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"content": "\u003cp>Following in (if it’s very lucky) the Broadway-directed footsteps of \u003cb>American Idiot\u003c/b>, \u003cb>Girlfriend\u003c/b>, is the latest \u003ci>album musical\u003c/i> to fist pump its way across the Berkeley Rep stage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We can call it an album musical to distinguish it from a \u003ci>Rock Opera\u003c/i> (\u003cb>Tommy\u003c/b>, \u003cb>Hair\u003c/b>, \u003cb>Passing Strange\u003c/b>) or a \u003ci>Movical\u003c/i> (\u003cb>Billy Elliot\u003c/b>, \u003cb>Spamalot\u003c/b>, \u003cb>Young Frankenstein\u003c/b>) or the \u003ci>Juke Box Musical\u003c/i>, (\u003cb>Mama Mia\u003c/b>, \u003cb>Jersey Boys\u003c/b>). And we call it an \u003ci>album musical\u003c/i> because in these days of 99 cent iTunes downloads, the music of concept and “seminal” albums has a unifying coherence that’s worth keeping intact.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Folks who love Matthew Sweet’s 1991 album, \u003cb>Girlfriend\u003c/b>, would agree with critics who rated it as one of the top 100 pop albums of the ’90s. One critic wrote that \u003cb> Girlfriend\u003c/b> was the pretty record that everyone played when they were pretending to be listening to Nirvana.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you were one of those Matthew Sweet fans, then this play, a sweet and simple chamber musical, no doubt had you at “Girlf–.” I’m not sure why I wasn’t listening to this music in the ’90s. My radio dial was permanently tuned to Alice Radio where all good indie rock fans were stationed. I was all about Sinead and REM and it would seem I would have been a sucker for this record, which Sweet said was the outcome of his divorce. But downloading the songs now, I don’t feel particularly warm or fuzzy. Or particularly impressed with the music. Or nostalgic. And for these types of gimmick and/or homage spin-offs, for which the play is itself an afterthought, the loyalty to the source material’s the thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like \u003cb>American Idiot\u003c/b>, which grafts a plot — or at least some character-driven action — onto Green Day’s “seminal” 2004 post-punk album of the same name, \u003cb>Girlfriend\u003c/b> is a slip of a two-character play built around a record. \u003cb>American Idiot\u003c/b> was mostly a 90-minute music video that rocked with rage against the general suckiness of everything.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Girlfriend\u003c/b> — from the happier ’90s — is all sweetness, harmony and pop musicality. So instead of a rock musical’s energy, \u003cb>Girlfriend\u003c/b> (the play) is a more intimate play about relatedness. The music necessitates a love story, but how do you capture the tenderness of falling in love in a media world where a vaguely compelling movical romance requires three possible fathers, a Greek island and an impending wedding?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Make it gay. It’s an ingenuous way to breathe new life into an old-fashioned love song. Put two boys in the front seat at the drive-in. Now that’s a first kiss! A first gay kiss is a crackerjack way to shake each of us into remembering the power of the first kiss, all first kisses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/girlfriend-1.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>And so kudos to Todd Almond, who wrote the book for \u003cb>Girlfriend\u003c/b> and director Les Waters who reintroduces the scary-ecstatic tension of the crush, the phone calls, the small talk, the last ditch attempt to make your breath smell better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I can’t decide if gay-ifying the story is a nifty way to distract the audience from an underwhelming narrative with underdeveloped characters and mediocre dialogue. Or a striking device to communicate the universality of romance and to reawaken our empathy for the all encompassing hugeness of the first time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ryder Bach and Jason Hite play two Nebraska boys who spend their summer after high school going to the same drive-in movie each night. As Will, the lighter in his loafers boy, Bach is full of wit and charisma. He’s an outsider at school, the 98lb weakling to Mike, the popular football hero type. But he’s also the one who knows who he is and is very comfortable in his skin. As Mike, Jason Hite is a strong singer but not as strong an actor. Their sliver of a story is sweet but it’s very under baked. The play could not stand alone without the music and the music, while pleasant enough, doesn’t have the power to carry the play.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/girlfriend-2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>There’s one terrific exception where story and song are finally in sync — as the boys sing \u003cb>Evangeline\u003c/b>, pretending to be the character in the B-movie they’re watching. They’re goofing around and the singing seems spontaneous, not just because it’s in the script. Too often, the musical performances feel slapped on and poorly integrated. The fusion of music and theater seems very very random, because this is not a simple boy meets boy story. It’s a boy meets boy and they both really, really like the music of Matthew Sweet so sometimes they sing it story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Girlfriend\u003c/b> runs through May 9, 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>Following in (if it’s very lucky) the Broadway-directed footsteps of \u003cb>American Idiot\u003c/b>, \u003cb>Girlfriend\u003c/b>, is the latest \u003ci>album musical\u003c/i> to fist pump its way across the Berkeley Rep stage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We can call it an album musical to distinguish it from a \u003ci>Rock Opera\u003c/i> (\u003cb>Tommy\u003c/b>, \u003cb>Hair\u003c/b>, \u003cb>Passing Strange\u003c/b>) or a \u003ci>Movical\u003c/i> (\u003cb>Billy Elliot\u003c/b>, \u003cb>Spamalot\u003c/b>, \u003cb>Young Frankenstein\u003c/b>) or the \u003ci>Juke Box Musical\u003c/i>, (\u003cb>Mama Mia\u003c/b>, \u003cb>Jersey Boys\u003c/b>). And we call it an \u003ci>album musical\u003c/i> because in these days of 99 cent iTunes downloads, the music of concept and “seminal” albums has a unifying coherence that’s worth keeping intact.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Folks who love Matthew Sweet’s 1991 album, \u003cb>Girlfriend\u003c/b>, would agree with critics who rated it as one of the top 100 pop albums of the ’90s. One critic wrote that \u003cb> Girlfriend\u003c/b> was the pretty record that everyone played when they were pretending to be listening to Nirvana.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you were one of those Matthew Sweet fans, then this play, a sweet and simple chamber musical, no doubt had you at “Girlf–.” I’m not sure why I wasn’t listening to this music in the ’90s. My radio dial was permanently tuned to Alice Radio where all good indie rock fans were stationed. I was all about Sinead and REM and it would seem I would have been a sucker for this record, which Sweet said was the outcome of his divorce. But downloading the songs now, I don’t feel particularly warm or fuzzy. Or particularly impressed with the music. Or nostalgic. And for these types of gimmick and/or homage spin-offs, for which the play is itself an afterthought, the loyalty to the source material’s the thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like \u003cb>American Idiot\u003c/b>, which grafts a plot — or at least some character-driven action — onto Green Day’s “seminal” 2004 post-punk album of the same name, \u003cb>Girlfriend\u003c/b> is a slip of a two-character play built around a record. \u003cb>American Idiot\u003c/b> was mostly a 90-minute music video that rocked with rage against the general suckiness of everything.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Girlfriend\u003c/b> — from the happier ’90s — is all sweetness, harmony and pop musicality. So instead of a rock musical’s energy, \u003cb>Girlfriend\u003c/b> (the play) is a more intimate play about relatedness. The music necessitates a love story, but how do you capture the tenderness of falling in love in a media world where a vaguely compelling movical romance requires three possible fathers, a Greek island and an impending wedding?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Make it gay. It’s an ingenuous way to breathe new life into an old-fashioned love song. Put two boys in the front seat at the drive-in. Now that’s a first kiss! A first gay kiss is a crackerjack way to shake each of us into remembering the power of the first kiss, all first kisses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/girlfriend-1.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>And so kudos to Todd Almond, who wrote the book for \u003cb>Girlfriend\u003c/b> and director Les Waters who reintroduces the scary-ecstatic tension of the crush, the phone calls, the small talk, the last ditch attempt to make your breath smell better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I can’t decide if gay-ifying the story is a nifty way to distract the audience from an underwhelming narrative with underdeveloped characters and mediocre dialogue. Or a striking device to communicate the universality of romance and to reawaken our empathy for the all encompassing hugeness of the first time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ryder Bach and Jason Hite play two Nebraska boys who spend their summer after high school going to the same drive-in movie each night. As Will, the lighter in his loafers boy, Bach is full of wit and charisma. He’s an outsider at school, the 98lb weakling to Mike, the popular football hero type. But he’s also the one who knows who he is and is very comfortable in his skin. As Mike, Jason Hite is a strong singer but not as strong an actor. Their sliver of a story is sweet but it’s very under baked. The play could not stand alone without the music and the music, while pleasant enough, doesn’t have the power to carry the play.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/girlfriend-2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>There’s one terrific exception where story and song are finally in sync — as the boys sing \u003cb>Evangeline\u003c/b>, pretending to be the character in the B-movie they’re watching. They’re goofing around and the singing seems spontaneous, not just because it’s in the script. Too often, the musical performances feel slapped on and poorly integrated. The fusion of music and theater seems very very random, because this is not a simple boy meets boy story. It’s a boy meets boy and they both really, really like the music of Matthew Sweet so sometimes they sing it story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Girlfriend\u003c/b> runs through May 9, 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>William Shakespeare just might be churning and spitting in his grave in response to yet another liberal interpretation of \u003cb>Othello\u003c/b>. The tone is set early when Iago drunk dials Lady Desdemona’s father on her cell phone. I was apprehensive about what might follow, hoping this production would not strike the same pose as Baz Luhrmann’s outright corny suburban interpretation of \u003cb>Romeo + Juliet\u003c/b> with Leonardo DiCaprio.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Executive director and founder of the African-American Shakespeare Company, Sherri Young, tinkers with sexuality, gender, race and a hint of war and technology in \u003cb>Othello\u003c/b>. Shakespeare’s immense vocabulary is left untouched so viewers at least know they are in the right building.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Iago is distraught when Othello overlooks her and chooses Cassio to be his second in command. Self-pity sparks revenge; Iago informs Venetian Senator Brabantio that his daughter Desdemona has eloped with Othello. Othello is an African Moor, which makes him an unfit match in Brebantio’s estimation, and so begins the drama. Yet, all this talk of Venetians comingling with Moors leaves one a little confused as to why the scene is set in Iraq.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Young consolidates Shakespeare’s cast to five actors, removing some characters and combining others. Desdemona’s father Brabantio is mentioned but never seen or heard in Young’s production. Roderigo is a Venetian man who has feelings for Desdemona and assists Iago in Othello’s demise. Young morphs Roderigo and Iago into one irate lesbian played by Aimee McCrary. The gender switch is an intriguing twist that complicates Iago’s plot to destroy Othello’s marriage. It seems no coincidence that McCrary is an African American actress playing the role of a racist who belittles Othello for his African roots (behind his back of course). One cannot be sure whether it was Young’s intention to extend intrigue to irony.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Iago warns us from the beginning, “I am not what I am.” Hopefully McCrary is not as dry in real life, delivering her lines like a stand-in at the start of the play. As the action gets going, McCrary redeems herself. Iago’s delight in her own malice is made clear through the actor’s facial expressions, which enrich the meaning behind the character’s mischief while adding much-needed comic relief.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The least significant female role is by far the best played by Meggi Hai Trang as Emilia, Desdemona’s attendant. Jeff Handy’s Othello is no match for Trang’s absorbing and natural delivery. It is unclear if Desdemona is absolutely annoying or if it’s Vivian Kane’s portrayal of the aristocratic lady. Sam Leichter as Cassio has spunk where it counts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The set design by Joel Eis allows three worlds to merge on stage at the African American Arts & Culture Complex. On the left is a bar with a few stools where Iago pours alcohol down Cassio’s throat and begins to plant her seeds of deceit. The stage is a smidge too far for my outdated contacts to decipher what those framed pictures are about on the fake stone wall behind the bar. Taking center stage is a rigid-looking brown leather office chair where Othello sits from time to time while Desdemona tends to his headaches. Props to the right set the military tone. Nothing says Iraq like a wall covered in macramé of various green tones, representing lush vegetation beyond. Stretched before the green wall is a line of sandbags piled four high. Before the sandbags sit a small wooden crate and a red cooler on which Iago sits early in the play to plot, plot, plot!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cast seemed to engage the audience directly in such an intimate setting, often making eye contact, which felt like a challenge. But whenever the challenge was met, it distracted from the play.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tragedy tends to be a fascinating subject but the evening was a bit too much of a mess to be enjoyable. Changing the location from Venice to Iraq detracted from a desired cohesion. Something close to gripping was achieved by morphing the characters, though ultimately few of the added devices integrated well with Shakespeare’s intentions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the better part of two hours, the final bows and dimming of the lights are met with a joking chant for an encore from an elderly gentleman to my left, “We want Macbeth! We want Macbeth!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The African-American Shakespeare Company’s production of \u003cb>Othello\u003c/b> runs through April 18, 2010 at the African American Art & Culture Complex in San Francisco. \u003ca href=\"http://www.african-americanshakes.org/performances/index.html\">For tickets and information\u003c/a>, visit african-americanshakes.org.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>William Shakespeare just might be churning and spitting in his grave in response to yet another liberal interpretation of \u003cb>Othello\u003c/b>. The tone is set early when Iago drunk dials Lady Desdemona’s father on her cell phone. I was apprehensive about what might follow, hoping this production would not strike the same pose as Baz Luhrmann’s outright corny suburban interpretation of \u003cb>Romeo + Juliet\u003c/b> with Leonardo DiCaprio.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Executive director and founder of the African-American Shakespeare Company, Sherri Young, tinkers with sexuality, gender, race and a hint of war and technology in \u003cb>Othello\u003c/b>. Shakespeare’s immense vocabulary is left untouched so viewers at least know they are in the right building.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Iago is distraught when Othello overlooks her and chooses Cassio to be his second in command. Self-pity sparks revenge; Iago informs Venetian Senator Brabantio that his daughter Desdemona has eloped with Othello. Othello is an African Moor, which makes him an unfit match in Brebantio’s estimation, and so begins the drama. Yet, all this talk of Venetians comingling with Moors leaves one a little confused as to why the scene is set in Iraq.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Young consolidates Shakespeare’s cast to five actors, removing some characters and combining others. Desdemona’s father Brabantio is mentioned but never seen or heard in Young’s production. Roderigo is a Venetian man who has feelings for Desdemona and assists Iago in Othello’s demise. Young morphs Roderigo and Iago into one irate lesbian played by Aimee McCrary. The gender switch is an intriguing twist that complicates Iago’s plot to destroy Othello’s marriage. It seems no coincidence that McCrary is an African American actress playing the role of a racist who belittles Othello for his African roots (behind his back of course). One cannot be sure whether it was Young’s intention to extend intrigue to irony.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Iago warns us from the beginning, “I am not what I am.” Hopefully McCrary is not as dry in real life, delivering her lines like a stand-in at the start of the play. As the action gets going, McCrary redeems herself. Iago’s delight in her own malice is made clear through the actor’s facial expressions, which enrich the meaning behind the character’s mischief while adding much-needed comic relief.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Much has been made of the fact that \u003cb>Frank Langella’s Cyrano\u003c/b>, which debuted at the Roundabout Theater in New York City in 1997 and is now running at City Lights in San Jose through April 18, 2010, is a good deal shorter than Edmond Rostand’s 1897 original. That production typically clocks in at more than four hours. At two and a half hours, including intermission, \u003cb>Langella’s Cyrano\u003c/b> is still a substantial evening of theater, but with Jeff Kramer in the title role, I wish it had gone the full four.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kramer brings panache to his portrayal of the character who popularized the word. He is all bravado and bluster when circumstances demand, commanding the stage as the other players wither and wilt before him. So convincingly does Kramer channel the character’s boundless will that, at times, we believe that this warrior poet could indeed slay 100 men singlehandedly. When he tells us that he is too proud to be a parasite, we wish we could always say the same; when pride causes him to go to his death rather than confess the truth to the woman he has always loved, we want to admire his irrationality.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kramer’s Cyrano, we immediately believe, is a man whose rapier wit is as sharp as his sword, whose way with words could melt the heart of the fairest maiden. Most importantly, behind Cyrano’s confident boasts and satisfied smiles, Kramer gives us tinges, and then torrents, of melancholy and despair, the products of a profound insecurity that pervades his being despite his formidable intelligence and physical skills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The problem, of course, is his enormous nose, which in this City Lights production is long, craggy, and deformed. It’s not just big (every time Kramer dons and doffs his baldric, I worried he might inadvertently rip the cursed thing from his face) but ugly, too. It is a singularly disgusting nose, an eyesore, a catastrophe. Kramer wears it like a crown.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the story of Cyrano is not a cautionary tale about the limits of self esteem. Rather, it’s a tragedy — although at times hilarious — about unrequited love. The object of Cyrano’s affection is Roxane, played here by Sarah Griner. Roxane’s smile is so rapt, her gaze on would-be lover Christian (Joshua Marx) is so fixed that sparks seem to fly between the two. And when she flirts with her older, deformed cousin Cyrano to ask that he protect her beautiful Christian, breaking Cyrano’s heart in the process, her flirty, self-absorbed insensitivity is painful and glorious to watch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other actors who shine in this fine production include Lucinda Dobinson, whose servant girl Lise doesn’t utter a single line but whose face is a mirror of empathy as she hovers around Cyrano, echoing his pain, hopes, and dreams. Derek McCaw is also good in several roles, especially early on as an irredeemably terrible actor. And Steve Lambert’s Ragueneau is a fine drunken cook, whose amiability and baking, if not his poetry, repeatedly draw saviors such as Cyrano to his side.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Frank Langella’s Cyrano\u003c/b> runs through April 18, 2010 at City Lights Theater Company in San Jose. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.cltc.org\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">tickets and information\u003c/a>, visit cltc.org.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Much has been made of the fact that \u003cb>Frank Langella’s Cyrano\u003c/b>, which debuted at the Roundabout Theater in New York City in 1997 and is now running at City Lights in San Jose through April 18, 2010, is a good deal shorter than Edmond Rostand’s 1897 original. That production typically clocks in at more than four hours. At two and a half hours, including intermission, \u003cb>Langella’s Cyrano\u003c/b> is still a substantial evening of theater, but with Jeff Kramer in the title role, I wish it had gone the full four.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kramer brings panache to his portrayal of the character who popularized the word. He is all bravado and bluster when circumstances demand, commanding the stage as the other players wither and wilt before him. So convincingly does Kramer channel the character’s boundless will that, at times, we believe that this warrior poet could indeed slay 100 men singlehandedly. When he tells us that he is too proud to be a parasite, we wish we could always say the same; when pride causes him to go to his death rather than confess the truth to the woman he has always loved, we want to admire his irrationality.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kramer’s Cyrano, we immediately believe, is a man whose rapier wit is as sharp as his sword, whose way with words could melt the heart of the fairest maiden. Most importantly, behind Cyrano’s confident boasts and satisfied smiles, Kramer gives us tinges, and then torrents, of melancholy and despair, the products of a profound insecurity that pervades his being despite his formidable intelligence and physical skills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The problem, of course, is his enormous nose, which in this City Lights production is long, craggy, and deformed. It’s not just big (every time Kramer dons and doffs his baldric, I worried he might inadvertently rip the cursed thing from his face) but ugly, too. It is a singularly disgusting nose, an eyesore, a catastrophe. Kramer wears it like a crown.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the story of Cyrano is not a cautionary tale about the limits of self esteem. Rather, it’s a tragedy — although at times hilarious — about unrequited love. The object of Cyrano’s affection is Roxane, played here by Sarah Griner. Roxane’s smile is so rapt, her gaze on would-be lover Christian (Joshua Marx) is so fixed that sparks seem to fly between the two. And when she flirts with her older, deformed cousin Cyrano to ask that he protect her beautiful Christian, breaking Cyrano’s heart in the process, her flirty, self-absorbed insensitivity is painful and glorious to watch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other actors who shine in this fine production include Lucinda Dobinson, whose servant girl Lise doesn’t utter a single line but whose face is a mirror of empathy as she hovers around Cyrano, echoing his pain, hopes, and dreams. Derek McCaw is also good in several roles, especially early on as an irredeemably terrible actor. And Steve Lambert’s Ragueneau is a fine drunken cook, whose amiability and baking, if not his poetry, repeatedly draw saviors such as Cyrano to his side.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Frank Langella’s Cyrano\u003c/b> runs through April 18, 2010 at City Lights Theater Company in San Jose. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.cltc.org\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">tickets and information\u003c/a>, visit cltc.org.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>The principal conceit of \u003cb>O Lovely Glowworm, or Scenes of Great Beauty\u003c/b> is that the play’s interminable string of uneven scenes — few of which approach beauty, let alone greatness — are the products of the overactive imagination of a profoundly melancholy goat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Said goat, a figment of playwright Glen Berger’s surreal imagination, has reportedly spent 15 years before, during and after Work War I tied to a post near a garbage dump outside the hovel of his owners, a would-be inventor named Macmann (Philip Mills), whose fondest wish is to invent a flushable toilet so that his name would be attached to every privy in Ireland, and his mother (Mairin Lee), whose fondest wish is to die.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It goes on like this for almost three hours, with the goat (animated via remote control and voiced by Tobie L. Windham) mostly at center stage. Windham spends much of the play’s first act crouched on the roof of the aforementioned hovel as he gives voice to the goat’s fantasies of life as a tramcar conductor, or perhaps as a racehorse or dog. The goat repeatedly tells us that he is deaf, blind and suffering from an undefined and unbearable pain. Windham bays and bleats for relief, which the goat gets toward the end of Act I, when Macmann finally summons the nerve to shoot the pathetic creature in the head.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, we are not yet rid of the intolerable beast, who continues to conjure arbitrary daydreams for his perverse amusement, if not ours. In plodding succession, he summons, kills off and then reanimates a Belgian-front deserter named Marveaux (Kyle Schaefer), his childhood chum Halliwell (David Jacobs), and Philomel (Emily Kitchens), a mermaid who lures men to their doom from an island in the middle of a whirlpool-and-eddy-infested lake.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Why should we buy into this, why should we believe the fevered musing of a deranged goat? His scenarios are presented to us as if they must contain clues to not just the goat’s suffering but ours, too. They are meant to be parables, these dismal tales of misfortune and woe, but Berger’s goat is so capricious and stands in such contempt of its creations — changing their circumstances (at times sadistically) — that the perspective is simply not to be trusted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The set only compounds the signal-to-noise ratio. The theater at Zeum is a terrible place to see a play, but the \u003cb>Glowworm\u003c/b> set is like a \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/arts/programs/spark/profile.jsp?essid=4330\">David Best\u003c/a> sculpture gone bad. I liked the idea of hiding Belle Epoque dioramas in compartments carved out of mountains of trash, but they faced the wide splay of seats almost straight on. How easy it would have been to tilt the compartment on stage left a bit to stage right so that its interiors could be better viewed by those sitting house left. Same problem for the blacksmith’s workshop and mermaid lair perched above it on stage right. And if you are sitting in one of the back rows, forget about seeing the action (if you can call actors crawling on the floor “action”) downstage. This place is bad enough for theater — such choices only make the experience worse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All that said, at times the play is quite funny in its sense of the absurd (for example, the mundane musing revealed in the firing-squad scene), and I liked the scene between Jacobs and Kitchens in which Halliwell finally agrees to permit the duplicitous Philomel to shave his neck with a straight razor. I also believed Lee as the mother, who covers her ears with pillows and puts a chamber pot over her head whenever her Pollyanna-like son sings his idiotic songs of devotion. That seemed honest enough, and hats off to Mills for selling the sap hard. But mostly I shared the unscripted sentiments of Jacobs, who uttered an exasperated and unprintable epithet when the carabiners for his fly system became momentary tangled. Dude: I feel your pain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The A.C.T. M.F.A. production of \u003cb>O Lovely Glowworm, or Scenes of Great Beauty\u003c/b> runs through February 7, 2010 at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.act-sf.org\">tickets and information\u003c/a>, visit act-sf.org.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The principal conceit of \u003cb>O Lovely Glowworm, or Scenes of Great Beauty\u003c/b> is that the play’s interminable string of uneven scenes — few of which approach beauty, let alone greatness — are the products of the overactive imagination of a profoundly melancholy goat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Said goat, a figment of playwright Glen Berger’s surreal imagination, has reportedly spent 15 years before, during and after Work War I tied to a post near a garbage dump outside the hovel of his owners, a would-be inventor named Macmann (Philip Mills), whose fondest wish is to invent a flushable toilet so that his name would be attached to every privy in Ireland, and his mother (Mairin Lee), whose fondest wish is to die.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It goes on like this for almost three hours, with the goat (animated via remote control and voiced by Tobie L. Windham) mostly at center stage. Windham spends much of the play’s first act crouched on the roof of the aforementioned hovel as he gives voice to the goat’s fantasies of life as a tramcar conductor, or perhaps as a racehorse or dog. The goat repeatedly tells us that he is deaf, blind and suffering from an undefined and unbearable pain. Windham bays and bleats for relief, which the goat gets toward the end of Act I, when Macmann finally summons the nerve to shoot the pathetic creature in the head.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, we are not yet rid of the intolerable beast, who continues to conjure arbitrary daydreams for his perverse amusement, if not ours. In plodding succession, he summons, kills off and then reanimates a Belgian-front deserter named Marveaux (Kyle Schaefer), his childhood chum Halliwell (David Jacobs), and Philomel (Emily Kitchens), a mermaid who lures men to their doom from an island in the middle of a whirlpool-and-eddy-infested lake.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Why should we buy into this, why should we believe the fevered musing of a deranged goat? His scenarios are presented to us as if they must contain clues to not just the goat’s suffering but ours, too. They are meant to be parables, these dismal tales of misfortune and woe, but Berger’s goat is so capricious and stands in such contempt of its creations — changing their circumstances (at times sadistically) — that the perspective is simply not to be trusted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The set only compounds the signal-to-noise ratio. The theater at Zeum is a terrible place to see a play, but the \u003cb>Glowworm\u003c/b> set is like a \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/arts/programs/spark/profile.jsp?essid=4330\">David Best\u003c/a> sculpture gone bad. I liked the idea of hiding Belle Epoque dioramas in compartments carved out of mountains of trash, but they faced the wide splay of seats almost straight on. How easy it would have been to tilt the compartment on stage left a bit to stage right so that its interiors could be better viewed by those sitting house left. Same problem for the blacksmith’s workshop and mermaid lair perched above it on stage right. And if you are sitting in one of the back rows, forget about seeing the action (if you can call actors crawling on the floor “action”) downstage. This place is bad enough for theater — such choices only make the experience worse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All that said, at times the play is quite funny in its sense of the absurd (for example, the mundane musing revealed in the firing-squad scene), and I liked the scene between Jacobs and Kitchens in which Halliwell finally agrees to permit the duplicitous Philomel to shave his neck with a straight razor. I also believed Lee as the mother, who covers her ears with pillows and puts a chamber pot over her head whenever her Pollyanna-like son sings his idiotic songs of devotion. That seemed honest enough, and hats off to Mills for selling the sap hard. But mostly I shared the unscripted sentiments of Jacobs, who uttered an exasperated and unprintable epithet when the carabiners for his fly system became momentary tangled. Dude: I feel your pain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The A.C.T. M.F.A. production of \u003cb>O Lovely Glowworm, or Scenes of Great Beauty\u003c/b> runs through February 7, 2010 at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.act-sf.org\">tickets and information\u003c/a>, visit act-sf.org.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Life During Wartime Is Nasty, Brutish And Not Especially Short",
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"content": "\u003cp>There again is that tell-tale rusty chain-link fence. The stage is something of a junk yard. The lighting is harsh; strip lights exposed. It could be a stage representing a work camp in Germany, or the East Village of disaffected youth. It could be \u003cb>Rent\u003c/b> or \u003cb>American Idiot\u003c/b>. This time it’s Bertolt Brecht’s \u003cb>The Caucasian Chalk Circle\u003c/b>, a modernist play written in 1944, which smells a little musty today. I could submit that the theater of Brecht is itself obsolete. War is hell. Heads of state are immoral. Justice is corrupt. Tell us something we don’t know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Berkeley Rep made it all very relevant a few years back with its powerful staging of \u003cb>Mother Courage\u003c/b> (Halliburton, anyone?). So the fault must lie, in part, in John Doyle’s new production of \u003cb>Chalk Circle\u003c/b> which opened last Wednesday at ACT.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yes the play itself is not as powerful as \u003cb>Mother Courage\u003c/b> and not as devilishly entertaining as \u003cb>Three-Penny Opera\u003c/b>. But this spiritless revival — with a new translation by A.C.T. associate artist Domenique Lozano — doesn’t help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>The Caucasian Chalk Circle\u003c/b> features actors playing instruments, a signature of the play’s Tony Award-winning director John Doyle (see revivals of \u003cb>Sweeney Todd\u003c/b> and \u003cb>Company\u003c/b>), with original music from avant-garde composer Nathaniel Stookey (Lemony Snicket’s \u003cb>The Composer Is Dead\u003c/b>). A narrator/singer played by Manoel Felciano tells the story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The play begins with a military coup in what is now Georgia, during the country’s war with Persia. As rebels invade the palace, the governor and his wife prepare to flee. The Governor’s wife, amusingly played by the excellent René Augesen, is so preoccupied with stuffing her luggage with fancy frocks and getting the F out of dodge that she forgets all about her infant son.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Augesen brings a lot of humor to her role as a trashy, spoiled prima donna. Her tacky attire is American glitzy ’80s — or present day Eastern Europe. But other actors are costumed in generic Euro-olden peasant wear — scarves and tunics and kerchiefs. The corrupt police and soldiers wear bad-guy sunglasses. Some actors wear contemporary American military uniforms, others, Middle Eastern garments. There are black leather jackets and a bowler hat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In essence, there is little cohesion to the costume choices and not much cohesion to the performances either. It isn’t quite clear what Doyle, who directed and designed the production, is going for. And “rag tag” doesn’t suffice as a theatrical style. The acting is neither naturalistic nor stylized. If the actors are emulating Brechtian unadorned artifice, the result is often just stilted delivery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Likewise, stabs at updating the translation detract from simple truth and eloquent wit. For instance, speeches and songs sample Obama and Edwin Starr lyrics — “War (What is it Good For?)” — contributing to the jumble of styles. And even though the story is simple, the action feels cluttered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Grusche, a palace servant, hides the forgotten baby from the soldiers who are searching for him after they behead the wealthy Governor (the baby’s father). After the Governor’s wife flees, Grusche (Omozé Idehenre) heads for the countryside, protecting the baby from winter weather, greedy country folk and an inhospitable sister-in-law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are some amusing scenes, such as when Grusche tries to find shelter with a group of exiled aristocrats by putting on airs and pretending she is one of them. When the snooty women espy her calloused hands, it’s as if they’ve encountered a leper.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Act II takes a palpable shift, developing the character of Azdak, a corrupt judge, who ultimately decides to whom the baby will belong, the mother who abandoned it or the servant who saved and protected it. At long last, the play arrives at its reason why.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What is here should belong to those who deserve it,” concludes the singer, equating maternal legitimacy with Marxist thought. “The children to the motherly so they may thrive; the wagons to the good drivers so they are well driven; and the valley to those who water it so it may bear fruit.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At its close, the cluttered goings on are distilled into something refreshingly unadorned and neo-classical. It’s no compliment to the production that the telling works better than the showing. Too much of this “re-imagined” production proves that more is less.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>The Caucasian Chalk Circle\u003c/b> runs through March 14, 2010 at The American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.), located at 415 Geary Street in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.act-sf.org\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit act-sf.org.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Augesen brings a lot of humor to her role as a trashy, spoiled prima donna. Her tacky attire is American glitzy ’80s — or present day Eastern Europe. But other actors are costumed in generic Euro-olden peasant wear — scarves and tunics and kerchiefs. The corrupt police and soldiers wear bad-guy sunglasses. Some actors wear contemporary American military uniforms, others, Middle Eastern garments. There are black leather jackets and a bowler hat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In essence, there is little cohesion to the costume choices and not much cohesion to the performances either. It isn’t quite clear what Doyle, who directed and designed the production, is going for. And “rag tag” doesn’t suffice as a theatrical style. The acting is neither naturalistic nor stylized. If the actors are emulating Brechtian unadorned artifice, the result is often just stilted delivery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Likewise, stabs at updating the translation detract from simple truth and eloquent wit. For instance, speeches and songs sample Obama and Edwin Starr lyrics — “War (What is it Good For?)” — contributing to the jumble of styles. And even though the story is simple, the action feels cluttered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Grusche, a palace servant, hides the forgotten baby from the soldiers who are searching for him after they behead the wealthy Governor (the baby’s father). After the Governor’s wife flees, Grusche (Omozé Idehenre) heads for the countryside, protecting the baby from winter weather, greedy country folk and an inhospitable sister-in-law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are some amusing scenes, such as when Grusche tries to find shelter with a group of exiled aristocrats by putting on airs and pretending she is one of them. When the snooty women espy her calloused hands, it’s as if they’ve encountered a leper.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Act II takes a palpable shift, developing the character of Azdak, a corrupt judge, who ultimately decides to whom the baby will belong, the mother who abandoned it or the servant who saved and protected it. At long last, the play arrives at its reason why.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What is here should belong to those who deserve it,” concludes the singer, equating maternal legitimacy with Marxist thought. “The children to the motherly so they may thrive; the wagons to the good drivers so they are well driven; and the valley to those who water it so it may bear fruit.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At its close, the cluttered goings on are distilled into something refreshingly unadorned and neo-classical. It’s no compliment to the production that the telling works better than the showing. Too much of this “re-imagined” production proves that more is less.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>The Caucasian Chalk Circle\u003c/b> runs through March 14, 2010 at The American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.), located at 415 Geary Street in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.act-sf.org\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit act-sf.org.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Bruce Conner, along with the Legion of Decency, figured out pretty early on that rock ‘n’ roll and sex were joined at the, well, hip. (It’s a youth thing, don’t you know.) The San Francisco artist and filmmaker, who died in 2008, was also among the first to pioneer a new way of thinking about images, namely that appropriating footage shot for one purpose — educational films, cartoons, commercials, propaganda films — and presenting it in another context offered all sorts of shocking and entertaining possibilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The use of found footage, as the approach has come to be known, is familiar to the point of cliché thanks to countless TV ads and music videos. So I’m extremely pleased (and relieved, frankly) to report that Conner’s \u003cb>Three Screen Ray\u003c/b>, a triptych reworking of 1961’s \u003cb>Cosmic Ray\u003c/b> that’s on view at SFMOMA through the spring, remains an energy-packed chunk of voracious, irreverent Americana. Half a century on, Conner’s fast and furious marriage of sexy black-and-white imagery and swaggering Ray Charles stomp has lost none of its wit but a good bit of its audacity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"float: right;margin-left: 10px;margin-bottom: 10px;font-size: 77%;color: #a2a2a2;line-height: 12px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/conner-breakaway.jpg\" alt=\"Bruce Conner, Breakaway, detail from film strip, 1966\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bruce Conner, Breakaway\u003cbr>detail from film strip, 1966.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Cosmic Ray\u003c/b>, as well as this new ultra-widescreen installation, lays Charles’s soulfully, suggestively lascivious \u003cb>What’d I Say\u003c/b> underneath a barrage of shots and snippets that essentially traverse the arc from foreplay to climax. A choice selection of nude female dancers provide the surface come-on, augmented with shots of rockets, cannons (courtesy of a Mickey Mouse ‘toon) and even the raising of the Stars and Stripes on Iwo Jima. (Insert flagpole joke here.) The fire-hose-like cascade from an uncorked bottle — eyes on the left screen only, if you please — provides the punch line in case you took everything that came before it too seriously.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, Conner is proffering serious social commentary, if you can elevate your mind from your belt buckle, about the testosterone that drives both U.S. military adventures and consumer spending. The effort and expense expended by women to win approval and attract a mate, while not exclusive to America, first manifested itself most visibly in 1950s and ’60s TV commercials. In other words, \u003cb>Three Screen Ray\u003c/b> is an acknowledgment of both basic human hormonal urges and the society that exploited and manipulated them. Hmmm, did I need to use the past tense there? I thought not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s inevitable that while we still take much pleasure from Conner’s editing and rhythm, we can’t fathom what a bold smack in the face \u003cb>Cosmic Ray\u003c/b> was when it debuted at underground events back in the day. Neither nudity nor ribald sight gags shock us anymore, not after decades of MTV, prime-time wardrobe malfunctions and porn on demand. Consumerism is beyond satire at this point, while the military is above it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Years later, Conner was credited with introducing the music video, a notion he rejected out of hand. SFMOMA has nonetheless assembled a bunch of music-related works by various artists in an adjacent gallery, the best of which, far and away, is Conner’s gorgeous black-and-white \u003cb>Breakaway\u003c/b> (1966). Featuring Antonia Christina Basilotta (\u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4CyNvEfWoE\">Toni Basil\u003c/a>) onscreen and on the soundtrack, the film and its subject are fresh, bouncy and overtly sexual. But there’s an enormous difference between Basil and the girls on display in \u003cb>Cosmic Ray\u003c/b>. She owns her body and its visual representation (long before Madonna, by the by); she isn’t passively accepting the male gaze but challenging it. Five minutes of pure pop goodness, \u003cb>Breakaway\u003c/b> is liberating, intoxicating, energizing and timeless.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>None of those lovely words apply to the other selections. Two examples: Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist’s \u003cb>I’m Not the Girl Who Misses Much\u003c/b> (1986) is painfully self-indulgent but at least offers a few bars of The Beatles’ \u003cb>Happiness Is a Warm Gun\u003c/b> (get the connection?). Cory Arcangel’s \u003cb>All the Parts From Simon and Garfunkel’s 1984 Central Park Performance Where Garfunkel Sings With His Hands In His Pockets\u003c/b> is amusing for 20 seconds, but goes on for more than six minutes. I look at it this way: Every installation needs a room clearer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Long Play: Bruce Conner and the Singles Collection\u003c/b> is on view through May 23, 2010 at SFMoMA, 151 Third St. (at Howard) in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http:www.sfmoma.org/\">more information\u003c/a> visit sfmoma.org.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Bruce Conner, along with the Legion of Decency, figured out pretty early on that rock ‘n’ roll and sex were joined at the, well, hip. (It’s a youth thing, don’t you know.) The San Francisco artist and filmmaker, who died in 2008, was also among the first to pioneer a new way of thinking about images, namely that appropriating footage shot for one purpose — educational films, cartoons, commercials, propaganda films — and presenting it in another context offered all sorts of shocking and entertaining possibilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The use of found footage, as the approach has come to be known, is familiar to the point of cliché thanks to countless TV ads and music videos. So I’m extremely pleased (and relieved, frankly) to report that Conner’s \u003cb>Three Screen Ray\u003c/b>, a triptych reworking of 1961’s \u003cb>Cosmic Ray\u003c/b> that’s on view at SFMOMA through the spring, remains an energy-packed chunk of voracious, irreverent Americana. Half a century on, Conner’s fast and furious marriage of sexy black-and-white imagery and swaggering Ray Charles stomp has lost none of its wit but a good bit of its audacity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"float: right;margin-left: 10px;margin-bottom: 10px;font-size: 77%;color: #a2a2a2;line-height: 12px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/conner-breakaway.jpg\" alt=\"Bruce Conner, Breakaway, detail from film strip, 1966\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bruce Conner, Breakaway\u003cbr>detail from film strip, 1966.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Cosmic Ray\u003c/b>, as well as this new ultra-widescreen installation, lays Charles’s soulfully, suggestively lascivious \u003cb>What’d I Say\u003c/b> underneath a barrage of shots and snippets that essentially traverse the arc from foreplay to climax. A choice selection of nude female dancers provide the surface come-on, augmented with shots of rockets, cannons (courtesy of a Mickey Mouse ‘toon) and even the raising of the Stars and Stripes on Iwo Jima. (Insert flagpole joke here.) The fire-hose-like cascade from an uncorked bottle — eyes on the left screen only, if you please — provides the punch line in case you took everything that came before it too seriously.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, Conner is proffering serious social commentary, if you can elevate your mind from your belt buckle, about the testosterone that drives both U.S. military adventures and consumer spending. The effort and expense expended by women to win approval and attract a mate, while not exclusive to America, first manifested itself most visibly in 1950s and ’60s TV commercials. In other words, \u003cb>Three Screen Ray\u003c/b> is an acknowledgment of both basic human hormonal urges and the society that exploited and manipulated them. Hmmm, did I need to use the past tense there? I thought not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s inevitable that while we still take much pleasure from Conner’s editing and rhythm, we can’t fathom what a bold smack in the face \u003cb>Cosmic Ray\u003c/b> was when it debuted at underground events back in the day. Neither nudity nor ribald sight gags shock us anymore, not after decades of MTV, prime-time wardrobe malfunctions and porn on demand. Consumerism is beyond satire at this point, while the military is above it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Years later, Conner was credited with introducing the music video, a notion he rejected out of hand. SFMOMA has nonetheless assembled a bunch of music-related works by various artists in an adjacent gallery, the best of which, far and away, is Conner’s gorgeous black-and-white \u003cb>Breakaway\u003c/b> (1966). Featuring Antonia Christina Basilotta (\u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4CyNvEfWoE\">Toni Basil\u003c/a>) onscreen and on the soundtrack, the film and its subject are fresh, bouncy and overtly sexual. But there’s an enormous difference between Basil and the girls on display in \u003cb>Cosmic Ray\u003c/b>. She owns her body and its visual representation (long before Madonna, by the by); she isn’t passively accepting the male gaze but challenging it. Five minutes of pure pop goodness, \u003cb>Breakaway\u003c/b> is liberating, intoxicating, energizing and timeless.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>None of those lovely words apply to the other selections. Two examples: Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist’s \u003cb>I’m Not the Girl Who Misses Much\u003c/b> (1986) is painfully self-indulgent but at least offers a few bars of The Beatles’ \u003cb>Happiness Is a Warm Gun\u003c/b> (get the connection?). Cory Arcangel’s \u003cb>All the Parts From Simon and Garfunkel’s 1984 Central Park Performance Where Garfunkel Sings With His Hands In His Pockets\u003c/b> is amusing for 20 seconds, but goes on for more than six minutes. I look at it this way: Every installation needs a room clearer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Long Play: Bruce Conner and the Singles Collection\u003c/b> is on view through May 23, 2010 at SFMoMA, 151 Third St. (at Howard) in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http:www.sfmoma.org/\">more information\u003c/a> visit sfmoma.org.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>You might think that clamor about who should marry whom is coming from the San Francisco federal courthouse, where same sex marriage is currently on trial. You might think that the debate about traditional values and societal stability is coming from the attorneys arguing over Proposition 8.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it’s not. It’s coming from the Golden Gate Theater where Tevye is weighing these selfsame issues in the new production of \u003cb>Fiddler on the Roof\u003c/b>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You might think the voices raised in hatred and intimidation against the Jewish people are those of the actors playing the Cossacks who rampage the shtetl of Anatevka in the pogrom at the end of Act I.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But no again. Those are members of the congregation of The Westboro Baptist Church of Kansas standing in front of the Jewish Community Center, the Jewish Museum and even Brandeis Hillel \u003ci>Elementary School\u003c/i>, wielding placards that say “God Hates Jews.” (Their \u003ca href=\"http://sfist.com/2010/01/28/scene_from_todays_anti-gay_anti-jew.php\">tour of San Francisco\u003c/a> had included Thursday’s performance of \u003cb>Fiddler on the Roof\u003c/b> but apparently, they were a no show.) Their schedule also includes the Federal courthouse, \u003ci>Jewish News Weekly\u003c/i> and a student production of \u003cb>Rent\u003c/b>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lest anyone think we’ve come a long way from Anatevka, Pastor Fred Phelps and his church are here to tell us otherwise. (\u003ca href=\"http://laughingsquid.com/san-franciscos-answer-to-westboro-baptist-church/\">See Laughing Squid’s coverage\u003c/a> of San Francisco’s clever counter protest.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But this symmetry is more trenchant than the show itself. I wish I could tell you that the new national tour of \u003cb>Fiddler on the Roof\u003c/b>, which opened Wednesday, January 27, gut-punches us anew with its wrenching depiction of lives at the crossroads of old ideals and new ideas. And I wish that the new generation of theatergoers, who never got to see Zero Mostel, Theodore Bikel or Chaim Topol play Tevye, could experience the depth of emotion that the play can communicate. But director Sammy Dallas Bayes’s take on the Jerome Robbins masterpiece is not that play.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was to be the farewell tour for Topol, who played Tevya in the 1971 film version and in countless stage productions since. Due to a shoulder injury he was replaced by Harvey Fierstein.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jerome Robbins directed and choreographed the 1964 Broadway production of \u003cb>Fiddler\u003c/b>starring Zero Mostel. The musical is an adaptation of Sholem Aleichem?s stories about small town Jewish life in Czarist Russia. Mostel (then Topol, then Fierstein) played Tevye, the milkman whose sense of tradition is shaken when his three marriageable daughters fall in love.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harvey Fierstein is the Tony-winning playwright and actor who has created or starred in the best in drag-themed Broadway fare — \u003cb>Torch Song Trilogy\u003c/b>, \u003cb>La Cage aux Folles\u003c/b> and \u003cb>Hairspray\u003c/b>. In other words, he’s an iconically gay performer. Yet, in the 2005 Broadway revival of \u003cb>Fiddler\u003c/b>, Fierstein starred as Tevye. Opposite Rosie O’Donnell. All I can imagine is that some very gay Broadway producers got very high and thought this would be hysterical.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Certainly gay is the new Jew. Perhaps Fierstein-as-Tevye could work on some meta-level: in San Francisco this week, tradition is being challenged within a hall of mirrors — in Anatevka, in theatrical casting, in the San Francisco courts, and out on the streets. Meanwhile, Kansans stand nearby, trying to decide whether the gays or the Jews go to a bigger Hell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sure, this adds a new political twist to an old classic, but it doesn’t enlarge the play. The merits and demerits of stunt-casting and non-traditional casting aside, Fierstein doesn’t begin to fill Topol’s shoes. In fact, everything in Bayes’s production feels smaller than life; it’s a shrunken midget version of \u003cb>Fiddler\u003c/b> trying to fill the impressive space waiting for it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fierstein-as-Tevye commands no presence or authority. He is vocally incapable of bellowing — and bellowing is needed. Instead, he works the shtick. He clowns and mugs and even his intimate, one-sided banter with his personal pal, God, seem to be played to the crowd.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that voice. One wants to ask Fierstein — as Billy Crystal’s mother once asked Louis Armstrong — “can’t you just cough it up?” Fierstein’s throaty, phlegmy voice upstages pretty much everything. It’s unique, yes. And distracting. Moreover, it has no resonance, no beauty, no sorrow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As written by Joseph Stein (book), the character of Tevye is a larger-than-life patriarch who thunders, pounds his chest, weeps, cowers and melts for his daughters. Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick (lyrics and music) wrote songs that reflected all of this. The role calls for an actor who can belt it out like nobody’s business. Harvey Fierstein does not have that range, emotionally or vocally. And too many of the other cast members lack the technical chops for musical theater. The orchestra overpowers the weak voices and the vocals seem trapped in a tinny transistor radio.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But while I’m a traditionalist — and a cranky one — when it comes to beloved Jerome Robbins musical theater, I must admit that Fierstein does know how to dance the Yidle-diddle gig. And those bottle dancers really know how to flail their limbs. Susan Cella suffices as Golde; she’s refreshingly real, if not all that moving. Rena Strober, Jamie Davis and Deborah Grausman offer touching performances as Tzeitel, Hodel and Chava, the three daughters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, the men for whom the daughters break their father’s heart hardly seem worth it. As the first in a trio of fiances to marry without a matchmaker, Erik Liberman’s Motel is weirdly inert. We don’t witness this nebbishy wuss gather his manhood and we don’t hear it in his song of self-celebration, “Wonder of Wonders.” Colby Foytik’s Perchik, the big city revolutionary, gives a low-key, but still appealing performance. But his vocals aren’t robust either.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Disappointing though it is, this \u003cb>Fiddler on the Roof\u003c/b> benefits from being a \u003cb>Fiddler on the Roof\u003c/b>. Very much of the material works all by itself. The musicality, if not, the pathos, is fail-safe. The music bursts with vitality, intensity and personality; these are the type of songs that stay with you a lifetime. You’d have to be an anti-Semite to not adore “To Life” or “Matchmaker.” You’d have to be a Westboro Baptist to not get verklempt during “Sunrise, Sunset.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fiddler on the Roof\u003c/b> runs through February 21, 2010 at The Golden Gate Theatre in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.shnsf.com/shows/show.asp?key=18&subkey=1177\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit shnsf.com.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>You might think that clamor about who should marry whom is coming from the San Francisco federal courthouse, where same sex marriage is currently on trial. You might think that the debate about traditional values and societal stability is coming from the attorneys arguing over Proposition 8.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it’s not. It’s coming from the Golden Gate Theater where Tevye is weighing these selfsame issues in the new production of \u003cb>Fiddler on the Roof\u003c/b>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You might think the voices raised in hatred and intimidation against the Jewish people are those of the actors playing the Cossacks who rampage the shtetl of Anatevka in the pogrom at the end of Act I.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But no again. Those are members of the congregation of The Westboro Baptist Church of Kansas standing in front of the Jewish Community Center, the Jewish Museum and even Brandeis Hillel \u003ci>Elementary School\u003c/i>, wielding placards that say “God Hates Jews.” (Their \u003ca href=\"http://sfist.com/2010/01/28/scene_from_todays_anti-gay_anti-jew.php\">tour of San Francisco\u003c/a> had included Thursday’s performance of \u003cb>Fiddler on the Roof\u003c/b> but apparently, they were a no show.) Their schedule also includes the Federal courthouse, \u003ci>Jewish News Weekly\u003c/i> and a student production of \u003cb>Rent\u003c/b>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lest anyone think we’ve come a long way from Anatevka, Pastor Fred Phelps and his church are here to tell us otherwise. (\u003ca href=\"http://laughingsquid.com/san-franciscos-answer-to-westboro-baptist-church/\">See Laughing Squid’s coverage\u003c/a> of San Francisco’s clever counter protest.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But this symmetry is more trenchant than the show itself. I wish I could tell you that the new national tour of \u003cb>Fiddler on the Roof\u003c/b>, which opened Wednesday, January 27, gut-punches us anew with its wrenching depiction of lives at the crossroads of old ideals and new ideas. And I wish that the new generation of theatergoers, who never got to see Zero Mostel, Theodore Bikel or Chaim Topol play Tevye, could experience the depth of emotion that the play can communicate. But director Sammy Dallas Bayes’s take on the Jerome Robbins masterpiece is not that play.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was to be the farewell tour for Topol, who played Tevya in the 1971 film version and in countless stage productions since. Due to a shoulder injury he was replaced by Harvey Fierstein.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jerome Robbins directed and choreographed the 1964 Broadway production of \u003cb>Fiddler\u003c/b>starring Zero Mostel. The musical is an adaptation of Sholem Aleichem?s stories about small town Jewish life in Czarist Russia. Mostel (then Topol, then Fierstein) played Tevye, the milkman whose sense of tradition is shaken when his three marriageable daughters fall in love.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harvey Fierstein is the Tony-winning playwright and actor who has created or starred in the best in drag-themed Broadway fare — \u003cb>Torch Song Trilogy\u003c/b>, \u003cb>La Cage aux Folles\u003c/b> and \u003cb>Hairspray\u003c/b>. In other words, he’s an iconically gay performer. Yet, in the 2005 Broadway revival of \u003cb>Fiddler\u003c/b>, Fierstein starred as Tevye. Opposite Rosie O’Donnell. All I can imagine is that some very gay Broadway producers got very high and thought this would be hysterical.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Certainly gay is the new Jew. Perhaps Fierstein-as-Tevye could work on some meta-level: in San Francisco this week, tradition is being challenged within a hall of mirrors — in Anatevka, in theatrical casting, in the San Francisco courts, and out on the streets. Meanwhile, Kansans stand nearby, trying to decide whether the gays or the Jews go to a bigger Hell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sure, this adds a new political twist to an old classic, but it doesn’t enlarge the play. The merits and demerits of stunt-casting and non-traditional casting aside, Fierstein doesn’t begin to fill Topol’s shoes. In fact, everything in Bayes’s production feels smaller than life; it’s a shrunken midget version of \u003cb>Fiddler\u003c/b> trying to fill the impressive space waiting for it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fierstein-as-Tevye commands no presence or authority. He is vocally incapable of bellowing — and bellowing is needed. Instead, he works the shtick. He clowns and mugs and even his intimate, one-sided banter with his personal pal, God, seem to be played to the crowd.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that voice. One wants to ask Fierstein — as Billy Crystal’s mother once asked Louis Armstrong — “can’t you just cough it up?” Fierstein’s throaty, phlegmy voice upstages pretty much everything. It’s unique, yes. And distracting. Moreover, it has no resonance, no beauty, no sorrow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As written by Joseph Stein (book), the character of Tevye is a larger-than-life patriarch who thunders, pounds his chest, weeps, cowers and melts for his daughters. Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick (lyrics and music) wrote songs that reflected all of this. The role calls for an actor who can belt it out like nobody’s business. Harvey Fierstein does not have that range, emotionally or vocally. And too many of the other cast members lack the technical chops for musical theater. The orchestra overpowers the weak voices and the vocals seem trapped in a tinny transistor radio.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But while I’m a traditionalist — and a cranky one — when it comes to beloved Jerome Robbins musical theater, I must admit that Fierstein does know how to dance the Yidle-diddle gig. And those bottle dancers really know how to flail their limbs. Susan Cella suffices as Golde; she’s refreshingly real, if not all that moving. Rena Strober, Jamie Davis and Deborah Grausman offer touching performances as Tzeitel, Hodel and Chava, the three daughters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, the men for whom the daughters break their father’s heart hardly seem worth it. As the first in a trio of fiances to marry without a matchmaker, Erik Liberman’s Motel is weirdly inert. We don’t witness this nebbishy wuss gather his manhood and we don’t hear it in his song of self-celebration, “Wonder of Wonders.” Colby Foytik’s Perchik, the big city revolutionary, gives a low-key, but still appealing performance. But his vocals aren’t robust either.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Disappointing though it is, this \u003cb>Fiddler on the Roof\u003c/b> benefits from being a \u003cb>Fiddler on the Roof\u003c/b>. Very much of the material works all by itself. The musicality, if not, the pathos, is fail-safe. The music bursts with vitality, intensity and personality; these are the type of songs that stay with you a lifetime. You’d have to be an anti-Semite to not adore “To Life” or “Matchmaker.” You’d have to be a Westboro Baptist to not get verklempt during “Sunrise, Sunset.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Fiddler on the Roof\u003c/b> runs through February 21, 2010 at The Golden Gate Theatre in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.shnsf.com/shows/show.asp?key=18&subkey=1177\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit shnsf.com.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Since 2006, the Aurora Theatre Company in Berkeley has been hosting its annual Global Age Project, in which a jury of local directors chooses new plays to be read on successive Monday nights. The four new works for 2010 were selected from a pool of 200 submissions and features the return, for a second year in a row, of Chicago playwright Joel Drake Johnson, whose 2009 GAP submission, “The First Grade” is running concurrently at Aurora through February 28, 2010. As in years past, attendance to Global Age Project readings is free on a first-come, first-served basis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The goal of “GAP,” as conceived by Aurora artistic director Tom Ross, is to highlight new works that address issues in the global age, including the changing nature of human relationships. To that end, this year’s first reading, on February 1 at 7:30pm, is Johnson’s \u003cb>A Guide for the Perplexed\u003c/b>. Directed by Matthew Graham Smith, \u003cb>Perplexed\u003c/b> explores the role gender plays in a hastily created household of three men — an ex-con, his off-the-charts-smart gay nephew, and the ex-con’s nervous brother-in-law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also in the lineup is Bekah Brunstetter’s provocatively titled \u003cb>Miss Lily Gets Boned\u003c/b> on February 15 and Allison Moore’s \u003cb>Collapse\u003c/b> on February 22, both at 7:30pm. These are accomplished playwrights all: Johnson’s \u003cb>Perplexed\u003c/b> is set to premiere at Victory Gardens in Chicago after its reading here, Brunstetter is currently working on a commission for New York’s Roundabout Underground and Moore is readying an adaptation of Willa Cather’s \u003cb>My Antonia\u003c/b> for the Illusion Theater in Minneapolis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Into this fine company steps San Francisco’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/arts/profile/index.jsp?essid=18904\">Garret Jon Groenveld\u003c/a>, whose \u003cb>The Serving Class\u003c/b> will be read on February 8 at 7:30pm. Directed by Margo Hall and starring Liam Vincent as Buddy Beauchamps, \u003cb>The Serving Class\u003c/b> is a comedy about a gay love triangle set against the backdrop of a high-society marriage. “The play actually has a very local connection,” Groenveld says. “It was commissioned in 2007 by \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/arts/profile/index.jsp?essid=6266\">PlayGround\u003c/a> and rewritten for a public reading in 2008.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The story focuses in large part on the indispensability of the gay community (interior decorators, florists, photographers) to the local marriage industry. “Without gay men,” Groenveld quips, “the super-wealthy could never pull off a wedding, and yet gay men can never marry.” It may sound like a message play, but Groenveld is quite comfortable with \u003cb>The Serving Class\u003c/b> as a comedy. “Comedy is just tragedy sped up,” he says, paraphrasing a famous quote, adding, “There’s a high joke-per-page ratio.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Groenveld knows he’s the odd man out at this year’s GAP. “It’s super-rare,” he says, “to get picked for a festival with a comedy.” But with two high-powered attorneys, once bitter adversaries, arguing in Federal Court on behalf of gay marriage as the reading is being rehearsed, Groenveld also knows that his subject matter is not just a fast-paced string of gags. “I’m hoping it will become anachronistic so I can rewrite it again,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 2010 Global Age Project runs through February 22, 2010 at the Aurora Theatre Company in Berkeley. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.auroratheatre.org/show.php?prod_id=71&ref=seas\">tickets and information\u003c/a>, visit auroratheatre.org.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Since 2006, the Aurora Theatre Company in Berkeley has been hosting its annual Global Age Project, in which a jury of local directors chooses new plays to be read on successive Monday nights. The four new works for 2010 were selected from a pool of 200 submissions and features the return, for a second year in a row, of Chicago playwright Joel Drake Johnson, whose 2009 GAP submission, “The First Grade” is running concurrently at Aurora through February 28, 2010. As in years past, attendance to Global Age Project readings is free on a first-come, first-served basis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The goal of “GAP,” as conceived by Aurora artistic director Tom Ross, is to highlight new works that address issues in the global age, including the changing nature of human relationships. To that end, this year’s first reading, on February 1 at 7:30pm, is Johnson’s \u003cb>A Guide for the Perplexed\u003c/b>. Directed by Matthew Graham Smith, \u003cb>Perplexed\u003c/b> explores the role gender plays in a hastily created household of three men — an ex-con, his off-the-charts-smart gay nephew, and the ex-con’s nervous brother-in-law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also in the lineup is Bekah Brunstetter’s provocatively titled \u003cb>Miss Lily Gets Boned\u003c/b> on February 15 and Allison Moore’s \u003cb>Collapse\u003c/b> on February 22, both at 7:30pm. These are accomplished playwrights all: Johnson’s \u003cb>Perplexed\u003c/b> is set to premiere at Victory Gardens in Chicago after its reading here, Brunstetter is currently working on a commission for New York’s Roundabout Underground and Moore is readying an adaptation of Willa Cather’s \u003cb>My Antonia\u003c/b> for the Illusion Theater in Minneapolis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Into this fine company steps San Francisco’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/arts/profile/index.jsp?essid=18904\">Garret Jon Groenveld\u003c/a>, whose \u003cb>The Serving Class\u003c/b> will be read on February 8 at 7:30pm. Directed by Margo Hall and starring Liam Vincent as Buddy Beauchamps, \u003cb>The Serving Class\u003c/b> is a comedy about a gay love triangle set against the backdrop of a high-society marriage. “The play actually has a very local connection,” Groenveld says. “It was commissioned in 2007 by \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/arts/profile/index.jsp?essid=6266\">PlayGround\u003c/a> and rewritten for a public reading in 2008.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The story focuses in large part on the indispensability of the gay community (interior decorators, florists, photographers) to the local marriage industry. “Without gay men,” Groenveld quips, “the super-wealthy could never pull off a wedding, and yet gay men can never marry.” It may sound like a message play, but Groenveld is quite comfortable with \u003cb>The Serving Class\u003c/b> as a comedy. “Comedy is just tragedy sped up,” he says, paraphrasing a famous quote, adding, “There’s a high joke-per-page ratio.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Groenveld knows he’s the odd man out at this year’s GAP. “It’s super-rare,” he says, “to get picked for a festival with a comedy.” But with two high-powered attorneys, once bitter adversaries, arguing in Federal Court on behalf of gay marriage as the reading is being rehearsed, Groenveld also knows that his subject matter is not just a fast-paced string of gags. “I’m hoping it will become anachronistic so I can rewrite it again,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 2010 Global Age Project runs through February 22, 2010 at the Aurora Theatre Company in Berkeley. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.auroratheatre.org/show.php?prod_id=71&ref=seas\">tickets and information\u003c/a>, visit auroratheatre.org.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "A.C.T.'s Phèdre a Hot Mess",
"headTitle": "A.C.T.’s Phèdre a Hot Mess | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>When it comes to tragedies, nothing puts butts in seats like a good old-fashioned tale of incest. Oedipus had four children with his mother; Dustin Hoffman couldn’t resist the wiles of that original MILF, Anne Bancroft; Woody married Soon-Yi.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The current A.C.T. production of Timberlake Wertenbaker’s translation and adaptation of Jean Racine’s 1677 \u003cb>Phèdre\u003c/b>, now through February 7, 2010 at the American Conservatory Theater, is in this grand, forbidden-love tradition. It should be inappropriate, it should be passionate, it should make every mother and son in the audience squirm. Instead, we are punished by colorless acting, rigid — if beautiful — 17th-century costumes, a boring park-and-bark directing style, and a complete lack of connection, let alone chemistry, between the two principals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The trouble begins in the first scene, when we meet king Theseus’s son Hippolytus (Jonathan Goad) and his tutor, Théramène (Sean Arbuckle), who is too close in age to his student for the pairing to be believable. With his monotone, William Shatner-like delivery, Goad fails to convince us of the torment in his heart. Instead, he comes off as a whiner — “my daddy gets to slay monsters; I want to slay monsters, too.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This being a tragedy, Hippolytus is also looking for an excuse to get as far away as possible from the woman he loves, Aricie (Claire Lautier), whose family is his father’s mortal enemy (gotta love the “Romeo and Juliet” subplot). This business of fleeing from problems — whether by leaving his home of Trézène, as Hippolytus vows to do, or by leaving this mortal coil, as his stepmother, Phèdre (Seana McKenna), will soon threaten — is one of the play’s richest themes. But the audience can take no pleasure in this foreshadowing because the actors are so detached from the words flowing from their mouths. In fact, many of the words that Wertenbaker has pulled from the original Racine are wonderful to listen to, but the actors are as isolated from their characters as they are from their colleagues on stage, creating a chasm between the audience and the spectacle we’ve been invited to witness. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Phèdre, as you probably know, is secretly in love with Hippolytus, her stepson. This sort of thing runs in her family — Phèdre’s mother mated with a bull and gave birth to the Minotaur, so mom was not exactly a role model. But in McKenna, I didn’t see a woman condemned by Venus’s curse, though Phèdre claims that fate. I saw histrionics, which didn’t help when it came time for an unhinged Phèdre to confess her love to moody Hippolytus. In order for there to be tension between these two, we in the audience have to be able to at least entertain the possibility that icky sparks might actually begin to fly, that Hippolytus’s knees might buckle. In McKenna and director Carey Perloff’s hands, though, Phèdre’s tragedy is not the mere utterance of her desires; it is her pathetic inability to do anything about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Naturally Theseus is not dead, as has been announced earlier in the play. Phèdre’s husband’s death had been the catalyst behind her confession to Hippolytus, but I for one was glad that dear old dad had survived long enough to take the stage. As Theseus, Thomas McCamus wakes this production up. He bellows, he struts, and it’s not just his character that swaggers. McCamus owns his role in a way the other leads don’t. We trust his bluster and wince at his pride because we believe both. In the end, I left the theater feeling like this version of \u003cb>Phèdre\u003c/b> was more Theseus’s story than Phèdre’s, which is perhaps the cruelest punishment the theater gods could heap upon the play’s ostensible lead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The A.C.T. production of \u003cb>Phèdre\u003c/b> runs through February 7, 2010 at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.act-sf.org\" target=\"offsite\">tickets and information\u003c/a>, visit act-sf.org.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>When it comes to tragedies, nothing puts butts in seats like a good old-fashioned tale of incest. Oedipus had four children with his mother; Dustin Hoffman couldn’t resist the wiles of that original MILF, Anne Bancroft; Woody married Soon-Yi.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The current A.C.T. production of Timberlake Wertenbaker’s translation and adaptation of Jean Racine’s 1677 \u003cb>Phèdre\u003c/b>, now through February 7, 2010 at the American Conservatory Theater, is in this grand, forbidden-love tradition. It should be inappropriate, it should be passionate, it should make every mother and son in the audience squirm. Instead, we are punished by colorless acting, rigid — if beautiful — 17th-century costumes, a boring park-and-bark directing style, and a complete lack of connection, let alone chemistry, between the two principals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The trouble begins in the first scene, when we meet king Theseus’s son Hippolytus (Jonathan Goad) and his tutor, Théramène (Sean Arbuckle), who is too close in age to his student for the pairing to be believable. With his monotone, William Shatner-like delivery, Goad fails to convince us of the torment in his heart. Instead, he comes off as a whiner — “my daddy gets to slay monsters; I want to slay monsters, too.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This being a tragedy, Hippolytus is also looking for an excuse to get as far away as possible from the woman he loves, Aricie (Claire Lautier), whose family is his father’s mortal enemy (gotta love the “Romeo and Juliet” subplot). This business of fleeing from problems — whether by leaving his home of Trézène, as Hippolytus vows to do, or by leaving this mortal coil, as his stepmother, Phèdre (Seana McKenna), will soon threaten — is one of the play’s richest themes. But the audience can take no pleasure in this foreshadowing because the actors are so detached from the words flowing from their mouths. In fact, many of the words that Wertenbaker has pulled from the original Racine are wonderful to listen to, but the actors are as isolated from their characters as they are from their colleagues on stage, creating a chasm between the audience and the spectacle we’ve been invited to witness. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Phèdre, as you probably know, is secretly in love with Hippolytus, her stepson. This sort of thing runs in her family — Phèdre’s mother mated with a bull and gave birth to the Minotaur, so mom was not exactly a role model. But in McKenna, I didn’t see a woman condemned by Venus’s curse, though Phèdre claims that fate. I saw histrionics, which didn’t help when it came time for an unhinged Phèdre to confess her love to moody Hippolytus. In order for there to be tension between these two, we in the audience have to be able to at least entertain the possibility that icky sparks might actually begin to fly, that Hippolytus’s knees might buckle. In McKenna and director Carey Perloff’s hands, though, Phèdre’s tragedy is not the mere utterance of her desires; it is her pathetic inability to do anything about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Naturally Theseus is not dead, as has been announced earlier in the play. Phèdre’s husband’s death had been the catalyst behind her confession to Hippolytus, but I for one was glad that dear old dad had survived long enough to take the stage. As Theseus, Thomas McCamus wakes this production up. He bellows, he struts, and it’s not just his character that swaggers. McCamus owns his role in a way the other leads don’t. We trust his bluster and wince at his pride because we believe both. In the end, I left the theater feeling like this version of \u003cb>Phèdre\u003c/b> was more Theseus’s story than Phèdre’s, which is perhaps the cruelest punishment the theater gods could heap upon the play’s ostensible lead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The A.C.T. production of \u003cb>Phèdre\u003c/b> runs through February 7, 2010 at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.act-sf.org\" target=\"offsite\">tickets and information\u003c/a>, visit act-sf.org.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>It’s Christmas Eve, 1864, on the banks of the Potomac River, just outside Washington D.C. We know this because in the TheatreWorks production of Paula Vogel’s \u003cb>A Civil War Christmas\u003c/b>, now through December 27 at the Lucie Stern Theater in Palo Alto, the actors and singers stand before us, look us in the eye, and tell us so in words, song, and a pair of pantomime horses. Balancing all the relentless exposition is a handful of intertwined stories, each of which culminates in redemption, deliverance, or forgiveness of some sort.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is curiously sentimental stuff for Vogel, whose work is usually more at home with characters whose struggles shall not always be overcome. Here, her characters sing “Silent Night” without a hint of cynicism, belt out “Follow the Drinking Gourd” as they make their way north to freedom, and transform “The Yellow Rose of Texas” from a very red state’s unofficial marching song to a tender ballad of lost love. Even more curiously, it all pretty much works.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Part of the secret, I think, is that Vogel has a sure touch when it comes to the mechanics of her story. For example, she knows just how much peril to put a young Confederate volunteer named Raz (Jayne Delly) in, so much so that at one point we sincerely wonder if things are about to get rather dark. Similarly, we know that Vogel cannot let little lost Jessa (Myha’la Herrold and Tiana Travis alternate in the role) actually freeze to death on the streets of the nation’s capital, but she pushes things just far enough to give the inevitable mother-and-child reunion a satisfying, emotional punch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pacing is another of this show’s many strengths. The sets are always in motion, which means the 14 actors — playing some 90 roles — are almost always on the move, too. The result is that no actor, even the leads, hogs the spotlight for long. As soon as John Wilkes Booth (Kit Wilder) has revealed his plan to ambush the president, he exits to become someone else while we are spirited away on, say, a shopping trip with Abraham Lincoln’s famously neurotic wife, Mary (Diana Torres Koss), and her African-American confidante, Elizabeth Keckley (C. Kelly Wright).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite an economy of dialog, along with the inevitable stereotyping of Keckley as the simple but wise friend of color, the relationship between the two women feels surprisingly real, as does the one between an idealistic, Quaker private (Jonathan Shue) and his embittered and vengeful African-American sergeant-turned-blacksmith, Decatur Bronson (Michael A. Shepperd).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are laughs, too, particularly when it comes to those pantomime horses. No doubt Vogel wants us to wince when we first witness young Confederate Raz tying a rope around the neck of Daveed Daniele Diggs, the African-American actor who, among other parts, plays Silver, Raz’s trusty steed. But once we get past our liberal squeamishness, Diggs as Silver takes over, eliciting laughs of relief from the audience. Similarly, it is difficult not to chuckle at Robert Parsons as an earnest Abraham Lincoln, who seems to be doing his best John Cleese when he trots out of the White House for a solo Christmas Eve ride.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then there’s the music, which even a holiday Scrooge like me found enriching. I very much enjoyed the mix of traditional Christmas carols — some with altered lyrics — spirituals, and original tunes that Vogel and her arranger, Daryl Waters, have brought together for \u003cb>Civil War\u003c/b>. And it doesn’t hurt that most of the voices are strong and powerful, particularly Shepperd’s, whose slow, sad, “Yellow Rose” was one of this hopeful show’s beautifully melancholy highlights.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>TheatreWorks’ production of \u003cb>A Civil War Christmas\u003c/b> runs through December 27, 2009 at the Lucie Stern Theater in Palo Alto. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.theatreworks.org/\">tickets and information\u003c/a>, visit theatreworks.org.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>It’s Christmas Eve, 1864, on the banks of the Potomac River, just outside Washington D.C. We know this because in the TheatreWorks production of Paula Vogel’s \u003cb>A Civil War Christmas\u003c/b>, now through December 27 at the Lucie Stern Theater in Palo Alto, the actors and singers stand before us, look us in the eye, and tell us so in words, song, and a pair of pantomime horses. Balancing all the relentless exposition is a handful of intertwined stories, each of which culminates in redemption, deliverance, or forgiveness of some sort.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is curiously sentimental stuff for Vogel, whose work is usually more at home with characters whose struggles shall not always be overcome. Here, her characters sing “Silent Night” without a hint of cynicism, belt out “Follow the Drinking Gourd” as they make their way north to freedom, and transform “The Yellow Rose of Texas” from a very red state’s unofficial marching song to a tender ballad of lost love. Even more curiously, it all pretty much works.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Part of the secret, I think, is that Vogel has a sure touch when it comes to the mechanics of her story. For example, she knows just how much peril to put a young Confederate volunteer named Raz (Jayne Delly) in, so much so that at one point we sincerely wonder if things are about to get rather dark. Similarly, we know that Vogel cannot let little lost Jessa (Myha’la Herrold and Tiana Travis alternate in the role) actually freeze to death on the streets of the nation’s capital, but she pushes things just far enough to give the inevitable mother-and-child reunion a satisfying, emotional punch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pacing is another of this show’s many strengths. The sets are always in motion, which means the 14 actors — playing some 90 roles — are almost always on the move, too. The result is that no actor, even the leads, hogs the spotlight for long. As soon as John Wilkes Booth (Kit Wilder) has revealed his plan to ambush the president, he exits to become someone else while we are spirited away on, say, a shopping trip with Abraham Lincoln’s famously neurotic wife, Mary (Diana Torres Koss), and her African-American confidante, Elizabeth Keckley (C. Kelly Wright).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite an economy of dialog, along with the inevitable stereotyping of Keckley as the simple but wise friend of color, the relationship between the two women feels surprisingly real, as does the one between an idealistic, Quaker private (Jonathan Shue) and his embittered and vengeful African-American sergeant-turned-blacksmith, Decatur Bronson (Michael A. Shepperd).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are laughs, too, particularly when it comes to those pantomime horses. No doubt Vogel wants us to wince when we first witness young Confederate Raz tying a rope around the neck of Daveed Daniele Diggs, the African-American actor who, among other parts, plays Silver, Raz’s trusty steed. But once we get past our liberal squeamishness, Diggs as Silver takes over, eliciting laughs of relief from the audience. Similarly, it is difficult not to chuckle at Robert Parsons as an earnest Abraham Lincoln, who seems to be doing his best John Cleese when he trots out of the White House for a solo Christmas Eve ride.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then there’s the music, which even a holiday Scrooge like me found enriching. I very much enjoyed the mix of traditional Christmas carols — some with altered lyrics — spirituals, and original tunes that Vogel and her arranger, Daryl Waters, have brought together for \u003cb>Civil War\u003c/b>. And it doesn’t hurt that most of the voices are strong and powerful, particularly Shepperd’s, whose slow, sad, “Yellow Rose” was one of this hopeful show’s beautifully melancholy highlights.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>TheatreWorks’ production of \u003cb>A Civil War Christmas\u003c/b> runs through December 27, 2009 at the Lucie Stern Theater in Palo Alto. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.theatreworks.org/\">tickets and information\u003c/a>, visit theatreworks.org.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "The Golden Girls: The Christmas Episodes",
"headTitle": "The Golden Girls: The Christmas Episodes | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>While British theaters have a long history of putting on annual \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantomime_dame\">cross-dressing Christmas shows for kids\u003c/a>, this custom has stubbornly resisted making the journey across the Atlantic (surprising, I know). However, things are beginning to change here in the Bay Area thanks to a dragtastic live version of senior sitcom \u003ca href=\"http://www.voicefactorysf.org/goldengirls.html\">\u003cb>The Golden Girls\u003c/b>\u003c/a>, now back for its third holiday season. The show is threatening to become a full-blown holiday tradition in San Francisco, and why not? Yuletide is a great time to be gay, after all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But before we go any further, there’s something important I want to clear up. It’s something I’ve never really admitted in public before: I love \u003cb>The Golden Girls\u003c/b>. There, I’ve said it. I’ve come out of my pastel-colored-wicker closet. I’m a friend of Dorothy (plus Rose, Blanche, and Sophia, of course). And this isn’t some knowing, post-ironic hipster thing; I genuinely believe it’s an outstanding sitcom. The setup is beautifully simple — four ladies of a certain age living together in a suburban Miami home — and the tightly written scripts don’t deviate from this basic winning formula. No aliens turn up, no one suffers a head-and-body transplant, no sharks are jumped. Indeed, the main characters rarely stray further from their living room than the kitchen over the course of seven seasons and 140 episodes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This simplicity also makes \u003cb>The Golden Girls\u003c/b> ideal for transferring to the stage, even in a small-scale production like this one. There are no difficult outdoor locations to deal with, just two rooms and a few soft furnishings. The four returning leads in the cast all have a strong lineage in San Francisco drag royalty and they play their characters with appropriately reverent understatement, relying instead on scripts that are already packed with plenty of bitchy comments, camp humor, and sexual innuendo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indeed, the main subject dealt with in \u003cb>The Golden Girls\u003c/b> (both this version and the original) is sex. Sure, the words are kept daytime-telly safe, but some of the gags are still surprisingly racy for a mainstream American sitcom, especially one originally aired in the 1980s. For example, when Rose gives Blanche a blouse for Christmas, she innocently adds, “I hope it’s alright. Dorothy said you’d like something crotchless.” Elsewhere there are references to infidelity, sexually transmitted diseases, bestiality, and even Bob Hope. This isn’t just sex, but senior sex, from a time when Viagra was just a glimmer in Pfizer’s eye.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But who can focus for long on mundane matters like sexual politics when you’re being dazzled by a geriatric fabulous parade of sequined blouses, scene sweaters, and shoulder-padded nightgowns? In the end, this show is a superb slice of festive fun served with a healthy side order of misty-eyed nostalgia. What could be more Christmassy than that? Perhaps this year Santa’s elves shouldn’t be the only gender-ambiguous part of your holiday celebrations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>The Golden Girls: The Christmas Episodes\u003c/b> runs through December 26, 2009 at Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory. For tickets and information, visit \u003ca href=\"http://www.voicefactorysf.org/goldengirls.html\">voicefactorysf.org\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>While British theaters have a long history of putting on annual \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantomime_dame\">cross-dressing Christmas shows for kids\u003c/a>, this custom has stubbornly resisted making the journey across the Atlantic (surprising, I know). However, things are beginning to change here in the Bay Area thanks to a dragtastic live version of senior sitcom \u003ca href=\"http://www.voicefactorysf.org/goldengirls.html\">\u003cb>The Golden Girls\u003c/b>\u003c/a>, now back for its third holiday season. The show is threatening to become a full-blown holiday tradition in San Francisco, and why not? Yuletide is a great time to be gay, after all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But before we go any further, there’s something important I want to clear up. It’s something I’ve never really admitted in public before: I love \u003cb>The Golden Girls\u003c/b>. There, I’ve said it. I’ve come out of my pastel-colored-wicker closet. I’m a friend of Dorothy (plus Rose, Blanche, and Sophia, of course). And this isn’t some knowing, post-ironic hipster thing; I genuinely believe it’s an outstanding sitcom. The setup is beautifully simple — four ladies of a certain age living together in a suburban Miami home — and the tightly written scripts don’t deviate from this basic winning formula. No aliens turn up, no one suffers a head-and-body transplant, no sharks are jumped. Indeed, the main characters rarely stray further from their living room than the kitchen over the course of seven seasons and 140 episodes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This simplicity also makes \u003cb>The Golden Girls\u003c/b> ideal for transferring to the stage, even in a small-scale production like this one. There are no difficult outdoor locations to deal with, just two rooms and a few soft furnishings. The four returning leads in the cast all have a strong lineage in San Francisco drag royalty and they play their characters with appropriately reverent understatement, relying instead on scripts that are already packed with plenty of bitchy comments, camp humor, and sexual innuendo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indeed, the main subject dealt with in \u003cb>The Golden Girls\u003c/b> (both this version and the original) is sex. Sure, the words are kept daytime-telly safe, but some of the gags are still surprisingly racy for a mainstream American sitcom, especially one originally aired in the 1980s. For example, when Rose gives Blanche a blouse for Christmas, she innocently adds, “I hope it’s alright. Dorothy said you’d like something crotchless.” Elsewhere there are references to infidelity, sexually transmitted diseases, bestiality, and even Bob Hope. This isn’t just sex, but senior sex, from a time when Viagra was just a glimmer in Pfizer’s eye.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But who can focus for long on mundane matters like sexual politics when you’re being dazzled by a geriatric fabulous parade of sequined blouses, scene sweaters, and shoulder-padded nightgowns? In the end, this show is a superb slice of festive fun served with a healthy side order of misty-eyed nostalgia. What could be more Christmassy than that? Perhaps this year Santa’s elves shouldn’t be the only gender-ambiguous part of your holiday celebrations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>The Golden Girls: The Christmas Episodes\u003c/b> runs through December 26, 2009 at Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory. For tickets and information, visit \u003ca href=\"http://www.voicefactorysf.org/goldengirls.html\">voicefactorysf.org\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Tony Kushner at the Berkeley Rep",
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"content": "\u003cp>I am not a theater-goer. And, judging by the predominantly silver-haired audience at the Berkeley Rep last week, neither are a lot of younger folk. In a culture dominated by the immediacy of Youtube and Tivo, the patience and concentration required for an intelligent night at the theater has all but vanished. But there is hope for revival in plays like Tony Kushner’s \u003cb>Tiny Kushner\u003c/b>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cheeky title refers to the format of the show: in direct opposition to the lengthy, epic works of his past (the 6 hour \u003cb>Angels in America\u003c/b> being the best example), Kushner has decided to put on five distinct one-act plays. What the viewer gets is a little over 2 hours of variety, talent, and sheer genius.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tony Kushner has a habit of appropriating historical figures (often subversive ones) and injecting them into his fictional creations. And he keeps with this tradition with the first play of this set entitled “Flip Flop Fly!” The piece takes place on the moon (naturally) and revolves around two polar opposites, Lucia Pamela (Valeri Mudek) and Geraldine, Queen of Albania (Kate Eifrig).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qACGIfJIirA&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0xcc2550&color2=0xe87a9f]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Tiny Kushner\u003c/b> plays through November 29, 2009 at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.berkeleyrep.org/\">tickets and information\u003c/a>, visit berkeleyrep.org\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "I am not a theater-goer. And, judging by the predominantly silver-haired audience at the Berkeley Rep last week, neither are a lot of younger folk. But there is hope in plays like Tony Kushner's \u003cb>Tiny Kushner\u003c/b>.",
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"soldout": {
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