Flora Lynn Isaacson

Susan Jackson as Jessie and Diana Brown as Jenny 
in Eye Tooth, Part 2.  Photo by Stacy Marshall

The Southern Railroad Theatre Company’s mission is to bring the true Southern experience to the Bay Area in the plays of Susan Jackson.  Her main characters are strong, irrepressible women, facing sudden challenges.  All of the characters in her plays are related by blood or marriage, and this family tree is the foundation of her producing calendar beginning with Heathen which takes place during the Civil War and continues to the present day. In addition, the selections of the plays are connected thematically–Blessings 2010, Forgiveness 2011, Mercy 2011 and Beholden 2012.

Act One opens with Heathen Part 2 which takes place in Bess Canaan’s bedroom in 1865.  Here Ann Kuchins has remarkable stage presence as Bess Canaan as she explains to Posey, her slave girl (Margo Sims) how she has always taken care of her and saved her life making Posey beholden to her for life.  This is followed by  contrasting scene in Posey Carter’s home, two miles from the Canaan Plantation in 1929 in which Posey has a monologue speaking her thoughts, explaining why she is never beholden to anyone.

The next play is Eye Tooth, Part 2 directed by Ann Thomas.  Eye Tooth takes place in the present day at a California State mental hospital. Here Diana Brown has a great deal of spontaneity as Jenny Safrit who explains in group therapy, why she took the life of Jessie Waters (Susan Jackson) who was one of her husband’s “bitches.” Susan Jackson is effective as the ghost of the waitress, Jessie Waters.  Robert Cooper is very professional as Dr. Phillip Brevard who is in charge of a group of patients which includes Adrienne Krug, Ann Kuchins and Margo Sims.

Act One concludes with For I Am Not Breaking, Part 5 directed by Stephen Drewes, which takes place at the Charlotte International Airport, September, 2011.  Here, Susan Jackson, in an appealing performance as Marion Peallin, soon to be ex-wife of bigamist Judge Peallin, meets a stranger (Eric Nelson) while waiting for the flight for her first trip to New York City.

Act Two opens with Rockets Red Glare: Lacy’s Story directed by Ann Thomas which stars Adrienne Krug as Crazy Lacy.  Here we join Lacy on her survival journey from an abandoned three year old in 1970 through 2012, a few days before The Wedding of the Century in 2012.  Here Krug gives a wonderful tour de force performance as Lacy at two years old, seven years old, nine years old, thirteen years old, twenty one years old, forty years old and forty five years old.

The grand finale of the evening is Rockets Red Glare: The Wedding directed by Ann Kuchins. This play takes place in the Anterooms and Sanctuary of the Beaver Dam Free Will Baptist Church in the present, 2012.  Here the entire cast joins in, in wonderfully comic performances.  The folks in Beaver Dam never thought they’d see the day that Salacious and Nancy (Diana Brown) would stop fighting long enough to actually get married, yet it seems that the day has finally arrived.  They are joined by a supporting cast in top notch performances which include Ann Kuchins as Rev. Rainbow, Robert Cooper as Billy Barnett, Susan Jackson as Mayor Peaches Nasterson, Adrienne Krug as Crazy Lacy and Margo Sims as Tulita.

Thanks to Susan Jackson’s marvelous sense of humor, a great time is had by all!

2Beholden or Not 2B! runs through September 29. Performances are held Thursday-Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Royce Gallery, 2901 Mariposa, San Francisco. For tickets and information, contact www.brownpapertickets.com/event/252834 or call 1-800-838-3006.

Laura Domingo as Maria, Craig Christiansen as Tito and Gwen Kingston as Maggie in Ross Valley Players’ production of Lend Me a Tenor

Ross Valley Players opens their 83rd season with Lend Me A Tenor by Ken Ludwig, directed by Kris Neely and produced by Anne Ripley.

In 1934, renowned tenor Tito Morelli (Craig Christiansen) is scheduled to sing the lead in Otello. The opera is being produced as a gala fundraiser for the Cleveland Opera Company.  Unfortunately, even before the star leaves his hotel room, everything begins to unravel.  Chaos ensues when Morelli’s wife, Maria (Laura Domingo), who has mistaken an autograph-seeker hidden in the closet for a secret lover, leaves him a Dear John letter. The distraught Morelli, accidentally, is given  double dose of tranquilizers to calm him and passes out. Saunders, the company’s General Manager (David Kester) is determined that the show will go on (for his own financial interest), so he asks his assistant Max (Robert Nelson) to impersonate the opera star.  Max puts on the black-faced makeup required for the role of Otello and his disguise succeeds admirably–until Morelli, also in black-face, wakes up and heads for the stage. What follows is a chain reaction of mistaken identity, farcical plot twists, double entendres, innuendoes and constant entrances and exits through six different doors.

Kris Neely takes on the directorial challenge of creating a three-ring circus of slamming doors, double takes and pratfalls at top speed and top volume in his eight character romp. In the slapstick sweepstakes, David Kester, as the long-suffering director of the opera company, wins hands down, followed by Robert Nelson and Craig Christiansen who do a wonderful second act dance as the two Otellos being pursued by women (Christina Jacqua as a lecherous dowager, Gwen Kingston as an ingenue admirer, Dylan Cooper as a prima donna who hopes seducing the tenor may be her ticket to the Met and Amanda Grey as a sexy female bellhop in awe of the tenor).  Laura Domingo as the tenor’s long (but not silently) suffering wife, was almost as skillful and overblown in her stage Italian as her husband in their arguments.

There were lots of opportunities for actors to hustle in and out of the six doors in Ken Rowland’s handsome red and white set, hiding in bedrooms and closets, disappearing in the nick of time into the hallway or the kitchen.  The beautiful costumes by Michael A. Berg are easy on the eyes.

Lend Me A Tenor achieves true comic delirium at the curtain call when the cast romps through a mimed version of the lunatic plot in about two minutes.  Those two minutes are more charming and fundamentally funnier than the two hours of hard labor that have come before.

Lend Me A Tenor runs September 14-October 14 at Ross Valley Players’ Barn Theatre, Marin Art and Garden Center, 30 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Ross, CA. Performances are Thursday at 7:30 p.m.; Friday-Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. For reservations, call 415-456-9555, ext. 1.

Coming up next at Ross Valley Players will be You Can’t Take It With You by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, directed by Jim Dunn, November 16-December 16, 2012.

Susan Stein, Molly McCarthy, Ron Dailey and Susan Gundunas in Last of the Red Hot Lovers at NTC

The 93-year old Novato Theater Company has just opened its new season with Neil Simon’s Last of the Red Hot Lovers which opened on Broadway on December 28, 1969 and was released as a film in 1972.

Last of the Red Hot Lovers is one of the most amusing of Neil Simon’s comedies. It focuses on Barney Cashman (Ron Dailey), a 47-year old owner of a seafood restaurant who is afraid that the sexual revolution of the 1960’s is passing him by.  Over the space of 9 months, he invites three different women to his mother’s Manhattan apartment in an attempt to have an afternoon of extra-marital sex. None of the affairs are consummated, however, Barney decides, after the last one, that he would prefer a romantic afternoon with his wife Thelma.

Act One is a late afternoon in December when Barney meets Elaine Navazio (Susan Gundunas) who is in her late 30’s, attractive, tough, sexy who likes cigarettes, whiskey and other women’s husbands.  Act Two is a late afternoon in August when Barney meets Bobbi Michele (Molly McCarthy) who is about 27, an actress, pretty and very fresh/cool looking despite oppressive heat outside and at times, mad as a hatter.  Act Three is a late afternoon in September when Barney meets Jeanette Fisher (Susan Stein), about 39 years old, a moralist and singularly the most oppressed woman on the face of the Western hemisphere.  She is the best friend of Barney’s wife Thelma.

Barney’s doing all right for a guy who spent his life running a Manhattan seafood restaurant and raising a family with his dull but decent wife, but now he wants more. He wants to see what sex would be like with another woman. He wants adventure and romance so he sneaks into his mother’s apartment from 3 to 5 p.m. to use it as a love nest.  But Elaine is too cold, Bobbi too crazy and Jeanette too depressed.

Beautifully directed by Jamey Hurwitz with a very talented cast, Last of the Red Hot Lovers is a hot ticket.

The Novato Theater Company is in new surroundings at 32Ten Studios where you sit in loge seats that George Lucas and Company also sat in watching Star Wars and other films.  32Ten Studios is located at 3210 Kerner Blvd., San Rafael.  Last of the Red Hot Lovers runs August 31-September 23, 2012.  Performances are Thursday-Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. For tickets, call 415-883-4498 or go online at www.novatotheatercompany.org.

Coming up next at Novato Theater Company will be Nunsense by Dan Goggin October 18-November 11, 2012.

Flora Lynn Isaacson

Cat Thompson as Clarice and Darren Bridgett as Dorante in The Liar.

Marin Shakespeare Company is currently presenting The Liar by David Ives, adapted from the comedy of Pierre Corneille and directed by Robert Currier.  Featuring rhyming couplets, high energy and comic timing, playwright David Ives’ clever adaptation of this 17th century French farce was heralded as “a true comic gem” when commissioned and presented by Washington D.C.’s Shakespeare Theatre in 2010.  “It is neither a translation nor an adaptation,” according to Ives, “It is what I call a translaptation.  The play is partly a social satire about how lies work within a society, within love, how lies are woven into the fabric of things.  It shows how lies can feed love and actually create love.”

When the first few lines of Marin Shakespeare’s production of The Liar were spoken, Stephen Muterspaugh, who delightfully plays the role of Cliton, Dorante’s servant, begins the play in iambic pentameter, reminding the audience to turn off their brains and announcing the next two hours of the play will be in rhyme.

The Liar starts out with Dorante (Darren Bridgett), a young man just arrived in Paris who meets two women in the Tuileries in Paris whose names are Clarice (Cat Thompson) and Lucrece (Elena Wright).  He impresses them with his claim to have returned recently from the wars in Germany and boasts of the vital role he played.  After they leave, he decides to court Clarice mistakenly thinking her name to be that of her friend, Lucrece.  These two women have identical twin maids (both brilliantly played by Natasha Noel). One is a saucy promiscuous wench and the other, a straight laced puritan.

Geronte (Jarion Monroe), Dorante’s father, announces to his son that he has found a girl for him to marry (Clarice).  Dorante, wrongly believing that the girl he likes is Lucrece, concocts an outrageous lie that he is already married in order to avoid having to marry Clarice.

After more fabrications and complications, Dorante reveals that his “wife” is pregnant, and Geronte is infuriated to discover he was lied to.  Dorante eventually tells the truth and the play is resolved happily.

Robert Currier’s robust staging of The Liar whips past at high speed.  The whole cast is outstanding.  James Hiser as Alsippe, Clarice’s secret fiance, gets a well deserved applause for each of his scenes and Scott Coopwood, as Philiste, Alsippe’s friend, stalks about at various times carrying a book with various plays by Shakespeare, from Anthony and Cleopatra to Othello, Hamlet and As You Like It, during which times, the actors involved will be quoting lines from the plays.

The sets designed by Mark Robinson which take place in the Tuileries Place Royal and the Bois de Boulange are charming with square trees and have a pop-out book sensibility.  Award-winning Costume Designer Abra Berman has produced beautiful costumes from the Restoration era.  Billie Cox has composed original Parisian music to put us in the mood and Ellen Brooks’ lighting design is perfection.

To sum up The Liar boasts a sense of playfulness throughout and Currier has directed his expert ensemble cast with a great deal of style.  Go see The Liar, you’ll laugh and have a great time!

The Liar plays August 25-September 3, 2012.  Performances are at 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday and 4 p.m. Sunday at Forest Meadows Amphitheatre, 890 Belle Avenue, Dominican University of California, San Rafael.  For tickets, call 499-4488 or go to www.marinshakespeare.org.

Flora Lynn Isaacson

Theresa (Arwen Anderson) and Marty (Julia Brothers) talk during a break from their adult Creative Drama class in the Bay Area Premiere of Annie Baker’s Circle Mirror Transformation, now playing at Marin Theatre Company, in co-production with Encore Theatre Company, through August 26.

Marin Theatre Company in a co-production with Encore Theatre Company of San Francisco, has opened its 2012-13 Season with a regional premiere of Circle Mirror Transformation by Annie Baker, a hot, young, New York-based playwright.  Earlier this year, the Aurora Theatre Company gave Annie Baker’s Body Awareness a strong production, followed by the San Francisco Playhouse’s superb production of her second play, The Aliens, which were both set in the fictional town of Shirley, Vermont.  Circle Mirror Transformation, also set in Shirley, Vermont, has become her most popular play.

Since Annie Baker’s Circle Mirror Transformation is an actor’s play, it wouldn’t be surprising if any person who has taken an acting class has played at least one of the games presented in this play. However, Circle Mirror Transformation is not just a play about acting. It is also a play about life.  Acting could be viewed as mirroring the transformation of life.  According to Annie Baker, life is about circles, mirrors, and transformations.  Life is often described as a circle, observing only six weeks of an acting class, Baker grapples with many common issues in life.

In 33 brief scenes, spread over six weeks, Circle Mirror Transformation follows the discovery of four students with the guidance of Marty, their teacher (Julia Brothers).  The class includes recently divorced carpenter Schultz (Robert Parsons), precocious aspiring actress Lauren (Marissa Keltie), teasing former actress Theresa (Arwen Anderson) and Marty’s husband James (L. Peter Callender).

The play opens on the group in the first day of class playing a concentration game where the goal is to count to ten, one by one, without signaling who is going to say what number and when.  The group is unable to do it. The play is essentially a compilation of acting games with two real scenes in between.

Staged by New York Director Kip Fagan in his first Marin production, the show displays the talents of a marvelously strong cast.  Andrew Boyce’s set is a community center rec room. The class taking place in the center is called “Adult Creative Drama–six weeks of once a week classes conveyed in two hours with no intermission, but with lots of short scenes and blackouts. These pauses are one of the defining trademarks of Annie Baker’s work.  Silence allows the characters to think before they act; everything becomes much more deliberate.  It also gives the audience time and space to take in the story and participate in the moment the characters are living through.

The “transformation” in the title refers to the barely perceptible ways people change each other for good and sometimes forever.  What’s most amazing over the course of the play is the occasional “re-enactments” in which one student plays another.  From the depth and detail of the portrayals, you realize just how much quality time they’ve spent together.  Annie Baker has created a theatrical compliment to real life.

Circle Mirror Transformation runs August 2-August 26, 2012 at the Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller Avenue, Mill Valley, CA.  Performances are at 8 p.m. Tuesday & Thursday-Saturday; 7:30 p.m. Wednesday; and 7 p.m. Sunday.  Matinees are at 2 p.m. every Sunday. There are also performances Saturday, August 11 and 25 at 2 p.m. and a 1 p.m. performance, Thursday, August 16.

For tickets, call 415-388-5208 or go online at www.marintheatre.org.

Coming up next at Marin Theatre Company will be Top Dog/Under Dog by Susan-Lori Parks and directed by Timothy Douglas, September 27-October 21, 2012.

Scott Coopwood as Oberon, King of the Fairies and Cat Thompson as Titania, Queen of the Fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Marin Shakespeare.

Director Robert Currier transports the action of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream to the magical shores of mystical Hawaii under the gaze of the Tiki Gods which were created by Sculptor Antonio Echeverria.  Made out of wood and foam, these gods flank the Hawaiian set designed by Mark Robinson.  The scent of hibiscus and twang of ukuleles permeate Shakespeare’s story. The Hawaiian music is the creation of the Sound Designer and Composer, Billie Cox.  This is all to get us in the mood before the play begins.

When we enter this slightly fantastical version of contemporary Hawaii, we encounter several beautiful girls in Hawaiian costumes with leis around their necks dancing the hula.  While this is going on, an American tourist takes their picture.  This is followed by three interlocking plots, connected by a celebration of the wedding of Duke Theseus of Athens (Damien Seperi) and the Amazon Queen Hippolyta (Sylvia Burboeck) and set simultaneously in the woodland and the realm of Fairyland under the light of the moon.

In the first plot, that of the real world, we meet Helena (Luisa Frasconi) who loves Demetrius (Evan Bartz) who is infatuated and wishes to marry Hermia (Jessica Salans) who loves Lysander (Brandon Mears). Hermia’s father Egeus (Jack Halton) appeals to ruler Theseus to force Hermia to marry Demetrius.  Then the star crossed lovers run away and enter the realm of Fairyland.

In the second plot, a group of working men led by Peter Quince (Stephen Muterspaugh) have gathered to prepare a play to perform for Theseus and Hippolyta’s wedding.  Nick Bottom (Jarion Monroe), a weaver, quickly establishes himself as the star actor of the group.  Francis Flute (Alexander Lenarsky) is not excited to be cast as Bottom’s love interest.  Regardless, the group agrees to meet the next night in the wood to rehearse; the play will be the ill-fated love story of Pyramus Thisbe.

The third plot involves the King and Queen of the Fairies, Oberon (Scott Coopwood) and Titania (Cat Thompson) who are in a heated debate.  Their dispute has disturbed their fairy followers including Oberon’s henchman, the impish Puck (James Hiser), who screws everything up with a magic potion.  Oberon is costumed by Tammy Berlin as a Polynesian God of War who in times of peace becomes the God of Fine Arts; he fights when necessary and dances when the fighting is done.

Bringing fresh takes to their roles are Jessica Salans as the pushy and feisty Hermia, Luisa Frasconi as the sexy and pouty Helena and the laugh out loud antics of Jarion Monroe as Bottom.  Dressed in bright red, Cat Thompson makes a beautiful and graceful Titania and James Hiser as Puck, Oberon’s right hand man, carries the show.

Director Robert Currier has employed excessive physical action to garner laughs, and the young lovers do great justice to Currier’s use of physicality.  Speaking of laugher, special mention should be made of Alexander Lenarsky’s portrayal of Thisbe, the leading lady when the play of the workmen is actually  presented at the end of the show.

This modern adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream might make the strict, Shakespeare purist squirm a little but these additions definitely help to add context to the language by keeping things interesting and adding a modern spin.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream plays at Marin Shakepeare Company, July 28-September 30, 2012.  Performances are held at Forest Meadows Amphitheatre, 890 Belle Avenue, Dominican University, San Rafael, CA.  For tickets, call the box office at 415-499-4488 or go online at www.marinshakespeare.org.

Coming up next at Marin Shakespeare will be The Liar, by David Ives, adapted from the farce by Pierre Corneille, directed by Robert Currier and opening August 25, 2012 through September 23, 2012.

Flora Lynn Isaacson

Erik MacRay as the Bastard in King John at Marin Shakespeare Company.

Wood Lockhart as Didi Snavely in Greater Tuna at RVP