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David Hirzel

David Hirzel

Nov 25 2012
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“La Virgen Del Tepeyac” at Mission San Juan Bautista

By David Hirzel

Here is a show that will set a mood for the upcoming holiday season that has no Christmas music, no re-creations of the nativity, no heartwarming hallmark sentimentality.  It takes not in a theatre but in a church—Mission San Juan Bautista—where the thick adobe walls have echoed for two hundred years and still resound today with voices raised in song and praise.

“La Virgen Del Tepayac” is a vibrant retelling of an old story, the miracle of the four miraculous apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe to the Aztec messenger Juan Diego in 1531.  Night has already fallen as we wait in line outside the mission, reading over the detailed synopsis of the story we are about to witness.  We’ll need this information, because the pageant is performed by El Teatro Campesino (“the peasant theatre”) entirely in Spanish.  Inside, we take our seats facing the center aisle with the altar at our right hand and the central raised stage at our left.

The lights dim; long blasts from a conch-horn echo through the darkened sanctuary, dancers clad in Aztec robes and feathers gather in the rear, and offer a song in salute and prayer to “Estrella del Oriente,” the Star of the East.  The year is 1519; enter the Spanish clergy and soldiers, a symbolic conquest, baptism of the Indios.  Appearing from the smoke and mist to our hero Juan Diego (Ruben C. Gonzalez), La Virgen is an apparition to us as well.

All this story is told with compelling music, great flashes of color and dance, moving through the mission from one end to the other and back again.  The great hall has been so built that spoken words are heard throughout with not need of amplification.  When La Virgen (Stephani Garcia Canedlaria) appears a second and third time to Juan Diego, her song captures the resonance of the great hall perfectly, a truly stunning performance.   There are turns of fine acting by the Bishop (Gustavo Mellado) and the Friars (especially Luis Juarez as Fray De Gante), some comic relief by Rosa Mari Escalante as Citlamina, a sprightly children’s dance, leading up to climactic dance and final apparition at the altar.

This show, adapted by Luis Valdez from an anonymous 18th century script, conveys all the wonder of Juan Diego’s vision and the miracle that became the seed of the Christianity to spread throughout Mexico.  As we depart into the crisp starlit night the entire ensemble sings “Vamos Caminando” and invite us to take our own journey with the true spirit, unity and essence of Christmas.

Mission San Juan Bautista, San Juan Bautista CA

Through December 16, 2012

Tickets and Information:  http://www.elteatrocampesino.com or 1-800-838-3006

I heartily encourage you to take the trip to San Juan Bautista and see this remarkable pageant this year. Look for Posada de San Juan Hotel, a perfect blend of traditional appearance with modern hospitality (http://paseodesanjuan.webs.com) in the midst of a town that seems to have changed little in the last century.

 

 

 

 

Nov 11 2012
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Fringe of Marin Fall 2012: Program Two’s Laughs and Insights

By David Hirzel

The current crop of new one-act plays at the Fringe of Marin reflects a familiar disparity between the two programs:  one program is stronger overall, with the best individual plays and performances to be found in the other.  This is the most compelling argument for planning to see both programs in every season–to take in all of the considerable talent and surprise the Fringe has to offer.

In the case of this year’s lineups, Program Two has in my view the better run of plays.  It was light on drama and overladen with humor, but the laughs were genuine and plentiful.  The first three plays all take a broad and farcial look at senior romance.  “Get a Date Show” is a spoof on TV’s the Dating Game, with Ross Travis spot-on as the smarmy game show host.  Carol Sheldon’s “On with the Wind” mines a retirement-home viewing of Margaret Mitchell’s classic, with the irrepressible Flora Lynn Issacson a standout in her rented ante-bellum hoop-skirt.  “Arrangements” pairs Charles Grant and Terri Barker again as a funeral services director signing a “pre-need” cremation contract with an outspoken client for an as-yet unspecified date. The first of five plays following the intermission continued the pattern of broad humor with Bill Chessman’s Beasley family confronting a hat-stealing chimpanzee and a surprising turnabout “One Time at the Zoo.”

The evening took a more somber turn when an alcoholic husband discovers his self-absorbed wife has been “Supplementing” her romantic life.  Then the tone turns literary as George Bernard Shaw (Kevin Copps) meets God (Jerrund Bojeste) in the witty and well-acted “Shaw”  (written and directed by first-timer Ollie Mae Welch).  There is “Trouble at Table 23,” Charlie Lerrigo’s absurd take on a hapless diner (well-played by Manik Bahl) who came for a glass of milk and finds himself ever more deeply mired in a burgeoning murder case by the talented Jean Davis in four successive roles.  In the final play a milquetoast conspires with his therapist –“She Has a Plan”—to become more of a man for his wife, until things go awry.

Eight plays might seem like a lot for one evening, but in this lineup the time just flew by.  Fringe of Marin Fall 2012 Programs One and Two through November 18.

At Meadowlands Hall, Dominican University, 50 Acacia Ave., San Rafael CA.  Reservations and information: (415) 673-3131

Fringe of Marin Website:  www.fringeofmarin.com

Schedule:  http://fringeofmarin.com/performanceschedule.html

 

Nov 10 2012
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Dance at Dominican: A great show from the LINES/BFA in Dance Program

By David Hirzel

One of the don’t-miss shows of the north Bay Fall Season has got to be Ballet Recitals by the students of  Dominican University’s BFA in Dance.    The school works with Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet and the San Francisco Dance Center.  I’m no dance critic, but I know what I like.  I really like this show, and wouldn’t miss it for the world.

There are generally eight or so recitals, some complex ensemble pieces by the combined students of the various classes, a few Senior Project, some modern pieces in urban settings, some classical performed to operatic music.  The show opener, four movements set largely to non-melodic rhythmic music through a rain-forest setting was also one of the more accessible to philistines like me.  I soon learned to put down my notes and just watch.  Each piece had its own story, and not necessarily the one I would have gotten from the liner notes, or from my own attempt at understanding.  In time I lose place altogether with the program, becoming lost in the swirl of vision, rhythm, motion, visceral stories told without words, visceral emotional contact that cannot be recast in mere words.  Each of the pieces exists for a brief moment in its own world, and we in the audience are blessed to be invited into it.

The evening performance of November 9 was followed by and informal Q+A and round-table discussion between some of the dancers and choreographers, and those few audience members who chose to stay after the show and take part.  This was a nice touch, a great way for some of us to learn more about the art of dance.  Not every piece needs to be taken literally, interpreted through the written introductions in the program.  Dance is one of the liveliest of arts, a wide range of possibilities drawing not only from music and movement, but from each dancer’s separate and ensemble interpretation interacting with each audience member’s intellect and emotion.

This show only happens twice a year in the Fall and Spring semesters so look for it and mark your calendars for 2013.  Last performance this year is 3:00 November 10, 2012

Performances at Angelico Hall, Dominican University of California, 50 Acacia Ave., San Rafael, CA 94901

415-482-3579  www.domincan.edu  

LINES Ballet School/BFA  http://bfa.linesballet.org/events/

Nov 03 2012
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Fringe of Marin Fall 2012: Program One off to a good start

By David Hirzel

The Fringe of Marin opened its 30th season November 2, 2012 with a near full house set to enjoy the seven new plays presented in Program One. So much happens on such a small stage!

The night got off to a fast start with Shirley King’s Hollywood Confidential a spy-caper spoof, a witty SNL-flavored take on “007” in Hollywood.  Gigi Benson perfectly cast as the lady in red.  George Dykstra wrote and delivered the evening’s most powerful performance in Mysterious Ways, a well-paced and very moving soliloquy from a grieving widower.

Minerva and Melrose gave us a change of pace from the somber to the silly, as the clueless Minerva spins off malapropisms gives us plenty to laugh at as she tries on one arts career after another with dizzying speed.  Written and directed by Martin A. David, this play also featured the most inventive set of the evening with a glass door on a pivot between a bathroom/prison and a living room.

The highlight of the lineup came just before the intermission. Carol Eggers directs veteran Fringe actor Rick Roitinger as a passive-aggressive husband scheming to get his wife (Emily Soliel)  involved in a wife-swapping party. Don Samson’s script has the flavor of a real marital argument, coming around time after time to the same arguments in the same words with no apparent resolution in sight. “Marion” being the wiser of the two doesn’t want to play, but fed up with “Tom’s” badgering finally she consents to play The Game, but only on her terms.

After the intermission, we are treated to another (the best so far) of Annette Lust’s kitchen fairy-tales.  In this delightful show, Cynthia Sims (Salt), Terri Barker (Pepper), and French chef Charles Grant ham it up in equal measure to tell us exactly How Salt and Pepper Got Put into Shakers.  The evening turns serious again with Michael Ferguson’s look at the Sharp Edgesthat doom the budding romance between a man and a woman who has been scarred by assault. In another change of pace, the final play Sunday Sundays (written and directed by Peter Hsieh) brought the most laughs in a four-way take on a simple absurdist sketch, repeatedly played word-for-word, each time funnier than the last.

As promised, the Fringe gives you something you won’t see anywhere else, you will be glad you came.  Don’t miss Program Two (eight different new plays) starting November 3.

Fringe Programs One and Two through November 18.  For times and dates see schedule:  http://www.fringeofmarin.com/performanceschedule.html

At Meadowlands Hall, Domincan University, 50 Acacia Ave. @ Grand Ave., San Rafael CA

Reservations and Information 415-673-3131  http://www.fringeofmarin.com

Review by David Hirzel www.davidhirzel.net

Oct 26 2012
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Fringe of Marin: Advance Review Fall 2012

By David Hirzel

The season hasn’t started yet, so don’t look here for reviews of what you will or will not see.  But of course, you will have to go to Meadowlands Hall at Dominican University in San Rafael, to see the plays for yourself.  Then, should you be inspired, you can write your own reviews.

I can say this.  In all the Fringes I have attended (and we are going on eight or nine now), there is at least one play, and often more, that will astound you with a deft script, sensitive direction, and superb acting.  You will be, as I have often been, amazed at the dynamic confluence of all these appearing on stage before you.

These are all one-act plays, by unknown or little-known playwrights, having their world premiere right in front of you. You could (and in fact probably are) watching the incubation of the next Harold Pinter or David Mamet (or Eugene O’Neill—everybody starts somewhere).  That stage is literally no more than twenty feet in front of you, so close that you are no longer an audience separated from the action by the supposed fourth wall.  You are, and sometimes quite literally, a part of the action.

This is not to promise that every play at the Fringe will deliver a memorable theatrical experience.  With thirteen plays produced twice a year for lo! these thirty seasons, that is a standard impossible to keep up.

I can promise that you will see something you have never seen before.   And if you attend both Programs, something that will leave you thinking and talking to your friends for days afterward.  This is the best bargain in small theatre you can find.  There are only five performances of each Program, starting November 2.  Don’t miss it.

Fringe of Marin website for Program and Performance Schedule: http://fringeofmarin.com

by David Hirzel www.davidhirzel.net

Oct 19 2012
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Chinese Melodrama: Music you know, but have never heard like this. . .

By David Hirzel

It was one of those rare Friday nights that didn’t involve a longish drive for me.  I was staying close to home, so when my friend Evelyn sent out her weekly “things to do this weekend in Pacifica” and how much she loved this duo Chinese Melodrama  I thought: I’ll check ‘em out.  Playing this night (October 19) at “A Grape in the Fog” wine bar in Pacifica.

A classically trained violinist of clearly Asian descent (Lisa  Chu—the Chinese part) and a white-guy singer-songwriter (Randy Bales—the Melodrama part, as he himself put it).  Put them together, and you have something you have never seen before, but you are sure to want to see again.  The evening starts off at a relaxed pace, a trio of songs including Cat Stevens’ “Father and Son.”  Guitar and vocal didn’t stray far from the original (true of many of the evening’s offerings) but with Lisa’s poignant violin it took on a dimension I never knew it had.  The same holds true for other offerings from the familiar songbooks of Soundgarden, Mettallica, Led Zeppelin, rendered ethereally beautiful with the Lisa’s haunting melodic counterpoints. At more than one point during the show I found myself wondering, what is it about the sound of a violin that literally brings a tear to the eye.  Randy Bales handles all the vocals, and it’s his detailed and potent guitar work that give the performances their underlying foundation.  By the third song, one of their original compositions, we were getting a taste of what was about to come.  “Seasons,” ostensibly about the spirituality of our being, started of suitably restrained and introspective, but when the music hit the bridge, it positively ignited.  Just an amazing little interlude of stringed pyrotechnics, before settling back down into its muted, reflective groove.

But by this time, the show was just getting started.  When Lisa felt his spoken introduction to another of their originals was going on a bit too long, she tapped the music stand with her bow:  “More music, less talk.”  And, boy was there more music.  That hot interlude of “Seasons” was just a teaser for the real power these two bring to their performance.  After the first break, the real show started off.  There is a subtle personal interplay between these two.  Watch their faces.  She takes a half-closed look over her strings at his fingers on his own, while the song begins to take on its shape, growing slowly, methodically, inevitably she leaps into the music, and the whole performance ignites again in complex syncopated rhythms, amazing melodic lines sweeping and soaring breathtaking power.  And then this happens again.  And again.  I no longer care who wrote what I am hearing, or what the lyrics might have had to say, so powerful has this performance become.

By the end of the show, I had to marvel that their instruments—just a guitar and a violin—had not burst into flames.  You really have to see these two in person.  You can check their website http://chinesemelodrama.com/ for upcoming dates in the Bay Area, including house parties, surely the best way to see Chinese Melodrama.

Lisa Chu and Randy Bales

 

 

 

 

Sep 17 2012
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Rigoletto in the Ballpark

By David Hirzel

For those of us who are not opera purists, and by the 30,000+ turnout at San Francisco’s ATT+T Park September 16, I suspect there are a whole lot of us, this venue has got to be the best way to enjoy Verdi’s Rigoletto.  If you remembered to leave home with enough layers to keep you warm as the evening rolls along, you will find that there are no bad seats.  From the lawn (outfield) below to the upper deck, everyone has a good view of a BIG screen with excellent video graphics coupled with distortion-free amplified sound to carry the music to your ears.  Before each act a written synopsis appears briefly, to get you oriented to what’s about to happen, and much (not all) of the singing is subtitled.  Not that you need to read to enjoy such phenomenal singing, but it helps to keep you oriented to the players and the action onscreen: lust, treachery, tender love, betrayal, murder.

Such is Rigoletto.  The title character (Zeljko Lucic) is a jester to the Duke’s court, but he has a serious side, and a secret daughter, and it is on this Gilda (Aleksandra Kurzak) whom he dotes, and the depth and breadth of their relationship is the heart of the story.  It is in their tender moments together that the real value of this ballpark opera house makes itself known.  The big screen focuses on their faces, their eyes and lips, the bond they share, while their voices intertwine in music of marvelous beauty.  This passionate actress makes the show, lovely to behold and hear, a perfect match to her burly father’s abiding love.

The staging is a simple wonder.  Vertical panels angling into the distance do multiple duty, serving as the brilliant court or a dark alley or Verona’s empty square during a violent storm, with just a change of light and color.  A similarly undecorated room slides into view, and it changes into house, an inn, a bedroom with barred windows, again with just lighting and the most minimal of props.  The primary colors used—red, yellow, blue-gray—set the scenes so well that nothing more is needed.

Altogether, what a show!  Here’s how it works.  This is a simulcast of the live performance onstage at the SF War Memorial Opera House.  At the conclusion of the show, when the cast came on for their (well-deserved) applause, each was bearing or wearing a bit of Giants fan-gear: a big orange We’re Number One, a baseball bat, a black beard—a special nod to those of use in the stands.  It’s free, and this night at the opera in the ballpark comes but once a year in the fall, so look for it in 2013 and don’t miss it.  Special treat for those coming from Marin:  get the special opera ferry at Larkspur, straight to McCovey Cove.  But don’t forget to print out your online reservation, or you won’t get home by ferry later that night.

Review by David Hirzel

http://www.davidhirzel.net

 

Sep 14 2012
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Pacifica Spindrift Stage 2: “Time Was” and “Partitions”

By David Hirzel

Stage 2 is an experimental offshoot of Pacifica Spindrift Players, where out-of-the mainstream productions have a chance to get staged.  This season’s offering is a pair of short plays by a new playwright Kathryn Murdock, simply staged as readers’ theatre for three nights only.  Director Barbara Williams managed to make the most of the bare-bones staging—a pair of stepladders, a handful of chairs and a table before a blue curtain—and the cast, most of them taking a role in each of the plays.

The evening opened with Time Was, an elliptical theatre of the absurd, Murdock’s ruminations on the nature of time, memory, and mortality (“Big whoop!”) given voice by actors on a stage within a stage.  “I wanted to remind you, I’m equity.”  First one character, then another and another are given sacks to carry dangling from their necks: “My childhood, I carry it with me everywhere.”  But sometimes this is a good thing.  A child sees everything through a lens of awe and wonder.  Just not for everyone, or all the time.  White shrouds, even the stage manager herself, become characters, leading to a surprise and snappy ending.

At intermission, you have a chance to meet the cast and production staff in the gallery, one of the wonderful features of small productions like this.

The evening’s second offering, Partitions.  left the absurd and entered the  complicated world of ordinary life, of a sea-captain loved by, and seen through the eyes of four different women:  a past love, a present fling, a sister, and an office manager.  Each knows some but not all things about him, and none of them know or understand the same things.  Each deludes herself as she enables his free-wheeling philandering, until the climactic scene following his sudden death in the hospital.  In the wild confrontations there each comes to see herself as a part of a larger whole that was his life, and included them all.

The direction and acting in these productions, particularly the latter, brought the show almost out of the realm of readers’ theatre, to the point that one was barely aware that each had a script in hand throughout.  A special nod to Dianna Collett for her spot-on and sensitive portrayal of the betrayed Melinda in Partitions.  If you want to catch this show, you’ll have to hurry.  Three nights only, final performances Saturday 9/15 8:00, Sunday 9/16 2:00.  Admission for this Stage 2 is FREE, but bring a little cash for the donation box.

Box office:  (650) 359-8002  or   http://www.pacificaspindriftplayers.org/Tickets/index.html

Review by David Hirzel:  http://www.davidhirzel.net

Sep 03 2012
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Two for One: Petty Theft and Liars

By David Hirzel

Two only-in-Marin in one day—September 2, 2012.  First stop a free concert at Homestead Valley in Mill  Valley.  We arrived toward the end of the middle band’s set, found a place in the sun and settled in for the final act—a cover band for the Heartbreakers known as Petty Theft.  I was a fan of Hearbreakers radio play from the late 70’s, but listened less and cared less as the decades moved on.  Of course Petty has his enduring fans, but I was not particularly one of them.  I was in Mill Valley to lie in the sun (a perfect day for it), picnic and listen to some live music, so I was happy.

As the show went on, it became impossible for me to lie still.  After a while I was sitting up, then on my feet, then gotta-go-dance.  I was not alone in this.  Petty Theft does a near perfect cover of every Heatrbreakers song that ever got airplay, vocals and arrangement note-for-note, with plenty of room for the guitars to take flight on their own (and every other instrument as well) and singer Dan Durkin to stir the crowd up with when the time comes.  Audience participation?—You bet.  The set ended with a show-stopping “Need to Know” but when the band left the stage without playing “American Girl” we all knew there was an encore if we wanted it.  We got it, and a follow-on “Refugee” that brought down the house.  What a show!

Check out Petty Theft.  As they say themselves, “It’s about the music.”   They’re playing all around the Bay Area through September and beyond.   If you like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, you’ll be glad you did.  Website:  http://www.pettytheftrocks.com/

That was just the start of the evening.  We had just enough time between shows to get home and make another picnic—supper this time—and get to Marin Shakespeare’s evening performance of The Liar.  I hadn’t read the playbill and had no idea what to expect for this play, so I was surprised the actors appeared onstage foppishly costumed for 1643 Paris.  The first lines were another novelty when it became clear that the script was written entirely in metered verse approaching iambic pentameter and the quickly developed into farce.  The script was adapted in 2010 by David Ives from the 1643 French comedy by Pierre Corneille.  As Ives said, “to render this luminous world in English. . . .it had to be in verse, just as it is in Corneille.”

We have the standard ingredients of love affairs based mistaken identities, good and evil twins, intentional and unintentional conceits, all compounded by the lofty extravagances that gush from the lips of Darren Bridgett’s Liar.  His servant Clito (Jarion Monroe) is by similar token unable to say a single word that is not the absolute truth, despite detailed instruction:  “Don’t swerve. Be tripping. Poetry. Stay low. Irrelevant details. With verve!”

There is really no way to express in print how absolutely hilarious this play is from one end to the other.  The script is wonderfully absurd, and all in rhyme rhymes but it is these eight marvelous actors taking flight under the freewheeling direction of Robert Currier who make it all seem so, well, believable.  When the whole play is compounded on lies.  It’s something you’ll have to see to believe, and you will not be sorry.  You’ll be thinking and talking about this play for days.   At the Forest Meadows Amphitheatre, Dominican University in San Rafael CA, through September 23, 2012.

Website:  http://www.marinshakespeare.org/index.php

Box Office:  (415) 499-4488

 

Sep 02 2012
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Second Time Director

By David Hirzel

I would not by any stretch consider myself a “director” of theatre, no matter how small.  My own experience is very small, but I must confess I have felt it grow this afternoon in ways I would not have anticipated.  The call came from a friend, an amateur playwright who had penned a two-acter some years ago, based on true events in her own life.  This was to be “readers’ theatre” by non-actors in a community centers, with three rehearsals (and I would have to miss the first) one week apart before curtain.  As I was the only one among her circle of friends who had any directorial experience (see above), I was tapped and with a few misgivings and prequalifications, accepted.

As noted, I missed the first rehearsal.  At the second, two of the eight actors arrived without their scripts.  All but one had NO acting experience.  Neither a good sign.  But things improved by the third.  As “director” I must make do with what I had in hand, and hope for the best.  By the end of the dress rehearsal—lost scripts, missed cues, a general dearth of relevant emotion given the incipient deaths of three of the characters and the actual deaths of two, a different actor each time for the role of  “the stranger,” all compounded by the complete ineptitude of the “director”—it seemed clear that only the most modest of aspirations were likely to be met.

The audience would be shanghaied from among those departing community center lunch in the early afternoon.  Not likely to be terribly critical, if they were at least mildly entertained.

And here is what happened:  All of the “readers” became by miraculous osmosis “actors,” and assumed that wonderful generosity arises when cues are missed, props fail, actors don’t show up, pages are missing from the script.  We had a full house who caught all the humor in the playwright’s lines and the cast’s delivery and laughed all the way through it.  By any measure except box office, the show was a huge success.

And here is what else happened:  One of the cast came up to the director, and thanked me for all that she had learned from me.  I found out it was the other way around.

[Special thanks to Anna Boothe, playwright (Six Months to Live) and stage manager, and to: Tom Sullivan, Lydia Benetiz, Gus Tjgaard, Joyce Sorce, Jeanne Angle, Karim Kiram, Manuel Sequeria, Dick Moody, and Camincha, and Janice at the Pacifica Community Center]

by David Hirzel   http://davidhirzel.net/