characters about the stage keeping the tempo upbeat until a dramatic incident demands a stop action effect.

His cast performs admirably with accolades to Stephen McFarland as Kynaston, Matt Weimer  King Charles II, Ali Hass as Nell Gwyn, Elissa Beth Stebbins as Margaret Hughes and Patrick Ross as Samuel Pepys. The minor characters double and triple in multiple roles that are adequate rather than distinctive.

CAST: Colleen Egan, (Lady Meresvale); Ali Haas (Nell Gwynn); Jeffrey Hoffman (Sedley/Ms Revels), Sam Jackson, (Marie); Justin Liszanckie, (Villiars); Stephen McFarland, (Edward Kynaston);  Christopher Morrell, (Ms Fayne);  Patrick Ross (Pepys/Hyde); Elissa Beth Stebbins, (Margaret Hughes) and Matt Weimer, (King Charles/Betterton).

CREATIVE TEAM: Scenic design by Giulio Cesare Perrone; Lighting design by Christian Mejia; Costume design by Keri Fitch; Sound design by Steve Abts; Prop design by J. Conrad Frank; Fight choreography by Mark Gabriel Kenney; Stage management by Stephanie Desnoyers.

Kedar K. Adour, MD

Courtesy of www.theatreworldinternetmagazine.com.

May 25 2015
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The Annual San Francisco International Arts Festival (till June 7) Dazzles

By Test Review

The Annual San Francisco International Arts Festival (till June 7) Dazzles

by Jenny Lenore Rosenbaum

Until June 7, 2015, the San Francisco International Arts Festival (SFIAF) is a nearly three-week cornucopia of theater, dance, music, performance art and art exhibitions that few American cities can match in aesthetic diversity and sheer exhilarating power.  San Francisco, with its world famous multi-cultural pizzazz, is the ideal setting to showcase and celebrate the power of Bay Area and global art to inspire, thrill and engender cross-cultural understanding.

Indeed, among the goals of visionary SFIAF Founder, Andrew Wood, is to nurture cross-cultural collaborations among the featured artists. Another is to showcase both emerging and established artists who often do not have U.S. or overseas representation (agents, producing organizations) and whose creations are rarely (and, in some cases never) seen in the States. Because the featured artists are not part of the American touring circuit, the 2015 lineup of performances cannot be seen elsewhere in the U.S., or the world.

Among the Festival’s other curatorial priorities and values is to serve as a catalyst for the emergence of enlarged audiences for the arts, to expand opportunities for artists to showcase their work globally, to heighten the public’s awareness of the transformative power of the arts (on mind, body and spirit), and to spark new perspectives — provocative and illuminating– on psychological, spiritual, social, cultural, political and environmental issues.

Now in its 10th year, the Festival and its partners have presented over 150 arts ensembles from the Bay Area and over 50 countries.  This year the Festival is being co-presented with Fort Mason Center, the conglomerate of performing arts venues, museums and other cultural institutions stunningly situated along San Francisco’s waterfront, in the Marina district.

The featured work, including 150 ticketed performances, spans the gamut from traditional to innovative and avant-garde.  Participating artists and companies are from  Australia, the U.K., Belgium, Brazil, Ireland, Poland, El Salvador, Japan, South Korea, Austria, the Congo, France, Peru, Germany, Russia, Taiwan — as well as many American and local Bay Area performing and visual artists.  Among the exhibitions is “Bearing Witness: Surveillance in the Drone Age” (curated by Matt McKinley and Hanna Regev).

Unquestionably, the world class SFIAF can serve as a model for cities, around the world, to nurture the performing and visual arts in ways that transcend the giving of pleasure to audiences.  Even beyond this — the pleasure that of course is an irresistible and compelling goal of any performing or visual artist — a festival such as SFIAF offers other cascading, ever reverberating benefits.

It creates the kinds of cultural bridges and proffers powerful transformative perspectives sorely needed in an era blighted by war, international tensions and sectarian violence.  In this arena, the SFIAF and the concurrent Venice Biennale can be seen as “co-conspirators” in the quest for nothing less than global harmony through the potency of the arts, for the kinds of cross-cultural admiration that perhaps, just perhaps, can work miracles.  We can only hope the Festival will be an ever-reverberating annual force to work such magic, in San Francisco and throughout the world.

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SFIAF events will take place in a number of Fort Mason venues including Cowell and Southside Theaters, the Firehouse, the Fleet Room, and the Conference Center.  For detailed information on daily performances, opening receptions, pre- and post-performance soirees, workshops and free shuttle buses to Fort Mason (departing from Valencia and 24th Streets, and Market and The Embacadero), go to:   www.sfiaf.org // info@sfiaf.org// or call (415) 399-9554.  Tickets:  from $12 to $50 with some free events.

May 24 2015
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‘Peter Pan’ is fun for kids — and grandparents, too

By Woody Weingarten

[Woody’s [rating: 5]

Flying high in “Peter Pan” are (from left) Peter (Melissa WolfKlain), John (Jeremy Kaplan), Michael (Claire Lentz) and Wendy (Erin Ashe). Photo by Woody Weingarten.

Colorfully clad ensemble is energetic and nimble in “Peter Pan.” Photo by Woody Weingarten.

Peter (Melissa WolfKlain) defeats Captain Hook (Jeff Wiesen) in swordfight. Photo by Woody Weingarten.

Long, ticking crocodile puppet is just one delightful feature of “Peter Pan.” Photo by Woody Weingarten.

“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

May 22 2015
Love0

The Empty Nesters rings true at the Thick House

By Kedar K. Adour

The Empty Nesters begins at Skywalk of the Grand Canyon

THE EMPTY NESTERS: Comedy/Drama by Garret Jon Groenveld and directed by Amy Glazer. Empty Nester Productions in association with PlayGround and Virago Theatre Company. Thick House Theatre, 1695 18th St., San Francisco, CA  (415) 401-8081 May 18 –June 14, 2025.   WORLD PREMIERE

The Empty Nesters rings true at the Thick House  [RATING:4]

During the initial scene of Garret Jon Groenveld’s tightly written two hander ordinary conversation between a husband and wife standing in line to the cantilevered Grand Canyon Skywalk brings laughter to the audience.  Then with the off-handed remark to husband Greg (John Walker) by the wife Frances (Pamela Gaye Walker), “I’m thinking of leaving you”, the course is set for the remainder of this 75 minute without intermission play that will surely be produced by community theatres across the country. The subject matter is universal and has often been depicted on the stage, in movies and on TV: What takes place when an apparently successful marriage is challenged after the children have departed and the couple is living in an “empty nest.”

Groenveld does not offer any new insights into causes of interpersonal problems that confront married couples but with his mastery of dialog and play construction he has created a believable microcosm with universal truisms. Within that framework his two characters have distinctive idiosyncrasies that allow the audience to identify with one or both. All the confrontations are civil, although with a touch of animosity that is circumscribed by understanding.

Throughout the evening the seriousness is modified by naturalistic humor found both in what is done as well as being said. The simple writing of postcards leads to a mention of the proverbial Christmas letter that recipients rarely read. The suggestive suggestion by Greg that they “take a nap” is rebuffed by Frances who just wishes to nap.

The Walkers are a real life married couple with extensive theatrical experience who bring the characters to life under Amy Glazer’s tight direction

As the male/female differences are elucidated the obvious love and dependence between the two still lingers and Groenveld has written a scene with minimal dialog that fortifies their bond giving a hopeful ending to the evening. Recommended as “a should see production.”

CAST: Frances (Pamela Gaye Walker); Greg (John Walker).

ARTISTIC CAST: Lighting Designer, Colin Johnson; Sound Designer, Josh Senick; Costume Designer, Jocelyn Leiser Herndon; Production Manager, Eli Marrs; Properties Artisan, Amy Crumpacker; Production Assistant, Marcus Marotto; Stage Manager, Gary Quinn.

 Kedar K. Adour, MD

Courtesy of  www.theatreworldinternetmagazine.com