Glorious Weightless soars back to SF

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Kate Kilbane (left) and Lila Blue in the rock musical Weightless at ACT’s The Strand. Below: Dan Moses, Kilbane and Brothers bring the story of sisters Procne and Philomela to musical life. Photos by Julie Schuchard

Last year I fell in love with Weightless, the rock musical by The Kilbanes, when it had a triumphant world premiere at Z Space. The show had muscle and heart and passion and staggering beauty. The experience of watching the show was so thrilling it felt like something important was beginning – a new hit musical on its way along the lines of Hadestown or Once but on a slightly different scale, one that finds an intriguing balance between rock concert and rock musical.

(Read my original review here.)

Weightless may yet become the massive hit it so richly deserves to be. A year later, the show is back in San Francisco, this time at American Conservatory Theater’s Strand Theater for a quick two-week run. It’s the same glorious cast/band – the wife-and-husband team of Kate Kilbane and Dan Moses, Lila Blue, Julia Brothers, Josh Pollock and Dan Harris – and the same creative team headed by director Becca Wolff. The biggest difference is that the show has moved from the customized performance space that the marvelously malleable Z Space affords, with audience on three sides of the stage and into a more traditional proscenium situation.

Happily, the Strand is so intimate that very little is lost in transition. The design elements – primarily the gourd-shaped objects of Angrette McCloskey’s set design that hover of the stage are even more effective at catching the lights (by Ray Oppenheimer and the dynamic projection designs (by Hana S. Kim). The nuances of the performances, especially Brothers who plays God in such a way that if I ever find out such a deity exists and it’s not in the image of Brothers channeling David Bowie, I’m going to be shatteringly disappointed. I felt like this time I heard and absorbed more of the score and the story, making it that much more exciting and moving.

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And what a story. Inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Weightless tells the story of inseparable sisters Procne (Kilbane) and Philomela (Blue) and how their love and devotion to one another is threatened and nearly destroyed by a man, Tereus (Pollock). There are lies, betrayals and excruciating violence. There is ferocious anger and revenge. And there is transcendent beauty – all set to a dynamic, heart-grabbing score that combines rock, pop, folk and anything else that sounds good.

Kilbane and Pollock danced the most delicate dance because they have to be raging rock stars – she on bass, he on lead guitar – and deliver high-voltage dramatic performances. Both are tremendous. Blue remains as stunning and as ethereal as ever. Her Philomela hardly seems of this earth. The character is transformed by art and nature even before God interferes and takes that transformation to a whole different level, and her voice ranges from deeply emotional to realms of beauty we are rarely allowed to visit. Every time she and Kilbane combine their voices, it’s like Weightless jolted by bolts of lightning from Mt. Olympus. And I would posit that the driving “Awake” is as exciting as any musical theater moment currently on any stage right now.

As enjoyable as Weightless is, it also has heft. The canny re-crafting of Ovid’s story (which is far more violent and grotesque) allows for more beauty in the telling and makes a strong case for beauty in art and nature being – along with earth, wind, fire and water – one of the essential elements of life. There is also joy, plain and simple joy, in being told a fascinating story with clear characters, tension and outcomes. The fact that much of the story is narrated by one of the few gods that still cares about humans makes it even more poignant. Somebody really is listening. Maybe.

It’s so heartening to revisit a beloved work and find it not only as good as you remembered but maybe even better. Oh, Weightless, to paraphrase you: your heart and your bones, your heart is my home.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
The Kilbanes’ Weightless continues through May 12 at ACT’s The Strand, 1127 Market St., San Francisco. Tickets are $15-$65. Call 415-749-2228 or visit act-sf.org.

Amazing women open doors in The Roommate

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In Jen Silverman’s The Roommate at San Francisco Playhouse, Robyn (Julia Brothers) offers to clean up a mess while moving in with her new roommate, Sharon (Susi Damilano). BELOW: Sharon and Robyn spend a provocative evening at home. Photos by Jessica Palopoli

There are several wonderful things about Jen Silverman’s The Roommate now at San Francisco Playhouse, not the least of which is that it seriously considers the lives of two women in their 50s and their attempts to grow and change and correct what they perceive as some of the missteps of their lives.

The nearly two-hour one-act play, directed by Becca Wolff, is also heartily entertaining, contains some satisfying laughs and creates a showcase for two dynamic actors to create complex characters that are full of surprises.

Susi Damilano, the Playhouse’s co-founder and producing director, is Sharon, a 54-year-old divorcé living alone in her big Iowa house. Her grown son is off being a designer in New York, and her constant phone calls and texts are pushing him further and further away. So, aside from her book club and a weekly gig at a shop, she’s very much alone and adrift.

Not yet ready to accept a life of loneliness, Sharon boldly seeks, for the first time in her life, a roommate. Enter Robyn (Julia Brothers), an escapee of the Bronx seeking to re-start her life in the great American Midwest. The things we think we know for sure about Robyn are that she’s done many things in her life, including things that were illegal. She’s about Sharon’s age and also has a child. She’s vegan who has retired from writing and performing slam poetry and she’s gay. Everything else about this tall transplanted New Yorker is enigmatic to say the least.

Silverman’s set-up is part sitcom spin on “The Odd Couple,” with the worldly Robyn enlightening and shocking the more sheltered Sharon, and part unique invention. A thriller element is introduced that could take the play into lots of dark directions, but there’s also a more serious element involving two women coming to know one another, surprise one another and befriend one another. What they have in common, aside from being mothers who can’t (or don’t) rely on men for co-parenting, is that they are at points in their lives ripe for change. One is ready for excitement and challenge and danger, while the other is opting for a calmer, more focused life. One outcome is possible, the other less so.

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Damilano and Brothers play off one another beautifully, which makes the comedy bigger and the drama deeper. Sharon could easily be a stereotype of a ditzy Iowa housewife, but as written, there are layers to her, and Damilano adds even more complexity and endearing charm. Brothers is one of those actors whose name on a cast list should immediately make you want to see that play. She never disappoints and constantly surprises. Her Robyn is grounded and smart but also terribly conflicted. She wields some hard-won wisdom, which is lapped up by Sharon, her eager student. On the subject of child rearing, for instance, Robyn says, “Our children’t don’t have to love us. They just need to survive long enough to become us.” Brothers walks that fine line between being a fascinating new friend and a potentially deadly threat.

Watching these two wonderful actors spar and bond and surprise each other is the heart and spark of the play, and set designer Nina Ball makes good on the promise of Iowa specializing in “corn and space” with her airy suggestion of a Midwestern domicile. She and lighting designer Robert Hand and projection/sound designer Theodore J.H. Hulsker use light, shadows, projections and see-through walls to convey the vast Iowa sky (clouds, sunsets and stars abound). There’s a strong sense of isolation that works to effectively intensify the relationship forming between the women.

Director Wolff creates a strong sense of rhythm that builds nicely through twists, turns, laughs and emotional revelations. But then the play stumbles in its final moments. A monologue is delivered in the form of a phone call to God, and then another is delivered directly to the audience, neither of which is as effective as it needs to be. It’s not the way the play ends (the fate of the characters) that’s the problem – it’s how that information is conveyed.

Brothers and Damilano have earned enough audience love by this time to curtail any serious damage to such an enjoyable play, but there’s a stronger ending in here somewhere for all the fascinating women involved, the actors and the characters.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Jen Silverman’s The Roommate continues through July 1 at San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post St. (in the Kensington Park Hotel), San Francisco. Tickets are $20-$125. Call 415-677-9596 or visit www.sfplayhouse.org.