Woody Weingarten

 Woody’s [rating:3.5]

To be inventive or not to be inventive, that is the question.

When it’s bandleader-bassist Marcus Shelby doing the asking (as well as the innovating), the answer is a resounding “yes.”

In a Cal Performances concert at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley celebrating Duke Ellington’s 115th birthday, Shelby flaunted his calculated risk of failing — by juxtaposing swinging big-band jazz and Shakespeare.

He didn’t fail.

Instead, he and his 15-member, mostly-brass ensemble evoked toe tapping, applause, whistling, cheers and foot stomping with each section of the obscure but stimulating “Such Sweet Thunder.”

The suite had been popularized by the Duke on vinyl but written by his longtime collaborator, Billy Strayhorn.

Shelby’s sidemen brought out each segment’s uniqueness, helping me see how Strayhorn was in effect trying to cover the entire jazz landscape in a single symphonic work.

And each segment’s pithiness left me wanting more.

Because the music was based on the plays and sonnets of the Bard, it was a big deal but not a big surprise that Shelby integrated soliloquys by five actors from Cal Shakes, more formally known as the California Shakespeare Theater.

While all the spoken-word interludes were top-notch, I found some connections to the music tangential at best and, thereby, hard to distinguish — even given information that “the essence” of Shakespeare’s material was being emphasized rather than any one scene or character.

I did find a few links clear-cut, though.

A Juliet balcony scene obviously bonded with a ballad, “The Star-Crossed Lovers,” and a bluesy waltz-time “Lady Mac” danced a direct path to “Lady Macbeth.”

“Sonnet to Hank Cinq” was, of course, a hip reference to Henry V, and “Sonnet for Sister Kate” might have had a little to do with Willie the Shakes’ “Taming of the Shrew.”

In my mind’s eye, by evening’s end I’d labeled the experiment fascinating and a success.

Even though I’d have liked the music alone.

The pre-intermission set of the concert, which also marked the 15th year of the Shelby group and the 40th anniversary of Ellington’s death, consisted of more familiar melodies.

It was dubbed “The Legacy of Duke Ellington: 50 Years of Swing!”

And swing it did.

For me, the highlight was an unbilled rendition of “Take the ‘A’ Train,” but I was also delighted by “Perdido,” the show’s bouncy opener; “C Jam Blues,” its rousing closer; and “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” and “Hit Me With a Hot Note” in the middle.

The San Francisco-based Shelby, who took only one solo, happily spotlighted other musicians from his troupe as well as his guest stars.

Into the latter category fell scat vocalist Faye Carol (the high-strutting, scat-singing “Queen Bee” who’s worked with Shelby for 20 years), violinist Matthew Szemela (who occasionally kept time with both feet at the same time), sax vet Jules Broussard (whom the bandleader labeled one of his mentors) and trumpeter Joel Behrman.

Perfection was elusive, however.

I couldn’t appreciate a trumpet solo despite Shelby’s explanation that some of its notes were un-trumpet-like.

And I cringed when Carol grew raspy several times on “In My Solitude.”

Duke Ellington composed almost 1,000 pieces of music. The concert only skimmed the proverbial surface. But it did provide a glimpse into the man’s genius — through an exciting evening of standard and not-at-all-standard jazz.

In case you missed the Shelby orchestra, Cal Performances offers other excellent jazz choices. Try, for example, vocalist Mavis Staples on Oct. 30, Irvin Mayfield and the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra on Nov. 16, the Peter Nero Trio (playing Gershwin compositions) on Feb. 8, Cassandra Wilson (singing Billie Holiday tunes), or pianists Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock on March 19. Information: www.calperfs.berkeley.edu/buy/ or : (510) 642-9988.

Woody’s [rating:4]

Racism, as depicted in the apartheid-fouled Johannesburg of “The Suit,” is downright ugly.

And brutal.

Palpably tragic.

Worst of all, it’s reflective of today’s racism in an America that pretends it’s integrated when its all-too solid walls of bigotry remain intact.

It’s a fascinating coincidence that “The Suit” opened at San Francisco’s A.C.T. Theatre only one day after L.A. Clippers’ owner Donald Sterling was fined $2.5 million and barred for life from the National Basketball Association for overtly anti-African American statements.

Though peppered with multiple instances of levity, “The Suit” is a solemn theatrical time bomb intentionally ignited by Peter Brook, an 89-year-old British director.

Brook clearly stages the kind of in-your-face prejudice I’ve always found abrasive and offensive.

Adapted from a Can Themba short story, the 75-minute drama thrusts into the foreground a husband who, after discovering his wife in bed with a lover, insists she take with her wherever she goes the suit her fleeing sex partner left behind.

It becomes, essentially, a scarlet letter, the traditional sign of sin.

Over all, the play exudes a surreal, fable-like quality, abetted by a Dali-esque set consisting of unadorned (yet colorful) wooden chairs and bare clothing racks.

But the extraordinary three-actor cast seamlessly integrates poignancy, music and pantomime.

Nonhlanhla Kheswa, Johannesburg native and veteran of Broadway’s “The Lion King,” is outstanding as the adulterous Matilda. Her body language and elegiac voice unerringly convey how she wears her punishment.

Ugandan-born Ivanno Jeremiah adeptly plays her humiliated, vengeful spouse, Philomen, middle-class wage-slave who’s suffered daily abuse from a system that downgraded a whole black population to second-class status.

New Jersey-born Jordan Barbour skillfully fills in the gaps as he jumps from role to role.

Musical interludes range from traditional African melodies to timeless American jazz pieces such as “Feelin’ Good,” the Nina Simone standard, and the painful Billie Holiday classic about lynching, “Strange Fruit.”

To prevent my review from being disingenuous, I must mention that the touring production from Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord is imperfect.

Even heavy-handed sometimes.

As when the fourth wall is broken by actors who provide the audience with invisible joints, or when folks are invited to represent white participants onstage at a shebeen, a speakeasy-like party.

Additionally, Brook, whose “The Empty Space” has been a theatrical bible for generations, has paced the play so deliberately I twice felt compelled to check my watch.

None of that, however, undercuts the emotional impact of the show.

Besides, “The Suit” contains numerous magic moments.

When, for instance, Matilda puts one arm into the empty outfit and, puppet-like, achingly caresses herself as if it were still being worn by her absent lover. When she sings, in Swahili, an upbeat song that’s crushed by Philomen with only a few words. When she foreshadows crucial action by dedicating a melancholy tune to “each and everyone who cannot get what they want in life.”

Or when the actors pantomime being on a rolling commuter train.

When trumpeter Mark Vavuma wrings every possible emotion from his muted horn. Or when Mark Christine underscores the play’s tragic ménage à trois via a soulful Bach “St. Matthew Passion” on a solo compact synthesizer.

“The Suit” is set in the 1950s in Sophiatown, an overcrowded black appendage of Johannesburg that actually was bulldozed.

With more than 65,000 blacks forcibly removed.

I, frankly, was grateful the stream of real 1950s violence was referenced but not shown onstage. It was surely enough just to envision each of a black man’s fingers being bloodied, and his being shot 34 times.

The first-impression simplicity of “The Suit” is purposefully deceptive, making its vivid ending even more powerful, more numbing.

The opening night audience, in fact, seemed so stunned it took it a few seconds to rise for a well-earned standing ovation — and then it did so almost in slow motion.

“The Suit” plays at the American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary St., San Francisco, through May 18. 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]

Distance can be crucial — ordinarily.

Ergo, as a critic, I try to remain at least one or two steps removed from whatever I’m evaluating.

But I couldn’t help but take “Tribes” — the Berkeley Rep’s comic drama about deafness, identity and love, the need to belong and the need to be heard — personally.

My wife, Nancy Fox, is responsible.

She’s been experiencing a deteriorating hearing loss for eight years, so the play had particular meaning — and discomfort — for her (and, by osmosis, for me).

Emotionally, she related most to Sylvia (sensitively depicted by Nell Geisslinger), a hearing person gradually going deaf.

“She feels different from everyone else, including her boyfriend who’s been deaf from birth,” Nancy observed, “and is distressingly aware of her increasing difficulty. Watching her is painful.”

During intermission, while getting the better fitting headphones instead of the ear buds Berkeley Rep personnel originally had supplied, my wife added, “I’m constantly aware of how my own hearing loss is progressing, having observed it in my mother and grandmother.”

Nancy, a professional pianist, also appreciated Sylvia’s musical predicament.

“When Sylvia was at the keyboard, it underscored the fact that the music she once heard and played was disappearing and eventually would not exist anymore. I can’t imagine — and don’t want to think about — what that would be like for me.”

Nancy was particular touched, too, by the bellowing yet silent outcry of Billy (James Caverly), Sylvia’s boyfriend, when he signs that he’s exhausted from having to say, “‘What?’ ‘What?’ ‘What?’ all the time.”

But she, and I, actually reveled in the aggregate professionalism of the ensemble cast (despite an accent or two slipping from time to time).

In addition to Geisslinger and Caverly, the cast includes the artistry of Paul Whitworth as the burly father, Christopher, self-styled nonconformist who clearly adores that his kids have returned to his home and influence; Dan Clegg as Daniel, Billy’s brother who’s tormented by voices and is terrified Sylvia will whisk Billy away from him; Anita Carey as the mother, Beth, whose nascent novel morphed from being about a therapist to being about a family coming unglued; and Elizabeth Morton as Ruth, the sister who simultaneously craves a boyfriend and a singing career.

British playwright Nina Raine provides one original scene after another, never succumbing to the sentimentality the subject matter might easily prompt.

She’s armed with a full quiver of crisp, deep yet hilarious dialogue — and she uses every arrow in it. She alternates noise-athons and silences as dexterously if she were crafting a symphonic masterwork replete with high highs and low lows.

She focuses on Billy and Sylvia’s relationship, sculpted in bas-relief against a backdrop of an often boisterous, sometimes garrulous, always opinionated family that, as one character claims, is a “hermetically sealed community” — with no one allowed in if they aren’t familiar with Czech composer Antonin Dvořák.

The main tribes of the title are not in dispute: Clearly they’re the deaf community and the ultra-creative clan. That the family is Jewish is scarcely touched upon, a fact that’s arguably ironic because of that group’s tribal heritage.

“Tribes,” an off-Broadway success in 2012, opens with rapid-fire, frequently vulgar banter. It closes with tenderness.

Along the way, it offers as fascinating a glimpse into a world I’m unfamiliar with as the Berkeley Rep did via “Chinglish” in 2012. And, like that one, this commendably uses the device of overhead projections of dialogue.

I’m sure director Jonathan Moscone, best known for his longtime role as artistic director of California Shakespeare Theater, was keenly aware that one out of six Americans has some form of hearing loss when he took the assignment.

But he readily joined with dramatist Raine to make sure both hearing and hard-of-hearing theatergoers get a laugh-out-loud yet profoundly moving theatrical experience.

“Tribes” plays at the Berkeley Repertory’s Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St., Berkeley, through May 18. Night performances, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Sundays, 7 p.m.; matinees, Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $14.50 to $99, subject to change, (510) 647-2949 or www.berkeleyrep.org.

Woody’s [rating:4.5]

The focus of “Fences,” Troy Maxon, becomes — like Willie Loman of “Death of a Salesman” — trapped by his own limitations, excuses and misperceptions.

And, like Arthur Miller’s classic everyman creation, this August Wilson character takes too much for granted.

Especially his wife, Rose, and sons Cory and Lyons.

Some of Troy’s beliefs are highly questionable. Such as his not being able to graduate from Negro League baseball to the Majors — even after the color barrier had been broken.

He blames prejudice. Rose more realistically faults his having been too old.

Troy demands Cory not play high school football because he sees it as a futile activity for a black-skinned man — even though his son could win a college scholarship (and a future that might surpass his own).

The frequently confrontational ex-con father, we learn, has been in a lifelong battle again racism, death and the devil.

But that doesn’t excuse his being a hard drinker, a philanderer and a procrastinator — a disheartened 53-year-old who in effect holds his culture liable.

His family, of course, bears the brunt of his anger.

In the powerful Marin Theatre Company revival of “Fences,” the biggest trap for Troy, robustly portrayed by Carl Lumbly, becomes the life he’s settled for: a responsibility-burdened family man, invisible garbage collector earning only $76.20 a week, a raider of his war-injured brother’s checks.

In the process, he manages to disrespect his 18-year wife’s loyalty, and disregard the urgent needs of his younger son.

What he ultimately, and tragically, finds is entombment behind a fence he’s forever building.

The play, set in 1957 Pittsburgh, is a cornucopia of metaphors, starting with a fence that keeps folks in as well as out, ending with baseball lingo that precedes a predictable strikeout.

A quarter of a century ago, I walked out of a pre-Broadway performance of “Fences” in San Francisco before it was done, dismayed by what I found to be stereotypical depictions, an excess of what had yet to be labeled “the n-word,” and an unfortunate emphasis on the failings of males in the black culture.

I couldn’t have been more mistaken.

What I overlooked then was the major historic value of the 90-minute play, the accuracy of Wilson’s reflection of how black life really was. Through this brilliant Mill Valley offering, which coincidentally opened on Jackie Robinson Day, I quickly recognized what I’d missed.

The cast made it easy for me. Each member was superb.

Hours later, my mind can’t let go of the images they created — Margo Hall’s frustrated and flailing Rose, Steven Anthony Jones’ drinking-buddy stint as Jim Bono, and Eddie Ray Jackson’s pained poignancy as Cory.

Adrian Roberts skillfully avoids being cartoonish in the role of Troy’s brother, Gabe, a brain-damaged vet, and Tyee Tilghman effectively fills the role of Cory’s wannabe musician older half-brother.

Superb, too, is a front-yard set by scenic designer J.B. Wilson that features a home facade illustrating economic battles  — plus a makeshift tree-limb batting device that allows Troy, momentarily, to purge his anger.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t cite sound designer Will McCandless’ work, pinpointing between-scene recordings that parallel the storyline and action (from traditional jazz to an edgy crescendo of dissonance, finishing with mournful, almost anti-climactic blues).

The Pulitzer Prize-winning play, presented in association with the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, is the second to be produced by the Marin Theatre Company in Wilson’s 10-play Century Cycle (sometimes called the Pittsburgh Cycle, with each component representing a decade of the African-American experience in the United States).

Jasson Minadakis, MTC artistic director, hopes to showcase the remaining eight as well.

Director Derrick Sanders, who’d worked with Wilson before his death in 2005, carefully built this emotionally charged, physical version so the second act moves incredibly swiftly, albeit a bit fitfully.

After a slow-moving but tension-packed first act, one attendee said, “I’m pretty sure this train-wreck isn’t going to end well.”

He was right, of course, if you consider only the play itself.

But for theatergoers, the experience does end well, exceptionally well.

“Fences” plays at the Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley, through Sunday, May 11. Performances Tuesdays and Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Wednesdays, 7:30 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m.; matinees Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $20 to $53. Information: (415) 388-5208 or marintheatre.org. 

 

I can get really excited about little stuff.

So can Nancy Fox, my wife.

A few days back, for instance, she was bouncing on air because she’d had the vintage knives in our San Anselmo kitchen sharpened.

“Unbelievable,” she exclaimed. “They’re like new!”

I loved her enthusiasm.

Almost as much as I’d loved my own ecstasy when I recalled a guilty pleasure from childhood — a bowlful of sliced sweet gherkins and sour cream.

Others may grimace, but I blissed out again.

Big things can also electrify me.

Such as completing tweak No. 8,957 of “Rollercoaster,” my book manuscript that details how a man can survive his partner’s breast cancer.

I finally believe it’s ready for prime time — after years and years of updating and polishing.

Maybe one of you, my steadfast readers, can nurture the project.

If you know a publisher who might be interested, I’d be interested in your giving me name, rank and serial number. If you’re connected to a foundation and think I could be eligible for a grant, send me the details — pronto. If you know a philanthropist who might help buoy thousands and thousands of male caregivers, email, snail-mail, carrier-pigeon or smoke-signal me the info.

“Rollercoaster” is a 47,000-word memoir-chronicle of my wife’s breast cancer 19 years ago — and my role as primary caregiver (and leader of the Marin Man to Man support group for guys with partners in the same sometimes leaky boat).

Fleshed out by essential “how-to” sequences and information on drugs, scientific research and where to get help.

Because I’m more concerned with getting the message out than in making money, I’m willing to donate all royalties to a breast-cancer research organization or relevant nonprofit.

Time’s a-wastin’ — the stats haven’t improved.

More than 2 million U.S. women live with breast cancer, with almost 250,000 new cases diagnosed each year, one every few minutes.

Hundreds of books are aimed at them.

But their male caregivers (husbands, boyfriends, fathers, sons and brothers) typically become a forgotten part of the equation.

And they, too, need propping up.

The few volumes directed at them and still in print are woefully out of date. “Rollercoaster,” in contrast, is current (with references, even, to last month’s New York Times story on a key study of mammograms).

“Rollercoaster” tracks my bumpy yet uplifting journey from the depths of Nancy’s diagnosis to the heights of our climbing the Great Wall of China. It illustrates that most couples can successfully deal with the disease itself, “slash, poison and burn” treatments, fear, and the repercussions of it all — and that there actually can be light at the end of the tunnel.

I must believe in the book or I wouldn’t have tinkered with it 8,957 times.

I’m primed for a “Rollercoaster” hardcover to appear in oncologists’ and radiologists’ offices, in hospitals and libraries, and in the hands of individual caregivers and patients.

But I truly don’t want to change the text anymore — unless Brad Pitt calls me and wants to write an intro (so, if anyone knows how to get to him, tell me).

And I truly reject the idea of papering my walls with rejection notices.

Northern Californian Jack London got 600 of them before publishing anything. And Gertrude Stein submitted poems for 22 years before one was accepted.

I don’t have that kind of patience.

Nor do I want to be published posthumously.

I do want to help all the male caregivers of breast cancer and other life-threatening diseases that need support — while I’m still breathing.

So I guess I’ll just walk my purebred mutt, Kismet, in downtown San Anselmo while waiting for a fairy godmother to arrive with a publisher in tow.

And settle, for the moment, for being thrilled by the little stuff.

Like my wife creating a Seuss-like rhyming treasure hunt last month, with the Big Prize being a small box of tiny candy hearts.

I loved her reverting to her kindergarten-teacher days and getting me to run up and down stairs so many times I decided to forgo my daily exercises.

“Ten clues are written,” she wrote,

“For Valentine’s Day,”

“To celebrate ours”

“In a new, goofy way.”

Yes, being thrilled is a thrill — whether it’s tiny, silly things or big, important stuff.

 Woody’s [rating:4/5]

Charlie Varon changes his voice and face and characters as fast as Miley Cyrus can twerk.

In “Feisty Old Jew,” his new one-man show at The Marsh in San Francisco, he portrays twentysomething surfers and members of a retirement home breakfast club.

But easily his most memorable character is the cranky Bernie to which the title refers.

Varon being 55 didn’t stop me from totally accepting him in the mind and body of a gutsy 83-year-old determined to go out fighting.

The plot of the comic monologue involves a mega-rich Indian techie reared in California, his best-selling author sister and a white surfer who pick up hitchhiking Bernie in their Tesla, haul him across the Golden Gate Bridge, and watch him try to ride a wave near Bolinas — the outgrowth of an 800-to-1 bet that could net him $400,000.

It’s a droll theatrical exercise grounded in reality, yet encompassing multiple touches of exaggeration that made me smile again and again,

And I was not the least thrown by its surprising, fantastical wind-up.

A Jewish background isn’t necessary to enjoy the show, because it’s more about the changing human and cultural landscape of the Bay Area and the aging process than Jewishness.

Take that as gospel from this feisty old Jew (even though I don’t hate yoga studios or medical marijuana outlets as Bernie does).

Yes, he can seem to be the ultimate curmudgeon, especially during descriptions that indicate he despises young people in general and Tony Bennett in particular (for singing with Lady Gaga).

But Varon insists the play’s “about a city in flux…about what I see when I step out of our theater and walk down Valencia Street — the hipsters, the techies, the restaurants serving truffle butter and pink aioli. When I moved to the Mission District in 1978, my rent was $70 a month. Now people pay $70 a month just for lattes.”

The life-affirming show was developed, like other Varon works at The Marsh over 23 years, with director-friend David Ford.

And with additional heavy lifting from Varon’s life partner, Myra Levy.

The program guide credits no craftspeople for costumes, props, sound effects or lighting — because, as usual, Varon relies solely on his rubbery face, gift for mimicry and ability to write impressively descriptive passages and poetic prose.

This tour de force is similar to previous Varon outings I’ve seen — “Rush Limbaugh in Night School,” “Ralph Nader Is Missing!” and “Rabbi Sam” — in which he narrated tales through numerous characters, all of whom he ingeniously portrayed.

This one is different, though, because there will be future links — he’s working on an entire series of vignettes about geezers.

Indeed, because “Feisty Old Jew” runs only 45 minutes long, Varon added several minutes by performing a portion of “The Fish Sisters,” a work-in-progress featuring Selma, an 86-year-old prankster who’s time-traveled to age 11, peeking through a keyhole at a naked woman dubbed Queen Esther.

The first complete reading of that piece — a two-hour “tale of mischief” — was scheduled to take place March 9.

The night I caught “Feisty,” it was preceded by a dramatic extract of “The Disappearance of Alfred Lafee,” written and performed by Peter L. Stein, ex-TV producer-writer, documentarian, actor and director of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival who, Varon explained, “is finding his legs as a solo performer.”

Stein told me later that he’s been working on it for two years, and expects at least six more months of tweaking — with assistance from Ford, Varon’s director.

But “Lafee” is already enthralling as it uncovers a painfully true story about the secret life of a closeted 22-year-old San Francisco rabbi murdered in 1923.

If Stein’s piece still needs work, the lone problem with an evening with Varon is that street parking near The Marsh borders on impossible (although space normally is available at the nearby New Mission Bartlett Garage).

I’m 117 percent confident, however, that seeing “Feisty Old Jew” is worth the trouble.

“Feisty Old Jew” is scheduled to run at The Marsh, 1062 Valencia St. (at 22nd St.), San Francisco, through May 4. Performances, Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 or 7 p.m. Tickets: $25 to $100. Information: www.themarsh.org or (415) 282-3055. 

 Woody’s [rating:5]

“Hir,” a gender-bending, tragicomic world premiere at the Magic Theatre, is the best Bay Area play I’ve seen this season.

In several seasons, in fact.

And I’ve attended more than a few magnificent shows during that timeframe.

To call “Hir” hilariously riveting would be to understate enormously the impact it had on the opening night San Francisco audience.

Including me.

I don’t have enough superlatives in my word-arsenal with which to praise the writing, direction, acting, set design and costumes.

Describing what’s what may make the play sound bizarre rather than funny. But playwright Taylor Mac keeps the laughter level extremely high.

Niegel Smith is the perfect director for what Mac calls “absurd realism.” Though every gag line draws a laugh, each stammer, brief pause or elongated silence also hits a dramatic bulls-eye.

And Smith’s pacing is spot on.

Paige is the antithesis of the submissive mom that populates so much pop culture. Instead, she’s a tear-down-the-established-routine demon who humiliates her husband with acts of comeuppance that include squirting water into his face as a trainer might to a disobedient kitten.

Nancy Opel portrays her with all the requisite venom. A Tony-nominated actress, she is a comic delight, spewing Mac’s acerbic words like ammo from a Gatling gun.

She informs us the family’s role now — 30 years after building its “starter house” — is to put on shadow-puppet shows and “play dress up.”

The playwright takes dysfunctionality to new heights. Or, perhaps, it might be more accurate to say new lows.

The play, set in a central valley suburb similar to Stockton, where Mac grew up, makes the audience feel good because their fractured families can’t possibly be that screwed up.

Jax Jackson adroitly plays Max, formerly Maxine — a 17-year-old “gender-queer” malcontent who’s been homeschooled and makes Holden Caulfield’s angst look as antiquated and simplistic as something out of a the old-time radio soap opera “One Man’s Family.”

He no longer chooses to be a she or a he but a gender-neutral ze (pronounced zay); in addition, he substitutes hir (pronounced heer) for the pronouns him or her.

A youth whose fantasy is to join an anarchist commune, Max finds his mind somewhere behind the curve of the hormone-triggered gender changes ze has put hir body through with self-medicating experimentation.

He calls himself “transmasculine” and “a fag.” He likes boys. He loves masturbating.

And he thinks he’s “allowed to be selfish because I’m in transition.”

Max goes ballistic about the biblical story of Noah being “transphobic” because only male and female animals were allowed aboard the ark — and because Leonardo da Vinci’s transexuality and that of his self-portrait, the Mona Lisa, aren’t acknowledged.

Actually, it’s not crucial for a theatergoer to “get” all the gender-based phrasing — or even the alphabet soup LGBT has evolved into, LGBTTSQQIAA.

The gist becomes clear through context.

Clear, too, is Mark Anderson Phillips’s performance despite his character barely speaking.

He skillfully portrays Arnold, the stroke-ridden ex-plumber, ex-abuser father who represents a disintegrating culture and who’s typically plopped in front of the Lifetime Channel when Paige and Max go out.

And Ben Euphrat is effectively transparent as Isaac, a Marine vet of the Afghanistan war dishonorably discharged after becoming a meth addict. He may have PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), and vomits profusely, the aftermath of his job of collecting body parts.

Isaac comes back to unrecognizable home and family, and desperately wants to restore them — and himself — to the way everything was when he left.

I missed “The Lily’s Revenge,” Mac’s earlier allegorical play/carnival at the Magic, thinking neither my brain nor my buttocks could handle five acts and five hours no matter how brilliant.

Now I have regrets.

Mac, not incidentally, is a triple threat: Although he’s written 16 full-length plays, he also performs as an actor and singer-songwriter (his most recent outing was as co-star with Mandy Patinkin in an off-Broadway workshop of “The Last Two People on Earth: An Apocalyptic Vaudeville” last December).

While introducing his latest dark, darker, darkest humor showcase to the opening night audience, Loretta Greco, the Magic’s producing artistic director, said, “Buckle your seat belts. You’re in for an incredible ride.”

She wasn’t lying.

“Hir” plays at the Magic Theater, Building D, Fort Mason Center, San Francisco, through March 2. Performances: Sundays and Tuesdays, 7 p.m., Wednesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m.; matinees, Sundays and Wednesdays, 2:30 p.m. Tickets: $15 to $60. Information: (415) 441-8822 or www.magictheatre.org.

  Woody’s [rating:5]

Uh, oh!

From the first cagey moments of “Gidion’s Knot,” I knew the play would be grueling to process.

I didn’t, however, expect my mouth to drop open, my heart to hurt.

They did anyway.

My pledge: Because the two-woman play is a disturbing cat-and-mouse game and theatrical Rorschach test, viewers will find it virtually impossible to leave the Aurora Theatre in Berkeley unaffected.

Personal baggage will, of course, determine exactly how and what is experienced.

The tension-filled drama starts with an abrasive, in-your-face single mother — a walking open wound — demanding a constrained teacher tell her why she suspended the parent’s troubled son from his fifth-grade class.

The discussion that follows is often awkward.

But it’s also a fascinating examination of personal responsibility and blame, freedom of expression, the failure of our school systems, bullying and embryonic sexuality.

“Gidion’s Knot” is provocative, powerful and guaranteed to force theatergoers to hold their breath for what seems its entire 80 minutes.

The impact of the gut-wrenching, twist-and-turn tragedy comes when the angry, sarcastic mother, herself a professor used to academic probing, keeps pricking and questioning until she learns the truth.

At least her truth.

A working clock on a classroom wall helps maintain the sense of real time.

And the actors’ breathtaking depiction of passion, thoughtfulness and mood swings help keep the action authentic.

Playwright Johnna Adams demands playgoers think for themselves, so she supplies no pinpoint answers to the questions she poses: Are parents or schoolteachers ultimately responsible for pupils’ well-being? Is Gidion a bullying monster or sensitive, poetic victim? Is classmate Jake the bully or an object of affection?

Neither fifth grader appears on stage.

Nor does Seneca, an 11-year-old friend and note-passer described as having a stuffed bra, nose ring, false eyelashes and dyed platinum hair.

Tossed into the mix are references to censorship, freedom of expression, American society’s litigiousness, and our growing national fear of what’s ahead.

Sadly, “Gidion’s Knot” echoes all too many real-life headlines of recent years about individual tragedies caused by taunting, either in person or through social networking.

And, although it doesn’t reference those situations, it can’t block memories of schoolyard massacres.

Tension is director Jon Tracy’s forté, copious enough to make me — and most other seat-holders — uncomfortable.

Intensity prevails.

Unrelentingly, in fact, all the way to the play’s final moments — except for a few snarky quips that let everyone find a smidgeon of relief through nervous laughter.

Part of the unease, by the way, stems from the two characters (and audience) waiting for someone to arrive.

As “Gidion’s Knot” unravels its multi-leveled conflicts and complexities — from an exploration of Greek and Roman military history and epic poetry to a tale of revenge against teachers and disembowelment — it may require a strong stomach.

I could hear erratic gasps in the audience.

Nina Ball’s set is a deceptively cheery contrast through which she’d dragged me into a 20-desk classroom and its reference maps and academic materials in Anytown, USA.

The setting’s so effective I could almost see the portraits of gods tacked onto an invisible wall explored by the distraught mom, who reveals she could best relate to a demon-destroying Hindu god, Shiva.

Destruction just happens to be another underlying theme of “Gidion’s Knot.

So’s the Marquis de Sade.

Then, of course, there’s the metaphoric Gordian Knot, which — legend tells us — Alexander the Great decided to slice rather than untie. The phrase, of course, has become a means of representing having to face an intractable problem.

What’s absent in this dazzling play is artifice — despite the presence of polemics and diatribes.

What’s present is actors whose performances are flawlessly multi-layered, facilitating my feeling their respective pain.

I flinched as the mother asked disingenuously, “This doesn’t have to be adversarial, does it?”

But the sold-out audience was right there as the mother, Corryn Fell (Jamie J. Jones), and teacher, Heather Clark (Stacy Ross), struggled to untangle the web of what really happened.

Where a playgoer travels emotionally and intellectually will determine whether “Gidion’s Knot” is loved or tagged offensive and too harrowing.

I fall in the first niche, glad I was there despite the work required.

The opening night crowd also had no doubt: In unison, it gave it a thunderous standing ovation.

“Gidion’s Knot” runs at the Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison St., Berkeley, through March 9. Night performances, Wednesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m., Tuesdays and Sundays, 7 p.m.; matinees, Sundays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $16-$50. Information: www.auroratheatre.orgor (510) 843-4822.

 Woody’s [rating:5]

“Man in a Case,” the new Mikhail Baryshnikov star turn, melds uncountable elements.

Radiantly.

But the dramatic Berkeley Rep re-invention of two Anton Chekhov short stories is so complex, so augmented with symbolism and stagecraft, I’m sure a single viewing is insufficient to absorb it all.

And, frankly, I suspect I might feel the same after two or three more times in the audience.

“Man in a Case,” which was adapted and co-directed by the dazzling duo behind the Big Dance Theatre, Paul Lazar and Annie-B Parson, fuses movement, theatrics, music and video.

Parson may deserve the most credit.

She alone was responsible for the piece’s choreography, which not only fit Baryshnikov’s dance and acting chops like skintight leggings but lent itself to integrating disparate elements — projections of titles and 1890s Russian characters re-dressed in modern garb, a quintet of TV terminals blinking in unison, infinite paper caricatures wafting from above, a strobe ball rotating ever so gently, accordion melodies blaring in contrast with scratchy old recordings, and a canopied Murphy bed sliding effortlessly into a wall.

Amazingly, like a perfectly practiced drill team, everything works in synch.

And Parson put it all together with a surrealistic cleverness that made me think she might have been channeling Salvador Dali after he’d stumbled upon Marcel Marceau and Spike Jones in the afterlife and convinced them to come back to Earth and pool their talents.

“Man in a Case” spotlights two modern-day hunters who swap poignant stories after initially wielding their microphones like comic weaponry, as if they were doing early morning drive-time radio.

The first — and longer — tale centers on Belikov, an uptight, reclusive Greek teacher who’s feared by his fellow pedagogues — and, indeed, “the whole town.” He falls for a cheery woman but, calamitously, can’t sustain the relationship.

The second story depicts a guy who grieves for his unrequited love, a married woman.

According to Parson, both Baryshnikov protagonists “have preconceived ideas how to live, even if it means living life in a case…of their own construction.”

She also said, in an interview with the Hartford Stage’s senior dramaturg, that even though the title piece is “prose, not a play, it’s eminently actable.”

Baryshnikov, who’d grown up reading Chekhov stories and plays, validates that notion.

And so do the other six actors in the ensemble cast, especially Tymberly Canale, his dance-and-love companion in both segments.

One stagey conceit of “Man in a Case” is showing onstage what normally goes on behind the scenes. It took me a few minutes to adjust to the “transparency,” but once I had, I found it refreshing.

Exactly what were the two co-directors trying to achieve?

Lazar has said, “It’s Chekhov’s unvarnished contemporary quality and his not feeling at an historical distance that we’re going after.”

Mission accomplished.

Baryshnikov, a Latvia native, started studying ballet at age 9. He became the principal dancer of the Kirov Ballet in 1969, and five years later defected from the former Soviet Union to dance with major companies around the world.

His film work has included “The Turning Point” and “White Nights,” and he appeared in “Metamorphosis” on Broadway.

His most famous role, however, may have been in the television series “Sex in the City,” in which he’s dumped by Carrie Bradshaw for Mr. Big.

In 2012, Baryshnikov starred in the Berkeley Rep  production of “In Paris,” a tragic love story that garnered only mixed reviews. He’d sunk $250,000 of his own money into the project.

Although the actor-dancer recently turned 65, he’s been quoted as saying, “I never celebrate my birthdays. I really don’t care.”

He also said: “Your body actually reminds you about your age and your injuries — the body has a stronger memory than your mind.”

Does his body hold up as he effectively makes the leap from one Chekhov short story to the other?

Absolutely.

Last year, Baryshnikov told the Washington Post, “I have been in successful productions sometimes. And I’ve sucked many times, too.”

Hey, Misha, there’s zero suckage this time.

“Man in a Case” plays at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre‘s Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St., Berkeley, through Feb. 16. Night performances, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Wednesdays, 7 p.m. Matinees, Sundays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $22.50 to $125, subject to change, (510) 647-2949 or www.berkeleyrep.org.

 Woody’s [rating:5]

If you’ve seen one acrobatic troupe, you’ve seen ‘em all — except, perhaps, for an occasional act in Cirque du Soleil.

Or every one of The Peking Acrobats.

I caught the latest rendition of the latter at a Cal Performances matinee the other day at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley.

It was fabulous.

Basing their work on folk traditions that date back to 221 B.C., the youngsters push their balancing and gymnastics beyond anyone’s expectations.

Fabulously.

And the Jigu! Thunder Drums of China company that’s been inserted into the tour for the first time as “special guests” also are fabulous.

The dexterous acrobatic troupe, which first came to the United States in 1986 and currently features performers ranging from 13 to 25, particularly enjoys defying gravity.

And contorting lithe bodies.

And risking youthful life and limb without a net.

Some of the acts are indescribably complex. To be believed, they must be witnessed. Despite seeing them with my own big brown eyes, I still found several unbelievable.

Being human, the acrobats are not perfect. But when they err, they do it again and inevitably get it right.

The showstopper clearly was a young man who put four wine bottles on a tabletop, then carefully balanced the first of eight white chairs on them. After he stacked high the other seven and was almost into the rafters, he performed three handstands, the last on one hand.

Extraordinary. Inspired. Breathtaking.

And fabulous.

His solo was followed by five girls balancing on the same six chairs, stacked not as high but maybe even more treacherously because they were diagonal.

Before the stunning finale, which featured almost a dozen performers perched delicately on a single bicycle, the combination visual-audial cornucopia provided so much more, most of it unique:

A guy who juggled while standing on one leg and while tap dancing on two, a clown who tripled as emcee and tumbler, stunningly choreographed gymnastics and dancing and drumsticks, a young man who stuck four bricks on his head so they could be smashed with an immense hammer, a man held mid-air on the points of four spears, and a lion dance with four dragon-like critters animated by eight males.

Plus, of course, acrobats who jumped from pole to pole, others who danced gracefully on long fabric, females who spun plates while twisting their bodies every which way, foot-jugglers who rotated drums, and a group that playfully juggled hats, hats and more hats.

The center-stage and background music was unusually wide-ranging, from booming synchronized drumming to almost eerie sounds emanating from traditional Chinese instruments such as the erhu, a small bowed instrument with only two strings, and the yangquin, a dulcimer played with bamboo mallets.

Most melodies were unfamiliar, but that didn’t hold true for a medley that included Tony Orlando and Dawn’s “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree” and the Beatles’ “Yesterday.”

The audience, which mainly consisted of young children and bald men, presumably fathers of the kids, applauded everything.

I’d say the crowd found The Peking Acrobats, well, fabulous.

“Calm down,” squeals the moderation-safety valve in my head. “This review’s become an over-gush.” But I can’t help myself — individually and collectively, they’re that good.

A cautionary announcement before the two-hour-plus fast-paced show told us not to try the tricks at home.

For me, that message was unnecessary.

I’m neither double-jointed nor willing to risk breaking every bone in my body.

In case you missed “The Peking Acrobats,” Cal Performances offers other excellent choices for families. Try, for example, Aesop Bops!” with David Gonzalez and the Yak Yak Band on April 6. Information: (510) 642-9988 or www.calperfs.berkeley.edu/.