Woody Weingarten

 Woody’s [rating:5]

“Journey’s End” is no “War Horse.” I saw no fantastical puppets.

“Journey’s End” is no “Apocalypse Now.” I heard no Wagnerian explosions or deafening helicopters.

“Journey’s End” is no “Saving Private Ryan.” I witnessed no gore.

What I did find, however, was considerable poignancy and a tough look at what war does to young men.

Regrettably, it mirrors the many wars across today’s globe.

It’s an exceptional anti-war drama, despite playwright R.C. Sherriff’s insistence — according to director James Dunn — that he didn’t set out to create that type of play.

It’s also the best Ross Valley Players show I’ve ever attended, and that’s saying a lot because I’ve seen many of their shows that were superb.

“Journey’s End” is a saga of disposable lives in the so-called Great War.

Its setting is a 1918 WWI British infantry dugout/bunker near St. Quentin, France, that’s about to be assaulted by German soldiers (“the Boche”). Its twin focus is on the interminable waiting (which may portend death) and a rushed 12-man patrol sent out to seize an enemy warrior.

The protagonist is Stanhope, a captain who drinks a lot to deaden the pain caused by the conflict and his fears that his men don’t respect him.

David Yen brilliantly portrays Stanhope, who originally was played by a young Laurence Olivier. Yen’s facial expressions and eyes become transparent windows to his character’s tormented soul.

His stage bouts with half a dozen bottles are neither over-the-top nor maudlin.

Yen is impressively supported by Tom Hudgens as Lt. Osborne, an ultra-proper officer who’s purposefully morphed into a kindly uncle to the soldiers, and Francis Serpa as 2nd Lt. Raleigh, a young, idealistic ex-school chum of Stanhope who’s stuck in hero-worship mode.

The rest of the all-male cast also is convincing: Philip Goleman as 2nd Lt. Hibbert, a cowering whiner; Sean Gunnell as Pvt. Mason, comic relief as a cunning kitchen worker always scrambling to make up for supply deficiencies; Stephen Dietz, Jeff Taylor and two actors who each assume dual roles, Steve Price and Ross Berger.

Special tribute must go to Dunn and his assistant dialect coach, Judy Holmes, for training the nine actors so well each accent stayed authentic throughout.

And never turn into caricature.

Deserving extra compliments, too, are Ron Krempetz for his set design (from real dirt on the floor to a hint of barbed wire peeking through an opening); Dietz for his sound design (crackling armaments getting closer and closer yanked me right into the action, and scratchy recordings of “Mademoiselle from Armentières” and “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” became instant time machines); and spot-on costumes by Michael A. Berg.

The two-hour play, despite having first been staged in 1928, miraculously avoids the clichés of the hundreds of war dramas, films and teleplays that came after.

There’s no token black, no token Latino, no token Jew.

There’s no super-patriot, no Dear John letter, no townie with a heart of gold.

Most importantly, there are no heroes.

There are, however, little touches that work especially well to break the tension — the awkwardness of a Brit and German trying to scale language barriers, the reading aloud of passages about the walrus and cabbages and kings, and a bizarre description of an earwig race.

By sidestepping most stereotypes and zeroing in on the human condition, Sherriff, who’d won a Military Cross after being wounded in the battle of Passchendaele in 1917, penned a play with multiple layers that retains its meaning almost a century later.

It won a 2007 Tony for best revival.

Dunn now has breathed new life into it by bringing to the production a rich history of directing and teaching theater arts for 50 years, including three decades at the helm of the Mountain Play.

Is war hell?

In the WWI battle of the Somme, 21,000 British soldiers died on the first day, and 38,000 more became casualties. Mankind apparently didn’t learn much from that episode.

Unfortunately, neither “Journey’s End” nor a multitude of anti-war tracts since have had the power to change anything.

“Journey’s End” will run at The Barn, Marin Art & Garden Center, 30 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Ross, through Feb. 16. Night performances, Thursdays at 7:30, Fridays and Saturdays at 8; matinees, Sundays at 2. Tickets: $13-$26. Information: (415) 456-9555 or www.rossvalleyplayers.com.

 Woody’s [rating:3]

I feel like a nine-year-old boy who’s found a crisp new $100 bill on the sidewalk.

Reveling in discovery.

I’ve never been to the Gough St. Playhouse before, but I’ve obviously missed out on a lot if “The Pain and the Itch” is a typical example of what the CustomMade Theatre Company produces there.

“Pain,” a mega-black comedy by Bruce Norris, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer of “Claybourne Park,” proffers a Thanksgiving meal piled high with biting insights into faux family values, racism, hypocrisy, wealth, dementia, a negligent death and, maybe, pedophilia.

When a financially comfortable, liberal, ultra-judgmental and phony family gathers for a Thanksgiving meal in New York, its members and hangers-on munch on Brussels sprouts and long festering resentments.

Norris unhurriedly peels the skin off the family’s smugness as adroitly as if he were wielding a paring knife and onion.

He’s skillful in warding off an audience’s tears but doesn’t avoid the cringe factor as his characters attack each other in overt, sometimes cruel ways.

Sometimes “Pain” is shockingly funny.

Sometimes not so much, like when the wife forces the husband to euthanize a cat to create a hypoallergenic situation for a second child.

 

Norris’ main tool is flashback — an effective freeze-frame device for the most part, but occasionally jarring and confusing.

Both the playwright and director Dale Albright make good use of Mr. Hadid (Dorian Lockett), an African American cab driver, an observer/participant who usually sits on one sideline or another but sometimes asks seemingly oblique questions about the cost of things.

The play centers on the hysteria of Clay (Justin Gillman), a golf-playing, porn-addicted, emasculated house-husband whose young daughter, Kayla (Gabriella Jarvie), has a major genital rash of unknown but possibly creepy origin.

He’s preoccupied by an unseen entity that’s been gnawing at the family avocados.

Clay lives in a world of hyperbole (“Why don’t I just move out? Why don’t I go upstairs and hang myself?”).

His wife, Kelly (Karen Offereins), a standoffish lawyer who tries to hide her own pain behind a cloak of intellectuality, continually puts him down.

Her excuse?

She feels she’s been abused — by “sarcasm” and “neglect.”

Cash (Peter Townley), Clay’s self-centered plastic surgeon brother, the black sheep of the family because he’s a Republican, is involved with a bigoted, coarsely sexual 23-year-old émigré, Kalina (Eden Neuendorf), who’d been repeatedly raped in her native Eastern European country.

The brothers’ condescending, saccharine, baby-talking mother, Carol (Jean Forsman), is a socialist on the brink of dementia.

With the possible exception of Neuendorf, whose accent is so thick it makes some phrases impossible to make out, all the performers acquit themselves rather well. Especially considering that Norris’ words are so barbed and that the actors are asked to talk over each other with great frequency and volume.

“The Pain” isn’t quite as polished as “Claybourne Park,” which it pre-dated by six years. The nastiness in “Pain” verges, in fact, on mean-spirited and vicious.

Moreover, the play shows that Norris (himself Caucasian) is slightly obsessed with ridiculing the hypocrisy of rich, white folk.

Still, the show’s absolutely worth a look-see.

And so is the almost hidden CustomMade troupe, ensconced in a bright but intimate black-box theater with exceptionally comfy seats and dedicated to “producing plays that awaken our social conscience.”

Opening night, more than a few of those 55 seats were empty. That’s a crime: They certainly deserve to be filled for the entire run of the two-hour show.

“The Pain and the Itch” plays at the Gough St. Playhouse, 1620 Gough St. (in the basement of the Trinity Episcopal Church, at Bush), San Francisco, through Feb. 16. Performances Thursday through Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 7 p.m. Tickets: $22 to $35. Information: (415) 798-2682 or www.custommade.org.

 Woody’s [rating:4]

My father wanted me to taste everything that wasn’t life threatening and become a well-rounded member of the literati.

So he took me at age 8 to “Man and Superman,” George Bernard Shaw’s battle of the sexes comedy.

The play was way, way over my head.

And way, way too long.

I eventually became hooked on Shavian wit anyway (though I didn’t learn where the “v” came from when the form of the Irish playwright’s name was changed).

I also became hooked on theater as a whole, and I did understand why: It could instantly transport me into an alternate world or lifestyle, one I’d not experienced before (and might never, in fact, experience in “real” life).

Seeing the new American Conservatory Theater production of Shaw’s “Major Barbara” instantly transported me backward, to those halcyon days of my youth, into a mental place that caused me now to smile throughout the 109-year-old play (which I’d first watched half a century ago).

In short, I enjoyed it.

Yet somehow the talky ACT political comedy — despite impeccable performances, set and costuming — came off as too intellectual and (even with ostensibly passionate speeches) too impassionate.

I had the feeling it too frequently tickled my cerebral cells rather than my funnybone.

Besides, being in a theater for 2 hours and 40 minutes, was slightly more than my hindquarters could comfortably endure — although the play itself didn’t feel long at all.

“Major Barbara” unfortunately proves, however, that not much has changed in 109 years, especially if you consider the growing gap between ultra-rich and ultra-poor, the continued cynicism of business (particularly regarding the manufacture of weaponry), and the blind zeal that religious faith can spawn.

The storyline is straightforward: Barbara Undershaft (Gretchen Hall), daughter of a ruthless millionaire whiskey distiller and bomb manufacturer (Dean Paul Gibson as Andrew Undershaft), is happily saving souls within the framework of the Salvation Army.

But when her father buys favor through a big donation, she quits — even as the plutocrat’s money saves the mission and leads to 117 conversions in a single day.

Her subsequent quest for reconciliation and inner peace shapes what, in the final analysis, becomes the crux of this morality play.

Along the way, the two leads are superbly supported by Kandis Chappell, who steals the show with her hilarious performance of Barbara’s controlling mother, Lady Britomart Undershaft, and Nicholas Pelczar as Adolphus Cusins, who adores and virtually stalks heroine Barbara.

Not one person in the 15-member cast, in fact, is anything but excellent.

Aiding the theatrical illusions, the massive, mobile set by Daniel Ostling is incredibly effective (though sometimes dwarfing the actors).

And costuming by Alex Jaeger leaves no doubt about the era of the action.

The show is a co-production with Theatre Calgary, a Canadian troupe. Its director, Dennis Garnhum, has noted that the result is what happens when “two theaters from two countries…share our similarities and our differences.”

He’s written, too, that he and Carey Perloff, ACT’s artistic director, selected ‘Major Barbara’ for the same reason: its “overwhelming relevance” to 2014.

Good choice.

Garnhum, not incidentally, managed to extract every possible laugh from the script, then added a few of his own via direction that underscores the inherent humor by means of an exaggerated glance or toss of the head.

While most of the themes tackled by Shaw resonate currently, his women display leadership qualities but few touches of feminism. Early on, for example, the matronly head of family states succinctly (while trying to encourage her son to take more familial responsibility):

“I am only a woman.”

Similar to most episodes of “Law and Order,” Shaw outlines both sides of each issue yet, ultimately, makes sure his thought process isn’t left to the fancies of an audience: Consider when the father proclaims that poverty is “the worst of crimes” and that poor people “kill the happiness of society.”

The playwright’s sharpest tools aren’t polemics, though. They’re swift, clever banter between characters, and they’re sarcastic or sardonic outbursts.

Shaw, of course, was an Irish playwright with well-defined opinions, a writer who won both the Nobel Prize for literature and an Oscar (for “Pgymalion,” the film forerunner of the hit Broadway musical, “My Fair Lady”). His creations, it could be argued, cleared the path for latter-day theatrical masters such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Tom Stoppard.

A perfect sidelight: An honest-to-goodness, four-piece Salvation Army band played outside the theater before the show, its familiar strains foreshadowing a major component of “Major Barbara.”

And a last thought: Barbara’s father’s consistent intimidations were strikingly reminiscent of recent bullying by a New Jersey governor.

“Major Barbara” plays at the American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary St., San Francisco, through Feb. 2. Performances Wednesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Tuesdays, 7 or 8 p.m.; matinees, Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $20 to $140. Information: (415) 749-2228 or www.act-sf.org.

 Woody’s [rating:4.5]

It was a one-night stand.

But I’ll long remember it as a theatrical ménage à quatre, which, clearly, is one person better than a ménage à trois.

The harmonious homecoming of the Kinsey Sicks took place at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco. And, as might have been prophesied, the quartet’s social satire was both outrageous and outrageously funny.

And as raunchy as ever.

I hadn’t seen the drag queen tour de farce in more than a decade. My loss.

This go-round, a 20th anniversary bash by “America’s favorite ‘dragapella’ beautyshop quartet,” spoofed — mainly through original lyrics and music — a potty-load of 21st century TV reality series.

The foursome labels its musical comedy “America’s Next Top Bachelor Housewife Celebrity Hoarder Makeover Star Gone Wild!”

I doubt if I’d have laughed harder even if I’d ever seen any of the original reality shows they were lampooning (or if I’d known beforehand that the show was an outgrowth of their having once been contestants on “America’s Got Talent”).

The Kinseys (who wear male attire when not on stage) were, as always, downright irreverent.

No body parts were safe from their wit.

And, naturally, there were endless overt and innuendo references to gay sex, gay sex and, in case you missed it, gay sex.

The Kinsey Sicks website provides a quick rundown of the current cast — “The Boys Behind the Girls.” Its cheeky tone is in keeping with the act, but there are serious undertones.

Ben Schatz (“Rachel“) co-founded the Kinsey Sicks with Irwin Keller and is its chief lyricist. A Harvard Law grad, he started the first national AIDS legal program and was on President Clinton’s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS.

Keller (“Winnie”), who’s responsible for many of the group’s musical arrangements, is a linguist and lawyer who authored Chicago’s gay rights ordinance. He also acts as lay rabbi of a small Cotati synagogue.

Jeff Manabat (“Trixie”) joined the Kinseys in 2004, and Spencer Brown (“Trampolina”) jumped on the vocalwagon in 2008.

The homecoming show also briefly featured Maurice Kelly, who’d originated the Trixie role. She sizzled while doing offering an updated rendition of “Fever” in a white gown that recalled Glinda the Good witch from “Wicked.”

The cavernous Castro has 1,400 seats, and a quick glance showed virtually none was empty. I, in fact, got there somewhat late and was relegated to the last row of the balcony, from which I could hear almost every barbed phrase, many of which (including countless f-bombs) can’t be reprinted by family newspapers or websites.

If lyrics became too dense or too fast to discern, however, I simply tuned into a cappella excellence that the Kinseys’ vocal instruments command.

The throng appeared to be 99.4 percent gay male, with a smattering of lesbians. A handful of others, including me, represented the straight population. If there were any LGBT-bashers, they stayed in hiding.

Parents wisely kept their tiny kids at home.

Pre-show slides on a big screen set the mood. They skipped through the Kinseys’ history, mostly in color but occasionally dating back the full 20 years to black-and-white stills.

The concert-burlesque also included tidbits from old but still vibrant concoctions.

For instance, the two-Jew, two-Gentile, big-haired, big-harmonied quartet offered excerpts from “Oy Vey in a Manger,” which they just presented on the Sonoma State University campus, proving that the Kinseys and their fans prefer naughty over nice.

Highlights of “America’s Next Top…” were retooled versions of “Don’t Rain on My Parade” and “Santa Baby,” as well as aggressive originals that asked the question, “Why the F—k Aren’t We Famous?”

The encores were superb.

One gospel-based piece truly jumped, and the poignant closing tribute to former Kinsey performer Jerry Friedman (and, presumably, AIDs casualties) brought the entire crowd, many of whom had been only one or two degrees of separation removed, to its feet.

Throughout the show, pop and cultural references were rife. Inserted, for instance, were often-snarky mentions of Rachel Maddow, Frida Kahlo, Simon Cowell, Susan Boyle, Dick Cheney and George Clooney.

Throwaway lines rocketed in every direction.

Like an old Henny Youngman routine, if you didn’t laugh at this gag, that phrase, or any specific alliteration or allusion, there’d be another along in a second.

Some were groaners.

Such as: “Van Gogh didn’t have an ear for music.”

After the two-hour show, which featured smatterings of audience participation, came a bonus: Deborah Doyle, president of the California Library Association, moderated a question-and-answer verbal roundelay featuring Kinsey input, serious and not.

The uproarious but thoughtful quartet has appeared in Las Vegas, off-Broadway and in 42 states — and they’ve put out two DVDs and eight CDs.

But the more I think about it, the more I realize that in keeping with their clever, dense-and-dirty delivery, the four drag queens would probably rejoice in my indicating that they’d put out at all.

A 20-year retrospective about the Kinsey Sicks will be displayed at the James C. Hormel Gay & Lesbian Center of the San Francisco Public Library, 100 Larkin St., third floor, from Feb. 8 through July 10. For information on upcoming appearances of the group, check out www.kinseysicks.com or call (415) 326-4679.

Dave Getz and I were relaxing on a stone bench outside Peet’s in San Anselmo’s Red Hill Shopping Center some time ago.

My friend sported his usual: a baseball cap, a mischievous smile and twinkling hazel eyes. He was so excited chatting about his new passion that an hour and a half had zoomed by before we realize our butts ached.

To a stranger, Dave might be an anomaly.

The public face of the longtime drummer for Big Brother and the Holding Company, legendary rock ‘n’ roll group, isn’t sensitivity, introspection and judiciously selected phrases.

But they’re familiar to any who know him.

That afternoon, however, his words reverberated with passion, like quivering cymbals. He was talking about premiering his original melodies instead of replicating those popularized by Janis Joplin.

And he did it, following through with a Global Recording Artists album titled “Can’t Be the Only One” — which also happens to be the name of its lead track, which features Dave’s music and previously unheard lyrics by Joplin.

The CD’s available at WWW.gragroup.com and www.cdbaby.com.

Not so long ago, over lunch on the deck of a Thai restaurant in Larkspur, I listened one more once — to a new jump-start of excitement. Dave again sported a baseball cap, a mischievous smile and twinkling hazel eyes.

The “consummate sideman,” as the Fairfax resident has called himself, had been thinking about a fresh CD — featuring the balafon, a West African instrument that looks like a xylophone made of gourds but plays an uncommon five-note pentatonic scale.

“No one has an album that’ll sound like this!” he exclaimed, his words once again reverberating with passion.

In addition to some traditional African melodies, he planned — and, in fact, is still planning — updates on some antique tunes such as “Buttons and Bows,” an Oscar-winning pop song that appeared in a Bob Hope film of the ‘40s, “The Paleface,”

Dave has long possessed the instrument, but it just as long was relegated to his home — until he showcased it at a Fairfax Library opening of an exhibit featuring the montages of, yes, Dave Getz, fine artist.

Since then, his schedule continually has been overcrowded with gigs, so he had to delay the CD.

Release date: Still undetermined, despite several tracks having been completed.

When it finally comes out, listeners can expect a revelation.

Not unlike the revelation they experienced with “Can’t Be the Only One,” which, just as he had imagined it, became a “progressive, world mix — a little jazz, a little rock, elements of African, some funk.”

All “rhythm-driven.”

I’d chuckled when he’d first used that phrase. What else could anyone expect from the drum guy?

As the sun had bounced off Dave’s white hair and white van dyke back then, I could almost feel his mind racing, hurdling all the simultaneous details required to arrange rehearsals, dodge financial perils and draw an in-person crowd for the debut of The Dave Getz Breakaway.

He had grinned broadly as he told me about the players, who turned out to include Tom Finch on guitar; Peter Penhallow on keyboards; Kate Russo on violin; Chris Collins on guitar; John Evans and Peter Albin on bass; and James Gurley on guitar.

Dave, naturally, was the drummer.

The new group’s lead singer was Kathi MacDonald, a blues diva who died a short time later.

I’d been attentive as Dave painted word-pictures, reeling off the multiple bands his musicians had played in, how he’d jammed and toured with them. He radiated while reminiscing about Mika Scott and him performing, as a duo for five years, “a lot of exotic percussion material.”

But he admittedly was skittish about segueing into bandleader and producer.

“All of a sudden,” he said, “I’m doing the calling, the hiring — in the past, I’ve always been called.”

Obviously, everything worked — after having dreamed “for 10 or 15 years” about cutting loose like that and creating a fresh “vehicle for expression.”

Nowadays, most of his gigs lean heavily on jazz. Upcoming dates include Jan. 18, when his trio will play for the annual 6-9 p.m. “Art from the Heart” auction at the Sonoma State University art gallery; Jan. 19, when his jazz quartet will be playing at the Sleeping Lady in Fairfax from 6:30 to 10; and Feb. 10, when the jazz trio will be at the Panama Hotel in San Rafael.

Being the main man has been a huge shift.

Dave had worked as a sideman himself for five decades, having others (such as Joe McDonald of Country Joe and the Fish, with whom he did two extended tours) “tell me what to do.”

He’d also worked solo — as a painter (after having earned a master of fine arts degree and won a Fulbright), despite unfounded fears that his red-green colorblindness would be discovered.

To be honest, it had felt odd watching his bandleader gland throb; I was used to him being mellow.

I was used to him gabbing breezily about yesterday (including getting his first musician’s card more than 50 years ago, at age 15), not tomorrow.

The stickman’s never been shy about his immersion in a historic cliché — sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. But lately he’s been cutting down on his globe hopping with Big Brother.

The road’s not so easy anymore.

And Dave — who still stays fit by climbing the 88 steps of his Ross Valley home (the same number as piano keys, which he also noodles with) — is always the realist. He accepts, in fact, that he’s “known as a ’60s rock musician and my epitaph will be ‘The drummer who played with Janis Joplin.’”

He also accepts that after all those rock gigs, his hearing isn’t what it used to be.

Dave also knows, though, that he still “can play a lot of styles and cover a lot of people.”

And, clearly, more than one instrument.

  Woody’s [rating:5]

Passion.

Museums have been arousing that sensation in me for seven decades — ever since my mom took me to Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art when I was a gangling suburban kid who knew nearly nothing about anything except how to climb a tree barefoot.

Since then, I’ve eagerly visited museums in dozens of countries, almost always having a top-notch experience.

With my shoes on.

So read what follows knowing that “normal” for me is to wear rose-colored glasses.

But understand, too, that the three exhibits I saw recently at the two Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco would deserve high praise even if I weren’t such an enthusiast. Each provides an opportunity to cavort momentarily inside a painter’s mind, to glimpse his vision from the inside.

Most riveting for me, and edifying, is the “Anders Zorn: Sweden’s Master Painter” display at the Legion of Honor. Most likely because what I’d known about him before could have fit into Thumbelina’s pocket.

Zorn’s watercolor portraits are exquisite, even if they don’t match the genre’s highest echelon.

At first glance they may appear to be detailed yet delicate airbrushed photographs instead of multiple layered paintings. One good example is “In Mourning,” a graceful, pensive 1880 oval creation.

Superb, too, are his land- and waterscapes — showing off his fixation on reflected light. Witness, specifically, 1887’s “Lapping Waves” and 1886’s “Summer Vacation.”

Zorn’s etchings (he produced close to 300 of them) also captivate.

But they’re more vigorous, more dramatic.

His gouache work, meanwhile, is unbelievably powerful — even “Une Premiere (A First),” an 1888-94 work he modified and modified yet still hated enough to cut into pieces (it was restored by an artist friend, who donated it to a museum).

And although Zorn’s oils don’t reach the artistic heights of either his watercolors or etchings, they’re still compelling.

I found particularly intriguing “Omnibus,” an 1891-92 work that delves into the working class by focusing on a milliner, as well as the 1896 entranceway painting, “Self-Portrait with Model,” which experiments with light and shadow.

“Self-Portrait in Red” (1915), in contrast, is a blindingly bright work in which the color of the artist’s coat and vest are so strong they distract from Zorn’s stern, mustachioed face.

The artist lived and worked in Mora, Sweden; London; Paris. He visited San Francisco in the winter of 1903-04 on one of seven trips to the United States. And luxuriated in commissions of society’s elite (and painted portraits of three American presidents).

His oil of President Grover Cleveland, in fact, is one of the 100 pieces (that include a handful of sculptures) in the Legion’s exhibit.

He alone is a discovery emphatically worth a trip into the city.

But, as a bonus, right next to that exhibit in a single room is “Matisse from SFMOMA,” a display of 23 paintings, sculptures and works on paper by the Impressionist color virtuoso — plus six pieces not owned by the modern art institution.

Among the highlights are “The Girl with Green Eyes” (a 1908 oil) and 1916 commissioned portraits of Sarah and Michael Stein, brother and sister-in-law of Oakland’s legendary writer-poet-art collector Gertrude Stein.

The Stein portraits certainly prove there was a there there for Bay Area art patrons.

Why the Legion?

MOMA’s undergoing an extensive expansion and will be closed during construction until 2016. So the facility’s doing joint exhibits with virtually every area museum.

Across town at the de Young, “David Hockney: A Bigger Exhibition,” continues to draw both aficionados and new fans.

Why? Because the 300-piece exhibit is astounding — clearly showing the 76-year-old Brit’s development from 2002 through last year, including his integrating iPhone, iPad and digital movie techniques to create new art forms.

Despite his having a major stroke.

The audio guide, in fact, tells of his turning the resultant speech problems into a boon: By not talking much, he concentrates better.

But there’s too much to even sum up in a review. Oils. Watercolors. Charcoals.

Portraits. Still lifes.  Landscapes.

Homages to and parodies of van Gogh and Picasso.

And it doesn’t take long to discover the “bigger” in the title is fitting (at 18,000 square feet of gallery space on two floors, it’s the largest in the museum’s history).

Size appreciation can stem from viewing a Hockney “Cubist movie” that took 18 different perspectives from 18 digital cameras and synchronized them to comprise a single artwork on 18 screens.

Or from many of the artworks being colossal — including a fascinating strip of 12 portraits with 12 paintings beneath them of the subjects’ hands, an enormous montage of prints tracing art history from 1200 to 1900, colorful 12-foot-high images of Yosemite, and “The Bigger Message,” a 30-canvas re-working of Claude Lorrain’s “The Sermon on the Mount.”

One six-year-old boy visiting with his San Francisco Day School class exclaimed, “Wow! Those are biiig pictures.”I may be three feet taller than he, and about 150 pounds heavier, but I agreed — big time.

“Anders Zorn: Sweden’s Master Painter” will be displayed at the Legion of Honor, Lincoln Park (34th Avenue and Clement Street), San Francisco, through Feb. 2. “Matisse from SFMOMA” will run there through Sept. 7. “David Hockney: A Bigger Exhibition” will be up through Jan. 20 at the de Young, Golden Gate Park (50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive), San Francisco. Details: (415) 750-3600 or legionofhonor.famsf.org  or deyoungmuseum.org

 

If you believe my wife, Ron Ratchford’s middle name should be “Raconteur.”

Or “Boulevardier.”

Or, if all else fails, “Bon Vivant.”

My, my, she certainly has a penchant for French appellations, doesn’t she?

Yet each works.

A raconteur skillfully tells the best stories and anecdotes, sometimes dramatic, other times witty.

Ron’s that, for sure.For two hours one weekday, he regales me on a favorite bench in front of San Anselmo’s Town Hall (another is nearby on the edge of the new Imagination Park) — with stories purloined from his past.

A boulevardier is a sophisticated, worldly, socially active “man-about-town.”

When I spot Ron strolling through a recent art and wine festival, he pauses to chat about what he encountered.

A boulevardier? Surely.

A bon vivant is somebody with cultivated, refined and convivial tastes.

Ron’s that, too, though I can’t swear to his palate for fine wine or gourmet food. And as far as conformity goes, I know he eschews wristwatch, cell phone and landline.

All the years he worked, “usually just to pay the rent,” he felt intruded upon, controlled by such gadgets.

He was a teacher in Appalachia, a buyer for a microbiology company, a social worker, a cook, a mailroom clerk, a waiter and a designer-stitcher for an art group.

“I used to be a scheduler, overburdened by the limits of time,” he remembers.

So, after his last job, he tossed his wristwatch into the ocean.

He feels freer without the devices.

The San Anselmo renter has succumbed to the computer age, however, and is having a love affair with his machine despite it weaning him from legal pad and pen.

On this particular day he wears chinos, a straw hat, sandals, gold-rimmed eyeglasses and a T-shirt featuring his own pattern (“Most of my designs,” he tells me puckishly, “start with stains. I think this one was chocolate”).

He’s obviously more interested in being comfy than being Beau Brummell.

And he’s adamant about nixing fixing a chipped tooth that’s been conspicuous for more than a decade.

He’s also into multi-tasking, steadily knitting (a top pastime) while fielding my questions.

The seventysomething bachelor with a white van dyke dating to the 1960s chuckles a lot. My stories amuse him. So do his.

He playfully skips from this topic to that. “I’m never sequential,” he explains.

One second he talks about toiling as a child-caddy on a golf course and gardener in a cemetery, the next he tells me of Army duty, the moment after that he jabbers about being a financial theatrical consultant.

As befitting a retired gentleman, he’s volunteered with Marin Literacy, teaching adults how to speak and write English.

And he’s tutored at the local library for years — unexpectedly, perhaps, in “Introduction to Computers.”

Admittedly, Ron doesn’t charm everyone. Several in the library’s book-reading group that he attended for years claim — to his face — he hijacked many of the monthly discussions, leaving insufficient time for others.

A voracious reader, he countered that too many believe they, and only they, have the right interpretation” of whatever book is being read.

His favorite activities also include leisure with “coffee-shop friends and old friends from the old days, by email mostly” — and writing at home.

He’s been working for years on his book, “historical fiction, character-driven rather than plot-driven social criticism about passing the status quo from one generation to the next.”

He also keeps a journal/blog consisting of “expanded ideas,” such as musicals based on Flash Gordon or Anne Frank.

Details are, for the most part, secret.

“When people find out I write,” he says, “they start giving me potential plots, plots that usually reveal something about themselves.”

Ron also walks a lot, sometimes twice daily, from downtown to the Seminary and back, and occasionally to Fairfax or San Rafael. He prefers shoe-leather to cars, which “damage the Earth.”

He’s opinionated on everything except TV shows (he doesn’t own a set).

To wit: “There are a lot of people in this area who could be in a book, people who went through the ‘6os but are now the soberest people in town.”

On the other hand, “we have a glut of people here who substitute a nanny for themselves. That’s not good.”

Ron Raconteur Bon Vivant Boulevardier Ratchford —owl- and bird-lover, San Anselmo ambassador without portfolio.

I relish running into this man for all seasons and all seasonings and what my grandmother would have called his “gift of gab.”

To turn an infamous Sally Field quote on its head, I like him, I really like him.

Chipped tooth and all.

 Woody’s [rating:4.5]

The decibel count in Davies Symphony Hall grew as fast as a Miley Cyrus stunt going viral on the Net.

Hundreds of kids squealed in unison — and glee — as actor John Lithgow interactively drew big pictures of animals and narrated Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” and a musical composition he co-wrote, “The Bandshell Right Next to the Zoo.”

The former piece rewove the original tale into a politically correct saga: The hunters don’t shoot the wolf dead but participate, instead, in a buoyant procession to the zoo.

And the duck that the wolf swallowed lives “rent-free” and warm in its belly, with plenty to eat.

Not quite what I experienced.

“Peter,” my introduction to symphonic music as a four-year-old, scared me.

But the narration was softened years later when I took my son and daughter. And this go-round of an event that pops up annually — with my six-year-old granddaughter in tow — was by far the easiest for innocent children to handle.

“Bandshell, ” which references (besides the usual monkeys, tigers and such) the likes of yaks, jackals and ferrets, is an especially interesting piece for kids — because it features a healthy but brief dose of dissonance, which Lithgow described as what might happen if “a bunch of animals [tried] to play music.”

The musicians seemed to enjoy thoroughly the musical ruckus they were creating. Many of them smiled broadly.

They also appeared to relish — along with a matinee crowd that collectively copied his rhythmic clapping — the headliner’s remaining on stage during Johann Strauss’ “Radetzky” march.

Kids and adults alike consistently focused their attention on Lithgow, who besides being a living cliché (“star of stage, screen and television”) is an award-winning author of nine children’s picture books and a memoir.

San Francisco’s Davies Hall was jam-packed for the event, with at least half the attendees well under four feet tall.

A bunch, indeed, may not have reached their third birthday.

Most youngsters remained motionless, their eyes and ears glued to every note by — and every musician in — the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra.

More than a few, possibly fledgling music students, were fingering air-horns, air-clarinets or air-flutes.

A handful, not spellbound by the proceedings on the stage, were staring at the ultra-high ceiling, jabbering, fidgeting, curling up in a ball or climbing over the backs of their seats.

Nobody wrestled a sibling, though.

The 75-minute performance began with five excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s classic ballet, “The Nutcracker Suite” (with Donato Cabrera, who’s been the youth orchestra’s music director since 2009, pointing out passages underscored by celesta, harp and flute).

And the show ended with three sing-along chestnuts including “Jingle Bells” and “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

The 108-piece orchestra, which began three decades ago, currently features well-rehearsed musicians between the ages of 12 and 21 — every one excellent (if any of them flubbed anything during the holiday concert, I missed it).

Parents and grandparents of the young concertgoers, as well as the numerous relatives of instrumentalists, delighted in the presentation.

And in their charges’ delight.

Looking for other family-oriented events? Cabrera will lead the adult symphony in 2 p.m., 90-minute concerts (including intermission) on Jan. 25 (“Music Here, There, Everywhere!”) and May 3 (“Musical Postcards!”). Both are intended for youngsters seven or older.For families wanting to learn about music, the symphony also provides a website — SFSKids.org.

It’s a cool way to encourage navigating the learning curve.

Most San Francisco Symphony concerts take place at Davies Hall, Grove Street (between Van Ness and Franklin), San Francisco. Information: (415) 864-6400 or www.sfsymphony.org.

It’s a paradox.

Alan Babbitt doesn’t see well. But his vision is sharper than most.

The sixtysomething Fairfax resident is succinct: “I was born with a whole bunch of eye problems, so I was wearing thick glasses from the age of 2 or 3. There’s no question — without contacts, I’d be legally blind.”But he refused to let the impairment get in his way.

It certainly didn’t block his becoming a successful film and video producer, webmaster or award-winning photographer.

Babbitt’s online site clearly shows his skill. One portfolio spotlights the Santa Cruz boardwalk on a winter’s day. Another contains dramatic, artsy New York City street scenes. A third focuses on lighthearted images.

Showcased are unusual angles and perspectives, brilliant colors and poignant black-and-white shots.Babbitt’s originality makes the scenically difficult look easy to capture. And he loves peppering his explanatory text with dubious puns and any remnants of humor that happen to be lying around.

He confesses, for example, that he once “joined a therapy group for photo addicts based on the ‘12-Stop program.’”

Ten years ago, though, Parkinson’s Disease invaded his life “like a loud, uninvited house guest who won’t ever leave.”

The physical shaking made him totally reexamine his life — and shelf his camera for a while.

Not that long ago he and I sat in a quiet Thai restaurant in San Anselmo enjoying the sunshine streaming through the windows. He smiled, almost mischievously, like a kid about to let me in on a gigantic secret.

“Parkinson’s adds to my vision,” he said. “Recognizing I could use the tremor freed me up like nothing else.”

I needed no follow-up question; he was on a roll.

“The disease is about losing control. Finding I could use it was empowering.

“When you first learn photography, they tell you over and over about crispness, about keeping the camera steady with a tripod. One evening in Las Vegas, where I was alone with a digital camera, I just started shooting. I was able to see right away what I got. Blurs. Streaks.

“And then people started reacting to it, liking it.”

So that became his style for some time — “tremor-enhanced photography.”

His web site — www.abproductions.com — contains portfolios dedicated to that innovative technique, “Movement Disorder” and “Shake Me Out to the Ball Game,” for example.

Babbitt grinned as he chatted about “crossing the border” and journeying to metaphoric “other lands” through his camera lens — speeding past his disability: “The tremor is only one kind of movement. I can shoot from a moving car, and move the camera around as well. It’s sort of what I call ‘un-still photography.’”

He, too, is very much un-still.

Babbitt’s taught at the de Young Museum Art School in San Francisco, exhibited at galleries and studios in the city and Marin, held shows at the Richmond Library, Half Moon Bay and Washington state.

His photos sold out at a December exhibit/silent auction/fundraiser in Santa Monica for the Greater Los Angeles chapter of the American Parkinson’s Disease Association.

In Marin, he’s part of a group show, “Artisans!” — that will continue, after a holiday break, from Jan. 2 through March 8 at the Falkirk Cultural Center, 1408 Mission Ave. (at E St.), San Rafael. Works from his new “Photo Blendo series” that fuses “symmetry, synthesis and serendipity” also can be viewed on the walls of San Rafael’s Miracle Mile Café, 2130 4th St., through the end of January.A while ago Babbitt participated in an Art for Recovery program in San Francisco featuring readings from letters exchanged by patients and medical students.

“One of the gratifying things is that people have seen the work and been inspired by what I’m doing,” he tells me. “It feels good getting those e-mails and letters.

“Some of them have been from photographers.

“And a 12-year-old girl wrote me and asked to use me as the basis of a school report. That’s the kind of thing that inspires me to do more.”

Still, it can feel pretty heavy — until you fully grasp the positive attitude that springs from the bearded, gray-haired guy with brown eyes that frequently display a twinkle:

There’s no doubt Babbitt cultivates his tendency to be upbeat, his affinity for the amusing.

“Soon after I got the diagnosis,” he recalled, “I thought of occupations that would be possible by using tremors: egg-scrambler, paint can-shaker, human vibrator. Sure, having Parkinson’s can be depressing, but humor can help fight that.”

His occasionally dark humor is quickly evident online, sprinkled be

tween his straightforward photos and experimental tremor shots that highlight bright streaks and patches, rings and blotches of light, geometric shapes.Spoofing a Viagra ad, he warns that “if feelings of giddiness…persist for more than four hours, just turn on the news for a few minutes.”

Want to witness what he labels “titters, snickers and snorts”? Or, more to the point, want to be visually impressed? Check out his work and see for yourself.

 

I’m ignorant about oh, so many things.

So it amazed me that I wanted to interview Joseph Zaccardi, Fairfax resident and Marin’s poet laureate.

Joe’s scarcely the only poet in Fairfax. There’s also Kay Ryan, Pulitzer  Prize-winner and U.S. poet laureate whom Barack Obama just handed a major medal (along with filmmaker George Lucas, a San Anselmo resident).

Can I deduce poetry’s as popular hereabouts as Indiana Jones and Yoda (who are standing tall  — and short — in San Anselmo’s Imagination Park)?

No way.But down-to-earth Joe Zaccardi could become the antidote for anti-poets.

His tips: “Don’t be afraid of poetry. You have to cultivate a taste for it. Read widely. Try writing free verse — you’ll surprise yourself. You’ll find yourself writing about love, or the death of someone. You’ll remember something someone said. Or you might ask yourself a question, really off the wall, like, ‘I wonder if they ever fried insects.’”

Of his work, the 65-year-old notes, “Every once in a while my sense of humor slips into my poetry and I leave it there. But I’m usually serious.”

He cites as a solemn for-instance, “Arroyo’s Soul,” which emphasizes subject matter “that’s really quite deep — about our not believing in anything anymore.”

Joe’s background isn’t riddled, however, with the snooty posturing sometimes attributed to writers.For much of his life, after apprenticing as a butcher, he functioned as “a barber, not a stylist, and I used to tell people I do one style — it’ll be shorter.”

He hung up scissors and combs in 2003.

Retirement means he now can take whatever time is necessary, rather than jotting down a word or two between clients. First drafts average 30 to 40 minutes. “Of every 10 of those, I only continue one or two” — and then his editing process “can be another month.”

He’s published 240 poems so far but is “sure I’ve written 1,000.”

“Written” is precise.Although he utilizes a computer for other tasks, he creates poems in longhand, in a notebook, in pen.

Joe gets $5,000 for his two-year stint as poet laureate, barely enough to buy writing materials. But the meager honorarium isn’t the point: The position enables him not only to promote poetry but use the bully pulpit to stage a panel discussion on “bullying and bystanders.”

He remembers being 13.

“A fat kid was picked on at lunch every day. One day six guys were doing it. I’m not brave, but I stepped in front of him and said, ‘Hit me instead.’ The leader said, ‘Let’s leave them alone.’ And I realized one person could make a difference.”

Also as a teenager, Joe — who last month married his longtime partner, Dave Eng — recognized he was gay.A teacher concurrently spurred his interest in poetry through William Carlos Williams, a New Jersey native like Joe, and advised him not to worry about punctuation marks or rhymes.

At 25, though, he started punctuating. “Now I love it,” he says, “especially semi-colons.”

Today he’s drawn to Jane Hirshfield of Mill Valley, Pablo Neruda, Gerald Stern “and lots of Chinese poets.” Earlier favorites? Shakespeare, Chaucer and Allen Ginsberg.

Ginsberg, in fact, had hit on him.“I was in my 20s and I met him. He bought me a Heineken’s beer, put his hand on my leg and said, ‘You have very nice thighs,’ and I said, ‘The thigh’s the limit.’”

Joe laughs at both pun and memory.

The skinny, six-foot poet’s totally animated when speaking. His hands perpetually move, and he occasionally jabs a finger at something invisible. Off and on go his wire-rimmed eyeglasses.

His soulful eyes remind me of actor Steve Buscemi’s.

“They used to be brown, but now they look gray, really strange,” Joe says, not

ing that as a schoolboy he asked a nun what color Jesus’ eyes were. “The color of yours, I’m sure,” she replied.Since the early ‘80s, he’s been hanging out at the Marin Poetry Center in San Rafael, which “puts on monthly sessions with visiting poets, an open mic once a month, and a wonderful thing called the Summer Traveling Show, which sponsors about 125 readings in various venues.”

He likes reading aloud: “You can feel an audience when you read a poem.”

When, at his request, I audibly read one — about his father, from his anthology “Render” — I’m overwhelmed by its power.

And I understand why Zaccardi’s a very special Joe, not an ordinary one.