Chad Jones’ Theater Dogs

I’ve been reading Amy Sedaris’ I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence, her hilarious guide to home entertaining, and that started me thinking.

I adore Amy Sedaris (and I hear her recent appearance at San Francisco’s City Arts & Lectures was a hoot) and crave her kooky sense of humor. I’ve memorized the entire “Strangers with Candy” series (and though I liked the movie, I prefer the TV show). My TiVo captures Amy’s every appearance on Letterman, and her recent apperances on Martha Stewart’s talk show (they made a Lady Baltimore cake from a recipe in Amy’s book) and on “The Colbert Report” where she tumbled with Colbert and Paul Dinello were priceless (check out the tumbling video here).

So what’s next for the beautiful and talented Ms. Sedaris? Well, Legally Blonde: The Musical is coming to SF in January before heading to New York. Wouldn’t it be inspired casting to put Amy Sedaris in the Jennifer Coolidge role of hairdresser Paulette Bonafante?

Last I heard, the role hadn’t been cast, and Coolidge probably doesn’t want to do it, so why not let the brilliant Amy Sedaris make the role her own? Not sure, though if Amy’s talents tend toward singing.

Frankly, this woman can do anything. She’s done plenty of theater. It’s time for her to embrace her inner show queen.

One of the most famous stage directions in theater history _ other than Shakespeare’s “Exit, pursued by a bear” _ is from Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. At the end of the absurdist comedy’s first act, two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, are frustrated. They’ve been waiting and waiting for Mr. Godot who never seems to show up.

“Well?” says one. “Shall we go?”

“Yes,” says the other. “Let’s go.”

Then Beckett adds: “They do not move.”

It’s sort of like how Seinfeld was a TV show about nothing. In its exploration of nothingness, it managed to be about a zillion different things.

Everyone wants to know who Godot is. Is he God? Is he Death?

“If I knew, I would have said so in the play,” said a cranky Beckett, clearly tired of being asked to explain his cryptic comedy.

Figure out the Godot riddle for yourself this week as Cal Performances brings back the Gate Theatre of Ireland production starring Barry McGovern and Johnny Murphy in the lead roles. McGovern and Murphy also starred in the 2000 production that rolled through Berkeley.

Performances are at 8 p.m. today and Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday at the Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St., Berkeley. Tickets are $65. Call (510) 642-9988 or visit www.calperfs.berkeley.edu for information.

You know it’s a new world of technology when they start doing plays in podcast form.

Trevor Allen’s Black Box Theatre Company is celebrating Halloween in a big way. On Monday night, which you might call Halloween Eve, Allen gathers a top-notch cast of Bay Area actors for The Creature, his own version of the Frankenstein story, this time told from the creature’s point of view.

Kent Nicholson directs a cast that includes James Carpenter as the creature, Andrew Hurteau as Capt. Walton and Paul Silverman as Victor Frankenstein.

The production will be performed before a live audience and recorded for broadcast in podcast form on Oct. 31 via www.blackboxtheatre.com.

“There are two sides to every tale,” Allen says. “This is the creature’s story.”
Director Nicholson adds: “By telling the story from the creature’s point of view, we not only explore the ethical and scientific issues in the original story but it also becomes a story about alienation and the effect of being outcast as an `other’ in society.”

The event is at 8 p.m. Oct. 30 at the Magic Theatre, Building D, Fort Mason Center, Marina Boulevard at Buchanan Street, San Francisco. Admission is free, but reservations are recommended. Visit www.blackboxtheatre.com or call (415) 731-4922 for information.

Usually, the sleepy little berg of Santa Rosa belongs to Charlie Brown, the melon-headed lad created by Santa Rosa’s favorite son, Charles M. Schulz.

Last Saturday night, Santa Rosa was indeed Brown’s town — Jason Robert Brown’s town.

The Broadway composer (a Tony Award-winner for Parade) was in concert for one night only to support a new theater company, the Roustabout, that has been offering training courses up to now and is preparing to take the next step and begin offering professional theater in Sonoma County.

Sort of Broadway’s answer to Billy Joel, Elton John and Barry Manilow rolled into one with sprinklings of Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein, Brown is one of those three-named composers — Michael John LaChiusa, Ricky Ian Gordon – who have been touted as the future of Broadway for years now.

With only Parade (an under-appreciated work) and Urban Cowboy to represent his Broadway work, Brown might not seem to be a show tune savior. But his off-Broadway work — Songs for a New World, The Last Five Years – shows enormous potential and is being performed all around the country (San Francisco’s Ray of Light Theater will likely be doing Songs later this season, according to artistic director Eli Newsom, who has at the Brown concert).

During the two-act concert, which included a hearty helping of tunes from Brown’s excellent solo album, “Wearing Someone Else’s Clothes,” and special guest Amy Ryder, offered two sneak peeks at Brown’s current works in progress.

His Act 1 closer, “Vegas,” is from Honeymoon in Vegas, a musical adaptation of the movie of the same name, and it is a winner. In full-on Frank Sinatra-Bobby Darin lounge-lizard mode, Brown rhymes “molar” with “roller” and sings “V-E-G-A-S, that spells love.” If the rest of the musical is anywhere near as spirited, it’ll be a winner.

That show likely won’t go into serious creative mode until next year. More pressing is 13, which begins rehearsals in a few days in Los Angeles (and begins previews in December and opens in January) at the Mark Taper Forum. It’s the story of Evan, a 13-year-old Manhattan boy whose parents divocrceand he ends up in Indiana with his mom just in time for his bar mitzvah. Brown performed a song about “being a geek” and why that fate is worse than death, and it demonstrates Brown’s trademark wit and intelligence.

Here are some sample lyrics from the song:

When you’re cool, you’ve always got a crowd.
You can break the rules and you’re allowed.
You can sway the gang in any direction?
It’s a high-speed connection
When you’re cool.

If you’re cool, you know you’ve got a shot,
But oh! If you’re not
It’s a waste, It’s a drag,
It’s ’suck’ in a bag,
It’s the loneliest thing in the world.

DOWNLOAD THIS
Brown’s album “Someone Else’s Clothes” is worthy of buying in its entirety, but if you want to sample a few songs, try the song he wrote as a toast at his brother’s wedding, “Nothing in Common,” the hit-worthy “Someone to Fall Back On” and the extraordinary “Coming Together,” Brown’s response to the events of Sept. 11.

From Parade, you should hear the opening number, “The Old Red Hills of Home,” and from Songs for a New World, Brown’s biggest hit, “Stars and the Moon.”

To check in with Jason Robert Brown, read his entertaining blog.

Here’s a sneak peek at my interview with Adam Pascal, who’s performing Oct. 27 and 28 at the Post Street Theatre in San Francisco (more info below).

Like any good blog item, there are bonus features that won’t make it into the newspaper.

Adam Pascal and Idina Menzel were friends in high school on Long Island. Well, not friends exactly, more like friendly. She was dating one of his good friends, and she was a year younger.

So what were the stars of Rent like in high school?

“In all honesty, I was cool and she was a nerd,” Pascal says on the phone from his Los Angeles home. “But she was a year younger. You know how that is in high school. She might as well have been 10 years younger.”

During those tender teenage years, Pascal was a heavy metal fan (”Judas Priest, that was my band!”) and had his very own band, which went through many names, including Wine and Vision. The band’s final name was Mute.

“I was outvoted three to one on that name,” Pascal says. And what was his choice? “Anything but Mute.”

Pascal’s rock ‘n’ roll career didn’t quite took off, but thanks to his “nerdy” friend Menzel, he got his big break.

She had already been cast in a raucous little off-Broadway musical about drag queens, artists and people with AIDS. It was called Rent, and her boyfriend at the time, mentioned to Pascal that the creative team was having trouble casting a rocker-type in the role of Roger.

If you saw Rent on Broadway or caught last year’s movie version, you know Pascal got the part and soared to fame largely on the power of his electrifying ballad, “One Song, Glory.”

Though Broadway fame beckoned _ Pascal would go on to play the Emcee in Cabaret during its long run and originate the role of Radames in Disney’s Aida _ Pascal still yearned for rock stardom.

“When Rent exploded, I thought for sure this was my springboard to a major label record deal,” he says. “But it didn’t happen for a lot of reasons. Frankly, I don’t think I had the chops to do it back then. I didn’t really know who I was as a singer or a songwriter.”
He has a better idea now.

On Wednesday (Oct. 25), Pascal turned 36, and tonight (Oct. 27) he plays the first of two solo concert gigs at San Francisco’s Post Street Theatre. He’s on a concert tour that is taking him to college campuses, theaters and the odd YMCA.

The concert is just him on bass and guitar and a pianist. His repertoire comes from his two solo albums, “Model Prisoner” and “Civilian” (both on the Sh-K-Boom label), and from Broadway shows.

Of course he sings “One Song, Glory,” but he has re-imagined it as what he describes as a “haunting piano ballad with a different time signature.” He also throws in “What I Did for Love” from A Chorus Line, “Maria” from West Side Story and “Maybe This Time” from Cabaret.

“I wanted to experiment with taking Broadway tunes and drastically re-arranging them without changing their intent,” Pascal says. “A lot of times, taken out of context, musical theater material doesn’t work. I wanted to make the songs more palatable.”

Assuming the movie of Rent would be a big hit and offers would pour in, Pascal and his wife, Cybele, and their two sons, Lennon Jay, 5, and Montgomery Lovell, 3, moved to Los Angeles.

The offers didn’t pour in.

“If I didn’t have music in my life…” Pascal says, then pauses for thought. “If I was out here just trying to be an actor, I’d kill myself. It’s brutal. I feel like every audition I go to I’m at an International Male catalog call with all these super-buffed-up, super-handsome male model-looking guys. You want to be taken seriously as an actor and be judged on your talent, but that’s not what it’s about.”

But Pascal does have his music _ and his family _ and he’s doing all right.

Reflecting on his birthday, Pascal says: “I’m much, sort of, smarter and more adept at what I do than I was 10 years ago. Music is a young person’s business, but it didn’t happen for me as a young person. It’s happening to me now. It took whatever my life experiences have been for the last 10 years to acquire the skills I need to do this well. I feel I have more of those skills to be a better musician, lyricist, player, whatever. I’m finally coming into my own.”

BONUS!
If you’re interested in knowing what Pascal is listening to these days (mostly at the gym): he just downloaded the Scissor Sisters’ latest, “Ta Da,” OK Go’s latest and a group called She Wants Revenge.

For Pascal neophytes, if you’d like to sample him at his best, of course download “One Song, Glory” from Rent. Pascal himself recommends the following three tracks from his solo work: “I’m with You” and “The Ringing in My Ear” from “Civilian” and “Undiscovered” from “Model Prisoner.”

I’d like to add Pascal’s excellent recording of “I Got Life” from the benefit recording of Hair on the Sh-K-Boom label.

Adam Pascal’s concerts are at 8 p.m. Oct. 27 and 28 at the Post Street Theatre, 450 Post St., San Francisco. Tickets are $35 to $85. Call (415) 771-6900 or visit www.poststreetheatre.com for information.

From the “now we’ve heard everything” file.
Apparently there’s a Gilligan’s Island musical, and it’s being done by the Actors Theatre Center in Santa Clara (through Nov. 4).

The book is by series creators Sherwood and Lloyd Schwartz, and the score (which includes “The Ballad of Gilligan”) is by Sherwood’s daughter Hope Juper and her husband Laurence Juper.

The Jupers plan to come see the show Oct. 27 and to a talkback with the audience.

Says artistic director Jeff Hicks: ‘Hope and her husband, Laurence, wrote the music and lyrics for our show, so the fact that she wants to come see it — and has even offered to do a talkback with the audience and cast after the show — well, that’s just frosting on the cake.’

Gilligan’s Island: The Musical is at Mission City Center for the Performing Arts in Santa Clara. Find ticket information:here or call (408) 985-5500.

Halloween seems the appropriate time to talk about Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, a dark, grisly 1979 musical about murder victims being ground into meat pies.

The show had an acclaimed but ultimately too-brief revival on Broadway recently with Patti Lupone and Michael Cerveris.

Then came news that Tim Burton and Johnny Depp were going to make a movie of the musical, with Depp in the title role.

Now Variety reports that Depp’s leading lady has been cast. Helena Bonham Carter, best remembered for her period turns in Merchant-Ivory films and in Burton’s Planet of the Apes remake, will play Mrs. Lovett.

Can Bonham Carter sing? She sounded pretty good singing in the animated film Corpse Bride. But what about Depp? We know from Pirates of the Caribbean that he looks good in eye makeup, but can he warble? I guess we’ll find out. Filming is slated to begin early in 2007 for a release next fall.

There’s always plenty of juicy theater to keep us occupied here in the Bay Area. But we can’t help casting an eye toward Broadway.

It’s sort of like our favorite sports team is having an away game, and we just want to keep an eye on the score.

That said, some Theater Dogs have recently been to New York to sample some of the current crop of big-budget musicals.

Here’s what they have to say about the Twyla Tharp/Bob Dylan collaboration The Times They Are A-Changin’:

Spy 1: “This SHOW it needs a-hangin’!”

Spy 2: “I practically slept through this show. Oh man - what a mess. I guess I don’t care for Bob Dylan. The singers were good. The freakiest part was watching Twyla’s dancers play clowns. It was just wrong. However, did I tell you how FANTASTIC Michael Arden was? He made that show rock.”

Spy 2 also saw Martin Short’s Fame Becomes Me, which as you may recall, had its world premiere in San Francisco earlier this year.

I loved Fame so much here, I wanted to see the NY version. He cut it down to only 90 minutes! Chopped a lot of stuff out - but my favorites parts were still there. And, of course, Capathia Jenkins stopped the show with “Stop the Show.”

Spy 2 also had good things to say about LaChanze in The Color Purple, which sets out on a tour soon and may be coming to the Bay Area, and Altar Boyz, which is part of the Best of Broadway season next year.

Spamalot also got high marks, but we’re angry with that show. Because it’s playing Vegas, there will be no California tour stops. Well, we didn’t want to see it anyway. So there.

Things I’m excited about at the moment:

- The new Chorus Line cast recording (stay tuned for more on that one), which came out last week.

- Two off-Broadway musicals making their way to Broadway: Spring Awakening and Grey Gardens. The good folks at Broadway.com have posted a world-premiere video from Spring Awakening, a musical by Steven Sater and popster Duncan Sheik (I’m a big fan — interviewed him on his tour bus earlier this year). Watch the video for “The Bitch of Living” here.
This is the first I’ve heard of the score, and it sounds neither like High Fidelity nor Legally Blonde. It sounds like, well, Duncan Sheik, and that’s always good in my books. And the video is actually sort of funny in a Dead Poets Society-meets-‘N Sync -meets-Rock ‘n’ Roll High School sort of way. Very exciting.
On his blog, Sheik says he’s hoping for an early December release for the cast album.

As for Grey Gardens, I’ve only heard the cast album, but Act 2 sounds especially promising, and Christine Ebersole sounds better than ever. If you haven’t seen the documentary that inspired the musical, go rent it right now.

- Audra McDonald’s “Live from Lincoln Center” concert last weekend on PBS. Like an idiot, I missed McDonald’s two-night stand at Bimbo’s in San Francisco. As she did at her SF gig, the luminous McDonald sang songs from her new CD, “Build a Bridge” (read my review here) as well as some musical theater chestnuts. My favorite track from the CD (and her most passionate performance in concert) is Laura Nyro’s “Tom Cat Goodbye.” My only disappointment with the show was that she didn’t sing Rufus Wainwright’s “Damned Ladies.”
Hard to complain too much when you consider the songs she did sing: “It Might As Well Be Spring,” “Hey Buds Below,” “When Did I Fall in Love?” and an “Edelweiss” to melt the hardest of hearts.

Thanks to our correspondent Elizabeth for alerting us to the following kerfuffle.

Ted Diadiun, a columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that the theater critic from his paper, Tony Brown, was accosted by the artistic director of the Drury Theatre, who was apparently having a bad reaction to Brown’s dismissive review of the company’s Rabbit Hole.

Here’s what Diadiun had to say about the incident:

Artistic Director Michael Bloom, inspired by an unfavorable review Brown had written of the play and his direction, spied Brown in the back row of the theater, hurried down the aisle and ran the critic down in the lobby, where he passionately delivered an intimate and unrestrained critique of the review.

Accounts of the exchange differ. Brown says Bloom gripped his hand and wouldn’t let go, cursed him loudly in a threatening way and then pounded him overly hard on the back as he left.

Now, I’ve been reviewing Bay Area theater for 14 years, and I’ve never had the misfortune of being accosted by anyone, let alone an artistic director. I will say that, through the grapevine, I’ve heard about artistic directors who would happily have pummeled me but settled for putting me on their “never, ever, under any circumstances let him talk to me” list. The biggest threat I’ve received (so far) is from the now-deceased actor/critic (never a good combo) Dean Goodman, who didn’t like my review of his performance in Horowitz and Mrs. Washington. He said that, like Sylvia Miles did when she saw John Simon after he wrote a particularly scathing review of her, he would happily dump a plate of spaghetti over my head.

I’m going to give the final word to columnist Diadiun, who puts it very nicely:

The relationship between a good critic and the people on his beat is always a dicey one, unless the critic is simply a sycophant. His subjects, who usually work ferociously hard at what they do and are seldom shortchanged in the ego department, are rarely happy at being criticized.

The best way to keep the relationship honest is to show up. A good critic will always show up and face his target after a bad review. But while a sports columnist might feel a twinge walking into a locker room after criticizing a 260-pound linebacker, physical intimidation is not normally an occupational hazard for a theater critic.

Read the whole article here