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.

As a critic at the Oakland Tribune and its sister newspapers, one of my greatest pleasures was instituting a teen theater critic internship, and it was my luck to launch the program with Leslie Ribovich, who was then a senior at Albany High School. For much of her final year in high school, she would accompany me to shows and write her own reviews, which than ran in the newspaper or online (or both).

Well, Leslie has finished her freshman year at a prestigious New York college, and while she’s home this summer, I asked and she graciously accepted my offer to be a Theater Dogs guest critic. It is my pleasure to present her work. (For my review of the show, click here.) She remains an astute observer and a wonderful writer.

Aurora’s Busy World Provokes Thought of Biblical Proportions

By Leslie Ribovich

You could label The Busy World is Hushed, currently at Aurora Theatre Company, as a political play with a strong message about the Episcopal Church’s relationship with homosexuality, but the designation would be misleading. Yes, the characters grapple with God and predestination, and yes, two of them are homosexual, in a church no less, but playwright Keith Bunin presents the issues far too complexly to take sides.

In a political play, you look for the point of view. In this play, it’s fragmented. We see three different points of view and wonder with whom the playwright agrees.

Is it Hannah (Anne Darragh) who has the first and last line of the play (often an indicator of point of view)? Hannah is an Episcopalian minister and seminary professor who is amazed by the idea that an infant could be the most powerful being, but also refers to “doe-faced Jesus-freaks from the Midwest.”

Or Brandt (Chad Deverman), an excellent writer with a dying father who is unqualified for the job of synthesizing Hannah’s research on an unearthed gospel into writing?

What about Thomas (an incredibly charismatic James Wagner), Hannah’s son named for the apostle, who heard gospels instead of bedtime stories and believes his mother is, “fully informed and yet swallows her own Kool Aid”?

What if all three of them say things that make a lot of sense? And then say things that we couldn’t disagree with more?

We don’t walk away from this play knowing what political stance the playwright is taking. That makes good political theatre because these issues aren’t black and white. Religious affiliation and belief in God address a fundamental part of human existence. The play thrives in sticky territory that must be dealt with gracefully and honestly, which Bunin and director Robin Stanton do.

Without a political or religious agenda laid out for us, the audience must think about the issues. And what’s theatre good for if it doesn’t make you think at least a little?

Bunin’s play is also satisfying dramatically. Hannah hires Brandt despite his inadequacies, (a move that more scatter-brained professor types could benefit from following). His religious views are in flux: the Bible was the first piece of writing that he “truly and consciously loved” and yet he questions whether religion is a desperate attempt to make death more bearable. He tells Hannah upfront that as a gay man, he feels at best queasy when faced with the church’s attitude toward homosexuality.

Thomas enters the scene covered in animal blood and “dried crap” immediately after Hannah explains that she despises stained glass because it epitomizes the self-important nonsense of Christianity and makes a mockery of motherhood (one of Bunin’s many clever juxtapositions). Thomas is happy when he notices Brandt “looking his way.”

So we’ve got two characters hard at work on Hannah’s book and the mysterious history therein; a romantic relationship with too many psychological and practical barriers to produce anything less than one big fight; and a mother/ son relationship with expectations of biblical proportions.

The heat is raised on the drama in certain scenes, even visually at the end of Act 1 when light designer Kurt Landisman goes for a Godlike, transcendent quality. The effect highlights the production’s melodramatic elements more than creates a religious metaphor, but it certainly excites you for Act 2.

The set has elegant stained glass windows for Hannah to deconstruct, boxes of Thomas’ deceased father’s things, and enough piles of books that when Brandt comments, how innovative to have a library without shelves, we laugh.

A large window overlooks a slightly out-of-focus, black-and-white photograph of New York’s upper west side. Set designer Eric E. Sinkkonen’s choice might indicate that the discussions in the playing space are timeless; they are somewhat removed from the outside world. The text takes a while to identify where they are geographically, and we might in fact like to know less about the city outside the church. When Bunin mentions “The Strand” and “NYU,” we wonder if the characters aren’t believable enough to live in the more ambiguous, slightly out-of-focus world that Sinkkonen creates.

This is political theater where the specific represents the big picture, or at least gets us wondering about it. After all, the big picture is nothing if we don’t understand how it affects people we know or can relate to. In The Busy World is Hushed, we do.

The actors are all fabulous – they’ve figured out the emotional nuances of their characters to a tee. I must say: after a year in New York, Bay Area theatre still tops my list. Even a show like this that shouldn’t necessarily be the-best-thing-I’ve-seen-all-year, feels so much more organic than anything I saw in New York. Kudos to the Aurora for creating risky, thought-provoking theatre.

For information about The Busy World is Hushed visit www.auroratheatre.org

Opened June 21, 2008 at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts

The cast of TheatreWorks’ Snapshots creates scenes from the life of a married couple set to recycled Stephen Schwartz songs. Photos by David Allen

Stephen Schwartz songbook turns into Snapshots revue
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The idea of a musical revue was green before we even knew what green meant. Revues reuse and recycle, just as all good citizens should do.

We’ve had standard-issue revues along the lines of A Grand Night for Singing (Rodgers and Hammerstein), Jerry’s Girls (Jerry Herman), Cole! (Cole Porter),
Side by Side by Sondheim (Stephen Sondheim) in which shiny, happy people (usually too shiny and too happy for my taste) tap their troubles away with seemingly endless medleys clever twists on songs by great composers that we know and love.

Then there’s the jukebox musical (hello, Mamma Mia!), which recycles old songs (usually pop songs not written expressly for the theater) and shoehorns them into some semblance of a story, however awkward.

And then there’s Snapshots, the long-gestating revue of songs by Stephen Schwartz, the composer of Godspell, Pippin and Wicked to name a few of his better-known shows. This is a revue with jukebox aspirations, which is to say, songs from Schwartz’s shows from the last 30 years are forced into the service of an all-new story.

Conceived by Michael Scheman and David Stern, the show has been re-worked and refined right up through its most recent incarnation from Mountain View’s TheatreWorks. Schwartz and Stern (who gets final credit for the book) have been involved in this latest production, and the results are surprisingly good. IN theory, a cobbled together show like this shouldn’t work – it sounds unappealing.

But under director Robert Kelley’s care, there’s a real show here. Not everything works as Schwartz’s re-configured songs attempt to tell the story of how the marriage of Sue (Beth DeVries) and Dan (Ray Wills) has come to the breaking point, but some of the songs work beautifully, and some genuine feeling comes bubbling up.

Spun out in the attic (cluttered, useful set by Joe Ragey) of Sue and Dan’s Connecticut home, the story of the marriage is triggered by snapshots dating back to childhood when Dan, just after losing his mother, moves to the neighborhood and meets Sue, the woman who will be the love of his life.

In childhood the couple is played by Brian Crum and Courtney Stokes, and in the college to middle years by Michael Marcotte and Molly Bell. Everyone helps out by playing various other characters – lovers, friends, children (Crum even dons cheerleader drag) — to fill out the story.

One goal of any revue is to give audiences a concentrated sense of a composer’s life work. We should leave with a sense of who Stephen Schwartz is and what his musical palette has to offer. The overarching impression of Schwartz that comes through here is one of someone straddling two worlds: the pop-infused Broadway of the ’70s and ’80s (which can’t help sounding a little dated) and a more timeless musical theater sound.

Songs from Pippin and The Magic Show, for instance, even in new arrangements by Steve Orich (and under the musical direction of William Liberatore and his quartet), are strongly anchored in a hippie-ish pop, and that’s not a bad thing. It’s just very specific, while songs like “Popular” (from Wicked) and “In Whatever Time We Have” (from Children of Eden) still have Schwartz’s strong pop sensibility but connect to a bigger musical theater sound that helps them work better in this new context.

The best re-worked song is “Meadowlark” from The Baker’s Wife. Usually performed as a diva’s showstopper, the song in the context of Snapshots is performed by the three women in gorgeous harmony who are approaching the song from different places in their lives. It works so well, in fact, you wish the rest of the show could match its intensity.

Though there’s some emotional connection to the beleaguered married couple at the center of the story, our attachment to the individuals is lopsided. The woman, Sue, is far more interesting, and it’s hard to see what she ever saw in Dan and why she pined for him for so many years. The women get all the interesting songs, and as a result, the character of Dan doesn’t amount to much. In fact, one key moment, when Dan finally stops seeing Sue as a pal and recognizes his love for her simply happens – no defining moment, no song, nothing.

In the end, you have to wonder if all the futzing and fussing with old songs is really worth it in the telling of a new story. Wouldn’t a new Stephen Schwartz musical be more exciting than something recycled? Snapshots is perfectly enjoyable, well performed and staged, but it can’t help leave its audience wondering what lyrically and musically interesting things Schwartz still has to offer.

Snapshots continues through July 13 at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro St., Mountain View. Tickets are $26-$64. Call 650-903-6000 or visit www.theatreworks.org.

To keep up with Stephen Schwartz visit his Web site: www.stephenschwartz.com

Continues through July 26 at the Campbell Theatre, Martinez

Michael Scott Wells and Alexandra Creighton scare off Candarian demons in Evil Dead: The Musical, a Willows Theatre production at the Campbell Theatre in Martinez. Photos courtesy of Willows Theater.

Singing and bleeding in horror musical
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Adding the words “the musical” to a title is, in some cases, automatically funny. ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore: The Musical. Mein Kampf: The Musical. Spider-Man: The Musical. (Don’t laugh – that last one is real and coming to Broadway soon.)

So already, Evil Dead: The Musical has a leg up in the laugh department, albeit a dismembered, bloody leg.

Sam Raimi’s early ’80s gore fest splattered across movie and video screens through much of the decade, lending it cult status, spawning two sequels and making a sort-of star of Bruce Campbell and a budding blockbuster director of Raimi (who would go on to direct the Spider-Man franchise).

Whenever the word “cult” is attached to a movie, the musical stage version can’t be far behind. About two years ago, a group of Canadian kids – George Reinblatt (book, lyrics, music), Christopher Bond (music and additional lyrics), Frank Cipolla (music), Melissa Morris (music) and Rob Daleman (music) – decided to camp up the already campy comedy-horror film and turn it into an all-singing, all-dancing zombie fest. The show was a hit in Toronto, had a run off-Broadway and is now back in Toronto.

The musical finally makes it to the Bay Area courtesy of the Willows Theatre Company, who’s producing it in their Campbell Theatre, which is a spiffy cabaret-style space in downtown Martinez. The ironic thing is that years ago, this is the kind of outrageous, sensational show that people would come see in the big, bad city. But now these kinds of shows tend to spring up in the suburbs, and city folk have to make the trek.

Now to the review. In the immortal words of Ash, the hero of Evil Dead: “Yo, she-bitch. Let’s go.”

To read the complete review, click here.

Evil Dead: The Musical continues through July 26 at the Campbell Theatre, 636 Ward St., Martinez. Tickets are $30 for the splatter zone, $25 regular. Call 925-798-1300 or visit www.willowstheatre.org for information.

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.

Vasantasenā (Miriam A. Laube) paints a portrait of her lover, Chārudatta (Cristofer Jean) in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival production of The Clay Cart. Photo by David Cooper.

Here’s the link to the last batch of reviews I wrote of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Ore., for the the San Francisco Chronicle.
Click here.

And may I just say how fun it is to control the Little Man?

Opened June 18, 2008 at the Curran Theatre

Jaston Williams (left) is Tasty Kreme waitress Helen Bedd and Joe Sears is her co-worker and compatriot Inita Goodwin in Tuna Does Vegas, the fourth Tuna show, now at San Francisco’s Curran Theatre. Photos by Brenda Ladd

Fourth serving of Tuna sprinkled with sins, smiles
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There’s no such thing as too many visits to Tuna, Texas, the legendary (and fictional) Texas town with a virtual population of two: actors Joe Sears and Jaston Williams, who play all of the town’s eccentric, lovable citizens.

Since the arrival of Greater Tuna in the early ’80s, audiences have grown to love the world of Tuna as created by Sears, Williams and director/co-writer Ed Howard. After the sequels A Tuna Christmas and Red, White and Tuna, we thought the trilogy was finito, and it was goodnight, Tuna. But you can’t keep a good Texan down, apparently, because here comes No. 4: the self-explanatory Tuna Does Vegas, now in a short run at San Francisco’s Curran Theatre as part of the SHN/Best of Broadway season.

My favorite show of the quartet is still A Tuna Christmas, but the new Vegas show is a worthy entry into the Tuna canon.

The first appearances of characters such as Bertha Bumiller or Pear Burras (both played by Sears) or Vera Carp (Williams) elicit rounds of applause as if greeting the arrival of an old friend and that’s pretty much true. There’s just something comforting seeing the hefty Sears wobble out in Aunt Pearl’s bright floral dress, petite hat and cane that inspires good humor.

The first half of the two-plus-hour show is set mostly in Tuna as Bertha and her husband, radio host Arles Struvie (Williams

Opened June 11, 2008 at American Conservatory Theater

Michael Hayden and René Augesen play a brother and sister with more than familial affection for one another in ACT’s production of ”Tis Pity She’s a Whore.‘ Photos by Kevin Berne

ACT slices into harsh, bloody revenge play
«« ½ ‘Tis pity it’s so harsh

You don’t want to be a woman in John Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, the 1630 barnstormer in which women are murdered and tortured – some by their own mischief, some at the hand of their supposed loved one, some just for gossiping – or at the very least, sent into a nunnery after seeing your lover killed in your arms. As one man says: “‘Tis as common to err in frailty as to be a woman.” And don’t forget that snappy title, which also happens to be the last line of the play. Substitute the word “woman” for “whore” and you get the idea.

The men don’t fair much better—they’re mean, violent, corrupt, greedy and stupid — but at least they have all the money and power.

Welcome to the world of the Jacobean revenge drama. Nobody has much fun, including the audience.

You can feel American Conservatory Theater artistic director Carey Perloff trying to locate the beauty and the power in her production of ‘Tis Pity. The vast stage of the ACT theater has been transformed, by set designer Walt Spangler, into a vast array of staircases and platforms adorned with strings of glass beads and candles (or what appear to be candles in Robert Wierzel’s colorful lighting design). The overall effect is both ornate and rough. In fact, the stage looks a little like an Urban Outfitters.

The most interesting feature of the stage contains one of the most interesting elements of the production. Housed in what looks like a giant, upside down organ is cellist/vocalist Bonfire Madigan Shive, who provides live accompaniment for the nearly three-hour production, and it’s a mercy she’s there to lend beauty (and a little screaming outrage) and passion and tenderness to an otherwise unforgiving evening. It’s no wonder she’s costumed (by Candice Donnelly) to appear somewhat angel-like. She confers a certain grace to something truly ugly.

You can’t help but feel the playwright attempting to shock his audience by having a brother (Michael Hayden) and sister (René Augesen) declaring their love for each other, smooching up a storm in their sinful sheets and then suffering the consequences of their forbidden union. To Ford’s credit (and to Hayden and Augesen’s), we do have some sympathy for these lovers, though their quick acceptance of incest as the best possible route seems haphazard to be sure. The brother ends up like a moody, swoony riff on Hamlet, only his Ophelia happens to be a blood relative.

With the audience rooting for the infidels, it’s hard to muster up much concern for the passel of rivals (Jud Williford, Michael Earle Fajardo, Anthony Fusco, Warren David Keith) all vying in one way or another for the sister’s hand in marriage. There are rousing swordfights (fight directed by Dave Maier) and any number of subplots involving betrayal and revenge, but it all feels like it’s heading in one direction and one direction only: the bloody denouement quickly followed by a sharp poke at the Catholic church. An early line of foreboding in the play warns: “Death waits on thy lust,” and boy does it ever.

Death, mayhem, blood and gore – it’s all there. Even the silliest character (an imbecilic fop played by Gregory Wallace) meets an untimely end, and so does the bawdy nurse (Sharon Lockwood), who lustily encouraged the brother-sister union because a brother is just another man, after all. And what does it all amount to? At the end of Hamlet, though the stage is strewn with bodies, you feel something profound has happened that speaks to the core of man’s weakness. At the end of ‘Tis Pity, you’re reminded a) not to sleep with your relatives and b) to be grateful that button-pushing Jacobean revenge dramas are in short supply.

Or maybe they’ve just changed form and are now more readily available in video game versions. That seems about right.

‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore continues through July 6 at the American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary St., San Francisco. Tickets are $17-$82. Call 415-749-2228 or visit www.act-sf.org. Also visit www.tispity.org.

NOW CLOSING JUNE 29

Musical theater turns magical – somewhat
«« ½ Flash, bang, wallop

Darren Romeo is many things over the course of his 90-minute magic and music show with the cumbersome title.

He’s a magician, as promised, and a singer, as promised. He’s also, as the title reminds us, the protégé of master Vegas magicians Siegfried and Roy. But Romeo is also a magic enthusiast eager to share his hobby, a musical theater aspirant who wants to move people with the sound of his voice and an old-school Vegas entertainer with a lust for flash over substance.

That’s a lot to pack into a small frame, but Romeo does it. He’s also a young man – I’d guess around 30 – so he has the need to make it all fresh while paying homage to all the magicians (and boy have there been a lot of them) to come before him. Being classic and new is a tricky maneuver and one Romeo is still working his way through in The Voice of Magic at the Post Street Theatre.

There’s still a lot of Vegas cheese in the show and a few Branson, Mo., clunkers left to smooth out. But Romeo has his charms, nowhere more apparent than when all the set pieces and flashing lights and overstrained songs are set aside and he goes one-on-one with a kid from the audience. On Tuesday night, that kid was 10-year-old Ashley, a charmer in her own right. She and Romeo sat at the edge of the stage, in front of the curtain, and Romeo did a simple but impressive (and slightly icky – in a good kid way) card trick. The number was meant to recall Romeo’s Long Island youth as a kids’ party entertainer and to show us how far he’s come. But Romeo would be wise to build a little more of that human element into his show.

Just as Romeo is attempting to be many things as a young, singing magician, so too is his show attempting to be spectacular and intimate, romantic and funny, impressive and silly. It doesn’t all work, but Romeo has the energy to keep it all together. He builds nice rapport with the audience, even if his fake giggle grates from time to time, and when he’s more natural and less “on” he’s quite appealing.

Romeo seemed to have a case of opening-night nerves on Tuesday and probably wasn’t as slick as on other nights when his mentors aren’t sitting in the orchestra (Siegfried and Roy, who is still recovering from a near-death encounter with one of their famous white tigers, received a standing ovation from the crowd). Some of the tricks and entrances were a little rough and revealed maybe more than the magician would have liked.

And he seemed to be suffering some vocal troubles that plagued certain numbers. But Romeo is enough of a pro that he pulled it all off with panache.

I can neither sing nor do magic tricks, let alone do both at the same time, so Romeo is well ahead of me in both departments. What he’s doing on stage is much harder than he makes it look, and some of it is beguiling. He serenades an audience member while singing Billy Joel’s sweetly sad “And So It Goes” while making a paper rose then, in a fiery flash, turning it into a real rose. He changes places in a flash several times with his leading lady, Kristy Michelsen, who also does some tricks and sings some songs of her own.

And then there’s the bit with the animal puppets on sticks and the furry little wormy things that dance and talk following “Talk to the Animals.” Cheesy. And so’s the “sawed in half” number, when it’s clear Romeo is wearing something bulky apparatus under his black T-shirt (the same Darren Romeo T-shirt available for sale in the lobby). “Gethsemane,” from Jesus Christ Superstar, is probably better when Romeo’s voice is stronger, though the Roman centurion contraptions worn by the dancers (Mariko Takahashi and Terrin Kelly) looks like a leftover from Siegfried and Roy’s show at the Mirage, and the finale of that number, when Romeo levitates, is awkwardly Christ-like.

He sings show tunes from Barnum, The Fantasticks, My Fair Lady and Kiss of the Spider Woman and even throws in a Melissa Etheridge tune and some originals. Somehow it all seems a little retro with the sparkly curtains and overly-flashy lights. When Romeo goes acoustic as it were, when it’s really just music and magic and a whole lot less flash, that will be something to see. If he really wants to take the show out of Vegas and the Vegas out of the show, there’s still some work to be done.

Siegfried and Roy present Darren Romeo: The Voice of Magic is at the Post Street Theatre, 450 Post St., San Francisco through JUNE 29 (earlier than previously announced). Tickets are $45-$65. Call 415-771-6900 or visit www.poststreettheatre.com. Darren Romeo’s Web site is www.darrenromeo.com.