In (and out of) the Motown groove

Posted on August 20, 2014 by Chad Jones

Reed L. Shannon (center) as Michael Jackson performing with the Jackson 5 in the Broadway national tour of Motown: The Musical at the Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco. Below: Krisha Marcano (left, as Florence Ballard), Allison Semmes (center, as Diana Ross) and Trisha Jeffrey (Mary Wilson) sing supreme. Photos by Joan Marcus

The challenge in reviewing Motown: The Musical is to be honest about its two most prominent components. The first is the clunky, self-aggrandizing book by Motown founder Berry Gordy who, at one point, has Diana Ross bat her big eyelashes and compare him to Martin Luther King Jr.. He also depicts the first time he attempted to sleep with Ross as a dismal failure, but when you’re in bed with a pop legend in the making and you’re writing the script, you can have her tell you everything will be OK and then sing “I Hear a Symphony” to you. It should be funny, and it is, but it’s just as cringe-inducing.

The other component, and this is far, far more important, is the Motown music itself. You simply cannot go wrong with that glorious music, the music that bridged racial and generation gaps when it was new and then never stopped. If this show were only one song after another, with none of the plot or “character” distractions, it would be a revue to remember. This cast is strong and appealing, the band is hot (and LOUD) and the songs spill out, one more joyful than the next.

So you have great music and wonderful performances trapped in schlocky show, which places the review right smack in the middle: criticizing the structure and the writing and loving the music and performances.

I reviewed Motown: The Musical for the San Francisco Chronicle. Here’s a sampling:

Berry sets himself up as the protagonist (played by Clifton Oliver) but doesn’t make himself a multidimensional character. He’s determined, that’s for sure, but as a character he doesn’t grow or change or do anything other than fight for his music empire. In the real world, that’s momentous, but on stage, it’s nothing we haven’t seen in other jukebox musicals like “Jersey Boys” or “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical,” both of which have much more expertly crafted books.

What “Motown” has that those other musicals don’t is an extraordinary songbook that just won’t quit. Even at nearly three hours, the show doesn’t come close to capturing all the fantastic Motown hits.

Read the full review here.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Motown: The Musical continues through Sept. 28 at the Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market St., San Francisco. Tickets are $65-$210. Call (888) 746-1799 or visit www.shnsf.com.

Forbidden Blah-way is more like it

Posted on July 11, 2014 by Chad Jones

Gina Kreiezmar delivers a spot-on Patti LuPone impression in Forbidden Broadway: Alive and Kicking! at Feinstein’s at the Nikko. Below: Kreiezmar again, this time as Mary Poppins. Photos by Carol Rosegg

It must be better in New York.

I’ve heard about Forbidden Broadway for much of its 32-year history and enjoyed some very funny recordings on several of the cast albums, but until this week, I had never seen a production. In New York, time is generally consumed with actual Broadway, which leaves little time for the Forbidden variety.

A touring version of the off-Broadway show, dubbed Alive and Kicking! opened an extended run at Feinstein’s at the Nikko Thursday, and the 70-minute show was underwhelming to say the least.

Four performers, each of whom has some appealing moments, and musical director Catherine Stornetta do their best to make the most of some generally weak and dated material by Gerard Alessandrini, the show’s creator.

If, when spoofing Broadway, the best you can come up with is Annie worrying about gray hair, Cameron Mackintosh selling merchandise and Barbra Streisand being egotistical, you’ve got problems. The two most current bits involve a lengthy spoof of Once (which happens to be playing a few blocks away at the Curran Theatre) and an Idina Menzel/”Let It Go” riff. Otherwise, we get Mandy Patinkin, Ethel Merman, Les Miz and Jersey Boys rather than anything that’s making news on Broadway today. Perhaps they figure we numbskulls in the provinces wouldn’t get the most current Broadway jokes about Hedwig or Rocky or Aladdin.

The saving grace here comes in the form of cast member Gina Kreiezmar, who delivers a spot-on Patti LuPone impression (“everything’s coming up roses for me and for meeeeee”) and offers an amusing Mary Poppins suffering the indignities of dumbed-down shows manufactured for low-brow audiences in “Feed the ‘Burbs.”

There are laughs to be had here, but they’re not nearly as frequent as they’re intended to be, and too often the numbers are shrill and forced and as low-brow as the shows it’s intending to lampoon.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Forbidden Broadway: Alive and Kicking! continues through July 27 at Feinstein’s at the Nikko, 222 Mason St., San Francisco. Tickets are $45-$60. Call 866-663-1063 or visit www.ticketweb.com.

Transcendence (and show tunes!) under Sonoma stars

Posted on July 6, 2014 by Chad Jones

The setting for Transcendence Theatre Company’s “Broadway Under the Stars” summer series involves the ruins of a winery and a hillside vineyard in the heart of Sonoma’s spectacular Jack London State Park. Photo by Robbi Pengelly. BELOW CENTER: Beautifully staged, a Transcendence show is as classy as its surroundings. Photo By Ryan Daffurn. BELOW BOTTOM: As the sun sets, the show tunes light the night with lively choreography and stunning performances by a Broadway-caliber cast. Photo by Ray Mabry.

“I would rather be ashes than dust!
I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.
I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.
The function of man is to live, not to exist.
I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time.”
― Jack London

Those words took on special meaning when uttered at the start of One Singular Sensation, the first of this summer’s three Broadway Under the Stars shows from Transcendence Theatre Company in residence for a third summer at Jack London State Park.

The setting for the shows couldn’t be more beautiful. The audience is seated in the ruins of a winery, and behind the stage, just beyond the crumbling stone wall, are rolling Sonoma hills, trees toward the top and grapevines climbing in orderly rows along the sides.

Fans of Broadway musicals and show music take note: you do not want to miss the work of Transcendence Theatre Company. If you worry about musical revues coming off like slick cruise ship shlock, worry not. This is a top-tier professional company in which the large, extravagantly talented troupers boast a bevy of Broadway and national tour credits. Direction, choreography and musical direction are all sharp, unadorned and focused on pure, energizing entertainment.

As thrilling as the performances are, I would also say that you don’t necessarily have to be a Broadway fan to have a grand time at a Transcendence event. The whole experience, from the drive to Jack London State Park (a gem of a state park full of history, hiking trails and a 2,000-year-old redwood) to the pre-show wine and food bacchanalia, it’s all part what could (and should) be a great Bay Area outdoor theater tradition.

And then there’s the show itself, essentially two-plus hours of shimmering Broadway songs and dances culled from classic and contemporary musicals performed by artists who seem to be thriving on the spotlight and the sultry Sonoma nights. The show begins just before sunset, and by the beginning of Act 2, night has kicked in, with the moon and stars giving the show’s colorful lighting design some stiff competition.

The first show of the season, One Singular Sensation, which closed last Saturday (July 5), featured, among other highlights, “Fugue for Tinhorns” from Guys and Dolls performed by three cowboys on real live horses and then dazzled with too many showstoppers to enumerate, but here are a few:

Sonoma native Lexy Fridell delivering a one-woman musical comedy in the form of the song “The Girl in 14G.”
A trio of Adam Halpin, James D. Sasser and Stephan Stubbins turning Sondheim’s well-worn “Being Alive” into something dazzlingly fresh
Fridell (again) and the charming Scott Barnhardt finding every laugh in “The Song That Goes Like This” from Spalmalot
The company performing a medley of TV theme songs that made the audience so giddy with delight it had to be experienced to be believed.

In short, One Singular Sensation was sensational. Kudos to director Melissa Giattino, musical director Benjamin Rauhala and choreographer Molly Alvarez (with Amanda Lehman, Dylan Smith and Kurt Domoney) for creating destination theater worthy of whatever journey it takes to get there.

[bonus video]

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Transcendence Theatre Company’s “Broadway Under the Stars” series continues with Fantastical Family Night July 25 and 26; The Music of the Night Aug. 14-24 and a Gala Celebration Sept. 5 and 6. Transcendence also presents its “Artist Series” with Lexy Fridell in Brace Yourself July 12 and 13; Carrie Manolakos and Morgan Karr in concert Aug. 1 and 2; Steppin’ Out Live! with Ben Vereen Aug. 9; Witness Uganda Aug. 19; Leah Sprecher and Stephan Stubbins in Oh What a Beautiful Mashup Aug. 28. Call 877-424-1414 or visit www.ttcsonoma.org.

Depth, beauty surge through glorious Once

Posted on June 19, 2014 by Chad Jones

Stuart Ward is the guy and Dani de Waal is the girl in the national tour of the Tony Award-winning musical Once based on the movie of the same name. Below: The company of Once performs the transcendent number “Gold” at the end of Act 1. Photos by Joan Marcus

If every movie-to-musical transformation were as soulful and creative as Once the state of the Broadway musical would be in a much better place.

There would seem to be no less likely candidate for the Broadway treatment than the sweet and modest 2007 Irish indie film Once about a frustrated singer/songwriter in Dublin and the Czech immigrant who changes his life. It’s a love story and not a love story, a musical and not a musical. Above all else, it’s intimate and delicate, like a slice of life infused with passionate music transferred with great love to the big screen.

Fans of the movie (which nabbed a best song Oscar for songwriters/stars Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová’s “Falling Slowly”) let out a collective groan when it was announced that Once would be turned into a Broadway musical. Kicklines across the River Liffey? Or worse, riverdancing through the countryside?

One of the great joys of Once, the musical, is that there’s nary a trace of crass Broadway commercialism in the telling of this still-intimate friendship/love story. Director John Tiffany, choreographer Steven Hoggett and music supervisor/orchestrator Martin Lowe bring such sensitivity, joy and genuine emotion to their adaptation that it turns out to be – perhaps it’s sacrilege to say – better than the original.

Once scored 11 Tony nominations in 2012 and won eight, including best musical, which virtually ensures a national tour. So now we have the road company of Once settling in at the Curran Theatre as part of the SHN season.

As on Broadway, Bob Crowley’s set is a rather impressionistic version of a Dublin pub (lots of lights and tarnished mirrors), and as on Broadway, the pub is open before the show and at intermission to sell beer and wine. If you go early enough before the show, be sure to enjoy your drink on stage (the “bouncers” limit the number of folks on stage so do get there early). About 10 minutes before the show begins, the actor-musicians arrive and begin playing Irish pub songs.

This is all part of director Tiffany’s genius method of closing the gap – literally and figuratively – between actors and audience. He wants his audience active and involved, so when he asks us to hold multiple realities, we do so eagerly. The performers are characters in the story and they’re musicians. They’re specific people and they’re all people. The pub is, in fact, a pub, and it’s also an apartment crowded with Czech immigrants, a vacuum repair shop, a recording studio, the office of a bank loan officer, a hilltop, a beach. Some musical numbers are actual musical numbers performed in a specific place, like on a street corner or at a pub’s open-mic night. Others are pure expression of feeling and are physical manifestations of emotion.

It may sound complicated, and it is to a degree, but it’s completely accessible because Tiffany’s staging and Hoggett’s movement are so clear and convey so much. The same is true of Lowe’s arrangements, beautifully performed by the ensemble on guitars, violins, cellos, accordions and percussion. The sound is warm and passionate and so intense you sometimes want to join the dancing and the playing because watching isn’t enough (whether or not you’re a dancer or a musician hardly seems to matter).

The number at the end of Act 1, “Gold” (written by Fergus O’Farrell), is a prime example of why Once works so well and on so many levels. The set-up involves the Girl (Dani de Waal) pushing her new friend (Stuart Ward) to perform one of his songs on a pub’s small stage. She believes he is “stopped” in his life, the result of a bad break-up, and she senses that his music is the way to un-stop him. He begins singing the song, and she’s mesmerized by him. The audience begins to play along with the singer, and as the passion builds, the musicians rise from their chairs and dance and play. It’s electric and stunning and conveys a sense of what it feels like to be caught up in music and what it might feel like to be creating great music with a group. It’s like Once itself: there’s synchronicity, true connection, glorious music and utter transcendence.

[bonus interview]
I talked to director John Tiffany and choreographer Steven Hoggett for a story in the San Francisco Chronicle. Read the feature here.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Once continues through July 13 at the Curran Theatre, 445 Geary St., San Francisco. Tickets are $40-$210. Call 888-746-1799 or visit www.shnsf.com.

Chita! The liveliest living legend of all

Posted on February 24, 2014 by Chad Jones

The liveliest living legend you’re ever likely to see: Ms. Chita Rivera, still going strong at 81, performed her cabaret act Chita: A Legendary Celebration as part of Bay Area Cabaret’s 10th anniversary season in the Venetian Room at the Fairmont. Photo by Monica Simoes. Photo below by Laurie Marie Duncan

In her opening number, Chita Rivera sings, “You’re alive, so come on and show it. There’s such a lot of livin’ to do.” She finishes the song, and the 81-year-old legend adds, “I mean it.” And she’s not kidding. After a triumphant turn in the Fairmont’s Venetian Room in 2010, Rivera returned to the Bay Area Cabaret as part of the company’s 10th anniversary season. Rivera’s performance four years ago was spectacular (read my review here). This time out, she was beyond spectacular. She exuded energy and charm and pizzazz for 90 minutes and dazzled, seemingly without even trying to. It’s just who she is.

In Chita: A Legendary Celebration (somewhat related to the show she did in New York last year with chorus boys and superstar guests), she sings many of the same songs she sang four years ago and told versions of the same stories. While that might work against some performers, Rivera brings exuberance to every full-throated note she sings or word she utters.

She was in fine voice on Sunday and was especially marvelous on Brel’s “Carousel,” a sometimes annoying musical nervous breakdown that Rivera turned into a showstopper, and on her trio of tunes from Kiss of the Spider Woman.. No one will ever sing songs from Chicago like Rivera. During “Nowadays,” she even did a Gwen Verdon impression that was so uncanny it drew gasps from the adoring audience.

As she sang, told stories and even did a little dancing (she shook her hip at one point and exclaimed, “It still works!”), Rivera was ageless. A hoofer, a workhouse, a true Broadway superstar doing what she does best: making her audience members even happier than they expected to be.

Here are Chita and Gwen from the Mike Douglas Show during the original run of Chicago.

[bonus interview]
I had the great pleasure of chatting with Chita Rivera for a story in the San Francisco Chronicle. Read about Ms. Rivera’s TV viewing habits and her desire to play a zombie on The Walking Dead. Click here to read the story.

Also, there was a nugget of info that didn’t make it into the story but did make it into the editor’s note that also had to do with TV:

When you picture Chita Rivera, you think Broadway. You think “West Side Story.”

But when Chad Jones interviewed Rivera for this week’s cover story, they had a great conversation about, of all things, television.

“When she’s not working, Rivera likes to watch TV,” Jones says. “She has complete disdain for reality shows, especially ‘Dance Moms’ about kids in dance class.” Among her favorites? There’s “Walking Dead,” “Breaking Bad” and pretty much anything on PBS, Jones says. But “she will admit that if she has time in the morning, she likes ‘The Price Is Right’ and ‘Let’s Make a Deal,’ both of which tap into the positive attitude she’s managed to hold onto all these years,” Jones says.

“I like people jumping up and down and winning things and not being afraid to look foolish,” Rivera says. “There’s a life lesson in there.”

Enchanting Starcatcher has all the right star stuff

Posted on November 7, 2013 by Chad Jones

The company of Peter and the Starcatcher opens Act 2 with a rousing number involving Neverland mermaids. The Tony Award-winning play continues through Dec. 1 at the Curran Theatre as part of the SHN season. Below: Peter (Joey deBettencourt) takes a leap of faith into a golden lagoon. Photos by Jenny Anderson

Is it the fantasy of flying? The lure of perpetual youth? The constant yearning for home? Whatever the reason, the interest in the Peter Pan story seems, if anything, even more persistent than when J.M. Barrie introduced it in the early 1900s both in book form and as a play. His story of the flying boy who will never mature beyond the cusp of manhood touched some kind of universal nerve that has resonated through a century’s worth of adaptations, reinterpretations and flights of fancy.

The most recent big-ticket re-telling comes from playwright Rick Elice, half of the team (with Marshall Brickman behind the musical juggernaut known as Jersey Boys), who has adapted the Peter Pan prequel Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Berry and Ridley Pearson for the stage.

Working with directors Roger Rees and Alex Timbers, Elice conceives the tale as a piece of stripped-down theatrical storytelling short on the kind of manufactured spectacle and special effects we’ve come to expect from Tony Award-winning Broadway shows (this one has five such statues) and long on crackling good humor, rough-edged intelligence and heart.

The touring production of Peter and the Starcatcher now at the Curran Theatre as part of the SHN season, is as delightful as the version I saw on Broadway. Because this is serious storytelling, with the company of actors playing many roles with very few costume alterations, it takes a minute to shake off the constraints of the usual theatergoing, you know, where the show itself does all the work and you just sit there. Peter demands a little something of its audience and offers rewards for participation.

The marvelous designers Donyale Werle (sets) and Paloma Young, with assists from Jeff Croiter’s lights and Darron L. West’s sound, give us just what we need to tease our imaginations into believing we’re seeing a “period” piece with one foot in 1880s London and the high seas and the other grounded in a modern sensibility. I’ve heard the description “steam punk” for the design (especially the costumes), and I get the punk part, just not the steam. They’re great, raggedy costumes that suggest more than outright describe. For instance, a distinguished government man in his great coat has medals on his chest, but if you really look, they’re actually keys dangling there.

That sense of re-use infuses the production with a playful, resourceful sense of childhood: serious play with drama, outcomes and reality mixed into the fantasy and imagination. You see it in the Victorian proscenium decorated with garden implements and kitchenware. You see it in the mermaids that open Act 2, with their tails made of fans and bras made of teapots and vegetable steamers. And you see it in an extraordinary piece of rope that becomes a door, a ship’s deck and many other things over the course of the play.

The 12-member company tells the story and acts the story, which takes a little getting used to, but once the rhythms are established, the story takes off, especially in Act 2, which offers one thrill after another (especially if you know your Pan lore and care about why the crocodile ticks, how Capt. Hook lost his hand, why Peter can fly and where the heck Tinkerbell came from).

There’s one clever delight after another as we see two ships headed for the island country of Rundoon. One carries a treasure belonging to Queen Victoria (God save her), and the other has been overtaken by pirates. Also tucked into one of the ships are a valiant daughter, Molly (Megan Stern), trying to help her noble father (Ian Michael Stuart) and ditch her governess, Mrs. Bumbrake (Benjamin Schrader). Once Molly does shake the old battle axe, she discovers three wayward orphans who are being sent to the King of Rundoon, who will feed them to his snakes. They are Prentiss (Carl Howell), the ineffective leader, Ted (Edward Tournier), the pork-obsessed dreamer, and the nameless, grown-up-hating boy (Joey deBettencourt who will be Peter.

Leading the charge of the pirate brigade is Black Stache (John Sanders), a word-mangling bumbler with a hint of menace. His moustache is about 90 percent Groucho, and so is Sanders’ goofily over-the-top performance.

The entire company seems to be having a ball, and their enthusiasm and commitment to the storytelling is the only special effects necessary to take us to Neverland and back.

[bonus interview]
I interviewed Peter and the Starcatcher’s Tony Award-winning costume and set designers, Paloma Young and Donyale Werle for the San Francisco Chronicle. Read the story here.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Peter and the Starcatcher continues through Dec. 1 at the Curran Theatre, 445 Geary St., San Francisco. Tickets are $40-$160 (subject to change). Call 888-746-1799 or visit www.shnsf.com.

Norm Lewis brings on the leading man charm

Posted on October 21, 2013 by Chad Jones

Norm Lewis dazzled the Bay Area Cabaret audience Sunday night in his local concert debut. Photo by Peter Hurley

More than two dozen songs and four standing ovations later, Norm Lewis has officially made his San Francisco splash. The Broadway leading man and golden-voiced baritone made his long-overdue Bay Area concert debut Sunday night at the Fairmont’s Venetian Room as part of the Bay Area Cabaret’s 10th anniversary season.

Most recently, the 50-year-old Lewis nabbed a Tony Award nomination opposite Audra McDonald in The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, but his impressive resume also includes Javert in the revival of Les Misèrables, King Triton in Disney’s The Little Mermaid, the Sondheim revue Sondheim on Sondheim and Side Show. He also has a recurring role as a senator on ABC’s “Scandal” and will be starring opposite Bernadette Peters and Jeremy Jordan in A Bed and a Chair conceived by Sondheim and Wynton Marsalis. So all of that to say: Norm Lewis has chops, and he’s not afraid to use them.

Outside the Broadway world, Lewis is less celebrated than he should be. He’s got a superb solo album, 2008’s This is the Life! (check it out on Amazon here), and he’s as charming as he is handsome (which is saying quite a lot). Why he’s not a massive star remains a bit of a mystery, but if Sunday’s concert is any indication, this is a performer who won’t be anybody’s secret for long.

With the help of music director Darius Frowner on piano and Paul Bonnell on bass, Lewis performed a generous slice of show tunes, standards and pop. Wearing a shiny gray suit, Lewis took the stage with a two-song tribute to Tony Bennett, “The Best Is Yet to Come” (whose lyrics Lewis, um, improvised) and “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” followed by another shout out to a Venetian veteran, Peggy Lee, with “Fever.”

From here, Lewis got biographical, talking about growing up in Eatonville, Fla., and spending lots of time in church. His medley of spirituals mixed with pop songs like “ABC” and “Rock with You” could have gone on for another 20 minutes and lost none of its appeal. He paid tribute to Johnny Mathis, one of his favorite crooners, with “Misty” and revealed one of his mother’s guilty pleasures, Tom Jones with “It’s Not Unusual,” which included a ’70s-style saunter through the audience.

Once Lewis dove into the Broadway songbook, the show really took off. We got “Be a Lion” from The Wiz, “Corner of the Sky” from Pippin and his jubilant “Before the Parade Passes By” from Hello, Dolly! to name a few.

From the shows he’s been in, he offered “You Should Be Loved” from Side Show, “I’d Rather Be Sailing” from A New Brain and two songs from Les Miz, “Stars” and “Bring Him Home” (the first of the four standing ovations). From Porgy and Bess he smiled his way through a warm and wonderful “I Got Plenty of Nothing” before launching into a grab-bag section that included “Some Enchanted Evening,” “Sorry-Grateful,” “Paris Blues,” Oleta Adams’ “I Just Had to Hear Your Voice” and a rousing “Being Alive.”

For his encores, Lewis sang “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever” and David Friedman’s “We Can Be Kind.” This is a guy with a killer belt – killer – though he doesn’t always show a deep emotional connection to a song.

Norm Lewis, as polished and accomplished as he may be, is in the middle of a terrific career, but it seems in some ways he’s just beginning. He’s a Broadway star gaining traction outside of New York, and as he sang at the top of the show, we ain’t seen nothing yet.

[bonus video]

Norm Lewis singing “Before the Parade Passes By” from Hello, Dolly!

Broadway-bound Carole King bio truly is Beautiful

Posted on October 9, 2013 by Chad Jones

The cast of the Broadway-bound Beautiful: The Carole King Musical includes, from left, Jeb Brown as Don Kirshner, Jake Epstein as Gerry Goffin, Jessie Mueller as Carole King, Jarrod Spector as Barry Mann and Anika Larsen as Cynthia Weil. Below: Mueller as King and Epstein as Goffin experience their own personal “some kind of wonderful” in the world-premiere of Beautiful at the Curran Theatre. Photos by Joan Marcus

You know that Beautiful: The Carole King Musical has worked its musical biography magic when, during the curtain calls, the extraordinary Jessie Mueller takes her bow, you feel like you’re applauding an actor for her superb performance as King and you feel like you’re acknowledging King herself and all of the remarkable work she has contributed over the last five decades.

King is nowhere to be found in the creation of this Broadway-bound enterprise except where it really counts: in the music. She has apparently given her blessing to the production and stepped away to let the storytellers do their thing. The story that book writer Douglas McGrath and director Marc Bruni are telling springs out of King’s early start in the songwriting business and her eventual triumph as a seminal singer-songwriter of the 1970s, but the show is really a tribute to the craft of songwriting.

While Jersey Boys, another well-crafted jukebox musical with which Beautiful shares some structural DNA, traffics in flash and punch, this show revels in the bumpy joys and frustrations of crafting pop music. Happily, Beautiful is rather old-fashioned in its presentation in that set designer Derek McLane gives us twirling, sliding sets full of actual furniture with nary a projection in sight. When action shifts from the songwriters’ offices to the actual performance of the songs on TV or on stage somewhere, light panels fly in that look like flashing Christmas decorations. There’s something a little cheesy about that but in a satisfying, ’60s variety show kind of way.

McGrath sets up the story such that Act 1 focuses on King’s launch into the songwriting world at age 16 followed quickly by her marriage to Gerry Goffin, her songwriting partner, at 17. We watch as the pair churns out hit (“Some Kind of Wonderful”) after hit (“Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow”) after hit (“Up on the Roof”) after hit (“Locomotion”), fueled in no small part by their competition with the songwriting couple in the room next door, Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann, the hit-makers behind “On Broadway” and “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” among many others.

As Carole and Gerry (Mueller and Jake Epstein) revel in every Top 10 or No. 1 hit, Cynthia and Barry (Anika Larsen and Jarrod Spector) work even more furiously to top them. All the while, the two couples become close friends, so when the Goffin-King marriage begins to fall apart (a victim of his philandering, suggested drug use, possible mental illness), they are the support Carole needs as she moves into the next phase of her musical life and the massive success around the corner called “Tapestry,” which is where this biography ends.

The music in this 2 1/2-hour experience is thrilling – musical supervisor Jason Howland and co-orchestrator/vocal arranger Steve Sidwell deserve tremendous credit for helping the 12-piece orchestra sound so big, vibrant and authentic. There’s a medley early in Act 1 that conveys how pop tunes were being cranked out of New York’s Brill Building as if it were a song factory. Aside from that medley, when songs are performed here, they are performed in their entirety (as it should be in a show reveling in the creation of pop music). We get them in their nascent stages as lyricist (Goffin, Weil) and composer (King, Mann) pair words and music, and then we get full-on performances by the likes of the Drifters, the Shirelles and Little Eva (the ensemble is absolutely terrific) with their spot-on ’60s pop group choreography by Josh Prince.

The principals all have glorious voices, but Mueller is astonishing in the way she conveys King’s vocal style without directly imitating her.

Where the show needs work is in the sections depicting Goffin’s breakdown and King’s emergence as a performer in her own right. It’s a rush from divorce to Carnegie Hall without conveying a deep enough sense of what was at stake for King, who shied from live performance. In early talks about making a solo album, she is promised Carnegie Hall as a way to promote that album (it’s never mentioned that her first solo album, “Writer,” was not a hit). But then, in a flash, we’re at Carnegie Hall and “Tapestry,” her second solo album, has already won a slew of Grammys.

The last person we want to lose track of here is Carole King. But Mueller, whose warmth and grounded practicality imbue the stage King with the kind of real-person reality often missing in musical bios, pulls us back into the wonder of King with her performance of “Beautiful.” Seated at the piano, she explodes with joy in every lyric and note. And there can be no more fitting tribute to Carole King than that.

[bonus interview]
I interviewed Beautiful star Jessie Mueller for a feature in the San Francisco Chronicle. Read the story here.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Beautiful: The Carole King Musical continues through Oct. 20 at the Curran Theatre, 445 Geary St., San Francisco. Tickets are $50-$120 (subject to change). Call 888-746-1799 or visit www.shnsf.com.

Drag, disco, divas and – surprise – delight in Priscilla

Posted on August 23, 2013 by Chad Jones

Wade McCollum (center) is Tick/Mitzi performing “MacArthur Park” in the Broadway touring company of Priscilla Queen of the Desert: the Musical at the Orpheum Theatre. Below: McCollum (left) as Mitzi, Scott Willis (center) as Felicia and Bryan West as Bernadette perform the disco anthm “I Will Survive.” Photos by Joan Marcus

Musical theater’s rush to turn every movie into a Broadway show has taught us to tread carefully and lower our expectations. For every Billy Elliot or Hairspray or The Producers there’s a Cry Baby or Catch Me If You Can or The Little Mermaid or Shrek or Sunset Boulevard or Sister Act or Leap of Faith or Young Frankenstein and the list goes on. And on

So it’s understandable to come to the splashy Broadway musical adaptation of the absolutely charming 1994 movie The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert with some trepidation. Banishing original music and lyrics in favor of ’70s and ’80s disco and pop hits further lowers the bar of expectation as the tale of two drag queens and a transsexual on a road trip through the Australian outback makes its way to the stage

The surprise, then, is that Priscilla Queen of the Desert: The Musical is actually quite fun and not devoid of charm. A hit in London in 2009 and then a modest success on Broadway two years later, the show loses some of the depth and heart of the movie but has instead all the glitz, glamour and fabulousness you’d want from a Broadway-sized drag pageant.

The touring production of Priscilla, now at the Orpheum Theatre as part of the SHN season, certainly doesn’t look like a scaled-down road production. The music is loud, the lights are flashy and the set, especially the bus called Priscilla, has all kinds of nifty, sparkly surprises.

But nothing in this show, not the delightful performances or the still-serviceable plot, compares to the joy of the costumes designed by the same team that won an Oscar for creating such memorable outfits in the movie. Tim Chappel and Lizzy Gardiner go all out with the outsize marvels they pile onto the heads and shoulders of a cast that knows how to work a costume. It’s less like a movie has been adapted for the stage and more like a gay pride parade (or perhaps Mardi Gras in Sydney) has veered off the city streets and onto a local stage. The Australia pageant at the show’s finale — filled with birds and koalas and kangaroos and iconic architecture — is a jaw dropper.

The plot remains essentially the same as the movie: Tick (Wade McCollum), a Sydney drag performer, recruits two friends, the dignified, older transsexual Bernadette (Scott Willis) and spoiled younger drag queen Adam (Bryan West) to head into the heart of the Australian desert to perform at a casino run by Tick’s — gasp! — wife. The girls end up with an old school bus that somehow manages to be big enough for them, their food and drink and all their gigantic costumes as well as some kitschy decorations.

While on the road, the girls encounter small-town homophobia in the form of unruly, violent mobs and acceptance in the form of a nice mechanic named Bob (Joe Hart) who happens to have a mail-order bride (Chelsea Zeno) who can do a trick with ping-pong balls that is honestly one of the funniest things seen on a stage in quite some time.

Along the way, they sing and lip-synch to recycled pop songs, some of which — “I Say a Little Prayer” as a father’s ode to a son, “Don’t Leave Me This Way” at a funeral, “Always on My Mind” as an absent parent’s apology to a child — are very cleverly utilized in the storytelling. Other numbers, like “MacArthur Park” or “Shake Your Groove Thing” are just excuses for good-time numbers and another round of eye-popping costumes.

As movie to stage adaptations go, Priscilla starts of shakily (a drag queen just has to throw out an insult to lesbians within the first few minutes) and gains traction as it pumps up the spectacle, disarms the audience and turns the story of drag queens putting on a show into the actual drag show itself, which is not such a bad deal after all.

[bonus interview]
I talked to Priscilla star Wade McCollum and a host of San Francisco’s greatest drag queens for a story in the San Francisco Chronicle. Read the story here.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Priscilla Queen of the Desert: The Musical continues through Aug. 31 at the Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market St., San Francisco. Tickets are $45-$210. Call 888-746-1799 or vsit www.shnsf.com.

Sirs Ian and Patrick in conversation

Posted on August 4, 2013 by Chad Jones

Knights of the realm: Patrick Stewart (left, photo by Robert Ascroft) and Ian McKellen (photo by Sarah Dunn) bring Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land to Berkeley Repertory Theatre before taking it to Broadway, where it will run in rotating rep with Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.

It’s not the worst thing in the world to have to spend an hour with two of England’s finest: Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Patrick Stewart. Though more famous from TV and film than for their extraordinary stage careers (on both sides of the Atlantic), the two journeymen actors are giving up the sci-fi/fantasy limelight to return to their first love: the stage.

They are currently on stage at Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Roda Theatre in Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land co-starring Billy Crudup and Shuler Hensley. (Good luck getting a ticket; they’re awfully hard to come by, as you might expect.)

I interviewed McKellen and Stewart for an article in the San Francisco Chronicle. You can read the full story here (subscription may be required).

Here’s my favorite part of the interview when the actors talk about the original 1975 production of No Man’s Land starring John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson:

“I saw the original production of ‘No Man’s Land’ in London starring John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson three times in one week,” Stewart says. “I couldn’t get enough. I’d have gone again if I’d had the money. It was the brilliance of the writing. I don’t think there’s anything quite like this play. I have been quoting bits of the play for years that I remembered simply from being in the audience.”

McKellen also saw that 1975 production and says Gielgud, whose role he is playing, left a lasting impression – maybe too lasting.

“I feel like I could do the whole performance as John Gielgud,” McKellen says. “Then I wouldn’t be feeling half so tired as I am trying not to be John Gielgud.”

“Ian had a bit of a meltdown in rehearsal today,” Stewart interjects. “He thought Gielgud had possessed him, which was not the case at all.”

Stewart is mostly resisting re-creating Richardson’s performance, but he does mimic the late great British actor every time he pours a drink onstage.

“I’m allowing myself one moment of homage when I say, ‘Good Lord, did you really?’ like Richardson,” Stewart says with gusto. “Richardson also wore dazzling blue socks under a silver suit. I’d like to do that if our designer can find the right socks.”

Photo by Jason Bell

Here’s an exchange that didn’t make it into the final article.

McKellen: The first time I remember an actual conversation with Patrick, we were in America. You’d just been offered a chance at Star Trek.
Stewart: Yes. It was that week. I had been given from Monday lunch until Friday lunch to make a decision. I was staying with a friend and you came over for dinner.
McKellen: You asked me what I thought you should do, and I said, “Think very carefully.”
Stewart: You were reserved and cautious.
McKellen: It wasn’t that the material wasn’t worth doing. It was just the prospect of six years living outside your own country.
Stewart: That’s what terrified me about the part. As is now part of the Star Trek mythology, I spent those four days talking to everybody I knew with any experience of Hollywood. Without exception, they said that I shouldn’t worry about those six years. They said I’d be lucky to make it through the first season because you cannot resurrect an iconic series. I remember a well-established Hollywood writer telling me to take and make money for the first time (which was true), get a suntan, meet girls and go home. I was married at the time, so I didn’t meet any girls.

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