Woody Weingarten

Woody’s [rating: 4]

“Pippin,” fittingly touted as “Broadway’s high-flying musical,” is a seamless balance of acrobatic circus acts and theatrical extravaganza.

It blends impeccable singing and high-kick dancing with plentiful comedic interludes.

It spotlights droll magical illusions — and a cute dog trick guaranteed to keep your memory bank warm.

If only the show had a linear, cohesive storyline.

Still, the 2 hour, 20 minute fantasy-fairy tale at the SHN Golden Gate Theatre in San Francisco roughly based on historical realities won’t disappoint.

“Pippin 2.0,” my artificial designation because it’s so different from the 1972 original, is precisely what I expected from a touring company of the 2013 Tony winner for best musical revival:

Inventive. Glamorous. Spectacular.

What I couldn’t foresee, however, were the perfectly timed sound effects by percussionist Ken Bergman, who used a tiny 3×5 screen to monitor the stage action so he could sync everything without missing a proverbial beat.

He counted out for me during intermission the 31 instruments he utilized (including a small washboard).

“This is difficult,” he said. “Usually there’s a point where you can relax, but in this show, there’s always something coming up.”

True.

Bergman’s equipment is so expansive he requires a space of his own in the orchestra pit.

The other dozen-plus musicians (mostly locals) need something else: a net — in case plummeting detritus, runaway hoops, oversized balls or errant gymnasts fall onto them.

The curtain for “Pippin” gives the impression of a circus tent. When it first parts, an interlocutor/narrator (Sasha Allen, filling a role similar to Joel Gray’s emcee in “Cabaret”) quickly creates the illusion of a show within a show.

Her words, and a portion of others (including those of the mega-vibrant chorus), sometimes can’t be easily discerned. But that doesn’t matter.

The overall effect is so dazzling it etches a perma-smile on my face.

The plot’s basics?

A king — Charlemagne (played vigorously by John Rubinstein, who’d starred as the title character in the original) — wants his soldiers to unite Europe, at any cost.

His son, Prince Pippin (a charismatic Matthew James Thomas, who showed off his plentiful vocal, dance and gymnastic talents in the same role for the revival), is more concerned with uniting the wobbly parts of his personality.

Although he claims to seek the meaning of life, he’s really searching for the meaning of his life. He repeatedly gripes about being “empty and vacant” — even after a wild intro to sexuality.

Sabrina Harper (likewise from the revival cast) also turns in a top-notch performance, as Fastrada, Pippin’s manipulative stepmom.

But the showstopper is the sole property of Lucie Arnaz,.

The svelte 63-year-old daughter of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz plays a gyrating granny, Berthe, with enough raw energy to light half the spotlights by her oomph quotient alone.

The audience applauded and cheered. Loudly.

I heartily approved of the outburst.

I also appreciated the fact that director Diane Paulus and circus creator Gypsy Snider, who began her career in San Francisco as a child of the Pickle Family Circus, insisted the acrobats/tumblers/trapeze artists learn dancing and the dancers learn gymnastics.

Paulus, who also was brilliant at the helm of “The Gershwin’s Porgy & Bess” and “Hair,” won a Tony for the revival.

Snider, who’d led her Montreal-based 7 Fingers circus company (officially known as Les 7 doigts de la main) to global success, plucked several of her top performers from it for the “Pippin” revival.

So I wasn’t surprised to find I liked this production more than 1972’s — despite Bob Fosse’s direction and choreography.

This version features dances cobbled by Chet Walker, a Fosse protégé who follows his mentor’s style but adds novel turns of his own. His sexually oriented dance, highlighting a simulated ménage a trois, may not ignite the audience’s fire, but almost everything else he conceived does.

What didn’t work for me?

Scenes like one in which dancers do infantile comedic turns as pigs and chickens. Or an über-melodramatic sequence in which the narrator demands the set be shut down.

Moreover, tunes by Stephen Schwartz, famed for “Wicked” and other Big Apple triumphs, failed to make me leave the theater singing or humming..

Or even thinking about them.

Another minor fault is that the second act, which slows considerably, becomes disjointed as it moves toward a finale that tries to determine if Pippin will settle for something other than his dream of “magic shows and miracles.”

But even with these minor fault-lines, the musical is unique.

And fun.

“Pippin” runs at the SHN Golden Gate Theatre, 1 Taylor St. (at Market), San Francisco, through Oct. 19. Night performances Tuesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m.; matinees Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $45 to $210 (subject to change). Information: (888) 746-1799 or shnsf.com.

Woody’s [rating:2]

You can be sure when a critic emphasizes costumes and set early in a review, giant imperfections stifle the production.

That being said, let me state unequivocally that costumes designed by Michael A. Berg in “The Fox on the Fairway,” the Ross Valley Players’ latest production, are first rate.

They instantly differentiate the characters.

And the 19th-hole set — including frequently swinging doors that become a focal point of the farce — accomplishes precisely what designer Ken Rowland intends.

Acting by each member of the six-person cast is admirable as well.

And director Julianna Rees keeps the pace so frenetic that the 100-minute show whizzes by.

The night I went, the RVP audience showed appreciation with sporadic laughter and vigorous applause at the end.

Yet the script of “Fox” is riddled with holes (and I’m not talking about the cups golf balls fall into) and predicable bits of business.

With cliché heaped on cliché.

Credulity in farces is often strained, but here it’s stretched as thin as a piece of limp Swiss cheese left too long in the sun.

Lightweight playwright Ken Ludwig, whom many once believed would be an appropriate successor to Neil Simon as the theatrical world’s comedy king, has become a master of playing it safe.

Perhaps that’s why his work has been seen in 30 countries in more than 20 languages, often in community theaters similar to that of the RVP.

Yes, his original “Lend Me a Tenor” and his adaptation of “Twentieth Century” did provide amusement (both were staged by the RVP). And  “Leading Ladies” (the Novato Theatre just did it) was enjoyable to watch.

But “The Fox on the Fairway” relies on old saws such as endless malapropisms and precious sexual innuendos, a lost engagement ring, the threatened destruction of a valuable vase, continued links between ex-spouses, a melodramatic revelation about parentage, and, of course, the making of a 90-foot putt.

All that and I’m still not sure who or what the fox is.

I do know, however, that the convoluted plot twists, as most farces are wont to do, come fast and furiously.

The president of the Quail Valley Country Club, Henry Bingham (played by Louis Schilling with suitable bluster) learns the golfer he thought could deliver a grudge match victory over Dickie Bell (Javier Alarcon), who heads the rival Crouching Squirrel facility and wears one ugly sweater after another, has switched loyalties.

Bingham, who’s made a six-figure bet he can’t afford, recruits Justin (an appropriately wide-eyed and awkward Derek Jepsen), a newly hired assistant, and engineers his club membership.

The hotshot, unfortunately, breaks his arm after building up a nine-stroke lead, so…

And while a non-logical frenzy swirls about everyone, Jepsen as a befuddled almost-hero, Eileen Fisher as a lust-laden Pamela and Sumi Narendran as a testosterone-oozing Muriel turn in exceptional performances.

“Fox,” first staged in 2010, was written in reverence to the English farces that began in the 1880s and flourished in the ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s.

Maybe that’s why it sometimes feels as if its use-before date has passed.

“The Fox on the Fairway“ will run at The Barn, Marin Art & Garden Center, 30 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Ross, through Oct. 12. Night performances, Thursdays at 7:30, Fridays and Saturdays at 8; matinees, Sundays at 2. Tickets: $14-$29. Information: www.rossvalleyplayers.comor (415) 456-9555.

 Woody’s [rating:3.5]

“Fool Moon,” a Tony Award-winning show with Bill Irwin and David Shiner clowning up a comedic storm, made me blissfully happy.

So I impatiently waited for an encore  — for 16 years.

Finally, the baggy-pants pair is back, in a mostly non-verbal collaboration at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, “Old Hats.”

Though Irwin and Shiner are no longer chronologically young (they might be called middle-aged if they plan to live to 120), their bodies seem as rubbery, as lissome and acrobatic as ever.

And their inventiveness is nearly as agile.

They easily, and almost continuously, induce laughter with old-style chapeaus and new-style bits.

With a slew of newfangled technology tossed in.

This production, in conjunction with New York’s Signature Theatre, is quite different from their first go-‘round: Original musical interludes (heavy on country rock) by singer-songwriter-pianist Shaina Taub separate, and then overlap with, the twosome’s individual and dual segments.

Irwin and Shiner are, in effect, theatrical Renaissance Men.

They create hilarious comedy and prickly poignancy, they invent silent but sympathetic characters, they dance and play instruments and sing, they improvise and they inveigle audience members to play along fully with slapstick shtick.

I saw Pickle Family Circus co-founder Irwin not that long ago at the San Francisco Opera House, where he stole the show in a presentation of “Showboat.” I’d also thoroughly enjoyed his work in A.C.T.’s “Endgame” in 2012.

As for Shiner, a grad of Cirque du Soleil, he also starred as The Cat in the Hat in Broadway’s “Seussical: The Musical.”

Both are masters at the characters they assume — Irwin the good-natured schlub, Shiner the darker, more aggressive onstage persona.

Their 105-minute show is somewhat uneven, but its high points are extraordinary.

• Such as “Mr. Business,” spotlighting Irwin’s exquisitely timed playfulness with his own images on a tablet (my writing about it can’t compare to my joy watching it).

• Such as Shiner’s goading and mimicking four audience members in an extended bit about filming a mute old-fashioned Western, the side-splittingly funny “Cowboy Cinema.”

• Such as the opening number, “Old Hats,” which features projections that envelop the two spotlight-craving clowns as they flee an explosion in space.

• Such as “The Encounter,” with two guys waiting for a train initially badgering each other in highly amusing ways, then finding commonality via the sharing of pills.

• Such as an excursion into the sublime, similar to a lightning-fast riff by the late Robin Williams, when they break their silence barrier and convulsively swap lines from “Who’s on First” and “Over the Rainbow,” with a couple of quotes from Shakespeare added to the mix.

Alas, not everything is a 10.

Shiner’s “Hobo Puppet Waltz,” a solo set piece that finds a tramp getting more and more depressed as he jerks a predicable series of broken items from a trash bin can’t be saved by his imaginative creation of a woman companion from a white fabric.

And “The Debate,” a sketch about a political face-off, is filled with all-too-familiar lowbrow humor and standard pot shots.

But, overall, director Tina Landau ensured that “Old Hats” was an evening’s entertainment that kept me smiling.

And she proved that old clowns never die — they just slip into baggier pants.

“Old Hats” plays at the American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary St., San Francisco, through Oct. 12. Performances Wednesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Tuesdays, 7 or 8 p.m.; matinees, Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $20 to $120. Information: (415) 749-2228 or www.act-sf.org.

 

 Woody’s [rating:4.5]

Expect the unexpected.

And Meow Meow, leggy brunette bombshell and mock diva, will energetically provide it at the Berkeley Rep.

She’s fabulous — in all meanings of the word: mega-excellent; larger than life-sized; and a spectacular invention, in the fabled sense.

She’s half wildcat, half wild card.

With ersatz desperation, the combo singer-comedian-actress-dancer weaves her innate talents and cleverness into a triumphant 90-minute patchwork-quilt, musical-spoof that’s headed for Broadway.

She also parades as a wannabe revolutionary and philosopher (“Is there a God?”).

But her main shtick is to pull male theatergoers onstage and womanhandle them during “An Audience with Meow Meow,” a title with multiple interpretations.

Not for a second did I envy folks dragged from the front rows to paw her legs, grope her torso and act as comedic chairs and foils.

But those repeated gambits, albeit somewhat cheesy, are extremely funny.

Meow Meow — whose given name is the slightly less glamorous Melissa Madden Gray — along the way dices and slices diva and cabaret mythology, turning theatrical clichés sideways and upside down.

She revels in taking risks.

She satirizes superstars who thrive on flowers tossed at them, who physically toss themselves onto their fans, who praise to the rafters whatever venue they’re in.

With hints of, and homages to, Marlene Dietrich, Edith Piaf and Lady Gaga.

And I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn she’d secretly viewed re-runs of Carol Burnett and Lucille Ball’s televised physical antics.

Or been addicted to the black-and-white slapstick of Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton.

Meow Meow, who as a small girl wanted to be a ballerina but ended up getting a law degree instead, isn’t above making cabaret standards her own.

She particularly excels with Jacques Brel melodies and Harry Warren’s “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.”

But the show-stopper becomes an antique Bobby Darin novelty hit, “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini,” with which she lampoons genre after genre after genre.

Her being exceptionally limber, agile and gymnastic also allows a self-serving self-reflection: “Is art a woman killing herself?”

Meow Meow says she especially loves entertaining audiences who’ve grown tired of green witches, jukebox musicals and singing Mormons.

I’d say the entire opening night crowd — including me — fully appreciated her creative efforts in that regard.

A multi-lingual international star (she’s been a headliner in Berlin, Sydney and Shanghai), she was ably supported by two boy-toy dancers, a four-piece band and a white-mouse puppet.

And competently directed by Kneehigh Theatre’s Emma Rice, previously represented winningly at the Rep by “The Wild Bride” and “Tristan & Yseult.”

Meow Meow, whose fame skyrocketed while performing in Michel Legrand’s “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” in London in 2011, slyly tries to be mysterious and cloak her origins, purposefully referring both to Moscow and Berlin.

But she’s really an Aussie.

I couldn’t determine, however, if she adopted her stage name before or after meow meow, the street drug, gained popularity. Mephedrone, that potent designer amphetamine, has become a British rave favorite because it produces effects parallel to cocaine and ecstasy.

Meow Meow, the performer who’s also credited with writing her show, supplies a public wave of ecstasy as an alternative.

Consequently, I might hate myself in the morning for using what may be a cat-astrophic ending, but I really can’t stop myself (she instantly turned me into a fan, you see):

Meow Meow’s act may not reach purr-fection, but it does come as close as a whisker.

“An Audience with Meow Meow” plays at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre‘s Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St., Berkeley, through Oct. 19. Night performances Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Sundays, 7 p.m.; matinees, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $14.50 to $89, subject to change, (510) 647-2949 or www.berkeleyrep.org.

 

Fifty-six years ago I asked my first man-in-the-street question for a weekly newspaper.

I don’t recollect what it was, but it was shallow.

After all, I was a wet-behind-the-ears 21-year-old know-it-all who knew next to nothing. So it was appropriate that neither the query nor answers published in the Bronx Press-Review stirred any emotions.

The feature drew an unadulterated response:

Diddly-squat. Bupkis. Zilch.

Several weeks ago, hoping I’ve learned a speck or two in the interim, I decided to repeat the exercise. I expected, naturally, that my much deeper person-in-the-street probing would elicit vastly more profound responses from strolling passersby.

I was right.

Back in the day, I was forced to discard close to two-thirds of the replies I’d extracted.

They were unfathomable. Vacuous.

Or gibberish.

This time around, on picturesque San Anselmo Avenue rather than the hustle-bustle of a New York City street, I needed to trash only a few reactions (and then because they mirrored others).

My question prompted self-awareness, sensitivity and vulnerability: “Pretend I’m handing you a magic card. With it you get to do over any one thing in your life — not re-live, but do differently. What would your revision be?”

Most folks came up with their answers speedily.

But one guy went so far inside himself for such an elongated time I feared I’d have to summon either a shrink or a crew of paramedics.

Was there one predominant response?

Nope.

But the most prevalent had to do with education and academics.

The thought-provoking winner from that grouping, in my estimation, was what San Anselmo’s Katherine Willman, who categorized herself as “middle-aged,” conjured up.

Without hesitation, she said he’d have taken her “son out of public school and put him into a private school — because private schools promote individuality and independent thinking better.”

Spencer Hinsdale, 47, another San Anselmo resident, would have “chosen to study Spanish because I spent more years studying French than the number of French speakers I’ve met in this country. Meanwhile, everyone’s speaking Spanish.”

His choice made me ponder my own.

In retrospect, Latin and German didn’t quite turn out to be as valuable on a daily basis as I’d thought they might.

Erika Mott, 15, of Kentfield, wished she’d “have studied harder for my finals freshman year because it dropped down my Grade Point Average.”

Ronald Brozzo, 71, also of San Anselmo, said he’d “have finished college instead of going for only a year and a half. It would have helped me a lot later in life.”

And Josette Dvorak, a 48-year-old Mill Valley woman, mused that she’d “have spent a college semester abroad, at Oxford, so I could have experienced life in England.”

Others who were questioned provided a wide gamut:

• Amy Castagna, 58, Novato: “I would have gone home to Pennsylvania for my grandmother’s funeral. It’s my one big regrets in my life.”

• Alex Swanson, 32, Larkspur: “I’d have started investing in index funds, purchased my first rental property earlier, and learned to live on 50 percent of my income — so I could have been financially independent.”

• Yuko Fukami, 54, Berkeley: “I wouldn’t have become an architect but would have done something else — maybe become an artist.”

• Carlos Mock, 43, San Rafael: “I would have traveled more, all around the world, instead of being so responsible.”

• Mona Philpott, 63, San Anselmo: “I’d have taken my music lessons more seriously. My parents wanted me to, but I fought the practice.”

• Lynne Ashdown, 75, Novato: “I would have had one more child. I have two sons and I’d have liked to have a daughter.”

Several respondents declared they’d change nothing — folks like 61-year-old Cindy King of Mill Valley, visiting 57-year-old Yatra Sherwood from the United Kingdom and 35-year-old Mila Kronick of San Anselmo, who asserted “I’ve liked everything I’ve done.”

But my favorite answer came from Heather Richer, a 38-year-old San Anselmo resident — because of its levity. “I wish I’d have brought my Bed Bath & Beyond coupon with me to the store.”

When I posed the Big Question to myself, I thought that instead of becoming an editor and writer, I might have tried life as a cartoonist or actor.

The downside, of course, would be that this column, The Roving I, wouldn’t exist.

Hmmm…

Woody’s [rating:5]

When I watched him transform into George Gershwin in a one-man Berkeley Rep show in June 2013, I’d never heard of Hershey Felder.

Still, I reveled in his virtuosity as a pianist, actor and writer.

And wanted more.

When last fall I witnessed his puissant direction of Mona Golabek as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor in “The Pianist of Willesden Lane,” I basked in another of his talents.

I craved more.

And when I saw him morph into conductor-composer Leonard Bernstein in June of this year’s “Maestro” musical bio, I couldn’t wait for what came next.

Next is now.

“Monsieur Chopin,” also a solo show, is a bio and concert predictably more romantic than the others — musically, at least.

Some of Fryderyk Chopin’s melodies will be as instantly recognizable by classical music buffs as quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s tattoos would be to 49er fans.

But director Joel Zwick, who guided the Gershwin and Bernstein shows as well as the film “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” proficiently has the keyboardist-playwright intersperse less familiar strains.

“Hershey Felder as Monsieur Chopin,” which runs at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre through Aug. 10, transports audiences to the 1848 Paris salon of the “Polish poet of the piano.”

There he hunkers down with an enigmatic, volatile author, George Sand, and entertains painter Eugene Delacroix, a sometimes bff.

And there, I, and an audience that leapt to its collective feet at the two-hour opening night’s conclusion, could appreciate Felder’s piano dexterity and a characterization that overcomes a heavy accent and feels authentic.

His Steinway tones range from ultra-soft to thunderous.

He nimbly plays all or parts of more than a dozen pieces, including three Polonaises (emphasizing their “rise to glory”), a handful of preludes and nocturnes, “Mazurka in A-Flat Major, Opus 50 No. 2,” “Marche Funébre, Opus 35” and “Romanza, E-Minor Concerto.”

Credit goes to lighting designer Richard Norwood for creating instant mood changes, and scenic designer for fashioning a period setting with just an upholstered chair, end tables, mirror and trinket-laden mantle.

Norwood’s pièce de résistance, however, is a gilded frame that borders the stage and heightens what occurs within: historic legitimacy, histrionic biography.

Felder injects heaps of humor, from the play’s get-go to the end of a 30-minute coda with the house lights on (in which he quick-wittedly answers questions from the crowd in character, cleverly improvising occasional anachronistic jests about cell phones and other today-technology).

He’s especially laugh-inducing when Chopin, a child prodigy and adult genius who died prematurely at age 39, sneers at Franz Liszt’s piano playing and works (“scales and arpeggios and so much noise”).

But pathos is even more prevalent.

From the performer’s description of the death of Emilia, Chopin’s sister, to the composer’s frequent sidekick, melancholia (in modern terms, depression).

And from his obsessive hand-washing to his semi-romantic proclivities (focusing on an eight-year relationship with the pseudonymous Sand, a woman he first encounters dressed in man’s clothing and smoking a cigar).

The playwright’s major conceit is to address the audience as if it were a Chopin class, a theatrical device that’s slightly awkward.

But some of his teaching moments are pithy and poetic:

“You must dust the keys with your fingers as if you were dusting them with your breath.”

“Forget your lunatic family and play as if you are playing for God.”

Felder, who’s been a scholar-in-residence at Harvard’s department of music and is married to Kim Campbell, former Canadian prime minister, apparently cannibalized “Monsieur Chopin” from his own, original three-performer construct, “Romantique,” first performed 11 years ago and skewered by critics.

He obviously rewrote, fixed and honed it.

And salvaged it.

So much so that, nine years after its debut, he’s performed “Chopin” more than 800 times to more than 250,000 theatergoers.

So much so that now it’s become a masterwork, a near-perfect integration of recital and biography.

“Hershey Felder as Monsieur Chopin” plays at the Berkeley Rep’s Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley, through Aug. 10 and then returns for encore performances Sept. 16-21. Night shows, 8 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays through Saturdays, 7 p.m. Wednesdays and Sundays; matinees, 2 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays. Tickets: $14.50 to $87, subject to change, (510) 647-2949 or www.berkeleyrep.org.

You can contact Woody Weingarten at voodee@sbcglobal.net.

Woody’s [rating: 2.5]

The more things change, the more they stay the same — except they droop.

That’s the greeting card text I wrote 30 years ago.

My gag line again came to mind as I watched the Ross Valley Players’ new production of Wendy Wasserstein’s “Old Money.”

The play’s all about social climbing, generational gaps, moolah, art and real estate — with dual roles for each of the eight actors. But it feels stodgy and stilted despite the playwright’s renowned skill with barbed dialogue.

Her construct may be too clever, her play too New York.

Wasserstein invites us into a lavish mansion on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

There we witness two dinner parties.

Jeffrey Bernstein, an arbitrage kingpin played as a man of equanimity by Geoffrey Colton, hosts the first — at the beginning of the 21st century.

The second, nearly 100 years earlier, spotlights Johnny DeBernard as a boisterous robber baron, Tobias Pfeiffer.

Colton doubles as even-tempered retail tycoon Arnold Strauss, and DeBernard also personifies Sid Nercessian, a Tinseltown director who repugnantly spews an f-bomb every fourth word.

All the actors do well, no mean feat considering they’re burdened with a plot unnecessarily complicated and convoluted.

Director Kim Bromley admittedly struggled with the plotline complexities and mélange of Wasserstein characters (“I had to read it three times to grasp the scope of it,” she writes in the program).

She suggested opening night reviewers feel what the characters feel.

I couldn’t.

Perhaps because Wasserstein — known for her intelligent, independent but self-doubting female characters trapped by male power — thwarted me by pricking too many heavy subjects.

Relentlessly, she tackles youthful rebellion and self-destruction, aging and death, legacy and immortality, Jewishness and assimilation, platonic relationships and sexuality, snobbery and acceptance.

Which almost bury all her valiant attempts at humor.

The script of the two-hour, two-act comedy of manners, which premiered off-Broadway in 2001, immediately tells theatergoers what they’re watching — an examination of how new money becomes old money (and what impact that evolution has on its wealthy stakeholders).

The problem is that the theme gets underscored over and over.

Mind-numbingly.

A single summation, such as the scene in which Bernstein and Pfeiffer engage in a verbal mine’s-bigger-than-yours debate about influence, would have sufficed.

Striking, however, are spot-on costumes by Michael A. Berg that range from elegant to flamboyant and instantly allow audiences to know which characterization an actor in inhabiting, and a ideal set by Michael Walraven, replete with large paintings and a massive always-needing-polish wooden railing.

Wasserstein, who won a Pulitzer and a best play Tony in 1989 for “The Heidi Chronicles,” isn’t above contrasting schmaltziness and whimsy. Check out, for instance, her having one actor stylishly dance the Gavotte but later prance in a lobster costume.

The playwright’s signature one-liners are numerous:

• “If the rich aren’t happy, who the hell will be?”

• “I like the opera. Big girls with elephants. Isn’t that enough?”

• “I’m having trouble ignoring you tonight.”

Top-notch performances are turned in by Gillian Eichenberger as both silver-voiced servant and self-destructive daughter; Robyn Wiley, as outdated as the figure sculpted by her character, Auntie Mame-ish Saulina Webb; Karen Leland as strident publicist Flinty McGee; and Jesse Lumb as sons of both Bernstein and Pfeiffer (and part-time narrator).

Add to the mix Wood Lockhart, who may hold the record for most RVP performances and is wistful as Tobias Vivian Pfeiffer III, and Trungta Kositchaimmongkol, snarky as underwear designer Penny Nercessian.

“Old Money” has many amusing and edifying moments yet, in the final analysis, couldn’t excite me.

And it somehow felt both long and long in the tooth (though not quite as antiquated as Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s “The Rivals,” the 1777 play it references) — despite anachronistic references to Jennifer Lawrence and Silicon Valley.

If asked to stick my two cents in, I’d have to say earlier works by Wasserstein — who died of lymphoma at age 55 in 2005 — were much easier to bank on for laughs or insights.

The RVP recently produced some incredibly good entertainments.

This wasn’t their best choice.

“Old Money” will run at The Barn, Marin Art & Garden Center, 30 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Ross, through Aug. 17. Night performances, Thursdays at 7:30, Fridays and Saturdays at 8; matinees, Sundays at 2. Tickets: $13-$26. Information: www.rossvalleyplayers.com or (415) 456-9555.

You can contact Woody Weingarten at voodee@sbcglobal.net.

 

Patrice Hickox would prefer I think of her as ordinary.

She isn’t.

The Fairfax resident’s a real-life Energizer Bunny.

Without floppy ears.

A perpetual motion machine with platinum-hued hair and hands that intermittently sketch pictures in thin air. A do-gooder everlastingly battling for one cause or another.

Since I’ve tilted at a few windmills myself, I like that.

Still, no matter how much she achieves, she’s never able to rest on her laurels.

 

She is resting one recent Saturday, however, on a memorial bench at the edge of Bolinas Park in Fairfax she fought hard to get installed at the end of May.

Not quite relaxed.

Trying to figure out how she best can help Marin’s foster children keeps her mind flashing like a July 4th sparkler.

She can’t know a Marin County Civil Grand Jury will shortly issue a report saying more funds must to be spent on the issue, more communication must occur between foster parents and social workers, and more access to therapy must be provided those neglected kids.

What to do? What to do?

She and I are together, me armed with interview pad and pen, she momentarily staring off into the distance at a bald hill she knows must be preserved.

Of course.

One cause at a time isn’t her style.

She’s also thinking about finding a way to replace “the dingy, worn-out, style-less sign announcing the Town of San Anselmo.”

And improving local median strips.

How?

“Re-plant, re-think, re-design,” she tells me.

The artsy wood bench we’re on is dedicated to the memory of her friend, Nancy Helmers, an environmental activist who died last year at age 82.

Patrice tactfully declines to reveal the political obstacles — “the kerfluffle, the brouhaha” — she had to vault to make it happen.

She’s just glad it’s a done deal.

Nancy had served on the county’s Open Space Committee for 10 years, as well as many other boards, and had been as non-stop energetic as Patrice.

She also was an unrelenting firebrand when it came to pushing petitions. “No one could collect a signature like Nancy,” Patrice tells me. “No one would say ‘No’ to her.

The two women met in 1988 when Nancy was collecting names in favor of creating a multi-purpose park on the 28 acres of the Marin Town and Country Club, which was being eyed by a developer.

The pair stopped the development from happening.

But they couldn’t come up with an effective plan to raise enough money to build their dream park.

“Instead, we became friends,” Patrice remembers. “We were both birders and environmentalists. We hiked, and we eventually collected thousands of signatures for a lot of things that failed.”

There were, however, sporadic triumphs.

Such as Lansdale Park in San Anselmo, a pocket-sized space with a children’s playground — or, as the town’s website says, “just what the neighborhood needed! Parents can enjoy a coffee-to-go from the nearby café while watching their children play outdoors.”

Patrice recalls “they were going to put condos there, but we got a petition to stop it. We got two grants from the Buck Fund, and got students from the White Hall Middle School in Fairfax to help. It was great.”

Her awareness began shortly after reading Rachel Carson’s best-selling “Silent Spring,” which detailed the detrimental use of pesticides.

“I was off and running after that,” she says. “I stopped eating meat and started paying attention. I was 14.”

As a Manhattan teenager, she’d attended be-in’s in Central Park, marched in Washington against the Vietnam War, and rallied for civil rights.

“I guess I’ve been a die-hard liberal ever since I figured out what that was,” she says.

Sometimes Patrice, who’s lived in Fairfax since 1995 with Charlie, her musician husband of 41 years, volunteers longer than she’d intended.

She helped out at WildCare for more than 10 years, for instance, “raising hundreds of baby things — from snakes to foxes to raccoons and squirrels.”

If she could accomplish anything in the world, what would it be, I ask. She replies without hesitation: “Get rid of Putin and Assad.”

Then she says, “I think I’d like to be empress of Oakland and just fix that city.”

And then, after a slight pause, she adds seriously, “Anything that I’d be effective at — so I wouldn’t have to beat my head against the wall again.”

I smile.

Since I’ve tilted at a few windmills myself, I understand completely.

You can contact Woody Weingarten at voodee@sbcglobal.net

 

No, of course I don’t eavesdrop on purpose.

But I do unintentionally pick up conversational crumbs during my dog-walking stints or other Ross Valley meanderings.

I’ve learned the vicinity is a veritable hotbed of amusing or thought provoking verbal tidbits. Such as the following, extracted from the pile of Post-it collectibles on my desk:

A pair of girl bicyclists rests, cross-legged, on a downtown San Anselmo sidewalk. Says one, “When I first met my boyfriend, he was feral.”

Chatting outside a Sleepy Hollow residence, a redheaded midlifer tells a male companion, “I thought Hostess was defunct, but I was wrong. Twinkies and Ho-Ho’s have new outlets. Which confirms what I’ve always believed — they have a shelf-life that ensures they, along with the cockroaches, will inherit the Earth.”

“When I see how many of my gismos, thingamajigs and appliances are breaking down, some after only 30 or 40 days,” laments a white-haired geezer to a checker in Fairfax’s Good Earth Natural Foods, “I hate to think about what’s going on in my body after 92 years.”

At the dog park behind Safeway in Red Hill, a grinning twentysomething guy rhetorically asks a chum, “Did you hear that canines here communicate via pee-mail?”

Husband in tattered shorts to overly loud wife in basic black outside Ross Post Office: “I heard what you meant.”

A blue-hair leaning on a cane at the Rino gas station in Fairfax says to a driver, “I don’t know about you but I can never rest in a restroom.”

Angry young woman to red-faced young man in Bolinas Park in Fairfax: “I am not a stand-in in your movie.”

As they both caress an assortment of nuts and bolts at Fairfax Lumber & Hardware, a young man with a nose-ring tells his girlfriend, who has both eyebrows pierced, “He got his B.S. degree in B.S.”

Succinctly, on the lawn of Town Hall in San Anselmo, a female teenager tells a gal pal, “I don’t do boredom.”

A forty-ish guy on the Kentfield campus of the College of Marin tells a younger classmate, “When anyone calls a celebrity ‘a legend,’ that means the person being referred to is old, old, old — or dead.”

At the Ross Valley Veterinary Hospital in San Anselmo, a mom asks her daughter: “When all the newspapers disappear, will puppies be trained on Kindles?”

Unsteady gray-haired guy in front of the San Anselmo’s Lincoln Park wine bar who clearly did more than taste: “My life can be measured in troublesome channels. When I was five, it was Guadalcanal. Now, it’s my alimentary canal.”

While discussing her daughter’s new boyfriend, a stylish Fairfax woman heading into 19 Broadway in Fairfax tells a companion, “My inner jury’s still out.”

Says one smiling matron to another as they window-shop at Fairfax Variety, “Having just learned that an American Headache Society exists gives me a headache.”

“She’s a magnet for desperadoes,” says one twinkle-eyed blonde in front of Andronico’s in San Anselmo to another.

A man in a 49ers’ cap says to a cop near the Parkade in Fairfax, “Oh, how quickly we forget. I wonder whatever happened to Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Sperminator.”

Couplet overheard at the hub bus stop in San Anselmo: “Greeting cards are getting expensive.” “Yeah, but now they talk, sing and do your laundry.”

A redhead sips a latte in San Anselmo’s Marin Coffee Roasters and gripes, after her second date with the new man in her life, “I have yet to find his sense of humor or personality.”

An acne-ridden teen boy, licking a spoon in front of Gelato on San Anselmo Avenue: “I believe in stating the obvious — because most people overlook it.”

“I’m 87 years old and still very much a work in progress,” says a woman to her companion in Fairfax’s Siam Lotus.

In the doorway of the Sunshine Bicycle Center in Fairfax, a youth whispers to himself, “She’s somewhere between perfect and oh, my God.”

A housefrau enters Seawood Photo in San Anselmo telling one friend about another: “He lives partly in Manhattan, partly in Florida, and wholly in yesterday.”

Drake High School student describes a verbose acquaintance thusly: “He’s a wordaholic.”

And here’s my personal favorite:

A bald philosopher-king outside MC23 Salon in Ross says, “My recommendation for a bumper sticker is: ‘Life is not a bumper sticker.’”

You can contact Woody Weingarten @voodee@sbcglobal.net.

Woody’s [rating: 5]

It’s way too early for me to crawl out on this particular limb, but I’m impetuous enough to do it anyway.

The best flicks of any year, the sure-fire Oscar contenders, typically are released in December, often a day or two before year’s end.

That ensures eligibility.

And, usually, a booming box-office.

This year, a vibrant film I just saw breaks with the tradition.

“Boyhood” is Richard Linklater’s cinematic masterwork, a groundbreaking work of scripted fiction that took 12 years to film. It feels real.

Indeed, it’s the most emotionally nourishing movie I’ve seen in eons.

I expect it to cop the Oscar as 2014’s best.

Forget the competition.

For a dozen consecutive years, the director-writer’s cameras filmed the various actors while they grew up, grew furrowed, grew chunkier.

In three or four-day annual shoots.

Ellar Coltrane stars as Mason Junior, a youngster who loses his baby fat and innocence while we watch.

Lorelei Linklater, the director’s daughter, realistically portrays the boy’s officious cinema sister, Samantha. Olivia (Patricia Arquette) and Mason Sr. (Ethan Hawke) come off as his blemished but loving parents.

All four are understated.

The veteran filmmaker overcame his gimmick by making the movie a non-formulaic exploration of human development — without the usual cinematic clichés.

Except for an abusive husband-drunk.

The characters seem transparent, even when internal mini-crises envelop them.

Mostly, though, Linklater, 54, examines the impact ordinariness has on human beings.

His novel-like study — based in Texas, where he was born and yetlives — meanders, but generally focuses on the less showy flashes that can influence life: sibling squabbling, routine schooling, cussing, parental guidance and lapses, Bible- and gun-toting, revolving haircuts and facial hair, juvenile bewilderment and sexuality.

Linklater’s finest scenes exude humor, including gutter bowling and blue fingernails.

But his characters are genuine enough to have been my neighbors in Clearwater, Florida, or Willingboro, New Jersey.

For some viewers, namely those who prefer high drama to watching inch-by-inch life changes, “Boyhood” may seem plot-less. Other moviegoers may suffer from a lack of zitzfleisch, the project’s 165-minute length tough on their bony backsides.

I had no such problems.

Rather, I found the film to be epic — not in the sense of explosions or thousands of warriors and computer-graphic stunts, but epic in the sense of zooming in on people reacting to life’s commonplaceness.

I’ve long been a Linklater fan — especially the documentary “Fast Food Nation,” the fact-based black comedy “Bernie,” and his fictional trilogy, “Before Sunrise,” “Before Sunset” and “Before Midnight,” which tracks a loving but contentious couple.

If there’s an antecedent to “Boyhood,” it’s director Michael Apted’s “7-Up,” a documentary series that took 14 seven-year-old British pupils from varied soci-economic backgrounds and revisited them every seven years for the next 49 so far.

The fabricated “Boyhood” has vastly more impact, however.

For me, it creates a time machine.

Although my coming of age didn’t resemble Mason’s in the least, it lets me relive the warmth and angst and crossroads I faced while growing up.

So, thanks, Mr. Visionary, for skipping a cinematic stone over the water’s edge and letting the ripples of my past glisten in the sun. Thanks, too, for reminding me that a parent can be only as joyous as the least happy child.

And thanks for verifying that there’s always a little kid inside an older body.

“Boyhood” will grab no prize for taking more than a decade to complete. Hitler propagandist Leni Riefenstahl started a script in 1934 but didn’t release “Tiefland” until 20 years later. The longevity winner, however, is an animated feature, “The Thief and the Cobbler,” which took 28 years — mainly because writer-director-head animator Richard Williams ran out of money.

No movie this year should be more prize-worthy than “Boyhood,” though.

Linklater has planted the right cinematic seeds to merit his harvesting Academy Awards as best director and best film.

I predict he will.

“Boyhood” is playing at the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Rafael Film Center in San Rafael, the California and Piedmont theaters in the East Bay, and the Embarcadero, Sundance Kabuki Cinema and UA Stonestown Twin in San Francisco.

You can contact Woody Weingarten at voodee@sbcglobal.net.