Clay it isn’t so!

Claymates rejoice while the rest of us ponder why Clay Aiken ever stuck his fingers in Kelly Ripa’s mouth (OK, he covered her mouth with his hand, but like she said at the time, she didn’t know where that hand had been — right on, sister).

Aiken, the “American Idol” second-place finisher behind Ruben Studdard, will make his Broadway debut in Monty Python’s Spamalot.

He’ll be playing Brave Sir Robin, a role originated by Davd Hyde Pierce. His stint begins in January and is scheduled to continue into May.

Director Mike Nichols (whoever thought we’d see the day when Mike Nichols, the man who directed The Graduate and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, would be talking about Clay Aiken?) said in a statement: “Clay Aiken is amazing beyond that glorious voice. Turns out he is an excellent comic actor and a master of character. People will be surprised by his wide-ranging talent, since the first impression is of great country charm and a singer to remember. This guy is not only a star, he is a lot more. We are lucky to get him for Spamalot.”

Visit the official Spamalot Web site here.

And here’s a number from Spamalot, “Find Your Grail,” performed on the 59th annual Tony Awards. (You go, Sara Ramirez — happy you have steady work on “Grey’s Anatomy,” but a voice like yours needs to be on a stage).

Chili scenes of autumn

On Saturday at San Francisco’s El Rio bar, where a giant cut-out of Carmen Miranda looks down on the back courtyard, Crowded Fire Theatre Company held a festive fundraising chili cook-off.

Here are the competitors, who each contributed three chilis — traditional, veggie and “anything goes”:

Impact Theatre

Fools Fury

Playwrights Foundation

Crowded Fire (actually this is just Mollena Williams, but her chili had the event’s best name)

Here are Crowded Fire artistic directors (and newlyweds) Kent Nicholson and Cassie Beck:

And here are the fine judges (Chloe Veltman of the SF Weekly, yours truly and Karen D’Souza of the San Jose Mercury News):

The overall winning chili was Playwrights Foundation’s traditional chili, “Fires in the Chili.”
Here are all the winners:

It was a great event. Everyone had a marvelous time, and with luck, funds were raised to keep all these artists in business.

Review: `The Color Purple’

Opened Oct. 12, 2007 at the Orpheum Theatre, San Francisco

Purple musical finally finds its voice
Three stars: Lumpy, ultimately beautiful bundle

Those first few moments of the overture are crushing as you think, “Hey, I came here for The Color Purple, not for `Rejected Themes from `The Love Boat.’

In theory, the notion of turning Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel into a musical makes perfect sense. In fact, Steven Spielberg’s 1985 movie version had so much music (all created under the astute guidance of Quincy Jones), it was practically a musical itself.

Walker’s story of Celie, a resilient young woman raped by her father beginning at age 12 and victim of seemingly every indignity in the years that follow, is prime musical material. At the core of Walker’s story is the strength of love, the power of faith and the divine right to find — and use — the voice we’re given. All of that is prime fodder for the musical theater stage.

With a team of producers so numerous it resembles a directory for a downtown law firm (with the name Oprah Winfrey prominently listed before everyone else), The Color Purple opened on Broadway in 2005, won a Tony Award for its leading lady (LaChanze as Celie). The show has proven to be a sturdy hit and is now on tour.

At San Francisco’s Orpheum Theatre for Friday’s opening-night performance, the audience was primed for an Oprah-endorsed hit inspired by the Bay Area’s own Walker.

Then that darn overture started spilling from the orchestra pit, and when the music by composers Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray didn’t sound like bad 1970s TV themes, it sounded like incidental music for the dusty, sparkly Jubilee! spectacular in Las Vegas.

In the nearly three hours that follow, what we get from these Purple pros is a slick Broadway concoction that is streamlined for the masses. Director Gary Griffin has trouble deciding just how serious he wants this show to be. Is it a piece of social and artistic significance such as Porgy and Bess? It could easily have been, but it’s not.

Is it more of a musical-by-committee mess than that, aspiring to be something for everyone. Early on, as we see Celie (played by the extraordinary Jeannette Bayardelle, above left) abused by her father, her husband and life in general, the gravity of her situation keeps being upended by the presence of three church ladies (Kimberly Ann Harris, Virginia Ann Woodruff and Lynette Dupree), who pick a little and talk a little in brief attempts at comic relief.

This is The Color Purple, which takes place in Georgia in the first half of the 20th century. We don’t expect — or need — comic relief. This is an early misstep in Marsha Norman’s book.

Griffin’s direction aims for machine-like efficiency and mostly succeeds, though it seems whenever there’s any chasing or running onstage, his staging turns ridiculous.

There’s no room in this story for the ridiculous — except if we can consider cruelty, ignorance and heartlessness ridiculous.

Walker’s story is powerful, and no Broadway musical machine can prevent it from connecting with the audience. That is the ultimate triumph of this Purple.

For all the mediocre songs (you want proof? Try “Big Dog” or “Miss Celie’s Pants”) and Broadway gloss, there’s a show here that pulsates with compassion and love and redemption. Even the score, when it attempts to fire up some gospel energy (“Mysterious Ways”) or create a somewhat authentic 1920s juke joint number (“Push Da Button”) breaks out of its pop doldrums.

We get glimpses of beauty in the stage pictures created by John Lee Beatty’s set and Brian MacDevitt’s lights, which traffic heavily in silhouettes. But where this show lives is in the performances of its cast.

Bayardelle, a veteran of the Broadway production, anchors the story as Celie. Her expressive face, and even better, her powerhouse voice elevate the show and give it dignity and emotional heft.

Would that she had a better vocal partner on the affecting duet “What About Love?” Michelle Williams (of Destiny’s Child fame), as juke joint singer Shug Avery, was not in great voice Friday. The song, which gives voice to Celie’s first true love, should be a standout, but Williams couldn’t quite muster up the power.

The touring production is fortunate to have another Broadway veteran, Felicia P. Fields (above left) as Sofia. Watching this fine comedian and dramatic actor strut her potent stuff through “Hell No!” and then later make love on a porch (“Any Little Thing,” sung with the charming Stu James as Harpo) is a delight. Like Bayardelle, Fields knows the line between serious theater and musical theater, and she’s comfortable on both sides.

Also notable is sweet-voiced LaToya London (one of the few good things to come from “American Idol”) as Nettie, Celie’s sister.

Unlike most musicals, where things tend to drop off after intermission, Act 2 of The Color Purple is all payoff. The story starts in 1909, but by the second act we’re in the ’30s and ’40s. There are about half as many songs in this act, and that’s a good thing.

Bayardelle’s Celie finally triumphs against the oppressive forces (namely her “husband” Mister, played by Rufus Bonds Jr.) in her life and gets her own aria at last: “I’m Here.”

Act 2’s Africa fantasia falls short both musically (so what else is new?) and choreographically. Donald Byrd’s movement, which tries to marry authenticity with Broadway pizzazz, squanders much of the number’s energy.

But Act 2 also introduces the score’s best song: “The Color Purple,” a simple choral number that serves as a prayer to the better things in a harsh world. The warmth of the song wraps gently around the story’s tear-jerking conclusion and hits that sweet musical theater spot where emotion, sound and story become spirit.

After the opening-night curtain call (and enthusiastic, not just rote, standing ovation), producer Scott Sanders introduced a radiant Walker, who deservedly took a bow and kindly accepted a proclamation from the mayor’s office proclaiming Alice Walker Day in San Francisco.

Walker should take a great big bow. Her story, it seems, can survive any adaptation and remain true to its beautiful, wounded, triumphant heart.

The Color Purple continues at the Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market St., San Francisco, through Dec. 9. Visit www.shnsf.com for information.

Make `ShowBusiness’ your business

One of the most interesting documentaries of the year had nothing to do with health care or Iraq.

ShowBusiness: The Road to Broadway sort of slipped in and out of theaters without a whole lot of fanfare, which is really too bad because director Dori Berinstein has created a fascinating glimpses behind the scenes of four major musicals opening in New York during the 2003-2004 season.

Luckily, the movie came out on DVD this week (Liberation Entertainment, $28.95).

For her movie, Berinstein picked four musicals to follow, and boy did she pick good ones: Wicked, Avenue Q, Caroline, or Change and Taboo.

Bay Area audiences, of course, got the first look at Wicked during its pre-Broadway tryout. We had the great fortune to see Caroline, and Avenue Q made its overdue local debut last August. The only real mystery in this bunch is Taboo, the Rosie O’Donnell-produced ’80s flashback revolving around Boy George: his life, his music and himself (he was in the cast).

Of the four, Wicked and Avenue Q were monster hits and are still running. Caroline is an esteemed flop by Angels in America playwright Tony Kushner and composer Jeanine Tesori. And Taboo is known as one of Broadway’s great disasters.

The movie follows each of the shows from the summer of 2003 up to the Tony Awards in 2004 when Avenue Q upset favorite Wicked for the Best Musical award.

Along the way, we get fascinating glimpses of the creative process, the marketing machine and the economics of Broadway. One of the juiciest threads involves tension between Jeff Marx, the co-composer of Avenue Q and Jeff Whitty, the book writer who was brought on board relatively late in the creative process.

It all ends happily, with Tony Awards for everyone, but the two did not get along, and it’s not pretty. Marx’s parents, by the way, turn out to be a highlight of the movie.

Director Berinstein includes several round-table discussions with New York theater critics, and this, to me, is a horror show. These nattering fools (save Charles Isherwood from the New York Times, who salvages a shred of dignity) make critics look like the lowest possible bottom feeders in the show business pool. Ouch.

Covering such a diverse assortment of shows, Berinstein ended up with more than 250 hours of video that had to be whittled down to 104 minutes.

“The season was a roller coaster with highly anticipated shows closing early and little shows coming out of nowhere to take Broadway by storm,” Berinstein says. “There was no way to predict where the Season was heading. Consequently, it was necessary to capture everything. Editing, as a result, was a massive and extremely difficult process. Narrowing down our primary storytelling to four musicals was excruciating. So many extraordinary moments are on the cutting room so to speak. I can’t wait until we assemble the DVD.”

Visit the movie’s official site at www.showbusiness-themovie.com.

Here’s the trailer from ShowBusiness: The Road to Broadway, followed by a clip featuring Idina Menzel of Wicked.

Galati reads Murakami

There’s a definite literary bent — no ice rinks or Disney TV musicals here — to director Frank Galati’s work.

Two of his best-known stage adaptations began life as books: The Grapes of Wrath and Ragtime. He even got an Oscar nomination for his screenplay version of Anne Tyler’s Accidental Tourist.

Now he turns his attention to celebrated Japanese author Haruki Murakami with after the quake, now in previews at Berkeley Repertory Theatre.

The show, an adaptation of Murakami’s book of stories related to the massive 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan, that killed more than 6,000 people, began life in Galati’s classroom at Northwestern University, where he is an emeritus professor in the department of performance studies.

“Right after 9/11 I was looking for material for my students to work on,” Galati says during a rehearsal break at Berkeley Rep. “I often teach a course on performing short stories and have done James Joyce, Flannery O’Connor, Grace Paley and others. But the students were just not connecting with some of these classic writers.”

So Galati tried Murakami, who is arguably Japan’s most celebrated author and is probably best known in this country for The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles.

“The stories are so cryptic, elusive, deceptively simple,” Galati says. “They create a world that’s very recognizable. Clearly, the stories are about Japan, but the world of the stories seems very much like the one we live in. The students really dug the stories.”

After a couple of years of working on the stories in the classroom, Galati took them to Chicago’s famed Steppenwolf, where Galati is an ensemble member, and after the quake made the leap from academia to the professional theater.

The show has since been done several times, and the Berkeley Rep production is produced in association with Steppenwolf and the La Jolla Playhouse.

The simplicity of the production — four actors and two musicians — helps convey Murakami’s blend of Chekhovian naturalism and phantasmagorical comedy.

While dealing with a hugely serious issue like the aftermath of an earthquake, there’s still time for something called “Super Frog Saves Tokyo.”

“That’s something Murakami does in all his works,” Galati says. “He’s tremendously interested in the thin membrane that separates the waking from the sleeping world, the mundane jog through the workaday world and the dreams that are kind of haunted by dark and threatening forces. I just find that tremendously interesting and rewarding.”

Galati notes Murakami’s deft use of contrast: Chekhovian nautralism in the way characters are drawn and in the way relationships unfold. But then there’s this interest in pop culture, which Galati describes as “fantastical, phantasmagorical and comically grotesque.”

“There’s this great kind of tension between the realistic and the more Kafkaesque, uncanny, scary side,” Galati says. “His is a destabilized world, a world that is as porous as the dream world. You see that in all his works.”

Though Murakami is a novelist, Galati says the writer’s sense of drama makes him a good fit for the stage because of the way they “manipulate time and memory and the past.” But novels can penetrate the interior lives of the central characters in ways plays cannot.

“That’s been of great interest to me,” Galati says. “The audience is able to enter inside the sensibilities of the characters through the agency of a narrator, a storyteller. I’ve tried to construct this 90-minute evening in such a way that the two stories we’re doing are interlocking, with actors playing multiple roles.”

To Galati’s knowledge, Murakami has not seen after the quake. “I gather he’s not too keen about hearing his words spoken aloud,” Galati says. “He’s a mysterious guy. He writes a lot about jazz — he’s a very articulate music critic. He and his wife had a jazz club in Tokyo, a hole-in-the-wall coffee shop, for about 15 years. He loved it because he could listen to jazz all day, but that’s a hard business to keep going. He compares his process as a writer with jazz musicians, Thelonious Monk in particular, in regard to cadence, rhythm and phrasing. You can feel when you read him that he’s improvising. He has this kind of wonderful sense of how to create a melodic line, how to repeat it, change key and tempo and keep the same motif and melodic cadence but then alter it again.”

Working on this show has inspired Galati to try his hand at another: Kafka on the Shore, Murakami’s most recently published (in the U.S.) novel.

“I’m hoping we’ll do it at Steppenwolf next year,” Galati says.

For information about after the quake, visit www.berkeleyrep.org.
Visit Haruki Murakami’s Web site — where he will occasionally answer readers’ questions — here.

Annie Lennox finds joy in `Mass Destruction’

Hey, Theater Dogs. I know the following isn’t theater related, but I just wanted to share my experience with an extraordinary performer…

Sweet dreams are made of Annie Lennox.

Quirky, inspired and inspiring, Lennox spent the ’80s as a techno diva with Eurythmics
>, launched into huge successful solo career in the ’90s and can now do pretty much anything she wants.

Her output has been slim. Since her first solo album, 1992’s “Diva,” Lennox has produced an album of covers (1995’s “Medusa”), a wrenching collection of post-divorce balladry (2003’s “Bare”) and the newly released “Songs of Mass Destruction.”

Four albums in 15 years isn’t exactly prolific. True, Lennox did win an Academy Award for co-writing “Into the West” from the third Lord of the Rings movie, but that was just one song.

It’s a good thing, then, that Lennox’s albums are meaty enough to sustain her fans for years. The new one, which is strong and grim in equal measure, should get us through to at least 2009.

Lennox tours even less frequently than she records, which is why her stop at San Francisco’s Nob Hill Masonic Auditorium Wednesday night was such a treat. Her Annie Lennox Sings tour is only about a month long, and she’s hitting a mere 16 cities.

We got her on the second stop of the tour, and her energy and enthusiasm were extraordinary.

She didn’t waste any time trying to coax fans into the new material. She opened with a full-throttle “No More `I Love You’s’,” which has the great first line: “I used to be lunatic from the gracious days,” and slammed right into the driving “Little Bird.” She kept the momentum going with “Walking on Broken Glass” before slamming on the brakes with the first surprise of the evening, the world weary “Pavement Cracks” from “Bare.”

With lyrics like “Everything I wanna be comes crashing down on me,” the song was but a prelude to the near-apocalyptic depression of “Dark Road,” the first single from the new album, which sings of “the fires of destruction still burning in my dreams.”

With such angst and emotion swirling through the darkness (and the voluminous stage smoke), the crowd should have been weeping and burning black candles. But this is Annie Lennox, the indestructible diva who traffics in depression to the delight of all those who love her.

And indeed, this crowd loved her, adored her, swooned for her every dramatic gesture.

It’s all about that voice — soul deep and so muscular it can pummel you or just as easily carry you away.

At 52, Lennox has lost none of her luster as a performer, from her short-cropped platinum blond hair to her tasteful black, sleeveless mini-dress with black pants. She looked gorgeous. And her voice is as sturdy and powerful as ever.

After nearly smashing the room with the explosive “Smithereens” from the new album, Lennox slowed things down as she accompanied herself on piano through a tender Eurythmics hit, “Here Comes the Rain Again,” followed by “A Thousand Beautiful Things” and a rousing “Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves.”

The piano disappeared when she launched into “Cold,” a heartbroken lament sung with such force it became the equivalent of a pop spiritual. The soulful tone burst wide open with “There Must Be an Angel (Playing with My Heart),” which Lennox and her five-piece band and two backup singers turned into full-on gospel number.

“Ghosts in My Machine,” the most insistent song on the new album, followed with a taste of blues to start — “I’ve seen too much, I know too much, I hurt too much, I feel too much, I dread too much, I dream too much” — before it erupted into a percussive, hard-driving expression of existential pain.

The final two songs of the main set were surprising choices — fun and irresistible, but surprising. “When Tomorrow Comes” and “Thorn in My Side,” both from the 1986 Eurythmics album “Revenge,” proved to be a whole lot more fun in concert — with everyone in the auditorium up and dancing — than they ever were on record.

For her encore, Lennox climbed up on a musical soapbox with the new album’s “Sing,” an anthem promoting awareness of and involvement in the fight to end HIV and AIDS in Africa, especially for women and children.

But why leave the audience with the hope of making a difference in the world when you can leave them with the somber “Why,” which revels in fear and dread and doubts and utter pain?

Well, because you’re Annie Lennox, the dark diva. And that’s why we love her and why she continues to enliven our dreams, sweet or otherwise.

For information about Annie Lennox’s SING project, visit www.annielennoxsing.com.
And visit her official site here.

Here’s the video for “Dark Road,” the first single from “Songs of Mass Destruction.”

Chucky on ice

So many things are good on ice _ lemonade, oysters, the Sharks _ but High School Musical on Ice? Really?

Ice Capades and Holiday on Ice, sure. But a made-for-TV movie about chipper high schoolers coming to terms with friendship, self-empowerment and sassy dance moves? Hmmm. Sounds like Disney is going to milk the High School Musical franchise — which already includes a phenomenally successful sequel to the original movie, a professional touring stage show and countless community theater productions — for all it’s worth.

High School Musical: The Ice Tour (it’s apparently passe to be On Ice) arrives in the Bay Area next Thursday and continues through Oct. 20 at the Oracle Arena in Oakland, then moves to the HP Pavilion in San Jose Oct. 24 through 28.

To ensure that Troy and Gabriella, Ryan and Sharpay, Chad and all the others retain their youthful exuberance, Disney and ice producer Kenneth Feld approached the original creative team to help make the transition to ice.

Kenny Ortega, who directed and co-choreographed the two HSM movies, recommended they use one of his fellow Emmy-winning co-choreographers: 27-year-old Charles Klapow, who prefers to be called Chucky.

Chucky Klapow was thrilled to get Ortega’s call, but there was only one problem in his mind: He didn’t know how to ice skate.

The ice folks said that wouldn’t be a problem because he could still teach the dance routines and “protect the integrity of the original moves.”

But for Chucky Klapow, not skating was not an option.

“The way I coach is by example,” he says on the phone from Manhattan just before HSM: The Ice Tour opened at Madison Square Garden. “The dancers feed off my energy. I show the move, demonstrate it so they can see how it looks and feels.”

So with the help of his fellow ice choreographers, Klapow learned to skate.

“I was doing an axle in 20 days,” he boasts. “The first one was a really bad, cheated axle, but I’ve been working on it. It’s still not great.”

So for someone who began his dancing career at 12 and has danced for Patti LaBelle, Celine Dion, Salt-N-Pepa and in Austin Powers, how does it feel to move on ice?

“Skating is a rush,” the Los Angeles native says. “It’s addictive. You master one jump and want the next one. It’s a cool feeling.”

Choreography for a movie — with everything directed to the camera — is one thing. Choreographing for an audience on three sides, not to mention the whole ice and skates factor, is quite another.

“What you can do on a floor in shoes you can’t necessarily do on a blade on ice,” Klapow says. “And the ice is so vast with the audience everywhere. You have to turn the choreography out and share the energy. The challenge was to keep each number recognizable and as true to the film as possible, but then cover a huge stage of ice. Each number was like solving a puzzle.”

For this icy HSM, the first movie and all its songs are confined to the first act. Act 2 features all the songs and plot from HSM 2. That’s a lot of show to learn, and Klapow and his cohorts were teaching all of this to three separate casts: two North America tours and one international tour.

“The whole process took about 2 1/2 months,” Klapow says. “We worked with skaters really quickly, but I’m super proud of it. Every time we set a number, it turned out to be better than we thought it would be.”

And here’s an added bonus: Klapow met someone special as a result of this near-arctic adventure.

“I met a girl during the rehearsal process,” Klapow says, and even though he’s on the other end of the phone lines, you can just tell he’s smiling. “Not only did I learn to skate and choreograph for the ice, I met somebody.”

Thinking back to those early days when HSM was just another in-development Disney Channel TV musical, Klapow says he had no idea he was about to become involved in a phenomenon.

“When I heard it was going to be called High School Musical, I thought, `Ugh. No one’s going to watch that!’ ” Klapow recalls. “But making the movie was an amazing experience. We had a ball doing it and knew it was something special. I don’t think any of us expected the level of success we got. I was just so happy I got to work on production numbers with 100 people in them. When was I going to get an experience like that again? It was like an old movie musical. The the second film was even bigger. I’m so lucky — I got to do it twice.”

The kety to the show’s success, Klapow says, is that it strikes a balance between the boys and the girls, sports and drama, sinigng and dancing, skaters and brainiacs and all the rest.

“It’s such a positive message,” Klapow says. “We’re all in this together. It’s all about teamwork, all for one, acceptance of everybody, friendship. That’s why people fall in love with it — it’s all about innocence and fun. It’s totally the `Saved by the Bell’ formula.”

Klapow will likely be involved in High School Musical 3, which is reportedly being readied for the big screen and will begin shooting in January. “I’m talking to Kenny about it,” he says.

“High School Musical: The Ice Tour” runs Thursday through Oct. 20 at the Oracle Arena, I-880 at 66th Avenue, Oakland. Tickets are $18 to $60. Call 510-625-8497, 415-421-8497 or 408-998-8497 or visit www.ticketmaster.com for information. The show moves to HP Pavilion, 525 W. Santa Clara St., San Jose, Oct. 24-28.

And check out Klapow’s Web site at www.chuckyk.com.

The `fun’ in fundraising

Upcoming theater fundraisers are going to let you fire it up and throw ’em down.

First up, this Saturday (Oct. 13), Crowded Fire Theatre Company is hosting a Chili Cookoff with foolsFury, Impact Theatre and the Playwrights Foundation.

Here’s the beauty part: in addition to a “fan favorite” chili, there will be a “critics choice” selected by a “celebrity” panel of judges comprising yours truly and the far more beautiful Chloe Veltman of the SF Weekly and Karen D’Souza of the San Jose Mercury News. Impact is already promising to burn our mouths.

New co-artistic director Kent Nicholson says: “We wanted to create an event that brought the Bay Area small theater community together. It’s more of a way to connect off stage with each other and our audience members than as a means for making money…though that’s an added bonus!”

The event, which will also feature bluegrass music by the Duck River Band, is from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at the El Rio Bar, 3158 Mission St., San Francisco. Tickets are $1 each, and for one ticket, you get a chili “taster.” For three tickets you get a side dish, and for five tickets, you get a piping hot bowl of your favorite chili. All you can eat “gas passes” are $20 in advance and $30 at the door.

Purchase tickets at www.crowdedfire.org or at the door.

The mouth-burning folks at Impact are busy with a fundraiser of their very own. On Saturday, Oct. 20, the company hosts Full Houses: A Poker Tournament to Benefit Impact Theatre. Tickets are going fast (only 35 remain at this writing). Participants will play No-Limit Texas Hold-Em, with a massive prize pool up for grabs and pizza and desserts throughout the night.

Top prize is an 8GB Apple iPhone, and the runner-up prize is $200 in gift cards to Bloomingdales and Nordstrom. Anyone who gets a full house or better during the tournament, even if they don’t win the hand, gets one of the other prizes. And what are the other prizes you ask? Theater tickets, of course, to ACT, Berkeley Rep, Cal Shakes, Magic, Shotgun and other local companies. There are also gift cards of varying kinds, movie tickets, jazz concert tickets, an autographed “Simpsons” script. And more. Hey, even the first player out of the tournament gets a prize.

“We specialize in theater that’s relevant to our audience,” says Impact artistic director Melissa Hillman. “So naturally the kind of benefit we’d have is relevant to them, too. And of course, poker was meant to be played in a basement, and La Val’s Subterranean is the perfect basement for a benefit tournament like this. Best of all, you could be the worst poker player in the world and still win an awesome prize worth more than the buy-in just for getting a full house or better…or being the first one out.”

The tournament is limited to 54 players (must be 21 or older). The buy in for Full Houses is $50, with unlimited $25 re-buys for the first two hours of the tourney. Tickets are available at www.impacttheatre.com.

`Blonde’ clips

MTV.com has a bunch of 30-second clips from the upcoming broadcast of Broadway’s Legally Blonde, The Musical.

You can see “Omigod You Guys,” “What You Want” (complete with plug for Jet Blue), “The Harvard Variations,” “Bend and Snap” and “There Right There” (aka “Gay or European?”).

The still-running musical will be broadcast Oct. 13

If the above doesn’t work, click here to check them out.

Goodbye, Magic man

After five seasons at the helm of San Francisco’s Magic Theatre, artistic director Chris Smith will leave his position at the end of the 2007-2008 season.

A search commtittee will begin a national search for his replacement effective immediately.

“As I contemplate my fifth season at the Magic, I believe we have accomplished so much that I had hoped for when I came on board,” Smith said in a statement. “I’m proud of the work we’ve done on stage and behind the scenes…As my family and I consider the next step in my career, I know the magic is in a great position for this transition. I will be leaving on an artistic and organizational high note.”

Since Smith’s arrival in the 2003-2004 season, the Magic has grown artistically and financially with 20 world premieres, four American premieres and three Bay Area premieres by the likes of David Mamet, Rebecca Gilman, Edna O’Brien, Paula Vogel, Charles Grodin and the Tony Award-winning team of Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik.

In four seasons, subscriptions have increased by 50 percent, and single-ticket income hit all-time highs with Mamet’s Dr. Faustus, O’Brien’s Triptych, the musical adaptation of The Opposite of Sex and Elaine May’s Moving Right Along.

For information about the Magic, visit www.magictheatre.org.