Chad Jones’ Theater Dogs

Opened July 4 in Dolores Park

The cast of the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s Red State includes (from left) Lisa Hori-Garcia, Lizzie Calogero, Robert Ernst and Adrian C. Mejia. Photos by David Allen

Great songs make Mime Troupe’s `Red State’ sing
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This Fourth of July, at the premiere of SF Mime Troupe’s latest opus, Red State, petitions were circulating to get a local sewage plant named after George W. Bush. Another group was fighting the push to charge $115 for replacement library books. Cindy Sheehan was there, so were giant dragonflies dancing over the heads of the theatergoers/revelers, and even the sun made intermittent appearances.

With the impending presidential election, this is prime time for a nearly 50-year-old lefty-loony theatrical troupe with satire on its collective mind.

Written and directed by Michael Gene Sullivan, Red State forgoes the big, easy targets and focuses on the little man. Specifically, the show is about the dying Kansas town of Bluebird, where the hospital, the public schools and the farms are all kaput.

It’s Election Day 2008, and by some bizarre twist, the results are tied, with only one district not reporting any results. Yes, little Bluebird – with its late-arriving ballot machine and dwindling population – holds the key to the nation’s highest office.

Though it bears a strange resemblance to Swing Vote, an upcoming Kevin Costner film about a regular guy who holds the deciding vote in the presidential election, Red State is sharp for most of its 90 minutes. There’s a dull patch in the last third, but things pick up by the end.

The real high point of the show is Pat Moran’s score. He has written some great songs about struggling Americans. In “How Much” a woman trying to sell her last few possessions sings, “What’s the use of memories when you can’t make enough to get through the day?”

And in the showstopper, Velina Brown (above with Robert Ernst), as Miss Rosa the librarian, sings “Leaving Town.” Soulful and with a hint of ’50s blues, the song bemoans a country where the educated are in the minority and the priority is bombs over brains. In the end, Miss Rosa sings that she’s just another over-educated, unemployed old woman whose country doesn’t want anything she has to offer.

To read the complete review, please visit my Examiner.com theater page here.

“Red State” continues its free park tour through Sept. 14 and is likely coming to a park near you. Visit www.sfmt.org for a complete schedule or call 415-285-1717.

 
Brandon Finch (left) is Albert, a lonely gay teen about to find love with the help of his “fairy godmother” (Scott Phillips) in the original musical Oh My Godmother: A Fabulous Fairy Tale at the Zeum Theatre in San Francisco. Photos by Justin Chin

Infectious tunes, spirit make `Godmother’ sparkle
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Once upon a time, in a little island kingdom known as Alameda, an industrious and talented man wrote a wacky musical. Beloved by all on the island, the musical found a fairy godmother who, with a wave of her lucrative wand, magically transferred the show to the emerald city known as San Francisco.

So is there a happy ever after ending for Oh My Godmother!, the musical that got its start three years ago at the Altarena Playhouse and is now ensconced in San Francisco’s Zeum Theatre?

The answer is an unqualified yes.

The creation of Ron Lytle, who wrote the music, lyrics and book, directs and choreographs, Godmother has charm and exuberance to spare. This re-telling of the Cinderella story with a modern gay spin is a throwback to the perky, snappy musicals of Jerry Herman. In fact, if you envision Herman’s La Cage aux Folles blended with Cinderella you get the idea.

Where it counts, this merry musical has what it takes. Lytle’s score has melody and hooks and abundant humor. His book, though there’s more of it than necessary, is sweet and sassy. And his cast keeps surprising with its blend of musical comedy exaggeration and genuine heart. Clearly Lytle is a man who has absorbed the world of musical theater, especially shows from the ’50s and early ’60s when tuneful enjoyment was the highest priority. His show is derivative in the way that Mel Brooks’ The Producers was – it’s so in love with shows of yore, it can’t help channeling their sounds and their joy.

Godmother’s community theater roots still show (especially in blackout scene changes that have a tendency to kill momentum), but that’s also part of the charm here. This isn’t just some slick, contrived show designed to take your money and time without thought for much else. Clearly, a lot of people have worked hard to bring this show to life, and it’s a tribute to their efforts that the show’s 2 ½ hours turn out to be as enjoyable as they are.

The clever part of Lytle’s update is the way he uses drag instead of magic. When Prince (Kyle Payne) instantly falls in love in a chance meeting, the object of his affection happens, for comically complicated reasons, to be our young hero, Albert (Brandon Finch), in drag. This sends Prince into a tailspin – how could a young gay man raised by gay parents (the very funny Steve Yates and John Erreca) suddenly be straight and in love with a young lady? Well, only in stage comedies would a reasonably intelligent man not notice the bad wig and even worse dress. Not even Prince’s sassy, queeny best friend, Payne (Tomas Theriot) notices that the lovely “lady” is clearly a handsome man in draggy drag.

But such willing suspension of disbelief is the lifeblood of musicals. Horrified that their son might be straight (but willing, as compassionate parents are, to give up their own hopes in favor of their child’s happiness), the parents hold a ball so that their son will either find his mystery woman or meet another handsome young man.

Back home, Albert is dealing with his horrible stepmother (a wry Jennifer Tice) and two psychotic stepsisters, Esther Hazy (the ever-sneering Lisa Otterstetter) and Esta Lieber (the always-eating Julia Etzel). The only light in his life comes from his “fairy godmother” (Scott Phillips), an old friend of his departed dad’s who runs a drag shop in the Castro called The Beaded Lash.

The show’s best numbers tend to be the big ensemble numbers. The colorful opening, “San Francisco, Home Sweet Home to Me,” could easily become a much-loved anthem for the city that can never have enough anthems. The rousing closer, “Old Fashioned Commitment Ceremony,” is also pleasing in all the right musical ways. Comedy numbers such as “Bitch” (the stepmother and stepsisters), “Somebody for Everybody” (the stepsisters) and “It’s a Boy!” (Prince and his parents) manage to advance the story and entertain in grand fashion.

The ballads are less successful (especially the Cole Porter wannabe “Midnight”) only because it’s harder to find the emotional pulse of a fairy tale than it is the comic. Still, there’s not a song here that’s less than easy on the ears, which is a major achievement for any new musical. And you’ll be hard pressed to find any musical, new or old, more carefree and gay than Oh My Godmother!

Oh My Godmother! continues through July 26 at Zeum Theatre, 221 Fourth St. (at Howard Street), San Francisco. Tickets are $25-$35. Call 800-838-3006 or visit www.ohmygodmother.com for information.

 
Elijah Alexander starred as Jack Tanner in California Shakespeare Theater’s Man and Superman last summer. This year he’s starring in Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband. Photo by Kevin Berne

He’s right on time for his interview – early even – and he’s in character.

“Oscar Wilde said that punctuality is a thief of time, and I’m trying to grapple with that,” says the ever-on-time Elijah Alexander. “People say you should always be fashionably late, but that’s impossible for me. Don’t know why. I’m always early. But right now I’m turning over a new leaf. Being late could stir things up a bit.”

Alexander is preparing for his third summer in the Orinda hills as a cast member of a California Shakespeare Theater show. Two years ago we were introduced to him in Amy Freed’s Restoration Comedy. Last summer audiences fell in love with him in George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman. And this week he opens in Wilde’s An Ideal Husband playing a very Wilde-like Lord Goring.

After last summer’s Shaw marathon, which Alexander calls “to date, the greatest challenge of my career,” the actor is settling into his first-ever Wilde play. Like last summer, his director is Jonathan Moscone, Cal Shakes’ artistic director.

“Working with Jon last summer was the beginning of a very, for me, important working relationship,” Alexander says. “The Wilde is interesting because it is so unlike Shaw. I usually play the rogue. This guy is the mediator. He’s utterly honest but in an unassuming way. He’s less bold and less brash than the characters I usually play. He’s taking a backseat while others drive the action, speculating and commenting on a lot of it. He’s the one the other characters come to for support. It requires an ease…I mean, the guy is effete. Essentially, he’s the Oscar Wilde of the play.”

Born and raised in Michigan, Alexander set out to be in broadcast journalism with a side interest in criminal justice. Then, at the University of Michigan, an acting class changed the course of his life.

“I was a junior, and that class was a monumental moment for me,” Alexander says. “I decided to get trained and make acting my life. Got into Yale for grad school. It was all new to me. I came out of grad school having done 50 plays. I was so hungry for work I was constantly doing three plays at a time for three years. Then I moved to New York and got into the real world, where you’re lucky if you do maybe two plays a year.”

Busy most of the time – even in the real world – Alexander is between home bases. He has spent the last five years in Los Angeles doing the movie and TV thing. His biggest claim to fame is a small but juicy role in Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the movie that brought Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt together.

“My first movie involved me working with Angelina Jolie for a month,” Alexander recalls. “I had US Weekly calling me, trying to convince me that gossiping about those people would actually be good for my career.”

After the ups and downs of L.A., Alexander says he’s looking for a new artistic home base. After Ideal Husband closes he’s off to the Utah Shakespeare Festival. After that, he’s thinking about settling in the Bay Area or Ashland, Ore., home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the country’s largest resident company of actors.

“Earlier this year, the writers’ strike decimated L.A. because everyone was so desperate for work,” Alexander says. “There was such a sense of fear, even in the audition room. I realized I’m going to go where the meaningful work is. We attribute meaning to things, so if it means I’m have to go on the road again, I will. The road brought me to here and now.”

An Ideal Husband previews today (July 2) through Friday (July 4) and opens Saturday (July 5). The show continues through July 27 at the Bruns Amphitheater just off the Gateway/Shakespeare Festival exit on Highway 24, one mile east of the Caldecott Tunnel in Orinda. Tickets are $32-$62. Call 510-548-9666 or visit www.calshakes.org for information.

For more of my interview with Elijah Alexander, visit my Examiner.com theater page here.

Watch Cal Shakes’ An Ideal Husband trailer here.

Opened June 19, 2008 at the Aurora Theatre Company, Berkeley

Anne Darragh (left) is an Episcopalian minister and Chad Deverman is her writing assistant in Keith Bunin’s The Busy World Is Hushed at the Aurora Theatre Company in Berkeley. Photos by David Allen

Thoughts on faith, love, family make noise in Hushed
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Aurora Theatre Company concludes its 16^th season with a thoughtful love story/dysfunctional family drama cloaked in theological robes.

Keith Bunin’s The Busy World Is Hushed has its soapy, melodramatic moments, but there’s much more to the play – musings on gays, God, getting lost and being found — that satisfies both intellectually and emotionally.

There aren’t that many plays around that address the notion of faith from both an organized religion standpoint and from a less structured spiritual place. Bunin’s play opens the conversation without preaching too hard or making anyone look foolish. That in itself makes the play worth seeing.

In addition to an intelligent discussion of God’s place in our modern lives, Busy World throws in a tortured mother-son relationship, a love story between two mid-20s men and a crisis of faith for a son slowly losing his father to a terminal illness. That’s a lot to stuff into two hours, but Bunin manages it, and director Robin Stanton (who did such wonderful work on the Aurora’s Permanent Collection) lends it a naturalism infused with realistic rhythms that pull the audience into the fraught conversations.

How appropriate that this tale is told simply – one set (by Eric E. Sinkkonen, complete with stained-glass windows above, and a regular window looking out onto a cold, gray New York) and a trinity of characters in various stages of belief.

Hannah (Anne Darragh) is an Episcopalian minister and seminary professor. She is a great believer in God – not the God depicted in stained-glass windows or trumped up Catholic mythology but the human Jesus who spoke and taught and performed miracles. She’s liberal in her beliefs but strict in her faith. She’s in the process of decoding a newly discovered gospel that could turn out to predate the existing gospels in the Bible, and if genuine, could be the closest thing to the true words of Christ.

To help her write the book on the gospels, she has hired an aspiring author, Brandt (Chad Deverman), whose own writing is blocked and needs a project to help him concentrate. Brandt’s father has been diagnosed with a brain tumor, and his belief in anything is severely shaken. “All religion,” Brandt says, “is an attempt to make death more bearable.”

And then there’s Hannah’s 26-year-old son, Thomas (James Wagner), who doesn’t believe in anything beyond running away. He has just returned from “getting lost,” a game he plays where he throws himself into someplace wild with few provisions then challenges himself to make it out alive. Damaged by his father’s death (and possible suicide) before he was even born, Thomas resents his mother’s immersion in faith and the fact that her relationship with Jesus is often stronger than her relationship with him.

Stanton’s actors are excellent, and this is one of those plays that benefits tremendously from the Aurora’s intimacy. There’s no escaping the passion of Thomas and Brandt’s budding romance just as there’s no turning away from the final confrontation between mother and son, with God, hypocrisy and loneliness wafting through the chasm between them. Bunin comes down hard on Hannah and Thomas, and their rift, full of harsh accusations and hard truths, is truly painful.

There’s not a lot of peace or resolution in this Busy World, which is best, but there’s a lot of common sense and even insight into the complexities of faith and the complexities of living outside faith. Hearts and souls are tangled and torn, God is abused and praised. And the audience is left in a state of contemplation.

The Busy World Is Hushed continues through July 20 at the Aurora Theatre Company, 2081 Addison St., Berkeley. Tickets are $40-$42. Call 510-843-4822 or visit www.auroratheatre.org for information.

The play’s title, by the way comes from the following benediction:

May the Lord support us all the day long,
Till the shades lengthen and the evening comes
and the busy world is hushed,
and the fever of life is over,
and our work is done.

Then in his mercy may he give us
a safe lodging
and a holy rest,
and peace at last.

Continues through June 14 at the Climate Theater, San Francisco

Group leader Ryan Eggensperger goes deep into the brain’s quadrants in the environmental theater experience The Group at San Francisco’s Climate Theater. Photos courtesy of Dodeska Performance Ensemble.

Self-help yourself to a slice of this intriguing `Group’
««« Head trip hootenanny

Enormous credit must go to the Dodeska Performance Ensemble and writer/director/sound designer Robert Quillen Camp for constructing a unique theatrical experience.

The Group is an hour-long spoof of self-help silliness – not so much of the people who want to improve themselves but the “leaders” and “innovators” who sell them a pile of steaming clichés and New Age nonsense. And it’s presented at the intimate Climate Theater in San Francisco’s South of Market district as an actual group session.

On Thursday night, my group consisted of 11 people. We are ushered into the theater space, and before we take a seat in the circle of chairs, we’re given a free cup of coffee and asked to identify our predominant sickness and slap it on a nametag that reads: “Hello, My Sickness Is…” I couldn’t resist choosing “lonliness” (sic). Others in the group were suffering from laziness, anger control, addictions, cancer, depression, infidelity and allergies. Curiously, no one chose the AIDS/HIV option.

Once in our circular formation, we were asked to fill out a questionnaire with questions such as: “My parents are (circle one): UNAPPRECIATIVE; DEAD” or “What’s your favorite film from the 1980s? (circle one): FLETCH; TOP GUN” followed by “Who is your favorite character in Top Gun (circle one): CHIPPER; SUNDOWN; MERLIN.” You get the idea. By the end of the form, when asked to draw a picture of your soul, you’re in the right mindset to meet the group leader.

But first we put on the headphones that will immerse us in the audio landscape of artificial self-help.

Ryan Eggensperger is the charismatic leader who graciously spreads his direct, intense eye contact to each member of the “power circle” as he talks us through our speedy soul reclamation project. Outfitted with a head microphone that rings loud and clear in our headphones, Eggensperger spouts inanities like a pro. “The opposite of suicide is a party,” he tells us. He also introduces us to our “spirit animal,” a sort of guide that will pop up in the earphones from time to time. That animal is a giraffe, and he sings little tunes (by Alec Duffy and Quillen Camp) that wouldn’t be out of place on a TV show for toddlers.

Eggensperger guides us through pseudo-meditations that take us to various quadrants of our brains. He sends us a fax to our selves, takes us to a costume party in a firehouse, introduces us to our Hindu otman (soul) and shares platitudes along the lines of “love is the super glue” and “money is self-confidence.” It’s all quite fun, and Eggensperger’s tightly focused energy combined with Quillen Camp’s laser-sharp soundscape create a mind-altering experience – even if the alteration means you’re lulled into sleepiness by the dim lights and lovely sounds.

With your audience literally in your thrall, it behooves Quillen Camp’s text to be that much wilder and/or sharper. The piece, as enjoyable as it is, doesn’t build to a comic punch line or a dramatic dénouement. The satire lacks that final slap or tickle that might make the evening complete. When it’s over, and Eggensperger has done a tribal dance, been possessed by our demons and changed clothes for his post-group social engagement, it’s simply over. We enjoyed it, but it didn’t make us think differently (or more jadedly) about self-help groups.

The technology of The Group – which recalls the audio installation theater projects of the Antenna Theater – is fantastic and could be utilized to an even greater degree. We willingly join this Group for whatever journey it decides to take us on. We’re not, as the leader describes, “disaloids,” diseased people who refuse to join the group. We want The Group to blow our minds – even if it blows them into hysterical fits or the discomfort of truly pointed satire.

The Group continues through June 14 at the Climate Theater, 285 Ninth St., San Francisco. Tickets are $15. Call 415-706-9535 or visit www.climatetheater.com or www.dodeska.com.

Actor Megan Cavanagh has the kind of living arrangement you might see on a TV sitcom – in fact, you should see it on a TV sitcom. Every time she tells someone about her house and her family, someone inevitably says, “You should totally write a show about that!”

Here’s the deal: Cavanagh was married, as she puts it, “many moons ago,” and she and her now ex-husband have a son who’s in high school. The ex-husband remarried and had a daughter who adores her older brother (and vice-versa). So when the ex and his wife moved from Los Angeles to Palo Alto, it seemed only right that Cavanagh, now a lesbian, and her partner pull up stakes and head north as well. Brother and half-sister get to finish growing up together, and the exes and their new mates happily allow that to happen.

But wait, there’s more! Cavanagh and her partner live next door to the ex, the new wife and the little sister. And the son’s bedroom connects TO BOTH APARTMENTS! Mom on one side, dad on the other. Cue the laugh track and run the closing credits music.

“The arrangement poses its challenges,” Cavanagh says, “but it’s actually pretty great. We love my son’s little sister – we’re her aunties. We babysit and give her music lessons, and that fulfills a baby fix in me. The best part is my son gets to grow up with his sister.”

Megan Cavanagh (right) sings with Darlene Popovic in 42nd Street Moon’s revival of Out of This World, a 1950 musical by Cole Porter. Photo by David Allen

So how about writing the TV show inspired by real life?

“I’m actually more interested in a reality show,” Cavanagh says. “You could call it `Getting Along,’ and it could follow couples after a divorce. There’s so much horrible news out there. You never really hear the good stuff, about couples who loved each other once, aren’t together anymore but decide to be mature for their kids.”

Cavanagh is one of this busy workman actors whose name you might not know but whose face – and voice – ring a bell. Cavanagh is on Logo’s lesbian sitcom “Exes and Ohs,” which she describes as a gay cross between “Sex and the City” and “Friends.” She plays Cris, who, along with partner of 10 years, Kris, operates an online pet supply business out of Seattle (the show is filmed in Vancouver). “They call it a dramedy, but it’s really more comedy than drama,” Cavanagh says. “Everything I do is comedy. I celebrated my 40^th birthday in the first season – they’re so kind – but that was filmed two years ago. We’re going to film the second season, but it’s like, hello people, I’m aging. How long can I pretend to be 40? They’re writing scripts madly now, and we’ll likely film this fall.”

Though she has lived in the Bay Area for a couple years, Cavanagh still commutes to LA to do voiceover work for Nickelodeon cartoons. Most notably, she’s the voice of Jimmy Neutron’s mom. Among the other voices she provides for the network is a new show set in San Francisco in which she plays mother to kids voiced by Amy Poehler and Andy Richter. “I’m a total San Francisco mom,” she says. “I have dreds, a tattoo and drive a Harley. I booked that job right as I decided to move up here. I thought it was God’s way of saying, `Go for it!’ ”

TV and film have been good to Cavanagh (remember her as Broomhilde in Mel Brooks’ Robin Hood: Men in Tights or as Marla, the homesick ballplayer in A League of Their Own?), but the actor claims that theater is her first love. But when the TV and movie gigs keep coming along, it’s hard to commit to a stage job. After a long stretch of work in LA, Cavanagh suddenly realized it had been almost a decade since her last play. “I was flabbergasted with myself,” she says. “So I went back to Door County, Wis., where I had interned in college at the oldest resident summer stock company in the U.S. They were doing Sylvia, and I played the therapist you’re not sure if it’s a man or a woman. I had a panic attack backstage and worried that I couldn’t do a whole scene without starting or stopping like they do in TV. I was about to make my entrance. I was sweating profusely. I gave myself a good talking to, pushed myself onstage and did it – shakily. I vowed never to let so much time go by again without doing a play.”

So, these last few years, while she’s been doing the TV thing, she has also been going in and out of various productions of Menopause: The Musical (one of her stints included the Pier 39 production in San Francisco). And now she has her first post-Menopause gig: with 42^nd Street Moon’s revival of Out of This World, the 1950 Cole Porter musical about Greek gods and Hollywood’s upper crust comically colliding.

The musical (in previews June 5 and 6 with opening on June 7) entered Cavanagh’s life shortly after she dove into the Theatre Bay Area general auditions. “I hadn’t done an audition since the ’80s,” Cavanagh says. “I dusted off a monologue from college that was totally not right for my age – Viola in Twelfth Night. And I sang both parts of `Bosom Buddies’ from Mame. I had been home 15 minutes when 42^nd Street Moon called.”

In the show, Cavanagh plays the Hedda Hopper-like gossip columnist Isadora St. John. “I’m modeling her on Eve Arden,” Cavanagh says. “She’s a hoot – an opportunist always on the lookout for a scoop. She’ll go with a guy or a girl, whatever’s working in the moment. I get two duets with (Bay Area actor) Darlene Popovic, and we are having so much fun. There’s one number, `I Sleep Easier Now,’ that just kicks butt. We’re drinking through it.”

Cavanagh says she’s anxious for more Bay Area stage work – mostly of the comic variety – though she’s willing to shake it up. “I did the audition to face my fear, and I’m ready to go. I’d do anything that comes along.”

Out of This World continues through June 29 at the Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson St., San Francisco. Tickets are $22-$38. Call 415-225-8207 or visit www.42ndstmoon.org for information.

California Shakespeare Theater production opened May 31, 2008, Bruns Amphitheater, Orinda

The eight-member cast of California Shakespeare Theater’s Pericles puts on a jousting pageant on stage at the Bruns Memorial Amphitheater in Orinda. Photos by Kevin Berne

Cal Shakes season opens with radiant romp
«««« Rich, rewarding, adventurous

Presented as a gorgeous fairy tale for grown-ups, California Shakespeare Theater’s first show of the season, Pericles, reminds us that in a seemingly horrible world, faith, love and integrity will receive their just reward.

One of those tricky plays labeled “romance,” Pericles might as well be called “kitchen sink Shakespeare” because it includes a little bit of everything: incest, fiery shipwrecks, knightly jousts, swirling romance, assassination attempts, tragic death, magical resurrection, marauding pirates, betrayal and beyond-belief happy ending machinations. Experts quarrel about the exact authorship of the play, especially the first two of the five acts, but the fact is, Pericles is mightily entertaining, especially when directed with flair.

And flair is something director Joel Sass has in great abundance. This Pericles, which is winnowed down to eight actors (and four general ensemble members) playing forty-some roles, is based on the adaptation Sass created for Minneapolis’ Guthrie Theatre in 2005. All the role switching gives the play a hyper-theatrical feel and helps keep it more in the realm of vibrant storytelling and less in the more emotionally demanding world of realism.

The stage of the Bruns Amphitheater, nestled in the rolling Orinda hills, has rarely been so beautiful. Set designer Melpomene Katakalos gives us a natural world – a tree trunk forms a central arch amid a sandy floor – with crude structures walled in by Persian carpets. Exotic carpets and pillows are strewn about the sand to create a warm, cozy atmosphere for ripping yarns and lusty romance. Russell H. Champa’s lights play with the set the way fireworks play with a Fourth of July sky – they form an extraordinary element in the storytelling here, with their dastardly shadows, warm hues, heroic posturing and near-operatic grandeur.

All of those elements are necessary in the telling of Pericles, the story of the Prince of Tyre (Christopher Kelly), whose life seems to take dramatic turns every time he takes a voyage. First he heads to a kingdom to woo a beautiful princess, but because her father the king is an incestuous letch, that doesn’t work out too well, and Pericles finds himself and his kingdom under attack.

So the handsome prince heads off to a kingdom suffering famine and brings them grain and hope. Returning from that trek, his ship catches fire and sinks. He washes up on the shores of a gentle kingdom and is taken in by kindly fisherman. It just so happens that there’s a knightly tournament going on and that the good-hearted king has a lovely, unmarried daughter. Cue the jousting. From here, the tale takes a more tragic turn, with death, kidnapping, jealousy, murder, forced prostitution and the supernatural all coming strongly into play.

But director Sass and his wonderful octet of actors sail through these bumpy dramatic waters with style. Shawn Hamilton(above) holds the narrative together as Gower, the storytelling poet who sings beautifully and fills in the blanks as the years hurry by over the course of the play’s nearly three hours. Having a narrator helps because it’s a little hard to keep track of this wandering tale.

But that’s another reason Sass’ production works so well – even when the play loses its way or gets tangled in yet another adventure, the stage is gorgeous and there’s always something interesting going on. Raquel M. Barreto’s costumes are lush and beautiful, like something out of 1,001 Nights. She also has a sense of humor. Her fishermen, for instance, look less like people and more like grass huts. And when it’s time for the joust, the knights strap on their horses like clowns. Composer Greg Brosofske lends pomp and romance to an already lyrical story.

The role-shifting actors all shine. Ron Campbell goes from dastardly (as the incestuous king) to dippy (as a fisherman) to equine (as a prancing knight on “horseback“); Delia MacDougall (above, with Kelly) is a robust redhead who wins Pericles’ heart, and then she’s a madam in a fat suit (complete with over-stretched fishnet stockings); Domenique Lozano is a duplicitous queen and an enigmatic sorcerer who has the power to bring the dead back to life; Sarah Nealis is a radiant Marina, daughter of Pericles; Alex Morf plays a series of bad guys until his final bad guy, in the face of overwhelming virtue, turns good; and Danny Scheie plays several good, noble men and one feisty hunchback.

Is the play nonsensical and outlandish? Absolutely. Is it incredibly moving at its tearjerking conclusion when all is set right, and noble Pericles, after all his misfortunes, is given what he most wanted in the world? Oh, yes, and then some. Fairytale is fantasy, and we want to believe some of that fantastical world, of outrageous wrong and unwavering right, can rub off on our world. We want to believe in happy endings so that in our daily dealings with shipwrecks, bawds and nefarious kings, we, like Pericles, can take heart in an ending of the happy, tear-stained variety.

Pericles continues through June 22 at the Bruns Memorial Amphitheater, one mile east of the Caldecott Tunnel on the Gateway/Shakespeare Festival exit in Orinda (there’s a free shuttle to and from the theater and the Orinda BART station). Tickets are $32-$62 (with student, senior and under 30 discounts). Call 510-548-9666 or visit www.calshakes.org for information.

The summer season is starting to, pardon the expression, heat up, though anyone who has been through a Bay Area summer knows that summer does not necessarily mean heat around here.

- Lions and tigers and bears. Oh, my! The first outdoor show of the year opened last week on the slopes of Mt. Tamalpais in Marin: The Mountain Play’s The Wizard of Oz runs weekends through June 15. All shows are at 1 p.m. The views are spectacular, and the show’s probably pretty good, too. Tickets are $25-$39. Call 415-383-1100 or visit www.mountainplay.org for information.

Franz Kafka’s Love Life, Letters and Hallucinations in Short Scenes with Live Actors at the Berkeley City Club. Photo by Marty Sohl

- Brookside Repertory Theatre in Berkeley presents Franz Kafka’s Love Life, Letters and Hallucinations in Short Scenes with Live Actors (whew!) by Mae Ziglin Meidav. Written by Brookside’s artistic director, this comic biography delves into the hallucinations that fed Kafka’s creativity. The show continues through June 29 at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., Berkeley. Tickets are $16-$34. Call 800-838-3006 or visit www.brooksiderep.org for information.

- Check out Marga Gomez’s work-in-progress Long Island Iced Latina at The Marsh, which will have its premiere at the Public Theater’s Joe’s Pub in New York. Another in her series of comedic memoirs, the new show is about Gomez’s awkward adolescence (is there any other kind?) in Massapequa, Long Island, where life was equal parts cultural confusion, chronic virginity, mother-daughter instability and polyester fashion.
The show opens today (May 28) and continues through May 31 at The Marsh Studio Theater, 1074 Valencia St., San Francisco. The bill also includes an excerpt from Samantha Chase’s Lydia’s Funeral Video.
Tickets are $15-$35 on a sliding scale. Call 800-838-3006 or visit www.themarsh.org for information.

- California Shakespeare Theater opens its 2008 season with Pericles, a wacky Shakespeare play involving incest, shipwrecks, tournaments, magicians bringing the dead back to life and, of course, pirates! Minneapolis-based director Joel Sass makes his West Coast directing debut with a highly theatrical re-telling of this odd tale with eight actors playing 50 roles. Previews begin tonight (May 28) and opening is Saturday, May 30. The show continues through June 22 at the Bruns Amphitheater in Orinda (good news for your gas tank: there’s a free shuttle between Orinda BART and the theater). Tickets are $40-$62. Call 510-548-9666 or visit www.calshakes.org for information.
You might also want to check out Cal Shakes’ blogs here.

A Shotgun Players production at the Ashby Stage, Berkeley, through June 22

Jason Craig, who also wrote the show, tackles the title role in Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage, a Shotgun Players collaboration with Banana Bag & Bodice. Photos by Jessica Palopoli.

Shotgun collaborates, monstrous musical roars to raging life
«««« Hungry like the Beowulf!

Forget last year’s craptastic half-live/half-animated Beowulf movie that put a tail on Angelina Jolie. Heck, you may even want to forget about reading the book. If you want to experience Beowulf – really experience the 1,000-year-old epic poem, head to Berkeley’s Ashby Stage, where you’ll dive into one of the most interesting and exciting shows currently on a Bay Area stage.

Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage is original, surprising and strangely moving. The world-premiere work marks a first collaboration between the Shotgun Players and the Banana Bag & Bodice, a group familiar to San Francisco Fringe Festival audiences. Also in the creation mix are Magic Theatre/Z Space and the New Works Initiative, and the show will be further developed when it moves to the Henry Street Playhouse in Manhattan a little less than a year from now.

So how do you approach Beowulf, a monumental epic, with a cast of seven? You make it a rousing musical, of course. The original aim of composer Dave Malloy was to create an opera, but what he and writer Jason Craig ended up with is something more interesting: a hurdy-gurdy rock musical that lives just on the other side of a Brecht-Weill beer hall. Malloy’s engaging score is, like the show itself, both funny and serious. And unlike so many new musicals, it features music you actively want to listen to. Just check out the composition of Malloy’s orchestra: Malloy himself is on piano and accordion (he also plays King Hrothgar); Jen Baker is on trombone; Chris Broderick is on bass clarinet and clarinet; Dan Bruno goes to town on percussion; Andy Strain slides the trombone; and Andre Nigoghossian plays guitar and – get this – the saw.

You get roiling anthems like the opening “Heorot” and angry heart-rippers such as “Bring It” sung by a rampaging Grendel’s Mother (who, strangely, has never been named after all these years). There are sweet harmonies (provided mainly by dancing soldiers Anna Ishida and Shaye Troha) that recall 1940s swing, and then you get a duet called “What Kind of a Face” sung between the warrior Beowulf (Craig) and King Hrothgar that sounds a little like Johnny Cash and June Carter flirting over the microphone.

Directed with verve by Rod Hipskind, Beowulf isn’t even two hours, but it never feels rushed. There are a few songs here and there that could be tightened, but the brisk pace and the constantly changing palate (played out on a set designed by Banana Bag & Bodice and lit by Miranda Hardy) make those two hours as full as they could be.

Craig has devised a smart narrative device to help put his story in both a historical and a modern context that also happens to skewer the academic world that Beowulf seems to live in these days. The show begins with three academics (Cameron Galloway, Jessica Jelliffe and Christopher Kuckenbaker) sitting behind microphones and preparing to lead us through a seminar on the epic story poem. Before too long, the academics have broken the bonds of their brains and jumped into the action of the play. Kuckenbaker becomes Grendel, the murderous monster man and Jelliffe becomes Grendel’s mom, who lives with her outcast son at the bottom of a lake. The mother-son relationship is especially strong, and once Beowulf severs Grendel’s arm, and the beast dies in his mother’s arms, there’s more than a pang of sadness in the number “Grendel’s Death.”

Galloway, who is just priceless in her timid academic suit and neckwear (the smart, funny, just-right costumes are by Kaibrina Buck), doesn’t break out until toward the end, during the last chapter of Beowulf’s life (when he dies battling a dragon) when she sings part of the tale in the original Olde English.

Craig makes for an ambivalent hero. When asked by Grendel’s mother why he murdered her son, the warrior can’t come up with a great answer. “It started with his action against. So, revenge I guess.” Beowulf, it seems, is not such a thoughtful guy. He can’t even come up with a definition of “good” when asked. Instead of thought, he lives in a world ruled by the all-too-common school of thought: “It is better to retaliate than to mourn.”

Part of what makes Beowulf so exciting is that it feels contemporary without straining itself to be hip. The aim seems to be the telling of a story and not the marketing of a performance art rock musical and all the wondrous personalities within it. There’s a natural ferocity, humor and thoughtfulness in this show, and that’s truly what makes this Beowulf howl.

Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage continues through June 22 at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., Berkeley. Tickets are $17-$25. Call 510-841-6500 or visit www.shotgunplayers.org for information. Find out more about Banana Bag & Bodice at www.bananabagandbodice.org.

It’s worth reporting SF Playhouse’s 2008-09 season just for the name of the second show of the season. Check it out:

Shining City by Conor McPherson (Oct. 1-Nov. 22) - Wonderful Irish playwright’s modern-day ghost story.

Abraham Lincoln’s Big Gay Dance Party by Aaron Loeb (Dec. 3-Jan. 17) -This new comedy by local scribe Loeb tracks the happenings surrounding the outing of Abe Lincoln by a fourth grader at a Christmas pageant.

Landscape of the Body by John Guare (Jan. 28-March 7) - Long overdue Bay Area premiere of Guare’s part-play, part-musical.

The Story by Tracey Scott Wilson (March 18-April 25) - Drama based on the true story of a New York Times reporter fabricating a story. A co-production with the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre.

TBA (May 6-June 13)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey and Dale Wasserman (June 24-Sept. 5) - Nurse Ratched, oil up your sneer. It’s time to head back to the asylum.

For information visit www.sfplayhouse.org.