Moonwalking over biography in MJ

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ABOVE: Roman Banks as ‘MJ’ and the cast of the MJ First National Tour, part of the BroadwaySF season at the Orpheum Theatre through Feb. 25. BELOW: Jaylen Lyndon Hunter (center left) is Little Marlon and Ethan Joseph (center right) is Little Michael. Photos by Matthew Murphy


The first two numbers of Act 2 are my dream Michael Jackson musical. The rest of MJ, now at the Orpheum Theatre as part of the BroadwaySF season, is a classy, well-pedigreed but still boilerplate biographical jukebox musical.

When Act 2 begins, the thrilling Roman Banks – tasked with being as remarkable a singer and dancer as Michael Jackson and rising admirably to the challenge – is alone on stage with a suitcase. He pulls out a sparkly jacket, then a single, sparkly glove. Then a fedora. That instantly recognizable bass kicks in, and he re-creates Jackson’s nuclear blast of “Billie Jean” on 1983’s Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever TV special. Now that was a moonwalk to remember.

Before we can even catch our breath from that, the show takes us into Michael’s creative process as he imagines dancing with some of his most inspirational heroes: Fred Astaire, Bob Fosse and the Nicholas Brothers. As the music morphs into “Smooth Criminal,” it’s another thrilling moment in a show that has a few others but not enough because it gets bogged down by biography and by the uneasy weight of Jackson’s legacy.

With a book by two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Lynn Nottage, MJ at least tries to have it all ways: please the Jackson estate, deliver Jackson’s hits complete with dazzling choreography (by director Christopher Wheeldon) and attempt some honesty around Jackson’s issues like painkiller addiction, abuse at the hands of his bully of a father and vague references to his legal troubles involving the sexual abuse of minors.

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But the creators don’t wanna be startin’ that something, so their focus is Jackson as a brilliant, troubled artist putting the finishing touches on his 1992-93 Dangerous world tour, which would ultimately be seen by more than 3 1/2 million people. Nottage uses the gimmick of having an MTV reporter and cameraman in the rehearsal room as a way to tease biographical details from Jackson and launch flashbacks into the Jackson 5 era and then into the Off the Wall and Thriller periods. At Wednesday’s opening-night performance, Young Michael was played by the charismatic Bane Griffith. And the middle-period Michael was played by Jacob Kai, also impressive.

If the show were only songs and dances depicting different periods of Jackson’s life, that would be more than sufficient to convey his artistry without having to delve into the man’s troubled life. Wheeldon’s Tony-winning choreography is always exciting and executed beautifully by the nimble ensemble. The Michaels, especially Banks as the primary Michael, evoke Jackson in ways that truly are thrilling. Ironically, the “Thriller” number tries to layer on too much psychological turmoil and ends up draining much of the original’s fun.

The production values for this touring production are notably sharp and appealing. Though Derek McLane’s set is basically a Los Angeles rehearsal hall, Natasha Katz’s lighting and especially Peter Nigrini’s projections lend dimension and dazzle that add to the energy rather than detract from it (as projections so often do). The physical set and lights feel directly related to the projections in ways that give the stage depth and provide innumerable ways to let the stage itself be a visual feast for the dancing.

And really, it’s the dancing that separates MJ from the jukebox musical pack. The most unabashed fun is, not surprisingly, the curtain call, which is devoid of biography and full of all the reasons people still thrill to Jackson’s talent in spite of everything that can make such affection feel like a conflict.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
MJ continues through Feb. 25 at the Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market St., San Francisco, as part of the BroadwaySF season. Running time is 2 1/2 hours (including intermission). Tickets start at $65. Call 888-746-1799 or visit broadwasf.com.

Mamma Mia! returns: How can we resist you?

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ABOVE: Christine Sherrill (center, top) is Donna Sheridan with the company of Mamma Mia! 25th Anniversary Tour at the Golden Gate Theatre as part of the BroadwaySF season through Dec. 10. BELOW: Grant Reynolds (front) is Sky, the groom, with members of the company. Photos by Joan Marcus


When Mamma Mia!, the jukebox musical recycling the hits of ABBA, had its U.S. premiere in November of 2000, I was there in the audience at San Francisco’s Orpheum Theatre, singing along and admiring the way director Phyllida Lloyd and book writer Catherine Johnson shoehorned beloved pop hits into a manufactured plot. There’s a wedding on a little Greek island and the bride, raised by a single mom, is determined to figure out which of her mother’s three old flames is her father. So the mom’s money woes erupts into “Money, Money, Money” and a wedding kerfuffle ends in “I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do.” A bachelorette bash continues the repetitive song title theme with “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)” and an older woman rebuffs a young man’s advances with “Does Your Mother Know.”

It was all good fun, and nearly 25 years later, it still is. The 25th anniversary touring production is rolling through San Francisco, this time at the Golden Gate Theatre, as part of the BroadwaySF season. This is probably the fourth or fifth time I’ve seen the show, and I will say the returns are definitely diminishing. The most bothersome aspect of this production is its sound design and music direction. If the show can’t be good, it can certainly be LOUD, or at least that seems to be the theory in play here. And the six-piece band honestly comes across as a pretty talented high school ABBA tribute band. All those meticulous production details that made ABBA songs some of the most immaculately constructed pop songs of all time are blurred and buried in washes of electric keyboard programming that barely feels live.

Disney’s The Lion King (also in town for the holiday season) actually has a lot in common with Mamma Mia!. Both have been around for a quarter of a century and both are still going strong around the globe. Both have earned billions at the box office (King’s $8 billion to Mamma’s $4 billion). And each has its distinctive appeal. Disney offers puppets, masks and gorgeous spectacle. And Mamma Mia! has those glorious, spirit-lifting pop songs. But in this tour, some of the voices, the orchestra and the volume are not doing those songs any favors.

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That said, the Mamma Mia! machine still motors on, with some aspects as enjoyable as ever. Act 1 still has most of the fun. Three women re-living their days of being glam-rock singers yields irresistible “Chiquitita” and “Dancing Queen” and a bachelor party in scuba gear is still a blast in “Lay All Your Love on Me.”

Of the voices on stage, my favorite belongs to Carly Sakolove, an old pal of the bride’s mom. She gets a lively solo in “Take a Chance on Me,” but she could sing the whole score, and I’d be happy. Her way with the comedy (such as it is) also has a nice punch. That’s also true of Jalynn Steele as another old friend – this one rich, oft-divorced and full of wisecracks.

Act 2 gets bogged down with ballads and plot, but that leaves the best for last. The curtain call, when all pretense of story are banished, becomes a ’70s flashback concert with shiny costumes, some reprises of songs from the show (“Dancing Queen,” “Mamma Mia”) and one that isn’t (“Waterloo”). Pure, unadulterated (and perhaps I mentioned about this production) loud ABBA music that we are invited to sing and dance to. After all, isn’t that what Sondheim and Rodgers and Hammerstein were aiming for when they kept reinventing musical theater?

Back in 2000, when I reviewed Mamma Mia! for the first time, I wrote: “The end result is an earnestly pleasing show that tries hard to be a real musical with a real plot but never extends much beyond a new way to hear old favorites.”

I stand by that, and I don’t think I need to see the show again – or at least not until it gets some dark, wonderful reimagining. Could be a long wait.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Mamma Mia! The 25th Anniversary Tour continues through Dec. 10 as part of the BroadwaySF season at the Golden Gate Theatre, 1 Taylor St., San Francisco. Tickets are $. Running time: . Call 888-746-1799 or visit broadwaysf.com.
The show moves to the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts Dec. 12-17 as part of the Broadway San Jose season. Click for info.

Yes, Disney’s Lion King is still roaring

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ABOVE: Gerald Ramsey is Mufasa in the North American touring company of The Lion King. Photo by Matthew Murphy ©Disney BELOW: The Lionesses dance. Photo by Deen van Mee ©Disney


This year for the holidays, BroadwaySF is giving us the equivalent of hot cocoa and nachos – comfort theater in the form of Disney’s The Lion King (now at the Orpheum Theatre) and Mamma Mia! beginning next week at the Golden Gate Theatre. The former has been around for 26 years and the latter for 24. While not exactly fresh, they’re reliable, enjoyable and, more to the point, beloved.

I last saw The Lion King about seven years ago at the Orpheum (read my review here), and the current tour feels sturdier in terms of performances and the overall production. It’s still a spectacularly beautiful show, and Disney has obviously invested in maintaining it at a high level. Other touring perennials (looking at you Les Misérables) seem to shrink in every way, making shortcuts (like too much video) and “reimagining” when they mean “reducing the budget.” But The Lion King is still mighty.

The weak tea Shakespearean book is never going to be one of my favorite musical comedy plots (it was fine for the animated feature, but the songs and spectacle could use more), but this King is all about director Julie Taymor’s ultra-theatrical production – a combination South African cultural festival, modern dance program (thank you, choreographer Garth Fagan) and phantasmagorical explosion of world puppet and mask traditions.

Taymor has blended her outsize theatrical vision with the more mundane aspects of the movie (comic relief, winky modern references, cardboard cutout bad guys) so that the 2 1/2-hour show moves expertly along, but it definitely feels like Taymor was way more invested in conveying the essence and beauty of African nature and wildlife than in the mechanics of storytelling.

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There are two knockout numbers in Act 1, the processional, magisterial “Circle of Life” and the exuberant, dazzling “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King,” alongside the still-dazzling effect of a wildebeest stampede. Which leaves Act 2 rather barren of high points. The act opener, a straightforward human musical number called “One by One” is charming, and then we get the nearly great “He Lives in You (Reprise)” to close the show. Before the curtain calls, we get a reprise of “Circle of Life” and more amazing animals, but nothing really new other than plot resolution, and that comes way too easily and predictably (kind of like in a Marvel movie).

But here’s what’s so great about The Lion Knig – it’s easy to love for anyone of any age. For many kids, this is their first taste of live theater, and it’s sophisticated in its theatricality while still being easy to digest. There’s a darkness to it (stemming from a lot of death in the story) that sits easily alongside the brighter moments, and the inherent message about maintaining the balance of nature, is no small accomplishment.

In this touring company, special shout out to Julian Villela as Young Simba (sharing the role with Mason Lawason), a star in the making. Charming, assured and affecting, Villela commands the stage like an absolute pro. Gerald Ramsey as Mufasa also makes a strong impression, especially vocally on “They Live in You.” I tend to resist the cornball schtick of Timon and Pumbaa, but Nick Cordileone and John E. Brady respectively are pitch perfect.

On Broadway and around the world, The Lion King musical has reportedly raked in over $8 billion. That’s astonishing. But given the rapturous response of Wednesday’s opening-night audience, it’s not all that surprising. It’s well made, beautifully produced entertainment. It raised the bar for Disney’s theatrical pursuits, a bar the mighty Mouse still hasn’t surpassed.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Disney’s The Lion King continues through Dec. 30 as part of the BroadwaySF season at the Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market St., San Francisco. Tickets are $66.50-$300.50 (subject to change). Running time: 2 hours and 30 minutes (including one intermission). Call or visit broadwaysf.com.

So a Jew walks into a room ful of neo-Nazis…

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Alex Edelman has crafted a stand-up comedy/one-man play hybrid in the hilarious Just for Us at San Francisco’s Curran Theatre Oct. 26 and 28. Photos by Matthew Murphy


Alex Edelman is hilarious. And incisive. And just the performer we need right now.

His solo show Just for Us, hot off of its Broadway run, is especially of the moment in its exploration of anti-Semitism, online vitriol and the great American divide. His short run at the Curran Theatre courtesy of BroadwaySF kicks off his tour (next to Los Angeles and then his hometown, Boston), and I couldn’t imagine a more relevant show for this fraught moment in history.

On one level, it’s absolutely enjoyable to watch a skilled performer tell a fascinating story that is both hilarious and cognizant of all the dark and dreary forces at work in our world. There’s nothing wrong with frivolous laughter – bring it on! – but Edelman is such a canny performer that he seems to be shambling through a loose stand-up act when in fact he and director Adam Brace have constructed and finely calibrated a penetrating look into hatred on a colossal scale. This is powerful theater masquerading as a stand-up act.

The central premise is that Edelman did two things you’re not supposed to do: 1) he looked at the comments and 2) he responded to a troll. It happened on the dying platform formerly known as Twitter, and a nasty exchange with an anti-Semite led Edelman to the borough of Queens for a meeting of White Nationalists, where, for a little while, he passed for “white” (the gorgons at the meeting do not consider Semites to be the right kind of white).

0021_Alex Edelman in JUST FOR US on Broadway (credit Matthew Murphy)

For 90 minutes, the high-octane Edelman takes us into the details of that night. Is he really attracted to one of the women there, imagining a rom-com only Mel Brooks could dream of? Are there really jigsaw puzzles that take three months to complete? But he also frequently veers off into his Jewish Orthodox upbringing and tales of a young David Yosef Shimon ben Elazer Reuven Halevi Alexander Edelman navigating yeshiva, his relationship with Judaism and, to great comic effect, an Edelman family attempt at Christmas.

There’s something incredibly satisfying about laughing so robustly at something that is actually awful. It’s like Edelman is playing with electricity on stage and sending bolts out into the audience. Some tickle, some sting. There we all are just laughing away at Edelman’s foibles, and then suddenly one of the meeting’s attendees asks Edelman, “What’s your name,” but it’s not a friendly inquiry. It’s a first level of vetting, and the audience goes stone cold silent.

There’s a fair amount of that guffaw/gulp dynamic in Just for Us, but there’s also comfort in the fact that humor (and bold storytellers like Edelman) can bring us together with a galvanizing force. Together, we can look into the face of the worst of us with a little empathy, a little hope among the ruins and, mercifully, more big laughs than I’ve had in a very long time.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Alex Edelman’s Just for Us continues a short run through Oct. 28 at the Curran Theatre, 445 Geary St., San Francisco. Running time is 90 minutes (no intermission). Tickets start at $46. Call 888-746-1799 or visit broadwaysf.com.

Anthony Rapp mines grief and triumph in moving Without You

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Anthony Rapp explores his life and work, his triumphs and his tragedies, in the solo show Without You at San Francisco’s Curran Theatre. Photos by Russ Rowland


In the blockbuster musical Rent, Anthony Rapp originated the role of Mark Cohen, a filmmaker who uses his camera as a sort of shield to protect himself from the pain and drama that seems to overwhelm the world he’s documenting. As Rapp points out in his deeply moving musical solo show Without You, now at the Curran Theatre courtesy of BroadwaySF, when he was involved in the first off-Broadway production of Rent at the New York Theatre Workshop, like Mark, he started documenting the process through his own camera – a detail that didn’t go unnoticed or unappreciated by Rent creator Jonathan Larson.

In Without You, Rapp further cements his role as a documentarian by taking us through those incredible, tumultuous early days of Rent, from a first workshop to that off-Broadway production and, most notably, to that fateful night of the final dress rehearsal when Larson, only 35, died suddenly. It’s a tragic tale, told often, but its emotional impact only seems to grow. Rapp relates a funny incident that happened at a party when a friend met Larson, who told him (probably half-jokingly, half not) that he was the “future of musical theater.” And in many ways, he was. He just wasn’t here to enjoy it or take it another step further.

Rapp was in his mid-20s when Rent changed his life – changed the lives of all the original cast members – and he recounts that time with the measured temperament of the 50-ish seasoned veteran he is, but he captures that youthful joy and then sudden grief with dazzling power.

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The tremendous loss of Larson and the subsequent mega-success of his show create a highly emotional journey and give Rapp the opportunity to sing a number of songs from Rent accompanied by a five-piece band.

As if that weren’t emotional enough, Rapp’s exploration of loss and grief extends to his own family. Concurrently with his ever-intensifying Rent experience, Rapp’s mother was dealing with cancer and its various treatments, hospitalizations and life intrusions. He flies home to Joliet, Ill., when he’s able, and (happily), his mom is able to fly to New York for the Broadway opening of Rent. Her section of the story involves original songs, including one called “Wild Bill,” which is the name she gave the first round of cancer, and the wrenching “Visits to You,” a tense, tear-jerking musing on whether a visit will turn out to be the last.

From where we were sitting at Thursday’s opening-night performance, the sound mix in the Curran leaned far too heavily on the band and not nearly enough on Rapp, but in spite of that balance, Rapp’s performance kept the audience, well, rapt.

So much of the show, both the Larson side and the mom side, are about the weight of grief and the ways we can choose to move into it and, if we’re lucky, through it. That weight never goes away, which is probably why Rapp’s story from nearly 30 years ago still feels so potent and powerful. To borrow words from Rent, we seem to need a constant reminder that

There’s only us, There’s only this
Forget regret, or life is yours to miss
No other road, no other way
No day but today



FOR MORE INFORMATION
Anthony Rapp’s Without You continues through Sunday, Oct. 22 at the Curran Theatre, 445 Geary St., San Francisco. Running time: 95 minutes (no intermission). Tickets start at $49 (prices are subject to change). Call 888-746-1799 or visit broadwaysf.com.

Way down (again) in Hadestown

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Hannah Whitley (front left) is Eurydice and J. Antonio Rodriguez is Orpheus (with members of the company) in the Hadestown North American Tour at the Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco before a run at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts. Photo by T. Charles Erikson


It seems like only yesterday that the strangely magical musical Hadestown was playing at the Orpheum Theatre as part of the BroadwaySF. Well, it wasn’t exactly yesterday – more like 15 months ago. But the impression the show leaves is so powerful, it seems that hardly any time has passed since those crazy kids Eurydice and Orpheus had their sad adventure in the bowels of hell, all while singing rousing, beautiful songs.

Hadestown has indeed returned, but only for a minute (five days to be exact), and then it heads south (is there any other direction for Hadestown?) to San Jose for another five-day run.

At the risk of repeating myself, let me direct you to my June 2022 review of the national tour. All of that still holds, but we have a different cast putting different spins on their mortal and immortal characters. The most interesting thing about seeing Hadestown a second time is not necessarily the differences in performance (there’s still abundant talent on stage, from the leads to the ensemble to the on-stage band). It’s reveling in how mesmerizing and enveloping the production itself is.

The way that composer/lyricist/book writer Anaïs Mitchell and director Rachel Chavkin turn storyteller theater into such a moody, pulsating theatrical experience is absolutely wondrous. Mitchell’s New Orleans-infused score is a mood all on its own, with a special shout out to the gorgeous arrangements by Liam Robinson. But even without the striking visuals of Rachel Hauk’s set and Bradley King’s lights, the score stands on its own and could almost as captivating simply as a concert.

But it’s so much more than a concert, and toward the end of Act 1, we get one of the truly great modern musical theater moments with Orpheus’ “Wait for Me” as he attempts to walk into hell to retrieve the love of his life. Lights swing, fog swirls and Orpheus (played by J. Antonio Rodriguez in this tour) wails. The number gets a huge ovation because it’s practically a show unto itself.

The power of ritual and fate pulse deeply in Hadestown, which is why multiple viewings and listenings (the the various recordings) are so rewarding. As the company sings at the end, “It’s an old, old tale from way back when / And we’re gonna sing it / Again and again / We’re gonna sing it again.”

And we’re going to be enthralled again and again.

Hadestown continues through Sept. 17 as part of the BroadwaySF season at the Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market St., San Francisco. Running time is 2 hours and 30 minutes (including intermission). Visit broadwaysf.com. The show runs from Sept. 26 through Oct. 1 as part of the Broadway San Jose season at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts, 255 S. Almaden Blvd., San Jose. Visit broadwaysanjose.com.

A glorious journey Into the Woods

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ABOVE: Stephanie J. Block and Sebastian Arcelus, a real-life married couple, are the Baker’s Wife and the Baker in the national touring company of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into the Woods. BELOW: David Patrick Kelly (left) is the Mysterious Man, Kennedy Kanagawa (center) is the puppeteer for Milky White the cow and Cole Thompson is Jack (of the beanstalk fame). Photos by Matthew Murphy for MurphyMade


By all accounts, last year’s New York City Center Encores! production of Into the Woods, the beloved fairytale mash-up by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, was a special kind of magic. Director Lear deBessonet stripped away all the fairytale frippery and let the actors and Sondheim’s glorious score shine through. Even when the show transferred to Broadway and cast members started to rotate in and out, it seems the magic just couldn’t be dampened. Surely, when the production began its national tour, it would be rather less luminous version of itself.

Based on what is on stage at the Curran Theatre as part of the BroadwaySF season, this Into the Woods is destined to be the version that makes musical theater audiences react like they’re at a Taylor Swift concert. At least that was the case at Tuesday’s opening-night performance. From the instant the curtain rose swiftly up to reveal a large slice of the cast, the audience roared its approval, and that roar only increased over the next few hours.

Everything about this Woods is so confident, clear and crisp that you merely need to exhale and be swept up in the swift moving joys of great actors, beautiful voices and a score that continually reveals treasures no matter how many times you’ve heard it. In short, this production – which is full of performers who also did this on Broadway – really is as delightful and as heart-expanding as we’ve heard it is.

At the center of the story is the Baker’s Wife and the Baker’s Wife’s Husband (aka The Baker) played by real-life marrieds Stephanie J. Block and Sebastian Arcelus, and they exemplify so much of why this production works so beautifully. They carefully tread the line between cartoonish and realistic. They get big laughs when they need to and just as easily trigger the tears. They are as warm and charming as they can be, but they’re also precise and magnificent when it comes to the music and the lyrics. They are simultaneously theatrical and relatable – we get that they’re storybook characters on a quest to kill the curse that has rendered them childless, but we also care about them.

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Block’s full-body delight at her dalliance with a prince in the woods (“Any Moment” performed with the sterling Gavin Creel, who provokes full-body delight in the entire theater) is palpable, so it’s no surprise that her “Moments in the Woods,” which follows, is an emotionally complex (adultery is fun! or is it?), joyfully vigorous showstopper.

The way this show works its magic is also evident in Milky White, the cow belonging to and best friend of Jack (Cole Thompson, who will later tangle with giants at the top of the beanstalk. Sure, it’s a puppet (designed by James Ortiz) operated by a skilled puppeteer, but that doesn’t begin to convey how much emotion surrounds this cow with the sad, sparkly eyes. Kennedy Kanagawa masterfully manipulates the decrepit bovine, but his physical dexterity and expressive face complete the equation in ways that continually surprise and captivate. It’s a simple idea with a huge payoff.

Every detail has been attended to here, and the 16-piece orchestra (in full view on stage) conducted by John Bell ensures that Sondheim’s music is the life blood of the show. Lyrics are so clear that no whiff of enchantment, cynicism, despair, grief or arrogance goes unnoticed, and Bell keeps the show moving swiftly – not too fast but just fast enough that the fairytale glee of the first act lingers long enough to undergird the reality that intrudes in Act 2 (when the body count begins to rival a Shakespearean tragedy). With the orchestra on stage, this could come across as a staged concert, but it doesn’t. David Rockwell’s simple set – a few set pieces and just enough large birch tree trunks to convey a forest – relies on the sharp lighting by Tyler Micoleau and the simple costumes (by Andrea Hood) to add color and tone.

There is no shortage of standout moments and performances, but Creel as Cinderella’s Prince and his compatriot Jason Forbach as Rapunzel’s Prince, mine every last laugh out of their duet, “Agony” and its woefully domesticated reprise. David Patrick Kelly is a robust narrator and actually makes sense of the Mysterious Man, who is so moving on “No More,” a duet with the Baker. Katy Geraghty is the embodiment of innocence and experience wrestling under a blood-red cape as a tart Little Red Ridinghood. Diane Phelan‘s soprano soars on Cinderella’s “On the Steps of the Palace,” and Felicia Curry, filling in for Montego Glover as the Witch on Tuesday, electrifies on “Stay With Me” and the impossibly moving “Children Will Listen.”

Sophisticated and silly, sublime and deeply moving, Into the Woods – especially this Into the Woods – is the fairytale we most need to experience in all its musical theater glory.

The chances look small,
The choices look grim,
But everything you learn there
Will help when you return there.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into the Woods continues a brief run through June 25 as part of the BroadwaySF season at the Curran Theatre, 445 Geary St., San Francisco. Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes (including intermission). Tickets are $90-$299. Call 888-746-1799 or visit broadwaysf.com

SIX sicks sexy exxies on Henry for histo-remix

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ABOVE: Olivia Donalson (center) as Anna of Cleves in the North American tour of SIX, part of the BroadwaySF season at the Orpheum Theatre. BELOW: The cast revives the six wives of King Henry VIII. Photos by Joan Marcus


If SIX, the peppy, poppy musical that attempts to “girl power” the six wives of King Henry VIII back into the spotlight, feels like an imaginative school project that has gotten way out of hand, well that’s pretty much what it is. Creators Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss began working on the show while they were still in college. The show, which brings back the wives as mock-Tudor versions of ’90s pop royalty such as Beyonce, Britney Spears, Ariana Grande and the like, made its debut at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2017 and has taken its crusade to London’s West End and to Broadway, where the queens are still going strong.

There’s a lot of earnest good cheer and posturing in SIX, whose national tour has decamped to the Orpheum Theatre as part of the BroadwaySF season. The women are all glammed up in sparkly outfits (by Gabriella Slade that are part disco armor, part regal finery. They strut and fret for about 85 rambunctious minutes on an illuminated set (by Emma Bailey with exceedingly busy lighting design by Tim Deiling) that feels very much like the Las Vegas version of Hampton Court Palace.

This college project that has turned into an international mega-hit is primarily a concert, complete with the all-women band on stage, that has the wives competing with each other to see who had the most miserable time being married to old Hank Eight. That’s an awfully thin thread on which to hang a show, but there it is – another singing contest full of vocal one-upsmanship in which you expect Simon Cowell to show up and scowl.

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Since SIX opened on Broadway (right before the lockdown but resumed in the fall of 2021), I’ve encountered friends who absolutely loved the show and its fierce embrace of campy/poppy sensibility to reframe historical figures. Others absolutely loathed it and feel its shallow history lesson does nothing but offer empty feminism in an aggressively sparkly package.

I fall somewhere in between. I enjoyed the show and really enjoyed the audience enjoying the show. With co-creator Moss co-directing alongside Jamie Armitage and Carrie-Anne Ingrouille choreographing, all the dazzle goes down pretty easily. The Orpheum swallows too many of the lyrics to fully appreciate their sass or their cleverness, but we get the gist.

My favorite song comes from Anne Boleyn played by the perfectly named Storm Lever. The sorry-not sorry chorus of “Don’t Lose Ur Head” is a particularly insistent ear worm (though Anne’s beheading jokes grow tiresome). But my favorite queen is Anna of Cleaves as played by the fabulous Olivia Donalson. Her solo is preceded by a fun house music homage called “Haus of Holbein” that blends portrait painting by Hans Holbein the Younger with Tinder. But then Anna, who apparently wasn’t as pretty as her portrait suggested, disappointed Henry. He had the marriage annulled and set her up in her own palace with her own accounts. According to “Get Down,” Anna loved living the life of an independent former queen and makes zero apologies for her lack of misery.

By the end, when the women realize their silly contest continues to define them as Henry’s wives and not as distinct individuals, their epiphany doesn’t really get the song full of rebellion and verve it deserves. Rather, they get that tried-and-true finale cliché of a mega-mix (or mega-six, as the case may be), trotting out songs we’ve heard but in shorter versions.

SIX wants to entertain and it does (especially those with a fondness for ’90s pop). But it also wants to be taken a little bit seriously as an example (hello, Hamilton) of re-writing women and people of color back into the historical narrative. That is certainly admirable, but SIX mostly sashays around that throne rather than fully claiming it.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
SIX continues through March 19 at the Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market St., San Francisco, as part of the BroadwaySF season. Running time is 85 minutes (no intermission). Tickets are $66.50-$263.50 (subject to change). Call or visit broadwaysf.com. For every performance of SIX, a minimum of 20 tickets will be sold at $30 ($36, including fees) through Lucky Seat.

On Wednesdays we wear pink and kvetch about Mean Girls

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ABOVE: The cast of the Mean Girls national tour includes (from left) English Bernhardt as Cady Heron, Jasmine Rogers as Gretchen Wieners, Nadina Hassan as Regina George and Morgan Ashley Bryant as Karen Smith. BELOW: Based on the 2004 movie, Mean Girls explores the highs and lows of high school life. Photos by Jenny Anderson


The burns from the Burn Book are splashed all over the stage when you walk into the Golden Gate Theatre to see the national tour of Mean Girls (part of the BroadwaySF season). Some of the burns are sort of clever, “if corn flakes were a person.” Or another poor dude gets “You could live off the food in his braces.” There are a few of those awful slams that only one girl can perpetrate on another, including “Needs super jumbo tampons.” And then there’s the ultimate burn, the one we all fear to our core. Just a simple “Who?” scrawled over a photo.

High school is awful. The original Mean Girls Burn Book arrived in those (hardly) innocent pre-internet days of 2004 when the movie came out. Fast forward more than a decade to the inevitable musical adaptation, and the Burn Book bullying is no longer contained within the walls of a suburban Illinois high school but rather available for viewing on every screen in every corner of the world.

All to say there’s something retro about Mean Girls, even in its new musical form, and that’s not a bad thing. Tina Fey wrote the original screenplay and starred as one of the beleaguered teachers, and now she makes her debut as a Broadway book writer with the same story, which was inspired by Rosalined Wiseman’s 2002 nonfiction exploration Queen Bees and Wannabes.

Fey knows all the ins and outs of the plot, which remains the same: after growing up home-schooled in Kenya, new girl Cady Heron arrives in the U.S. and begins a stint in a public high school so, in her words, she can become socialized. That means quickly learning the high school caste system, from stoners (rich and poor but taking the same drugs) to obnoxious jocks to sexually active band geeks to math nerds (DO NOT fraternize here or risk certain social death), etc. At the top of the food chain are “The Plastics,” a trio of terror with supplicants Gretchen Weiners and Karen Smith supporting their queen mean girl, Regina George.

Cady is too smart for all this social nonsense – she’s a math prodigy and in Africa she was dealing with actual apex predators – but she wisely acknowledges the “need to belong that roars within us all” and unwisely falls into scheming and social climbing and ultimate disaster.

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Fey’s smart, funny book is really the star here, though composer Jeff Richmond (Fey’s husband) and lyricist Nell Benjamin (of Legally Blonde fame, which feels very on point here) work hard to give this story a musical heartbeat and not just stick songs into a brand-name story. Within the realm of movie-to-musical adaptations, it sits comfortably in the middle of Beetlejuice/Carrie (at the bottom end) and Little Shop of Horrors/The Producers/A Little Night Music (at the top).

Director/choreographer Casey Nicholaw brings the same comically fluid pace he brought to The Prom (a similar but better show in almost every way) and to The Book of Mormon. It’s a breakneck 2 1/2 hours with little room for actual emotion and barely time for characters to register in any meaningful way. Oddly, it’s one of the supporting players, Gretchen, who gets the most active inner life. Her song “What’s Wrong with Me” is a standout, and it’s a shame that Cady, the protagonist, can’t fails to get the same traction.

If anything, the show is too slick and efficient for its own good. Scott Pask’s set is essentially blank surfaces to be filled with the hyperactive projections by Finn Ross and Adam Young. The actors are often in competition with the visuals, and they don’t always win. The brightness of the backdrops makes it feel everything is happening in front of a giant screen saver, and that never helps warm a cold tale about mean people. For all the burning here, the show never really heats up.

Among the energetic cast members, standouts at Wednesday’s opening-night performance were Cady’s first friends in the new school, fringe dwellers Janis (Adriana Scalice, filling in for Lindsay Heather Pearce) and the “too gay to function” Damian (Eric Huffman). Also stellar was Mary Beth Donahoe filling in for Jasmine Rogers as Gretchen Wieners, the mean girl you actually root for. Some of the evening’s best laughs come from the underplayed mean girl, Karen (Megan Grosso filling in for Morgan Ashley Bryant), who is a lot smarter than she thinks.

Too often in the sound design stage voices were rendered shrill and over-miked to almost painful levels. That’s the kind of mean nobody needs.

What is the kind of mean people need? Apparently the kind that eventually helps everyone learn a lesson and become better people. The underlying message of Mean Girls – to be kind (to yourself and others), to be authentic, to be fearless – resonates, especially as it relates to young women. That is true of the movie as well, and it’s hard to say if the musical has amplified or improved that message in any meaningful way beyond simply re-telling it in an entertaining way. Sometimes you aim for “fetch” and end up with “feh.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Mean Girls continues through Feb. 26 at the Golden Gate Theatre, 1 Taylor St., San Francisco, as part of the BroadwaySF season. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes (including intermission). Tickets are $66.50-$184.50 (subject to change). Call 888-746-1799 or visit broadwaysf.com.

Stage, not screen, is the place for Evan Hansen

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ABOVE: Anthony Norman (left) is Evan Hansen in the 2022-23 North American tour of Dear Evan Hansen. Also in the cast are (from left) John Hemphill as Larry Murphy, Lili Thomas as Cynthia Murphy and Alaina Anderson as Zoe Murphy. BELOW: Norman’s Evan attempts connection with his single mom played by Coleen Sexton. Photos by Evan Zimmerman for Murphymade


The movie version of Dear Evan Hansen broke more than its protagonist’s arm. It shattered its source material – a Tony Award-winning musical – into a million awful little pieces. The movie made the cardinal mistake of taking something that can be extraordinary in the theater and making it seem absolutely absurd when earnest characters started to sing in their living room or their classroom, and the audience response was to wince or, even worse, to laugh.

At the time of the movie’s release (fall of 2021) there was a lot of unnecessary gnashing about how original Broadway star (and Tony winner) Ben Platt was too old (27 at the time) to convincingly play a 17-year-old. Platt was hardly the problem. His Herculean stage performance was fairly effectively modulated for the screen. But it’s the very notion of this story on a screen that was the problem.

On stage, Dear Evan Hansen takes place in a dark, impressionist version of modern society. Suburban households and schools are rendered with just a few pieces of furniture on David Korins’ set, while seemingly gazillions of screens, mostly flashing, streaming and scrolling info from our social media wasteland, fills much of the rest of the space. It’s visually overwhelming (as it should be), and it never lets us forget that the stakes in this drama are rooted, triggered and magnified by the omnipresent internet.

When this dazzling stage version of our warped world was hemmed in by the conventions of a movie screen depicting real-life locations, it became just another “window” much like the one Evan sings about in the showstopping “Waving Through a Window” – another screen on which we’re on one side and the rest of the world feels like it’s on the other.

The only way to truly feel the impact of this story about living a delusional life is to experience it on stage. The Broadway production closed last September, but the national tour, now in its fifth year, is going – at least until July, when it will close up shop. Bay Area audiences first saw the tour at the Curran Theatre late in 2018 (read my review here), and now, a little more than four years later and in the wake of the movie, that same tour, with an entirely different cast, is back as part of the BroadwaySF season at the Orpheum Theatre.

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The good news is that the tour is still in fine shape. The physical production (which, in addition to Korins’ incredibly efficient set, includes lights by Japhy Weideman, projections by Peter Nigrini and sound by Nevin Steinberg) delivers all the necessary bells and whistles to keep the show speeding along through its nearly three hours. And the cast of eight is spot on, with shouts out to Micaela Lamas as Alana, a teenager whose desperation for acceptance provides a powerful mirror for Evan’s, and to understudy Gillian Jackson Han filling in for Alaina Anderson as Zoe Murphy, the sister of a teen who takes his own life, who becomes caught in the intricate web of Evan’s lies. As Evan’s mom, the superb Coleen Sexton brings equal amounts of hurt, rage and insecurity to the role, and her “So Big/So Small,” a song to comfort Evan and reassure him of her love, is like a small, exquisite musical all on its own.

In the title role, Anthony Norman is an excellent actor if a less excellent singer, although he delivers on all the dramatic high points of his character, an anxiety-ridden, mentally unstable 17-year-old who cannot stop himself from falling into lie after lie when his dreams of being what he considers “normal” begin to materialize around him. The son of a divorced, hardworking mom and an all but invisible father in a different state, Evan’s failure to clarify a misunderstanding leads him to experience what it might be like to have a stable home with a mom who cooks and dotes; a father who is present and supportive; peers at school who actually talk to him; and the affection of a girl he has adored from afar for years.

The score by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul reveals something more with every listen. “Waving Through a Window,” Evan’s cri de coeur, remains chilling, especially in the frenetic way director Michael Grief stages it, and the faux-inspirational rush of the Act 1 closer, “You Will Be Found” is fascinating. A social media viral sensation happens before our eyes, and though the song hits all the right notes and words about creating a supportive, connected community, it’s all based on a huge lie, and all that online hubbub feels like hollow platitudes that could just as easily turn into bone-crushing stones (which they do in Act 2). That said, I could do without ever hearing “To Break in a Glove” ever again – its purpose to create a surrogate father moment for Evan is clear and potent, but the song, unlike most of the rest of the score, does not bear repeated listenings.

I also wish the show had a more powerfully musical ending. People gripe that Evan isn’t punished enough for his lies and his fraud, but I’m not one of them. What Evan does is wrong, most certainly, but he’s primarily acting out of a need to help other people and in turn helps himself to a life he never thought he could have. His breaking point comes when one final lie turns out to be wholly self-serving (a clever, powerfully desperate moment in the book by Steven Levenson). And then, in the emotional aftermath, we skip ahead in time and end with a reprise of “For Forever” rather than “You Will Be Found.” Both songs have finally found some semblance of truth in Evan’s acceptance of himself and his need for help. Still, it’s “You Will Be Found” that feels more relevant and ultimately more hopeful than “For Forever.”

At some point, Dear Evan Hansen with its focus on social media damage, the precarious state of teen mental health and its characters who work so hard to delude themselves, may feel dated. Sadly, that day when “we could be all right for forever” seems very far away.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Dear Evan Hansen continues through Feb. 19 as part of the BroadwaySF season at the Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market St., San Francisco. Tickets are $66.50-$256.50 (subject to change). Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes. Call 888-746-1799 or visit broadwaysf.com.