Ga-ga for Go-Go’s in giddy Head Over Heels

Posted on April 19, 2018 by Chad Jones

Taylor Iman Jones as Mopsa (center) and the company perform “We Got the Beat,” the opening number of the new musical Head Over Heels, which features songs by the Go-Go’s. (below) Peppermint (center) is Pythio, The Oracle of Delphi, in the number “Vision of Nowness.” Photos by Joan Marcus

My love for the Go-Go’s began with my first Sony Walkman and the first cassette I bought to play in that Walkman: “Beauty and the Beat,” the debut album from the Go-Go’s featuring “We Got the Beat,” “This Town” and “Our Lips Are Sealed.” Almost 40 years later, I still have great affection for Belinda, Charlotte, Gina, Kathy and Jane, my first delicious taste of girl power before I even knew what that was.

How thrilling, then, to find the songs of the Go-Go’s fashioned into a fizzy new jukebox musical, Head Over Heels with the inventive concept of folding the punky-poppy ’80s tunes folded into a (greatly) adapted version of Sir Philip Sidney’s late 16th-century Arcadia. You’ve got song and text separated by more than four centuries, so it’s a mash-up of sensibilities with lots of room for cheeky humor and the exploding of gender norms.

All of that was on display when Head Over Heels opened April 18 at the Curran theater, but a lot has changed since the show’s first production three years ago at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The whole creative team, headed by director Michael Mayer (Spring Awakening, American Idiot, Hedwig on Broadway), is new, including book writer James Magruder, who replaces Jeff Whitty (Avenue Q), who conceived this wacky idea in the first place. There’s a whole village of producers ahead of the title, including the Curran’s Carole Shorenstein Hays and Oscar-winner Gwyneth Paltrow, and an opening date on Broadway looming in the very near future (July).

As the out-of-town tryout before heading to Broadway, the production at the Curran reveals a show that is fizzy and fun (especially for those of us ga-ga for Go-Go’s) but with work still to be done before a New York bow to make the show really come together.

Sidney’s Arcadia surfaces here mostly to provide framework for a road trip comedy as the royal family of Arcadia attempts to outrun a doomsday prophecy by journeying to Bohemia. Otherwise, this is a pretend period comedy with a checklist of modern issues to address: lesbian love, inept men yielding power to more competent women, trans people achieving god-like status, certain body shapes subverting other body shapes to dismantle the beauty standard, cross-dressing men who access the divine female within and on and on. As checklists go, that’s a pretty great one, but you can feel the effort behind each tick mark.

With the Go-Go’s fueling the party (and an all-female band headed by Kimberly Grigsby that, unfortunately, we don’t get to see until the curtain call), there’s a mighty girl power vibe emanating from the stage, and that’s fantastic. Nothing against the male members of the cast, but how great would it be to go all the way and make this an all-woman cast. The original text is a relic from the 16th century when women weren’t allowed on stage, so let’s make up for some lost ground and just set the women loose on all the roles.

And let’s make the band visible for all of the show’s 2 1/2-hours while we’re at it, which might mean eighty-sixing the flat “pastoral” set pieces by Julian Crouch, which, at best, feel like they’re borrowed from an old tour of Kiss Me Kate.

As is, Head Over Heels feels too polite and could use a little anarchy, some punk-lite to rough up the edges and make songs like “Lust to Love” and “Skidmarks on My Heart” and “Automatic Rainy Day” come to life even more. This is an enjoyable show, but I craved something bolder, edgier and even more cranked up.

The Go-Go’s songs sound great (music supervision, orchestrations and arrangements by Tom Kitt), and because they’re not theater songs, they don’t carry a lot of emotional weight (and sometimes don’t fully make sense, but who cares?). The title song, for instance, “Head Over Heels,” is a zippy Act 2 opener in which couples frolic. The more apt title for the show might be “We Got the Beat,” the show’s opener and a rather belabored attempt to tell us how Arcadia is special because of its passionate pulse or, if you will, its beat. At a certain point in the plot, Arcadia loses its beat, and the bright, jewel-toned colors of Kevin Adams’ lighting design fade and the stage goes blah. So keeping the beat is central to the show – why not the title?

What is most definitely not blah here is the cast, even when the material lets them down (like the entire ending). As the king and queen, Jeremy Kushnier and Rachel York get to be adulterous (with each other, no less), though it takes too long for us to hear York let loose with her glorious voice. She also gets saddled with an eye-roller of a monologue (about that elusive beat) that she conveys with such poignancy that it actually works.

As sisters Pamela and Philoclea, Bonnie Milligan and Alexandra Socha respectively get to explore vanity and sincerity. Pamela has to figure out why her hordes of suitors leave her so cold, while Philoclea wrestles with her love for a humble shepherd, Musidorus (Andrew Durand), an inappropriate match for a princess. Durand gets to do some major cross-dressing as an Amazon warrior, and he is as hilarious as he is endearing. He even makes the song “Mad About You” (not, technically, a Go-Go’s song but a solo hit for Belinda Carlisle) sweet instead of schmaltzy.

Taylor Iman Jones oozes charm as Mopsa, a narrator of sorts who breaks the fourth wall to move the plot along when necessary, and a major player in one of the romances. And then there’s Peppermint, the second-runner-up in Season Nine of RuPaul’s Drag Race, playing Pythio, the Oracle of Delphi, savoring every quip and ounce of attitude the role has to offer.

The entire ensemble works hard to keep the energy level up, and if choreographer Spencer Liff’s moves are heavy on the hand-jive, there’s still a lot of verve, though not a lot of meaning.

After a dud of an ending, Head Over Heels cranks up the volume for the curtain call, reveals (at long last) the band at the back of the stage and invites the audience to get on their feet because they know we can dance to the beat. We may not jump and get down, but we can go round and round and round the idea that this is a show still finding itself, though it has most definitely got the beat.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Head Over Heels continues through May 6 at the Curran Theatre, 445 Geary St., San Francisco. Tickets are $29-$175. Call 415-358-1220 or visit www.sfcurran.com.

2017 theater in review: Reflections on a powerful year

Posted on December 28, 2017 by Chad Jones

If you’re a theater fan, 2017 was a very good year. If you’re an American, depending on your point of view, 2017 was a terrifying year. Quite often, it seemed, the theatrical stage and the national stage were in direct conversation.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, the year was dominated by the juggernaut known as Hamilton, the musical that signaled new hope in diversity, inclusion and making new conversations and new rules even while the country regressed in unfathomable ways. The first touring production of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Pulitzer- and Tony-award winning musical kicked off at San Francisco’s Orpheum Theatre as part of the SHN season and played to packed houses for five months before heading down to Los Angeles. The show itself was as thrilling and important and satisfying and moving as everyone said, and we couldn’t enter the ticket lottery often enough (let alone win the ticket lottery). [Read my Hamilton review]

It’s hard to compete with the sheer magnitude of Hamilton, but local stages held their own, especially when it came to conversations about race.

My two favorite local productions of 2017 both happened to be directed by Eric Ting, the artistic director of the California Shakespeare Theater, and both happened to attack the issue of race in American in totally different and quite unconventional ways. An Octoroon at Berkeley Repertory Theatre saw playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins take an old play and blow it to smithereens as a way to illustrate just how poorly we have dealt with the ramifications of slavery in this country. The play, under Ting’s expert direction, was funny and disturbing and confusing and startling and altogether extraordinary. [Ready my review of An Octoroon]

On his own Cal Shakes turf, Ting turned to Oakland native Marcus Gardley for black odyssey for the year’s most moving theatrical experience. This loose adaptation of Homer translates the “soldier returns” story to the African-American experience and moves through time and history and mortals and gods with poetic ease and powerful impact. Music and dance elevate the emotional level, and the super cast made it all soar. The show was a wonder and needs to be shared, somehow, from coast to coast. Happily, Cal Shakes will remount black odyssey next season (Sept. 25-Oct. 7). Don’t miss it. [Read my review of black odyssey]

On a smaller scale, but with no less emotion, humor and inventiveness, two other local productions told stories of what it means to be black in America. Shotgun Players produced Kimber Lee’s drama brownsville song (b-side for trey), a play that deals with the emotional aftermath of violence and the defiance of hope. [Read my review of brownsville song (b-side for trey)]

And San Francisco Playhouse sparked a blaze in the fall with Robert O’Hara’s wild Barbecue, a play that literally flips race on its ear and has a splendid time doing so (special shout-out to director Margo Hall, who also dazzled as an actor in black odyssey and also managed to stand out in the cast of this production as well). [Read my review of Barbecue]

Another hot topic that received some astute theatrical attention this year is immigration. Crowded Fire Theater and TheatreWorks both tackled the topic with energy and imagination. Crowded Fire’s production of You for Me for Youby Mia Chung blended elements of Alice’s trip down the rabbit hole to illuminate the different experiences of North Korean sisters, one who is stuck in the country and the other who makes it to America. The fantastical and the devastating lived side by side in director M. Graham Smith’s memorable production. [Read my review of You for Me for You]

At TheatreWorks, The Four Immigrants: An American Musical Manga saw local composer Min Kahng turn Henry Yoshitaka Kiyama’s 1931 comic The Four Immigrants Manga into an irresistible musical that, for all its exuberance, still managed to convey the darkness and weight of the immigrant experience. [Read my review of The Four Immigrants]

It was interesting this year that two theaters emerged in San Francisco as homes to a compelling variety of work and became the kind of theater spaces where you pretty much want to check out whatever comes to their stages no matter what you might (or might not) know about the shows themselves. American Conservatory Theater’s The Strand Theatre on Market Street hosted two of my favorite shows of the year – small shows that ACT could never have done so successfully in the much larger Geary Theater. In March, Annie Baker’s fascinating John blended domestic drama and ghost stories into three gloriously offbeat hours with a cast headed by the sublime Georgia Engel. [Read my review of John]

And later in the year at the Strand, another quiet show, Small Mouth Sounds dove underneath the New Age calm to see what drama lies beneath. Comedy ensued in this mostly wordless play by Bess Wohl. [Read my review of Small Mouth Sounds]

Then there’s the Curran Theatre, which used to be a stopping place for Broadway tours but is now, under the stewardship of Carole Shorenstein Hays, something more – a carefully curated collection of extraordinary theatrical experiences. There are the Broadway tours, like the sublime musical perfection of Fun Home [Read my review of Fun Home] but also the experiences you won’t find anywhere else, like Taylor Mac’s overwhelming and gobsmacking and deliriously delightful 24-Decade History of Popular Music.

That’s a pretty dynamic year right there, but I would be remiss not to mention the roaring good time (amid imperfections) of the Broadway-bound Ain’t Too Proud, the Temptations musical at Berkeley Rep [read my review]; Peter Brook’s elegiac and stunning Battlefield at ACT [read my review]; and the deeply moving revival of Paula Vogel’s The Baltimore Waltz at the Magic Theatre. [read my review]

Amid so much that is disturbing in our world, I am heartened by the ever-reliable level of theatrical art-making here in the Bay Area. There’s challenge as well as comfort, belly laughs and punches to the gut (metaphorically speaking of course) and perhaps best of all, real engagement. Not every time, certainly, but often enough that it’s clear our local artists are paying close attention and doing what they can to make change while they entertain.

Galaxy of emotions surround Bright Star at the Curran

Posted on December 1, 2017 by Chad Jones

Carmen Cusack reprises her Tony-nominated role as Alice Murphy in the touring production of Bright Star, now at the Curran Theatre. Below: A.J. Shively also reprises his role for the tour: Billy Cane, who has just returned from World War II and is ready to start his life as a writer. Photos by Joan Marcus

Steve Martin and Edie Brickell’s Bright Star is a beautiful musical, especially if you have a penchant for bluegrass music and florid stories with twists, turns and not-so-surprising surprises.

It feels like a quintessentially American musical in several ways, the first being that glorious, banjo-heavy bluegrass, which brings to life a story that stretches from the 1920s to the 1940s in North Carolina. That is such a bright, emotional American sound, filled as it is with elements of country and gospel and soul-rattling spirituals. It is an absolute pleasure to sit in a theater – the Curran Theatre in this case – for two-plus hours and listen to a great bluegrass band and the soaring voices of the cast.

The other way Bright Star is so very American is the way it renders African-American people in the South completely invisible. They aren’t on stage. They aren’t mentioned. They may as well not exist. Apparently Martin and Brickell felt it was necessary to abide by the Jim Crow system of the time, which is a shame because this story, which we’re told is “inspired by a true event,” isn’t important enough to be yet another “whites only” story of America.

That makes it hard to love a show that is eminently lovable. The original, Tony-nominated leading lady from Broadway, Carmen Cusack signed on for the tour, which is fortuitous circumstance for audiences around the country. Cusack has a rich, expressive voice that is able to make the best possible case for bluegrass-informed show tunes. She reveals everything she can about her character, Alice Murphy, through songs like the opener, “If You Knew My Story,” and her magnificent “At Long Last” as all the strands of her story come together. This is Alice’s story, after all, as she takes us back to her youth and re-lives a series of events – a romance with the mayor’s’ son, unintended consequences, tragedy – that eventually led her to success as the editor of the literary magazine the Asheville Southern Journal.

If Cusack wanted to sing the score as a one-woman concert version, that would be splendid, but it would rob us of some of the production’s other pleasures, from the elegant, fluid staging by director Walter Bobbie to the graceful/rambunctious choreography by Josh Rhodes to the effectively minimalist set by Eugene Lee that enlists actors to move pieces on and off and keeps the on-stage shack that houses the band shuttling around the stage like a lone bumper car at a carnival.

The music is credited to both Martin, who has gone from being a “wild and crazy guy” to a guy who is pretty much doing anything and everything he wants, and Brickell, with book by Martin (featuring more humor than you might imagine in what is a pretty melodramatic tale) and lyrics by Brickell. It’s the hope-tinged music – more than any words either spoken or sung – that is most moving. The great, mostly string band is led by P. Jason Yarcho, with music supervision by Peter Asher and Rob Berman (who also did the glorious vocal arrangements). Bonus points to the musicians for not getting motion sickness.

It’s all in service to a story that is pulpy to say the least. Family secrets, parental interference, thwarted love and blossoming romance all play a part. There are so many spinning wheels of plot it feels a little like Shakespeare, especially when everything comes together and the couples start pairing off, which then makes it feel like Guys and Dolls. There’s a sweet romance between lifelong friends, appealing “big city” secondary characters, villains who feel like they just stepped out of a silent movie after tying a damsel to the railroad tracks and one moment of kindness between a father and daughter that is remarkably poignant.

Bright Star is quaint and old-fashioned … to a fault. It’s whitewashed loveliness is definitely of another era, but its beauty – that music! – is undeniable.

[bonus videos]
Carmen Cusack performs “Sun Is Gonna Shine” and “If You Knew My Story” from Bright Star.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Steve Martin and Edie Brickell’s Bright Star continues through Dec. 17 at the Curran Theatre, 445 Geary St., San Francisco. Tickets are $39-$175. Call 415-358-1220 or visit sfcurran.com.

A unique aural Encounter at the Curran

Posted on April 27, 2017 by Chad Jones

Simon McBurney in The Encounter, an immersive solo show incorporating 3-D audio headphones at the Curran Theatre. (Photo by Tristram Kenton) Below: McBurney delves into the disappearance of National Geographic photographer Loren McIntyre, while attempting to document the Mayoruna in a remote part of Brazil in 1969. (Photo by Robbie Jack)

Not to take anything away from Simon McBurney’s rather extraordinary show The Encounter now at the Curran Theatre, but my first encounter with binaural sound at Disneyland remains my favorite.

The Disney folks always seem to be searching for ways to jazz up the Lincolon-as-robot attraction “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln,” and for a while, the jazz turned out to be a 3-D audio experience in which a young Union soldier prepares to get his photo taken by the famous Matthew Brady. He gets a haircut, and with the headphones on, you could practically feel the scissors snipping alongside your ears. Then, after the soldier is wounded in battle and recovering in a hospital, he meets and chats with President Lincoln, and the audio immersion attempts to give you a sense of what it might be like to be in the same room as our 16th president.

Happily, that theme park technology has been translated into theater. Low art grows up into high art in the form of this globe-trotting solo show from McBurney and his theater company, Complicite. Already a hit in London and New York, this unique theatrical experience involves McBurney on stage telling the story of Loren McIntyre, a photographer for National Geographic who would go on to locate the source of the Amazon. This particular story, though, is about how McIntyre got lost in Amazonia while attempting to photograph the Mayoruna people, an undocumented tribe deep in the jungle, and it is adapted from the book Amazon Beaming by Petru Popescu.

But the way McBurney, who directed (along with Kirsty Housley), tells McIntyre’s story makes all the difference. Harnessing the best of audio technology and a spectacular sound design by Gareth Fry with Pete Malkin, the show requires audience members to wear headphones for its nearly two-hour duration. At the top of the show, a very casual McBurney (a familiar face from Harry Potter movies and a bunch of other British movies you’ve seen) takes the stage and starts talking about photos of his children on his mobile phone, an antique videotape of home movies from his childhood and about how telling stories is what makes us human.

Then he demonstrates the bells and whistles of the sound design by pretending to walk through our brains and then shows off an incredible microphone center stage. It’s in the shape of a human head, and it conveys sound with a sense of direction and space so that it can feel like voices are coming from behind you or whispering so closely to your ear you can all but feel the breath on your neck.

It’s incredibly cool technology, and its effect, once the storytelling begins in earnest, is to create a shared experience for the audience as a whole that also manages to create individual sound bubbles in which McIntyre’s harrowing odyssey lost in the jungle becomes a dizzying spiritual experience that feels incredibly intimate.

Imagine Heart of Darkness meets Fitzcaraldo meets “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln” and you’ll get an idea of what this experience is like. McBurney is offering a physically demanding live performance and all the vocal subtlety of a radio drama. Although I never got as swept up in it all as I would have liked, I fully appreciated how enthusiastically McBurney was able to expand the notion of solo performance through technology that can be expansive and personal simultaneously. It’s a close Encounter of the theatrical kind.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Complicite’s The Encounter continues through May 7 at the Curran Theatre, 445 Geary St., San Francisco. Tickets are $49-$129. Call 415-358-1220 or visit http://sfcurran.com.

Eclipsed demands attention at the Curran

Posted on March 12, 2017 by Chad Jones

The cast of Danai Gurira’s Eclipsed at the Curran Theatre includes (from left) Adeola Role, Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Stacey Sargeant, and Ayesha Jordan. Below: Photos by Little Fang

Danai Gurira’s intense, harrowing drama Eclipsed really only appeals to two kinds of people: those who care about women and those who care about basic human decency. Anyone else should stay home (or in the White House).

The history of humanity has not been kind to either of those groups, and Gurira offers a stark reminder that our so-called evolution hasn’t progressed very far. Set in the early 2000s in the final days of Liberia’s second civil war, the play examines war from the point of view of women, specifically four women who are essentially sex slaves to an unseen Commanding Officer. One of the unnamed “wives,” as they are known, has turned herself into a fierce soldier fighting for the CO’s rebel group, while another, at 15, is new to this hideous world but like the women around her, she’s figuring out how to survive.

Only the second production at the stunningly refurbished Curran Theatre, Eclipsed follows a triumphant Fun Home and serves as an indicator of the kind of shows the Curran and leader, Carole Shorenstein Hays will be bringing in: important, powerful and risky. You don’t go to a play like Eclipsed for a rollicking good time. This is impeccably produced theater, but it’s challenging and disturbing. The play was first produced at the Public Theater in 2015 before moving to Broadway last year. That’s the production, with some of the actors who were involved with the show in New York, now at the Curran, and it’s a historic production: the first Broadway play to have a cast, playwright and director who are all black women.

Director Liesl Tommy, who was briefly the associate director at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, keeps the focus on the women but relies on set designer Clint Ramos (who also won a Tony for the vibrant and varied costumes) to convey the stark reality of the bullet hole-riddled shack in which the wives live and work (they do the CO’s cooking and his laundry). The lighting (by Jen Schriever) and sound (by Broken Chord) conjure some of the natural beauty of the land, but they really come into play as the story intensifies and the harsh reality of war becomes more vivid.

Though an ensemble piece, the story’s trajectory follows the character known simply as The Girl (Ayesha Jordan), who is hidden by the other wives #1 (Stacey Sargeant) and #3 (Joniece Abbott-Pratt) to keep her away from the CO, but he finds her and makes her Wife #4. Unlike the other women around her, The Girl has had some education and can read (she entertains the other wives by reading from a tattered book about Bill Clinton). Her intelligence makes her susceptible to Wife #2 (Adeola Role), who has gone from enslavement to ferocious militarism. With her gun slung across her shoulders and a kind of power the other women cannot access, The Girl sees the advantages of becoming a fighter. As we see, those advantages come with tremendous cost.

The outside world is represented by Rita (Akosua Busia), a member of the group Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace that is attempting to negotiate a ceasefire among all the warlords. She represents not only an escape route for the women but a strong maternal force attempting to reconnect them to their humanity (and the names they were born with, which have ceased to be used).

What’s deceptive in Act 1 of this nearly 2 1/2-hour play is that its rhythms feel natural and familiar: women talking, working, squabbling and joking. Then, when one of them is selected by the CO to satisfy his sexual pleasure, we’re reminded what’s really going on. These women (one of whom is pregnant) are prisoners and subjected to sexual assault on a regular basis. The fact that they are managing some semblance of normal existence together is astonishing. Things become more harrowing in Act 2, and Jordan especially as The Girl, is so powerfully good it’s almost hard to breathe watching her struggle through her attempt to reconcile her anger and ferocity with her basic humanity.

All the performances are wrenching, but they have to be. The glimmers of hope here come from the way the women care for each other and from the possibility that even in the worst of circumstances, all is not completely lost. During an eclipse, after all, light is only blocked temporarily.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Danai Gurira’s Eclipsed continues through March 19 at the Curran Theatre, 445 Geary St., San Francisco. Tickets are $29-$140. Call 415-358-1220 or visit www.sfcurran.com.

Gorgeous, moving Fun Home at the Curran

Posted on January 27, 2017 by Chad Jones

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.

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.

Fences comes home to the Curran Theatre

Posted on December 16, 2016 by Chad Jones

Denzel Washington is Troy Maxson and Viola Davis is his wife, Rose Maxson, in the screen adaptation of August Wilson’s Fences. The Paramount Pictures release, which Washington directs as well as stars in, opens Christmas Day everywhere. Below: Washington’s Troy walks home from work with Jim Bono, played by Stephen McKinley Henderson, a veteran of Wilson’s plays. Photos courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Hard to know which was more exciting: the art or the venue. Let’s go with both.

The Curran Theatre formally reopened Thursday, Dec. 15, after more than a year of renovations and refurbishments, and it’s gorgeous. In shades of elegance and Curran red, Carole Shorenstein Hays’ palace has once again cast open its doors.

The first official event, preceding the January bow of the Fun Home tour (get tickets now), was a homecoming of sorts. Thirty years ago, Hays launched August Wilson’s Fences, a play that would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize and sweep the 1987 Tony Awards. But before its Broadway glory, the play bowed at the Curran, and this week, the play returned in a manner of speaking. Denzel Washington directs and stars in the movie adaptation of the play, and the film had its San Francisco premiere at the Curran followed by a panel discussion with Washington, members of the cast (sadly, the busy Davis was absent due to work commitments) and Costanza Romero, a costume designer and Wilson’s widow.

There were more San Francisco roots in play: Washington spent some of his formative years nearly 40 years ago studying with the Curran’s neighbor, the American Conservatory Theater and worked across the street at the now-shuttered soup emporium, Salmagundi’s. After the movie screening and the panel discussion, Washington did something he said he’d always wanted to do but never imagined he could: he took a bow on the Curran stage.

It was a well-earned bow, certainly for Washington’s extraordinary body of work, his two Academy Awards and the stature he holds as one of the best of the best. But it’s also well earned for his achievement in Fences, a beautiful adaptation of the play that feels opened up (but not too much and not egregiously) and keeps the focus on the language and the performances, all of which are stellar. Music and underscore are used sparingly because, as Washington said, “the magic of August’s words, those are the notes. You don’t need an orchestra for Shakespeare. There’s Williams, Miller, O’Neill, Albee and Wilson. August’s work is rich, deep and wide.”

One reason the performances are so good may have to do with the fact that most of the cast (minus the younger actors who got too old) were in the 2010 Broadway revival that, once again, nabbed a passel of Tonys, this time for best revival and for its stars, Washington and Davis. Their chemistry and connection can be felt, even on screen, which is rare. And the supporting cast is just as good, especially Stephen McKinley Henderson, who plays best friend and fellow Pittsburgh garbage man to Washington’s Troy Maxson. Mykelti Williamson as Troy’s war-wounded brother Gabe does such finely tuned, extraordinary work it would seem his performance was always destined to be captured on screen. Russell Hornsby is Troy’s older son, Lyons, and Jovan Adepo makes a remarkable big-screen debut as Troy and Rose’s son, Cory.

Washington says he has fond memories of seeing the original Broadway production of Fences starring James Earl Jones, Mary Alice and Courtney B. Vance, so when producer Scott Rudin and Paramount Pictures approached him about seven years ago to talk about a movie, he was interested, but he wanted to do the play first. That’s how the revival was born. Now, six years later, Washington and his “core squad,” as Washington calls them, have returned. It’s rare for a movie adaptation to feature so many members of a stage company, but Washington says, “I remember when I was in A Soldier’s Play and when they made the movie, they used me and Adolph Caesar from the original cast but passed over another actor, Samuel L. Jackson. When it came time to make Fences, I thought, why should I go anywhere else? The band was tight. We had 114 some performances. It would be hard to get in the band.”

So, with his dream cast, Washington decided to film the movie in the actual location where it (and all of Wilson’s work) takes place: the Hill District in Pittsburgh. The choice lends even more richness to a film that is already dense with drama, remarkable language and performances that stun.

Washington says he felt Wilson, who died in 2005, on the set with him. There’s a scene toward the end of the film, when much of the cast is assembled, and a gate in the yard opens by itself. “That happened on its own,” Washington insists. “I knew August was with us and that we were all right.”

There will be more Wilson adaptations for the screen. The playwright’s epic 10-play cycle about African-American life in the 20th century, one play per decade (Fences is the ’50s), has been optioned by HBO with Washington producing. The idea is to do one play from the cycle each year for the next nine years. “We already have a script for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom [set in the 1920s and the only one of the plays not set in Pittsburgh].”

Before taking that bow onstage at the Curran, Washington added, “This work, these plays, these movies – this is what I was meant to be doing at this time in my life.”

Fences, rated PG-13, opens wide Dec. 25.

[bonus trailer]

Taylor Mac cycles through American song

Posted on January 22, 2016 by Chad Jones

Taylor Mac performs the first act of his epic A 24-Decade History of Popular Music: 1776-1806 as part of Curran: Under Construction. When completed, the song cycle will stretch 240 years, from 1776 to 2016 and will be performed in its entirety over 24 hours. The fabulous costumes are by Machine Dazzle. Photos by Jim Norrena

Taylor Mac emerges, godlike, from the mezzanine, resplendent in a sparkling headdress and gown, and from the stage of the Curran Theatre, where the audience is seated, it looks like the lowered chandelier is actually the crowning part of his ensemble.

Once Mac makes his way to the stage, where he joins his nine-piece band, he may appear less godlike – the dress, on closer inspection, is part tawdry tease, part used car lot banners and tinsel – but remains no less impressive. Towering in his heels, Mac warbles his way through an amazing “Amazing Grace” as he welcomes his audience into Act 1 of his epic undertaking: A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, which, when complete, will be performed once in its entirety, with each decade receiving an hour in the show, making it a full 24-hour concert experience with no intermissions. In smaller chunks, the piece is broken into eight acts, each covering three decades. The first act covers 1776 to 1806, and the last will cover 2006-2016.

While in San Francisco, Mac, a native (and escapee) of Stockton, as part of the Curran: Under Construction series, Mac is performing Act 1 and, for the first time, Act 2: 1806-1836. On Saturday, Jan. 30, he will do a marathon six-hour run of Act 1 and Act 2, and, like all performances from the cycle, there will be no intermissions.

To describe what Mac does in this show requires some critical quilting: there’s performance art, there’s theater, there’s cabaret, there’s agitprop swirled with history, politics and protest. And above all, there are pop songs – popular songs of the day. Not necessarily American songs, but songs that were popular in this country during these particular decades (in the later decades, Mac promises some original songs written in response to performing the entire cycle). Above all else, it’s an experience. It’s fun, it’s long (though the time does fly), it’s thoroughly engaging and Mac is as fascinating and compelling and intelligent and outrageous a star as possible, even when trying to exercise performance art muscles and be annoying or exercise Brechtian distancing techniues. Mac is a true entertainer with a powerful voice as both a singer and a writer (his play Hir, which started out at the Magic Theatre here in 2014 [my review is here], is now a big hit in New York). Mac’s reason for creating this extraordinary piece date back to the mid-’80s and attending the first AIDS Walk in San Francisco. There, on view, was a community deteriorating from the ravages of an epidemic but, at the same time, building itself back up into a community to nurture, fight and survive. That pattern, Mac says, is evident in every decade he’s covering and his show, the 24-hour hone, will deteriorate as it progresses (the 24-piece orchestra on that day will lose a musician an hour leaving a ravaged Mac alone on stage in the final hour) all the while building a new community among the audience members.

The way Mac builds that community is primarily through his dynamic performance of songs, most of them unfamiliar but all rousingly performed (and arranged by music director/pianist Matt Ray). Mac also engages his audience in all kinds of activities. During “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” for instance, judy (Mac prefers the pronoun judy to a more traditional gender-based pronoun, which is way too creative and fun not to use) explicates the song’s origins (British making fun of behind-the-fashion Americans) and engages judy’s audience in various parts to create chaos representing all the elements on which the country was founded, including loathing of Congress, the longing to be anywhere but America, the adoration of people with black hair and the misinterpretation of Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense.” Mac has an audience member worshipped as a god from the stage, has the “dandy minions” (a squad helpers) outfit audience members in boas and fuzzy ears and the like, and recruits various audience members to play characters opposite judy on stage.

In the second hour, which is devoted to the origins of the women’s movement, Mac has the dandy minions pass out apples for a particularly poignant section, and during the third hour, which is devoted to pub songs to represent the young union’s “frat boy” phase, we get beer and pingpong balls.

With each new hour comes a new costume designed by Machine Dazzle. The trash-chic glitter of the first hour is replaced by chiffon-dripping columns and hips adorned by severed heads. For the pub section, Mac takes on the character of Crazy Sally, a sort of performance-art barfly whose gown features practical features like rolls of toilet paper and other toiletries. It’s all grandly theatrical, and surprises abound throughout the three hours.

Co-director Niegel Smith and Mac still have a work to do, which they will do throughout this workshop production, but the roughness is part of the charm. Everybody feels in the moment, and as Mac repeats as a sort of mantra, “perfection is for assholes.” As fun as Act 1 is, it also has a certain weight. There’s a moment when Mac is a singing a beautiful lullaby and asks neighbors to put their heads in each other’s laps as if after a night of heavy drinking, and it felt like the onstage community had really clicked. We were in it together and taking a moment of comfort. It was a stunning experience, as is, it would seem, just about anything Mac sets out to do.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Taylor Mac’s A 24-Decade History of Popular Music continues with performances of the first act, 1776-1806, on Jan. 22 and 23 and the second act, 1806-1836, Jan. 26 and 27. Both acts will be performed in a six-hour marathon run (no intermission) Jan. 30. Tickets are $50 and $75 (marathon). Visit www.sfcurran.com.

Bay Area theater 2015: some favorites

Posted on December 22, 2015 by Chad Jones

One of the best things about the year-end exercise to round up favorite theatergoing memories of the preceding year is that it can be such a powerful reminder of how much good theater we have in the Bay Area and how many really extraordinary theater artists we have working here. Another element jumps out at me this year and that is how, in addition to great homegrown work, our area also attracts some of the best theater artists from around the world to come and share their work (at the behest of savvy local producers, of course).

So here are some thoughts on memorable work I saw this year – and I will add as a caveat, I didn’t see as much as I should have (or as much as I used to for that matter), and I must express some pride that as we head into 2016, this old Theater Dogs blog will celebrate its 10th anniversary, and that makes me mighty proud. This is a labor of love, and I want it to be that first and foremost, a way of celebrating and promoting the riches we have here.

• The Curran Theatre is reborn. For me, the theater event of the year was actually a series of events comprising Curran Under Construction, a reintroduction of the fabled theater by its owner, Carole Shorenstein Hays not simply as a stop for touring shows but as an important player in the theatrical culture of the city. While the theater undergoes renovation in its lobby and restrooms, Hays invited audiences to enter through the stage door and sit on stage to experience one after another shows of extraordinary power and diversity. She began with The Event, a horrifyingly relevant exploration of mass violence, grief and understanding, and moved on to the wildly different but equally thrilling The Object Lesson with Geoff Sobelle blending materialism and memories in a magical way. Dave Malloy’s Ghost Quartet offered whisky, haunting music and one of the year’s best, most immersive stage experiences. Steve Cuiffo is Lenny Bruce brought a favorite son back to San Francisco, and Stew and Heidi Rodewald put their own rock-blues spin on James Baldwin in Notes of a Native Son. Every event at the Curran, including the speaker series hosted by the Curran’s resident literary star, Kevin Sessums, has been glorious and fascinating and involving. What more could you want from theater? (read the original posts here)

• Central Market gets a jewel of a theater in ACT’s The Strand. The Curran wasn’t the only re-birth this year. American Conservatory Theater spent a whole lot of time, money and effort bringing some class to the evolving Central Market area. The new Strand Theater is spectacular and should prove to be a key component in the cultural life of San Francisco. (read the original post here)

• Just Theater blows us away. Again. After A Maze last year, Just Theater became a company I wanted to pay attention to, and boy did that attention pay off. With Jackie Sibblies Drury’s We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, from the German Südwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915 the company emerged as a producer of provocative, impactful work that should attract as big an audience as possible. This play within a play (within a rehearsal) tackled race, history and personal drama in ways that felt mind bending and heart racing.(read the original post here)

• We got to see Angela Lansbury live on stage. Even if she had just stood on stage and waved, that would have been something, but no, Dame Angela, the legend herself, gave a true and truly funny performance as Madame Arcati in the Broadway touring production of Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit as part of the SHN season. At 89, she defied any signs of age and offered pure magic. Extraordinary. (read the original post here)

• Hookman splatters expectations. Playwright Lauren Yee offered abundant surprises in this “existential slasher comedy,” which is the best possible description of this electric one-act play from Encore Theatre. (read the original post here)

• Tuneful time travel in Triangle. The most heartfelt new musical I saw this year was Triangle at TheatreWorks, a time-twisting tale involving tragedy and romance. Curtis Moore and Thomas Mizer have crafted a smart, melodious show that feels original and scaled exactly right (the cast of six feels much bigger, as do the emotions). (read the original post here)

• There’s still life left in Scrooge after all. There’s absolutely no reason that the new musical Scrooge in Love should not become a holiday perennial. Creators Kellen Blair, Larry Grossman and Duane Poole have crafted an utterly charming musical sequel to A Christmas Carol with songs you actually want to hear and characters you root for. Of course having Jason Graae as Scrooge is a big Christmas bonus, so kudos to all at 42nd Street Moon for breaking away from the classic or forgotten musicals and presenting something fresh and fantastic. (read the original post here)

• Alice Munro should love Word for Word. There’s no better theater company than Word for Word and no better writer than Alice Munro, so…mic drop. This was sublime from beginning to end as director Joel Mullenix and a cast that included the wondrous Jeri Lynn Cohen, Susan Harloe and Howard Swain brought two Munro stories to life, one from 1968, one from 2012. There was humor, heart and exquisite writing. (read the original post here)

• Cathleen Riddley lays it bare in Tree. Riddley can always be counted on for a strong performance, but in this powerful Julie Hébert family drama at San Francisco Playhouse she was riveting and heartbreaking as an older woman losing touch with herself and her family. (read the original post here)

• And then the drama comes flooding in. My favorite set of the year was G.W. Skip Mercier’s design for Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Head of Passes at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Water played a big part in the design of a house in marshy Louisiana territory where the forks of the Mississippi meet. There was a storm, a leaky roof and then a deluge of biblical proportions. And boy was it fun to watch. (read the original post here)

• Hypocrites pummel Pirates perfectly. Probably the most fun you could have in a theater (and not mind getting beaned by a beach ball) was Chicago troupe The Hypocrites’ wild and wonderful take on Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance. Berkeley Rep had the smarts to introduce the Bay Area to this smart, enterprising company, and I hope we haven’t seen the last of their inventive, energetic take on interactive theater. (read the original post here)

Baldwin adds spice to the delicacy known as Stew

Posted on December 4, 2015 by Chad Jones

Stew and band The Negro Problem (from left, Art Terry, Mike McGinnis, Stew) in Notes of a Native Son, a musical riff on James Baldwin, at the Curran theatre. Below: Stew and Heidi Rodewald duet on the Curran stage. Photos ©Jim Norrena

Essentially, Notes of a Native Son is a rock show with a literary degree. Ini the words of Stew, the composer (with Heidi Rodewald), this 90-minute show is “not a musical nor a play with music. It’s a song-cycle, a set, a concert, or put squarely, just a buncha songs with banter in between.” And that about sums it up.

But what a description of the show itself can’t convey is the sheer joy, the energy, the alive-ness of the music and feeling created by Stew and his band, the Negro Problem. Stew could make music out of an auto repair manual and make it compelling if he wanted to, but give him a potent topic – like his own autobiography in Passing Strange or, in the case of Notes of a Native Song, the life and work of James Baldwin – and things get really interesting.

Notes, which takes its title from Baldwin’s 1955 collection of essays, is in no way a biography of Baldwin but more of a collage inspired by him, a fantasia on being Baldwin filtered through the being of Stew. What we get is about a dozen songs/poems interspersed with rambling banter in which Stew keeps insisting that this is rock ‘n’ roll and not theater, all performed up close and personal on the stage of the Curran Theatre. The audience is sharing that stage, so when Marty Beller wails on the drum kit as he does on the phenomenal “Poof to Tower,” you feel every vibration from head to toe. This is immersive rock, a personal concert and the kind of literary experience college students can only dream about.

Enjoyment of Notes of a Native Son does not require extensive knowledge of Baldwin, but it will help. The screen behind the band features “video concepts” by Stew and designer Joan Grossman that often amusingly portray Baldwin’s novels as album covers and Baldwin’s face superimposed on the bodies of, say, George Harrison or Jimi Hendrix. At the top of the show, an animated smoking Baldwin says: “Don’t blame any of this on me. These are Stew’s words. Not mine.” Indeed, early on, at Thursday’s opening show, Stew says the show, which was created for the Harlem Stage on the occasion of Baldwin’s 90th birthday, is really a response to Baldwin.

The first song, “Baldwin Country,” contains some of the show’s most powerful music and lyrics as Stew sings in gratitude of great teachers who introduced him to the work of black writers such as Baldwin. “You taught like you gave a fuck,” he wails. Other songs will go into Baldwin’s expat time in France and Istanbul. One of the more interesting songs addresses Baldwin’s criticism of his mentor, Richard Wright, while others deal with Baldwin works such as Go Tell It on the Mountain and The Amen Corner.

There’s a raw honesty to Stew as a writer and performer. Whatever he chooses to convey is somehow automatically compelling, powerful and laid bare. He’s the center of this magnificent maelstrom, but his band kicks some pretty serious ass as well. Rodewald is on bass, guitars and synth. Beller’s drums beguile. Art Terry brings tremendous feeling on piano and Mike McGinnis in yarmulke and tuxedo, keeps the sound varied and fresh on a variety of wind instruments.

The whole Curran space, the stage, the auditorium and the glorious chandelier, are all part of the zesty lighting design by K.J. Hardy and help blur the line between theater and rock show (is there really a difference? it matters not).

I left Notes of a Native Son charged up and ready to read everything of Baldwin’s I could get my hands on. So don’t mind me. I’ll be over here listening to Stew, locked in Giovanni’s Room – at least until the next Curran: Under Construction, a surprise festival that has suddenly made theatergoing in San Francisco as interesting as it has been in a long, long time.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Stew and the Negro Problem’s Notes of a Native Son continues through Saturday, Dec. 5 at the Curran Theatre, 445 Geary St., San Francisco. Tickets are $25-$50. Visit www.sfcurran.com.

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