Margo Hall is Wiletta Mayer in Alice Childress’ Trouble in Mind at the Aurora Theatre Company. Photos by David Allen

If only playwright Alice Childress could see Margo Hall’s performance in her 1955 play Trouble in Mind now at Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre Company.

Hall has long been one of those Bay Area actors you go out of your way to see, whether she’s directing, acting or writing. Somewhat unbelievably, Hall is only just getting around to making her Aurora debut, but what a debut! Hall plays Wiletta Mayer, a successful African-American actress on the Broadway stage. Wiletta isn’t biter exactly, but she’s learned how to play the race game in order to succeed in her chosen field. She’s hardened, and this is especially evident when she’s instructing a Broadway novice (Jon Joseph Gentry as John) before they begin rehearsals on a new play with a mostly black cast that’s bound to court controversy because it’s an anti-lynching screed.

“Laugh at everything they say,” Wiletta tells John. “Make them feel superior. White folks can’t stand unfunny negroes.”

John is somewhat taken aback by Wiletta’s instruction. “Sounds kind of Uncle Tom-ish,” he counters. But Wiletta stands firm. She has learned the hard way that if you want to succeed on the Great White Way (with that middle word being key here), there are certain rules you have to follow, and kissing up to The Man is one of them.

As we meet Wiletta and John’s co-stars and creative team, all gathering for the first rehearsal, we see that the black actors have had to bow and scrape just to find work in ridiculous bowin’ and scrapin’ roles written by white men depicting happy slaves full of mammy-speak. There’s even a funny exchange between Wiletta and fellow actress Millie (Elizabeth Carter) about all the roles they’ve played named after flowers and jewels – so many Gardenias, Petunias, Opals and Rubys.

There’s a lot of humor in Childress’ play, but this is a serious work about race in America. Wiletta has done things a certain way for a long time, but the more she delves into this anti-lynching play, in which the white folks who realize lynching is wrong emerge as the heroes, the more she realizes the compromises to her self-respect and self-dignity she has made over the years.

To watch Wiletta, so fully and beautifully realized by Hall, come to life as an activist, which is to say someone who is going to push back and stop laughing when nothing is funny, is an extraordinary thing. Hall’s masterful performance is full of small but explosive revelations. You see everything going on in Wiletta’s mind because it all reads on Hall’s face and, most especially, in her eyes. This is a spectacular play to see in the intimate Aurora because there’s so much to watch in the faces and bodies of this splendid cast, h eaded by the incomparable Hall.

Director Robin Stanton pitches the entire two-hour play at the ideal pace and tone. On one level, there’s work being done – an arrogant director (Tim Kniffin, whose Bill Clinton-esque smarmy charm is perfect here) is trying to make great art from a play he considers important. He’s playing mind games with his actors, but what he’s really toying with is the very notion of race in America.

Rhonnie Washington is superb as Sheldon Forrester, another journeyman black actor who’s not quite as content as Wiletta and tends to squawk when the absurdity gets to be too much. Washington is good for some great, prickly laughs – just watch him try to follow director’s orders and whittle a stick during a scene when that’s the very last thing his character should be doing. Sheldon also gets some great lines. Speaking of white people in general, he says, “I wouldn’t trust one of ‘em if they was sittin’ in front of me on a merry-go-round.”

Sheldon’s casual observation about race also rings true: “Two people got the world all messed up – the blacks and the whites.”

There’s so much that’s wonderful about this production, it’s hard not to gush. The cast, which also includes Earll Kingston as a doddering stage door manager, Melissa Quine as a Connecticut liberal being tested by her first job on Broadway, Patrick Russell as a beleaguer stage manager and Michael Ray Wisely as a character actor who can never manage to say the right thing. Eric Sinkkonen’s set expertly conveys the grandeur of a Broadway theater, while Callie Floor’s costumes, especially her sharply tailored dresses for the women, evoke the crisp styles of the ’50s.

It’s a shame that Childress’ Trouble in Mind never made it to Broadway. After a successful off-Broadway run, the play was supposed to make the transfer, but producers apparently wanted a happier ending. Childress wisely refused to make changes (her ending, by the way, is low key but powerful and lingers long after you leave the theater). Trouble in Mind has a great deal to say – the fact that it’s more than half a century old hasn’t dimmed its humor, insight or provocation.

Wiletta is a different person by the end of the play. The status quo won’t work for her anymore. She sees a world that needs to be changed. She says simply and powerfully: “We have to go further and do better.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Aurora Theatre Company’s Trouble in Mind continues through Sept. 26 at 2081 Addison St., Berkeley. Tickets are $34-$55. Call 510 843-4822 or visit www.auroratheatre.org.

Chaz Lamar Shepherd is Curtis Taylor Jr. and Moya Angela is Effie Melody White in Dreamgirls, at San Francisco’s Curran Theatre through Sept. 26. Photos by Joan Marcus

Dreamgirls, as a movie, seemed apologetic that it was a musical at all. Set in the Motown-ish world of a Supremes-ish girl group, the story lends itself to abundant music without straining credibility. But on the Broadway stage, the music world was only a façade – the real music came from the musical, you know, when people actually sing about how they feel.

On screen, when Dreamgirls had to start singing about emotion rather than just sing, it got sheepish. Oh, please don’t mind us. We’re just going to emote for a minute. We’ll get back to the flashy editing and glitzy Beyoncé moments before you know it.

That’s not how Dreamgirls should live. This is a show that needs to be seen on the stage. The touring production of Dreamgirls now at the Curran Theatre (under the auspices of SHN) – the tour that opened last year at Harlem’s famed Apollo Theatre – is dazzling in many ways, but it truly gets that this is a performance work that needs to move and sing and only stop long enough to pour on the diva moments.

And this production, fully realized by director/choreographer Robert Longbottom, is smart enough to benefit from the flaws of the movie by making some key story and song changes.

Longbottom honors Michael Bennett’s original (and game changing) 1981 staging but takes it to the next, high-tech level. This isn’t a dusty old revival of Dreamgirls. It’s a re-imagining that breathes new life into a show that was beginning to feel musty from too many reverent re-stagings.

In place of Bennett’s dynamically moving columns, which gave a smooth, movie-like flow to the action, we have set designer Robin Wagner’s giant high-def video panels (the media design is by Howard Werner/Lightswitch), which whisk us from on stage to backstage in seconds. They take us on ratty bus tour through the U.S. or a European tour to London and Paris. These astonishingly vivid and bright screens also augment Ken Billington’s lighting design by re-creating stages around the country (and the world).

There’s always a danger with video that it’s going to be too much flash. We don’t want to feel overwhelmed, as you might feel at a rock concert, because we’re here to experience a story and characters. But Longbottom uses the screens brilliantly (in every sense), and they help focus the attention and keep the show moving at the brisk pace it needs.

In many ways this Dreamgirls feels like the spawn of Jersey Boys, which itself was influenced by Bennett’s original Dreamgirls. You can sense Longbottom sitting and watching Des McAnuff’s staging of Jersey Boys and thinking to himself, “Imagine how a dynamic approach like this, with high-tech video and sleek movement might benefit a show like, oh, say, Dreamgirls!”

Longbottom was also smart to incorporate a song from the movie that, while it was used ineffectively on screen, adds a great deal of dimension, emotion and closure to the show. When superstar Beyoncé signed on to play Deena Jones, the pretty member of the trio who ends up pushing Effie White (the heavy one with the extraordinary voice) into the background, the powers that be decided that Beyoncé needed her diva moment.

Effie’s big moment is the legendary “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going.” She belts that anthem of clinging weakness at the end of Act 1, and the show might as well be over. She has one big moment near the top of Act 2 with “I Am Changing,” but she doesn’t have much else to do after that.

For Miss Beyoncé, composer Henry Kreiger (book writer and lyricist Tom Eyen died in 1991) and a committee concocted a lite version of “And I Am Telling You” called “Listen” (and hey, we may be able to release it as a single!). The problem was that Dreamgirls is Effie’s story. Deena doesn’t deserve a diva moment because it’s not her damn show.

So for this version, the song becomes the 11 o’clock number the show always lacked. Deena has fallen into the same man trap that snared Effie years before. Effie has taken control of her life and is moving on, and though the women allowed their deep friendship to rupture, Effie can offer some of her strength to Deena — and she does that in their duet, “Listen.”

The song still doesn’t hold a candle to “And I Am Telling You,” but it serves a higher purpose now with its reinforcement of the female bond and the empowerment that bond can offer.

The cast in this production is terrific (Wednesday’s opening-night performance had some sound issues, however), most notably Moya Angela as Effie and Chester Gregory (seen above right) as the nearly show-stealing James “Thunder” Early.

But in all fairness to the efficient ensemble, this show is stolen by Longbottom’s staging and, most fabulously, by William Ivey Long’s breathtaking parade of costumes. There’s a sequence in Act 2, from “I Am Changing” through “One More Picture Please” that is a gown paradise complete with glitter and surprises – you might even say it’s a dream. A dream with glorious girls.

Please enjoy this video sneak peek.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Dreamgirls continues through Sept. 26 at the Curran Theatre, , San Francisco. Shows are at 8pm Tuesdays-Saturdays and 2pm Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays. Tickets are $30-$99. Call 888 SHN-1799 or visit www.shnsf.com.

Shuler Hensley (left) is the Monster and Roger Bart is Dr. Frederick Frankensein in the national tour of Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein at the Golden Gate Theatre. Photo by Paul Kolnik

If you need proof of how lively and diverse the San Francisco theater scene can be, let me direct your attention to two wildly different shows I’ve seen recently. One is about as old fashioned as it gets, while the other is wonderfully experimental.

For sheer retro-musical theater pleasures, Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein – at the Golden Gate Theatre until July 25 – is a prime example of Grade B goods. There was a time on Broadway – think the 1950s and early ’60s – when these kinds of shows populated the Great White Way. Taking the term “musical comedy” to heart, these shows have no objective other than to please its audience for a couple of hours. A few laughs, a few hummable tunes, and we’re done.

With The Producers Brooks fulfilled a lifelong passion to create a musical theater blockbuster. Now Brooks is settling into his groove with Young Frankenstein, an extremely faithful version of his classic 1974 movie (co-written with star Gene Wilder). As a recycler of his own material, Brooks sticks to the formula that worked for the movie and supplies songs that, while not as catchy as those in The Producers, are appealing.

The loosey-goosey feel of the entire production, directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman, Brooks’ partner on The Producers, means that the actors are free to ham it up as much as they want. Star Roger Bart, of the original Broadway production, takes that notion to heart and is hammy and winky-wink to the audience as I imagine Ray Bolger might have been back in the day.

Shuler Hensley (another conquering hero from the Broadway production) as the monster doesn’t have the freedom to yuk it up, but he’s big and green and funny, especially when performing Irving Berlin’s “Puttin’ on the Ritz.” Brad Oscar goes to town as the blind man visited by the monster and squeezes every possible laugh in a role originated on film by none other than Gene Hackman.

Young Frankenstein does not breathe new life into musical theater, nor does it electrify on its own merits. But it is a generally pleasing, vintage-feeling show that makes audiences happy.

A few blocks away from the Golden Gate, local dance world star Joe Goode and his Joe Goode Performance Group are reviving a fascinating show that combines dance, theater, song, spoken word and art installation.

Traveling Light roams the echoing halls and chambers of the Old Mint, once a thriving center of big money and now a historic footnote waiting to be restored and revived. In the meantime, Goode and his company are the best thing to hit the Mint since gold bullion.

The audience is split into four groups to view the quartet of scenes that take place in different parts of the building. At the end of each segment, a guide takes you quickly to where the next tableaux unfurls. It’s all expertly handled, and the excitement of experiencing such a perfectly orchestrated musing on the meaning of money and value burbles throughout the show’s entire 90 minutes or so.

Mention must be made of Jack Carpenter’s lighting, which is a show unto itself – not that it distracts from the performances or calls too much attention to itself. It’s just so exquisite that I found myself wanting to watch the show again just to watch the shifting lights and shadows, especially in the segment that takes place in a courtyard that makes you feel like you’re in Ancient Rome.

Joe Goode’s Traveling Light is a must see for so many reasons – it’s bold, beautiful, impeccably produced and highly original. And you just can’t see it anywhere else.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein continues through July 25 at the Golden Gate Theatre, 1 Taylor St., San Francisco. Tickets are $30-$99. Call (415) 512 7770 or visit www.shnsf.com.

Joe Goode Performance Group’s Traveling Light continues through Aug. 1 at the Old Mint, 88 Fifth St., San Francisco. Tickets are $34-$44. Please note: there are additional 10pm shows on Fridays and Saturdays. Call (415) 561-6565 or visit www.joegoode.org.

We’re thinking about Sam Harris because the big-voiced, Tony-nominated performer is headed back to San Francisco’s Rrazz Room, where he triumphed in a last-minute, late-night about a year ago. It just so happens that Harris’ gig coincides with all the Gay Pride revelry, which can hardly be accidental. In addition to his new song, Harris’ life is practically a paean to the fully integrated, 21st century gay life. He and his husband, Danny, are busy raising their 2-year-old son, Cooper, who after a recent trip to the theater (the child’s first) to see Sesame Street Live, told his dads, “Cooper up there, sing, dance with Cookie Monster.” You could hardly expect less from the spawn of Harris.

“We don’t watch much TV in our house, but I do go to YouTube and show him things like Donald O’Connor doing `Make ‘em Laugh,’” Harris says on the phone from his Los Angeles home. “My favorite words from his mouth are, `More Gene Kelly! More Gene Kelly!’ The fact that he’s been backstage when I’m performing or on stage during sound checks — he’s been exposed to show biz. I mean come on, Liza Minnelli (Harris’ good friend) is in his life. It’s inevitable he’s going to be drawn to this environment. But we’re not enrolling him in tap class just yet. He’s into garbage trucks, Elmo, Cookie Monster and playing with balls. He’s a little scrapper.”

The 49-year-old Harris could be a described as a scrapper himself. Ever since winning that first big singing contest (on a little pre-“American Idol” show we used to call “Star Search”), Harris has made a living being an old-fashioned entertainer in a new-fangled world. He’s done albums, Broadway, TV sitcoms and the concert circuit. He’s frank and funny, and full of energy — that much you can see on his regular YouTube posts. Then there’s that voice, a Streisand-esque marvel that soars to unbelievable heights even as it plumbs emotional depths.

In addition to promoting his “My Reclamation” single, Harris is working on a couple of projects. The big one is something he started working on years ago: a stage biography of Al Jolson, a heart-on-his-sleeve, voices-in-the-rafters entertainer who shares entertainer DNA with Harris.

“This show is meaty and dark and gritty and fat and complicated and really the best part for a man ever, ever, ever,” Harris explains. “It’s about somebody whose first love was the stage. It deals with his relationship with his father and with Ruby Keeler. It’s the inside of this darkly megalomaniacal man who was like a child, kind of a schmuck and then very kind at other times.”

Harris, obviously enamored of the part, goes so far as to call it “the Mama Rose of men’s roles.” The musical, which has been called Let Me Sing and Jolie features a book by Sherman Yellen and music and lyrics by Will Holt (the show also incorporates Jolson’s biggest songs and standards of the day).

“It’s interesting because I did an incarnation of this 10 years ago, and it almost went to Broadway,” Harris recalls. “We had costume fittings and had an out-of-town theater in Boston, but the financing dropped out in an afternoon. But I realized recently that at this time in my life, I’m so much more ready and prepared and right for it than I would have been then. It’s my goal to look at everything that way: work hard toward a goal and go where the universe takes you. I think that now the show’s chances for success are much greater.”

The other project is still a hush-hush TV project. “It’s getting a lot of heat,” Harris says. “I’ll hopefully be able to talk about it soon. It not only satisfies me creatively but also satisfies the obligation to my philosophy, which is about paying it forward.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Sam Harris in concert, June 23-27 at the Rrazz Room in the Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St., San Francisco. Call 866 468-3399 or visit www.therrazzroom.com.

Here is a revered local theater company venturing into risky territory – a play mostly without words told through dance and recorded music of all kinds – in collaboration with an artist from another revered local company. But get this, that other revered institution is not a theater company.

Yes, ACT Artistic Director Carey Perloff has spent four years working with the San Francisco Ballet’s Val Caniparoli to create The Tosca Project, a story inspired by – hold your hats again – a piece of San Francisco history. Are you getting all this local, local, local stuff? The legendary Tosca Cafe in North Beach is the subject, from its opening in 1919 by a trio of Italians to its current status as the royal court of Jeanette Etheredge and her literary and cinematic pals, and that history is related via dance, music (opera, jazz, standards, rock) and even some beat poetry.

There are thrilling, beautiful moments in this 90-minute piece, and the stage pictures – created by Robert Wierzel’s lighting, Douglas W. Schmidt’s warm, inviting set and Caniparoli and Perloff’s staging – are often stunning in their visual poetry.

This “Project” should be the start of many such projects that take full advantage of the extraordinary resources we have in the Bay Area. Think about the history we have yet to explore in dramatic and musical ways. “The Tosca Project” focuses on one bar in one neighborhood. The city, as they say, is full of a million stories. Let’s hear more of them. And let them be told by local arts groups of all kinds working together.

I know it’s naive to think that arts groups can just join together and create. There are little hurdles like budgets (or lack thereof)and grants (or lack thereof). But the biggest hindrance seems to be the silos everyone works in. ACT, Marin Theatre Company and the Magic Theatre are busting out of their silos to present Tarell Alvin McCraney’s
The Brother/Sister Plays trilogy next season. Why are there so few of these inter-Bay Area collaborations? With any luck, such fruitful teamwork may be an inspired byproduct of this horrendous economy.

California Shakespeare Theater has collaborated brilliantly with Campo Santo/Intersection for the Arts as well as with Word for Word. Think of what they could do with a little help from San Francisco Opera. Or the Oakland East Bay Symphony. Or Oakland’s flammably adventurous The Crucible. Think what might happen if Beach Blanket Babylon and Killing My Lobster decided to join forces. Or Thrillpeddlers and Lamplighters. The mind fairly boggles.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

ACT’s The Tosca Project continues through June 27 at 415 Geary St., San Francisco. Tickets are $10 to $89. Call 415 749-2228 or visit www.act-sf.org.

Above photo: The Bartender (Jack Willis) dances with the memory of his long-lost love (Sabina Alleman) in ACT’s world premiere of The Tosca Project. Photo by Kevin Berne.

The ensemble of Cal Shakes and Word for Word’s The Pastures of Heaven, an adaptation of the John Steinbeck book by Octavio Solis. Photos by Kevin Berne

Spectacular things are happening at the Bruns Amphitheater – on stage and off.

At long last, California Shakespeare Theater is getting a performance venue worthy of its status as one of the Bay Area’s foremost theater companies. Improvements to the Bruns include a new box office, new landscaping and, most importantly, a beautiful new 7,850-square-foot building to house its food operations and some spectacular bathrooms (if you ever used the bathrooms in the old endlessly “temporary” facility, you’ll appreciate just how spectacular these new facilities really are).

The improvements aren’t quite done yet, but they’re already upping the ante on the Cal Shakes experience – and just in time for Artistic Director Jonathan Moscone’s 10-year anniversary with the company.

So many things to celebrate ̶ not the least of which is the world-premiere production on the Bruns stage.

There’s a palpable sense of the new at Cal Shakes, and that extends to Octavio Solis’ adaptation of the 1932 John Steinbeck novel The Pastures of Heaven, which is the first world premiere to take place at the Bruns. In translating this book for the stage, Cal Shakes turned to the one of the nation’s greatest literary and theatrical resources, which just happens to be across the bay in San Francisco: Word for Word Performing Arts Company. There’s no better company when it comes to adapting fiction for the stage.

But in keeping with the whole idea of making things new, Word for Word’s collaboration with Cal Shakes involves, for the first time, a playwright. Usually, the wizards at Word for Word adapt short works of fiction for the stage without changing a word of the author’s original text. That’s why they’re every writer’s favorite theater company. This time out, they’re working with a playwright, and it’s inevitable that the playwright will place his own literary and theatrical stamp on Steinbeck’s work.

So you end up with an extraordinary quartet of collaborators: Cal Shakes, Word for Word, celebrated San Francisco playwright Octavio Solis and a silent but very present John Steinbeck.

Steinbeck’s Heaven, published when the author was only 30, is a novel told in 10 thematically linked short stories (with a prologue and epilogue), and Solis’ adaptation more or less follows the structure of the book with some dramatic rearrangement. The result is a play that feels more like a complete novel than the actual novel does. A deeply human story of dreams and destiny, of flaws, foibles and failure, Pastures of Heaven, both on the page and on the stage, is a compelling and beautiful story shot through with the sadness of fantasy clashing with reality.

Directed with the emotional acuity and elegance we’ve come to expect from Moscone, these Pastures are rich with nearly three hours’ worth of fascinating stories and characters enlivened by a marvelous cast of blended Word for Word company members, Cal Shakes company members and newcomers.

Set in a picturesque valley outside of Salinas, Las Pasturas del Cielo (“pastures of heaven”) was settled by a disenchanted 49er fleeing gold greed seeking an ideal home for many future generations, and though his vast family never quite materialized (he and his wife had only one son, and that son only had one son), the area grew into a thriving little farming community.

And where there’s community there’s drama, as we find out in Steinbeck’s pithy portraits of the valley’s inhabitants. There are so many vivid moments in this production that it’s impossible to catalogue them without simply reprinting Solis’ script. But some of the stand-outs include Rod Gnapp (seen at right with Charles Shaw Robinson) as Shark Wicks, a financial whiz with a big secret whose world collapses just as his wife’s world (so insightfully illuminated by Joanne Winter) expands into bold new emotional places. It’s also impossible to forget Amy Kossow’s portrayal of Hilda Van Deventer, a terrifying child whose mother (the invaluable Julie Eccles) has an unfortunate penchant for grief and endurance.

Madness and mental challenges play a surprisingly large role in the stories Steinbeck chooses to tell. Tobie Windham plays Tularecito, a somewhat deformed young man whose mental grasp of the world is tenuous but whose artistic talent is undeniable. The young man is forced to go to school, but his teacher (an animated Emily Kitchens) reveals an unbridled enthusiasm for the boy’s artwork and his grasp of the more supernatural elements of valley nights.

Amid much serious subjects that includes curses, ghosts, religious fervor, death by snakebites, filicide, financial ruin, and the depression of dashed dreams, the play takes a break for a chapter told completely in song. With music by Obadiah Eaves and musical direction by Julie Wolf, actors Winter and Catherine Castellanos (seen at right) play the Lopez sisters, who fail at farming and at running a diner. They finally find success in a centuries-old profession, and they do it singing and dancing (movement by Erika Chong Shuch) all the way.

Aside from wonderful guitar playing at the top of Act 2 by Richard Theiriot, there are no more musical interludes, alas. But we continue to delve into the stories of people – among them are those played by Dan Hiatt, Andy Murray and Charles Shaw Robinson – coming to California with a dream and inevitably having to reconfigure their lives when too much reality interferes.

This is an ambitious, abundantly rewarding new work that combines delicious theatricality (just watch the way 11 actors populate an entire valley and the way Annie Smart’s amazingly precise dollhouse set gives them room to do just that) with a literary pedigree that fuses Steinbeck’s muscular yet poetic prose with Solis’ lyrical, humor-tinged script.

The Pastures of Heaven tills fertile ground. Notions of destiny and legacy weigh heavily in these stories, but so do undercurrents of hope, community and determination. And this powerhouse collaboration yields a new dramatic work that should grow into a long, distinguished life on stage.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Cal Shakes/Word for Word’s The Pastures of Heaven continues through June 27 at the Bruns Amphitheater, 100 California Shakespeare Theater Way, one mile east of the Caldecott Tunnel in Orinda. Tickets are $34 to $70. Call 510-548-9666 or visit www.calshakes.org for information.

The cast of Marin Theatre Company’s Equivocation includes, from left, Andrew Hurteau, Craig Marker and Lance Gardner. Photos by Kevin Berne.

Now heading into the final weekend of a well-deserved extended run, Marin Theatre Company’s Equivocation is enormously enjoyable theater.

I liked Bill Cain’s play last summer when I saw it at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, and I still like its muscular, hugely entertaining theatricality. The Marin production, directed by Artistic Director Jasson Minadakis, is more intimate but just as rewarding.

The cast boasts some of the Bay Area’s finest – Anna Bullard (the lone woman in the cast), Lance Gardner, Andrew Hurteau, Craig Marker, Andy Murray, and Charles Shaw Robinson – as they crawl around J.B. Wilson’s scaffolding set that reminds of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. Where else would you want to set a story of William Shakespeare, or Shagspeare as he’s called in the play?

As Cain’s play imagines Will attempting to write a piece of propaganda theater for bonny King James (and his henchman, Sir Robert Cecil) and discovering that what he writes has to be the truth or nothing, something very interesting happens. Cain’s immense knowledge of Shakespeare’s plays and British history coalesce into a drama that feels recognizably human yet epic in its scope and more than just a little bit contemporary.

It’s so easy to forget that Shakespeare’s plays came from a human being, albeit a phenomenally talented human being (and for the sake of argument, let’s deny the Shakespeare deniers). Like Tom Stoppard did in Shakespeare in Love, Cain wants to remind us that Will Shakespeare was a son, a husband, a philanderer, a father and a successful artist. Whereas Stoppard’s movie was comic and romantic, Cain’s play is more intellectual and of the theater. But both makes us care anew about Shakespeare and stop to consider what it might have been like for him to actually create plays like Macbeth or King Lear. Something similar happened with Amadeus – we were asked to consider that Mozart was a brilliant composer and flawed human being and that his work wasn’t always “classical music.” At a certain point, it was fresh and new and surprising. We’ve turned his music into an institution, just as we have Shakespeare’s plays, and it’s refreshing when artists like Bill Cain come along to toy with our notions of why something great is actually great.

In Equivocation, Shakespeare is commissioned by the king to create a play about the Gunpowder Plot, a thwarted attempt to blow up the king and Parliament. But Will can’t muster any enthusiasm for the “powder plot” because, in dramatic terms, there’s no plot. The more he investigates, the more he discovers about a royal cover-up and dastardly deeds done by the overly ambitious Cecil.

Robinson (seen at right with Hurteau) is Will, an earnest if ego-conflicted playwright and mediocre father two his two daughters (we only meet Judith, an underwritten role played with aplomb by Bullard). He and Cecil (a brilliant Hurteau) loathe each other, but Will has a theater troupe to feed, so he accepts the king’s commission to write a play about current events. Will’s research leads him to the prison cells of the accused traitors, the most fascinating of which is Father Henry Garnet (Murray), whose theory about equivocation is that it allows you to tell the truth under difficult circumstances. You don’t have to compromise your morals if you learn to answer the answer really being asked of you – the question under the question.

And this is where Cain’s play gets really interesting – what’s the play under the play? Could it be about U.S. politics? Of course it could. But it’s also so wonderfully theatrical that, at its best, this play crackles with energy. Like most of the actors, Marker plays a member of Shakespeare’s troupe and several other roles – traitors, royals or whatever’s necessary. This role shifting provides some stellar moments for the actors, as when Marker gets to be an actor in a play and the king watching the play at the same time.

Theater about theater can come across as so much navel gazing in a spotlight, but Equivocation gazes into all the right places, questioning everything and putting on a hell of a good show.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Equivocation closes May 2 at Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley. Tickets are $34-$54. Call 415 388-5208 or visit www.marintheatre.org for information.

There’s no big anniversary, but there’s still something to celebrate. Steve Silver’s Beach Blanket Babylon is going on 36 years old and is brighter, fresher and funnier than ever. Members of the press were invited to come check out the show recently, and it’s easy to see why producer/co-writer Jo SchumanSilver and director/co-writer Kenny Mazlow are eager to spread the word that the country’s longest-running musical revue is in tip-top condition.

At this point, Beach Blanket is a reliable brand. You know you’ll get a few things when you head to the Club Fugazi, nestled cozily in bustling North Beach. You’ll get broad comedy (often delivered by comic broads), maniacally merry music from every era (Bill Keck is the musical director), fantastic (in every sense) costumes topped by towering hats and the precision popping of popular and political culture. As much as the show changes to accommodate current events and personalities, some things never change. Snow White looks for love and, in the end, turns into Madonna – complete with Jean-Paul Gaultier boob cones – and flies over the audience.

The current edition of Beach Blanket, in addition to some hilarious and timely skewering, finally lands on a way to make that Madonna makeover relevant. Much like the recent “The Power of Madonna” episode of Glee, Madonna is used to represent the ultimate in female empowerment. She’s a pop culture survivor who has remained relevant (relatively speaking) on her own terms and is a role model for women everywhere – at least that seems to be where her image is heading at the moment. Beach Blanket latches on to that, and when Snow White emerges as Madonna, she’s singing a re-worked version of “Defying Gravity” from Wicked, which makes the flying make even more sense. In the tradition of the show, however, the title of the song is now “Surviving Gravity” (look, ma, no chicken arms here!).

Madonna is taking her place in the big pop culture pantheon, so it makes even more sense to have her marry Elvis at show’s end.

From the very top of the 90-minute show, the pop-culture references pile on. Mr. Peanut (one of Silver’s signature Beach Blanket figures) shows up carrying a giant iPad. Within minutes, the stage is hosting a flashback to the Summer of Love as Mr. Peanut morphs into a sort of Jerry Garcia figure while songs from Hair let the sunshine in. The Beatles are there, and so is a woman with a Haight-Ashbury street sign sticking out of her head.

When Snow White (played by Shawna Ferris) visits Rome, her entrance is now heralded with “Be Italian” from Nine, and for some reason, Rome leads to the first big political routine involving 1950s-style Bill and Hillary, Schwarzenegger, Nancy Pelosi, John McCain, Sarah Palin, and Barack and Michele Obama. All of these politicos return toward the end of the show for another new showpiece built on Les Miserables. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Lehman Brothers join the pity party, but the real triumph of the bit is that the Obamas come out wielding swords and hope – could the reelection campaign be starting at Club Fugazi?

One of the funniest flash bits involves Tiger Woods retreating from his golf club-wielding wife while she sings “It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing.” And on the way to Snow White’s happy ending, we’ll see Susan Boyle, Lady Gaga, the Jonas Brothers, Britney Spears, Beyonce (singing “Single Ladies, naturally), a fainting Marie Osmond, Harry Potter, a nude Levi Johnston (seen above right, played by Paulino Duran, photo by Rick Markovich), Taylor Swift, Kanye West, Sen. Larry Craig, Al Gore, Barbra Streisand, the gruesome Gosselins, Octomom, Amy Winehouse (unable to finish her number, poor thing), to drop a few names.

Of course we also get the comic wonder of Curt Branom’s lisping, mincing King Louis and the powerhouse vocal stylings of Tammy Nelson (doing her utmost to fill the shoes – and hats—of the dearly missed Val Diamond). But the Beach Blanket MVP is Renée Lubin (seen at right as Am I Blue Lady, photo by Kevin Berne), who is in her 25^th year with the show. Still in great voice and fine comic form, Lubin is the show’s star and a clear audience favorite. Her duet with Phillip Percy Williams on “I’ll Be There” is a musical highlight.

Special mention must also be made of Doug Magipong, who is celebrating 20 years in the show. He heads a Michael Jackson tribute that is completely straightforward – no jokes – as he leads the cast through the “Thriller” choreography (the whole high-energy show is choreographed by Mazlow with assistant director/choreographer Mark Reina).

The trademark Beach Blanket ending still functions like clockwork: “Shout,” “Happy Trails,” the San Francisco hat, the wedding hat, “San Francisco” and we’re done. The smiling audience files out past the T-shirts and souvenirs and into the San Francisco night. Entertainment is a valuable commodity, and Steve Silver’s Beach Blanket Babylon remains an abundant source of riches and a true San Francisco treasure.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Steve Silver’s Beach Blanket Babylon performs at 8pm Wednesdays and Thursdays, 6:30 and 9:30 pm Fridays and Saturdays; 2 and 5 pm Sundays. Audience members under age 21 welcome at Sunday matinees. Tickets range from $25 to $80. Call 415-421-4222 or visit www.beachblanketbabylon.com.

Sheila Balter and Ryan Tasker are taking Two on a Party on the road to France for the annual Word for Word Tour de France. Photo by Mark Leialoha.

I loved it before and I love it even more now.

About a year ago, Word for Word and Theatre Rhinoceros joined forces for an evening of three shorts stories by gay writers adapted for the stage (in true Word for Word fashion, not a letter of the original text is changed). That production was a tremendous example of the Word for Word art – taking what’s great on the page and making it even greater on the stage. (Read my original review.)

Continuing the Word for Word tradition of taking shows to the American Libraries in France, Two for the Road, the Tennessee Williams story from the Rhino collaboration, is heading across the seas. But before the tour began, Word for Word decided to leave us with a taste of the show’s brilliance. On Saturday and Sunday at the thrilling new Z Space at Theater Artaud performance venue, we once again got to experience Williams’ sterling prose as he followed the lives and (sort of) loves of Billy and Cora, a gay man and a straight woman trawling the Eastern Seaboard for men and booze.

Director John Fisher’s ingenious production is, if anything, even sharper than it was a year ago, and the characters seem more deeply felt and poignant. In many ways, this is a tale as debauched as any tale ever was with its constant stream of sailors and simulated sex and rough trade and martinis from a Thermos. But Williams is far too skilled a writer to let this story be lurid or sensational. Billy and Cora are dimensional human beings, and as such, their interconnected stories are tender and sweet – even full of kindness.

Most of the original cast returns, which is a great thing. Ryan Tasker is note perfect as Billy, the Williams-esque writer who doesn’t always make wise choices in men. Most of those men are played by Brendan Godfrey, who is convincing as a nellie hotel clerk or a brooding motorcycle man. New to the cast is Jeri Lynn Cohen, who trills “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning” and makes a convincing barfly and sailor.

Sheila Balter was in the original cast but in the ensemble role now filled by Cohen. Balter is now Cora (originally played by the marvelous JoAnne Winter), and she makes the role her own. There’s an abundance of blousy, boozy warmth in Balter’s performance, and she and Tasker have sparkling chemistry.

So many moments resonate in this 70-minute story, but for me, this time out, I’ll always remember the four cast members clutching one another as Williams talks about why people are drawn to bars and to tricks – if just to be briefly connected and momentarily not alone. The words are simple but the image, which begins as sort of an orgiastic joke, becomes charged with power.

Audiences in France are in for a treat, but then again, this is Word for Word – they’ve been supplying France with flashes of genius for more than a decade now.

The other big news of the evening was that in the fall, Word for Word’s next production will be several chapters from Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive Kitteridge. If you’ve read that particular book – sort of a novel in short stories – you know how exciting that is. The only problem for me would be how to choose one story over another.

For information about this and about Word for Word’s annual benefit dinner (featuring a performance from Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate followed by a feast inspired by that book), visit www.zspace.org.

Above: Nicole C. Julien is Miss Ssippi in The Cutting Ball Theater/Playwrights Foundation production of Marcus Gardley’s …and Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi. Below: David Westley Skillman is The Great Tree/Jesus and Aldo Billingslea is Damascus. Photos by Rob Melrose.

Quilts and buttons are stars and stories in Marcus Gardley’s deeply lyrical, undeniably beautiful …and Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi, now at the EXIT on Taylor in a co-production of The Cutting Ball Theater and Playwrights Foundation.

On the theatrical spectrum, this is the exact opposite of the sitcom-ready Sunset and Margaritas now at TheatreWorks (read my review of that play in the Palo Alto Weekly here), which is to say this is challenging, thought-provoking material given the kind of sharply etched production that inspires curiosity and wonder. There’s nothing easy about Moonwalks, and that’s a good thing. Gardley, working with director Amy Mueller, weaves myth, folklore, American Civil War history, personal family history and musings on race in this country.

That’s a lot to fold into a nearly 2 1/2-hour production, but Gardley and Mueller do it with the assistance of a fantastic set (by Michael Locher) that represents the night sky with buttons and plants an ominous hangman’s tree in the planks of the floor. The small but versatile stage (beautifully lit by Heather Basarab) is a battlefield after the siege of Vicksburg, a shattered Louisiana plantation and, most amazingly, the soul of the mighty Mississippi River.

Nicole C. Julien plays Miss Ssippi, the embodiment of the river that wends its way more than 2,300 miles to the Gulf of Mexico. She sings like a soulful angel (with sterling backup by her chorus, Rebecca Frank, Halili Knox and Erica Richardson), and she refuses to take sides in the divisive war raging around her. But like a goddess in the Greek tradition, she does take an interest in human lives and isn’t afraid to lend a helping hand (wave?) and assist in leading folks to their fate.

In Gardley’s story, a freed slave named Damascus (a riveting Aldo Billingslea) is searching for his beloved, a slave named Poem (pronounced po-EMM). But Damascus is captured by Confederate soldiers and hanged from that terrifying tree. Jesus (in the form of David Westley Skillman, who occasionally tries to moonwalk to Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean”) decides to resurrect Damascus so he can continue his quest, but now the strapping man will be a woman named Demeter (echoes of the Demeter-Persephone myth here), and she has an extremely limited time to find Poem before death comes calling for real this time.

Damascus/Demeter is led to the ramshackle Verse plantation, where Cadence Marie Verse (a fierce Jeanette Harrison) is attempting to keep her daughters (Erika A. McCrary and Sarah Mitchell) and home together even though all her slaves have fled except for house servant Brer Bit (Martin F. Grizzell Jr.), who has a grand plan of his own (and it’s not good for his mistress).

There’s a tangled tale of romance and betrayal coursing through this plantation, so it’s hardly surprising that Damascus/Demeter’s fate lands her at this particular front door, where a Confederate roamer (David Sinaiko) and a shamed Yankee soldier (Zac Schuman) enter the fray.

It’s the story that compels, but it’s Gardley’s writing that fascinates. Interspersed amid some gorgeous spirituals, Gardley pours poetry over the drama and lets it cascade like water down a fall. The rhymes and images are so plentiful it would take a second viewing to appreciate them all.

Powerful, mesmerizing and complete with bolts of humor and tragedy, …and Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi is an intimate epic that pulses with power and beauty.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

…and Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi continues an extended run through April 25 at the EXIT on Taylor, 277 Taylor St., San Francisco. Tickets are $15-$30. Call 800 838-3006 or visit www.cuttingball.com.