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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cb>Next to Normal,\u003c/b> is a Broadway pop musical about Electroconvulsive Therapy and suicidal ideation. And you may ask: how in the world does one sing about psychopharmacology and major depressive disorder? With lyrics like this: “Zoloft and Paxil and Buspar and Xanex…These are a few of my favorite pills.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Which is to say, it’s not your daddy’s \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodgers_and_Hammerstein\">Rodgers and Hammerstein\u003c/a> hoe-down. \u003cb>Next to Normal\u003c/b>, which opened on Broadway in 2009 and just arrived in San Francisco last week, uses sardonic wit and dark humor to lighten this heartbreaking story of a family desolated by mental illness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the center of this Pulitzer-Prize winning musical is Alice Ripley, who won a Tony for her performance as a wife and mother suffering from bi-polar disorder and psychotic delusions. Fortunately, Ripley has joined the touring cast of the show, because it’s hard to imagine anyone else in the role. For one thing, Ripley has an incredibly unique singing voice — low and throaty, which perfectly communicates her character Diana’s pain. It can sound a little bit like Marianne Faithful — just a few nerves away from a breakdown.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The musical numbers (Brian Yorkeyto won a Tony for the book and lyrics and Tom Kitt wrote the score) have a profundity and resonance that are startling in their plain truth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/nexttonormal-3.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the revelations of the depth of Diana’s illness unfold, each member of her family expresses loss and longing. Many of the most affecting songs speak to each family member’s wish to be seen and acknowledged in a climate where reality sometimes takes a back seat. Songs like “Wish I Were Here” “He’s Not Here,” “I’m Alive” and “Superboy and the Invisible Girl” all achingly reflect a mother, father, sister and brother hungry to be present and known. It’s quite a feat of depth for musical theater to communicate a real understanding of the reverberations of mental illness within a family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Emma Hunton plays Natalie, a hurt and angry teenager who sees herself as the “invisible girl” to her brother Gabe’s “superboy.” And Gabe (Kurt Hansen) does hold a unique power to capture his mother’s attention. As Gabe, Hansen is menacingly electric. Hunton is powerful as the strong but mortally wounded teen. Asa Somers is the dutiful husband, whose patience is waning, even while his devotion is undying. Somer’s Dan is something of a generic nice guy and a bit less defined.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/nexttonormal-2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The drama cannily illustrates the mixed-bag that is psychiatric health care. Jeremy Kushnier plays Diana’s psychiatrist, Dr. Fine, a name that is something of a misnomer; though he’s a quick draw with the prescription pad, he’s no Dr. Feelgood. In one of Ripley’s most haunting ballads, she sings of the downside to “feel better” drugs. In “I Miss the Mountains,” a particularly aching ballad, Diana pines for the time before her emotions were flattened by meds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While there is much specificity in the drama, the set design is standard rock musical scenery — industrial hip scaffolding, blinding club lighting. Mark Wendland’s sets and Kevin Adams’ lighting give a chilly, rock and roll vibe to an otherwise engaging production.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/nexttonormal-1.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While rock musicals like \u003cb>American Idiot\u003c/b> or \u003cb>Rent\u003c/b> revel in their hip flair and downtown (East Village) milieu, \u003cb>Next to Normal\u003c/b> is not anchored in its time period. Current rock musicals (Spring Awakening), as well as classics like \u003cb>Tommy\u003c/b> and Hair, focus on youth culture and youth alienation. \u003cb>Next to Normal\u003c/b> focuses on family suffering and brings into play a second generation of casualties, which ups the ante and makes it more maturel. The score — it’s more an Adult Contemporary genre — is well-matched to this grown-up drama.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Next to Normal\u003c/b> runs through February 20, 2011 at The Curran Theater in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.shnsf.com/shows/nexttonormal/\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit shnsf.com or call 888-SHN-1799.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cp>I can’t believe its been 20 years since Tony Kushner’s \u003cb>Angels in America\u003c/b> first premiered. Remember (or maybe you don’t, youthful blog reader) when Ronald Reagan was the worst thing that ever happened to us? \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the uninitiated, \u003cb>Angels\u003c/b>, which was born at San Francisco’s Eureka Theater in 1991, evokes an America in which we are poised on the precipice of apocalyptic doom. Kushner’s vision of a morally bankrupt America is one in which the climate of the Reagan years is both the natural legacy of Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn as well as the virulent seed of the modern-day plague — AIDS and its metaphors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Years back, Kushner told a Berkeley crowd (in an absurdly modest statement), that he attributed some of the success of \u003cb>Angels in America\u003c/b> to timing. He noted that the Pulitzer- and Tony-winning play arrived on Broadway at the beginning of “Clinton’s 15 minutes. It’s a Reagan-hating play and that’s one of the things I like about it,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, when Brad Rosenstein interviewed Kushner at the Herbst theater last weekend, I was hoping to hear what Kushner thought of \u003cb>Angels\u003c/b> in Obama’s 15 minutes. How does Kushner think his play fares in the yet more cataclysmic, even more morally bankrupt 2010?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But as the curator of the Museum of Performance & Design, Rosensten had other matters at hand. His interview marked the opening of the museum’s exhibit, \u003ca href=\"http://www.mpdsf.org/PAGES/EXHIBITION/SHOWS/angels.html\">\u003cb>More Life! “Angels in America” at Twenty\u003c/b>\u003c/a>. And so, he and Kushner talked stage design — how did different performances manage the angel wing mechanics, make a book burst into flames, a feather fall straight down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And while some of us might have preferred to hear Kushner expound on politics, religion, history — or even talk more about \u003cb>Project Runway\u003c/b> (he’s a fan), one needs to give the feather its due: Over twenty years ago, as if he were night-visited by his very own angel, Tony Kushner saw the dramatic climax to his theatrical masterpiece in a dream. The image revealed to him was of an angel crashing through the ceiling of a man dying from AIDS. In waking life, Kushner connected the dream’s dots to form the play… the apocalyptic crash, the disease, the messianic wish fulfillment. And, the logical jump, when contemplating angels… whilst in America, is the Angel Moroni — and Mormonism — all key themes to the play.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, apparently, the impetus for the museum exhibition was the appearance of angel wings. Sandra Woodall, who designed the costumes for the original Eureka production in 1991, had donated her collection to the museum. Rosenstein felt the wings needed to have more life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Eureka’s original wings are accompanied by a pair from the Broadway production of \u003cb>Perestroika\u003c/b>, the second half of \u003cb>Angels\u003c/b>, ACT’s wings, and the pair — with the 12-foot wingspan — worn by Emma Thompson in the HBO movie version.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The museum exhibit, upstairs at the Herbst Theater, follows the play’s journey from Kushner’s notebooks and scripts to its various incarnations — the San Francisco premiere, the Broadway opening, the opera, the HBO film.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The exhibition is a treasure trove for Angels-heads; one can pause at a recreation of Kushner’s desk, where he wrote the play — there’s even a stash of Entenmanns’s donuts there, a recreation of the playwright’s sustenance. There are props, manuscripts, video clips, photos — including photography by Avedon and Leibovitz — and an amusing “Jew-fro” snap shot of the author as a young man. The exhibit showcases an array of original costumes and poster art from productions in Japan, Israel, Hungary and other unlikely countries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The exhibition also features photographs from the current Signature Theatre Company revival in New York.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In March of 2011, The Signature Theatre, in conjunction with the Public Theater will stage the New York premiere of Tony Kushner’s latest play, \u003cb>The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures\u003c/b>. The new play explores “revolution, radicalism, marriage, sex, prostitution, politics, real estate, unions of all kinds and debts both repaid and unpayable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I can’t wait for 2030 to find out what kind of junk food sustained Kushner during this creation process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>More Life! “Angels in America” at Twenty\u003c/b> runs through March 26, 2010 at the Museum of Performance & Design in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.mpdsf.org/\">more information\u003c/a> visit mpdsf.org.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>I can’t believe its been 20 years since Tony Kushner’s \u003cb>Angels in America\u003c/b> first premiered. Remember (or maybe you don’t, youthful blog reader) when Ronald Reagan was the worst thing that ever happened to us? \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the uninitiated, \u003cb>Angels\u003c/b>, which was born at San Francisco’s Eureka Theater in 1991, evokes an America in which we are poised on the precipice of apocalyptic doom. Kushner’s vision of a morally bankrupt America is one in which the climate of the Reagan years is both the natural legacy of Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn as well as the virulent seed of the modern-day plague — AIDS and its metaphors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Years back, Kushner told a Berkeley crowd (in an absurdly modest statement), that he attributed some of the success of \u003cb>Angels in America\u003c/b> to timing. He noted that the Pulitzer- and Tony-winning play arrived on Broadway at the beginning of “Clinton’s 15 minutes. It’s a Reagan-hating play and that’s one of the things I like about it,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, when Brad Rosenstein interviewed Kushner at the Herbst theater last weekend, I was hoping to hear what Kushner thought of \u003cb>Angels\u003c/b> in Obama’s 15 minutes. How does Kushner think his play fares in the yet more cataclysmic, even more morally bankrupt 2010?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But as the curator of the Museum of Performance & Design, Rosensten had other matters at hand. His interview marked the opening of the museum’s exhibit, \u003ca href=\"http://www.mpdsf.org/PAGES/EXHIBITION/SHOWS/angels.html\">\u003cb>More Life! “Angels in America” at Twenty\u003c/b>\u003c/a>. And so, he and Kushner talked stage design — how did different performances manage the angel wing mechanics, make a book burst into flames, a feather fall straight down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And while some of us might have preferred to hear Kushner expound on politics, religion, history — or even talk more about \u003cb>Project Runway\u003c/b> (he’s a fan), one needs to give the feather its due: Over twenty years ago, as if he were night-visited by his very own angel, Tony Kushner saw the dramatic climax to his theatrical masterpiece in a dream. The image revealed to him was of an angel crashing through the ceiling of a man dying from AIDS. In waking life, Kushner connected the dream’s dots to form the play… the apocalyptic crash, the disease, the messianic wish fulfillment. And, the logical jump, when contemplating angels… whilst in America, is the Angel Moroni — and Mormonism — all key themes to the play.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, apparently, the impetus for the museum exhibition was the appearance of angel wings. Sandra Woodall, who designed the costumes for the original Eureka production in 1991, had donated her collection to the museum. Rosenstein felt the wings needed to have more life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Eureka’s original wings are accompanied by a pair from the Broadway production of \u003cb>Perestroika\u003c/b>, the second half of \u003cb>Angels\u003c/b>, ACT’s wings, and the pair — with the 12-foot wingspan — worn by Emma Thompson in the HBO movie version.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The museum exhibit, upstairs at the Herbst Theater, follows the play’s journey from Kushner’s notebooks and scripts to its various incarnations — the San Francisco premiere, the Broadway opening, the opera, the HBO film.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The exhibition is a treasure trove for Angels-heads; one can pause at a recreation of Kushner’s desk, where he wrote the play — there’s even a stash of Entenmanns’s donuts there, a recreation of the playwright’s sustenance. There are props, manuscripts, video clips, photos — including photography by Avedon and Leibovitz — and an amusing “Jew-fro” snap shot of the author as a young man. The exhibit showcases an array of original costumes and poster art from productions in Japan, Israel, Hungary and other unlikely countries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The exhibition also features photographs from the current Signature Theatre Company revival in New York.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In March of 2011, The Signature Theatre, in conjunction with the Public Theater will stage the New York premiere of Tony Kushner’s latest play, \u003cb>The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures\u003c/b>. The new play explores “revolution, radicalism, marriage, sex, prostitution, politics, real estate, unions of all kinds and debts both repaid and unpayable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I can’t wait for 2030 to find out what kind of junk food sustained Kushner during this creation process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>More Life! “Angels in America” at Twenty\u003c/b> runs through March 26, 2010 at the Museum of Performance & Design in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.mpdsf.org/\">more information\u003c/a> visit mpdsf.org.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Sure, casting the lip-syncing gringa Natalie Wood as Maria, the Puerto Rican Juliet, in the 1961 movie \u003cb>West Side Story\u003c/b> was a woefully politically incorrect choice. (\u003ca href=\"http://www.tcm.com/video/videoPlayer/?cid=139054&titleId=23623\">Watch a short featurette\u003c/a> about Natalie Wood and the making of the 1961 movie musical \u003cb>West Side Story\u003c/b> on Turner Classic Movies.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Broadway’s new bilingual and Latino-centric \u003cb>West Side Story\u003c/b>, which just opened at the Orpheum, redresses Hollywood’s all-too-typical white-washing. But my (pre-theater) fear was that reparations might result in correctness for its own sake — and the buzz killing of a nearly perfect musical. Au contraire, me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Spanish-ization of the 2009 revival, directed by Arthur Laurents, (who wrote the original script), is the production’s key selling point; it delivers an exciting perspective to a classic that is pretty much sacrosanct to some of us. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cobject width=\"480\" height=\"295\">\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/OHjjYAobr9A?fs=1&hl=en_US\">\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\">\u003cparam name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\">\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/OHjjYAobr9A?fs=1&hl=en_US\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"480\" height=\"295\">\u003c/embed>\u003c/object>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>As someone who grew up tearing up at the opening strains of “Somewhere,” I didn’t think that it was possible to be touched by a new layer of emotionalism from the simple inclusion of bilingual duets. But this \u003cb>West Side Story\u003c/b>, for all its mediocrities, achieves this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Set to a kick-ass score, the 1950s story was remarkably progressive for its day. With music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, the play spoke of the realities of bigotry and the failed promise of Lady Liberty to her huddled masses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the 1953 play was more timid, the movie’s lyrics were right on: “Life is alright in America/If you’re all white in America/Here you are free and you have pride/Long as you stay on your own side/Free to be anything you choose/Free to wait tables and shine shoes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But if the 1961 movie talked the talk, the 2009 revival really does walk the walk. With the Spanish speakers actually speaking Spanish, this modern revival allows us to see the conflict from the other side of the street; we see the Puerto Ricans from the inside, not just from the side of the Xenophobe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/wss3.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>While much of the first half of the play suffers from unfavorable comparisons with the film, the bilingual approach begins to score some points in Act II. The audience bounces along on the bed with a gaggle of irreverent girls in “I Feel Pretty,” one of the play’s all-out best numbers. With its “oh no she di’int!” neck-rolling street-sass, the song, sung mostly in Spanish, now possesses a pajama party mood as Maria’s ga ga lovesickness is mocked by her friend’s playful teasing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/wss4.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>As Maria, Ali Ewoldt has a powerful, earthy voice — so different from Marni Nixon’s — the vocalist who sang Natalie Wood’s part in the film version. Both Nixon’s classical voice and Wood’s ingenue performance created an ethereal Maria, who, if we are to be honest, was kinda weak. Ewoldt’s Maria is a bit sexier; sweet but more substantial.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kyle Harris’s Tony, however, is a little too flimsy. Harris has a terrific, beautiful voice, but as an actor — he’s a bit vacuous with his incessant pretty boy smile — like he still can’t believe he got the part.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nonetheless, the two of them sound wonderful together and when they begin to sing a bilingual duet of “Somewhere,” it promises to be deeply moving. The integration of the Spanish and English languages — especially in this song, suggests a racial harmony that is so much less hokey than I could have imagined…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But then, inexplicably, ‘Anybodys’ — that odd tomboy character — winds up singing most of the song. ‘Anybodys,’ played here by Alexandra Frohlinger, has always been a curious role; she’s that tag along would-be Jet, who is always being told to scram and to act like a girl. Face it; she is early Hollywood’s most iconic, most thinly disguised lesbian.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/wss2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>In a balletic dream sequence in which Tony and Maria are free to love each other and Whites and Hispanics live in harmony, ‘Anybodys’ steps into this bright white, heavenly set, joins Tony and Maria’s hands and, although Frohlinger hardly has the vocal chops, she sings this iconic ballad.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is at once a lousy and a daring choice. Laurents must be well aware that “Somewhere” has become a gay equality anthem of sorts in recent decades. By giving the song to the coded gay character, the message becomes political. It’s a bold choice, and the number is emotionally moving from a gay rights point of view. But it’s a wholly inorganic, anachronistic way to go with this song. By giving the song to a minor character with a disappointing voice, it robs this number of its potential to say what it should be saying. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another number that has been updated — but remains true to its original meaning — is “Gee, Officer Krupke.” Led with off-color color by Drew Foster’s Action, The Jets deride the failed system of authority figures with much the same mischievousness as they did in earlier productions. But because it is 2010, the kids can deride the adults in an R-rated manner. The song is raunchy and edgy and while the antics are still full of ham, there’s a sense of queasy Brechtian over-kill to the vaudeville.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As I may have mentioned, some of us are fanatically devoted to the film version of \u003cb>West Side Story\u003c/b>. But, even Arthur Laurents acknowledged that the acting in the movie was “the worst in any musical film.” Still, I’d like to believe that he wasn’t including Rita Moreno when he made this statement. As the firebrand “a boy like that” Anita, the Piquant “Smoke on your pipe and put that in” Anita, Rita Moreno was the bee’s knees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So it’s worth noting that Michelle Aravena holds her own as Anita in this production. She is full of energy and personality. German Santiago is also good as Bernardo, but his performance seems short on singing and dancing and longer on fighting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/wss1.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>It seems that there’s not enough room for big scale leaping and Jerome Robbins-caliber dancing on the Orpheum stage. Or maybe it’s just that there’ll never be enough room to muscle out the movie in my mind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>West Side Story\u003c/b> runs through November 28, 2010 at The Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.shnsf.com/\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit shnsf.com.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Sure, casting the lip-syncing gringa Natalie Wood as Maria, the Puerto Rican Juliet, in the 1961 movie \u003cb>West Side Story\u003c/b> was a woefully politically incorrect choice. (\u003ca href=\"http://www.tcm.com/video/videoPlayer/?cid=139054&titleId=23623\">Watch a short featurette\u003c/a> about Natalie Wood and the making of the 1961 movie musical \u003cb>West Side Story\u003c/b> on Turner Classic Movies.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Broadway’s new bilingual and Latino-centric \u003cb>West Side Story\u003c/b>, which just opened at the Orpheum, redresses Hollywood’s all-too-typical white-washing. But my (pre-theater) fear was that reparations might result in correctness for its own sake — and the buzz killing of a nearly perfect musical. Au contraire, me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Spanish-ization of the 2009 revival, directed by Arthur Laurents, (who wrote the original script), is the production’s key selling point; it delivers an exciting perspective to a classic that is pretty much sacrosanct to some of us. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cobject width=\"480\" height=\"295\">\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/OHjjYAobr9A?fs=1&hl=en_US\">\u003cparam name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\">\u003cparam name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\">\u003cembed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/OHjjYAobr9A?fs=1&hl=en_US\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"480\" height=\"295\">\u003c/embed>\u003c/object>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>As someone who grew up tearing up at the opening strains of “Somewhere,” I didn’t think that it was possible to be touched by a new layer of emotionalism from the simple inclusion of bilingual duets. But this \u003cb>West Side Story\u003c/b>, for all its mediocrities, achieves this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Set to a kick-ass score, the 1950s story was remarkably progressive for its day. With music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, the play spoke of the realities of bigotry and the failed promise of Lady Liberty to her huddled masses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the 1953 play was more timid, the movie’s lyrics were right on: “Life is alright in America/If you’re all white in America/Here you are free and you have pride/Long as you stay on your own side/Free to be anything you choose/Free to wait tables and shine shoes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But if the 1961 movie talked the talk, the 2009 revival really does walk the walk. With the Spanish speakers actually speaking Spanish, this modern revival allows us to see the conflict from the other side of the street; we see the Puerto Ricans from the inside, not just from the side of the Xenophobe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/wss3.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>While much of the first half of the play suffers from unfavorable comparisons with the film, the bilingual approach begins to score some points in Act II. The audience bounces along on the bed with a gaggle of irreverent girls in “I Feel Pretty,” one of the play’s all-out best numbers. With its “oh no she di’int!” neck-rolling street-sass, the song, sung mostly in Spanish, now possesses a pajama party mood as Maria’s ga ga lovesickness is mocked by her friend’s playful teasing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/wss4.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>As Maria, Ali Ewoldt has a powerful, earthy voice — so different from Marni Nixon’s — the vocalist who sang Natalie Wood’s part in the film version. Both Nixon’s classical voice and Wood’s ingenue performance created an ethereal Maria, who, if we are to be honest, was kinda weak. Ewoldt’s Maria is a bit sexier; sweet but more substantial.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kyle Harris’s Tony, however, is a little too flimsy. Harris has a terrific, beautiful voice, but as an actor — he’s a bit vacuous with his incessant pretty boy smile — like he still can’t believe he got the part.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nonetheless, the two of them sound wonderful together and when they begin to sing a bilingual duet of “Somewhere,” it promises to be deeply moving. The integration of the Spanish and English languages — especially in this song, suggests a racial harmony that is so much less hokey than I could have imagined…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But then, inexplicably, ‘Anybodys’ — that odd tomboy character — winds up singing most of the song. ‘Anybodys,’ played here by Alexandra Frohlinger, has always been a curious role; she’s that tag along would-be Jet, who is always being told to scram and to act like a girl. Face it; she is early Hollywood’s most iconic, most thinly disguised lesbian.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/wss2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>In a balletic dream sequence in which Tony and Maria are free to love each other and Whites and Hispanics live in harmony, ‘Anybodys’ steps into this bright white, heavenly set, joins Tony and Maria’s hands and, although Frohlinger hardly has the vocal chops, she sings this iconic ballad.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is at once a lousy and a daring choice. Laurents must be well aware that “Somewhere” has become a gay equality anthem of sorts in recent decades. By giving the song to the coded gay character, the message becomes political. It’s a bold choice, and the number is emotionally moving from a gay rights point of view. But it’s a wholly inorganic, anachronistic way to go with this song. By giving the song to a minor character with a disappointing voice, it robs this number of its potential to say what it should be saying. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another number that has been updated — but remains true to its original meaning — is “Gee, Officer Krupke.” Led with off-color color by Drew Foster’s Action, The Jets deride the failed system of authority figures with much the same mischievousness as they did in earlier productions. But because it is 2010, the kids can deride the adults in an R-rated manner. The song is raunchy and edgy and while the antics are still full of ham, there’s a sense of queasy Brechtian over-kill to the vaudeville.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As I may have mentioned, some of us are fanatically devoted to the film version of \u003cb>West Side Story\u003c/b>. But, even Arthur Laurents acknowledged that the acting in the movie was “the worst in any musical film.” Still, I’d like to believe that he wasn’t including Rita Moreno when he made this statement. As the firebrand “a boy like that” Anita, the Piquant “Smoke on your pipe and put that in” Anita, Rita Moreno was the bee’s knees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So it’s worth noting that Michelle Aravena holds her own as Anita in this production. She is full of energy and personality. German Santiago is also good as Bernardo, but his performance seems short on singing and dancing and longer on fighting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/wss1.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>It seems that there’s not enough room for big scale leaping and Jerome Robbins-caliber dancing on the Orpheum stage. Or maybe it’s just that there’ll never be enough room to muscle out the movie in my mind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>West Side Story\u003c/b> runs through November 28, 2010 at The Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.shnsf.com/\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit shnsf.com.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>I have always been confounded with Anne Frank’s incredibly optimistic words: “I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.” If you look it up, Google will offer “\u003ci>in spite of everything anne frank.\u003c/i>” It’s the second suggested search item. Apparently I’m not the only one who wonders about that sentence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those who were entrusted to parse and to interpret Anne’s words, to protect them and/or edit them had the opportunity to use them to instruct and remind — or to heal, and even to profit. In the decade following the Second World War, the stewardship of Anne Frank’s words proved to be a bitter, even litigious, tug of war. And it became a personal quagmire for Meyer Levin, the man who dedicated his life to ministering to the literary life of \u003cb>The Diary of Anne Frank.\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Compulsion\u003c/b> is a riveting new play, premiering at Berkeley Rep, about Meyer Levin’s passionate convictions and tortured obsessions. In it, Mandy Patinkin gives an extraordinarily complex performance as Sid Silver — the Levin character. And a marionette gives a hauntingly stirring performance as the specter of Anne Frank. What actress could play the ghost of the sacrosanct Anne Frank? One cannot imagine her being inserted as a character in anyone else’s story. The use of a puppet — who holds the strings? — is a stroke of genius.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/annefrank1.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>In 1955, just 11 years after Anne wrote her final diary entry, the stage adaptation of \u003cb>The Diary of Anne Frank\u003c/b> opened on Broadway to colossal acclaim, a Tony, a Pulitzer, and to intense contempt and resentment from Myer Levin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Compulsion,\u003c/b> Rinnie Groff’s profound work of historical fiction, shows how the concerns of the era — anti-Semitism, assimilation, Zionism, McCarthyism, as well as the intersection of business and art — all became factors in the adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary. At least these -isms were perceived to be major factors in the eyes of Sid Silver. Groff’s play seems to suggest that although Silver may have been paranoid, that doesn’t mean they weren’t out to get him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/annefrank2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>Director Oskar Eustis (who will bring the play to New York next) deftly chisels the social, political and psychological nuances. As Silver, Patinkin tightropes between acting out of moral compulsion and being a fanatical obsessive. For Silver, Anne Frank’s remaining words \u003ci>are\u003c/i> her remains. When he first brings Anne Frank’s diary to Doubleday, the publisher refers to it as the “adolescent diary by the Jewess.” In an era of gentlemen’s agreements and surnames that “pass,” Silver was protective of Anne Frank’s diary and wary of those who would touch it — be they Eleanor Roosevelt (who wrote the diary’s introduction) or Carson McCullers (who was asked to write the adaptation for the stage) or Lillian Hellman (whose politics may or may not have induced her to undermine Silver.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Silver seemed to think that if he could craft the play just so, American audiences would comprehend the Holocaust and the Jewish experience just so, too. But his version was too Jewish. Or he was too impossible to work with. In the end, \u003cb>The Diary of Anne Frank\u003c/b> was written by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich (who ironically, wrote the Christmas classic \u003cb>It’s a Wonderful Life\u003c/b>). In their version, human suffering is universal; this time around, it was the Jews’ turn. The original diary’s references to Jews as victims and Germans as killers were removed. Anne’s seemingly forgiving “I still believe…” gets the play’s final word. The play was reviewed as a “lovely, tender drama.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/annefrank3.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>Hannah Cabell plays Silver’s wife, a performance which grows in poignancy as the wife gradually watches her husband become unhinged from the ordeal. Silver spent his money on lawsuits; he squandered his credibility and talents and sacrificed his marriage, his family and his peace of mind. Cabell also plays Miss Mermin, the young publisher at Doubleday whose allegiance towards Silver is challenged by his monomania. Matte Osian plays several roles, including bottom-line oriented anti-Semites. In this three-actor play, the stage is also peopled by marionettes. Designed by Matt Acheson, the puppets include Anne and Otto Frank and seem to represent the ghosts of unnamed Holocaust victims.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the play’s most achingly intense scene, the puppet of Anne Frank appears in the Silvers’ bed. What begins as a familiar trope — the other woman between them — becomes a heartbreaking conversation between a mother and a dead child. As Anne describes her final days, and her father’s sorrow, the scene pierces with the truth of what was lost and what transpired in Bergen-Belsen. Here, and elsewhere, \u003cb>Compulsion\u003c/b> achieves the rawness and beauty that Hackett and Goodrich’s “lovely drama” did not. Even more, Mandy Patinkin distills this rawness and beauty to one throe of quiet sorrow as he sings, in a mournful countertenor, a Yiddish song, after rising from the bed where he channeled Anne Frank.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Compulsion\u003c/b> runs through October 31, 2010 at Berkeley Repertory Theater. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.berkeleyrep.org/tickets/index.asp\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit berkeleyrep.org.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>I have always been confounded with Anne Frank’s incredibly optimistic words: “I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.” If you look it up, Google will offer “\u003ci>in spite of everything anne frank.\u003c/i>” It’s the second suggested search item. Apparently I’m not the only one who wonders about that sentence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those who were entrusted to parse and to interpret Anne’s words, to protect them and/or edit them had the opportunity to use them to instruct and remind — or to heal, and even to profit. In the decade following the Second World War, the stewardship of Anne Frank’s words proved to be a bitter, even litigious, tug of war. And it became a personal quagmire for Meyer Levin, the man who dedicated his life to ministering to the literary life of \u003cb>The Diary of Anne Frank.\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Compulsion\u003c/b> is a riveting new play, premiering at Berkeley Rep, about Meyer Levin’s passionate convictions and tortured obsessions. In it, Mandy Patinkin gives an extraordinarily complex performance as Sid Silver — the Levin character. And a marionette gives a hauntingly stirring performance as the specter of Anne Frank. What actress could play the ghost of the sacrosanct Anne Frank? One cannot imagine her being inserted as a character in anyone else’s story. The use of a puppet — who holds the strings? — is a stroke of genius.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/annefrank1.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>In 1955, just 11 years after Anne wrote her final diary entry, the stage adaptation of \u003cb>The Diary of Anne Frank\u003c/b> opened on Broadway to colossal acclaim, a Tony, a Pulitzer, and to intense contempt and resentment from Myer Levin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Compulsion,\u003c/b> Rinnie Groff’s profound work of historical fiction, shows how the concerns of the era — anti-Semitism, assimilation, Zionism, McCarthyism, as well as the intersection of business and art — all became factors in the adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary. At least these -isms were perceived to be major factors in the eyes of Sid Silver. Groff’s play seems to suggest that although Silver may have been paranoid, that doesn’t mean they weren’t out to get him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/annefrank2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>Director Oskar Eustis (who will bring the play to New York next) deftly chisels the social, political and psychological nuances. As Silver, Patinkin tightropes between acting out of moral compulsion and being a fanatical obsessive. For Silver, Anne Frank’s remaining words \u003ci>are\u003c/i> her remains. When he first brings Anne Frank’s diary to Doubleday, the publisher refers to it as the “adolescent diary by the Jewess.” In an era of gentlemen’s agreements and surnames that “pass,” Silver was protective of Anne Frank’s diary and wary of those who would touch it — be they Eleanor Roosevelt (who wrote the diary’s introduction) or Carson McCullers (who was asked to write the adaptation for the stage) or Lillian Hellman (whose politics may or may not have induced her to undermine Silver.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Silver seemed to think that if he could craft the play just so, American audiences would comprehend the Holocaust and the Jewish experience just so, too. But his version was too Jewish. Or he was too impossible to work with. In the end, \u003cb>The Diary of Anne Frank\u003c/b> was written by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich (who ironically, wrote the Christmas classic \u003cb>It’s a Wonderful Life\u003c/b>). In their version, human suffering is universal; this time around, it was the Jews’ turn. The original diary’s references to Jews as victims and Germans as killers were removed. Anne’s seemingly forgiving “I still believe…” gets the play’s final word. The play was reviewed as a “lovely, tender drama.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/annefrank3.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>Hannah Cabell plays Silver’s wife, a performance which grows in poignancy as the wife gradually watches her husband become unhinged from the ordeal. Silver spent his money on lawsuits; he squandered his credibility and talents and sacrificed his marriage, his family and his peace of mind. Cabell also plays Miss Mermin, the young publisher at Doubleday whose allegiance towards Silver is challenged by his monomania. Matte Osian plays several roles, including bottom-line oriented anti-Semites. In this three-actor play, the stage is also peopled by marionettes. Designed by Matt Acheson, the puppets include Anne and Otto Frank and seem to represent the ghosts of unnamed Holocaust victims.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the play’s most achingly intense scene, the puppet of Anne Frank appears in the Silvers’ bed. What begins as a familiar trope — the other woman between them — becomes a heartbreaking conversation between a mother and a dead child. As Anne describes her final days, and her father’s sorrow, the scene pierces with the truth of what was lost and what transpired in Bergen-Belsen. Here, and elsewhere, \u003cb>Compulsion\u003c/b> achieves the rawness and beauty that Hackett and Goodrich’s “lovely drama” did not. Even more, Mandy Patinkin distills this rawness and beauty to one throe of quiet sorrow as he sings, in a mournful countertenor, a Yiddish song, after rising from the bed where he channeled Anne Frank.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Compulsion\u003c/b> runs through October 31, 2010 at Berkeley Repertory Theater. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.berkeleyrep.org/tickets/index.asp\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit berkeleyrep.org.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Each time the 1981 Tony winning musical \u003cb>Dreamgirls\u003c/b> is produced, it brings to the fore yet another diva’s story. And our collective pop culture consciousness of her gets folded into the layers of \u003cb>Dreamgirls\u003c/b>. In 2010, with a \u003ca href=\"http://www.dreamgirlsonstage.com/\">\u003c/a>\u003cb>Dreamgirls\u003c/b> revival opening in San Francisco, the show carries the personalities of Beyoncé and Jennifer Hudson (from the 2006 film adaptation) with it, in addition to Jennifer Holliday (the star of the 81 original) and the ghosts of Motown divas past.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Everybody knows — or everybody thinks they know — that the Broadway musical \u003cb>Dreamgirls\u003c/b> is about Diana Ross and The Supremes. Anybody who knows a bit about the Supremes can see that the play’s Effie White invokes Florence Ballard, the big voiced Supreme who fell by the wayside as Diana Ross’s star rose.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The musical’s librettist, Tom Eyen, has insisted that he did not write \u003cb>Dreamgirls\u003c/b> with The Supremes in mind. But that might have just been his lawyers talking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/dreamgirls1.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If \u003cb>Dreamgirls\u003c/b> wasn’t the musical theater version of a roman à clef, it would be much less interesting. Yes, this is a musical about big voices, big egos, big divas (fun!), cat fights (super fun!), infidelity (of all stripes), glitter (in truckloads!), and synchronized dance steps. All good stuff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the play’s extratextuality is what gives it its texture. It should be a prerequisite to know that: Motown’s Berry Gordy was sleeping with Diana Ross when he launched her career. And that Diana had his child, unbeknownst to him until years later. Or that Jennifer Holliday (who originated the role of Effie in 1981) quit the workshop again and again until they rewrote the play so Effie didn’t get killed off after Act I (although Flo Ballard did die young.) Or that Jennifer Hudson totally should have won Idol but didn’t, but she shot to fame anyway. (Snag, Simon.) Or that Diana Ross once hit a flight attendant with her hat box, which was carrying her dog.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/dreamgirls2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without all the TMZ dish, \u003cb>Dreamgirls\u003c/b> is a good enough music industry musical with familiar composite characters whose costumes, hair and musical styles transform from the 1950s through the 1970s. The story follows Effie White (Moya Angela, delivering the goods) as the big, busty diva with a ‘tude. She can belt it out like nobody’s business, but because of favoritism and the music biz’s transformation from an aural art to an audio-visual one, she gets relegated to the back of the band. Syesha Mercado plays Deena Jones, the Diana Ross character (played by Beyoncé in the film.) Like all the characters in this play, her role is utterly underwritten. But we can’t really care: the stylized dances (Robert Longbottom from Michael Bennett’s original choreography) and eye-catching costumes (William Ivey Long and lots of lamé) assert that this is a play that is exclusively about showmanship.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/dreamgirls3.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With Effie gone, the Dreams are now comprised of Mercado’s Deena and Adrienne Warren and Margaret Hoffman as Lorrell and Michelle, whose plotlines involve boyfriends who won’t leave their wives, if I remember correctly. Chaz Lamar Shepherd plays Curtis Taylor, Jr. the Berry Gordy character and Trevon Davis plays C.C. White, the song writer who Taylor thwarts again and again. Effie goes off to start a solo career that looks and sounds something like Roberta Flack/Aretha Franklin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While Angela’s “And I’m Telling You..” is a powerful show-stopper, it’s Chester Gregory as James “Thunder” Early, who wows us throughout the play. Gregory plays Jimmy, a James Brown type, who refuses to tone down his racy act to “break over” to the pop charts. His Gumby-limbed dance moves and raunchy microphone gestures thrill and lift the energetic, but not very memorable songs (Henry Krieger and Tom Eyen’s genre knockoffs) to suitable heights.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the movie outperforms this revival, this production underscores the sea change between an era when the music ruled to the modern television age of \u003cb>American Bandstand\u003c/b> and \u003cb>Soul Train\u003c/b>. Using vintage-style, big-screen projections (media design by Howard Werner) behind the live actors, the contrast betweem the eras comes through loud and clear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dreamgirls\u003c/b> runs through September 26, 2010 at The Curran Theater in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.shnsf.com/\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit shnsf.com.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Each time the 1981 Tony winning musical \u003cb>Dreamgirls\u003c/b> is produced, it brings to the fore yet another diva’s story. And our collective pop culture consciousness of her gets folded into the layers of \u003cb>Dreamgirls\u003c/b>. In 2010, with a \u003ca href=\"http://www.dreamgirlsonstage.com/\">\u003c/a>\u003cb>Dreamgirls\u003c/b> revival opening in San Francisco, the show carries the personalities of Beyoncé and Jennifer Hudson (from the 2006 film adaptation) with it, in addition to Jennifer Holliday (the star of the 81 original) and the ghosts of Motown divas past.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Everybody knows — or everybody thinks they know — that the Broadway musical \u003cb>Dreamgirls\u003c/b> is about Diana Ross and The Supremes. Anybody who knows a bit about the Supremes can see that the play’s Effie White invokes Florence Ballard, the big voiced Supreme who fell by the wayside as Diana Ross’s star rose.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The musical’s librettist, Tom Eyen, has insisted that he did not write \u003cb>Dreamgirls\u003c/b> with The Supremes in mind. But that might have just been his lawyers talking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/dreamgirls1.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If \u003cb>Dreamgirls\u003c/b> wasn’t the musical theater version of a roman à clef, it would be much less interesting. Yes, this is a musical about big voices, big egos, big divas (fun!), cat fights (super fun!), infidelity (of all stripes), glitter (in truckloads!), and synchronized dance steps. All good stuff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the play’s extratextuality is what gives it its texture. It should be a prerequisite to know that: Motown’s Berry Gordy was sleeping with Diana Ross when he launched her career. And that Diana had his child, unbeknownst to him until years later. Or that Jennifer Holliday (who originated the role of Effie in 1981) quit the workshop again and again until they rewrote the play so Effie didn’t get killed off after Act I (although Flo Ballard did die young.) Or that Jennifer Hudson totally should have won Idol but didn’t, but she shot to fame anyway. (Snag, Simon.) Or that Diana Ross once hit a flight attendant with her hat box, which was carrying her dog.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/dreamgirls2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without all the TMZ dish, \u003cb>Dreamgirls\u003c/b> is a good enough music industry musical with familiar composite characters whose costumes, hair and musical styles transform from the 1950s through the 1970s. The story follows Effie White (Moya Angela, delivering the goods) as the big, busty diva with a ‘tude. She can belt it out like nobody’s business, but because of favoritism and the music biz’s transformation from an aural art to an audio-visual one, she gets relegated to the back of the band. Syesha Mercado plays Deena Jones, the Diana Ross character (played by Beyoncé in the film.) Like all the characters in this play, her role is utterly underwritten. But we can’t really care: the stylized dances (Robert Longbottom from Michael Bennett’s original choreography) and eye-catching costumes (William Ivey Long and lots of lamé) assert that this is a play that is exclusively about showmanship.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/dreamgirls3.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With Effie gone, the Dreams are now comprised of Mercado’s Deena and Adrienne Warren and Margaret Hoffman as Lorrell and Michelle, whose plotlines involve boyfriends who won’t leave their wives, if I remember correctly. Chaz Lamar Shepherd plays Curtis Taylor, Jr. the Berry Gordy character and Trevon Davis plays C.C. White, the song writer who Taylor thwarts again and again. Effie goes off to start a solo career that looks and sounds something like Roberta Flack/Aretha Franklin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While Angela’s “And I’m Telling You..” is a powerful show-stopper, it’s Chester Gregory as James “Thunder” Early, who wows us throughout the play. Gregory plays Jimmy, a James Brown type, who refuses to tone down his racy act to “break over” to the pop charts. His Gumby-limbed dance moves and raunchy microphone gestures thrill and lift the energetic, but not very memorable songs (Henry Krieger and Tom Eyen’s genre knockoffs) to suitable heights.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the movie outperforms this revival, this production underscores the sea change between an era when the music ruled to the modern television age of \u003cb>American Bandstand\u003c/b> and \u003cb>Soul Train\u003c/b>. Using vintage-style, big-screen projections (media design by Howard Werner) behind the live actors, the contrast betweem the eras comes through loud and clear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dreamgirls\u003c/b> runs through September 26, 2010 at The Curran Theater in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.shnsf.com/\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit shnsf.com.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>With its socialist yoking of sex and commerce and marriage and whoredom, \u003cb> Mrs. Warren’s Profession\u003c/b>, George Bernard Shaw’s 1893 play, was quite the shocker in its day. Banned in England at the end of the 19th century, a New York production’s cast and crew were arrested in 1905 and it was again banned — as late as 1955 — in Paris as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In modern times, when nothing is risqué, least of all ideas, the play’s radicalism is tricky to tap. Timothy Near’s room-temperature revival of the play, for The California Shakespeare Festival, does little to generate the excitement of Shaw’s daring ideas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The play begins with the putting on of layers and layers of feminine undergarments — to the forlorn strains of Sinead O’Connor’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8IbqqnBvIQ\">“Factory Girl”\u003c/a>. It’s a perfect selection that suggests a new approach to a period melodrama. O’Connor sings, “I’ve gold in my pocket and silver as well/No more will I answer that factory call.” The stoic resignation in her voice brings a fresh resonance to the plight of women of meager means and scant choices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rather than setting the tone for a tale that will mirror the lyrics, the song kinda outshines it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While there’s some intrigue beneath the layers of Victorian frockery and the performances are mostly competent, this new production hardly socks it to us the way any show about sex and money ought to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Vivie Warren, with her strong handshake, no nonsense demeanor and pleasure in cigars, is a classic Shavian feminist. A Cambridge mathematician, who is all business and no sentimentality, Vivie is an unconventionally modern girl, played a bit too conventionally by Anna Bullards. Having been educated at consecutive boarding school, she hardly knows her mother and when Mrs. Warrren arrives, Vivie is intent on knowing more. Specifically, she wants to know who her father is. As it turns out, a number of the men in Mrs. Warren’s wake are also wondering what part they may play in Vivie’s parentage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dropping her refined accent, “Mrs.” Warren tells her tale of the white lead factory, the starvation wages, the scullery work and the indelicate industry that ultimately put her daughter through school and made her quite comfortable, thank you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shaw’s rebuke of the hypocrisy of his culture is deft: “As if a marriage ceremony makes any difference in the right or wrong of the thing,” Mrs. Warren proffers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the moral relativism of it all becomes more complex when Vivie, who had embraced her mother and admired her resilience, learns more and retracts her support. When she finds out that her mother continues to practice this trade — not for necessity, but because she has become accustomed to the finer things in life, Vivie is shocked and outraged at her mother’s capitalist greed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stacey Ross has moments of authentic intensity as Mrs. Warren, even though her speedy delivery isn’t always effective. Andy Murray is a familiar Victorian villain, whose marriage proposal to Vivie reminds us that wives are merely upper crust prostitutes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s a rector (Rod Gnapp) with a checkered past, his son (Richard Thieriot), a free-thinking Oscar Wild-esque loaf-about and an artist (Dan Hiatt) to contrast Vivie’s pragmatism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Erik Flatmo’s appealing set design and Meg Neville’s striking costumes look great against the pale mountains at Orinda’s amphitheater. The music is, once again, imaginative — in one affecting, wordless scene, mother and daughter dance to a classically arranged instrumental of Cindy Lauper’s “Time After Time.” Later, there’s Bob Dylan and Pink Floyd (“Money”, of course.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s these between-the-text flourishes that give this performance a distinct personality. And one wishes there were more original choices because a conventional adaptation of a play that scorns convention just won’t do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mrs. Warren’s Profession\u003c/b> runs through August 1, 2010 at Bruns Amphitheater. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.calshakes.org/v4/ourplays/2010/mrswarrens.html\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit calshakes.org.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>With its socialist yoking of sex and commerce and marriage and whoredom, \u003cb> Mrs. Warren’s Profession\u003c/b>, George Bernard Shaw’s 1893 play, was quite the shocker in its day. Banned in England at the end of the 19th century, a New York production’s cast and crew were arrested in 1905 and it was again banned — as late as 1955 — in Paris as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In modern times, when nothing is risqué, least of all ideas, the play’s radicalism is tricky to tap. Timothy Near’s room-temperature revival of the play, for The California Shakespeare Festival, does little to generate the excitement of Shaw’s daring ideas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The play begins with the putting on of layers and layers of feminine undergarments — to the forlorn strains of Sinead O’Connor’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8IbqqnBvIQ\">“Factory Girl”\u003c/a>. It’s a perfect selection that suggests a new approach to a period melodrama. O’Connor sings, “I’ve gold in my pocket and silver as well/No more will I answer that factory call.” The stoic resignation in her voice brings a fresh resonance to the plight of women of meager means and scant choices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rather than setting the tone for a tale that will mirror the lyrics, the song kinda outshines it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While there’s some intrigue beneath the layers of Victorian frockery and the performances are mostly competent, this new production hardly socks it to us the way any show about sex and money ought to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Vivie Warren, with her strong handshake, no nonsense demeanor and pleasure in cigars, is a classic Shavian feminist. A Cambridge mathematician, who is all business and no sentimentality, Vivie is an unconventionally modern girl, played a bit too conventionally by Anna Bullards. Having been educated at consecutive boarding school, she hardly knows her mother and when Mrs. Warrren arrives, Vivie is intent on knowing more. Specifically, she wants to know who her father is. As it turns out, a number of the men in Mrs. Warren’s wake are also wondering what part they may play in Vivie’s parentage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dropping her refined accent, “Mrs.” Warren tells her tale of the white lead factory, the starvation wages, the scullery work and the indelicate industry that ultimately put her daughter through school and made her quite comfortable, thank you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shaw’s rebuke of the hypocrisy of his culture is deft: “As if a marriage ceremony makes any difference in the right or wrong of the thing,” Mrs. Warren proffers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the moral relativism of it all becomes more complex when Vivie, who had embraced her mother and admired her resilience, learns more and retracts her support. When she finds out that her mother continues to practice this trade — not for necessity, but because she has become accustomed to the finer things in life, Vivie is shocked and outraged at her mother’s capitalist greed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stacey Ross has moments of authentic intensity as Mrs. Warren, even though her speedy delivery isn’t always effective. Andy Murray is a familiar Victorian villain, whose marriage proposal to Vivie reminds us that wives are merely upper crust prostitutes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s a rector (Rod Gnapp) with a checkered past, his son (Richard Thieriot), a free-thinking Oscar Wild-esque loaf-about and an artist (Dan Hiatt) to contrast Vivie’s pragmatism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Erik Flatmo’s appealing set design and Meg Neville’s striking costumes look great against the pale mountains at Orinda’s amphitheater. The music is, once again, imaginative — in one affecting, wordless scene, mother and daughter dance to a classically arranged instrumental of Cindy Lauper’s “Time After Time.” Later, there’s Bob Dylan and Pink Floyd (“Money”, of course.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s these between-the-text flourishes that give this performance a distinct personality. And one wishes there were more original choices because a conventional adaptation of a play that scorns convention just won’t do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mrs. Warren’s Profession\u003c/b> runs through August 1, 2010 at Bruns Amphitheater. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.calshakes.org/v4/ourplays/2010/mrswarrens.html\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit calshakes.org.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>In the course of 90 minutes and 90 years, the art deco double doors at the Tosca Cafe on Columbus Avenue, swing open probably 90 times to let in immigrants and opera singers, flappers and sailors, thugs and bar flies, beat poets, vets, hippies, disco queers, businessmen, ballet dancers, yuppies and dot-commies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You know a 90-minute play is dragging when the Loma Prieta earthquake hits and you think: thank goodness, only two decades to go.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>The Tosca Project\u003c/b>, ACT’s world premiere dance-theater work about the life of North Beach’s renowned bar, aspires to be a love song to the singularity of San Francisco and the eccentrics who called this place home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ACT artistic director Carey Perloff and Val Caniparoli (SF Ballet Principal Character Dancer and Choreographer) spent four year years developing the piece — culling tales from the bar’s neighbors, friends and fixtures. And still, besides those deco double doors, hand-carved mahogany bar top, Italian espresso machine and familiar arches, \u003cb>The Tosca Project\u003c/b> is a mere nostalgia-thon of passing decades and their passing dance styles in any city in America.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/tosca-1.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The nearly wordless piece runs through the decades from Prohibition to Black Tuesday to Pearl Harbor to the Summer of Love to the Dot-Com Boom. Each new era is ushered in by a change in the music on the jukebox (Irving Berlin, Tommy Dorsey, Hendryx, Sylvester…), the introduction of a new dance craze and changes in costume. World events are announced via an old-timey newsreel voice. There’s a cursory sense of checking off the eras. It reminds me of that “classic” YouTube video \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMH0bHeiRNg\">\u003cb>The Evolution of Dance\u003c/b>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The talent of the dancers is clear, even if much of the choreography leans toward the Artistic. A ghost dancer pirouettes across the floor; the old Italian proprietor longs for his lost love. Its all very dreamy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Crowd-pleasing jukebox numbers energize strike-a-pose group dances where Hollywood starlets swing and stroll and make us smile. While there are some winning and original moments — a comic pas de duex between a classical ballet dancer and an awkward business man (Sabina Allemann and Peter Anderson) — much of the dance elements are (well-executed) if uninspiring recreations of familiar genres. For a story about 242 Columbus Avenue, it’s surprisingly generic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/tosca-2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s a sailor smooching his gal goodbye. In the hippie decade, a flower child sits lotus-style atop a Tosca bistro table (holding a flower). A Vietnam vet and a peacenik skirmish. A disco ball descends in the ’70s as cruising gays snort coke and do cornball John Travolta moves. Did Tosca install a disco ball in the 1970s? I don’t think so, but disco ball is an easy signifier.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When a dancer falters, his limbs uncooperative, that’s AIDS. We may or may not know that the dancer whose body is failing (Pascal Molat) represents Rudolph Nureyev, a friend of the new owner. He is to AIDS what the disco ball is to the ’70s, what the beret is to the beats…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/tosca-3.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you read ACT’s program notes, you’ll learn that Tosca does have an interesting history; the bar opened in 1919, just weeks before prohibition went into effect. The immigrant proprietor’s wife cooked up booze on a stove top and snuck it into the bar where it was the secret ingredient in Tosca’s “Coffee Royale.” And yes, the place was lousy with celebs and notorious names. Without background reading, the production really doesn’t stand on its own. As is often the danger in hybrid forms, neither component is truly up to snuff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>The Tosca Project\u003c/b> runs through June 27, 2010 at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.act-sf.org/site/PageServer\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit act-sf.org.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>In the course of 90 minutes and 90 years, the art deco double doors at the Tosca Cafe on Columbus Avenue, swing open probably 90 times to let in immigrants and opera singers, flappers and sailors, thugs and bar flies, beat poets, vets, hippies, disco queers, businessmen, ballet dancers, yuppies and dot-commies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You know a 90-minute play is dragging when the Loma Prieta earthquake hits and you think: thank goodness, only two decades to go.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>The Tosca Project\u003c/b>, ACT’s world premiere dance-theater work about the life of North Beach’s renowned bar, aspires to be a love song to the singularity of San Francisco and the eccentrics who called this place home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ACT artistic director Carey Perloff and Val Caniparoli (SF Ballet Principal Character Dancer and Choreographer) spent four year years developing the piece — culling tales from the bar’s neighbors, friends and fixtures. And still, besides those deco double doors, hand-carved mahogany bar top, Italian espresso machine and familiar arches, \u003cb>The Tosca Project\u003c/b> is a mere nostalgia-thon of passing decades and their passing dance styles in any city in America.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/tosca-1.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The nearly wordless piece runs through the decades from Prohibition to Black Tuesday to Pearl Harbor to the Summer of Love to the Dot-Com Boom. Each new era is ushered in by a change in the music on the jukebox (Irving Berlin, Tommy Dorsey, Hendryx, Sylvester…), the introduction of a new dance craze and changes in costume. World events are announced via an old-timey newsreel voice. There’s a cursory sense of checking off the eras. It reminds me of that “classic” YouTube video \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMH0bHeiRNg\">\u003cb>The Evolution of Dance\u003c/b>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The talent of the dancers is clear, even if much of the choreography leans toward the Artistic. A ghost dancer pirouettes across the floor; the old Italian proprietor longs for his lost love. Its all very dreamy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Crowd-pleasing jukebox numbers energize strike-a-pose group dances where Hollywood starlets swing and stroll and make us smile. While there are some winning and original moments — a comic pas de duex between a classical ballet dancer and an awkward business man (Sabina Allemann and Peter Anderson) — much of the dance elements are (well-executed) if uninspiring recreations of familiar genres. For a story about 242 Columbus Avenue, it’s surprisingly generic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/tosca-2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s a sailor smooching his gal goodbye. In the hippie decade, a flower child sits lotus-style atop a Tosca bistro table (holding a flower). A Vietnam vet and a peacenik skirmish. A disco ball descends in the ’70s as cruising gays snort coke and do cornball John Travolta moves. Did Tosca install a disco ball in the 1970s? I don’t think so, but disco ball is an easy signifier.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When a dancer falters, his limbs uncooperative, that’s AIDS. We may or may not know that the dancer whose body is failing (Pascal Molat) represents Rudolph Nureyev, a friend of the new owner. He is to AIDS what the disco ball is to the ’70s, what the beret is to the beats…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/tosca-3.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you read ACT’s program notes, you’ll learn that Tosca does have an interesting history; the bar opened in 1919, just weeks before prohibition went into effect. The immigrant proprietor’s wife cooked up booze on a stove top and snuck it into the bar where it was the secret ingredient in Tosca’s “Coffee Royale.” And yes, the place was lousy with celebs and notorious names. Without background reading, the production really doesn’t stand on its own. As is often the danger in hybrid forms, neither component is truly up to snuff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>The Tosca Project\u003c/b> runs through June 27, 2010 at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.act-sf.org/site/PageServer\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit act-sf.org.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>The Bush Years have inspired much feedback. But so far no one has been brave enough to stage an allegorical romantic tragedy sit-com about the Bush administration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Lisa Kron goes there. Back to the days of hanging chads, butterfly ballots and manual recounts. Back to a New York apartment where a few young progressives are incapable of doing anything but switching between CNN and MSNBC.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smart and at times engaging and witty, \u003cb>In the Wake\u003c/b>, is, none the less, dialectic in the guise of a sit-com in the guise of a play. Talky and long, the play reads like the transcript of that 2am college bull session that covers the nature of democracy, dictatorships, monogamy, architecture, the tax code, gay marriage, race, sexuality, experimental film, Rwanda, Thomas Friedman Op-Eds and… Oh wait, the sun is rising. Or Act I is over. Whichever comes first.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/in-the-wake-1.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Through it all, the characters mostly remain on the couch. Ellen and Danny upstairs. Kayla and Laurie from downstairs who are mostly upstairs on Ellen and Danny’s couch. They drink beer and debate politics and discuss the decline of America — in the wake of Bush v. Gore. While the couch remains the same, the newspaper headlines and video clips projected onto the walls flip forward in time: 9/11. Iraq. Katrina. Catastrophe, scandal, jingoism and cowboy diplomacy. What happens in the lives of Ellen and Danny upstairs and Kayla and Laurie downstairs is much less dramatic, but a subtle analogy is forged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Heidi Schreck plays Ellen, a brainy, successful, politically engaged “golden girl” who has led a pretty charmed life and has come to feel entitled to her happiness and confident in her goodness. The play’s chief conceit is that, like America — the golden girl of nations — Ellen believes she is good and just and right, even when the facts on the ground don’t bear this out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Somehow, it’s cathartic to watch one of our own fellow do-gooders discover that liberal values are naive and self-serving. (See: Wally Shawn’s \u003ca href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=UYRNY34iPfoC&dq=wallace+shawn+the+fever&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=_7z6S4vuMZqwMrnw-a0F&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false\">\u003cb>The Fever\u003c/b>\u003c/a>.) In the end, \u003cb>In the Wake\u003c/b> is a public self-flogging that will speak to guilty white liberals who like their dress-downs vicarious.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/in-the-wake-2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Premiering at Berkeley Rep, (and preaching to the choir of lefty Berkeley audiences), the play was written by Kron and directed by Leigh Silverman, who directed Kron’s wonderful 2005 play \u003cb>Well\u003c/b> about health and race. The new play centers on Ellen and her interactions with boyfriend Danny (the affable Carson Elrod), his sister Kayla (a strong performance by Andrea Frankle), her wife Laurie (well played by Danielle Skraastad) and Ellen’s sometimes roommate Judy (Deirdre O’Connell with a comically unsettling lack of affect). On David Korins’ sit-com set, family are neighbors who hang out all the time like Ross and Monica did. The fire escape is for smoking, the TV is for yelling at. And everyone banters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Danny adores Ellen, Kayla respects and admires her, Laurie tries to keep her mouth shut because Ellen is a highly opinionated force of nature. Ellen’s other friend (Emily Donahoe) is enamored of her. All of them aim to please, so Ellen is used to calling the shots. Except for Judy, just back from West Africa where she is a humanitarian aid worker. Raised in poverty and now working in crisis zones, Judy alone can speak practice to principal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And it’s this clash between practice and principal, action vs. intention that gives the play its bite. “Don’t tell me about your morals or ethics, show me your tax code,” says Ellen at one point, understanding that meaning well means very little.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are a few scenes where class tensions and the gap between real and ideal are taut enough that we can feel it viscerally. Miriam F. Glover gives a great performance as Judy’s teenage niece in one uncomfortable scene that nearly makes it all worthwhile.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Well\u003c/b> was something of a masterpiece because it undermined its own sincerity every step of the way. Like \u003cb>In the Wake\u003c/b>, \u003ca href=\"http://www.lisakron.com/well.html\">\u003cb>Well\u003c/b>\u003c/a> also considered the lead character’s self-serving preconceptions and rationalizations while it explored larger socio-political issues. But \u003cb>Well\u003c/b>, which starred Kron, who was 1/5 of the Five Lesbian Brothers, a campy comedy quintet in the East Village, was full of meta-theatrical mayhem, self-deprecation and disobedient characters who refuse to stay on message.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>In the Wake,\u003c/b> takes itself way more seriously. And as Al Gore now knows, that can backfire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>In the Wake\u003c/b> runs through June 27, 2010 at Berkeley Repertory Theater. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.berkeleyrep.org/tickets/index.asp\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit berkeleyrep.org.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The Bush Years have inspired much feedback. But so far no one has been brave enough to stage an allegorical romantic tragedy sit-com about the Bush administration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Lisa Kron goes there. Back to the days of hanging chads, butterfly ballots and manual recounts. Back to a New York apartment where a few young progressives are incapable of doing anything but switching between CNN and MSNBC.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smart and at times engaging and witty, \u003cb>In the Wake\u003c/b>, is, none the less, dialectic in the guise of a sit-com in the guise of a play. Talky and long, the play reads like the transcript of that 2am college bull session that covers the nature of democracy, dictatorships, monogamy, architecture, the tax code, gay marriage, race, sexuality, experimental film, Rwanda, Thomas Friedman Op-Eds and… Oh wait, the sun is rising. Or Act I is over. Whichever comes first.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/in-the-wake-1.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Through it all, the characters mostly remain on the couch. Ellen and Danny upstairs. Kayla and Laurie from downstairs who are mostly upstairs on Ellen and Danny’s couch. They drink beer and debate politics and discuss the decline of America — in the wake of Bush v. Gore. While the couch remains the same, the newspaper headlines and video clips projected onto the walls flip forward in time: 9/11. Iraq. Katrina. Catastrophe, scandal, jingoism and cowboy diplomacy. What happens in the lives of Ellen and Danny upstairs and Kayla and Laurie downstairs is much less dramatic, but a subtle analogy is forged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Heidi Schreck plays Ellen, a brainy, successful, politically engaged “golden girl” who has led a pretty charmed life and has come to feel entitled to her happiness and confident in her goodness. The play’s chief conceit is that, like America — the golden girl of nations — Ellen believes she is good and just and right, even when the facts on the ground don’t bear this out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Somehow, it’s cathartic to watch one of our own fellow do-gooders discover that liberal values are naive and self-serving. (See: Wally Shawn’s \u003ca href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=UYRNY34iPfoC&dq=wallace+shawn+the+fever&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=_7z6S4vuMZqwMrnw-a0F&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false\">\u003cb>The Fever\u003c/b>\u003c/a>.) In the end, \u003cb>In the Wake\u003c/b> is a public self-flogging that will speak to guilty white liberals who like their dress-downs vicarious.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/in-the-wake-2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Premiering at Berkeley Rep, (and preaching to the choir of lefty Berkeley audiences), the play was written by Kron and directed by Leigh Silverman, who directed Kron’s wonderful 2005 play \u003cb>Well\u003c/b> about health and race. The new play centers on Ellen and her interactions with boyfriend Danny (the affable Carson Elrod), his sister Kayla (a strong performance by Andrea Frankle), her wife Laurie (well played by Danielle Skraastad) and Ellen’s sometimes roommate Judy (Deirdre O’Connell with a comically unsettling lack of affect). On David Korins’ sit-com set, family are neighbors who hang out all the time like Ross and Monica did. The fire escape is for smoking, the TV is for yelling at. And everyone banters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Danny adores Ellen, Kayla respects and admires her, Laurie tries to keep her mouth shut because Ellen is a highly opinionated force of nature. Ellen’s other friend (Emily Donahoe) is enamored of her. All of them aim to please, so Ellen is used to calling the shots. Except for Judy, just back from West Africa where she is a humanitarian aid worker. Raised in poverty and now working in crisis zones, Judy alone can speak practice to principal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And it’s this clash between practice and principal, action vs. intention that gives the play its bite. “Don’t tell me about your morals or ethics, show me your tax code,” says Ellen at one point, understanding that meaning well means very little.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are a few scenes where class tensions and the gap between real and ideal are taut enough that we can feel it viscerally. Miriam F. Glover gives a great performance as Judy’s teenage niece in one uncomfortable scene that nearly makes it all worthwhile.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Well\u003c/b> was something of a masterpiece because it undermined its own sincerity every step of the way. Like \u003cb>In the Wake\u003c/b>, \u003ca href=\"http://www.lisakron.com/well.html\">\u003cb>Well\u003c/b>\u003c/a> also considered the lead character’s self-serving preconceptions and rationalizations while it explored larger socio-political issues. But \u003cb>Well\u003c/b>, which starred Kron, who was 1/5 of the Five Lesbian Brothers, a campy comedy quintet in the East Village, was full of meta-theatrical mayhem, self-deprecation and disobedient characters who refuse to stay on message.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>In the Wake,\u003c/b> takes itself way more seriously. And as Al Gore now knows, that can backfire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>In the Wake\u003c/b> runs through June 27, 2010 at Berkeley Repertory Theater. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.berkeleyrep.org/tickets/index.asp\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit berkeleyrep.org.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>As \u003cb>Giant Bones\u003c/b> opens, a seemingly stern king known as the Jiril (Jay Smith) begins to read a bedtime story to his unruly children. In fact, the Jiril is reading the first of four Peter S. Beagle stories that make up \u003cb>Giant Bones\u003c/b>. Like the play, now through June 19, 2010 at Exit Theatre in San Francisco, the Jiril’s story is called “Giant Bones,” which is performed by a company of actors moving about in a kind of interpretive-dance pantomime, as recorded voices supply their dialogue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the tale, a boy is rescued from certain death at the hands of a fell beast by a benevolent giant, who then kidnaps the lad lest he reveal the secret of the community of giants that he has stumbled upon. As the boy learns patience, he also learns the customs of the giants, which includes consuming the corpses of their departed fellows. Finally, only one giant is left, the boy’s benefactor, who makes the young man promise to eat her bones when she finally passes away. He does this, and upon returning to his village after an 18-year absence, his patience is rewarded with a loving marriage and exceptionally tall children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is kind of cool, we think, but when does the acting begin?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A second tale quickly follows, this one based on a Beagle story called “The Magician of Karakosk.” Now the Renaissance Faire style of the players moves front and center. The queen (Jessica Rudholm), for example, is a squinty eyed conniver; the magician (Rik Lopes), whom the queen has blackmailed to learn his dark arts, is endlessly noble, a man who can communicate with the very elements yet considers himself no more than a servant of his fellow peasants. The supporting actors mug incessantly and are shamelessly obsequious before their fearsome queen, more clowns than actors. To play it straight would have been ponderous.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We are just beginning to ruminate on the gentle lessons that playwright-director Stuart Bousel has spread before us when the company begins to take its bows (I loved it when the magician presents his waiting wife with a gift of the queen’s gold crown: “I have no use for this,” she says. “I know,” he replies. “That is your gift to me.”). They turn first to us and we clap, a bit confused as we hear canned applause in the background. Then they turn their backs to us and bow to an unseen audience upstage. A curtain closes, and we are now backstage with them as they bicker about what went right and wrong in the preceding two stories we have just watched them act out. They mock their own intrusion into the play, and ironically bemoan plays with second acts that take too long to get going.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This new narrative, which is interrupted one more time in act one by a third Beagle story before dominating act two, is based on Beagle’s “The Tragical Historie of the Jiril’s Players.” Now we understand where all the melodrama and big gestures were coming from — that’s what the Jiril’s Players do, that’s their shtick.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I suppose act two could be its own play, the plot of which I won’t give away in the hope you’ll see it for yourself, but it does benefit from the context provided in act one, although 75 minutes is probably a good deal more context than most audiences need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, the time gave me a chance to get to know these marvelous actors, to look forward to them in each new role. For example, Katrina Bushnell is terrific as the player named Kydra as well as the Jiril’s dimwitted son, Davao. And I enjoyed Mikka Bonel’s work as Tai-Sharm alongside Lopes, the King she must marry, and Paul Rodrigues, the Thief who has come to steal her, and her heart, away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mostly, though, I grew to appreciate the interaction between the company’s leader, Dardis (Lopes), and his leading lady, Lisonje (Rudholm). Their relationship, which seemed so black and white when we first met the company, evolved slowly, subtly. All that was required to see it unfold was a bit of patience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Giant Bones\u003c/b> runs through June 19, 2010 at Exit Theatre in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://giantbonesplay.com/\">tickets and information\u003c/a>, visit giantbonesplay.com.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>As \u003cb>Giant Bones\u003c/b> opens, a seemingly stern king known as the Jiril (Jay Smith) begins to read a bedtime story to his unruly children. In fact, the Jiril is reading the first of four Peter S. Beagle stories that make up \u003cb>Giant Bones\u003c/b>. Like the play, now through June 19, 2010 at Exit Theatre in San Francisco, the Jiril’s story is called “Giant Bones,” which is performed by a company of actors moving about in a kind of interpretive-dance pantomime, as recorded voices supply their dialogue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the tale, a boy is rescued from certain death at the hands of a fell beast by a benevolent giant, who then kidnaps the lad lest he reveal the secret of the community of giants that he has stumbled upon. As the boy learns patience, he also learns the customs of the giants, which includes consuming the corpses of their departed fellows. Finally, only one giant is left, the boy’s benefactor, who makes the young man promise to eat her bones when she finally passes away. He does this, and upon returning to his village after an 18-year absence, his patience is rewarded with a loving marriage and exceptionally tall children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is kind of cool, we think, but when does the acting begin?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A second tale quickly follows, this one based on a Beagle story called “The Magician of Karakosk.” Now the Renaissance Faire style of the players moves front and center. The queen (Jessica Rudholm), for example, is a squinty eyed conniver; the magician (Rik Lopes), whom the queen has blackmailed to learn his dark arts, is endlessly noble, a man who can communicate with the very elements yet considers himself no more than a servant of his fellow peasants. The supporting actors mug incessantly and are shamelessly obsequious before their fearsome queen, more clowns than actors. To play it straight would have been ponderous.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We are just beginning to ruminate on the gentle lessons that playwright-director Stuart Bousel has spread before us when the company begins to take its bows (I loved it when the magician presents his waiting wife with a gift of the queen’s gold crown: “I have no use for this,” she says. “I know,” he replies. “That is your gift to me.”). They turn first to us and we clap, a bit confused as we hear canned applause in the background. Then they turn their backs to us and bow to an unseen audience upstage. A curtain closes, and we are now backstage with them as they bicker about what went right and wrong in the preceding two stories we have just watched them act out. They mock their own intrusion into the play, and ironically bemoan plays with second acts that take too long to get going.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This new narrative, which is interrupted one more time in act one by a third Beagle story before dominating act two, is based on Beagle’s “The Tragical Historie of the Jiril’s Players.” Now we understand where all the melodrama and big gestures were coming from — that’s what the Jiril’s Players do, that’s their shtick.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I suppose act two could be its own play, the plot of which I won’t give away in the hope you’ll see it for yourself, but it does benefit from the context provided in act one, although 75 minutes is probably a good deal more context than most audiences need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, the time gave me a chance to get to know these marvelous actors, to look forward to them in each new role. For example, Katrina Bushnell is terrific as the player named Kydra as well as the Jiril’s dimwitted son, Davao. And I enjoyed Mikka Bonel’s work as Tai-Sharm alongside Lopes, the King she must marry, and Paul Rodrigues, the Thief who has come to steal her, and her heart, away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mostly, though, I grew to appreciate the interaction between the company’s leader, Dardis (Lopes), and his leading lady, Lisonje (Rudholm). Their relationship, which seemed so black and white when we first met the company, evolved slowly, subtly. All that was required to see it unfold was a bit of patience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Giant Bones\u003c/b> runs through June 19, 2010 at Exit Theatre in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://giantbonesplay.com/\">tickets and information\u003c/a>, visit giantbonesplay.com.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "There IS a Place for Us -- In the Heights is an 'Up Side Story'",
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"content": "\u003cp>With less gritty realism and attention to societal ills than \u003cb>West Side Story\u003c/b>, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s contemporary immigrant story, \u003cb>In the Heights\u003c/b>, gets by on its wits and rhythms. The plot — money troubles, love troubles, apartment troubles — offers nothing nearly as earthshaking as the tamest \u003cb>Ugly Betty\u003c/b> episode. But the energy hardly ever stops pulsing. Andy Blankenbuehler’s choreography sparkles; the music energizes. And most refreshingly, for a new Broadway musical, the lyrics propel the story with smart poetry and clever rhymes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s all about the legacy,” raps Usnavi, the young man running the bodega his parents once owned. Portrayed sweetly by Kyle Beltran, Usnavi is the hardworking son of parents who emigrated from the Dominican Republic. They named their son something aspirational — “U.S. Navy,” taken from an American boat they saw when they arrived. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/heights-1.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>Across the street Nina’s parents, Kevin and Camila, have planned a big homecoming dinner to celebrate their daughter’s return home from her first year at Stanford. She is the local kid who makes good, the one that made it out, the pride of the neighborhood. She can’t bring herself to tell them all that she couldn’t hack it at Stanford.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Arielle Jacobs is lovely and authentic as Nina, the ingenue who has disappointed her parents academically and romantically. Isabel Santiago is full of vitality as Daniela, the brassy hair salon owner who leads a spicy gossip anthem with the refrain, “tell me something I don’t know.” And Shaun Taylor-Corbett brings terrific comic timing to his role as Sonny, Usnavi’s scrappy young cousin. They’ve all known each other forever.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/heights-2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>“I used to think we lived at the top of the world, when the world was just a subway street map,” Nina sings. Its one of many canny and touching lyrics in this play. California aside, even Greenwich Village seems a world a way; Vanessa (Sabrina Sloan) works at the beauty salon next to the bodega, and is trying to rent an apartment downtown, but can’t scrape together the money.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scraping together money and scraping by are themes that linger throughout the play. They’re underscored with subtle sweetness in the song of the piragua vendor, the old man who sells shaved ice with fruit syrup from his push cart. “Piragua, Piragua” he sings as he scrapes his block of ice and worries about Mr. Softee. “But I keep scraping by the fading light…Keep scraping by.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lin-Manuel Miranda, who created the role of Usnavi on Broadway and will play him in the film adaptation, wrote the lyrics and music. The songs propel the story much better than does Quiara Alegria Hudes’s book.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Within the genre of urban youth musicals, it’s somewhat refreshing that business competition with Mr. Softee and worrying about scholarships are matters worth contemplating in the theater. No one is getting stabbed or shot. No one O.D.s or dies of AIDS. Yes, there’s some racism — Benny (Rogelio Douglas Jr.) who works for Nina’s dad intuits that. But no one is really disaffected — this isn’t \u003cb>Rent\u003c/b> or \u003cb>American Idiot\u003c/b> — or \u003cb>West Side Story\u003c/b>. The neighbors here have “paciencia y fe” — patience and faith. Which is a song sung by Abuela Claudia, the barrio elder, played by Elise Santora. She sings of poverty in Havana, and her mama’s words, “Vamos a Nueva York.. Today she grandmothers the block, practices paciencia y fe — and plays the Lotto.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/heights-3.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>Yes, the Lotto… Abuela’s advanced age… the cost of college or West Village apartments. The flirtations between beauticians and bodega owners… the taxi dispatcher’s apprentice and his boss’ daughter… there are few surprises and no attempts to reign in sentimentality.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But somehow, director Thomas Kail manages to catch it before it becomes a sticky syrupy melted piragua of cloying mawkishness. In a genre where more nearly always means too much, \u003cb>In the Heights\u003c/b> is just enough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>In the Heights\u003c/b> runs through June 13, 2010 at \u003ca href=\"http://www.shnsf.com/theatres/index.asp?key=44/\">\u003cb>The Curran Theater\u003c/b>\u003c/a> in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.shnsf.com/shows/intheheights\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit shnsf.com. \u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>With less gritty realism and attention to societal ills than \u003cb>West Side Story\u003c/b>, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s contemporary immigrant story, \u003cb>In the Heights\u003c/b>, gets by on its wits and rhythms. The plot — money troubles, love troubles, apartment troubles — offers nothing nearly as earthshaking as the tamest \u003cb>Ugly Betty\u003c/b> episode. But the energy hardly ever stops pulsing. Andy Blankenbuehler’s choreography sparkles; the music energizes. And most refreshingly, for a new Broadway musical, the lyrics propel the story with smart poetry and clever rhymes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s all about the legacy,” raps Usnavi, the young man running the bodega his parents once owned. Portrayed sweetly by Kyle Beltran, Usnavi is the hardworking son of parents who emigrated from the Dominican Republic. They named their son something aspirational — “U.S. Navy,” taken from an American boat they saw when they arrived. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/heights-1.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>Across the street Nina’s parents, Kevin and Camila, have planned a big homecoming dinner to celebrate their daughter’s return home from her first year at Stanford. She is the local kid who makes good, the one that made it out, the pride of the neighborhood. She can’t bring herself to tell them all that she couldn’t hack it at Stanford.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Arielle Jacobs is lovely and authentic as Nina, the ingenue who has disappointed her parents academically and romantically. Isabel Santiago is full of vitality as Daniela, the brassy hair salon owner who leads a spicy gossip anthem with the refrain, “tell me something I don’t know.” And Shaun Taylor-Corbett brings terrific comic timing to his role as Sonny, Usnavi’s scrappy young cousin. They’ve all known each other forever.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/heights-2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>“I used to think we lived at the top of the world, when the world was just a subway street map,” Nina sings. Its one of many canny and touching lyrics in this play. California aside, even Greenwich Village seems a world a way; Vanessa (Sabrina Sloan) works at the beauty salon next to the bodega, and is trying to rent an apartment downtown, but can’t scrape together the money.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scraping together money and scraping by are themes that linger throughout the play. They’re underscored with subtle sweetness in the song of the piragua vendor, the old man who sells shaved ice with fruit syrup from his push cart. “Piragua, Piragua” he sings as he scrapes his block of ice and worries about Mr. Softee. “But I keep scraping by the fading light…Keep scraping by.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lin-Manuel Miranda, who created the role of Usnavi on Broadway and will play him in the film adaptation, wrote the lyrics and music. The songs propel the story much better than does Quiara Alegria Hudes’s book.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Within the genre of urban youth musicals, it’s somewhat refreshing that business competition with Mr. Softee and worrying about scholarships are matters worth contemplating in the theater. No one is getting stabbed or shot. No one O.D.s or dies of AIDS. Yes, there’s some racism — Benny (Rogelio Douglas Jr.) who works for Nina’s dad intuits that. But no one is really disaffected — this isn’t \u003cb>Rent\u003c/b> or \u003cb>American Idiot\u003c/b> — or \u003cb>West Side Story\u003c/b>. The neighbors here have “paciencia y fe” — patience and faith. Which is a song sung by Abuela Claudia, the barrio elder, played by Elise Santora. She sings of poverty in Havana, and her mama’s words, “Vamos a Nueva York.. Today she grandmothers the block, practices paciencia y fe — and plays the Lotto.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/heights-3.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>Yes, the Lotto… Abuela’s advanced age… the cost of college or West Village apartments. The flirtations between beauticians and bodega owners… the taxi dispatcher’s apprentice and his boss’ daughter… there are few surprises and no attempts to reign in sentimentality.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But somehow, director Thomas Kail manages to catch it before it becomes a sticky syrupy melted piragua of cloying mawkishness. In a genre where more nearly always means too much, \u003cb>In the Heights\u003c/b> is just enough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>In the Heights\u003c/b> runs through June 13, 2010 at \u003ca href=\"http://www.shnsf.com/theatres/index.asp?key=44/\">\u003cb>The Curran Theater\u003c/b>\u003c/a> in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.shnsf.com/shows/intheheights\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit shnsf.com. \u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Imagination gets a leg up in the new production of \u003cb>Peter Pan\u003c/b>. One hundred computers assist 12 projectors beaming 10,000-pixel-wide images to bring us a computer-generated Neverland splayed across the world’s first 360 degree CGI theater set. Peter, Wendy, Tink and the others soar against this HD backdrop nearly 100 feet up, in the US premiere of this highest of high-tech adaptations of J.M. Barrie’s 1904 play.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But is it theater? Or is it more akin to PETER PAN! — The Disneyland Ride? This London import’s immensely immersive, flight-simulating virtual experience feels a bit like a theme park ride or a video game.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/peter-pan-1.jpg\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This genre, what I might call, “Planetarium Theater,” might herald the future of theater (like 3D CGI is rendering hand-drawn animation quaint and rare). Or it might be a short-lived gimmick — anyone remember the movie \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071455/\">\u003cb>Earthquake\u003c/b>\u003c/a>… in \u003ci>Sensurround\u003c/i>? (That seat-shaking trick was actually preceded by an earlier sensory garnish, \u003ci>Percepto!\u003c/i>, developed by legendary 1950’s showman William Castle to deliver electric jolts to theatergoers during the climax of his 1959 film \u003cb>The Tingler\u003c/b>. John Waters spoofed the practice in 1981, releasing \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082926/\">\u003cb>Polyester\u003c/b>\u003c/a> in scratch-and-sniff \u003ci>Odorama\u003c/i>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m not saying threesixty° entertainment’s \u003cb>Peter Pan\u003c/b> is the \u003ci>Odorama\u003c/i> of live theater. I’m just saying maybe I hear William Shakespeare weeping somewhere beneath Stratford-on-Avon. Because here, the play’s not the thing. It is, however, the launch pad for techno-awesomeness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Peter fetches Wendy, Michael and John and they fly out their townhouse window and over London’s landmarks — Buckingham Palace, Tower Bridge — and dive through the Marble Arch — it is super cool. Without a doubt. And we really become part of the experience of flying, with the screens surrounding us and taking us up, up, and away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/peter-pan-2.jpg\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The scenes of flight — or deep-sea submersion with live mermaids, virtual fish and underwater views of the pirate ship are stunning moments when the live action and the computer-generated scenery seem to interact. At other times, the “theater” part of the play drags. The action and the dialogue are uninspiring and devoid of intrinsic magic. The play is upstaged by the backdrop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Director Ben Harrison’s aesthetic production has a bit of a Cirque du Soleil thing going on: graceful flying, mid-air somersaulting and an interpretive indigenous person’s yoga-as-“thank you” dance (Heidi Bluehler as Tiger Lily). The whole shebang features some 22 actors, with Nate Fallows as a classic, not especially absorbing Peter Pan. Jonathan Hyde is a zesty Captain Hook. And Abby Ford’s Wendy ultimately demonstrates touching emotional depth. But by and large the acting — and most especially the script, a pedestrian adaptation by Tanya Ronder — is unremarkable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/peter-pan-3.jpg\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sue Buckmaster’s cool puppetry design helps along the live action whimsicality. On stage, puppeteers manipulate a big floppy sheep dog and a few birds with great attention to the animals’ movements. Their innovative, low-tech construction and execution is a nice contrast to the techno-pizzazz and it owes much to Julie Taymor’s use of puppets in \u003cb>The Lion King\u003c/b>. Especially the ingeniously-designed crocodile. Two men pedal this skate-cycle contraption within the huge framework of a crocodile. Like Hyde’s humorous bad-guy pirate and his hapless subordinates, the Croc is just scary enough to little kids to be fun-frightening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And I’m glad the children can still be jolted by such an impressionistic and sculptural crocodile.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Peter Pan\u003c/b> runs through August 29, 2010 at The threesixty° theater at Justin Herman Plaza, located at the intersection of Clay Street and Drumm Street, across the street from the Ferry Building on the Embarcadero in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For \u003ca href=\"http://www.peterpantheshow.com/#/tickets_and_info\">tickets and information\u003c/a>, call 1-888-PPANTIX (1-888-772-6849), or visit peterpantheshow.com.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Imagination gets a leg up in the new production of \u003cb>Peter Pan\u003c/b>. One hundred computers assist 12 projectors beaming 10,000-pixel-wide images to bring us a computer-generated Neverland splayed across the world’s first 360 degree CGI theater set. Peter, Wendy, Tink and the others soar against this HD backdrop nearly 100 feet up, in the US premiere of this highest of high-tech adaptations of J.M. Barrie’s 1904 play.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But is it theater? Or is it more akin to PETER PAN! — The Disneyland Ride? This London import’s immensely immersive, flight-simulating virtual experience feels a bit like a theme park ride or a video game.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/peter-pan-1.jpg\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This genre, what I might call, “Planetarium Theater,” might herald the future of theater (like 3D CGI is rendering hand-drawn animation quaint and rare). Or it might be a short-lived gimmick — anyone remember the movie \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071455/\">\u003cb>Earthquake\u003c/b>\u003c/a>… in \u003ci>Sensurround\u003c/i>? (That seat-shaking trick was actually preceded by an earlier sensory garnish, \u003ci>Percepto!\u003c/i>, developed by legendary 1950’s showman William Castle to deliver electric jolts to theatergoers during the climax of his 1959 film \u003cb>The Tingler\u003c/b>. John Waters spoofed the practice in 1981, releasing \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082926/\">\u003cb>Polyester\u003c/b>\u003c/a> in scratch-and-sniff \u003ci>Odorama\u003c/i>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m not saying threesixty° entertainment’s \u003cb>Peter Pan\u003c/b> is the \u003ci>Odorama\u003c/i> of live theater. I’m just saying maybe I hear William Shakespeare weeping somewhere beneath Stratford-on-Avon. Because here, the play’s not the thing. It is, however, the launch pad for techno-awesomeness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Peter fetches Wendy, Michael and John and they fly out their townhouse window and over London’s landmarks — Buckingham Palace, Tower Bridge — and dive through the Marble Arch — it is super cool. Without a doubt. And we really become part of the experience of flying, with the screens surrounding us and taking us up, up, and away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/peter-pan-2.jpg\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The scenes of flight — or deep-sea submersion with live mermaids, virtual fish and underwater views of the pirate ship are stunning moments when the live action and the computer-generated scenery seem to interact. At other times, the “theater” part of the play drags. The action and the dialogue are uninspiring and devoid of intrinsic magic. The play is upstaged by the backdrop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Director Ben Harrison’s aesthetic production has a bit of a Cirque du Soleil thing going on: graceful flying, mid-air somersaulting and an interpretive indigenous person’s yoga-as-“thank you” dance (Heidi Bluehler as Tiger Lily). The whole shebang features some 22 actors, with Nate Fallows as a classic, not especially absorbing Peter Pan. Jonathan Hyde is a zesty Captain Hook. And Abby Ford’s Wendy ultimately demonstrates touching emotional depth. But by and large the acting — and most especially the script, a pedestrian adaptation by Tanya Ronder — is unremarkable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/peter-pan-3.jpg\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sue Buckmaster’s cool puppetry design helps along the live action whimsicality. On stage, puppeteers manipulate a big floppy sheep dog and a few birds with great attention to the animals’ movements. Their innovative, low-tech construction and execution is a nice contrast to the techno-pizzazz and it owes much to Julie Taymor’s use of puppets in \u003cb>The Lion King\u003c/b>. Especially the ingeniously-designed crocodile. Two men pedal this skate-cycle contraption within the huge framework of a crocodile. Like Hyde’s humorous bad-guy pirate and his hapless subordinates, the Croc is just scary enough to little kids to be fun-frightening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And I’m glad the children can still be jolted by such an impressionistic and sculptural crocodile.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Peter Pan\u003c/b> runs through August 29, 2010 at The threesixty° theater at Justin Herman Plaza, located at the intersection of Clay Street and Drumm Street, across the street from the Ferry Building on the Embarcadero in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For \u003ca href=\"http://www.peterpantheshow.com/#/tickets_and_info\">tickets and information\u003c/a>, call 1-888-PPANTIX (1-888-772-6849), or visit peterpantheshow.com.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>There’s a beautiful moment late in \u003cb>Anton in Show Business\u003c/b>, now through May 23, 2010 at the Dragon Theatre in Palo Alto, when the polish director of a regional theater company’s production of Anton Chekhov’s \u003cb>The Three Sisters\u003c/b> is bidding his leading ladies adieu. Funding problems are threatening to scuttle the production, but that’s not why the revered Chekhov expert Wikewitch Konalkvis (Mary Horne) has packed his bag: His work here is done.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Naturally Casey (Jennifer Jane Parsons), who will play Olga in \u003cb>Sisters\u003c/b>, Lisabette (Meredith Hagedorn), the wide-eyed Irina and Holly (Kristen Lo), a TV actress slumming for a bit of Hollywood street cred by taking the Masha role, want to know what the great director thinks of their performances. Though of disparate backgrounds, the women playing Chekhov’s sisters share the curse of having been told they lack talent, so they crave either confirmation or denial of this soul-killing charge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Konalkvis waves off their insecurity. “You are good enough,” he says, “to do the Chekhov you are good enough to do.” It’s not meant as a put down, it’s just a fact. As the director of umpteen productions of \u003cb>Sisters\u003c/b> (he’s sort of lost count), Konalkvis has seen better, and worse. The important thing for him is that in this production, the women who play his Olga, Masha and Irina have given it their all. He can ask for no more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This sentiment, mushy as it sounds here, is what makes \u003cb>Anton in Show Business\u003c/b> such a perfect play for small companies like the Dragon. The self-referential play, which cheerfully acknowledges its narcissism throughout, is less about how three actresses use \u003cb>Sisters\u003c/b> for their own ends — for Holly it’s a career move; for Lisabette it’s a first big break; for Casey it’s the chance to work while she still can. Rather, \u003cb>Anton\u003c/b> is about the theater world itself, where regional companies toil in the shadow of Broadway and community theaters are the poorest of cousins to the regionals. The further down the food chain you get, the less talent it is presumed you have.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For this production, the seven-member cast has done the best version of \u003cb>Anton in Show Business\u003c/b> that it is good enough to do, which, in this case is saying a lot. The actors are uniformly strong, both individually and overall, creating surprisingly little hierarchy between the three principles and the rest of the cast. Horne, Vera Sloan and Lonnique Genelle all give memorable, multi-character performances. Even Lauren Burniges, whose Joby is limited by design, makes brief but spirited appearances.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition to Horne’s Konalkvis, I liked Sloan’s Jackey, the artistic director of San Antonio Actors Express, who rambles for hours without managing to express the company’s mission, as well as her Ben, whose male ego is so flattered by the advances of a TV star that he gives up his wife and two kids. Men are such dopes, we think, but Sloan’s Ben still manages to come off as sad and sweet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lo’s Holly is also fun to watch, convincing us that her I-me-me-mine character is completely devoid of a soul. And Parsons as Casey is funny and heartbreaking, a woman, as she puts it, who at 36 is still paying off 40-grand in student loans and whose reward for having screwed every leading man on the East Coast is the opportunity to play their mother.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But a big reason why this \u003cb>Anton\u003c/b> works so well is Hagedorn’s Lisabette. With her crackling Texas accent, guilelessness and cheerleader enthusiasm (she’s forever clapping her hands to applaud the pronouncements of her superiors), Lisabette is the one with the least to lose by the failure of the San Antonio production of St. Anton’s \u003cb>Sisters\u003c/b>. She also has the most to learn, and watching the realities of the theater business sink in without entirely altering her effervescent worldview is as delightful as it is inspiring. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anton in Show Business\u003c/b> runs through May 23, 2010 at the Dragon Theatre in Palo Alto. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.dragonproductions.net/activities/next-season/anton-in-show-business.html\" target=\"offsite\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit dragonproductions.net.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>There’s a beautiful moment late in \u003cb>Anton in Show Business\u003c/b>, now through May 23, 2010 at the Dragon Theatre in Palo Alto, when the polish director of a regional theater company’s production of Anton Chekhov’s \u003cb>The Three Sisters\u003c/b> is bidding his leading ladies adieu. Funding problems are threatening to scuttle the production, but that’s not why the revered Chekhov expert Wikewitch Konalkvis (Mary Horne) has packed his bag: His work here is done.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Naturally Casey (Jennifer Jane Parsons), who will play Olga in \u003cb>Sisters\u003c/b>, Lisabette (Meredith Hagedorn), the wide-eyed Irina and Holly (Kristen Lo), a TV actress slumming for a bit of Hollywood street cred by taking the Masha role, want to know what the great director thinks of their performances. Though of disparate backgrounds, the women playing Chekhov’s sisters share the curse of having been told they lack talent, so they crave either confirmation or denial of this soul-killing charge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Konalkvis waves off their insecurity. “You are good enough,” he says, “to do the Chekhov you are good enough to do.” It’s not meant as a put down, it’s just a fact. As the director of umpteen productions of \u003cb>Sisters\u003c/b> (he’s sort of lost count), Konalkvis has seen better, and worse. The important thing for him is that in this production, the women who play his Olga, Masha and Irina have given it their all. He can ask for no more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This sentiment, mushy as it sounds here, is what makes \u003cb>Anton in Show Business\u003c/b> such a perfect play for small companies like the Dragon. The self-referential play, which cheerfully acknowledges its narcissism throughout, is less about how three actresses use \u003cb>Sisters\u003c/b> for their own ends — for Holly it’s a career move; for Lisabette it’s a first big break; for Casey it’s the chance to work while she still can. Rather, \u003cb>Anton\u003c/b> is about the theater world itself, where regional companies toil in the shadow of Broadway and community theaters are the poorest of cousins to the regionals. The further down the food chain you get, the less talent it is presumed you have.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For this production, the seven-member cast has done the best version of \u003cb>Anton in Show Business\u003c/b> that it is good enough to do, which, in this case is saying a lot. The actors are uniformly strong, both individually and overall, creating surprisingly little hierarchy between the three principles and the rest of the cast. Horne, Vera Sloan and Lonnique Genelle all give memorable, multi-character performances. Even Lauren Burniges, whose Joby is limited by design, makes brief but spirited appearances.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition to Horne’s Konalkvis, I liked Sloan’s Jackey, the artistic director of San Antonio Actors Express, who rambles for hours without managing to express the company’s mission, as well as her Ben, whose male ego is so flattered by the advances of a TV star that he gives up his wife and two kids. Men are such dopes, we think, but Sloan’s Ben still manages to come off as sad and sweet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lo’s Holly is also fun to watch, convincing us that her I-me-me-mine character is completely devoid of a soul. And Parsons as Casey is funny and heartbreaking, a woman, as she puts it, who at 36 is still paying off 40-grand in student loans and whose reward for having screwed every leading man on the East Coast is the opportunity to play their mother.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But a big reason why this \u003cb>Anton\u003c/b> works so well is Hagedorn’s Lisabette. With her crackling Texas accent, guilelessness and cheerleader enthusiasm (she’s forever clapping her hands to applaud the pronouncements of her superiors), Lisabette is the one with the least to lose by the failure of the San Antonio production of St. Anton’s \u003cb>Sisters\u003c/b>. She also has the most to learn, and watching the realities of the theater business sink in without entirely altering her effervescent worldview is as delightful as it is inspiring. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anton in Show Business\u003c/b> runs through May 23, 2010 at the Dragon Theatre in Palo Alto. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.dragonproductions.net/activities/next-season/anton-in-show-business.html\" target=\"offsite\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit dragonproductions.net.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
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"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
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"pri-the-world": {
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"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
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},
"radiolab": {
"id": "radiolab",
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"info": "A two-time Peabody Award-winner, Radiolab is an investigation told through sounds and stories, and centered around one big idea. In the Radiolab world, information sounds like music and science and culture collide. Hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, the show is designed for listeners who demand skepticism, but appreciate wonder. WNYC Studios is the producer of other leading podcasts including Freakonomics Radio, Death, Sex & Money, On the Media and many more.",
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"reveal": {
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"info": "Created by The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, Reveal is public radios first one-hour weekly radio show and podcast dedicated to investigative reporting. Credible, fact based and without a partisan agenda, Reveal combines the power and artistry of driveway moment storytelling with data-rich reporting on critically important issues. The result is stories that inform and inspire, arming our listeners with information to right injustices, hold the powerful accountable and improve lives.Reveal is hosted by Al Letson and showcases the award-winning work of CIR and newsrooms large and small across the nation. In a radio and podcast market crowded with choices, Reveal focuses on important and often surprising stories that illuminate the world for our listeners.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/",
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},
"rightnowish": {
"id": "rightnowish",
"title": "Rightnowish",
"tagline": "Art is where you find it",
"info": "Rightnowish digs into life in the Bay Area right now… ish. Journalist Pendarvis Harshaw takes us to galleries painted on the sides of liquor stores in West Oakland. We'll dance in warehouses in the Bayview, make smoothies with kids in South Berkeley, and listen to classical music in a 1984 Cutlass Supreme in Richmond. Every week, Pen talks to movers and shakers about how the Bay Area shapes what they create, and how they shape the place we call home.",
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"order": 16
},
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