Chad Jones’ Theater Dogs

Now here’s a no-brainer: there’s finally going to be a stage musical version of the classic 1977 Muppet made-for-TV musical “Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas.”

Variety’s Gordon Cox reports that the Jim Henson Co. and iTheatrics are teaming up to create a stage version that will utilize actors and puppets. Paul Williams (Oscar winner for co-writing “Evergreen”) wrote the fantastic score and is on board to contribute more material, and Christopher Gatelli, a current Tony nominee for choreographing the Broadway revival of South Pacific, is slated to direct and co-write the book with Tim McDonald, head of iTheatrics, which is based on a Lillian and Russell Hoban children’s book of the same name.

I remember seeing the original “Emmet Otter” on HBO when it first aired, and it became an instant favorite. My little brother and I knew every line of dialogue and every song. A few years ago, I gave my brother and his wife a copy on DVD (which differs slightly than the old videotape we had), and we watch it every Christmas. The great thing about the show is that it’s set at Christmas but isn’t all that Christmas-y. There are no Christmas songs (don’t change that, Paul Williams!), and the story deals with a very poor widow, who washes clothes and knits socks for a living, and her son, who makes money doing odd jobs around town. During the Christmas season (after Ma and Emmet get their traditional Christmas branch), the town hosts a talent show, with a cash prize of $200 (think rustic “American Idol”). In a sort of O. Henry twist, Emmet has to put a hole in Ma’s washtub so he can play washtub bass in his friends’ jug band, and Ma hocks Emmet’s tool chest so she can buy fabric to make a new dress to perform in during the show.

It’s all very sweet without being stupid, and Kermit the Frog, wearing a scarf and a flannel shirt, narrates. What’s not to love?

Read the Vareity story here: www.variety.com

Here’s a lovely fan-created trailer that makes reference to all the cuts that were made in broadcasts after the original 1977 airing on HBO:

Growing up, watching “The Carol Burnett Show” on Saturday nights was a highlight of the week. As far back as I can remember, I was a Saturday night TV junkie, with “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “Carol Burnett” as my earliest and still most cherished entertainment experiences. Those actors became, as silly as it sounds, like family — reliable, hilarious, touching, surprising.

Harvey Korman’s death Thursday at age 81 wasn’t exactly a surprise. Anyone who had seen him in recent years saw age dimming his light a little. In his appearances with old cohort Tim Conway, Korman seemed to be feeling the years.

Korman is the first of the Burnett crew to go, and it’s such a loss. The good news is that all of his best TV and movie work (he was so great in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles and High Anxiety) continue.

When I think of him on “The Carol Burnett Show” I think of him padded up with boobs and hips as Mother Marcus on the soap opera spoof “As the Stomach Turns.” And he and Carol as the old folks in the rockers singing songs and making sexual innuendo. I also recall the sort of sitcom-within-the show in which Carol and Harvey were a married couple (I think his name was Roger), and Vicki Lawrence was Carol’s little sister.

Of course, my favorite Korman character was Ed Higgins, Eunice’s belligerent and none-too-bright hardware-store-owning husband. Korman could do dramatic work — look no further than these family sketches as proof.

Korman’s other claim to fame on the “Burnett” show — other than the ease with which he cracked up during a sketch, especially opposite Conway — is that he could neither sing nor dance terribly well, so during those splashy musical finales, he was always pretending to shuffle along as best he could.

The best way to honor Korman is to laugh at him. Here’s a classic “Carol Burnett Show” sketch involving Harvey as the patient and Tim as the bumbling dentist.

And here’s a snippet from “As the Stomach Turns” with Korman in full comic drag as Mother Marcus, Canoga Falls’ resident yenta.

Extended through June 21 at the Magic Theatre, San Francisco

Kevin (Eric Kerr, left) and Max (Liam Vincent) wade through murky relationship waters in Steve Yockey’s provocative Octopus, a co-production of the Magic Theatre and Encore Theatre Company. Photos by www.DavidAllenStudio.com.

Yockey’s Octopus explores inky waters of commitment
«««1/2 Dripping with intrigue

Steve Yockey’s Octopus is a thrilling, somewhat frustrating theatrical experience.

This inaugural co-production of the Magic Theatre and Encore Theatre Company delivers a first-rate production of a fascinating world-premiere play that ultimately comes up a little short only because Yockey sets the bar so high for himself at the outset.

What starts as another riff on gay romantic situation comedies quickly turns into something quite different then evolves into something else shortly after that.

Committed couple Blake (Patrick Alparone) and Kevin (Eric Kerr) are hoping to liven things up by inviting another couple to join them in the bedroom. “It’s something guys do,” Kevin says. Into their neat little urban apartment (fantastic set by Erik Flatmo, more on that in a minute) steps longtime couple Max (Liam Vincent) and Andy (Brad Erickson). While Andy natters on about wine, the voracious Max practically devours Blake with just a glance.

Director Kate Warner masterfully amps up the tension between the four men – as couples and as individuals – to humorous and then to anxiety-inducing levels. Soon enough, though, the clothes come off as Jarrod Fischer’s lights politely dim and the huddle of flesh makes its way to the bed. But things don’t turn out exactly as planned. Feelings are hurt, boundaries are crossed and the flood is unleashed. HIV-AIDS looms, even though Blake says: “It’s not even something people get anymore.”

Yockey is a funny, assured writer, and director Warner and her actors find the rhythms that heighten the laughs (”Don’t say my name like it tastes bad,” Blake snaps, or here’s Max describing a convoluted coffee order: “It’s like an insane caffeinated yard sale in a cup.”) and then underscore the drama. The tone of the play changes with the arrival of a telegram delivery guy (Rowan Brooks), who happens to be sopping wet. Danger fairly drips from the cheerful man, and with each telegram, Octopus grows more chilling.

The ability of Flatmo’s set to hold water becomes increasingly important as action shifts to the bottom of the sea and to apartments overrun with the fluid embodiment of fear – fear of death, fear of commitment, fear of anything honest and real. There’s brilliance in the set-up, with the ocean becoming a metaphor for illness and isolation and sea monsters becoming the threat of imminent death.

The fact that Warner and her crew pull off the aquatic special effects as well as they do carries the last portion of the 70-minute play, even as Yockey sets up a dramatic confrontation between the fearful Kevin and the increasingly angry telegram guy. By this point in the play, we’re literally swimming in metaphor (especially the people in the front row), and the function of the grim-reaperish telegram guy diminishes. We get it, so his presence, especially as the catalyst for dénouement never feels quite right (through no fault of Brooks, who is pitch perfect).

There’s still plenty of power and emotion in Yockey’s ending thanks largely to the excellent Alparone and Kerr, but getting there somehow took an unnecessary detour. And this is much too fascinating a play for detours. One of the hardest things to do in a theater is to scare people, but Octopus, with its crazy sea monsters (and rattling sound design by Sara Huddleston) and astounding imagery, comes close multiple times.

There’s something chilling about Octopus, and it’s not just because the theater is filled with water.

Octopus continues through June 21 at the Magic Theatre, Building D, Fort Mason Center, Marina Boulevard at Buchanan Street, San Francisco. Tickets are$40-$45. Call 415-441-8822 or visit www.magictheatre.org for information.

Some good news from box offices both national and local today. First the local.

According to Berkeley Repertory Theatre, coming to the end of its 40th anniversary season,
Nilaja Sun’s No Child… broke the box office record for single-day sales last Saturday (May 24). The previous record was set a couple of months ago by Carrie Fisher’s Wishful Drinking, and that show broke the record set a couple of months before that by Mary Zimmerman’s Argonautika. A happy 40th birthday indeed. By the way, No Child… has been extended a second time through June 11. See it if you can. Visit www.berkeleyrep.org for information.

Across the country, on a little boulevard I like to call Broadway, the box-office news is pretty good as well. The Broadway League announced today that the season just ended (May 28, 2007-May 25, 2008) took in $937.5 million, down slightly from the previous year’s total of $938.5 million.

League members said last season probably would have broken records were it not for the the stagehands strike, which shut down much of the Broadway theater scene for 19 days.

Here are the season stats, just in case you follow theater like some people follow sports:
36 productions opened on Broadway during 2007-2008:
8 new musicals
1 musical return engagement
4 musical revivals
11 new plays
12 play revivals
Paid attendance at Broadway shows was 12.27 million, down .2 percent from the previous season.

Charlotte St. Martin, executive director of The Broadway League, said in a statement: “While we are disappointed that we didn’t exceed last year’s record-breaking season, we are confident that in the coming season, with such big name shows on the horizon as Billy Elliot, Shrek, West Side Story and Equus, to only name a few, that we will have the best season in recorded history.”

The summer season is starting to, pardon the expression, heat up, though anyone who has been through a Bay Area summer knows that summer does not necessarily mean heat around here.

- Lions and tigers and bears. Oh, my! The first outdoor show of the year opened last week on the slopes of Mt. Tamalpais in Marin: The Mountain Play’s The Wizard of Oz runs weekends through June 15. All shows are at 1 p.m. The views are spectacular, and the show’s probably pretty good, too. Tickets are $25-$39. Call 415-383-1100 or visit www.mountainplay.org for information.

Franz Kafka’s Love Life, Letters and Hallucinations in Short Scenes with Live Actors at the Berkeley City Club. Photo by Marty Sohl

- Brookside Repertory Theatre in Berkeley presents Franz Kafka’s Love Life, Letters and Hallucinations in Short Scenes with Live Actors (whew!) by Mae Ziglin Meidav. Written by Brookside’s artistic director, this comic biography delves into the hallucinations that fed Kafka’s creativity. The show continues through June 29 at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., Berkeley. Tickets are $16-$34. Call 800-838-3006 or visit www.brooksiderep.org for information.

- Check out Marga Gomez’s work-in-progress Long Island Iced Latina at The Marsh, which will have its premiere at the Public Theater’s Joe’s Pub in New York. Another in her series of comedic memoirs, the new show is about Gomez’s awkward adolescence (is there any other kind?) in Massapequa, Long Island, where life was equal parts cultural confusion, chronic virginity, mother-daughter instability and polyester fashion.
The show opens today (May 28) and continues through May 31 at The Marsh Studio Theater, 1074 Valencia St., San Francisco. The bill also includes an excerpt from Samantha Chase’s Lydia’s Funeral Video.
Tickets are $15-$35 on a sliding scale. Call 800-838-3006 or visit www.themarsh.org for information.

- California Shakespeare Theater opens its 2008 season with Pericles, a wacky Shakespeare play involving incest, shipwrecks, tournaments, magicians bringing the dead back to life and, of course, pirates! Minneapolis-based director Joel Sass makes his West Coast directing debut with a highly theatrical re-telling of this odd tale with eight actors playing 50 roles. Previews begin tonight (May 28) and opening is Saturday, May 30. The show continues through June 22 at the Bruns Amphitheater in Orinda (good news for your gas tank: there’s a free shuttle between Orinda BART and the theater). Tickets are $40-$62. Call 510-548-9666 or visit www.calshakes.org for information.
You might also want to check out Cal Shakes’ blogs here.

Got a little excited when I saw the Mamma Mia! trailer in a movie theater recently. With the success of Hairspray last year, it looks like summer is becoming the season for frothy stage musicals turned silver screen tuners.

Here’s one of the trailers. I like this one because it actually shows Meryl Streep singing.

Here’s the trailer I saw in the theater:

Aaargh! The tyranny of ABBA! Why is that music so fun? Mamma Mia! the movie opens July 18.

This holiday weekend I saw some movies on the big screen (Indiana Jones and the blah blah Crystal Skull – exactly what you think it would be, enjoyable but nothing more; Iron Man, which made me love Robert Downey Jr. all over again – oddly more human than Indiana Jones) and at home.

One of the movies I watched at home was P.S. I Love You, a movie I had avoided in theaters because the review chatter was so negative. Why do I listen to reviews? I know better. My mother loved the movie, which should have been my first indication that I should see it. And it was co-written and directed by Richard LaGravenese, the man responsible for one of my favorite movies of all time: Living Out Loud, which is inspired by two Anton Chekhov short stories (“The Kiss” and “Misery”). LaGravenese also co-wrote another favorite, the 1995 adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess directed by Alfonso Cuaron.

One of the things I love about Living Out Loud, A Little Princess and now P.S. I Love You is their use of music. LaGravenese clearly cares about music. He doesn’t just throw pop songs haphazardly onto the screen. He practically writes musicals, but they’re cleverly disguised as straightforward movies. In Living Out Loud, Queen Latifah is a nightclub singer, and actually demonstrates her chops by singing some standards (”Lush Life,” “Goin’ Out of My Head”), and there are a couple scenes in which leading lady Holly Hunter is lifted by music: once (on Ecstasy) at a lesbian dance club and once to the strains of Sly and the Family Stone’s “Hot Fun in the Summertime.”

Here’s the Ecstasy scene from Living Out Loud:

A Little Princess is a musical in many ways, even if the young stars aren’t singing and dancing around. Patrick Doyle’s enchanting score includes some beautiful songs, though they’re on the soundtrack rather than in the characters’ mouths.

In P.S. I Love You, even star Hilary Swank sings (albeit in a karaoke bar – the one way modern audiences will accept characters breaking into song), as does her leading man, Gerard Butler (whose varied film career includes the title role of Phantom of the Opera and the gladiator epic 300). The movie’s soundtrack includes some great songs by the likes of Flogging Molly, the Pogues (with the divine Kirsty MacColl),Toby Lightman and a band I have discovered great affection for, Camera Obscura. Even co-star Nellie McKay (a formidable singer-songwriter-actress whom you should check out if she’s unknown to you) gets to sing the title song. I could have done without the James Blunt song, but that’s just me.

So my point here is that Richard LaGravenese should just go ahead and make a musical already. It appears that among his next projects is the film adaptation of Douglas Carter Beane’s hilarious play As Bees in Honey Drown (rumored to star Cate Blanchett). That’s wonderful. But how about an honest-to-God LaGravenese musical? Now that’s the movie I want to see.

Here’s a montage from A Little Princess set to the song “Kindle My Heart.”

At The Marsh in San Francisco through June 29

Ann Randolph wrote and stars in Squeeze Box at The Marsh. The solo show is about her loss and rediscovery of faith.

Superb solo show squeezes out laughs, drama
«««1/2 Extraordinary characters

There are certain people who, when they recommend a show, I snap to attention and see the show. One of those people is Anne Bancroft, the late great actress who will never stop delighting me with her talent. Bancroft had this to say about Ann Randolph’s solo show Squeeze Box: “When I first saw [Squeeze Box], I was deeply moved. Ann Randolph’s amazing work, both as a writer and fellow performer, touched my heart and my mind so profoundly that I felt it belonged on the New York stage.”

Bancroft and her husband, Mel Brooks, became producers of Randolph’s show and gave it a successful off-Broadway run in 2004. Since then, Randolph has been doing Squeeze Box around the world while she has continued to develop new work. That’s what brings her to The Marsh in San Francisco. Randolph does her show two nights a week, works on new characters and new monologues and conducts workshops in developing solo shows.

Lucky us.

There’s something so incredibly theatrical about a one-person show. We have two excellent examples in the Bay Area right now – Randolph’s show and Nilaja Sun’s No Child… at Berkeley Repertory Theatre (now extended through June 11) – in which women, on a mostly bare stage, become a cast of characters that we willingly and enthusiastically see beyond the shape and size of the amazing actress creating them.

Randolph’s autobiographical story is really one of faith. When we first meet the likeable, slightly goofy Ann, she’s working a minimum-wage job at a shelter for mentally ill homeless women in Santa Monica. The job is wearing on her, and she’s beginning to feel like no matter how hard she works or how much she cares, she is not really helping the women. Her life, she concludes, has ceased to progress. She has failed to move forward and, as a result, has lost the faith that once made her want to become a saint and provide “encouragement, hope and love to those most easily forgotten.”

One of the ways Ann hopes to get some life back into her life is through a personal ad on Match.com. She’s hoping to find a rugged man with a love for Brahms. The rugged look, it seems, really turns her on. “Maybe that’s why I’m attracted to homeless men,” she says.

The man she finds is Harold, a musician and weekend hiker who speaks (and feels) in a monotone. But when Ann finds out what instrument Harold plays, it’s very nearly a deal breaker. He plays the accordion, the squeeze box and the soundtrack to many a beery oompah-pah Saturday night.

Nothing in Randolph’s tale is quite what you expect. There’s a whole lot of frank sex talk (especially from Brandy, the paranoid schizophrenic crack-head whore who lives in the shelter), and Ann’s downward spiral is quite dramatic (though the 75-minute show has loads of humor). The characters come and go, with some making more of an impression than others. The hippie-ish Shoshanna is there to represent liberal hypocrisy, while Julie, the shelter counselor just arrived from Christ the King Salvation Center, is a Bible thumper in the worst possible sense and couldn’t be more insensitive to the world around her.

Though the character of Irene, a new resident at the shelter, only makes a brief appearance, she has tremendous impact. Randolph pulls her hair up into a crude bun, twists her malleable face into something akin to a pain mask and strums the guitar while Irene sings of her marital woe. It’s a funny song that turns incredibly poignant. Irene, like Ann, has lost her faith in a big way.

But unlike Irene, Ann is able to rediscover faith through Harold, and in particular, a concert performance of Copland’s Appalachian Spring. Randolph brings the show full circle and allows her audience to taste what she experienced in that concert hall: the redemptive power of art.

As a bonus for San Francisco audiences, Randolph is doing excerpts of new work after performances of Squeeze Box. On the night I saw the show, she showed a short film called Disaster Relief that she directed and stars in. She read pieces of a monologue then costumed herself as a demented crack whore and let herself get full into the foul-mouthed, interesting character. From there she assumed the character of Carol Diddle, a landlady in Santa Monica who loathes the impoverished artists who live in her building and can’t pay their rent. Carol is a disturbing character – far more so than the crack whore. Scary.

Squeeze Box continues through June 29 at The Marsh, 1062 Valencia St., San Francisco. Shows are at 5 p.m. Saturdays and 7 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $15-$35 on a sliding scale. Call 800-838-3006 or visit www.themarsh.org.

Visit Ann Randolph’s Web site here: www.annrandolph.com.

Here’s some good news for those of us shut out of the City Arts & Lectures event at which former New York Times theater critic Frank Rich (aka “The Butcher of Broadway”) interviewed Stephen Sondheim at the Herbst Theatre.

The show, edited down to an hour, will be on KQED radio (88.5 FM) at 1 p.m. June 1 and 8 p.m. and 2 a.m. June 3.

I’ll be listening. From friends who went to the show, I learned that Sondheim is intrigued by the notion of turning the Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day into a musical — something about the repetition of the days lending themselves to musical interpretation. Sort of makes sense.

Visit the City Arts & Lectures Web site for information: www.cityarts.net.

Frederick M. Brown, Getty Images / Jan. 9, 2008

It’s true! Katie Holmes isn’t just a pretty, skinny Victoria Beckham-wannabe clothes horse; nor is she simply a trophy wife capable of possibly giving birth to her movie star husband’s adorable progeny.

No, it turns out that Katie Holmes is actually a three-dimensional acting person. How do we know this? She’s doing what most failed movie actresses do when their managers tell them it’s time for an image improvement.

She’s going to Broadway.

As had been rumored for a while, Holmes will make her Broadway debut in a revival of Arthur Miller’s 1947 drama All My Sons.

So let me just make sure I’ve got everything straight here. Great play about a manufacturer whose greedy sloppiness may have cost American soldiers’ lives — check. Great, capable actors — Dianne Wiest, John Lithgow and Patrick Wilson, check. Presence of Tom Cruise’s wife, whose theater chops are completely untested — check. Now don’t get me wrong. Back in the day I was a huge “Dawson’s Creek” fan, watched every episode and developed some affection for the young Ms. Holmes, whose gawky charm was just right for her character, Joey Potter. But it takes a giant leap of imagination to see that kind of small-screen acting translating well to the stage. In her checkered movie career, Holmes actually registerd in Pieces of April, though my favorite of her movie roles is in Sam Raimi’s 2000 The Gift. That’s the Holmes I’d like to see on stage.

The Simon McBurney-directed All My Sons will bow later this fall. Theater tbd.

It’s probably not at all surprising that Holmes’ jump to the stage follows two things: a flop movie (Mad Money alongside Diane Keaton and Queen Latifah) and Jennifer Garner’s successful stint in Cyrano opposite Kevin Kline. All those tabloid shots of the grinning Garner and hubby Ben Affleck playing in New York parks with daughter Violet were probably more than Holmes could stand: credibility and maximum exposure.