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David Hirzel

David Hirzel

Aug 20 2014
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San Francisco’s Golden Age of Poetry Open Mics Lives On

By David Hirzel

San Francisco’s golden age of poetry open mics lives 0n behind the wide-open doors of Glen Park’s venerable Bird and Beckett Bookstore. It’s hard to believe so many literary and artistic opportunities can coexist in one small space. That space is packed with books—packed in a good way, tall shelves lined with the new and used common and uncommon selections of owner Eric Whittington. It’s very hard for any book retailer to anticipate my geeked out interests, yet on my two visits, here they were: a (used) first-hand account of sailor’s life in the U.S. Navy in 1901, and a (new) translation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s 1966 classic The White Guard. Reason enough right there to take BART down to Glen Park and trust to serendipity from time to time.

Here’s another reason: Every other Monday evening the bookshop hosts a poetry reading with featured readers followed by a well-attended open mic. Tonight’s was my first to attend, but I trust it is representative of the high level of spoken-word artistry to be expected. The featured reader was a young gentleman’s insightful commentaries on romance, city life, family life, and possums. Ayo Khensu-Ra led us through recent works of his own and a favorite poet, with a seasoned musical counterpoint on saxophone, flute, and digeridoo by his father Ra-Ta Khensu-Ra. Some of the poems were good enough to deserve a second reading.

This featured performance was followed by ten poets at the open mic. Some rhymed and some not, some witty to make you laugh—another small mammal, this time a marmot—and some poignant with painful looks into the harsher aspects of family life or the complex rewards of a nurse’s work. All of them poetry in all its many forms, the voice’s music to the ear and the word’s music to the mind.

Bird and Beckett’s nonprofit provides a minimal stipend to the featured artists, supplemented by the passed hat, but the rewards for this enterprise come not from money, but from a common love of the word shared in a space that celebrates and enlivens that word. On other days and nights the same stage is held by jazz musicians, or books, depending. In any case, you can’t go wrong.

Support your local independent bookstore, support live music! Don’t forget to bring some cash for the tip jar and the CDs, and by all means look for that unique book to bring home with you.

Bird and Beckett Books:  653 Chenery St., San Francisco CA 94131    Phone:  (415) 586-3733

Bird and Beckett calendar: http://www.birdbeckett.com/# 

Review by David Hirzel: www.davidhirzel.net

May 24 2014
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Fringe of Marin Spring 2014: Season Opener

By David Hirzel

The Fringe of Marin has gotten off to a good start for Spring 2014, opening their 33rd season’s Program One at Dominican University’s Angelico Hall.  This relatively new venue (2nd season there) is in most ways a decided improvement over the stage at Meadowlands.  There is, for example, a real theatrical sound and lighting system, a real stage and several hundred banked seats.  These, taken together, add a theatrical polish to the overall production, and this in turn brings out the best in the performances.

One of the best of these is the opener, “Fourteen” (written by Inbal Kashtan), a glimpse into the frustration and desperation of an adolescent girl (very well played by Stefanee Martin) seeking connection in a disintegrating household.  Very well staged and directed by Jon Tracey.  Gaetana Caldwell-Smith’s “Andrew Primo” looks into a woman’s discovery that her man is, literally, a machine.  Wth Edith Reiner’s performance as Elaine, it all makes sense.  Lesbian honeymooners on a camping trip are “Fighting for Survival” against all intruders—men, bears, nude dancers, a thunderstorm.  Lucas Hatton’s over-the-top stint as a hapless campground-census taker brought the evening’s richest laughter.  Dylan Brody’s “PreOccupy Hollywood” takes us to the staging room of a group of movie extras hoping for a shot at the bigger time.

For all that this new venue adds, something has been taken away—the close-in intimacy of Meadowlands’ black-box narrow hall.   This is particularly noticeable in “Little Moscow” where Rick Roitinger’s estimable portrayal of a Russian Jewish tailor’s reflective monologue to an unseen customer loses much of the potency of Alecks Merilo’s powerful script to the cavernous auditorium.  It is a credit to his performance and physical embodiment of that tailor, that Roitinger transcends the difficulties of giving an outward projection to the thoughts and words of an inwardly-directed character.

Altogether, a great evening’s entertainment right here in San Rafael.  Program Two promises at least as much, if not more.  Premiere Program Two Saturday May 24, 2:00.

For all dates this season, click Fringe Spring 2014

Box office:  Fringe 2014

Review by David Hirzel  www.davidhirzel.net

May 04 2014
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Moon for the Misbegotten: Marin Onstage shines a light

By David Hirzel

This review is only partly for Marin Onstage’s just ended production of Moon For the Misbegotten. Eugene O’Neill’s play may seem in a way dated in its treatment of alcoholism (it was first produced in 1947) but the problems addressed are universal and timeless. We see greed raising its ugly head on a number of fronts, a father and his grown daughter who know each other too well constantly sparring, the tension between two would-be but never-quite-become lovers. There is conniving and scheming, bickering and just-missed assault, all of it fueled by a constant flow of liquor. And just as in real life, these quandaries are addressed and never quite resolved.

That is the essence of this play, made whole in this theater-in-the-round production. St. Vincent’s is a folding-chair sort of a theatrical space with a cabaret touch, with enough room for a half-dozen round tables for the audience to sit at. For this Moon the raised stage was used only as a backdrop, with the skeleton of a dirt-poor farmer’s shanty backed by blackness. The action takes place on the floor, a spare set with the suggestion of bare dirt, a few tree-stumps and a hand-pump well. Every seat is front-row.

The first act introduces the characters and the tensions that bind them to and repel them from each other. Father and daughter Michael and Caitlin Walraven play the farmer Phil Hogan and his daughter Josie. Their real-life relationship informs their portrayals of these characters eking out a living on a patch of rocks owned by landlord James Tyrone. The second act establishes the brewing crisis: the farm is about to be taken over by a greedy neighbor (Will Lamers). But it the third act, where that the play really catches fire, that the power and drama of O’Neill’s script takes flight. Here the long-simmering push-pull tension of disdain and longing between James and Josie ignites and cools again and again, giving them and the audience a sometimes painful at the conflict between what we desire and what we know we will never attain. Stellar performances by Caitlin Walraven and John Nahigian in this highly charged conclusion brought more than a mist of a tear to the eyes of some of us.

Splendidly directed by Ron Nash, who also directed the other two plays in Marin Onstage’s Spring 2014 season at St. Vincent’s. It was an ambitious series with a focus on the power of women in the life of the early years of the last century, a glimpse of how far we have come, a view of the path that brought us to where we are today. Special thanks also to Jeanine Gray and Lisa Immel for such well-tuned costumes.

The season ends today, but you can expect nothing but the best from Marin Onstage in the fall of 2014, at the Little Theater at St. Vincent’s (1 St. Vincent’s Drive, San Rafael CA)

 Theater Marin website:  www.marintheatre.org

 David Hirzel website: www.davidhirzel.net

Apr 27 2014
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Next to Normal: Please come back, we need you

By David Hirzel

It’s a little late in the game to be posting a review of this show:  today’s (4/27/14) 2:00 matinee was the last performance of Navato Theater Company’s Next to Normal.  It played to a full house—we were lucky enough to get the last two folding chairs before the box office closed for good and had to turn away the last of the eager late-comers.  News of this show had spread like wildfire, and with good reason.

It’s a musical, but not like any other you may have seen.  It deals with mental illness.  Very directly.  It presents the life of a modern American family, dysfunctional as any those we in the audience know from our own lives already.  But above all the tense interactions and confusions and denials lies a shadow.  The doctors have their ideas, their proposals, their drugs and procedures.  But they don’t know the causes of the turmoil and despair, and they can’t cure them.  The healing, partial and imperfect but a start towards something better, comes from within.  Director Kim Bromley sums it up in the liner notes.  “You are on your own path to discovery, as are these characters.”  I know I was.

Next to Normal  as drama, with its unflinching look deep into this family’s problems, is hard to watch.  For many, it looks to closely into their own.  But the intensity is leavened, lightened, by its presentation as a musical.  The music is driving and passionate, winsome and lyrical when it needs to be.   The singing and acting talent of each of the six on stage was uniformly superb.  I’ll briefly mention Julianne Thompson, whose nuanced performance as the teenaged daughter made this seem like a real family.  Like one you have known.  Alison Peltz’s portrayal of the bipolar Diana is beautifully, painfully accurate.

The show ends on a joyous note, a powerful anthem that brought the crowd to its feet.  So, why post a review now, when the show’s over?  Because this show, by this cast and direction, has put together a show that really ought to be seen by a much wider audience here in Marin.  I’d like to see a groundswell of support for another showing or two on a larger stage.  I know it would be difficult-to-impossible to arrange something like that.  The run is over, the set already dismantled.  But it’s a show that touched and moved me deeply, and will be impossible to forget.

Novato Theater Company:  5420 Nave Dr, Novato, CA 94949  (415) 883-4498

Website:  www.novatotheatercompany.org

David Hirzel website:  www.davidhirzel.net

Mar 01 2014
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“An Evening of Short Plays”–Trifles, The Jewish Wife, Miss Julie at Theater Marin

By David Hirzel

Theater Marin‘s current season is nothing if not ambitious, bringing to the stage plays that were new a hundred years ago, by playwrights in their prime. The works of Strindberg, Brecht, Ibsen, and O’Neill play more often in the black boxes than the big houses. They laid the foundations for modern theater that is still evolving today, and I’m grateful to Theater Marin for taking up the challenge of putting some of them on. Good theater, no matter when it was originally produced, continues to enlighten us to this fact: no matter what era we live in, we humans are always milling about, trying to find our own ways through the turmoil and constraints of our contemporary societies.

The current production “An Evening of Short Plays” opens with two short plays before the intermission. Susan Glaspell’s Trifles (first produced in 1916) takes us into the farmhouse investigation of a rural murder scene, where the two detectives come into and out of the set, looking for “evidence.” In a witty take on women’s innate superiority in a time of repression, their wives remain in the kitchen chatting and rummaging through the effects of the accused, uncovering (and then covering up) a host of clues to which their husbands remain oblivious.

Next Berthold Brecht’s The Jewish Wife plans her escape from 1938 Nazi Germany before it is to late to leave. In a remarkable performance Judith Stein, along on the stage for most of the play with only a telephone and an empty chair to which to direct her words, builds the story of her world in a stage of collapse. How can she tell him that she is leaving him in order to save his career? It will only be fore two or three weeks. . . . .

The real powerhouse of the evening’s lineup is director Ron Nash’s production of Strindberg’s 1888 play Miss Julie. Set in Sweden in an era when social class and class awareness ruled all of society. There were boundaries which could not be crossed, and the Countess Miss Julie (Stephanie Ann Foster) is determined to ignore them all. She seduces her father the Count’s valet Jean (Michael Walraven). These two actors so intertwine their performances that it seems almost a perfect dance, a powerful waltz to the music of passion and despair, as the dutiful cook Kristin (Jocelyn Roddie) looks on. This is one of those memorable productions that keep you thinking and wondering long after you have left the theater. I think we may expect the same when Ron Nash takes on Eugene O’Neill’s A Moon for the Misbegotten for Theater Marin opening April 18. Don’t miss that one, either.

“An Evening of Short Plays” ends soon. Two performances left: Saturday March 1 at 8:00 p.m., and Sunday March 2 At 3:00 p.m.

Stage: The Little Theatre at St. Vincent’s, 1 St. Vincent Drive, San Rafael CA

Box Office: 414-448-6152 or www.MarinOnStage.org

Nov 15 2013
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Step inside Ibsen’s “A Doll House” at Marin Onstage

By David Hirzel

 

Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll House may hold the record for the most-produced play ever written, but last night was the first time this reviewer had ever seen it.  I had no point of reference for either the play itself (I see plays first, then read the script after) or for how any of the roles had been performed.  I can tell you that after seeing this production, it’s hard for me to imagine that any actress can have played the role of Nora to better perfection.  From the opening moments of the play, when she emerges as a child-woman in a touching but unbalanced relationship with her paternalistic husband-banker Thorvald, through her clueless thoughtlessness in chatting with her widowed friend Kristine, on into her two-faced dealing with all her intimates as she attempts to reconcile the details of her deteriorating private life, Stephanie Ann Foster deftly shows the complexity of the role of Nora, as a reflection of the complexity and messiness of our own lives.

At the outset Gabriel A. Ross as Thorvald seems patient and kind and more than a little condescending to his “little squirrel,” but the two of them seem to have a happy, if not entirely mature, relationship.  He maintains emotionally remote throughout the first act, opens up some in the second, but not until the third act do we see some real depth, some passion in this character.  But when the storm breaks in him, it really breaks. 

In the final moments of the play Nora gives voice to what would echo in 1970 as a prototypical feminist manifesto.  If it seems a little dated now, imagine how radical Nora’s resolve to become her own woman and make her own way in the world must have seemed in 1879.  The costuming very nicely demonstrates the era and the social class of the supporting characters, each of whom (Bill McClave as Dr. Rank, Jim McFadden as Krogstad, Kelsey Sloan as Kristine, and Lynn Sotos as Anne-Marie)  is well played to reflect their inner turmoil, and their conflicted relationships with the principals.

Casual seating in this small venue; folding (upholstered) chairs, some of them around circular tables near the stage for good view of the action, and conversation during the intermissions.

Through November 17 at Little Theatre at St. Vincent’s, 1 St. Vincent’s Dr., San Rafael

Website: Marin Onstage

Box Office:  415-448-6152

David Hirzel Website:  www.davidhirzel.net

 

 

 

Nov 02 2013
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“Social Security” in Pacifica Spindrift’s new black box

By David Hirzel

The Spindrift Theater (the building, not the troupe) in Pacifica suffered a structural near-catastrophe in August—a major ceiling beam was about to give way, and the stage was closed.  Nothing daunted, the troupe put on their production of Noises Off on a borrowed stage, but tonight’s opening of Social Security proved they are HOME AGAIN!.

I knew this new production would be staged in the Muriel Watkins Gallery, an auxiliary room of the theater building.  I know this room, I thought.  How are they going to pull this off?

The answer is, with an unmitigated, unqualified, HUGE SUCCESS!  To start with, the unsung backstage hands transformed this smallish room into an intimate and beautifully designed black box.  It seats about 30—reserve early, Andrew Bergman’s wildly funny Social Security is sure to be a hit. Spindrift has  added two shows to their normal season, but this probably won’t be enough the sellout crowds expected for this wonderfully hilarious performance.

The intimate black-box setting brings each of us right into the apartment living room of NY art dealers David and Barbara (real-life husband-and-wife Gary and Joanie Pugh Newman), just as Barbara’s uptight sister Trudy (Joy Eaton) and her nerdy husband Martin (Harry Sellenthin) come to call with some bad news.  This first act taken on its own is hilarious.  Keep an eye on Trudy—to me this character is the heart of the show, and Ms. Eaton’s subtle performance makes everything else in the play work.

And work it does. There are many, many laughs in this show, and they only gather strength as it moves along.  One of the unintended consequences of this newly created black box is the contagion of laughter.  We are all in the living room with these souls and their problems and reactions become our own as only such an intimate setting can permit.

If you thought the first act was funny, wait until you see the second. Now Jackie Blue as mother and mother-in-law Sophie starts to steal the show, even moreso when new love interest Maurice (Jim Sousa) shows up to light her fire.  You’ll just have to see it.

Act three brings home some of the sublter lessons we’re all going to have to learn about how to deal with aging, with aging parents, with the loss of our illusions and the changes that time can bring to our lives.  With a whole lot of laughs.  As it should be.

Special kudos to director John Tranchitella, for putting the whole package together, and to the crew for creating this marvelously intimate stage in the  Muriel Watkins Gallery.

Don’t miss it!  Limited engagement and seating.

Through November 24, 2013 at Spindrift Players Theater at 1050 Crespi Dr., Pacifica CA

Box Office:  650-359-8002

Website: pacificaspindriftplayers.org

Review by David Hirzel  www.davidhirzel.net

Sep 08 2013
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SF Shakespeare in the Park: MacBeth’s Nightmare in Broad Daylight

By David Hirzel

Picture this: The dark and bloody secrets of Shakespeare’s MacBeth, played out on SF Shakes’ black and bloody mobile stage (as mobile as the trees of Birnam Wood), on a brilliant sunny day on the green lawn of the Presidio’s Parade Ground. It takes some impassioned acting to make this nightmarish tragedy come to life. Emily Jordan’s (Lady MacBeth) and Michael Ray Wisely (MacBeth) pull it off.

The play is built upon the descent these two main characters into the deep well of guilt from which there is no escape. The other characters, well played , provide the scaffolding on which the plot is built: the wars of the Scottish thanes, the eerie prophecies of the three witches MacBeth’s murder of the old king Duncan, his betrayal and murder of Banquo. One horror builds on another, at Lady MacBeth’s instigation as she browbeats her weaker husband into fulfilling her own lust for power.

Jordan’s performance is really quite remarkable. She paces the stage, enticing the audience (seated on the sunny lawn) into her own peculiar world-view, how the murder of the old king is just and necessary. Once we are convinced, she wheedles and cajoles her spineless husband until he breaks and does the dreadful deed. From the moment he emerges with bloodstained hands, the three witches watching silently from above, the stage is ever more awash. Ghosts walk among them, and among us.

She is very well matched by Michael Ray Wisely’s powerful performance as the warlord MacBeth, who gradually comes to realize that it is his wife who has betrayed him into this meaningless act of violence, and the ever-deepening pit into which it has led him. Most of the blood is shed offstage, but the (simulated) murder of an infant on the stage in front of us made me shudder and jump.

These two powerful characters rely on the yeoman performances of the rest of the cast, to flesh out the rest of the story, and to give meaning to it all. The stage is simple and spare, black and red, with sliding doors that open and close like the gates to a prison. A fleet of plain black chairs make banquet halls and bedrooms. To the right, a forest of blood-red columns hint at forests and dungeons.

The tragedy, and the nightmare, bloom in the tortured minds of the Lord and Lady, but they will stay with you a long time.   Free outdoor performances, through September 22, now at Presidio Main Post and last performances at McLaren Park (see SF Shakespeare website for details)

Website:  SF Shakes MacBeth

Telephone:  (415) 558-0888

David Hirzel’s Website:  www.davidhirzel.net

Aug 31 2013
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“Noises Off!” Pacifica Spindrift’s Spot-On New Production

By David Hirzel

Noises Off!  It’s been called the funniest comedy ever written, but it takes the hand of a wise director and the clock-work timing of a very talented cast to make Pacifica Spindrift’s new production of Michael Frayn’s play the laugh-out-loud hit of the season.

Veering between vaudeville, slapstick, and satire, this backstage look into play within a play (there are two playbills, one for the Spindrift production of Noises Off! and one for the spurious Nothing On), staged on a stage of the home of a pair of British tax-exiles.  The characters of Nothing On include a befuddled housekeeper, a lecherous rental agent with a potential client, a playwright and his wife, a director and his crew.  The characters of Noises Off! are the cast of the fictitious play.  Confused?  Don’t be.  Come and see this new production, and all will make complete sense, or nonsense.

The key to the comedy is the seamless flow of rapid-fire verbal exchanges, seasoned with exquisite comedic choreography—remember this:  “doors and sardines; getting on, getting off”—elevated to a high art.  An ensemble piece like this demands a lot of everyone involved, in equal measure, and the entire cast is up to the task. Even though I know it’s work, they make it look like fun.

The first act sets the stage for what will happen next, and each actor has a chance to shine on stage and oil the gears for everything is to follow.  The laughs are genuine and frequent, with well-done physical comedy and witty repartee; the plot thickens as more and more people enter the house, unknown to each other.

The set has two sides, and we get to see them both, in the ingenious constructions of master carpenter Mike Calderaro.  The second act set shows us the backstage Nothing On, now in performance on the road and  falling apart as we watch.  This is where the choreography really shows; you’ll have to go see the play to know what I mean.  We the audience loved every minute of it. Take special note of the individual performances going on simultaneously, while the play plays out before us on on the other side of this backstage set.

The third act turns the stage around again, and Nothing On, now as polished as it’s every likely to be, continues into its inevitable dissolution.  This production has got to be the funniest thing I’ve ever seen on stage, or anywhere, for that matter.  I complimented director Debi Durst after the show, and she of course gave all credit to her cast and crew, who really worked hard to make this show work so well.  It was a challenge for all, with the temporary closing of the Spindrift Theater and the subsequent scramble to find rehearsal and this performance space at Serramonte del Rey, 699 Serramonte Blvd., Daly City CA.  Everyone—and I mean everyone—in this show gets a rave review for an all-out effort, but my personal favorites are Dominic J. Falletti’s Garry Lejeune and Dianna Collett’s PoppyNorton-Taylor.

This new temporary performance space has plenty of room, and you won’t find a better theater experience anywhere, so come on down to see this run of Noises Off! before it ends September 15.

As for me, I’ll never think of sardines in the same way again.

Box Office:  650-359-8002

Website:  Pacifica Spindrift Players

David Hirzel:  www.davidhirzel.net

Aug 26 2013
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“All’s Well That Ends (especially) Well” at Marin Shakespeare

By David Hirzel

Marin Shakespeare has taken on “All’s Well that Ends Well,” one of Shakespeare’s more challenging plays, and pulled it off well.  Deeper than a comedy, funnier than a tragedy, the Bard’s careful look at character and deception has plenty of laughs (especially as served up by James Hiser), and a generous helping of insight into the potential depths of character that (we hope) exist in all of us.  The plot, like many of Shakespeare’s has its unique convolutions that don’t lend themselves readily to synopsis in a brief review like this.  But the language, much of it in rhymed couplets, can soar in unexpected flights.  Suffice it for me to say, the cast and direction here do yeoman work to keep the audience up to speed on the machinations at hand, as female lead Helena (superbly portrayed by newcomer to Marin Shakes, Carla Pauli) deftly plots her way into the  shallow heart of the playboy Bertram (also new here, Adam Magill).

A mesmerizing performance by Jessica Powell alternates between her heartfelt maternal care for the future of her ne’er-do-well son Bertram, and the tender intimacy she shares with her handmaiden Helena, the daughter she wishes were her own. The first half fairly hums along, alternating between laugh-out-loud comedy (Lucas McClure as Lavatch, Hiser’s clowinish Parolles, and Scott Coopwood’s Lafeu) and lovelorn pathos, and the miraculous cure of a perceptibly dying King of France (Jack Powell, another talented and familiar actor).

The second half is even better.  Once the actors really get warmed up, the complex pacing slips into gear, and the show takes off when the scene moves into Florence and the Shakespearean boudoir deceptions are plotted and then executed. Heather Cherry, as a flamboyant Widow of that fair city, fairly owns the stage every second she is on it.  Parolles, at last humbled by his own web of lies, reveals a hidden soul that brought a round of applause from the audience.  And I must confess, the final scene’s emotional outburst by Luisa Frasconi as Diana brought a tear to my eye.  In the end, all these troubled souls come to the understanding that, for all their (and our) weaknesses, there always exists the possibility that “All’s Well That Ends Well.”

Through September 29, 2013.  Box Office:  (415) 499-4488

At:  Forest Meadows Amphitheatre, Dominican University of California in San Rafael

Website:  Marin Shakespeare

David Hirzel’s Website:  www.davidhirzel.net