Chad Jones’ Theater Dogs

I can always tell whether a theater year has been good or not so good when I sit down to hammer out my Top 10 list. If I can summon five or more shows simply from memory, it’s a good year. This year’s entire list came almost entirely from memory (which is a feat in itself as the old noggin’ ain’t what it used to be), so it was a good year indeed.

Here’s the countdown leading to my No. 1 pick of the year.

10. Anna Bella Eema, Crowded Fire Theatre Company — Three fantastic actresses, Cassie Beck, Danielle Levin and Julie Kurtz, brought Lisa D’Amour’s tone poem of a play to thrilling life.

9. First Person Shooter, SF Playhouse and Playground – What a good year for SF Playhouse. This original play by local writer Aaron Loeb brought some powerhouse drama to its examination of violent video games and school violence.

8. Bulrusher, Shotgun Players – Berkeley’s own Eisa Davis’ eloquent play, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for drama, turned the Northern California dialect of Boontling into poetic drama as it told the story of an outcast young woman finding her place in the world.

7. Avenue Q, Best of Broadway/SHN – Hilarious and irreverent, this puppet-filled musical by Jeff Marx, Robert Lopez and Jeff Whitty made you believe in friendship, life after college and the joys of puppet sex.

6. Jesus Hopped the `A’ Train, SF Playhouse – It took a while for Stephen Adly Guirgis’ intense drama to make it to the Bay Area, but the wait was worth it, if only for Berkeley resident Carl Lumbly in the central role of a murderer who may have seen the error of his ways. And note: This is the second SF Playhouse show on the list.

5. Emma, TheatreWorks _ Paul Gordon’s sumptuous, funny and, of course, romantic adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel came marvelously to life as a musical, with a star-making performance by Pleasanton native Lianne Marie Dobbs.

4. Argonautika, Berkeley Repertory Theatre _ Mary Zimmerman’s athletic retelling of the Jason and the Argonauts myth fused beauty and muscle and impeccable storytelling into a grand evening of theater.

3. Which Is More Than I Can Say About Some People, Word for Word – Actually, the second half of Strangers We Know, this stage adaptation of Lorrie Moore’s short story was brilliantly directed by Joel Mullenix and performed by Patricia Silver and Sheila Balter.

2. Man and Superman, California Shakespeare Theater _ This unbelievably vivid version of George Bernard Shaw’s massive existentialist comedy benefited from superior direction by Jonathan Moscone and an impeccable cast headed by Elijah Alexander and Susannah Livingston.

1. The Crowd You’re in With, Magic Theatre _ The team of playwright Rebecca Gilman and director Amy Glazer fused into brilliance with this slice-of-life meditation on why we make the choices we make in our lives. Local luminaries Lorri Holt and Charles Shaw Robinson brought incredible humor and tenderness to their roles, and T. Edward Webster in the lead managed to make ambivalence compelling.

Now it’s your turn. Please post your favorite theater moments of 2007 — no geographical limitations, just good theater.

Opened Saturday, July 7, 2007, Bruns Amphitheater, Orinda

Cal Shakes’ Man and Superman soars with superheroic cast
four stars Shavian perfection

A lifetime happiness? No man alive could bear it.

So says Jack Tanner the irresistible leading man in George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman, the second show of the California Shakespeare Theater season.

A lifetime of happiness may be unattainable, but for about three hours and 15 minutes, director Jonathan Moscone, his extraordinary cast and Shaw’s incredible gift for enlightened entertainment provide a distinct measure of glee.

The summer weather in Orinda, not to mention Shaw himself, can get a little chilly, and sure enough, Saturday’s opening night was shrouded in fog and brisk around the edges. But Moscone and his actors kept the chill at bay with a production so full of energy and ideas that you left the Bruns Amphitheater more charged up than when you entered it.

Moscone has judiciously trimmed what he could from Acts 1, 2 and 4 so that he can include the Act 3 play-within-the-play, Don Juan in Hell, a thrilling dream sequence that cuts to the heart of the issues in the play and provides an enjoyable philosophical take on humanity that essentially says nothing ever really changes, we’ll never fully know why we’re here, we’re obsessed with our fear/love of death and it would be foolish to exist without a balance of serious thought and serious fun.

Most productions of Man and Superman cut the Don Juan sequence (or produce it as its own one-act play), but it’s a joy to see the sequence in the context of the larger play, because it really does pull everything together.

Moscone aids this unity by incorporating swaths of Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni, with actors lip synching arias and choruses to great comic effect.

That’s really the only directorial embellishment here. Otherwise, this is straightforward Shaw, performed on Annie Smart’s elegant, simple sets: an industrial metal pair of curlicues provides a sort of proscenium with the gorgeous trees and hills fully visible (and lit beautifully by Russell H. Champa) behind.

During an Act 2 trip to a country home, we’re treated to a psiffy early 20th-century automobile, and when the scene changes to Hell, where the devil is outfitted like Hugh Hefner and nuns consigned to the lower depths drink Tab and Heineken, we get illuminated rocks and, ultimately, a disco party.

The tremendous efforts of the cast here cannot be emphasized too highly, especially those of leading man Elijah Alexander as the roguish revolutionary Jack Tanner and Susannah Livingston as the charming, conniving Ann Whitefield (above).

These two formidable actors carry the bulk of the play (with the heavy lifting in hell provided by an exuberant Andy Murray as Senor Satan) and attack their roles with such seeming joy, it’s almost impossible not to be swept away by them. They are overflowing with the Life Force that Shaw keeps bringing up in the text.

Alexander (last seen at Cal Shakes in Restoration Comedy) has numerous rants against the hypocrisy of so-called liberals and against the horrendous institution of marriage, but he’s never boring. Part of the reason is that he’s physically so invested in what he’s saying — his body language punctuates everything he says unbelievably well. Never mind that all the other characters listen to him then summarily dismiss everything he says.

And Livingston, a Cal Shakes regular, is all grace, intelligence and ulterior motives as her character manipulates pretty much everyone on stage.

L. Peter Callender is a marvelous Roebuck Ramsden, a pillar of society and a prude (as Jack Tanner says, “Pooh, prudery!”), and Ben Livingston (husband of Susannah in case you were wondering) almost makes the mealy mouthed Octavius Robinson pitiable as everyone keeps telling him to be more of a man.

Delia MacDougall is commanding as Violet Robinson, and Dan Hiatt is great fun as the chauffeur Straker, a man for more educated and worldly wise than the middle-class boobs who employ him.

Shaw jokes about the “pious English habit of regarding the world as a moral gymnasium built expressly to strengthen your character in,” but Shaw’s plays, especially Man and Superman provide a strenuous mental workout. Such an effort for our lazy 21st-century minds could be tedious, but when the exercise is as sharp, clever and captivating as this Cal Shakes production, there’s happiness to be found as Shaw asks us to ponder religion, politics, art and that trifling thing known as human existence.

For information about Man and Superman, visit www.calshakes.org.