Chad Jones’ Theater Dogs

San Jose Repertory Theatre announced today that Rick Lombardo of Boston’s New Repertory Theatre will be the company’s next artistic director, succeeding the Rep’s long-time director, Timothy Near.

According to a press release, the six-month nationwide search landed on Lombardo for “his combination of artistic excellence, programming savvy and leadership abilities.”

“In Rick Lombardo we have found a proven leader who will complement the current team and help take San Jose Rep to an exciting new level in the community as well as on stage,” said Stan Anders, chair of the search committee and incoming board president. “We look forward to his energy and insight as we launch a new era for the theatre.”

For ten of his twelve years as artistic director at the New Repertory Theatre (NRT), Lombardo oversaw all artistic and administrative operations and presided over a quadrupling of the theatre’s budget, a successful capital campaign, a doubling of attendance from 2002-to 2007 and a 500 percent increase in contributed revenue. An award-winning director, Lombardo produced four world premieres at NRT and directed a wide range of plays including Ragtime, Sweeney Todd, King Lear, A Streetcar Named Desire, Waiting for Godot, Tartuffe, The Scarlet Letter and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

Lombardo also was artistic director of The Players Guild in Canton, Ohio and was founding artistic director of the Stillwaters Theatre Company off-Broadway in New York. A National Merit Scholar and graduate of Georgetown, he received his MFA in directing from Boston University School for the Arts. He has taught at Fordham University and Farleigh Dickinson University. He has a strong commitment to diversity and developing education and outreach programs such as the successful “New Rep on Tour,” a school touring program funded by the NEA.

“I am honored to be named the next Artistic Director of San Jose Rep and to continue the high artistic tradition the Rep has established under the leadership of Timothy Near,” said Lombardo. “My work has always been to find the plays, stories and voices that have a powerful and lasting impact on an audience, and to use these plays as a way to begin a real engagement between community and artists around the important questions and ideas of our times. I’m very excited to begin planning my first season for Silicon Valley, and I’ll be spending as much time as I can at the Rep this fall to get the feel for my new home.”

Lombardo will begin the transition into his new position in the fall of 2008.

For information about the San Jose Rep season, visit www.sjrep.com

The force is most certainly with her.

Carrie Fisher, fresh from her hit Berkeley Repertory Theatre show Wishful Drinking, a one-woman autobiographical play, is taking the show on the road. And no wonder: in 9 1/2 weeks, the show took in $1.3 million.

Producer Jonathan Reinis is sending Wishful across the country. The first stop isn’t so far away, just down south a little at San Jose Repertory Theatre in July 23-Aug. 2. The next stop is across the country at the Arena Stage at the Lincoln Theatre in Washington, D.C. Sept. 5-28.

The rest of the tour is sort of a regional theater hopscotch: Lensic Theatre in Santa Fe, N.M. (June 18-22); Hartford Stage in Connecticut (Aug. 6-17); and Huntington Theatre Company in Boston (Oct. 14-26).

Wishful Drinking, a delightful evening of Fisher sipping Coke Zeros and telling tales from her Hollywood life, is directed by Berkeley Rep artistic director Tony Taccone, who recently has been specializing in solo shows. He directed Sarah Jones’ Bridge and Tunnel all the way to Broadway and a special Tony Award.

No one would be at all surprised to see Fisher end up on the Great White Way. In other good Fisher news, word is she’s adapting her most recent wonderful novel, The Best Awful (sort of a sequel to Postcards from the Edge) for HBO.

Since leaving Theatre on the Square (now the Post Street Theatre) in San Francisco, the Berkeley-based Reinis has been a busy man. He’s also touring Jane Anderson’s The Quality of Life starring JoBeth Williams and Laurie Metcalf. That tour opens in October at American Conservatory Theater.

Could this be the future of touring theater — bypassing the commercial stage and taking advantage of the regional theaters’ nonprofit status and subscription audiences?

Time to start thinking about those season tickets — or at least cherry picking which shows you’re going to make a point of seeing next season.

Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s 2008-09 season was announced this week. Here’s how it shapes up.

Yellowjackets by Itamar Moses (left) — Berkeley native writes about Berkeley High School and the student newspaper. Tony Taccone directs.

Joe Turner’s Come and Gone by August Wilson – East Bay resident Delroy Lindo returns to Berkeley Rep to direct the play that earned him a Tony Award nomination.

The Arabian Nights by Mary Zimmerman – Local audiences are getting quite used to the dynamic theatricality of Chicago’s Zimmerman, a near-constant in Berkeley Rep’s recent seasons. This time out she’s zaaaing up the legend of the 1,001 nights.

The Vibrator Play by Sarah Ruhl – The last time director Les Waters was paired with Ruhl, the results were extraordinary. Eurydice turned out to be one of the best nights at the theater in a good long while. Now the director and the fast-emerging writer pair up for a world premiere about six lonely people seeking relief from a local doctor.

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky – Former Berkeley Rep artistic director Sharon Ott returns to direct Marilyn Campbell and Curt Columbus’ 90-minute adaptation of the classic Russian crime novel.

The Lieutenant of Inishmore by Martin McDonagh – The pairing of Waters and McDonagh was exciting last season in The Pillowman. Now Waters sinks his teeth into McDonagh’s bloody comedy about a dead cat and the Irish troubles.

Yellow Face by David Henry Hwang – Hwang finally makes his Berkeley Rep debut with a satirical self-portrait of a writer caught in a controversy of his own creation.

For information visit www.berkeleyrep.org.

And now for San Jose Rep’s new season, the final for artistic director Timothy Near.

The Foreigner by Larry Shue – A staple of community theaters everywhere, this comedy involves a rural fishing lodge, mistaken identity and slow-witted rubes.

Splitting Infinity by Jamie Pachino – Nobel prize-winning astrophysicist decides to use physics to prove whether God exists or not.

Around the World in 80 Days by Mark Brown (adapted from Jules Verne) — Adventurer Phileas Fogg embarks on the original version of “Amazing Race” in this streamlined, highly theatrical stage adaptation.

The Kite Runner by Matthew Spangler (adapted from Khaled Hosseini) — A big coup for San Jose Rep, this is the world premiere stage adaptation of the hot, hot novel that has already been turned into a controversial movie.

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee by Rachel Sheinkin and William Finn — This utterly charming musical was a big hit in San Francisco, and now it makes its way into the regional theater circuit.

For information visit www.sjrep.com.

Opened Aug. 11, 2007, Bruns Amphitheater, Orinda

More love, less triumph in Cal Shakes-San Jose Rep co-production
two [1/2] stars Romance trumps comedy

In the theater, there’s nothing worse than feeling on the outside of a joke. Members of the audience chortle happily while you sit there stony faced and cranky wondering why the onstage antics delight some but only serve to annoy you.

Such was my fate at The Triumph of Love, a co-production of California Shakespeare Theater and San Jose Repertory Theatre that opened Saturday night (so far this so-called summer, Cal Shakes is three for three with bone-chilling opening-night weather).

Having seen and loved Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux’s The Triumph of Love when Stephen Wadsworth adapted and directed it in 1993 at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, I was looking forward to revisiting the play. TheatreWorks produced the musical version, which drops the “the” from the title (rather than add an exclamation point, one supposes), in 2001, but it seemed like a different play entirely.

Director Lillian Groag’s new adaptation (working from a translation by Frederick Kluck) attempts to temper the sharp-edged romance of the story with the spirit of Italian commedia dell’arte that inspired Marivaux. I’m all for the romance — especially when it gets thorny and dark — but the commedia stuff left me (literally) in the cold.

Most of the comedic duties fall to Danny Scheie as Arlechino and Ron Campbell as Dimas, a gardener. Scheie is like an Italianate Tigger — he’s bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy, fun, fun, fun, fun. Except he’s not all that fun. He jettes across the stage with zest, but his seemingly mentally challenged character is nothing more than silliness in a hat.

Campbell’s gardener is a riff on Larry the Cable Guy – so much so I expected him to interject a “Git-R-Done!” here and there. At one point, Scheie and Campbell are involved in a lengthy pantomime, and though I watched attentively, I had absolutely no idea what they were doing. None at all.

I was much more interested in the love quartet at the story’s center.

Stacy Ross is Princess Leonide, whose goal it is to get the handsome young Prince Agis (Jud Williford) to fall in love with her. The match will mend old family feuds and restore the prince to his rightful throne.

But to win the prince’s affections, Leonide must disguise herself as a man and infiltrate his sequestered court. With the help of her lady in waiting (Catherine Castellanos, a marvelous actor, squandered in an Ethel Mertz role), Leonide gains access to the home of Hermocrates (Dan Hiatt), a great philosopher and teacher/guardian to the prince.

The challenge will be to get Hermocrates and his sister, Leontine (Domenique Lozano), to allow her (aka him) to stay long enough for her to woo Agis. Turns out Leonide is quite adept at slinging the ol’ BS, especially in the ways of love.

She convinces Leontine, a somewhat hardened soul, that “he” is in love with her. Leontine melts under the handsome young “man’s” attentions. Hermocrates is a little harder to crack. He sees right through the princess’ male disguise, so Leonide convinces the old philosopher that she donned the costume to win his affections.

In her spare time, when she’s not deluding the older folks, the princess lures the prince’s affection, first as a friend (and fellow dude) then as a woman.

As Leonide throws her love around like promises at a presidential debate, Kate Edmunds’ set (which features shag-carpeted shrubs at one side and an unattractive rear wall that’s meant to indicate the harsh, ugly world outside Hermocrates’ gates) begins sprouting red flowers. The same is true for Raquel Barreto’s gorgeous period costumes — the more in love the characters become, the more red flourishes appear on their costumes.

With all the red, I wondered if this was a comedy or an effort to fight AIDS in Africa.

Director Groag has a hard time blending elements here, and the actors, especially during the so-called comic bits, struggle to make sense of it all. A sense of spontaneity is overwhelmed by work that feels tightly programmed and full of effort. Perhaps this will soften by the time the production moves to San Jose next month.

What works here — amid the cartoon sound effects and the totally uncharming cupid peeing fountain — is Ross’ central performance. She carries the production on her able back and receives stalwart support from Williford, Hiatt and Lozano, all of whom come alive — in comic and dramatic ways — in their scenes with Ross.

There’s some serious exploration of love here, and the “happy ending” is actually fairly sad, which is mightily interesting. It’s just too bad that so much of this Triumph is so mightily silly.

For information about The Triumph of Love visit www.calshakes.org.

Last week, in honor of Thanksgiving, the critics of ANG Newspapers gathered an assortment of the year’s turkeys. Being one who prefers positive over the negative, I offer my turkeys and promise that the coming weeks will be full of the bests.

Golden Turkey Awards: Theater

I’m happy to report that there were far more good shows than bad on Bay Area stages in 2006. That’s generally the case, and when bad shows do pop up, they’re usually an example of a theater company attempting to make an artistic leap, hatch a new play or challenge complacent audiences.
Such examples of bad shows happening to good companies are California Shakespeare Theater’s The Merchant of Venice, TheatreFirst’s Criminal Genius or Magic Theatre’s The Ice-Breaker. But then there are the stinkers _ the shows you wish you hadn’t seen, that owe you hours of your life back. Here are five such shows:

Lestat, Best of Broadway
The Elton John-Anne Rice vampire musical that sucked harder than any other show in recent memory with its unlistenable songs, absurd performances and Vegas-ready design. Hugh Panaro (left, with Allison Fischer, who somehow managed to be good) gave the cheesiest performance of the year. Talk about major suckage…

Slava’s Snowshow, Best of Broadway
An unfunny clown show is painful, and when one of the giant balloons at the finale beaned me in the face, I knew theatrical and physical pain.

The Tempest, San Francisco Shakespeare Festival
Exactly the kind of production that makes people think Shakespeare is for brainiac English geeks, this free Shakespeare in the Park show reduced a mighty, magical play to inscrutable piffle.

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus’ The Greatest Show on
Earth, 136th edition
An attempt to make a more theatrical circus reduced an American classic from three rings to one, gave it a lobotomy and even made the glorious elephants look ashamed.

Iphigenia at Aulis, San Jose Repertory Theatre
Not to hit a company while it’s down, but this misguided, over-directed production of a Greek classic is a pretty good example of a company out of touch with its audience and dazzled by its own inflated sense of importance.