Woody Weingarten

Steve Budd’s face shows how he feels in Oy, What They Said About Love. Photo by Michael Prine Jr.

By WOODY WEINGARTEN

Steve Budd, in Oy, What They Said About Love, is committed — to not being committed.

Throughout the amusing and heartbreaking 70-minute solo performance at The Marsh Berkeley, he desperately wants to find The One, his beshert, his soulmate.

And he does. Momentarily.

The 50-year-old’s relationship is at best tumultuous — on and off, on and off again, on and off once more. From Kenya to Boston. From ultra-hot to icy.

The Oy in the title should be a dead giveaway: Budd’s clever one-man show is Jewish-oriented.

In it, he sings snippets of Hebrew songs and prayers, occasionally inspiring some audience members to do an impromptu unison sing-along. He also tosses in a handful of words that might not be familiar to every theatergoer. Like schmutz (dirt), traif (non-kosher), and shiksa (non-Jewish female).

The Oakland-based actor/writer/storyteller/standup comic embodies his own being and that of his wannabe wife, a strikingly beautiful Black émigré from Africa. She’s everything he desires in a woman — except she’s not Jewish. She’s willing to convert, however, and wants to have “Einstein kinky-haired kids” with him. Going from one tribe to another wouldn’t be a big deal, she submits.

Budd, a white-haired guy who knows exactly how to comedically utilize his rubbery body and face, explores commonalities and differences in relationships, and why his fail while others succeed. He also illustrates his bumpy journey by morphing himself into the personas of both genders of friends he’s interviewed.

He depicts, for example, Connor and Sarah (an interfaith couple who met at a Halloween party) on an escape trip to Canada, a visit to an Emergency Room because of an ear infection, and a heartfelt, long-withheld utterance of “I love you.”

He shows Gaby finally accepting Matt as her partner, after having met not cute but on Craigslist, by lowering her expectations.

He exquisitely describes folks through their own words. “He does not know how to blow his nose quietly,” for instance.

He also details his mother’s death. And switches the om chant to one emphasizing the word mom.

Steve Budd’s relationship crumbles. Photo by Michael Prine Jr.

The monologist’s acting chops have evolved enough so there’s no need for props or costumes or a set. The stage, indeed, is barren except for a chair and two undecorated blocks on which to sit. Infrequent lighting changes and recorded music do add some atmosphere.

Budd’s journey — directed by Mark Kenward and Kenny Yun —is at once funny and agonizing. And he displays it all while wearing a simple shirt with hoodie, darkish trousers, and old-fashioned black-and-white sneakers.

But, oy, he weaves his own written words into a narrative so real that it’s easy for the audience to visualize each character in his theatrical stockpile.

Oy, What They Said about Love will run at The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way, Berkeley, through Oct. 25. Tickets: $25 to $35; reserved seating $50 to $100 (plus a convenience fee of $3 a ticket). Info: 415-641-0235 or www.themarsh.org.

Sherwood “Woody” Weingarten, a longtime voting member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle and the author of four books, can be contacted by email at voodee@sbcglobal.net or on his websites, https://woodyweingarten.com and https://vitalitypress.com.

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Gabrielle Maalihan and David Siniako are awestruck as they enter a new universe in “The Motion.” All photos by Jay Yamada.

By WOODY WEINGARTEN

The Motion, a new sci-fi dramedy, provides laughable and challenging theater while occasionally making audience members believe their brains are about to explode.

In a good way.

Obie-winning playwright Christopher Chen crams about eight tons of material into 105 intermission-less minutes at the Ashby Theater in Berkeley. He explores, for example, morality, memory, identity, emotions, science, and animal welfare vs. animal rights.

Oh yeah, and love.

What’s dubbed a “metatheatrical sci-fi fable” is a five-character production with each of the Shotgun Players’ actors trying to out-superb the others as they try to figure out what it means to be human. The backdrop, the first of several universes that are explored, is a debate stage.

Dr. Alan James (played by David Siniako), “a humane doctor,” implies that critters have souls. To buoy his support of a ban on animal-testing, he describes in gory detail the vivisection of a bunny.

Dr. Sarah Matthis (Erin Mei-Ling Stuart) counters with facts, leading with the notion that 44% of testing does “no harm to animals of any kind” and attempts to show that most experimentation is on lower forms. “Fish are used to study cancer,” she reports, and “worms are used to test Alzheimer’s.” She declares that animals are sentient creatures that shouldn’t be mere tools in scientific research by humans. Along the way, she quotes 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant and cites an illustration of not knowing who to toss overboard when there are five people in a lifeboat that safely holds only four.

Matthis’ alternately cocky and insecure anti-ban partner, Prof. Neel Serrano (Soren Santos), believes the key to settling the debate is by determining how to eliminate suffering. A ban, he warns, might “halt most medical experimentation in its tracks”

Gabrielle Maalihan and Soren Santos provide a love undercurrent.

Prof. Lily Chan (Gabrielle Maalihan), perhaps the most susceptible to emotions and thereby the most vulnerable debater, admits at one point that she has “this thing where I can’t allow myself to be happy.” In a crisis, she simply feels “so helpless.”

Moderator Jack Donovan (Erin Gould) futilely tries to keep the lid on the debate, circling back to the initial question when everything starts flying off the rails, with participants either talking over each other or flirting. He gets to deliver many — but by no means all — of the laugh-lines.

James, white-bearded, distinguished, and nattily attired, tries swapping one-upmanship lines and concepts with Sarrano, but ends up angrily blurting out, “Please stop interrupting me.”

After loud claps of thunder and blinding lightning flashes, the four debaters are transported to an alternate world in which they are momentarily trapped behind invisible walls. Reading each other’s thoughts, a concept that frightens all of them, is but a first step in a journey that leads to them evolving in other places where they learn to live in the present with AI as a sidekick.

To make the presentation immersive, audience members get to vote on how the debate affected them.

Playwright Chen is popular in the Bay Area. His works have been produced and developed by such companies as the American Conservatory Theater, Berkeley Rep, Magic Theatre, and SFPlayhouse,

Erin Mei-Ling Stuart (left), Gabrielle Maalihan (center) and David Siniako brave a bitter-cold snowstorm.

Artistic director Patrick Dooley founded the Shotgun Players in 1992 in, the website says, the basement of a pizza parlor with “20 eager actors and a bucket of black paint.” Their aim: “to make great, affordable theater.” In the following 12 years, the players performed in 44 different spaces before finding their permanent home on Ashby Avenue in Berkeley.

In a post-show conversation after an opening week matinee of the world premiere, audience members cheerfully dove deeper into the morality issues — politely debating one another and, now and then, ignoring TDooley, who was moderating the half-hour bonus.

During the conversation, he suggested that perhaps the audience might want to consider what the play’s characters and they, as well, have learned about themselves. In the program, he advises theatergoers to retain “a spirit of thoughtfulness and wonder. Stay open. Stay curious.”

Both he and Chen make it virtually impossible to do otherwise.

The Motion will run through Oct. 12 at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., Berkeley. Tickets: $23 to $80. Info: 510-841-6500, ext. 303, or boxoffice@shotgunplayers.org.

Sherwood “Woody” Weingarten, a longtime voting member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle and the author of four books, can be contacted by email at voodee@sbcglobal.net or on his websites, https://woodyweingarten.com and https://vitalitypress.com.

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Wine leads to the release of some inner Big Scary Animals at the Masquers Playhouse. From left are Kim Saunders (Rhonda), Joseph Walters (Donald), David Zubiria (Clark), and Duane Lawrence (Marcus). Photo by Mike Padua.

By WOODY WEINGARTEN

It’s easy to forget that human beings are critters — unless you’re seated in the Masquers Playhouse in Point Richmond watching Big, Scary Animals. Then you can’t ignore our baser behaviors and instincts.

If you have any sense of humor at all, you’re apt to spend much of the 90-minute comic drama by Matt Lyle laughing out loud at the dialogue and feral antics of four Homo sapiens, Until the playwright’s “truth bombs” abruptly smack you between the eyes.

The hidden biases and contradictions of each character either ooze or explode in unexpected ways at unexpected moments.

The plotline is simplistic and predictable: A middle-aged, straight white couple relocates to Dallas in 2015, “a simpler time,” to be closer to their granddaughter. But they’ve unintentionally bought into a “gayborhood.”.

Midway through, all hell breaks loose when a polite dinner conversation with their gay black and Latino next-door neighbors deep dive into sensitive subjects — race, sex, sanity, the N- and C- words, and gun control, among others. Director Gabriel A. Ross milks all the bathos possible while ensuring that no potential laugh-line is downplayed.

The entire ensemble cast is superlative, with Kim Saunders standing out as Rhonda, a naïve Christian “cracker” whose inner big, scary animal can be triggered by a single action and a single glass of wine, and David Zbiria as Clark, a flaming, hysterically funny, Latino homosexual whose common sense eventually erases his emotional spasms. Duane Lawrence inhabits the character of Marcus, a serious black college professor whose secrets are bursting to be revealed, paralleling the inner angst and problematic memories of Joseph Walters as Donald, whose wife repeatedly labels him as stupid.

Consoling Joseph Walters (Donald, center) are Kim Saunders (Rhonda) and Tristan Rodriguez (Ronnie). Photo by Mike Padua.

Two others — Natalie Ford as Sophia, a 20ish black “slut” who tries to use her psych-major tools at inappropriate times, and Tristan Rodriguez as Ronnie, the straight couple’s “troubled” son who’s gently being seduced by Sophia — do the most with under-developed roles.

The audience at a Sunday matinee rocked the small theater with laughter and expressed its consummate pleasure during a 30-minute Talk-Back session afterward. One theatergoer summed up the show this way: “It was heavy butreally funny.” Another said, “My eyes are still wet.”

The director, meanwhile, said he thought one takeaway from the provocative show should be, “There’s a good chance that you have something in common with the person you despise.”

Big, Scary Animals will run at the Masquers Playhouse, 105 Park Place, Point Richmond, through Sept. 28. Tickets: $30 to $35. Information: 510-232-3888 or info@masquers.org.

Sherwood “Woody” Weingarten, a longtime voting member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle and the author of four books, can be contacted by email at voodee@sbcglobal.net or on his websites, https://woodyweingarten.com and https://vitalitypress.com.

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Don (Howard Swain, center) reacts to livestream comments projected above in Eureka Day at the Marin Theatre while (from left) Suzanne (Lisa Anne Porter), Carina (Leontyne Mbele-Mbong), Eli (Teddy Spencer), and Meiko (Charisse Loriaux) look on. Photo by David Allen.

By WOODY WEINGARTEN

To call Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Thursday appearance before the Senate Finance Committee’s three-hour hearing contentious would be a monumental understatement.

Multiple Democrat and Republican senators charged him with making non-logical, false, and misleading claims about vaccines. The Secretary of Health and Human Services futilely struggled to pull answers out of his back pocket.

Humor: Absent.

Eureka Day, a play that also tackles the chasm between vax and not vax, uses satire to make you laugh louder and longer than you’ve ever done before in a theater during a single scene.

Laughter: Infectious.

Also contagious in the 105-minute play is a 15-student outbreak of mumps that ultimately triggers a debate about whether to mandate vaccinations at a private, progressive Berkeley elementary school where white privilege blankets the place.

A five-member executive committee keeps trying to reach a mandatory consensus when consensus is light years away.

The fast-paced comedy, which debuted in 2018 at the Aurora Theatre in Berkeley, is being partnered by that company at the Marin Theater in Mill Valley — despite the Aurora having to cancel its current East Bay season because of a money drain.

The Marin production’s being directed masterfully by Josh Costello, Aurora’s artistic director who also held the reins for the original version.

A caveat: The hilarious scene, featuring livestream comments projected on the rear wall of the set, is abruptly followed by an incredibly heavy change of pace (even though it’s sandwiched by many other moments that are less funny yet still quite amusing).

Each of the five main actors in the ensemble cast is phenomenal.

Howard Swain, who’s transcended so many roles in so many Bay Area venues that if you blink, you might find he’s already booked for 17 more, becomes Don, school executive committee leader with tangled white hair and white beard who desperately quashes potential squabbles. On occasion, he’ll read an indecipherable bit of prose or poetry to the others in a hopeful but valueless teaching moment.

Swain is in the minority, a performer who wasn’t plucked out of the original for this rendition. Ditto Leontyne Mbele-Mbong (Carina).

Eli (Teddy Spencer) embraces Meiko (Charisse Loriaux) amid emotional and intellectual turmoil. Photo by David Allen.

But the other three main characters — Charisse Loriaux (Meiko), Lisa Anne Porter (Suzanne), and Teddy Spencer (Eli) — are all vets of the original show. Clearly, the time between the first production and the revival hasn’t in the least diminished their mastery of their parts. Their range of emotions, their skill at showing feelings with a nuanced look or gesture, their ability to have learned about four zillion words from the script without blowing any, all that may have honed their chops.

One lady leaving the first row could be overheard to put it succinctly: “The cast is perfect!”

Another perfect fit is the jazz between scenes (unless, of course, you’re as anti-jazz as one character is anti-vax).

Eureka Day, which won the 2025 Tony for best revival for its Broadway run, has been performed in Austria, South Australia, and the United Kingdom.

The playwright, Jonathan Spector, a Berkeley boy, has made a few changes since his first effort. However, he’s kept everyone on stage skirting issues and being afraid of saying anything that another exec committee member might take offense at — and he’s inserted tons of swearing and characters interrupting and talking over each other like most real folks do.

That noisy writing strategy might resemble David Mamet’s style but Spector’s is funnier.

Eureka Day will run at the Marin Theatre, 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley, through Sept. 21. Tickets: $38 to $89 (plus $6 handling fee). Info: 415-388-5208 or www.marintheatre.org.

Sherwood “Woody” Weingarten, a longtime voting member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle and the author of four books, can be contacted by email at voodee@sbcglobal.net or on his websites, https://woodyweingarten.com and https://vitalitypress.com.

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L-R, Marsha von Broek, Mary Katherine Patterson and Helen Kim are funny in “Into the Breeches,” onstage at Masquers Playhouse in Point Richmond through Aug. 3. (Mike Padua via Bay City News)

By Woody Weingarten

Insert amateur thespians into a modernized World War II version of a Shakespeare play with an all-female cast and what do you get?

A possible hit for the play-within-a-play — and a barrelful of big laughs for the Masquers Playhouse audience in Point Richmond.

L-R, Katharine Otis and Dana Lewenthal appear in Masquers Playhouse’s production of the comedy “Into the Breeches,” onstage through Aug. 3 in Point Richmond. (Mark Decker via Bay City News)

Katharine Otis does far less schtick and thereby gets fewer guffaws as Maggie Dalton, but she ably leads the cast as the wife of the absentee director (he’s off to the front, as are most of the women’s mates). She’s sensitive but bold, brandishing a cerebral weapon for her personal, newly spawned battle to get women equal pay (and, in the process, rid herself of being labeled her husband’s parrot).

The individual jokes, not incidentally, take a back seat to a farcical scene about walking like a man that features codpieces.

There’s a smirk hidden in the “Into the Breeches” title: King Henry V’s battle cry was, according to Willie the Shakes, “Once more, into the breach.” Here, the play on words implies women climbing into men’s trousers.

Mostly upbeat, the charming play by George Brant (with many added references to East Bay locations that trigger wild applause and shouts of “yay”), also delves adroitly if superficially into issues of race, sexual discrimination, misogyny and family separation.

The full cast is skillful: Dana Lewenthal plays a narcissistic but forgiving diva Celeste Fielding, who opts to play Cinderella rather than having to inhabit a character her own age; Alana Wagner as Ida Green, a Black costume designer who aims to snap a racial barrier; Helen Kim as Grace Richards, a newcomer to town who’s terrified her husband wouldn’t approve of her acting; Mary Katherine Patterson as June Bennett, a bike-riding ingenue who wants to become a symbol of patriotism and war efforts; and Chris Harper as Winifred’s board president husband, Ellsworth, who prefers to block progress but folds under pressure.

L-R, Gregory Lynch and Alana Wagner appear in Masquers Playhouse’s fun production of “Into the Breeches.” (Mark Decker via Bay City News)

The Masquers production is a bit quirky. Some of the props on the spare set are covered in material (looks like sheets) that’s removed only when the particular item is needed.

Director Marilyn Langbehn manages to neatly balance its comedy and heart.

Theatergoers appreciated the perfection of the recorded WWII music playing between scenes and the two acts. After the play, one patron said, “I came with trepidation because I’m not a fan of Shakespeare, but I shouldn’t have worried because the short excerpts didn’t get in the way of my enjoying all the comedy.”

And a woman in the first row said she enjoyed the show because the actors were “real people” who acted like real people.

“Into the Breeches” runs through Aug. 3 at the Masquers Playhouse, 105 Park Place, Point Richmond. Tickets are $15 $35 at www.masquers.org. 

Contact Sherwood “Woody” Weingarten, a member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle and author of four books, at voodee@sbcglobal.net, https://woodyweingarten.comand https://vitalitypress.com.

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Empathy coach Sofia (Sam Jackson, right) looks on as Jon (Joseph O’Malley, left), Jordan (Phil Wong, second from left) and Howie (Max Forman-Mullin) laugh in Do You Feel Anger? Photo by David Allen.

By WOODY WEINGARTEN

If you think the phrases “non-reciprocal blowjob,” “piss chart,” and “life is an oblong” are inherently funny and might be even funnier if they’re each repeated about 49 times in 90 minutes, go see Do You Feel Anger? at the Marin Theatre.

If you believe several adult characters acting like acting-out, clueless toddlers crammed into an office playpen of debt collectors might be funny in a slapschtick, farcical way, do go.

And if you consider mysterious or untethered themes, an O. Henry ending, a marvelous secondary set spotlighting three toilets, or good lighting and sound effects between scenes as items that might satisfy your cerebral or sexual needs, go.

A recent gray-haired audience liked the show’s office absurdities enough to applaud more than a little when it was over, enough to periodically chuckle quietly or even cackle or guffaw on rare occasion. On the other hand, a woman in the front row volunteered a three-word stinger: “That was painful!”

The plot? Sofia is an empathy coach newly hired to buoy the consciousness of three workers drawn by playwright Mara Nelson-Greenberg as somewhere between the classic personas of TV’s hilarious satire, The Office, and David Mamet’s biting dark satire, Glengarry Glen Ross.

The staff is overseen by a fourth cartoonish character, an office manager who doesn’t know what a woman’s period is and who joins the others in the belief that empathy is a bird.

Eva (intentionally played by linda maria giron with a grating ever-screechy voice and theater-shaking laugh) keeps getting mugged, or is delusional about it, or maybe both, and is obsessed with being a mermaid.

Jordan (left) and Howie goof around while Sofia watches. Photo by David Allen.

Howie (exquisitely portrayed by Max Forman-Mullin as a macho man-child whose anger is always on the brink and whose horniness is almost always on display) is physically and verbally over the top.

Jordan (a Phil Wong tour de farce distortion whose bug-eyes are aways in humorous motion) joins Howie as a resident misogynist.

Jon, the manager who’s interested only in having his mandated documentation signed by Sofia even if she’s unsuccessful, is skillfully delivered by lanky Joseph O’Malley with legs that jerk and slide like a ballet dancer on coke.

Jesse Caldwell, by the way, is excellent in his cameo monologue as Marcus, a geezer bomber-wannabe who’s seemingly lost the key to his dementia ward.

And Atosa Babaoff acquits herself well in dual roles, that of Janie, a woman who’s permanently ensconced in the bathroom, and Sofia’s long-suffering mom who’s featured in a parallel storyline that ultimately ties some stuff together.

It should be noted that there’s a major disconnect between the entire cast of crazies and Sam Jackson, who inhabits Sofia with a serious insatiable need to please. That gap might have been shortened.

Director Becca Wolff might also have sliced the text a bit or added an intermission; the workplace comedy feels a tad long in spite of being timed at an hour and a half.

All the acting’s worth seeing and there are, to be sure, a few wonderful lines. Such as “Everyone’s starting to say the clitoris is a hoax.”

Not incidentally, a “piss chart” is never explained in the show but one Google keystroke will instantly indicate that it’s used as an unclear metaphor based on its definition of a color map designed to illustrate hydration and urine levels. Who knew?

Do You Feel Anger? Will play at the Marin Theater, 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley, through June 29. Tickets: $47 to $85. Information: 341-388-5200 or info@marintheatre.org.

Sherwood “Woody” Weingarten, a longtime voting member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle and the author of four books, can be contacted by email at voodee@sbcglobal.net or on his websites, https://woodyweingarten.com and https://vitalitypress.com.

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Odd angles are a highlight of Mark Morris’ “Pepperland” at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley. Photo by Frank Wing/Cal Performances.

By WOODY WEINGARTEN

A black man scurries onstage and is introduced to the audience as white science giant Albert Einstein, only one of multiple racial- and gender-bending flashes and same-sex moves in a 12-part, 60-minute ballet, “Pepperland.”

The squatting dancer then mimics a classic photo of Einstein by sticking out his tongue and wiggling his brows.

A brunette Marilyn Monroe prances. Shirley Temple preens. So does Sonny Liston. They’re joined by other celebrities, all extracted from the cover montage of The Beatles’ groundbreaking concept album, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” to which the ballet pays homage.

The life-size cartoons specifically flesh out “Magna Carta,” one of five original pieces by arranger/composer Ethan Iverson squeezed between seven Fab Four tunes used in the Mark Morris creation at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley.

“Pepperland” features oblique postures. Photo by Frank Wing/Cal Performances. 

Morris’ out-of-the-box choreography — highlighted by dancers repeatedly standing and walking at virtually impossible angles, frequent three-person lifts and dancers melting/collapsing onto the floor, groupings of two and four, and frequent insertions of visual humor — guarantees to put a grin on your face and to keep it there.

The music itself is another story.

Fusion — which combined jazz harmonies and improv with rock, funk, and rhythm and blues — hadn’t yet become “the thing” in 1967. But that’s when The Beatles released their groundbreaking concept album, a whimsical stroke of imagination that superimposed psychedelia and pop onto rock rhythms.

Musical moments later, the term fusion became stretched beyond imagination following trumpeter Miles Davis’ experimentations with electric instruments and rock beats in his jazz.

Ultimately, to virtually everyone’s confusion, public relations flacks started defining fusion as the blending of any two or more genres of music, no matter how disparate, even when the notion of playing five tempos simultaneously was a part of the melodic landscape.

Iverson might not be fond of the label either, despite his arrangements rapidly slip-sliding like a roller coaster between slow, mournful blues to almost deafening jazz that features amazing runs on clarinet, sax, and drums.

“Pepperland,” which Morris first mounted in 2017 as a 50th anniversary tribute to the Sgt. Pepper album, was revived this weekend at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley under the auspices of Cal Performances. It not only merged elements of yesteryear seamlessly, it accomplished that task with light-hearted charm, dark aviator sunglasses, and Elizabeth Kurtzman’s brightly colored Mod-style costumes that couldn’t help but bring to mind 1967’s Summer of Love.

The often quaint and/or oblique dance moves wash, rinse, and repeat, then wash, rinse, and repeat again and again, their consistency playing off the low backdrop of irregular mylar-like pieces that reflect various colors.

Those who came to see unadulterated Beatles would have been disappointed. Iverson’s score, played live by seven musicians (including him on piano), emphasizes vocals by Clinton Curtis and an electric instrument, the theremin, which requires no human touch (though Rob Schwimmer’s body parts hover over it to produce a cornucopia of sound).

Theremin riffs varied, from lovely high-pitched wailings that might potentially evoke tears to screechy chalk-on-blackboard sounds that could trouble eardrums.

Innovative were moments like Iverson’s conversion in “A Day in the Life” of individual vowels into two-note grunting patterns. Amusing, too, was a double-take-inducing move in which one dancer is hidden behind another to create a laughable form.

Mark Morris (left) and Ethan Iverson collaborate on a tribute to The Beatles. Photo by Trevor Izzo/Cal Performances.

Morris seemed genuinely overjoyed Opening Night as he acknowledged with a smile and deep bow that a healthy chunk of the audience was giving his ballet a standing ovation.

“Pepperland” starts with company members in a tight circle smoothly dancing their way into a larger design. The ballet ends similarly, just in reverse. In between are tons of smooth transitions from one grouping to another. And yes, Morris’ flamboyant, carefree, entertaining approach to modern dance does delete much of the edginess and tension in the original Beatles musicology.

What’s left, sometimes, are mugging dancers and an over-all cutesiness with which all you can do is lean back and enjoy.

The Mark Morris Dance Group has one more show at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley, this weekend — at 3 p.m. today. Info: 510-642-9988 or https://calperformances.org. Upcoming Cal Performances include the June 21 roots music of Rhiannon Giddens and The Old-Time Revue.

Sherwood “Woody” Weingarten, a longtime member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle and the author of four books, can be contacted by email at voodee@sbcglobal.net or on his websites, https://woodyweingarten.com and https://vitalitypress.com.

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In living tableau of painting by Artemisia Gentileschi (Emily Anderson, right) in Marin Theatre’s It’s True, It’s True, It’s True, the artist and Judith (Alicia M. P. Nelson. left) behead Holofernes (Maggie Mason). All photos by David Allen.[yasr_overall_rating]

By WOODY WEINGARTEN

Rape.

That should be as offensive as any other four-letter word in the English language today, despite many of our society’s males consistently downplaying it.

Still, it was a tad worse 400 years ago.

At least that’s what’s displayed in It’s True, It’s True, It’s True, a dramatic polemic of sorts that runs at the Marin Theatre through May 4.

The play does focus on a positive theme — 15-year-old Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi using her paints and canvas to display her anger and pain and to get a taste of revenge for being sexually assaulted.

It’s a true tale.

Playwrights Ellice Stevens and Billy Barrett — and especially director Rebecca Wear — have mainly through exaggeration inserted just enough humor to keep the women in the audience in their seats instead of jumping up and screaming demands of female empowerment.

Elders (Keiko Shimosato Carreiro, left) and Maggie Mason) burst onto the scene. Behind them is a sign with an ironic motto in Latin that translates to “All are equal in the eyes of the law.”

Rock music loud enough to obscure virtually all lyrics pops up at various times, played and sung at top decibels by the all-female Actors Equity cast of four. That, along with costumes by Pamela Rodriguez Montero that merge 1612 courtroom attire and 2025 black leather-and-glitz punk band garb, makes some moments jagged because the two timeframes don’t fit together seamlessly.

About a third of the script — a reenactment of a real-life he-said, she-said courtroom drama — stems from verbatim records, translated into modern English that might be spewed by street people in Berkeley, that had been preserved (though the final pages were lost).

Emily Anderson plays Artemisia Gentileschi, the victim, one moment her face flashing rage at being raped, the next flaunting a satirical exuberance from a male perspective. Clearly, she can be demure or filled with piss and vinegar.

Anderson is exceptionally potent when she becomes part of living tableaus depicting two of the Baroque artist’s paintings (“Judith Slaying Holofernes” and “Susanna and the Elders”). In those moments, she’s aided significantly by the astonishing lighting of Mikiko Uesugi and resounding sound effects by Matt Stines.

Anderson is superb, too, in a scene where she, totally frustrated, poignantly repeats the phrase “It’s true,” dozens of times.

Maggie Mason, in the gender-bending role of Renaissance Italian painter Agostino Tassi, is appropriately lecherous, cocky, and snarky — and is as apt to slyly insert into his testimony his credentials as staff artist for the Pope as he is to deny any culpability as a rapist.

The judge (Alicia M. P. Nelson, rear) listens to testimony of Tuzia, Artemisia’s confidante (Keiko Shimosato Carreiro).

As the black-robed judge, another male part, Alicia M.P. Nelson is pointedly personality-less, a sharp contrast to when she shows her acting range in several minor roles and her energy as the band’s lead singer.

The hour and a quarter show dissolves the century gap to reveal a plotline reflecting how gender equality is absent, how biased judges can allow victims to become de facto defendants, and how repeated lies can erase truth. Do those concepts replicate today’s headlines? Yes.

The performance also reveals not only how enemies are enemies but how so-called friends may not be trustworthy either. Keko Shimosato Carreiro portrays Donna Tuzia, supposed confidante to Artemisia, who wavers on the stand trying to gain favor with both sides. She flails her arms a lot.

It’s True, It’s True, It’s True is a flawed but fascinating experimental effort filled with content that some folks may dislike: the applying of thumb screws to Artemisia;; the grisly display of beheading and sex scenes (oral, anal, and self); the close-up look at naked breasts.

But those eager for something different, those willing to check out this story about the first woman to enter the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence in spite of having been slut-shamed and having had to battle gender inequality again and again, will appreciate having their brain massaged.

Even if the actors occasionally drop lines, and the set is practically non-existent.

Think rape. Think the #MeToo movement. Think a world of alternative facts. Think of yourself or your sister or your daughter. Think. Then shudder.

It’s True, It’s True, It’s True runs in the 99-seat Lieberman Theater in the Marin Theater, 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley, through May 4. Tickets: $10 to $81 (plus $6 handling fee per total order). Info: https://www.marintheatre.org or 415-388-5208.

Sherwood “Woody” Weingarten, a longtime member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle and the author of four books, can be contacted by email at voodee@sbcglobal.net or on his websites, https://woodyweingarten.com and https://vitalitypress.com.

Woody Weingarten

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