Woody Weingarten

by Woody Weingarten, Bay City News

Novato Theater Company’s Marilyn Izdebski’s choreography and lighting design increase in excellence with each musical she works on. She’s been at it for 50 years, and critics are simply running out of words for “incomparable.”

Her light-hearted choreography in “Mamma Mia!” onstage in the Novato Playhouse through June 7 guarantees smiles. She once again has turned community theater thespians of all shapes and sizes into a cohesive chorus. Her choreography is the star of the show; she’s nicely assisted by conductor-keyboardist Nick Brown.

Izdebski — president of Novato Theater Company and a recent winner of the San Francisco Bay Area Critics Circle’s Gene Price Award “for embodying superlative professionalism and passion for Bay Area theater” — dares patrons not to tap their toes to ABBA’s 1970s hits.

In addition, her smooth lighting design nicely parallels the range of moods in playwright Catherine Johnson’s flimsy and illogical storyline.

Gia Mirra is excellent as Sophie, who switches emotions on a dime from joyous to confused; as are Lauren Sutton-Beattie and Jane Harrington as Rosie and Tanya, Donna’s oldest and best friends. The same goes for the dads: Lorenzo Alviso as Sam, Cordell Wesselink as Bill and David Cole as Harry.

The minimal set and props provide plenty of room for the large cast, who seem to be having as much fun as the audience. All members of the company are wearing mikes, so the song lyrics are clear, even when the chorus is dancing; that can’t be said of many local theaters.

Huda al Jamal’s terrific costumes range from sparkly for chorus lines to pure black for a nightmarish fantasy. And director Lisa Morse does a great job making the show’s bizarre action feel natural (except when the hoofing is appropriately extra-silly).

Notable numbers range from the flirting in “Take a Chance on Me to the bouncy “Knowing Me, Knowing You” and the especially poignant “Our Last Summer.”

The crowd, however, saved up its noisiest enthusiasm for chartbusters like “I Have a Dream,” “S.O.S.,” and “The Winner Takes All,” and kept up the spirit after the bows to sway and clap along to “Dancing Queen” and “Mamma Mia.”

In the lobby after, one elderly man couldn’t wait to tell a friend, “This show could pull you out of a depression.”

“Mamma Mia!” runs through June 7 at Novato Theater Company, 5420 Nave Drive, Novato. Tickets are $25 to $37 at novatotheatercompany.org. 

Reach Sherwood “Woody” Weingarten at voodee@sbcglobal.net, https://woodyweingarten.com or https://vitalitypress.com.

 

 

Kristen Gregoriev may have erred leaving her San Anselmo home accessible to birds and beasts. She walked into her living room a while ago “to find a mama deer had left a fawn the size of a large Chihuahua there, wedged between two flowerpots.”

The “mama had gone off to graze,” she remembers, “but the baby woke up and started screaming. Mama came bounding down the hill and immediately retrieved her.”

Gregoriev swiftly got out of the way, knowing not to interfere with a beast and its offspring, and just let the “rescue” happen.

The incident, she says, was probably the most surprising thing that’s happened in her late-in-life life as an environmentalist.

Gregoriev, retired since 2016, is now immersed in gardening at home as well as varied public sites of Refugia Marin, where she helps replace “invasive plant species” with native plants, and “cultivates a haven for local pollinators.”

She loves it.

The “spiritual nature of gardens can be really soothing in this time of chaos,” she says.

But she doesn’t love it all the time.

 “Gardening is a real leap of faith that something’s going to work, that critters aren’t going to get to it, that there isn’t going to be a lethal heat spell no matter how much you’ve watered.

 “Nature’s a bitch. Something you’ve been nurturing gets eaten. Something’s always dying.”

It wasn’t long after Gregoriev joined Refugia Marin in 2023, she says, that “they pounced” because of her 40-plus years in nature-centric small businesses. So she’s become the nonprofit’s treasurer, putting in about 30 volunteer hours a month working with gardens and numbers.

The nonprofit was founded in 2021 in Corte Madera’s Town Park by its then-and-now executive director, Dana Swisher, an award-winning, longtime second-grade teacher at the Neil Cummins Elementary School in Corte Madera.

“She kept looking on the other side of a fence and seeing a fallow strip of weeds,” explains Gregoriev, who knew her through the Marin Monarch Working Group. So, Swisher finally stopped thinking about it and instead spent the requisite time — with the ultimate help of about eight board members and about 80 volunteers — to transform the strip into a thriving native plant habitat.

Refugia Marin’s purpose now, according to its website —www.refugiamarin.org — “extends beyond conservation; we strive to educate the community about the myriad benefits of native plants while creating thriving wildlife habitats.

“By forging strong partnerships with schools, community leaders, and like-minded organizations, we work together towards our shared goal of enhancing the natural beauty of our community and creating spaces for people to enjoy.”

Refugia (a plural word that means safe havens) is a volunteer organization except for three paid employees whose public spaces include the Pollinator Garden at the Dominican University of California in San Rafael and the People’s Garden in Cove Park, Corte Madera.

Its latest project is Habitat Garden, behind the new Larkspur Library, that’s intended, according to the website, to “serve as a visible demonstration of climate-resilient planting and local biodiversity.”

Gregoria has gardened at all the sites except the library and Hall Middle School’s outdoor classroom in Larkspur. “I’ve done a lot of weeding, lots of pruning, planted a couple of trees, planted seeds, and weed-whacked with a new, lighter electric machine,” she says. “It’s very rewarding to see an area that you’ve tended.”

She’s also “done outreach, staffed tables set up at events like May 9’s Eco-Friendly Garden Tour and other community events.”

She’s been engrossed, too, in Refugia Marin’s highly successful April 28 fund-raiser, An Evening in Conversation at the Lark Theater with best-selling journalist and CNN series host Kara Swisher, Dana Swisher’s sister-in-law, and acclaimed Fairfax author Anne Lamott.

Gregoriev maintains that she’s “super-fortunate” to be able to work with the organization’s volunteer nature enthusiasts, a “wonderful group of people — bright, funny, smart, diligent. I’m the Old One, going to be 70 in September; everyone’s younger than me, the youngest in the mid-30s.”

Though happy, she regrets coming “pretty much late to the party. I was a passive environmentalist who only became active after I retired (although I’d designed environmental T-shirts that kids would want to wear).”

She says it’s “nice to work in areas other than my own because I have too many deer here.” But she still revels in changing her backyard into a pollinator paradise.

Gregoriev prefers working with plants native to California “because they’re more suited to our climate and they’re more beneficial to the pollinators — bees and butterflies — because they’ve evolved over time to have a beneficial relationship with each other.”

Her favorite public site is “the original town park, because I’ve seen the most evolution, watching one-gallon plants really take off and become more beautiful.”

Her favorite plants? “The Ceanothus, a shrub with  beautiful purple flowers that butterflies really go for; the Pitcher Sage, another shrub that smells unbelievably good to me, that has beautiful bell-like delicate pink flowers, and, as for a tree, the California buckeye, which supports all the caterpillars which in turn support the songbirds, the small birds that snatch the caterpillars to feed their babies.”

The gardening she’s doing, she says, brings her “delights and quiet satisfaction. I’ve done this kind of gardening since I was in college at U.C. Davis.”

As for toiling behind her own place, she says, “When we first moved in, we tried to plant anything that the deer wouldn’t eat. Now, I’m really trying to plant native, and I am finding some things the deer are not so fond of.”

Asked what the favorite plants in her yard are, first she answers flippantly, “Anything that grows,” then more seriously adds, “I have a lot of Milkweed for the Monarch butterflies.”

Gardening, she muses with obvious joy, “is a dialogue. You do something and then it does something. It’s not a one-way thing.”

 

By WOODY WEINGARTEN

Check out the upscale, retirement-age parents in their San Fernando Valley tract home where the wife’s real estate commissions have kept them afloat for years while the husband’s played golf thrice weekly and continually raged.

In Pictures from Home at the Marin Theatre through May 31, the lives and personalities of the Sultan parents — Irv and Jean — are methodically deconstructed by their demi-adult photographer son, Larry, who frequently sleeps over on weekends after traveling down from Greenbrae. Instead of a stuffed animal, he’s long been caressing a camera and recorder apparently borrowed from the San Francisco Art Institute and California College of the Arts, where he’s been teaching.

All three performers are Equity pros; all three easily bring their real-life characters to life on a cluttered stage set dominated by a large screen onto which still-photo after still-photo extracted from home-movie reels is projected.

 

 

 

 

Irv, a razor salesman and Schick V.P. who bears only a slight resemblance to everyman Willie Loman and who’s depressed because no one seemingly can afford “hopes and dreams” anymore, firmly believes photos depict events as they are. Larry, the son who’s decidedly more artistic, has spent the last 10 years working on a photo-cum-book project to prove that pictures can show more than bare reality, that they can judiciously recall memories in a way that some might label fiction or exaggeration.

He also acts as the 105-minute, intermission-less, fascinatingly different play’s narrator.

Jean, meanwhile, tries to skirt the ongoing debate, has convinced herself she’s “in charge,” and grumbles that she’d “just like a couple of nice photos for the fridge.”

The one-act Pictures from Home is sprinkled with lots of verbal and physical humor, so much you might think it would be enough to leaven the extremely weighty drama. Not quite.

That’s because what they’re discussing is too personal, too intimate, too raw. It’s visceral rather than cerebral, even when comparing generations.

The problem, if it is any problem, is that playwright Sharr White and director Jonathan Moscone have re-created a family that’s virtually everybody’s, regardless of ethnicity, socio-economic status, or geography. “That was my father up there,” one exiting theatergoer was heard to say.

Dad is played brilliantly by Victor Talmadge as a sad, vulnerable loudmouth who talks over everybody and tries to emasculate his son because he feels powerless himself. Though he appears to lack empathy, he contends that the “key to success is empathy.” Mom, portrayed by Suzan Koosin, flawlessly spends a good part of the play flitting from one edge of the stage to another while trying to get her husband and son to put down their verbal swords. Larry is well-crafted by Dan Cantor as an immature, cowed offspring unlikely ever to grow up.

The dramedy, which is based on a photo memoir by the real Larry Sultan, opened to critical acclaim on Broadway in 2023, with Nathan Lane as Irv.

No matter who’s in the role, though, when Larry’s proposal becomes a reality, Irv neither understands nor accepts the artsy concept and still feels invaded. “I see you’ve got pretty much every photo I don’t like in the book,” he bemoans.

Pictures from Home will run at the Marin Theatre, 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley, through May 31. Tickets: $38 to $94, plus a $6 handling fee per total order. Info: 415-388-5208 or www.MarinTheatre.org.

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

By WOODY WEINGARTEN

If you want to guess how many facts, including fake ones, can dance humorously and philosophically on the head of a pin, scoot over to the 6th St. Playhouse in Santa Rosa.

There you’ll find Lifespan of a Fact, a cerebral 95-minute play that may test your patience for nit-picking and a sluggish first act but is sure to reward you with tons of snarky-based chuckles minutes later. The acting, meanwhile, morphs from wimpy and tough-to-hear into robust and boisterous.

Crisp dialogue. A little slapstick, including a character at war with his backpack. Farce-like slamming of doors. All are tossed in for good measure and laughs.

The basic plotline? It’s all about truth vs. lies.

John D’Agata, a Norman Mailer-type veteran writer played arrogantly and gruffly by Marty Pistone, has penned a career-best “legacy” essay about a teen suicide for a prestigious but fiscally challenged New York magazine.

Egocentric enough to list himself along the great essayists of all time, he’s taken more than a few liberties with the facts. A lifelong habit? Clearly.

Jim Fingal, an energetic young intern portrayed by Noah Vondralee-Sternhill, struts his Harvard grad cockiness once he gets into the work — after awkwardly beginning the bizarre series of fact checks. If not careful, his over-the-top corrections will diminish the essay by erasing its color.

D’Agata, always protective of his reputation, nastily chides him about overestimating his “importance in the entire process.”

It takes no time at all for Emily Penrose, the editor who tasks Fingal, to recognize the pair’s polarized views (Shanay Howell alternates with Emily Lynn Cornelius, the troupe’s executive artistic director, in the role).

She listens to them swapping insults, attempts to mediate —  and then, with resignation, asks them “not to kill each other” (the outcome of which remains in doubt for some time).

Though the dramedy’s director, Libby Oberlin, has a tsunami of words to deal with, she keeps Act II at a pace that sprints — zingy enough to cause the audience to applaud between scenes.

The play (written by Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell, and Gordon Farrell) is based on a 2012 book crafted by the real-life D’Agata and Fingal.

Lifespan of a Fact debuted on Broadway in 2018 starring Daniel Radcliffe, Bobby Cannavale, and Cherry Jones. Critics praised its cleverness.

And its timeliness.

When the play’s over, you might try thinking of someone out there today who might stretch the truth just a teeny bit to serve his own purposes?

Lifespan of a Fact will run at the Monroe Stage of the 6th St. Playhouse, 52 W. 6th St., Santa Rosa, through May 31. Tickets: $26.95 to $47.95. Info: 707-523-4185 or boxoffice@6thstreetplayhouse.com.

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

By WOODY WEINGARTEN

Daphne Rain, a workaholic classics prof played impeccably by Anna Wesner, is mouse-like and straightforward, and early-on declares “I don’t need a boyfriend; I need tenure.” But she’s also fickle, flirtatious, and frisky.

Ralph, her male counterpart classics professor, is portrayed brilliantly, hilariously by Paul Bisesi as gawky yet lovable. But, nevertheless, he’s fickle, flirtatious, and frisky.

And Dionysus, one of two larger-than-life spirits who hustle down to Earth from Mount Olympus in The Gods of Comedy at the Masquers Playhouse, is rollickingly characterized by Jeffrey Biddle. But he, as well, is fickle, flirtatious, and frisky.

This screwball 2019 comedy by playwright Ken Ludwig, celebrated creator of Lend Me a Tenor, is crammed with sexual wordplay, sexual movements, and single entendres — with partners changing as often as those in a bad French movie that somehow never stoops to boring.

The most sex-crazed character, however, is none of the above. It’s Liddy Freeman as slithering bombshell actress Brooklyn De Wolfe, who, with apologies to Will Rogers, apparently never met a man she didn’t like.

That said, sex makes up only about 3% of The Gods of Comedy. Indeed, the farce is at once laugh-out-loud-funny, cartoonish, silly, clever, and witty. It’s filled with slapstick, mistaken identities, exaggerated mugging, buffoonery, gags coming as fast as gatling-gun bullets, and copious physical comedy.

A handful of costumed production numbers, moreover, guarantee keeping your family Grouch or Dr. Seuss’ Grinch away.

The plot itself — mainly a frantic search for a re-lost manuscript of an unearthed edition of as Euripides play, Andromeda — almost doesn’t matter.

It also makes no-never-mind ha the show features tons of champion on scenery as well as third-grade level clowning (that tickles adult funny-bones much better than red noses and floppy shoes might).

Think, too, about the impossibility of not laughing at the running gag in which costumed-to-the-nines Dionysus and the muse, Thalia (Melody Payne Alonzo), constantly re-introduce themselves as “The Gods of comedy” with a flourish, a pause, and arms thrust outward, followed by an over-the-top “Ta da!”

Theatergoers also chuckle at Ares, a narcissistic, oversexed god of war (played by Paul J. White, not Pete Hegseth) who responds when asked what he does for a living, “Rape and pillage.”

Awe is another frequent crowd reaction, especially to the most spectacular visual scene: Dionysus juggling, Thalia twirling batons, and projected fireworks going off on the backdrop.

Awe is also appropriate for most of the costume designs by Lynda Hornada, who’s done that work on Broadway and for the New York Shakespeare Festival.

The sets also deserve accolades. They range from a full-blown look at a college office to a naked curtain. It all works seamlessly.  

There are flaws in this community theater production, however, not because of any performances, not linked to the direction, the sound, or the lighting.

The two-act show is often uneven, because there are so many jokey moments the odds are, a bunch will fall flat. In addition, between sight gags that draw major giggles and squeals are a few slow moments when the dialogue is drab and audience silences are awkward.

And while there are topical references to the Marvel series of film franchises, there also are weird, outdated mentions — to an ancient television series, “I Love Lucy,” for instance.

Director Ronnie Anderson, who keeps the two-hour pace at unrelenting, breakneck speed, writes in the program, “I am thankful the Gods were smiling on me, when casting.” Clearly, they were: The entire ensemble is not only superlative but sustains as much fun on the Point Richman stage as anyone’s likely to see.

Anderson utilizes a successful device that allows the minor god-like characters to instantly change personalities. They also shift from invisible to visible and back again.

Not incidentally, each of the play’s characters consistently seeks either an adventure or “a happy ending.” They get one or the other. Or both. And, no spoiler alert here, so does the audience — despite the “pure chaos” that frequently colors the stage.

The Gods of Comedy will run at the Masquers Playhouse,  105 Park Place, Point Richmond, through May 17. Tickets: $15 to $35. Info: 510-232-3888 or info@masquers.org.

Sherwood “Woody” Weingarten, a longtime voting member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle, can be contacted by email at voodee@sbcglobal.net or on his websites, https://woodyweingarten.com and https://vitalitypress.com. His books include Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner’s breast cancer, aimed at male caregivers; MysteryDates — How to keep the sizzle in your relationship; The Roving I, a compilation of 70 of his newspaper columns; and Grampy and His Fairyzona Playmates, a whimsical fantasy intended for 6- to 10-year-olds that he co-authored with his then 8-year-old granddaughter.

 

 

 By WOODY WEINGARTEN

The 2,000-seat Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley was packed for Saturday’s matinee. The crowd blended nicely with the 7 or 8 folks in the audience who’d never before seen the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

For many, it’s been too long, their first reprise since the beginning of the pandemic.

Despite two Bay Area premieres being on the bill, no one apparently wanted to wait for the forever favorite, “Revelations,” the troupe’s signature piece, sometimes labeled the most-seen modern dance in the world.

When it happened, after the second intermission, the entire place seemed to go bonkers — as if a stadium of high schoolers were rooting for a local championship football team.

The final section of the 10-part gospel-based composition, “Rocka My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham,” was a presentation so rousing that the throng stood like an army in a unified, predictable standing ovation, clapping rhythmically and weaving and dancing in front of its seats.

It was awesome how so many folks were led into their happy place all at once, and no one even left “to beat the crowd” in a rush to get out of a parking lot.

“Revelations,” of course, featured the stylized, instantly recognizable hand, head, and body movements that have delineated Alvin Ailey’s choreography since the piece debuted in 1960, two years after he founded the company.

It all holds up today. Exquisitely. With grace and fervor.

Virtually every component of the composition amped up the volume and pace, forcing concertgoers’ excitement to rise accordingly until a roar shook the walls of the hall. It all fit perfectly, somehow, like a 2,000-piece jigsaw puzzle.

Early parts used no props or backdrops, allowing the audience to focus solely on the skill of the multi-racial company. Then, when the movements became as pure as the all-white costumes, “Wade in the Water” spotlighted a long fabric that transformed into lovely, nearly believable waves.

“Sinner Man” provided a hellish backdrop of flames and a trio of male dancers — Xavier Logan, Jessie Obremski, and Mason Evans — whose frenetic energy was exhausting just to witness. Without a zombie in sight.

The middle section of the concert, “Embrace,” featured five low tables that, when turned on their sides, allowed dancers to slither onto them. It also displayed exciting, emotional choreography by Frederick Earl Mosley to recorded melodies by Pink, Ed Sheeran, Stevie Wonder, and Kate Bush.

A rising and falling moon that showcased glistening craters and changing colors hung from semi-invisible wires.

The program said that “Embrace” examined “the ups and downs of human connections — messy, beautiful, and everything in between.”

True. It depicted 5 or 6 — maybe, 50 — shades of love, including an unsatisfying gay relationship whose raw emotion was best depicted when each half of the almost-couple is sitting on opposite sides of stage with his back to the audience.

“Jazz Island,” the concert’s opener, was based on a Caribbean folk tale and choreographed by Maija Garcia, a Cuban American whose history has included stage productions. The problem was that the piece’s narrative —adapted from Black Gods, Green Islands by Geoffrey Holder — was excessive, leaving nothing to the imagination, leaving little to be fascinated by.

Costuming by Carlton Jones, however, did stand out, particularly the outfit of two main characters, Erzulie, an Afro-Haitian goddess of love, and Baron Samedi, guardian of the dead.

The main plotline revolved around an arranged marriage between Bashiba, a flower girl, and a stereotypical wealthy guy despite her having fallen in love with a traveler, Jean-Claude Louis.

The Ailey troupe is now under the leadership of Alicia Graf Mack, a former star dancer with the company. She’s its fourth artistic director — and obviously has an ultra-high bar to replicate or surpass.

Highlights of what’s coming up soon at Zellerbach Hall under the auspices of Cal Performances include the Joffrey Ballet’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream” April 17-19, and a May 3 recital with soprano Renée Fleming and pianist Inon Barnatan.

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

By WOODY WEINGARTEN

A new play with an enigmatic title, Value Over Replacement, features sometimes confusing flashback and dream sequences. But it’s the specter of famed but un-hall of famer Barry Bonds, star homer hitter and alleged steroid user, that hovers over everything.

The dramedy by San Rafael resident Ruben Grijalva is a morality play that makes sure to sprinkle in enough laugh-guaranteeing lines to lighten the heaviness.

Many questions are posed but answers never become available — even by pondering long after the seven-member cast has taken its collective bows.

That said, Oscar “Woody” Harper is superlative as Ed “Chip” Fuller, a Triple-A minor leaguer who’s convinced he can still permanently make it to The Show, the major leagues, despite being short on talent, comparatively long in the tooth, and the long-time bearer of a bad knee.

Harper’s face projects a gamut of emotions as Chip goes through a series of introspections and causes a publicity surge by belatedly copping to injecting himself with Human Growth Hormone and other illegal substances.

The playwright — comments director Ken Sonkin in the program guide — “maps…one man’s tortured pursuit of a boyhood dream. [The play] doesn’t ask that you exonerate him, only that you hear him out.”

Sonkin’s encapsulation, not incidentally, links to Chip asking, “How many years would you be willing to trade to be exactly what you wanted to be when you were ten years old?”

David Kudler believably portrays Chronicle writer Dan Drake, Chip’s nemesis/friend/radio sports talk co-host on fictional San Francisco station KSFP, who cunningly prods him into a high-ratings moment — a confession.

By being onstage, Kudler, an Equity performer, ends a self-imposed theatrical absence of 19 years. And makes the audience hope the gap is forever closed.

Schoolgirl Amelia Stafford artfully switches genders as Alex, the Fuller’s son, especially agonized in a scene where he’s abused by his baseball-obsessed dad, and schoolboy Erik Forst is wordless but potent in dual bit parts as a young fan and young Chip.

Rachel Ka’iulani Kennealy (as Chip’s wife), Jennifer Reimer (as the mother of a boy who committed suicide after taking steroids), and David Schiller (as Jack Fuller, Chip’s late father, and as Mike Clawson, Chip’s drug supplier) fill out the cast. Effectively, all.

Value Over Replacement, a Ross Valley Players community theater production that’s part of its annual RVP New Works series, doesn’t depend on a deep knowledge of baseball to enjoy it — it’s a play about people, after all, not the math of statistics — but it might help if a theatergoer comes in knowing something about Bonds, the archetype for the never-seen character, Ken Hobbes.

Chip, meanwhile, is in effect a stand-in for all 27 players that allegedly received performance-enhancing drugs from the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO).

The wonderfully familiar crack of a bat hitting a baseball is skillfully provided by sound designer Bruce Vieira, who never misses a beat when Chip’s father endlessly practices with his son.

Benicia Martinez merits praise for the striking, spare set that includes bleachers and a corner that serves as a fill-in-the-blank area ranging from a spot where the autistic Alex incessantly practices slamming a ball against a wall to a spot where multiple characters testify before Congress.

The title, usually shortened in real-life to VORP, stems from an obscure sports stat that supposedly can evaluate a player’s contribution when compared with a real or imagined player of the same level and position. There’s but one reference in two acts and two hours to the statistic, though, so a new title could be more informative to a potential theatergoer.

Grijalva has written a first act that drags with excessive exposition and choppiness and a second that sprints and is sprightly, a first that borders on boring and a second that’s jammed with enough emotion to fill two acts. A bald senior in the first row could be heard at the end of an opening weekend matinee suggesting, correctly, that a sharp editor might cut it down to a more compelling one-act show.

The playwright nevertheless needs to be lauded for inserting lots of Bay Area references and such thought-provoking lines as, “If heart were a thing, there would be a stat for it already” and the Death of a Salesman-like “Steroids never killed anybody — disappointment, that’s the thing that kills everybody.”

He deserves kudos, too for a lengthy, uproarious, lowbrow segment on farting, almost as funny as Mel Brooks’ notorious cinematic scene in Blazing Saddles.

Grijalva has written that his “theatrical worlds are full of abstract hopes colliding with concrete frailties. The resulting debris can be beautiful, grotesque, and often — thank God — hilarious.”

That, indeed, does sum up the best of Value Over Replacement.

Stylishly.

Value Over Replacement, part of the Ross Valley Players RVP New Works, will run at the Barn Theater at the Ross Art and Garden Center, 30 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Ross, through April 12. Tickets: $30 to $45. Info: 415-456-9555 or www.rossvalleyplayers.com.

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

By WOODY WEINGARTEN, Bay City News

When is a jukebox musical more than just that? When its story covers issues from the 1990s that remain problems today, like fentanyl addiction, rape and gender and racial identity.

Canadian alt-rock singer Alanis Morissette’s smash 1995 album “Jagged Little Pill” is the inspiration for the 2018 musical onstage in a Novato Theater and Marin Musical Theatre co-production through April 12. It reveals how a seemingly picture-perfect white suburban Connecticut family—mom, dad, son and adopted Black daughter with hidden plights—is truly dysfunctional. It takes place over one year, beginning with the mother writing a sanitized Christmas letter, followed by a darker one the next.

This community production, co-directed and choreographed by Katie Wickes and Jenny Boynton, is exciting from its loud start to its unexpected, haunting finish.

Susan Zelinsky, as Mary Jane Healy, the pill-popping supermom, carries much of the show on her slim shoulders. But Evvy Carlstrom-March, who portrays Jo, the lesbian lover of Frankie, the Healy daughter who’s unsure of her sexuality, has the cleanest vocal chops. Imri M. Tate as the rebellious teen Frankie, is easily the most animated.

L-R, Evvy Carlstrom-March and Imri M. Tate are among the excellent cast of Marin Theatre Company and Novato Theater’s co-production of “Jagged Little Pill: The Musical.” (Katie Wickes via Bay City News)

Sean O’Brien as Steve, the frustrated dad who’s heavily into internet porn because his addicted wife has lost her libido, also has a strong voice.

Morgan Olson doesn’t need to sing. As a symbolic dancing shadow of Mary Jane, she’s graceful and eye-catching, whether twirling or flying from one mark to another on her toes or stone-facedly caressing MJ’s face and handing her opioids.

Music director Megan Schoenbohm and top-notch musicians keep the sound at a level that mostly doesn’t drown Morissette’s lyrics, which are potent, honest, biting, coarse, caustic and humorous. Occasionally, the chorus sounds mushy and the words are hard to discern; it’s the lone sour note in the passionate 2½-hour show.

Among the show’s many high points are Morissette’s classic tunes “All I Really Want,” “Hand in My Pocket,” “Ironic” and “You Oughta Know,” as well as “So Unsexy,” “Forgiven,” “Unprodigal Daughter,” “Predator” and “No.”

This examination of female introspection and angst boasts a book by Diablo Cody, who won a Tony Award. Glen Ballard composed some of the music with Morissette.

“Jagged Little Pill: The Musical” opened on Broadway in 2019 but closed soon after during pandemic shutdowns in 2020. Happily, it came back successfully.

Marin Musical Theatre’s Wickes and Boynton follow with another winner after their electrifying “Cabaret” last year featuring Carlstrom-March as Sally Bowles. This show, too, is worth a trip to Novato. It’s likely to make an impact on theatergoers coming from myriad places, both geographically and emotionally.

“Jagged Little Pill: The Musical,” a co-production of the Marin Musical Theatre Company, runs at Novato Theater Company, 5420 Nave Drive, Novato, through April 12. Tickets are $37 to $50 at novatotheatercompany.org.

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

 

By WOODY WEINGARTEN

Legendary composer Stephen Sondheim enjoyed turning concepts on their heads in his lyrics, and writing music that likewise broke an oeuvre of rules. When he finished a Broadway show, or a single song, he’d often find himself at a destination difficult for many theatergoers to fully comprehend.

Company is less problematic. Sondheim’s 1970 breakthrough musical comedy slyly — despite little deep diving — deconstructs the institution of marriage and its equally troubled partner, singlehood by focusing on paradoxical relationships and obstacles to commitment.

Via lots of humor. With several touches of pathos.

Sophistication might be Sondheim’s middle name. Too much for high school-age actors to fathom, much less stage? Nope!

The Throckmorton Theatre Youth Performers is producing an extraordinary version of the show through March 22 in Mill Valley. Opening weekend, the actors had almost as much fun as the screeching/hooting/clapping audience that clearly was crowded with friends and families.

In that production, which spotlighted one of two large ensemble casts, Parker Hall portrayed Bobby, a well-liked perma-bachelor whose friends had planned a non-surprise 35th birthday party. They long ago launched a nag-nag-nag campaign aimed at convincing him to get a wife.

Hall is masterful as he solos on “Someone Is Waiting,” performs a duet with April (Anya Lamb) on “Barcelona,” and gracefully leads the entire ensemble on “The Little Things You Do Together.”

Five couples find themselves at various levels of disintegration. One is divorcing, another’s lived together for years but is imperiled by the female’s fear of getting married, a third pictures a woman experiencing momentary freedom by inhaling pot even though she doesn’t really want it, yet another contains a male partner constantly demeaned by his thrice-married wife, and the last spotlights two quasi-addicts, one a recovering drunk and the other a practicing ultra-foodie.

Each couple literally gets its time in the limelight by singing behind a large wooden frame that’s the most striking part of a marvelous atmosphere created by set designers Steve Coleman and Jean-Paul LaRosee.

The complex but superb show — whose book was written by George Furth, and which was nominated after its debut for a record-breaking 14 Tony awards, winning six — is peppered with simply wonderful songs.

The biggest laugh-evoking, show-stopping tune, “Getting Married Today,” is exquisitely performed — over-the-top both physically and musically — by Sam Garfinkel in the role of Amy, the reluctant bride. It’s impossible not to laugh when she, at great length, sings with the frenetic speed of an auctioneer or horse race caller.

Poignant but mocking tones are interjected by Joanne (fleshed out perfectly by Noa Weis) in “The Ladies Who Lunch,” and in “Sorry/Grateful,” which features three guys (Harry, David, and Larry, portrayed, respectively, by Beckett Hepp, Lucas Cedolin, and Morgan Hunt).

That one shows how marriage simultaneously changes everything and nothing.

Plaudits are also especially deserved by co-directors Erin Gentry and Adam Maggio for keeping the two-plus-hour musical snug. Gentry’s playful choreography, not incidentally, draws smiles and appreciation.

To be sure, not everything works perfectly in the 142 Throckmorton production. Choruses occasionally muffle lyrics, and excessively loud music by a seven-piece adult band at the foot of the stage drowns out some others.

Not surprisingly, since Sondheim was gay, the show includes passing references to homosexual relationships. Also predictable is that the inherent sexuality in Company is played down in this production.

Sondheim musically painted the multiple vignettes of Company, which began as 11 separate one-act plays, so cleverly he was able to successfully observe marriage in such universal ways they’re just as recognizable today as when first staged more than half a century ago.

Company will run at the 142 Throckmorton Theatre, 142 Throckmorton Ave., Mill Valley, through March 22. Tickets: $30 to $38. Info: 415-383-9600 or throckmortontheatre.org.

Sherwood “Woody” Weingarten, a longtime voting member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle, can be contacted by email at voodee@sbcglobal.net or on his websites, https://woodyweingarten.comand https://vitalitypress.com. His books include Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner’s breast cancer, aimed at male caregivers; MysteryDates — How to keep the sizzle in your relationship; The Roving I, a compilation of 70 of his newspaper columns; and Grampy and His Fairyzona Playmates, a whimsical fantasy intended for 6- to 10-year-olds that he co-authored with his then 8-year-old granddaughter.