Chad Jones’ Theater Dogs

News from the Rialto: “American Idol” winner (Season 5) Taylor Hicks is going to fly onto Broadway as Teen Angel in the revival of Grease (you know, the one you didn’t want but came with a reality TV show anyway).

Hicks, who will be making his Broadway debut (alert the Tony Award nominating committee), is following in the footsteps of other “Idol” alums, including Fantasia, Latyoa London and Clay Aiken. He starts his doo-wop-diddy gig on June 6 at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre and continues through Sept. 7.

Here’s what Hicks had to say in a press release: “I am incredibly excited to be a part of one of my favorite musicals. The Soul Patrol’s gonna invade Broadway!”

If you are part of the patrol that is soul, here’s what you need to know about tickets for Grease: $71.50-$121.50. Call 212-307-4100 or visit www.ticketmaster.com or www.greaseonbroadway.com.

Mega-superstar and truth teller Dame Edna Everage (aka Barry Humphries) is coming back to San Francisco, her spiritual home, and, if the dame is to be believed, the home of her fashion designer son, Kenny, and her lesbian pit bull trainer daughter, Esme.

The International Housewife, Therapist, Gigastar, Fashion Icon, Guru and Swami today proclaimed she will appear at San Francisco’s Post Street Theatre for a limited engagement beginning Nov. 20 and continue through Jan. 4, 2009. Opening Night is set for Nov. 23, 2008. Tickets go on sale today at the Post Street Theatre box office, by phone at 415-771-6900 and on the web at www.ticketmaster.com.

Dame Edna is currently crafting a new and uniquely intimate offering on her private multi-million-acre, possum-infested luxury estate in her native Australia.

All will soon be revealed with Dame Edna – Live and Intimate in Her First Last Tour to her adoring and loyal American audiences. She will display her unique genius with a new and vibrantly stimulating theatrical infrastructure (to use her own vivid phrase), addressing an exciting range of cutting edge comedy solutions.

On making the announcement, Dame Edna said today “I don’t do shows Possums, I make History! In a spooky way I am theater in the making. My shows are really not shows at all, they are not Events; they are MIRACLES which you can proudly tell your grandchildren you witnessed.”

Dame Edna has been revealing her Entertainment Solutions both on Broadway and the length and breadth of America for the last nine years, and never have Americans needed to laugh, cry and give standing ovations as much as they do today. Dame Edna’s performances have won a Tony Award and one Tony Nomination and countless critical awards.

Dame Edna says “I am coming to your hometown with the glorious gift of laughter for a night you will never forget. See you there Possums”

Tickets range in price from $58-$78 for regular performances. All seats for preview performances (November 20 – 22) and Opening Night are $55.

Visit Dame Edna’s official Web site here: www.dame-edna.com

Here’s Dame Edna interviewing k.d. lang:

Here’s an intriguing subtitle: “A found-object puppetry play inside the mind of Albert Einstein.”

That subtitle is attached to One Stone: Einstein, a work-in-progress from two of the Bay Area’s leading theatrical lights: playwright Trevor Allen and puppeteer Liebe Wetzel (along with her Lunatique Fantastique puppeteers).

The play, which involves found text, found-object puppets and David Sinaiko as Albert Einstein, receives two readings: 7:30 p.m. Monday, May 19 at Stanford University and 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 20 at Traveling Jewish Theatre (470 Florida St., San Francisco). These are free “in the rough” presentations presented by the Playwrights Foundation.

You can RSVP by e-mailing rsvp@playwrightsfoundation.org or by calling 415-626-0453, ext. 105.

At The SF Playhouse through June 14

Susi Damilano is Agnes and Gabriel Marin is Peter in Tracy Letts’ Bug at the SF Playhouse. Photos by Zabrina Tipton.

It sure is fun to watch an audience squirm. It’s even more fun to be part of that squirming audience.

Tracy Letts’ Bug, now at the SF Playhouse’s intimate, creepy-crawly theater space, has some juicy moments that make the audience cringe collectively. What else do you do when a probably crazy man attempts to extract one of his own molars with a pair of pliers? You squirm. You cringe. You have a good time – if horror-type thrills are your idea of a good time.

When it comes right down to it, Letts’ Bug, which has been a hit in London and off-Broadway, is a mix of paranoid sci-fi thriller from the 1950s and 1970s white-trash B movie. The fact that Letts is a skillful enough writer to make it all seem much more important means the work seems somehow more important than it actually is, and that’s a good trick. Bug is more fun than Letts’ trashy Killer Joe, which the Bay Area saw when Marin Theatre Company transferred its successful production to San Francisco. And it’s probably not as good as August: Osage County, the Broadway drama that just won Letts a Pulitzer Prize.

In Bug, Letts is dealing with lonely people and a whopper of a conspiracy theory, which makes them both feel a whole lot less lonely. Agnes (Susi Damilano) lives in a skeezy Oklahoma hotel room. She’s terrified her ex-husband, Jerry (John Flanagan) will get out of jail and come back to terrorize her some more. One night, while killing the pain with her friend R.C. (Zehra Berkman) and several lines of coke and a few puffs off the ol’ pipe, Agnes meets Peter (Gabriel Marin), a shy, intelligent drifter who needs a place to stay for the night.

You don’t have to ask Agnes twice. Just make her a cocktail – vodka and Coke – and you’re in. It won’t take long to learn Agnes’ biggest sorrow: her 6-year-old son disappeared from the grocery store about 10 years ago. Life just hasn’t been the same since. While Steve Wonder’s “Superstitious” plays on the radio, Agnes and Peter waltz through their strange courtship ritual. Agnes bares her soul and Peter theorizes about how none of us is ever really safe because of the chemicals, the technology and the information out there being generated by people and their machines.

Ah, the wondrous smell of romance and paranoia. Such a heady combination.

The titular bug first appears in the form of a chirping cricket, which actually turns out to be a faulty smoke alarm, which turns out to be more radioactive than plutonium (funny how you don’t read about that on the smoke alarm box). Then, one amorous evening, Peter awakes to find bug bites on his arm. He discovers aphids – he calls them plant lice – in the bed and the bug adventure really begins.

Peter sucks Agnes into his buggy world, a horrific place where soldiers are experimented on by demented doctors in the hope of creating bio chips to mark every human being since 1982. Or something like that. Peter, it turns out, is on the run and can’t let the bad people find him. They’re the ones that infested him with bugs. And Agnes believes every word.

Marin brings incredible intensity to his performance. When it looks like Agnes might leave him, Peter throws an incredible fit – it’s a wonder Marin doesn’t destroy Bill English’s superb hotel room set with his thrashing about. There’s also quietness in Peter – a sort of dim light of intelligence that belies all the weird stuff and makes you wish we were meeting him under less exterminating circumstances.

Damilano’s naturalness makes Agnes likable and understandable. We feel for her and watch helplessly as she gets sucked into the paranoia. There’s an incredible scene in Act 2, really the heart of the play, when Letts gives Agnes a monologue that makes a case for human faith, intelligence and gullibility as interchangeable pieces of our brain structure. Damilano sinks her teeth into the moment and makes it as powerful as it is sad.

Director Jon Tracy goes less for horror than for humor in this production. In Act 2, the tension goes slack when it should be taut, but Damilano and Marin (who appears bloody and shirtless through much of the play) somehow keep the play on track, making this a dramatic infestation you don’t mind squirming your way through.

Bug continues through June 14 at the SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter St., San Francisco. Tickets are $38. Call 415-677-9596 or visit www.sfplayhouse.org for information.

Cassie Beck, local actress and co-artistic director of San Francisco’s Crowded Fire Theatre Company went off to New York to be in Adam Bock’s Drunken City. And what do you know? She won a Theatre World Award for her New York debut!

Beck first worked on Bock’s play when it was part TheatreWorks’ New Works Festival (the play was developed as part of the company New Works Initiative). Beck was also featured in TheatreWorks’ production of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, directed by Beck’s husband (and Crowded Fire co-artistic director) Kent Nicholson.

This year’s Theatre World Award winners include:
de’Adre Aziza, Passing Strange
Cassie Beck, Drunken City
Daniel Breaker, Passing Strange
Ben Daniels, Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Deanna Dunagan, August: Osage County
Hoon Lee, Yellow Face
Alli Mauzey, Cry-Baby
Jenna Russell, Sunday in the Park with George
Mark Rylance, Boeing-Boeing
Loretta Ables Sayre, South Pacific
Jimmi Simpson, The Farnsworth Invention
Paulo Szot, South Pacific

The Theatre World Awards ceremony will be held in Manhattan June 10 at Broadway’s Helen Hayes Theatre.

American Conservatory Theater’s final Koret Visiting Artist Series event is a good one — and it’s free!

On Sunday, May 18 at 5 p.m. on the ACT stage, the topic is “Notes on Music and Theater.” And the panelists are 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winner David Lang, Grammy Award-winner Tracy Chapman and local alt-rock cellist Bonfire Madigan Shive(above).

Lang provided scores for several ACT productions including The Tempest, Hecuba and The Difficulty in Crossing the Field. He won the Pulitzer last month for The Little Match Girl Passion (based on the children’s story).

Chapman, best known for her distinctive recordings of “Fast Car” and “Baby Can I Hold You,” recently made her first foray into writing for the theater when she provided a score (and recorded a new song) for ACT’s Blood Knot.

Shive is currently composing the score for ACT’s next show, Tis Pity She’s a Whore. Shive will perform the score live at each performance.

Artistic director Carey Perloff will moderate. The event is free but seats can be reserved by e-mailing rsvp@act-sf.org. For information visit www.act-sf.org/koret.

Here’s a flashback of Chapman performing her beautiful ballad “Baby Can I Hold You.”

Tony Award-winning performer Ben Vereen is spending this Saturday night (May 17) in Kanbar Hall at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco with a self-explanatory show called An Intimate Evening with the Legendary Ben Vereen.

Vereen made his New York stage debut at age 18 in Prodigal Son and shortly after landed in Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar and Pippin (which won him his Tony). With film roles in Funny Lady and All That Jazz, Vereen also made a lasting impression on the small screen. He won an Emmy for “Ben Vereen…His Roots.”

In the ’80s, Vereen appeared regularly on “Webster,” but the death of his son left him feeling suicidal. But Vereen bounced back and performed again on Broadway in Jelly’s Last Jam. Now he’s back on stage and back on tour.

The show is at 8 p.m. Tickets are $62 and $68. The JCCSF is at 3200 California St., San Francisco. Call 415-292-1233 or visit www.jccsf.org/arts for information.

Here’s Vereen heading the company of Pippin with the show-opening “Magic to Do.”

It’s all about us, right?

Sure the Tony Awards celebrate NEW YORK theater and Broadway and all that jazz, but what about US?

Not a problem. We can even make the Tonys Bay Area-centric. It’s a little harder this year because we’re not getting as many pre-Broadway tryouts as we have in past years, and our local geniuses are content with being local, so their output is expressly for us and not those NYC theater aesthetes.

So here’s how we factor into the Tonys:

First off, Tom Stoppard’s Rock ‘n’ Roll, a nominee for best play, will be part of the American Conservatory Theater season later this year. It’ll be a different production but the same play. So root for that one to win (it won’t –it’s all August: Osage County this year, but stay tuned — there’s buzz that one way or another, Bay Area audiences will be seeing that next season as well).

The big Bay Area tie comes courtesy of Berkeley Repertory Theatre, which co-produced the world premiere of Stew and Heidi Rodewald’s rock musical Passing Strange, which then went on to the Public Theater in New York and then BroadWAY. Passing Strange, as you’ll recall, earned seven Tony Award nominations on Tuesday.

Here’s Stew on the Berkeley Rep connection:

Passing Strange is all about pilgrimages to the Real, and my first real-life pilgrimage was to Berkeley when I was a teenager. This is why it was so moving and important to me that the play premiered at Berkeley Rep. Berkeley embodies many of the ideals that are celebrated in the play - a place where people live as if their thoughts have meaning and consequence. Berkeley Rep was the perfect place for a crazy rock band with no idea what theatre was to make a play. I can’t think of a better environment to have given birth to Passing Strange. Probably because there is none.

Finally, fine folks at TheatreWorks are always right on top of this stuff and provide the following list of their Tony connections:

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTOR IN A MUSICAL
Danny Burstein, South Pacific - at TWorks in Everything’s Ducky (World Premiere from Bill Russell and Henry Krieger)
BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL
Laura Benanti, Gypsy - at TWorks in Caraboo (written by Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning author Marsha Norman) at New Works Festival reading
BEST CHOREOGRAPHY
Andy Blankenbuehler, In the Heights - at TWorks for Kept and A Little Princess (world Premiere from Andrew Lippa and Brian Crawley)
Dan Knechtges, Xanadu - at TWorks for Vanities (world premiere from David Kirshenbaum and Jack Heifner)
BEST COSTUME DESIGN OF A MUSICAL
Catherine Zuber, South Pacific - at TWorks for A Little Princess

For all your Tony Award needs, visit www.tonyawards.com.

Cool things happening in San Francisco during the next day or two. Check them out:

- The pop opera The Rosenbach Company is at 8 tonight (May 14) at the Jewish Community Center. The piece is by Ben Katchor (projections, text and direction), the author of the comic-strip series Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer, The Cardboard Valise, Hotel & Farm and The Jew of New York. You’ve probably seen his work in the New Yorker. Mark Mulcahy composed the score and performs the role of Abe Rosenbach. Mulcahy has released the albums Fathering, Smilesunset and In Pursuit of Your Happiness. He also composed the music for the TV series “The Adventures of Pete & Pete” with his fictional TV band, Polaris. At the JCC, Katchor’s picture stories and drawings will be on exhibit in an exhibition called “The Backlit Word” through June 30. The exhibition is free.
Tickets for The Rosenbach Company, which tells the story of the world’s preeminent rare book dealer in the first half of the last century, are $15-$22. Call 415-292-1233 or visit www.jccsf.org/arts for information. The JCCSF is at 3200 California St., San Francisco.

- 42nd Street Moon celebrates its 15th anniversary with a world-premiere revue: Peddling Rainbows, a tribute to the lyrics of E.Y. “Yip” Harburg, whose most famous song (with Harold Arlen) was “Over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz. Among his other hits are “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” “It’s Only a Paper Moon,” “April in Paris,” “Happiness Is Just a Thing Called Joe” and “Down with Love.” The cast includes Andrea Brembry, Bill Fahrner, Susan Himes-Powers, Maggie May, Peter Sroka, Scarlett Hepworth and Alexander Nee. Previews begin Thursday, May 15, and the show continues through May 25 at the Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson St., San Francisco. Tickets are $22-$38. Call 415-255-8207 or visit www.42ndstmoon.org.

- Comedy troupe Killing My Lobster and Intersection for the Arts pair up to present a one-night-only film event: KML Gets Reel. This group fundraiser-auction-short film showcase will screen some of KML’s most beloved short films and preview the new short film Orifice Visit and the mini-feature Evolution: The Musical (above). Doors open at 7:30 p.m. and the screening begins at 8 at Intersection, 446 Valencia St., San Francisco. Tickets are $10-$20 on a sliding scale. Visit www.killingmylobster.com for information.

Here’s the trailer for Evolution: The Musical:

Tony Award nominations are out today. Here’s how it shook out:

BEST PLAY:
August: Osage County by Tracy Letts
Rock ‘n’ Roll by Tom Stoppard
The Seafarer by Conor McPherson
The 39 Steps by Patrick Barlow

BEST MUSICAL:
Cry-Baby
In The Heights
Passing Strange
Xanadu

BEST BOOK OF A MUSICAL:
Cry-Baby by Mark O’Donnell and Thomas Meehan
In the Heights by Quiara Alegría Hudes
Passing Strange by Stew
Xanadu Douglas by Carter Beane

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE (MUSIC/LYRICS) WRITTEN FOR THE THEATER:
Cry-Baby Music & Lyrics: David Javerbaum & Adam Schlesinger
In the Heights Music & Lyrics: Lin-Manuel Miranda
The Little Mermaid Music: Alan Menken; Lyrics: Howard Ashman and Glenn Slater
Passing Strange Music: Stew and Heidi Rodewald; Lyrics: Stew

BEST REVIVAL OF A PLAY:
Boeing-Boeing
The Homecoming
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Macbeth

BEST REVIVAL OF A MUSICAL:
Grease
Gypsy
Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific
Sunday in the Park with George

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTOR IN A PLAY:
Ben Daniels, Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Laurence Fishburne, Thurgood
Mark Rylance (right), Boeing-Boeing
Rufus Sewell, Rock ‘n’ Roll
Patrick Stewart, Macbeth

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTRESS IN A PLAY:
Eve Best, The Homecoming
Deanna Dunagan, August: Osage County
Kate Fleetwood, Macbeth
S. Epatha Merkerson, Come Back, Little Sheba
Amy Morton, August: Osage County

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTOR IN A MUSICAL:
Daniel Evans, Sunday in the Park with George
Lin-Manuel Miranda, In the Heights
Stew, Passing Strange
Paulo Szot, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific
Tom Wopat, A Catered Affair

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL:
Kerry Butler, Xanadu
Patti LuPone (right), Gypsy
Kelli O’Hara, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific
Faith Prince, A Catered Affair
Jenna Russell, Sunday in the Park with George

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTOR IN A PLAY:
Bobby Cannavale, Mauritius
Raúl Esparza, The Homecoming
Conleth Hill, The Seafarer
Jim Norton, The Seafarer
David Pittu, Is He Dead?

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTRESS IN A PLAY:
Sinead Cusack, Rock ‘n’ Roll
Mary McCormack, Boeing-Boeing
Laurie Metcalf, November
Martha Plimpton, Top Girls
Rondi Reed, August: Osage County

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTOR IN A MUSICAL:
Daniel Breaker, Passing Strange
Danny Burstein (above), Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific
Robin De Jesús, In The Heights
Christopher Fitzgerald, The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein
Boyd Gaines, Gypsy

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL:
de’Adre Aziza, Passing Strange
Laura Benanti, Gypsy
Andrea Martin, The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein
Olga Merediz, In The Heights
Loretta Ables Sayre, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific

BEST DIRECTION OF A PLAY:
Maria Aitken, The 39 Steps
Conor McPherson, The Seafarer
Anna D. Shapiro, August: Osage County
Matthew Warchus, Boeing-Boeing

BEST DIRECTION OF A MUSICAL:
Sam Buntrock, Sunday in the Park with George
Thomas Kail, In the Heights
Arthur Laurents Gypsy
Bartlett Sher Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific

BEST CHOREOGRAPHY:
Rob Ashford, Cry-Baby
Andy Blankenbuehler, In the Heights
Christopher Gattelli, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific
Dan Knechtges, Xanadu

BEST ORCHESTRATIONS:
Jason Carr, Sunday in the Park with George
Alex Lacamoire & Bill Sherman, In The Heights
Stew & Heidi Rodewald, Passing Strange
Jonathan Tunick, A Catered Affair

BEST SCENIC DESIGN OF A PLAY:
Peter McKintosh, The 39 Steps
Scott Pask, Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Todd Rosenthal, August: Osage County
Anthony Ward, Macbeth

BEST SCENIC DESIGN OF A MUSICAL:
David Farley and Timothy Bird & The Knifedge Creative Network, Sunday in the Park with George
Anna Louizos, In the Heights
Robin Wagner ,The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein
Michael Yeargan, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific

BEST COSTUME DESIGN OF A PLAY:
Gregory Gale, Cyrano de Bergerac
Rob Howell, Boeing-Boeing
Katrina Lindsay, Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Peter McKintosh, The 39 Steps

BEST COSTUME DESIGN OF A MUSICAL:
David Farley, Sunday in the Park with George
Martin Pakledinaz, Gypsy
Paul Tazewell, In the Heights
Catherine Zuber, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific

SPECIAL TONY AWARD FOR LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT IN THE THEATER:
Stephen Sondheim

REGIONAL THEATER TONY AWARD:
Chicago Shakespeare Theatre

SPECIAL TONY AWARD:
Robert Russell Bennett (1894-1981), in recognition of his historic contribution to American musical theatre in the field of orchestrations, as represented on Broadway this season by Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific.

For a complete list of nominees visit the American Theatre Wing’s Web site.