Woody Weingarten

Sterling Johnson blows bubbles on White House lawn.

Salvi Durango and guitar. Photo: Tim Bonnici.

Tylor Norwood (left) and Dylan Hurley check monitor on Robson-Harrington shoot.

Students concentrate at Michael Feldman’s art camp in Creek Park.

An escapee from San Quentin, an obsessive-compulsive San Anselmo writer and a tipsy five-legged giraffe strut into a bar.

There’s no joke there, no punchline.

I just wanted your attention.

I was afraid if I told you this column’s about creative two-legged critters encountered in Ross Valley parks, you might stop reading.

Please don’t.

Those folks are almost as compelling as the above trio.

Let’s try it this way: A filmmaker, a singing cowboy and a guy who plays second fiddle to his own bubbles operate fruitfully in local parks.

Why?

Because the parks, and their tranquility, spur creativity.

Tylor Norwood’s a San Anselmo resident I met in Robson-Harrington. He was directing two actors under a white canopy.

One actress exclaiming “my vagina” hooked me even before I spied the surrounding equipment.

Only later did I learn he was polishing a comedic scene for his new full-length feature. Tylor also swims in deeply creative TV waters: The BBC and HBO are commercial clients for his SkyDojo production company.

The 2007 San Francisco State film school grad subsequently informed me about the technological revolution, life on the road (“always hectic, so it’s a comfort to come back here”), and a crew in West Marin attacked by yellow jackets (causing eight adults to run “screaming into this little farmhouse to hide”).

No one fled during the re-shoot.

Sterling Johnson, 67, has been toying with bubbles since discovering them during a high-school science project. Nowadays he can be found with them in Fairfax’s Bolinas Park, near his home.

“It’s a great way to connect with people,” he said.

He’s good enough to make a living with his inventiveness, at least part-time. He’s even been asked to perform twice in Tokyo and once at the White House.

Heady stuff.

But more touching for him was the day “an autistic girl blew bubbles at a Formica-topped table I was working at and just lit up.”

Salvi Durango is a longhaired, white-bearded ex-Sleepy Hollow resident recently encountered in Bolinas Park while writing “Old Singing Cowboys Never Die.”

It’s well constructed, easy on the ears.

Salvi told me he’s been penning songs 33 years, and “playing in small bars and taverns all along the West Coast.”

He’s been name-dropping that long, too — with good reason: He’s been befriended by Willie Nelson (who backs him on a patriotic YouTube ditty, “Bankin’ on the Red, White and Blue”), Johnny Cash, Pete Seeger, Merle Haggard and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott.

He remembers chatting on a San Francisco street with John Lennon, who autographed his birth certificate, the only paper Salvi had on him.

He never sought fame but “never gave up on my dream — just singing for people, like I did for you in the park.”

Michael Feldman, who traded in ad-agency billing pads for a diminutive San Anselmo gallery, uses park benches and tables in Creek Park to facilitate his art camp students spreading their materials and smiles.

He encourages them to “explore different mediums and feel good about themselves through art, rather than copying the masters or doing what teachers demand.”

His prime hope? “That some of these kids will use art in their lives forever.”

Daniel Ezell also utilizes Creek Park’s facilities for classes — for Golden Gate Tutoring Center, which the San Anselmo resident founded with his wife, Celeste. They accentuate geometry, comic art and inventions.

“I get the greatest pleasure from instilling a curiosity in my students,” he told me.

Several weeks ago, for instance, students made an old-style diddly guitar from scratch. Result?  ”A lot of noisy music, a lot of fun.”

Michael Grossman lives in San Rafael but also has started to create music in Creek Park.

A professional classical violinist, he began writing pop songs on guitar “as a catharsis, a result of my wife dying.” He’s completed five so far, and declares he will “share my work in any way that’s share-able.”

He sees “the public park as a sanctuary right down the middle of town.”

I concur.

And the range of park creativity has inspired me to ponder where I put one word after another.

I normally create at a cluttered desk at home. Maybe I’ll venture out, park myself in a park and craft a column in the sunlight.

Woody Weingarten

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Woody’s [rating:2.5] 

Jeremy Kahn and Rinabeth Apostol are counterpoints as Bill Gates and Luz Ruiz in “First.” Photo: Kent Taylor.

“First” is a fictional glimpse into the future of today from the yesterday of 1976.

It’s an episodic feast of words and ideas — for geeks, freaks, nerds and eggheads. Or recovering or aging geeks, freaks, nerds and eggheads.For others not obsessed with computers, not so much.

Count me in the latter list.

Why? Because the 105-minute play’s excessively crammed with factoids and history and real icons of the computer and software universe that may make delicious provender for techies but overpower folks like me.

I remember having a friend in the early ‘80s who swore by The Well, a social networking site where co-owner and “First” playwright Evelyn Jean Pine first experienced this ‘n’ that.

My gal-pal constantly regaled me with stories of bulletin boards and other now-obsolete niceties — niceties I couldn’t grok (or sometimes even pronounce properly).

I remember that she’d tell me of the hours and hours she’d spent on this game or that, on locating this obscure piece of trivia or that.

And I recall endlessly discussing such nonsense like whether online should be spelled on-line or OnLine instead.

Mostly, I couldn’t get excited. Then.

But I got hooked on the software and hardware like everyone else (just as Bill Gates and his Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen, and a handful of other technology prophets had predicted).

“First,” which was commissioned and developed by PlayGround and which will play in the tiny Theatre Werx space through Nov. 3, details the origins of the digital revolution.

With drama. And humor.Exactly how much is accurate, how much exaggerated, I can’t say.

But I can say that it’s interesting.

And entertaining.

And amusing.

And that all six actors are competent at worst, excellent at best. The latter category includes Jeremy Kahn as a 20-year-old Gates, a mono-focused, egocentric boy wonder, and Rinabeth Apostol as Luz Ruiz, ex-pot dealer waitress.

Ruiz, the only grounded character, acts as a significant counterpoint to the head-in-the-clouds, persona non grata Gates.Instead of perceiving him as a future-seeking marvel, she sees him as “the kid doing wheelies in the parking lot this morning.”

She speaks in English, he in gobbledygook.

Except for a telling moment when he seriously advises her, “People let you do anything — if you push hard enough.”

The catch-all scene is the first personal computer conference.

There, Gates, a Harvard absentee, faces Ed Roberts (David Cramer) — a real-life guy who manufactured the first commercially successful PC kit, the $397 Altair.

He faces, too, a horde of customers irate because he’s demanding they stop sharing software.

Gates reads hate mail; the throng he perceives is “robbing him blind” boos; and Roberts (“I didn’t know I was inventing the future”) futilely urges him to apologize to the crowd.

Michael French directed this world premiere, and does well for the most part.

He does stumble into opaqueness a couple of times, however — when staging a game of keep-away with a Basic code disc, for example, and when IBM marketer Kevin Panik (Tim Green) does an awkward striptease.It’s also problematic trying to define a flighty character, Georgia Potts (Brandice Marie Thompson), self-taught programmer and computer addict who’s drawn to Valentine Smith (Gregory W. Knotts), visionary-dreamer-philosopher who renamed himself for a character in a sci-fi novel, “Stranger in a Strange Land,” a title that doubles as a “First” theme.

Without the humor or the Ruiz character, this would be a mediocre portrait but plot-less play. With them, it’s notable.

The real Gates might be pleased with his visage here, but he most likely hates that his love-child company may be following the path of IBM into irrelevancy.

And he’d definitely despise that I’m writing this review on an iMac.

“First” runs at Stage Werx, 446 Valencia St., between 15th and Sparrow streets, San Francisco, through Nov. 3. Night performances, 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays; matinees, 2 p.m. Sundays. Tickets: $25 to $35. Information: (415) 992-6677 or www.playground-sf.org.

Woody Weingarten

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Woody’s [rating:5] 

Geoff Hoyle wields invisible cigarette in “Geezer.” Photo: Patti Meyer.

Geoff Hoyle portrayed Mr. Sniff in the Pickle Family Circus in San Francisco, Zazu in The Lion Kingon Broadway, and a bevy of other characters I’ve cherished.

Now he’s portraying Geoff Hoyle.At least a carnival-mirror version of him (and his anxieties about death lingering in the wings).

His autobiographical solo show, Geezer, is again entrenched at The Marsh, an intimate San Francisco theater. In it, he combines mime, vaudeville, English music hall comedy — and transforms into a rubber-faced, rubber-bodied, one-man sound machine.

His lithe movements and physical one-liners are masterfully choreographed.

I smiled. I chuckled. I laughed out loud.

Clad in dark slacks and a red shirt, Hoyle friskily pulls elongated invisible hairs from his ear, nostril and chest before playing “Disease: The Video Game,” which becomes an organ recital that includes varicose veins, an enlarged prostate, gingivitis, degenerating spinal discs, diminishing eyesight, osteoporosis, arthritis and dementia.

But, believe it or don’t, he morphs all that into hilarity — even when proclaiming, “Warning: Your warranty expires in 90 days.”

“Is it death we fear,” he eventually ponders, “or just decline?”

But Hoyle’s body is so agile that he belies his 67 years — except for those moments when he whips out a hanky and wipes his sweaty brow and face. His mental agility lets him turn on a dime from skillful comedy to pathos-packed explorations of serious topics such as mortality.

And the death of his English typesetter father at age 60.

Hoyle, in fact, offers a breathholding moment in which one of his hands becomes his father’s, the other his own. The resultant clasp and bonding are pure poignancy.

His more comic instant personality transplants take the form of a blonde bombshell Latin teacher, an aging Minotaur yanked from Greek mythology, a squirrel in a school play, a metaphorical sparrow, and a whimsical glimpse at unrealized characters from a London sitcom and “Masterpiece Theater.”

The showstopper for me, though, was his interpretation of his belly becoming cat-like. My laughter, my wife’s and the crowd’s shook the rafters and then some. Printed words are inadequate to do justice to the sequence; a video might, however, since you then could see and appreciate it.

Hoyle, who studied in Paris with Marcel Marceau’s teacher, Étienne Decroux, also can make an audience squirm — as when he shows his own discomfort during a visit from his adult kids.

“Sit down,” he tells them, “so I can embarrass myself in front of you.”

Also a bit too close for comfort for geezers such as me is his railing against nursing homes. He focuses on the fictitious “Elderado, the elder commune,” drawing huge laughs along the way from a couple of antique jokes.

To wit: “Last night my wife asked me to go upstairs and make love. I said I didn’t know if I could do both.”

This 90-minute show is a re-run of one that debuted at The Marsh in San Francisco in March 2011. It’s still directed by David Ford, who also helped Brian Copeland and Charlie Varon develop their performance art.

But Hoyle is unique.

He can transform a wooden chair — believably — into the prow of a torpedo-endangered ship caught in a storm, a hospital bed and a walker.

Although he was born in Britain, he’s spent most of his life in America — emboldened by two years working with Ed, “the fourth of my artistic fathers” and a short tenure at a commune in the Ozark Mountains.

All his experiences appear to be fodder for his imagination. Boxing and stroking his shadow, for example.

But he covers each post-birth stage of life, his elastic face capturing each phase flawlessly.

Hoyle, who often makes invisible cigarettes real with his expert mime work, infrequently breaks the fourth theatrical wall and interacts with the audience. On one occasion, he asked my wife to tickle him. She was flummoxed, not knowing if he really meant for her to do it. He then mugged derision, which brought yet another laugh from the audience.

His tour de force — which deserves the standing ovation it draws — is often like attending a master class in mime and minimalism.

What Hoyle evokes is so strong that several people could found doubled over at any given point, and the convulsions of a few more turned their glee into pig-like snorts.

The show should be a must for anyone who cares about the aging process, most certainly any man or woman who’s noticed that first wrinkle.

Geoff Hoyle’s “Geezer” plays at The Marsh, 1062 Valencia St. (at 22nd), San Francisco, through Oct. 26. Performances: 8 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, 5 p.m. Saturdays. Tickets: $25 to $50, (415) 282-3055 or (415) 826-5750 or www.themarsh.org.

Woody Weingarten

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Woody’s [rating:5] 

Mark Junek does reverse striptease in the role of Spike as (from left) Anthony Fusco (Vanya), Caroline Kaplan (Nina), and Lorri Holt (Masha) watch in “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.” Photo courtesy kevinberne.com.

A lot more than once.

No, I didn’t wet myself. But it was a close call during the Berkeley Rep production of the comedy that won this year’s Tony Award as best play.

The Big Apple run starred Sigourney Weaver and David Hyde Pierce. I can visualize their performances as two of the three title siblings named after Chekhov characters.

But director Richard E.T. White conducts his ensemble of actors as if it were a jazz sextet, staging one solo riff after another to extract loud laughter from the audience as easily as a teenager might Google just about anything.Witness, for instance, the brilliance of Mark Junek’s physical antics when his character, the twentysomething boy-toy Spike, does a reverse strip tease.

Or Sharon Lockwood’s breakout as Sonia, imitating Maggie Smith emoting in a screechy British voice on the way to the Oscars (while prancing in a tiara and blue gown on which no more sequins would fit).

Or Heather Alicia Simms’ star turn as Cassandra, a voodoo pi

n-pricking prognosticator, or Anthony Fusco’s Old World passivity as the bearded Vanya.Nor should the other performers be ignored. Both are top drawer, Lorri Holt as narcissistic B-movie star Masha (“I just feel old and vulnerable”) and Caroline Kaplan as wannabe actress Nina, who’s attracted to Spike (“He is so attractive — except for his personality, of course”).

Playwright Christopher Durang’s wit and cleverness can be as swift-paced as a Louis C.K. standup routine, and as omnipresent as his allusions to Shakespeare, the Beatles and Disney’s seven dwarfs.

Durang even spoofs his own reverence for his favorite 19th Century playwright.“If everyone took anti-depressants, Chekhov would have had nothing to write about,” intones one character. “I hope you’re not going to make Chekhov references all day,” pleads another.But the seriousness that lies underneath is countered by the buffoonery that’s pervasive.

Indeed, “Vanya” is an homage, with frequent references to “Three Sisters,” “The Cherry Orchard” and “Uncle Vanya” but if you’ve never seen or read anything by Chekhov you’ll still enjoy the banter, set pieces and character development — not to mention the marvelous costuming by Debra Beaver Bauer (look particularly for the dwarfs), note-perfect sound design by Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen, and the lone set by Kent Dorsey that replicates an upscale country home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where Durang actually lives.

Durang’s characters are skillfully drawn. Sonia and Vanya feel their lives have passed them by, having spent 15 years caring for their Alzheimer’s-plagued parents.

She’s never reconciled her being adopted, and is usually sad and angry, a throwaway spinster who “can’t do anything right.” He laments his life, too, and relishes raving about the glories of yesteryear and the dreadfulness of today’s culture.

Like much of Chekhov’s work, “Vanya” emphasizes people and relationships rather than plot — with everyone working in unison to make sure the audience feels the play is much shorter than its two hours plus.

And when the characters become stagehands and move furniture between scenes, their actions appear to be seamless part of the play.Durang, who is gay, has had a history of dealing with homosexuality, Roman Catholic dogma and child abuse in his previous work (which included “Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You” and “Beyond Therapy”).This one skips the dogma and abuse.

Samuel Beckett, creator of “Waiting for Godot,” is known as the father of the Theater of the Absurd. In a sense, Durang might be considered his stepchild, romping in the same playground although his humor and personages are less abstract, more grounded, more rooted in reality.

Despite all the mugging and over-the-topness.

“Who’d you recommend this show to?” my wife asked me as we left the theater, continuing a verbal game we’ve played for years.

“Everyone,” I replied — “without hesitation.”

“Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” plays at the Berkeley Repertory’s Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St., Berkeley, through Oct. 25. Night performances, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Sundays, 7 p.m.; matinees, Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $17.50 to $89, subject to change, (510) 647-2949 or www.berkeleyrep.org.

Woody Weingarten

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Woody’s [rating:4.5] 

Hannah peeks through maze from the top. Photo: Woody Weingarten

My granddaughter owns a short attention span — except when she’s fascinated.

And then the 6-year-old, like most kids her age (or younger), insists on repeating whatever’s grabbed her, again and again and again. Her recent visit to the new Exploratorium is an unequaled for-instance.

She had nearly as much fun as horsing around with her new rescue puppy.

Hannah had been to the old science museum building in the Palace of Fine Arts multiple times, and loved it. But this time her squeals of delight were louder, her giggles more effervescent.

Repeatedly.

Once upon a time she raced from one exhibit to another, testing each for about half a second. But she was only 5 then. Or 4. Or 3 the first time we took her.

Now, she’s exponentially more mature.

Can the word “sophisticated” fit a first-grader? Yes, of course (though I grant a substantial bias in Hannah’s case).

Anyway, this time she lingered at exhibits. And tested each gain, again and again.

“Self-Centered Mirror” shows Hannah and her grandpa. Photo: Woody WeingartenAnyway, this time she lingered at exhibits. And tested each again, again and again.

She didn’t tire until the beginning of our fourth hour.

Like a white-haired roadie, I trailed her as if she were a rock star whose latest single had just gone viral. And I managed to experience much of her hands-on, trial-and-error experimentation from an analogous child’s-eye-view.

I left believing that had I looked close enough, I could have seen her mind expand.

The new Exploratorium, like the old, is an interactive, two-story science museum. But this one’s indoors-outdoors, a 330,000-square-foot facility with three times the space.It has 40 new exhibits and 560 carryovers, gratifying each of the senses except taste (and that craving might be satisfied at the posh 200-seat buffet-style Seaglass Restaurant or a tiny takeout café, “the seismic joint”).

Because the facility’s bigger, it doesn’t feel cramped or crowded. And it seems a bit less noisy (as well as somewhat less exciting).

But Hannah didn’t think about any of that.

She was too busy running back and forth between two displays — “Self-Excluding Mirror,” which reproduced images but somehow made the person in the center disappear, and “Self-Centered Mirror,” which replicated the viewer over and over.

Before that, near the entrance, she’d became entranced with “A Drop to Drink,” featuring a miniature hand she could manipulate robotically to fill a miniature cup with a lone drop of water, and “Black Sand,” an exhibit that showcased countless metallic pieces that stuck together magnetically. A few times during our visit she returned to both stations.

Hannah enjoyed exhibits carried over from the old building.

One favorite — where images and colors changed when we waved our arms, kicked out our legs and wiggled our torsos. Another was a screen crammed with pins that made different hand shapes and designs as she moved her fingers underneath.

Another echo came as Scott Weaver guided ping-pong balls through his panoramic view of San Francisco and vicinity made from “105,387 and a half toothpicks.” We’d seen it before, at the Marin County Fair, but loved it still.His art-piece only took 37 years to finish.

Hannah was also taken with “Tidal Memory,” its 24 columns of water representing 24 hours of tide data.

I, meanwhile, enjoyed playing “The Visible Pinball Machine,” which showed the machine’s innards. And all of us marveled at “Gyroid,” an outdoor climbing maze Hannah crawled through and atop while we watched.

Leaving, Hannah gleefully said she liked running into and out of an “orange and white spinning circus-tent thing,” spinning a plastic ball on a column of air, and changing the course of a simulated tornado.It’s truly impossible to even mention all we experienced, much less what we didn’t do (like check out the second floor and its observation center).

But we did recognize the Exploratorium features displays for virtually every age, ranging from some aimed at preschoolers to some so technical a doctorate in an esoteric scientific endeavor might help.

I think that translates, in effect, into something for everyone.All that’s required is sufficient time.

Oh, well, there’s always next time. Or the time after that. Or the one after that. Or…

The Exploratorium, Pier 15, San Francisco, is Tuesdays through Sundays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Wednesdays, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Thursday night After Dark cash-bar event for those 18 and older, 6 to 10 p.m. Tickets: $10-$25. Information: (415) 528-4444 or www.exploratorium.edu.

Woody Weingarten

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Woody’s [rating:5] 

San Francisco Symphony conductor Michael Tilson-Thomas

Violin soloist James Ehnes

My wife last heard George Gershwin’s “An American in Paris” played in the flesh 49 years ago in Manhattan.

I heard it in-person much more currently — 33 years ago — also in New York.

Sadly, neither of us can remember a thing about those concerts other than we were there. But the San Francisco Symphony version we caught recently, with Michael Tilson-Thomas conducting with his usual exemplary zeal, is apt to linger in our memories a long, long time.

And not because the music stand of a musician in the last row slipped down with a clunk before the Davies Hall concert began.

But because the performance was as luscious and joyous as the first bite of a truffle.

And then some.

The audience agreed. It gave the musicians — and MTT, of course — a standing ovation.

Tilson-Thomas conducted it at a good clip, conjuring up all the vibrancy possible from Gershwin’s instrumental dialogue — aided, naturally, by the incredible finesse of San Francisco’s finest music-makers.

Together they painted a melodic portrait that evoked the same images and feelings Gershwin must have experienced in the vital, avant-garde Paris of the 1920s.

MTT didn’t settle for just Gershwin, however.

He constructed an amazing program that beguiled the audience, starting with “The Alcotts,” a six-minute rendition of an unexpectedly sweet Charles Ives movement from “A Concord Symphony” — replete with passages that hint of church hymns and Beethoven’s Fifth.

Then, soloist James Ehnes, whose lightning-fast bow was a visual blur at the same time he created stringed exactitude, drew a standing ovation for his artistry on Samuel Barber’s ”Violin Concerto, Opus 14.” Some pundits have found the explosive, ultra-fast third movement disconnected from the first more pensive two, but Ehnes made any previous criticism vanish.

My wife commented of the “Presto in moto perpetuo,” only half in jest, that “his virtuosity made Rimsky-Korsakov’s ‘The Flight of the Bumblebee’ sound like it’s flying in slow motion.”

MTT gently pushed Ehnes back on stage for an encore. Niccolò Paganini’s “Caprice No. 16” earned him another standing ovation.

Tilson-Thomas also paired George Antheil’s “A Jazz Symphony,” a multi-faceted pastiche from 1928, with the Gershwin closer, suggesting Antheil was “deliberately out there, to delight and provoke.”

He urged the crowd to “fasten your seat belts — here it goes.”

The piece, with layered textures, colors and rhythms, with musical pauses as effective as those in a Harold Pinter play, included blow-your-mind riffs from trumpeter Mark Inouye and pianist Robin Sutherland.

One muted horn segment infused its bluesy strains in my mind and heart at once. A brief clarinet segment duplicated that impact.

An ad campaign of the ‘70s and ‘80s repeatedly proclaimed that “When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen.” I suggest the slogan be updated for the 2013-14 season: “When MTT conducts, everyone listens.”

His work so inspired my spouse, in fact, she rushed home to frolic with “An American in Paris” on our Yamaha piano.

She’d never played it before but thought it “would be fun.”

It was.

For her and me.

But in good conscience I must admit the symphony did it a teensy-weensy bit better.

Maybe, dear, it was just because they’d rehearsed.

If you missed this performance, you might want to catch one of these upcoming concerts: “MTT and Jeremy Denk: Beethoven, Mozart, Copland,” Nov. 7-10; Natalie Cole and the symphony, Nov. 25; Dianne Reeves with the orchestra, Dec. 11; Burt Bacharach and the symphony, Dec. 13; “MTT and Yo-Yo Ma,” Feb. 28. Information: (415) 864-6400 or www.sfsymphony.org.

Woody Weingarten

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Film newcomer Thomas Simon stars in the title role of “The Zigzag Kid.”

Nono is an exceedingly spirited, exceedingly imaginative Dutch kid who draws attention through mischievous stunts — particularly when they don’t work.

But he can be disarming.

And so can “The Zigzag Kid,” the coming-of-age film in which Thomas Simon stars as Nono, a 13-year-old two days from his bar mitzvah.

“Zigzag,” the opening-night entry of this year’s San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, will play at the California Theater in Berkeley on Aug. 6 and at the Rafael Theatre in Marin on Aug. 12.

The movie’s storyline is deceptively simple: Nono wants to emulate his dad, whom they both steadfastly believe is the best police inspector in the world, and in the process searches for details about his mother’s death.

Adventures ensue.

Although that may not sound wholeheartedly enchanting, when you add the slickest thief in the world; the inventive secretary-girlfriend of the boy’s father; and a seductive chanteuse marvelously portrayed by Isabella Rossellini (who’s looking more and more like her mother, Ingrid Bergman, as she ages), you find yourself devouring a cinematic stew spiced to please.

The 95-minute film — a fast-paced, subtitled Dutch-Belgian detective puzzler — contains way more whimsy and fantasy than a viewer might expect.

Plus amusing umbrella hijinks. And disguises. And chases.

With a modicum of poignancy.

And that leaves no room to talk about the charming flick’s top-notch production values.

Purists may object to the movie’s blurring of good and bad, but the movie’s magic will make that mindset disappear quickly for most filmgoers.

The SFJFF, the world’s first and still largest Jewish film festival, this year — its 23rd — is screening 74 films from 26 countries in nine Bay Area venues.

Berkeley and Marin screenings both will include an outstanding documentary, “Dancing in Jaffa,” which traces a world-class dancer’s efforts to teach dance to Jewish-Israeli and Palestinian-Israeli youngsters and then pair them in competition.

Another Marin highlight, which also will be shown in Oakland, is “The Trials of Muhammad Ali,” which explores issues of race, identity, power and faith.

A total of 39SFJFF films were slated for the California Theatre, 2113 Kittredge St., Berkeley, between Aug. 2 to 8. Thirteen films will screen at the Rafael Theatre, 1118 Fourth St., San Rafael, between Aug. 10 and 12. Festival information can be found at (415) 621-0523 or www.sfjff.org.

Woody Weingarten

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Woody’s rating:3.5 (3.5/5 stars)

How many American Marxists can dance on the head of the pin?

Emma (Jessica Bates) learns the truth about her blacklisted grandfather from Ben (Rolf Saxon, seated) as Leo looks on (Victor Talmadge) in “After the Revolution.” Photo: David Allen.

“After the Revolution,” the Aurora’s Theatre’s cerebral immersion in the ethical struggles of three generations of a left-leaning family, doesn’t answer my cheeky question.But it does deal with other Big Issues.

Such as whether the Machiavellian aphorism that the end justifies the means has validity, if right and wrong are written in concrete, and how yesterday’s actions impact today’s decisions.

Along the way, the dramedy makes sure to swipe at the Red-baiting, witch-hunting tactics of Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

Watching the show is like gazing into a retroscope — and then deconstructing what you think you’ve seen. Not that far removed from a multi-pronged Talmudic discussion about the essence of truth.

In effect, it’s a history lesson wrapped in secrets and lies.It helps if you’re familiar with Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, with the Verona Project (that led to decryptions that in turn revealed data about U.S. spies), and with initial Jewish hopes and subsequent disenchantment with Josef Stalin.

But if you’re not, the program guide will give you an abridged crash course.

Playwright Amy Herzog and director Joy Carlin, an actor and theatrical teacher who has an unforgettable scene opposite Cate Blanchett in Woody Allen’s “Blue Jasmine,” do their utmost to sketch a living portrait of a family ruptured by an old secret.It’s a serious look in the rearview mirror.

But they also extract the max from two roles that lend themselves to laugh-lines.

That of Vera, the rickety but still feisty widow of Joe, the Joseph family’s blacklisted hero, and Jess, the drugged-out sister of Emma, an overachiever who just graduated from law school and is determined to spread the clan’s social-justice messages.

Vera becomes a carry-over character in Herzog’s subsequent play, “4000 Miles,” a comic drama that shows the playwright’s evolution as an artist and that has infinitely more charm and tenderness than “Revolution.”When I reviewed the American Conservatory Theatre’s “Miles” production in January, I wrote that Herzog leaned on the six months she’d lived in Manhattan with her 96-year-old grandmother, the natural resource for the Vera persona.

Here she’s immensely likable.

But Em, the focus of the play portrayed by Jessica Bates, is not. She’s robotic, humorless and abrasive.An intellectual, cold fish.

The story takes place in 1999, when Em wants to use the foundation that bears the name of her grandfather to free accused Black Panther cop-slayer Mumia Abu-Jamal.

We learn early on, however, that Joe wasn’t quite so innocent: He’d given the Russians classified material. We also discover that Emma’s dad withheld that information from her. So Emma suddenly must deal with both father and grandfather having clay feet.

“After the Revolution” has numerous positive attributes.

Ellen Ratner is the top one. She steals the show many-faceted Vera, the cranky die-hard lefty with a big heart.

Rolf Saxon is also outstanding, as Ben, a history instructor who gets off on rubbing people the wrong way (even at parent–teacher confabs).And Sarah Mitchell depicts Jess, the sister who’s repeatedly been confined to rehab but ultimately snaps her twin bonds of agony and isolation, as concurrently weak and strong.

The dual-level set by J.B. Wilson, compact and simple (with plain wooden tables and chairs, a distinctly indistinct couch and a backdrop telephone poles and wires), allows quick scene changes.

The cast, not incidentally, frequently and artfully accomplishes those changes in the dark.

Costuming by Callie Floor, with robes and pajamas establishing a contrasting tone to commonplace daily apparel, also is highly effective.As are the frequent upswept hairstyles adopted by the protagonist, each a hint of where Emma’s head is at any given point — hopeful, depressed, angry, elated.

Herzog occasionally tries to sum up her thinking.

Notes Emma, for instance, “‘Good politics’ in my generation is different from ‘good politics’ in your generation.” And Peter Kybart, playing Morty, an elder who wants to leave his estate to the foundation, refers nostalgically to a past in which, in the East Village, you could throw a stone anywhere and hit a spy.Ben sets the mood: “Clinton is a big-business president, the poor are getting poorer, racial divides are deepening…and it’s hard to image things getting much worse.”

Because McCarthyism targeted a member of my own family, I went to “After the Revolution” with high hopes of being able to relate. I left disappointed  — because I’d wanted to be touched.

And my brain was but my heart wasn’t.

“After the Revolution” runs at the Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison St., Berkeley, through Sept. 29. Night performances, Wednesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m., Tuesdays and Sundays, 7 p.m.; matinees, Sundays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $16-$50. Information: (510) 843-4822 or www.auroratheatre.org.

Woody Weingarten

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I’m not the least bit objective.

Doyle Ott as The Cat in the Hat. Photo: Woody Weingarten.

I’m 129-percent convinced that Hannah, my six-year-old granddaughter, is a bright delight.

She loves to watch YouTube with me — caterpillars’ transforming into butterflies, volcanoes spewing lava, scientific marvels galore.

But she can instantly revert to a bounce-in-her-seat, giggle-out-loud little girl fascinated with Disney princesses.

Or “The Cat in the Hat,” an interactive show we just caught at the Marin Theatre Company, squeezed in a squeal-and-fun-filled Saturday between Strawberry’s In-N-Out Burger and the Presidio’s Family Day Kite Festival.

The 45-minute play was the first of a first — that is, the first of five shows aimed at kids, four of them produced by the Bay Area Children’s Theatre, in the MTC’s initial theater series for youthful audiences.

The show convinced me anew that I’m not the least bit objective: I was as impressed with it as my granddaughter — for slightly different reasons.

I know she thoroughly enjoyed the exaggerated antics from ever-so-familiar characters originally penned by Theodor Geisel (she knows him as Dr. Seuss), particularly the unmanageable juggling of The Cat and the flummoxed scurrying of the blue-haired Thing 1 and Thing 2.

At the same time, the show blew me away because it emphasized exceptionally age-appropriate, relatable action for youngsters; featured perky primary colors in both costumes and set; retained the monosyllabic sing-song rhymes expected from a Seuss story; and showcased six cast members who clowned and sang and danced with a degree of professionalism I hadn’t expected.

Especially Doyle Ott, who gleefully portrayed The Cat, a guy with both circuses and the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival in his résumé.

I reveled, too, in the perfectly timed, cartoon-like sound effects added by Beryl Baker — not to mention the brief recorded excerpts of classical music (“The William Tell Overture” and “Sabre Dance,” for example).

The production — and director Erin Merritt — happily stuck to Seuss’ text and his unwritten theme: When mom’s away, the kids (and The Cat) will play

Silly choreography by Laura Ricci added to everyone’s pleasure — as did The Cat playing golf with a black umbrella, riding a pink-wheeled unicycle, and strumming a tennis racket like a guitar and pseudo-creating lively Flamenco rhythms.

The biggest laugh, as might be expected with an age group of people all under four-feet tall, came from an outrageously loud burp.

“The Cat in the Hat” has been so well liked since being created in 1954 that the book’s been translated into a dozen languages. It has more than 11 million copies in print.

The staged version can only build on that popularity.

If the remainder of the Theater for Young Audiences season can come anywhere near the gusto of The Cat, I can guarantee matinee happiness.

Check out “A Year with Frog & Toad,” starting Jan. 11;  “Mercy Watson to the Rescue,” beginning March 8, and “Ladybug Girl and Bumblbee Boy” in May. Or MTC’s own production, “Rapunzel,” a Nov. 2-10 show that focuses on “taking risks and overcoming fear rather than being the subject of a witch’s petty grudges and a prince’s daring deeds.”

Theater for Young Audiences tickets at the Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley, cost $15 for children under 14; $20 for adults; $17 for seniors 65 and above. Information: (415) 388-5208 or marintheatre.org.

Woody Weingarten

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Ian McKellen (left) and Patrick Stewart star in the pre-Broadway engagement of “No Man’s Land.” Photo: Kevinberne.com.

What’s real?

That’s the real question behind many an absurdist Harold Pinter play.

The query’s especially pertinent — when the playwright’s elongated pauses and word-spurts are done — with “No Man’s Land,” which is entrenched at the Berkeley Rep through the end of the month.

The play’s been around since 1975, at which point its debut starred Ralph Richardson as Hirst, the drunken upper-class person of letters, and John Gielgud as Spooner, the failed poet who also knows close-up and personal the decaying consequences of alcohol. Now Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart exquisitely fill those roles. But only through Aug. 31 at the Rep before moving to Broadway.

Is Spooner an old university classmate of Hirst’s, an inner- or outer-circle chum who shared acquaintances and relationships?

Maybe.

Is he a liar, a charlatan — “a lout,” as Hirst declares at one point?

Maybe.

The mystery of who Spooner really is — or was — is left to the audience’s verdict as the final curtain rings down.Along the way, however, Pinter’s consistently rapier-sharp dialogue evokes copious laughter from his sporadically impenetrable, always serious-minded and thought-provoking reality vs. fantasy brainteaser.

Sir Ian, 74, a world-renowned British Shakespearean actor, has also mastered fantastic “X-Men” and “The Lord of the Rings” characters. Sir Patrick, 73, likewise an adroit British Shakespearean actor, saw his fame go viral not when he portrayed “Hamlet” but as Capt. Jean-Luc Picard in “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

Both had wrung the last drop of evil out of the “MacBeth” title role. Now they’re whipping the intellectual crap out of “No Man’s Land” at the Rep.

And starting Oct. 26, the two (as well as supporting actors Billy Crudup and Shuler Hensley as a pair of possibly gay manservants) will take the classic to the Great White Way and alternate performances with “Waiting for Godot,” a standard from the pen of Pinter’s mentor/friend, Samuel Beckett.I went to “No Man’s Land,” which I hadn’t previously seen, with huge expectations.

After all, Pinter, who died in 2008 after writing 30 plays (including “The Homecoming,” “Betrayal,” “The Caretaker” and “The Birthday Party”), had won the Nobel Prize for Literature, hadn’t he?

And hadn’t the Swedish Academy cited his work for unveiling “the precipice under everyday prattle”?

I wasn’t the least bit disappointed, even when forced to strain on occasion to hear McKellen’s mumbled words (which alternated with ultra-precise diction in his characterization of a staggering, impossible-to-pin-down drunk).

Or when, once in a while, Pinter’s use of British slang made clarity momentarily impossible.I found McKellen’s performance so magnetic that even when he was a ragtag background figure clutching his overcoat and a bottle of booze, and another character was speaking, I often watched him.

But Stewart (almost unrecognizable with hair) also could be compelling, depicting Hirst’s underlying insensitivity and threats with a simple look. He could exhibit, too, social differences that can be delineated with few words. Such as, “This is another class…it’s a world of silk.”

I loved that director Sean Mathias wisely let his actors display all their theatrical gifts and thereby heighten the vaudevillian humor of set pieces (McKellen’s bouncy movements while tying the laces of his tennis shoes, for instance).And I adored that Mathias let the often-enigmatic quality of Pinter’s pithy phraseology float unshackled in the air: “I will be kind to you” and “I have known this before…a house of silence and strangers.”

And allow, as well, seemingly irrefutable statements to stand on their own: “I am too old for any expectations,” “I am yours to command” and “Do I detect a touch of the hostile?”

I found the lone set — an elegant, sparingly furnished room designed by Stephen Brimson Lewis — big enough to dwarf the players and put their human transience and frailties in proportion.With both leading thespians being about my age, I was exceptionally pleased to find they’re still perfecting their stagecraft, with majestic, nuanced brilliance.

Opening night of the most star-studded play seen in the Bay Area in many years, the audience gave all four actors a standing ovation and multiple curtain calls.

They earned them.

For their superlative interpretations of characters who, despite its frequent splashes of humor, reside in a “No Man’s Land” that disturbingly “never changes [but] remains forever icy and silent.”

And perplexing.

“No Man’s Land” plays at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre‘s Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St., Berkeley, through Aug. 31. Tickets: $17.50 to $135, subject to change, (510) 647-2949 or www.berkeleyrep.org.

Woody Weingarten

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