Gorgeous, moving Fun Home at the Curran

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Alessandra Baldacchino (left) is Small Alison, Pierson Salvador (center) is Christian and Lennon Nate Hammond is John in the Broadway touring company of Fun Home at the newly renovated Curran Theatre. Below: The three actors who play writer/artist Alison Bechdel at various times in her life in Fun Home are (from left) Kate Shindle, Abby Corrigan and Baldacchino. Photos by Joan Marcus

At only about 100 minutes, the musical Fun Home, manages to encapsulate a profoundly moving life experience: coming to terms with your parents as human beings and not just the people who gave you life then messed up that life one way or another.

That’s a universal experience, although the version in Fun Home is very specific to writer/artist Alison Bechdel, who chronicled her childhood and coming out in the extraordinary 2006 graphic memoir of the same name. Chances are good that not all of us grew up in a small Pennsylvania town with a dad who was a high school English teacher, a furniture and house restoration buff, a mortician and a closeted gay man. But that doesn’t make Bechdel’s coming to terms with her dad (and, subsequently herself) any less relatable, funny or deeply moving.

What an extraordinary show to officially re-open the spectacularly renovated Curran Theatre, now in its 95th year and the ongoing project of Carole Shorenstein Hays and her family. With this one show, the Curran establishes itself as a home for the kind of forward-thinking, emotionally and artistically complex theater we need most now and will likely continue to need at an even greater level in the near future.

Fun Home does not seem like the kind of musical that would become a big hit, but that’s what happened in the wake of its premiere at New York’s famed Public Theater in 2013. The show, adapted by book writer and lyricist Lisa Kron and composer Jeanine Tesori and directed by Sam Gold, found a way to make the musical re-telling of Bechdel’s story feel fresh and original while never losing sight of the fact that Bechdel is telling her story from a cartoonist’s point of view. In many ways, the show is about a woman creating her memoir. To do that successfully requires the author to dig deep and try and face the truth. For Bechdel, that means containing her dad, mom and two brothers within cartoon panels with balloon dialogue and captions. For the musical’s creators, that means finding the emotional sounds of difficult personalities and incidents and making them sing and (occasionally) dance.

On Broadway, where it won five Tony Awards (including statues for Kron, Tesori and Gold), Fun Home was performed in the round. Now on its national tour, the production has been reconfigured for proscenium theaters and what it might lose from in-the-round intimacy, it gains in David Zinn’s stunning design, which has a profound moment of deepening the clarity of the storytelling and pulling us deeper into Alison’s experience as she draws closer to the last time she ever spent with her dad.

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Until that time, the staging is simple. The small orchestra is on a platform at the rear of the stage, and actors move tables and other pieces of furniture around to suggest the family home, the funeral home (known in the family as the “fun home”), a car, Alison’s college dorm room and more. Simplicity turns to escapist flare for two feel-good numbers. The first involves the three young Bechdel children creating their own commercial for the family business (“Come to the Fun Home”) with echoes of the Jackson 5 (especially in the choreography by Danny Mefford) and another with Alison reacting to the rough-edged relationship with her mercurial father by fantasizing a “Partridge Family”-style number to life (“Raincoat of Love”).

Tesori’s music for these numbers is infections and joyful and stands in contrast to much of the other music in the show, which feels weighted by dark emotion and uncertainty. It’s not surprising that some moments here evoke Tesori’s brilliant Caroline, or Change in the way they bear the emotional heft of opera but still live in the world of musical theater. Several stand-out numbers include “Ring of Keys,” a startlingly resonant moment in young Alison’s life when she identifies with a butch delivery woman; “Changing My Major,” college-age Alison’s incredibly endearing rush of first love excitement; and “Telephone Wire,” a duet for older Alison and her dad, which says as much in its silences as it does in its music and lyrics. The show ending trio between all three actors who play Alison at various ages, “Flying Away,” is as beautiful and as moving as any musical finale ever. Sometimes musical theater composers forget that when people join voices, it means something, and if there’s a resonant reason for them to be harmonizing the power can be overwhelming. That’s the zone in which Fun Home works.

The cast for this Fun Home tour is spectacular. The three actors who play Alison are the show’s heart. Alessandra Baldacchino as young Alison conveys childish enthusiasm confronting the reality of an erratic father, and her performance of “Ring of Keys” is nothing short of thrilling. Kate Shindle as older Alison hovers around the action for much of the play but finally comes into her own in the show’s final numbers. It is irresistible Abby Corrigan as college-age Alison who super-charges the evening. Coming out is such a fraught experience, and she conveys every shadow and spark of the experience with absolute charm and graceful intelligence.

Though the story here centers primarily on the enigmatic and troubling Bruce Bechdel, played with utterly believable storm, confusion and steel by Robert Petkoff, his wife, Helen (Susan Moniz), emerges as a fascinating character, a mother who has made some giant compromises and will fiercely protect her children from making the same mistakes. Her song “Days and Days” is shattering. Bruce’s “aria,” “Edges of the World,” captures his conflicts and troubled state of mind in a sad and powerful way.

Fun Home began life as an extraordinary work of memoir on the page and has just grown richer in its journey to the stage, with emotional undercurrents bringing depth, beauty and profound reflection to a story of secrets, lies and discovering what it really means to grow up.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Fun Home continues through Feb. 19 at the Curran Theatre, 445 Geary St., San Francisco Tickets are $29-$149. Call 415-358-1220 or visit www.sfcurran.com.

Finding Neverland: never found, never lands

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The Llewelyn Davies boys (from left) Jack (Mitchell Wray), Michael (Jordan Cole), George (Finn Faulconer) and Peter (Ben Krieger) in the national tour of the musical Finding Neverland, part of the SHN season. Below: Kevin Kern (center) is playwright J.M. Barrie and Tom Hewitt (right, in red) is Captain Hook. Photos by Carol Rosegg

I’m calling it: the use of Peter Pan as an automatic trigger for poignant reflections on lost youth and the emotional cruelty of aging is officially over. It’s been over for a while, but no one told Sarah Ruhl, whose For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday (read review here) got the hook at Berkeley Repertory Theatre last year. We have exceeded the Pan threshold.

That’s unfortunate for the musical Finding Neverland, based on the 2004 movie of the same name starring Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet and the remarkable child actor Freddie Highmore. This story behind the story of how author J.M. Barrie came to write Peter Pan worked much better on screen than it does in the bland Diane Paulus-helmed production that opened Wednesday night as part of the SHN season.

The Broadway production of Finding Neverland didn’t exactly alter the course of musical theater in any way, but it seemed to make audiences reasonably happy, and that can also be said of the general feeling at San Francisco’s Orpheum Theatre on Wednesday night. But from the opening scene, where a theatrical troupe is performing Peter Pan, I knew my Pan fatigue was going to prevent me from really enjoying this middling enterprise.

The score by British pop star Gary Barlow and Eliot Kennedy disappoints from the start (“Welcome to London”) and then lurches from unremarkable ballads well-suited to televised singing contests to derivative ensemble numbers that at least get a little spark from the muscular choreography by Mia Michaels but fade from memory the minute they’re over.

The story of a story isn’t inherently interesting, even if that story is Peter Pan, and this telling relies so much on stereotype (Actors are quirky and egotistical! British people are snobs! Dying women are noble and without character!) that the only depth comes from the actual size of the stage.

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Without much to work with in terms of script (by James Graham, based on a screenplay by David Magee, which is in turn based on a play by Allan Knee), the performers work with all the professional gusto they can muster to sell this undercooked baked potato of a show. Aside from some godawful mugging among the ensemble, they manage an admirable level of energy and appeal.

Kevin Kern as Barrie has leading man appeal and a pleasant voice, but his character has no apparent conflicts. His answer to a creative block is to just steal from rambunctious neighborhood kids he befriends in the park (one of the kids asks if he will get royalties and isp promptly shushed). His romance with the children’s mother (Christine Dwyer) would be Hallmark perfect if it weren’t for that pesky cough and those spots of blood on her handkerchief. She’s a one-dimensional character, and her big song, “All That Matters,” does nothing to change that.

Tom Hewitt blusters through his role as American theater producer Charles Frohman but really comes to life when he plays Captain Hook at the end of Act 1 (“Hook”/”Stronger Part 2”).

The real spark of the show comes from the young actors playing the four Llewelyn Davies children. At Wednesday’s performance, the roster included Finn Faulconer as George, Ben Krieger as Peter, Mitchell Wray as Jack and Jordan Cole as Michael. In Act 2, the brothers put on one of Peter’s plays (“We’re All Made of Stars”), and it’s by far the best song and scene in the show, with a natural charm and humor that eludes pretty much everything else before or after it.

Just when you think the show will submerge itself into mawkish dreck when all the poppy, bouncy machinations have to shift into a more serious gear, Paulus, whose directorial ambitions here seem wasted on a show that has seemingly no ambition at all, delivers a sparkly, breezy bit of stagecraft. The moment feels surprisingly sophisticated for a show like this, which would seem much more successfully scaled to the level of audience-pleasing community theater. Finding Neverland is an unremarkable piece of musical theater flying on the coattails of a much beloved, much better creation that has been overworked to the point of exhaustion.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Finding Neverland continues through at SHN’s Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market St., San Francisco. Tickets are $55-$275 (subject to change). Call 888-746-1799 or visit www.shnsf.com.

Hello, love: Hedwig slams her Angry Inch in our faces

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Darren Criss is Hedwig, a rock star with issues, in the Broadway touring production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Below: Lena Hall reprises her Tony Award-winning role as Yitzhak in Hedwig. Both Criss and Hall are San Francisco natives, and they kicked off the Broadway tour at SHN’s Golden Gate Theatre in their hometown. Photos by Joan Marcus.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch launches its first Broadway national tour with the power of a barbecue fired with jet fuel. An explosion of rock, lights, humor and heart, this show is a rarity among rarities: a quirky late ’90s off-Broadway hit that inspired a devoted cult following that seemingly peaked with its big-screen adaptation in 2001. Over the years, however, Hedwig’s tragic tale of rejection and glam-rock transformation has traveled around the world and created an international league of Heheads.

By 2014, the next logical step for a misfit rock musical with a built-in and avid fan base was Broadway. Armed with director Michael Mayer and star Neil Patrick Harris, Hedwig opened on Broadway to rapturous response and ran for a year and a half with five Hedwigs after the Tony-winning Harris departed the production. One of those Hedwigs, “Glee” heartthrob Darren Criss now headlines the national tour, which kicked off in fine form Wednesday night at the Golden Gate Theatre as part of the SHN season.

The show is essentially rock concert and monologue, making it an extraordinary showcase for its star, but creators John Cameron Mitchell (book and the original and still greatest Hedwig) and Stephen Trask (music and lyrics) add other levels to this show, including a secondary lead, Yitzhak, Hedwig’s Croatian husband, a former drag queen whose presence adds even more depth to the show’s gender fluidity and sexual vibrancy. For the tour, Yitzhak is played by the fierce Lena Hall, who won a Tony for the role on Broadway. In a delightful twist, Hall will take over as Hedwig for one performance a week (schedule below).

This tour recreates the Broadway production faithfully, right down to the concept that for one night only, Hedwig and her band, the Angry Inch (named after the result of her botched sex-change operation), are taking to the stage in a legit theater after the failure of Hurt Locker: The Musical (as on Broadway, the theater floor is littered with playbills for that bomb of a show, which opened the previous night and closed at intermission – do yourself a favor and spend time with that playbill because it is hilarious). The set for Hurt Locker remains, and Yitzhak performs a snippet of the show’s love theme. Otherwise, aside from some script tinkering to make it San Francisco-centric (references to the “newly annoying Mission,” Uber X, a gender-neutral bathroom on a idling Google bus, doing drugs in the Tenderloin as one does), this is Hedwig as she is meant to be seen: damaged, fabulous, ferocious, heartbroken, funny, loud and aggressively awesome.

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I saw Harris do the show on Broadway, and he was phenomenal, although he didn’t inhabit the character as fully or as emotionally as the remarkable Kevin Cahoon in the much scrappier San Francisco debut of the show at the Victoria Theatre in 2001. Every actor who dons Hedwig’s many (and marvelous) wigs will bring something unique to the party, and Criss brings extraordinary energy and a genuine rock vibe to the scorching score. He shows off some sharp comic timing, although his Hedwig voice seems less East Berlin than it does a governess raised in London by German parents. Aside from the songs, which he imbues with passion and grit, Criss’ best moments are those in which he’s playing the American characters: Luther, the GI who marries young Hansel, turns him into Hedwig and lands her in a Kansas mobile home; and Tommy Speck, an Army brat whom Hedwig takes under her wing (and then some) and turns into the rock star Tommy Gnosis. At 29, Criss is the youngest of the Broadway Hedwigs, and that’s a little problematic for a world weary and wise character who tosses off lines like, “One day in the late mid-’80s I was in my early late 20s.” Criss was born in the late ’80s, so when Hedwig is referencing Google buses and placing the action of the show in the here and now, it doesn’t fully make sense.

But Hedwig doesn’t have to fully make sense to be an extraordinary experience, and that’s what this is. Just hearing those songs played full throttle (the fiery four-piece band, under the music direction of Justin Craig are all from the Broadway company) is a transporting experience. Add in the fantastic costumes by Arianne Phillips (that hair dress!) and towering wigs by Mike Potter and you have a rock musical dream in the flesh. The nuclear explosion lighting design (by Kevin Adams) can be a bit much, but if elements of Hedwig aren’t a bit much, it’s not really Hedwig.

The nuance, tenderness and, ultimately power of Hall as Yitzhak provides ample evidence of why a seemingly secondary presence in the show would not only garner awards but make Hall a star. Hers is a voice that can be delicate and searing, and her physical transformation in the show is part of what makes the quasi-religious conclusion so mind-bogglingly glorious. Lift up your hands indeed.

[more on Hedwig]
Check out San Francisco kids Darren Criss and Lena Hall and composer Stephen Trask chatting about Hedwig and performing songs from the show here.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Hedwig and the Angry Inch continues through Oct. 30 at the Golden Gate Theatre, 1 Taylor St., San Francisco. Tickets are $45-$212 (subject to change). Call 888-746-1799 or visit www.shnsf.com.

From the department of YOU’RE NOT GOING TO WANT TO MISS THIS:

Lena Hall takes over as Hedwig on Wednesday, Oct. 12 at 8pm, Wednesday, Oct. 19 at 8pm and Wednesday, Oct. 26 at 8pm.

Enchantment, off-key comedy in revised Cinderella

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Kaitlyn Davidson is Ella and Andy Huntington Jones is Topher, her prince, in the touring company of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella, playing the Orpheum Theatre as part of the SHN season. Below: Davidson’s Ella (far right) must contend with the wicked stepmother and stepsisters played by (from left) Blair Ross, Kimberly Fauré and Aymee Garcia. Photos © Carol Rosegg

There has rarely been a moment when Cinderella’s glass slipper wasn’t the hottest shoe on the market. The Charles Perrault fairy tale is among the most well worn in the storybooks and shows no signs of losing her edge. A great deal of her popularity must be attributed to the Disney machine, er, Studio, which animated the tale in 1950 and then remade it in 2015 as a live-action film (well, a lot of live action and a lot of computer animation and effects). Side note: the geniuses at Disney produced a straight-to-video sequel to Cinderella in 2002 followed by a second sequel in 2007.

Running parallel to the evolution of Disney’s popular princess is the dynamic musical theater duo of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, who turned Cinderella into a musical for live television in 1957. That broadcast, starring Julie Andrews was watched by some 107 million people (a staggering 60% of the country). The musical leapt to the British stage soon after, and then to American stages in the early ’60s. Capitalizing on that popularity, a second television production was mounted in 1965 starring Lesley Ann Warren, and still a third (much more drastically re-worked with Rodgers & Hart songs added) was broadcast in 1997 starring Brandy and Whitney Houston.

If audiences get confused by this abundance of Cinderella that’s completely understandable, especially if they assume that the Rodgers and Hammerstein version has something to do with Disney. Any confusion will only be exacerbated by the 2013 Broadway production, which involved some major revision in the book by Douglas Carter Beane and a production design that looks like it took inspiration from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.

The Broadway production won a Tony Award for William Ivey Long’s lush, plush, jewel-toned costumes (and a gold dress for Cinderella that probably has Belle’s name tag sewn into it somewhere), which actually provide some of the liveliest moments in the show. Both the fairy godmother and Cinderella make flashy costume changes before our eyes: the godmother going from crone to magical beauty (like the witch in Into the Woods) and Cinderella going from charwoman to princess faster than you can say bibbidi-bobbidi-boo.

The touring company of the Broadway Cinderella finally made its San Francisco debut this week and has a short run through Sunday as part of the SHN season. The show played San Jose last year, and if Wednesday’s opening-night crowd is any indication, there are a whole lot of princess worshippers (prinshippers?) right here in the City? Who knew audiences still audibly swooned when a prince kisses a princess? Indeed they do.

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And there’s a lot that’s swoonworthy in this production, most notably the Rodgers and Hammerstein score and the two leads.

Even a secondary R&H score, which this mostly is, has aural treasures beyond compare. How could anyone not enjoy lilting tunes like “Impossible/It’s Possible” and “A Lovely Night” or not succumb to the romantic sweep of “Ten Minutes Ago” or “Do I Love You Because You’re Beautiful?” or the sweet melancholy of “In My Own Little Corner”? This production (like others before it) incorporates R&H songs from other projects like “He Was Tall” (cut from The King and I), “The Loneliness of Evening” cut from South Pacific, “Me, Who Am I?” from Me and Juliet and “There’s Music in You” from the 1953 movie Main Street to Broadway (which featured Rodgers and Hammerstein playing themselves working on this song with Mary Martin).

The score is a definite highlight here and a sobering reminder that no one writes with the lyrical and melodic sophistication and apparent ease of Rodgers and Hammerstein. It’s not simply old-fashioned Broadway – it’s gold-standard Broadway. And that’s why Beane’s re-worked script clunks more than it works. Imagine keeping all the famous bits of Hamlet but reworking the rest with contemporary dialogue and pseudo-political, thoroughly politically correct meanderings. You’d have a mess, and that’s sort of what happens here, granted we’re not quite at the Hamlet level, but still, with a strong musical comedy score you want a book to match its tone, and this one aims for cheap laughs rather than nobility or romance.

As with so many modern re-workings of fairy tales, the princess is no longer a damsel in distress waiting for a handsome but personality-free man to come and save her. This Cinderella (played with gusto by Kaitlyn Davidson) practices the power of kindness (her eventual book will surely make it to Oprah’s book club), and though a dilettante in matters of politics, she’s not afraid to tell the obtuse prince what’s going wrong with his kingdom’s laws and economy. She’s oppressed by her wicked stepmother (a droll Blair Ross) and one self-involved stepsister (Lulu Picart) but treated sweetly by the other stepsister, Gabrielle (Kimberly Faure), who is in love with the newly invented character Jean-Michel (David Andino), the kingdom’s rabble-rouser.

Davidson has a lovely voice, and you root for her from the start, which is always a plus in this rags-to-tiara tale. She is ably supported by Andy Huntington Jones as Prince Topher, a sheltered royal whose parents have shuffled off this mortal crown (unlike previous versions in which the King and Queen are alive and singing). He’s being bamboozled by his trusted vizier (shades of Disney’s Aladdin), Sebastian (Blake Hammond), who is a money-grubbing, land-grabbing, power-hungry creep. In this version, Prince Topher may have the money, clothes and palace, but he is saved by Cinderella, who shakes him out of his aristocratic stupor and sets him back on the throne to glory.

That’s all well and good, but what registers here is what has always registered: the fairy godmother granting life-changing wishes, turning mice into horses, woodland animals (played by annoying hand puppets) into coachmen, a pumpkin into a coach and a dress of rags into a sparking ball gown. That and the kiss and the (spoiler alert on a 1,500-year-old story!) royal wedding.

It seems they keep trying to turn Cinderella into an even bigger fantasy – blowing up the coach and puffing up the dress, you might say – but the story is what it always was: wish fulfillment, sparkles and a happy ending.

[bonus video]
Here’s a look at the 2013 Broadway production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella:

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella continues through Sunday, May 8 at the SHN Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market St., San Francisco. Tickets are $45-$212. Call 888-746-1799 or visit www.shnsf.com.

Sean Hayes is devilish/divine in Act of God

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Sean Hayes is a vessel for the almighty in An Act of God, David Javerbaum’s darkly comic play at SHN’s Golden Gate Theater. Below: Hayes takes a selfie with archangels played by James Gleason and David Josefsberg. Photos by Jim Cox

Like parochial school for fans of The Daily Show, the play An Act of God is a curious theatrical experience. All the ingredients are there: bells and whistles set, sharply funny script, charming star. But in the end, as in the beginning, it’s more lite than enlightening. Maybe it’s too much to ask that a snarky comedy about a grumpy god holding forth before an audience of heathen Americans have some spiritual heft to it, but the script comes close several times but ends up wishing it were a ditzy musical.

Written by former Daily Show writer David Javerbaum, this God had a nice run on Broadway last year starring Jim Parsons (Big Bang Theory), and now this left coast version stars Sean Hayes, whose success in Los Angeles and now San Francisco has encouraged producers to take the show, and Hayes, back to Broadway.

It’s interesting that in both productions, God has been played by an out gay man, but to be clear about the play’s conceit, the actor isn’t really playing God. He’s playing an actor chosen by God to be a channel for the almighty’s message after years of being incommunicado.

The most interesting thing about An Act of God is that it reveals God to be, well, an act. God is all powerful, mighty and omniscient, but he’s also angry, imperfect, guilty, regretful, spiteful and full of flaws reminiscent of those in his human creations. “Faith is a sausage best not seen made,” he says. This is not a likable God, nor is he trying to be. He’s grown weary of the Ten Commandments as his greatest contribution to Western civilization, so he spends 75 minutes revealing 10 new commandments (technically there are a few holdovers from the original).

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He’s assisted by two archangels, Gabriel (James Gleason, who reads from a Gutenberg Bible and Michael (David Josefsberg), who takes (fake) questions from the audience and asks his own provocative questions like why God allowed the Holocaust and 9/11 to happen and why he lets children – or anyone – die of cancer. God’s responses to those questions are evasive. At one point he punishes Michael by making one of his wings fall off (the audience awwwwwws in sympathetic union).

If you know Hayes from his years as Jack (Just Jack! and jazz hands) on Will and Grace, you’re familiar with his sharp comic timing and seemingly effortless way with a laugh line. He’s a real pro, and he sells this material well. He also handles the darker transitions well, as when God discusses why he made Abraham, one of his all-time favorite humans, almost kill his beloved son Isaac or when he talks about his son Jesus and all that messy business involving dying for our sins.

There’s an edge to the comedy here, and director Joe Mantello resists anything warm, cuddly or reassuring in this divine chat session. Hayes could be sweeter if he wanted to be, but the play calls for something harder and more thorny. It’s surprising, then, that the evening devolves into an only somewhat ironic musical number about believing in ourselves. It’s all very “Up with People,” but it doesn’t obscure the fact that God’s true message here is one of ambivalence. He moves in mysterious ways for sure, even to himself.

[bonus interview]
I interviewed Sean Hayes for a feature in the San Francisco Chronicle. Read the story here.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
David Javerbaum’s An Act of God continues through April 17 at SHN’s Golden Gate Theatre, 1 Taylor St., S.F. Tickets are $45-$150 (subject to change). Call 888-746-1799 or visit www.shnsf.com.

Merry murderous mayhem in musical Gentleman’s Guide

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The national touring company of the Tony Award-winning A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder includes (from left) Lesley McKinnell as Miss Barley, Kevin Massey as Monty Navarro and John Rapson as Asquith D’Ysquith, Jr. Below: Rapson as Lord Adalbert D’Ysquith (center in red jacket) surrounded by the cast. Photos by Joan Marcus

You really do root for the murderer in the delightful A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder. That may seem an insensitive scene in these brutal, terrifying days we’re living in, but the reality is that this musical comedy (based on a novel by Roy Horniman, which in turn inspired the wonderful 1949 movie Kind Hearts and Coronets) is all about karma. What you put into the world comes back to you. In this case, it’s about horrible people coming to horrible ends and a seemingly good guy whose kindness and suffering are rewarded until he goes too far and will end up seeing the cycle of retribution coming back to him.

If that sounds heavy, don’t worry. It isn’t. Not in the least. Gentleman’s Guide is 2 1/2 hours of wicked joy. It’s a beautifully crafted piece of musical theater, from set design (Alexander Dodge to lighting (Philip S. Rosenberg) to costumes (Linda Cho), with spotless direction by Darko Tresnnjak of a sterling cast.

It’s easy to see why the show won four Tony Awards including the coveted Best Musical – it’s got a smart book by Robert L. Freedman, a bright, tuneful score by Steven Lutvak and lyrics by both writers that propel the story and generate laughs. There’s nothing about it that doesn’t work. it feels at once like a throwback to bawdy British music hall music and comedy circa 1900 mixed with Gilbert and Sullivan meet Sondheim cleverness with some modern comic sensibility thrown in to keep it fresh.

The entire ensemble is wonderful, but in many ways, this is a two-man show. Kevin Massey is entirely appealing as Montague Navarro, a sweet, humble member of the lower class who learns that his bloodline is anything but impoverished. He is a D’Ysquith, and he happens to be ninth in line to be the Earl of Highhurst. After being harshly rebuffed by the family he has only recently discovered, Monty hatches a plan to murder each D’Ysquith standing between him and his earldom.

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Mostly Monty facilitates deaths rather than causes them. Sometimes he just happens to be there when a member of the cursed family kicks it. But he does participate in the mayhem, and his ascent is not without its darker moments.

Happily all the D’Ysquiths who will soon encounter that bucket and kick it are played by the marvelous John Rapson. A quick-change artist of highest degree, Rapson is hilarious as the toothy Rev. Lord Ezekial D’Ysquith, whose fondness for booze and the top of the bell tower lead to an inevitable fall from grace, and his turn as hammy actress Lady Salomé D’Ysquith Pumphrey, is fast but so very memorable. Rapson and Massey have terrific chemistry (there’s even a kind D’Ysquith, Lord Asquith D’Ysquith Sr.), but the stage positively roars to life with Rapson as the boorish Lord Adalbert D’Ysquith, whose sparring with his equally boorish wife, Lady Eugenia (played by the marvelous Kristen Mengelkoch) is a comic highlight of an already very funny show.

Lutvak and Freedman’s score is so precisely perfect for this story that I didn’t fully get it until I actually saw the show. Having previously listened to the Broadway cast album I appreciated its humor and sophistication but found it hard to discern stand-alone appeal. Now I know why. The songs are the motor of the show and are so character and plot specific that divorced from the show itself, they don’t have their full charge. It’s exciting to hear musical theater songs that astutely crafted.

Massey and Rapson get strong support from their cast, especially Kristen Beth Williams as Sibella, Monty’s one true love who can’t abide his poverty and so marries for money, and Adrienne Eller as Phoeobe D’Ysquith, a distant cousin of Monty’s who ends up as a viable love interest.

It’s astonishing how murdery and feel-good Gentleman’s Guide manages to be. It’s tricky tone is masterfully handled, and if there’s room for a sequel (spoiler alert: there is), I’ll be first in line.

[bonus interview]
I talked to A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder creators Steven Lutvak and Robert Freedman and tour stars John Rapson and Kevin Massey for a feature on the San Francisco Chronicle. Read the story here. Read the sidebar about the inspirational movie Kind Hearts and Coronets here.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder continues through Dec. 27 at the Golden Gate Theatre, 1 Taylor St., San Francisco. Tickets are $45-$212 (subject to change). Call 888-746-1799 or visit www.shnsf.com.

Delightful Matilda mostly avoids chokey

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The young ensemble of the national Broadway touring company of Matilda the Musical makes the song “When I Grow Up” really swing at the Orpheum Theatre. Below: Gabrielle Gutierrez plays the triumphant pint-sized super hero, Matilda. Photos by Joan Marcus

What is it about Roald Dahl that makes his books so ripe for adaptation? Probably the most famous book-to-screen-to-stage example from his canon is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which became a beloved movie musical in 1971 (with the title shifted to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory). The 2005 remake by Tim Burton is much less beloved, and the splashy 2013 West End stage musical has been a big, long-running hit and will hit Broadway in the upcoming season.

Others of Dahl’s stories have been turned into movies: James and the Giant Peach, The Witches and Fantastic Mr. Fox among others. Dahl’s rich imagination, edgy sensibility and ability to delight (and occasionally disgust) children without pandering to them makes his work ripe for adaptation. His 1998 novel Matilda became a movie in 1996, and an initial musical adaptation in 1990 went nowhere. But Matilda, it seems, was destined to be a musical. The Royal Shakespeare Company commissioned Australian actor-musiciain-comedian and Dahl fan Tim Minchin to compose the score and writer Dennis Kelly to adapt the book. The resulting musical, cleverly titled Matilda the Musical debuted in 2010, stormed the West End and Broadway (still running in both locations) and is now touring the U.S.

The greatest compliment you can pay to the musical is that it really feels like Dahl. It’s big and dark and bursting with grotesqueries, but it’s sweet at heart without being cloying. Minchin’s sharp, tuneful, highly enjoyable score is a major factor, and Kelly’s book hews closely to the novel but makes some smart tweaks along the way. Director Matthew Warchus wrangles the adorability of his child actors and lets them shine, especially amid the overplayed (and very funny) horrible adults like Miss Trunchbull, the meanest headmistress imaginable (she puts misbehaving children in mini-prison called “chokey”) and a former Olympic hammer-throwing champion.

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On tour, part of the SHN season at the Orpheum Theatre, Trunchbull is played by Bryce Ryness, who has the tremendous skill of underplaying and overplaying at the same time. It’s genius, and he gets laughs just from standing there in his Trunchbull drag (costumes are by Rob Howell, who also designed the set full of wooden letter blocks and tiles).

The trenchant thing about Matilda is that it’s a love story for two people who need each other but haven’t quite found each other or a way to be together. It’s not a romantic love story – more like a family of choice (as opposed to blood) in its nascent stage.

Our protagonist is precocious Matilda (played at Saturday’s performance by the unbelievably adorable Gabrielle Gutierrez, who alternates in the role with Mia Sinclair Jenness and Mabel Tyler), a 5-year-old with genius tendencies. She has taught herself to read and worked her way through Dickens. If she picks up a foreign novel, she teaches herself the language so she can appreciate the author’s work in her/his native language. A bright light in a dark world, Matilda has the misfortune of having been born to the Wormwoods. Mrs. Wormwood (Cassie Silva) is obsessed with appearance and ballroom dancing (her partner, Rudolpho, played by Jaquez Andre Sims is always good for a laugh). Her father, slimy used car salesman and all-around cheat (the marvelous clown Quinn Mattfeld), calls her “boy” because he so wanted a son he basically denies her very existence. Both Wormwoods are cretins who prefer “telly” and can’t understand why their child wastes time with books.

At school, Matilda fares no better under the tyrannical rule of Agnes Trunchbull, whose delight in torturing the students is as disturbing as it is entertaining (and occasionally hilarious). The only solace Matilda receives in the world comes from a kindly librarian (Ora Jones), whom Matilda regales with stories of daring do and tragic romance, and teacher Miss Honey (Jennifer Blood), whose pedagogical approach involves kindness and patience – the antithesis of the Trunchbull method.

Matilda really is a pint-sized super hero. She will liberate her fellow students, dispatch her family, make mincemeat of Trunchbull and make the world (or her world, anyway) safe for great books. At the height of her powers, she’ll even threaten to turn this story into Stephen King’s Carrie, but then she’ll find the home she deserves, all the while singing some catchy, zippy songs like “When I Grow Up,” “Naughty” and “Revolting Children.”

The only drawback to this touring production is a muddy sound design that, combined with some mushy British accents, renders only about 50 percent of the dialogue/lyrics understandable. The adults fare better than the children, but it’s a significant problem that’s only overcome by the strong acting, which puts the story over in spite of our inability to understand what’s being said or sung. That’s a shame because there’s a whole lot to enjoy here that’s not quite coming across.

[bonus interview]
I had a lively chat with Matilda composer Tim Minchin for a story in the San Francisco Chronicle. Read the feature here.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Matilda the Musical continues through Aug. 15 at the Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market St., San Francisco. Tickets are $45-$210 (subject to change). Call 888-746-1799 or visit www.shnsf.com.

Disney’s Newsies seizes its musical day

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The Broadway touring company of Disney’s Newsies, a flop movie musical that found new life on stage, lands at the Orpheum Theatre as part of the SHN season. Below: Dan DeLuca (center) is Jack Kelly, the leading newsboy with dreams of Santa Fe in Newsies. ©Disney. Photos by Deen Van Meer

Newsies that unlikely Broadway hit that started out as a flop movie musical, isn’t so much about groundbreaking theater as it is a sterling example of how efficient Disney can be at creating solid, broadly appealing entertainment.

The Broadway production closed last fall, but the tour dances on. If ever there was a show meant for the road, it’s Newsies, a high-energy, stick-it-to-the-man ode to unions of all kind (labor, romantic, brotherly). Now at the Orpheum Theatre as part of the SHN season, Newsies is the definition of crowd pleaser.

You can feel the machinery working here as Harvey Fierstein amps up and fills out the bare-bones movie screenplay about New York news boys who rebelled against money-grubbing Joseph Pulitzer in 1899. He dutifully provides a strong, intelligent young woman (absent from the movie), raises the dramatic stakes for the leading characters and does his best to make the boys themselves more than their identifying features (Crutchie has a crutch, Spot has a big arm mole, Specs wears…well, you get it). Composer Alan Menken and lyricist Jack Feldman tinker with the movie songs (which are quite good) and a few more, the best of which is the lively “Watch What Happens.”

Director Jeff Calhoun adopts a strategy of speed and motion to keep Newsies leaping through its 2 1/2 hours. There’s hardly a dull moment (except maybe for Pulitzer getting a shave), and much of the show’s entertainment value comes down to the choreography by Christopher Gattelli. These aren’t really news boys, after all. They’re Broadway dancers, and boy oh boy (oh, boys!) do they get to demonstrate their talent. From the gymnastics of “Carrying the Banner” and “Seize the Day” to the tap of “King of New York,” these young men are fountains of twirling testosterone. Acrobatic, graceful and aggressive, these dancers are the show’s motor, and though the plot of the little guys against the big bazillionaire bully has its moments, it’s the sheer joy that comes through the dancing that makes Newsies memorable.

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Dan DeLuca makes for a charismatic leading man as Jack Kelly, the de facto unionizer of the Newsies, and what’s a downtrodden hero without a pipe dream? For Jack, that translates to dreams of life out West in Santa Fe. DeLuca has a strong voice tinged with modern pop stylings. He and Stephanie Styles have a nice chemistry, which helps tone down the schmaltz in their duet, “Something to Believe I,” one of those love songs where they actually have to stop singing so they can kiss. Twice. Styles’ best moment is “Watch What Happens,” which, in addition to being an ode to journalism (yay, newspapers!), captures youthful, if naive, enthusiasm: “Their mistake is they got old. That is not a mistake we’ll be making. No sir, we’ll stay young forever.”

Youth itself is practically a character on this stage. “Newsies” revels in the idealism and, especially, the energy of youth. That’s why the anthems – “Seize the Day,” “Once and For All” – have such power. It’s like Les Miz lite with less flag waving and more dancing on newsprint.

The only really disappointing thing about Newsies is its ending. After all those stirring anthems, the strike is resolved and their are reprises of “Seize the Day” and “King of New York.” No powerful ballad or chorale to capture the moment or perhaps consider the future. Of course the finale/curtain call is overloaded with more hyperkinetic dancing, which is fun, of course, but by this time in the evening, we’re craving something more than melodrama, leaps and a relentlessly cheerful ensemble.

It’s all slick and efficient and impeccably performed – entertaining to be sure, but sometimes big, bold headlines aren’t enough.

[bonus interview]
I interviewed composer Alan Menken and cast member (and Bay Area native) Julian DeGuzman for a feature in the San Francisco Chronicle. Read the story here.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Newsies continues through March 15 at the Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market St., San Francisco. Tickets are $45-$250. Call 888-746-1799 or visit www.shnsf.com.

A Kinky kick in the pants

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Steven Booth (left) and Kyle Taylor Parker are Charlie and Lola in the Broadway national tour of Kinky Boots with a Tony Award-winning score by Cyndi Lauper. The show, based on the 2005 movie of the same name, is part of the SHN season at the Orpheum Theatre through Dec. 28. Below: Booth’s Charlie takes a fancy to Lindsay Nicole Chambers’ Lauren. Photos by Matthew Murphy

Kinky Boots is the kind of musical comedy that leaves no unpleasant aftertaste. There’s no guilt in enjoying its pleasures, and though it’s not exactly an emotional feast, neither is it empty calories. This is a well-crafted, tuneful show whose only aim is to entertain and uplift. It succeeds on both counts.

A huge hit on Broadway, where it racked up six Tony Awards and is well into its second year, Kinky Boots is based on the 2005 film of the same name, one of those distinctly British underdog feel-good movies they do so well over there. Harvey Fierstein, adapted the movie, Cyndi Lauper made her Broadway composing debut with the score, and Jerry Mitchell (last seen in these parts with the Broadway-bound Legally Blondereview here) directs and choreographs in his typically efficient, ebullient manner.

The national touring production of Kinky Boots now at the Orpheum Theatre as part of the SHN season is, in short, a blast. It’s tender hearted, energetic and filled with good will toward men, women and those who have yet to make up their mind.

What’s intriguing about the structure of the show is that there’s no great villain other than hard times and closed minds. Set in a Northampton, England shoe factor on the skids, the story is about a son reluctantly taking over the family business, finding a way to save it from extinction and challenging his community’s (and, it turns out, his own) basic attitudes of acceptance. Compared to Legally Blonde, a less successful screen-to-stage adaptation, this is Shakespeare or Greek tragedy.

Several elements contribute to the high level of Kinky enjoyment. The first is Fierstein’s book. This is a man who knows his way around drag queens (Torch Song Trilogy, La Cage aux Folles, Hairspray), so when it comes to dealing with his leading lady here – a fierce drag queen named Lola – he knows how not to write in stereotypes. He knows how to depict a fully rounded person who is confident in some parts of her life and not in others (daddy issues anyone?). He gives us two protagonists: Lola, whose flair for fabulous footwear is the key to survival for the shoe factory, and Charlie, a shoemaker by birth who doesn’t quite know what he wants in life or who he is. There’s also a third main character in the form of the entire shoe factory community, which grows to include Lola’s entourage of drag queen friends. By the end, that community turns out to be the most rewarding character of all.

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If you want to know how to move a show like a sexy, well-oiled machine, Mitchell is your man. The trick is not letting the machine overwhelm the production, lending a cold, mechanical feeling take over the stage. Mitchell is a master at this, slowing the gears for moments of warmth, charm, humor and sex appeal.

And finally there’s Lauper’s score. If you only know her mega-hits from the ’80s, you’ll recognize some of that sound in the songs. She can do club and disco with real flair and not make it seem out of place on the musical stage. But there’s a lot more here to her musical palette. She can do character songs (“The History of Wrong Guys” sung by Lauren, the delightful woman Charlie should be in love with), heart-wrenching ballads (Lola’s “Not My Father’s Son”), great pop tunes (“What a Woman Wants”) and driving, stirring anthems (“Raise You Up/Just Be”). This is not some pop pretender cashing in on Broadway. Lauper is a real tunesmith who cares about character and narrative. It will be exciting to see what project she takes on next.

This zippy package is driven by an amiable cast headed by Steven Booth as likable everyman Charlie and the powerhouse Kyle Taylor Parker as Lola. Booth is intriguing because he might be dismissed as a nice nebbish (think Dave Foley from Kids in the Hall), but he’s got a little edge to him, and when he sings (as in his big solo, “Soul of a Man”) he commands attention and defies expectations (a theme of the show). Parker starts fabulous and stays that way. In full drag, he looks like an ultra-glam Dionne Warwick, and he wears the costumes (by Gregg Barnes) with real panache. He delivers on every level and even gets his Act 2 Shirley Bassey moment with the power ballad “Hold Me in Your Heart.”

The emotional stakes in Act 2 get a little overwhelmed by the slick staging (a boxing match between Lola and a factory thug packs a punch), and the actors could dial it up a notch, but Kinky Boots remains a well-heeled musical that’s good for the sole, er, soul.

[bonus interview]
I talked to Kinky Boots co-creators Cyndi Lauper and Harvey Fierstein for a feature in the San Francisco Chronicle. Read the story here.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Kinky Boots continues through Dec. 28 at the Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market St., San Francisco. Tickets are $75 to $300. Call 888-746-1799 or visit www.shnsf.com.

Pippin in the center ring: razzle-dazzling!

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Sasha Allen (center) is the Player, in the touring production of Diane Paulus’ revival of Pippin, the 1972 musical by Stephen Schwartz and Roger O. Hirson. The exuberant new production is set in a circus. Below: John Rubinstein, who originated the role of Pippin in 1972, now plays Pippin’s father, King Charlemagne. Pippin is played by Matthew James Thomas. Photos by Terry Shapiro

Now this is how you revive a musical.Sure, you could set Les Misérables or Sunday in the Park with George in a circus with results that would likely be as baffling as they are entertaining. But when Diane Paulus was inspired to set her revival of Pippin under the big top, she was going for something more than a bright and shiny gimmick. Working with “circus creator” Gypsy Snier of the acclaimed Montréal-based theatrical circus company 7 doigts de la main, Paulus crafted a physical production that mirrored the emotional journey of the show’s central character.

It’s a brilliant concept and one that reenergizes the 1972 show and features its score by Stephen Schwartz and book by Roger O. Hirson off to their greatest advantage. Pippin still feels a little like a hippy ’70s musical (a good thing in my book), but this production finds something even more universal in it and makes it feel surprisingly of the moment.

The touring production of Paulus’ Tony Award-winning revival pulled in to the Golden Gate Theatre as part of the SHN season, and it’s a walloping good time. Everything from the cast (singers, dancers and acrobats), to the sets (by Scott Pask) to the lights (by Kenneth Posner to the music (band under the direction of Ryan Cantwell) is first rate and throbbing with life. That’s what you want from this show: color and fun and good old-fashioned razzle-dazzle – until you don’t.

And that’s the trick of Pippin. Originally directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse the show was sly and sexy and funny, doing for war and raping and pillaging and greed what Chicago (also a Fosse production) did for fame whoring. Fosse’s troupe of players, led by The Player, lent a cynical tone to Pippin’s quest for fulfillment. He thinks he’s extraordinary and destined for great things like fame, wealth and cosmic importance, but the players around him know better and continually pull him back into reality.

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In Paulus’ production, that world of carnal lust, power lust, filthy lucre lust is embodied by Sasha Allen as The Player and by the extraordinary ensemble creating the acrobatic circus world around her. Everything is thrilling and gasp-inducing and marvelous and colorful – all the things you want a seductive world to be. And as Pippin, played here as on Broadway by Matthew James Thomas, moves through his journey toward fulfillment (“gotta find my corner of the sky”), the spinning circus of war and politics and sex and revolution is pretty seductive (and incredibly fun to watch).

Act 1 ends in a blaze of glory, but Act 2 presents a big challenge as Pippin actually evolves and begins to embrace a simpler life where fulfillment can be found in work, in nature, in relationships with other people. That writhing, bounding, thrusting mass of players and stunt people becomes a whole lot less important, which means the tone of Act 2 is quite different from Act 1. It’s slower, quieter and boasts a lot less dazzle. Some would say Act 2 is inferior to Act 1 for that reason, but to remain true to Pippin’s story, that’s how it has to be, and this another reason Paulus’ choice of the circus world is so astute. When the circus begins to abate, you really feel its absence. The problem isn’t the lack of spectacle but rather the blandness that begins to infuse Schwartz’s score here. Songs like “Kind of Woman” and “Love Song” are nice, but not nearly as satisfying as earlier tunes like “Magic to Do” or “Morning Glow.”

But the overall concept is a huge win, and it helps make sense of the book, allowing the audience to have a whole lot of fun along the way. Among the many highlights are “War Is a Science” as Pippin’s papa, King Charlemagne, teaches him how to head into battle. Charlemagne, or Charles as he’s called here, is played with gusto by John Rubinstein, who originated the role of Pippin in the original production. Rubinstein seems to relish every minute on stage, and he shows off some fancy knife work in the circus arena.

The show is all but stolen by Lucie Arnaz as Berthe, Pippin’s grandmother. Paulus and Snider have devised a routine for her that is at once astonishing and beautiful. The song, “No Time at All,” becomes the true showstopper of the evening – it’s a sing-along, a wonderful circus act and a surprisingly heartfelt communication between grandmother and grandson. (Side note: Andrea Martin, who won a Tony as Berthe on Broadway, reprises the role the last two weeks of the run in San Francisco.)

Another highlight is Sabrina Harper as Fastrada, wife of the king who would like their son Louis (not Pippin) to ascend the throne. Her number, “Spread a Little Sunshine,” shows off choreographer Chet Walker’s Fosse-inspired moves and gives us three lightning-fast costume changes (costume designs are by Dominiue Lemieux).

The show is chock full of wonderful little moments, from the conversation with the beheaded man to the disembodied legs pushing the cart to the hilarious chickens in the barnyard. It’s musical theater pageantry at its best (though the sound in the Golden Gate leaves something to be desired), and it’s a joy to run away with this unique, ultimately quite moving, circus.

[bonus interview]
I had the pleasure of interviewing Pippin circus creator Gypsy Snider, a San Francisco native and member of local circus royalty, for the San Francisco Chronicle. Read the story here.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Pippin continues through Oct. 19 at the Golden Gate Theatre, 1 Taylor St., San Francisco. Tickets are $40 to $210. Call 888-746-1799 or visit www.shnsf.com.