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Her thematic pileup parallels the set, a mélange of cartons and racks of outdated and broken dreams from the life of Elise, a worn out and tapped out 68-year-old whose fingers are wedged in a metaphoric post-recession dike at her Matthews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