Tina: Do I love you? My, oh, my

Posted on August 3, 2023 by Chad Jones

ABOVE: Zurin Villanueva is Tina Turner in the North American touring production of Tina – The Tina Turner Musical playing the Bay Area at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Theatre and San Jose’s Center for the Performing Arts. BELOW: Villanueva as Tina performs as part of the Ike & Tina Tuner Revue. Photos by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade, 2022

Any time spent reveling in the glory of Tina Turner is time well spent. Turner is a musical titan, a quintessential story of American turmoil and triumph, a performer of legendary power. Her death earlier this year at age 83 brought new reverence to her life and career, forever enshrining her as the true Queen of Rock’n’Roll.

There’s no shortage of documentation when it comes to Turner’s remarkable, turbulent life. Turner herself published several memoirs. Angela Bassett memorably portrayed Turner on the big screen in the 1993 bio-pic What’s Love Got to Do With It. And five years ago in London, Turner’s life story exploded onto the musical theater stage with Tina – The Tina Turner Musical using her songbook to tell her life story. Turner and her second husband, Erwin Bach, are credited as executive producers, so the show has the artist’s stamp of approval. After running on Broadway in 2019 (then closing for Covid, then reopening in 2022 for a few months), the show is touring the country. In the wake of Turner’s death, having her live again through her Broadway avatar is strangely comforting.

Anyone tasked with playing Tuner obviously has some mighty, mighty stilettos to fill. For the tour, now at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Theatre as part of the BroadwaySF season before heading to the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts, the role is shared by Naomi Rodgers and Zurin Villanueva. At Wednesday’s press opening, Villanueva proved to be an extraordinary force, with the voice and the long legs to admirably conjure Turner’s flair and ferocity as well as the acting chops to help convey her emotional and spiritual depth.

Shoehorning existing pop songs into a biographical musical rarely works well, and the method is only intermittently successful in Tina. The trio of book writers – Pulitzer Prize-winner Katori Hall, Frank Ketelaar and Kees Prins – have taken the most conventional route imaginable. The show begins with promise as the barnburner “Nutbush City Limits” is re-conceived as a moody evocation of Turner’s small town Tennessee childhood, but then the mid-’80s B-side “Don’t Turn Around” becomes a duet for young Anna Mae Bullock (Turner’s birth name) and her grandmother (who raised her). The disconnect between the middling 1980s songwriting in the world of mid-1950s Tennessee is the first sign that the jukeboxing of Turner’s life will be less Jersey Boys or Beautiful: The Carole King Musical and more Summer: The Donna Summer Musical or Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical.

Some songs fit nicely into the storytelling: “Let’s Stay Together” is effective as a duet, “River Deep–Mountain High” dazzles in a straightforward recording session scene and “Tonight,” Turner’s 1986 duet with David Bowie, is intriguingly reimagined as a trio with Turner, her younger self and her grandmother. But others simply don’t work. “I Don’t Wanna Fight No More,” a new song Turner recorded for her bio-pic, is used as the dramatic Act 1 closer, and while Villanueva acts the hell out of it, the straightforward pop song is not the dramatic aria it needs to be in the moment of Turner’s escape from her abusive marriage and into the next, liberated phase of her life.

Other tunes, like “Private Dancer” and “We Don’t Need Another Hero,” are just plain awkward (what about her mother’s death is “life beyond the Thunderdome?”), while “I Can’t Stand the Rain” is just silly as Turner walks around London in the rain while the ensemble passes by with umbrellas. Apparently director Phyllida Lloyd used up all her good ideas in Mamma Mia!, a jukebox musical that, happily, doesn’t have to bother with real life.

Speaking of real life, it’s worth noting that slick musical theater is not an ideal medium for the depiction of spousal or child abuse. The very unreal singing and dancing contrasted with the very real violence toward women and children trivializes the former and undermines the pain and horror of the latter. For the sake of the dramatic arc, it’s understandable that the book writers would want us to know the nightmare of Turner’s marriage to Ike Turner so that her eventual escape and even more eventual emergence as one of the greatest rock stars of all time is fully felt.

Because Turner’s biography is so well known – try to find anyone who doesn’t hear the name Ike Turner and immediately think of him as an abuser – it’s a shame that the creative team didn’t find more creative, more inspired or more inventive ways to connect with Turner’s extraordinary journey. We whiz past all the signposts here as Turner rises, falls and then ascends to Olympian heights. But in splashing through these shallow, if flashy, waters, there isn’t much room for emotional connection.

After the curtain call, when all the biographical duties have been fulfilled, the show shakes off its narrative shackles and lets Tina be Tina. The mini-concert that ends the show is sublime. The whole enterprise comes to life in ways that have only previously been hinted at. For those rousing few minutes, Tina Turner is back with us, a flesh-and-blood survivor yet somehow, blissfully immortal.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Tina – The Tina Turner Musical continues through Aug. 27 as part of the BroadwaySF season at the Golden Gate Theatre, 1 Taylor St., San Francisco. Call 888-746-1799 or visit broadwaysf.com. The show runs Aug. 29-Sept. 23 at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts, 255 S. Almaden Blvd., San Jose as part of the Broadway San Jose season. Call 408-792-4111 or visit broadwaysanjose.com. Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes (including intermission).

The never-ending misery of Les Misérables

Posted on July 8, 2023 by Chad Jones

ABOVE: The ensemble performs “One Day More” from the touring production of Les Misérables running at San Francisco’s Orpheum Theatre through July 23 as part of the BroadwaySF season. BELOW: Christine Heesun Hwang is an excellent Éponine. Photos byMatthew Murphy & Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade

When the “new-and-improved” version of Les Misérables came through San Francisco 11 years ago in celebration of the never-ending musical’s 25th anniversary, the big news was that this thoroughly re-staged version had banished the famous turntable that kept the epic’s action spinning and, most famously, the barricade barricading. That version of the tour is back at the Orpheum Theatre as part of the BroadwaySF season, and everything I said about that production then (read my review here) still stands. Happily, the highly annoying projections have been somewhat minimized, although the lighting in general seems so dim it’s like they’re trying to disguise any wear and tear on what is undoubtedly a worn and torn touring production. The version we saw in 2012 felt so much like a video game it was surprising the Playbill didn’t come with a joystick to help guide Jean Valjean through the sewers of Paris. This one feels slightly less so, but the projections are so anodyne they may as well not even be there.

I first saw Les Misérables in London in the fall of 1986. I had fallen in love with the two-cassette cast album, and from my seat in the Palace Theatre way (waaaaayyy) up in what the British call the “angels” seats (because you’re so close to heaven), the show I saw left me cold. I was at such a high altitude that I could see what was happening in front of and behind the barricade and could watch costume changes (Look! Fantine is changing her wig!) and other stage business that was best left unseen. A few months later, I splurged for an orchestra seat and liked the show better but still not as much as I liked simply listening to the score. Then, in 1989, I saw the touring production that spent many months at San Francisco’s Curran Theatre. I was in the second row, and it was Easter Sunday. It was like seeing an entirely different show. I loved it and then proceeded to see it at least five more times across the next two decades.

The tour I saw in 2012 and the current tour have convinced me that my time with Les Miz has come to an end. I’m back to feeling like I’m in the angels seeing something that is, essentially, empty spectacle that no amount of flash and volume can mask. The actors don’t act so much as indicate, and every song, from “I Dreamed a Dream” to “On My Own” to “Bring Him Home” is sung so forcefully and with the expectation of blowing the audience’s collective mind that there’s no room for the song to actually live and breathe. It’s like Broadway’s greatest hits of the ’80s as performed on – take your pick – “American Idol,” “The Voice” or “America’s Got Talent.” The acting makes the show feel even more like an opera because it’s all show-offy singing and cardboard characters.

Producer Cameron Mackintosh keeps the Misérables machine running, even if it’s probably best to let it rest so that fans can actually start to miss it before it comes back yet again. The show’s press release claims the 1985 musical has been seen by more than 130 million people worldwide in 53 countries and 22 languages. The original Broadway production ran for 16 years and there have already been two revivals: in 2006, only three years after the original closed, and in 2014.

Mackintosh also likes to celebrate the show’s anniversaries with lavish concerts that spawn TV specials and albums. He did that for the 10th and the 25th, and while the London production was temporarily moved out of its theater to make way for renovations, Mackintosh kept the show going in a concert version that kept getting extended (and was eventually televised). For these concerts, multiple old cast members show up, as do choirs and every stringed instrument in England. It’s somewhat ironic that as the touring show gets smaller, the concert productions just get insanely huge. Perhaps he’ll broadcast from space for the upcoming 40th anniversary. Or maybe craft an entirely, cost-saving AI company. Seriously, the Les Miz holographic experience can’t be far away.

It’s also ironic that the musical misery that pours forth from the show makes audiences so happy. For three hours, the audience applauds its way through the abuse of sex workers, abuse of children, murder of children, abuse of prisoners, corrupt policing, suicide, theft, psychotic vengeance, poverty, confusing (ultimately deadly) political ideology and performances that are all costumes and vocal chords rather than living, breathing humans. Side note: there’s an interesting lyric change in the current production when Théndardier is looting his way through “Beggar at the Feast.” The original lyric was: “Here comes a prince. There goes a Jew. This one’s a queer. But what can you do?” The new lyric replaces that last line with “I might try it, too.”

Through all the changes to the production, I try to remember what made me love Les Misérables more than 30 years ago, and I still get pangs of that affection in the big, flag-waving numbers “One Day More” and “Do You Hear the People Sing?” and in the finale when we hear the lyric, “To love another person is to see the face of God.” I understand the changes that have been made to make producing the show less expensive – I imagine we’ll even get a turntable-free production of Hamilton at some point. But I don’t need to experience Les Miz again until it is seriously revived in a whole new production. Maybe in 20 years or so when I’m in my 70s and some hotshot director has a new vision to crack open the show for a new generation. Undoubtedly, the ever-youthful Mackintosh will still be around to make sure that version runs for at least another half century.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Les Misérables continues through July 23 at the Orpheum Theatre, 1182 Market St., San Francisco, as part of the BroadwaySF season. Running time: about 3 hours (including one intermission). Tickets are $60.50-$225.50 (subject to change). Call 888-746-1799 or visit broadwaysf.com

Ari’el Stachel floods the Berkeley Rep stage with Character

Posted on June 29, 2023 by Chad Jones

Tony Award-winner Ari’el Stachel stars in the world premiere of his autobiographical solo show Out of Character at Berkeley Rep. Photo by Kevin Berne/Berkeley Rep

As a performer, Ari’el Stachel is everything you want on stage, especially in a solo show. He’s charming, dynamic, kinetic and fabulously entertaining. In his world-premiere autobiographical one-man show Out of Character, now on stage at Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Peet’s Theatre, he plays more than three dozen characters, does a little singing (sublime beyond sublime), a little dancing (perhaps not so sublime, which is why he got into singing) and a whole lot of exploration into two things that have played major roles in his 30-plus years on the planet: identity and anxiety.

Directed by Tony Taccone, Berkeley Rep’s former artistic director and something of an expert in solo shows (see Sarah Jones, Carrie Fisher, Danny Hoch, Rita Moreno, John Leguizamo), Character comes out of Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor new works development program and still feels, frankly, like a new work. That said the production is superb, with a striking stage design by Afsoon Pajoufar whose shapes and textures are beautifully augmented by the lights and projections from Alexander V. Nichols.

The 80-minute show begins with what should be a high point in the life and career of Berkeley native Stachel: the night in 2018 when he won the Tony Award for best featured actor in a musical for his role in The Band’s Visit. But that night, as we see, only exacerbated his lifelong struggle with anxiety, and he ended up spending time hiding out in the bathroom rather than being celebrated for his triumph.

Diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder as a kid, Stachel struggled in numerous ways – first with the voice in his head, which he named Meredith after the scheming girlfriend in the 1998 remake of The Parent Trap, and second with his growing shame connected to his Yemeni-Israeli-Ashkenazy Jew roots. After 9/11 (when he was 10), life got even more complicated – especially at school – for a brown boy whose bearded dad got immediately branded “Osama” by the other kids.

So the intertwined narrative of Stachel’s show is the anxiety, which often results in abundant, visible sweating, and the ways he would slip into identities to protect himself from his outer and inner worlds. At Berkeley High, for instance, he passes for black, and he’s thrilled that he can finally be “cool.” But then in college, he finally embraces his Middle Eastern heritage, until that too seems like a character he’s playing. And everywhere along the way, there’s Meredith (realized in the excellent sound design by Madeleine Oldham) promising the end of the world if he doesn’t do exactly as she says.

What it is to be American emerges as a fascinating aspect of the show, especially when Stachel is on vacation in Kampala, Uganada, and is seen as just another white guy. But here, as with the examination of anxiety, Stachel’s writing doesn’t yet match his strength as a performer. The way he tries to make peace with Meredith internally and with his father externally aren’t yet fully realized, and the show doesn’t feel finished by its conclusion. Perhaps that’s because Stachel is still so actively living his experience and figuring out the day to day. There are more depths to plumb here, but Stachel should rest assured that he’ll never find a more charismatic actor to enliven his evolving script.

[bonus video]
Ari’el Stachel performs “Haled’s Song About Love” from The Band’s Visit (2018)

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Ari’el Stachel’s Out of Character continues through July 30 at Berkeley Repertory Theater’s Peet’s Theatre, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley. Running time: 80 minutes (no intermission). Tickets are $39-$119 (subject to change). Call 510-647-2949 or visit berkeleyrep.org.

A glorious journey Into the Woods

Posted on June 21, 2023 by Chad Jones

ABOVE: Stephanie J. Block and Sebastian Arcelus, a real-life married couple, are the Baker’s Wife and the Baker in the national touring company of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into the Woods. BELOW: David Patrick Kelly (left) is the Mysterious Man, Kennedy Kanagawa (center) is the puppeteer for Milky White the cow and Cole Thompson is Jack (of the beanstalk fame). Photos by Matthew Murphy for MurphyMade

By all accounts, last year’s New York City Center Encores! production of Into the Woods, the beloved fairytale mash-up by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, was a special kind of magic. Director Lear deBessonet stripped away all the fairytale frippery and let the actors and Sondheim’s glorious score shine through. Even when the show transferred to Broadway and cast members started to rotate in and out, it seems the magic just couldn’t be dampened. Surely, when the production began its national tour, it would be rather less luminous version of itself.

Based on what is on stage at the Curran Theatre as part of the BroadwaySF season, this Into the Woods is destined to be the version that makes musical theater audiences react like they’re at a Taylor Swift concert. At least that was the case at Tuesday’s opening-night performance. From the instant the curtain rose swiftly up to reveal a large slice of the cast, the audience roared its approval, and that roar only increased over the next few hours.

Everything about this Woods is so confident, clear and crisp that you merely need to exhale and be swept up in the swift moving joys of great actors, beautiful voices and a score that continually reveals treasures no matter how many times you’ve heard it. In short, this production – which is full of performers who also did this on Broadway – really is as delightful and as heart-expanding as we’ve heard it is.

At the center of the story is the Baker’s Wife and the Baker’s Wife’s Husband (aka The Baker) played by real-life marrieds Stephanie J. Block and Sebastian Arcelus, and they exemplify so much of why this production works so beautifully. They carefully tread the line between cartoonish and realistic. They get big laughs when they need to and just as easily trigger the tears. They are as warm and charming as they can be, but they’re also precise and magnificent when it comes to the music and the lyrics. They are simultaneously theatrical and relatable – we get that they’re storybook characters on a quest to kill the curse that has rendered them childless, but we also care about them.

Block’s full-body delight at her dalliance with a prince in the woods (“Any Moment” performed with the sterling Gavin Creel, who provokes full-body delight in the entire theater) is palpable, so it’s no surprise that her “Moments in the Woods,” which follows, is an emotionally complex (adultery is fun! or is it?), joyfully vigorous showstopper.

The way this show works its magic is also evident in Milky White, the cow belonging to and best friend of Jack (Cole Thompson, who will later tangle with giants at the top of the beanstalk. Sure, it’s a puppet (designed by James Ortiz) operated by a skilled puppeteer, but that doesn’t begin to convey how much emotion surrounds this cow with the sad, sparkly eyes. Kennedy Kanagawa masterfully manipulates the decrepit bovine, but his physical dexterity and expressive face complete the equation in ways that continually surprise and captivate. It’s a simple idea with a huge payoff.

Every detail has been attended to here, and the 16-piece orchestra (in full view on stage) conducted by John Bell ensures that Sondheim’s music is the life blood of the show. Lyrics are so clear that no whiff of enchantment, cynicism, despair, grief or arrogance goes unnoticed, and Bell keeps the show moving swiftly – not too fast but just fast enough that the fairytale glee of the first act lingers long enough to undergird the reality that intrudes in Act 2 (when the body count begins to rival a Shakespearean tragedy). With the orchestra on stage, this could come across as a staged concert, but it doesn’t. David Rockwell’s simple set – a few set pieces and just enough large birch tree trunks to convey a forest – relies on the sharp lighting by Tyler Micoleau and the simple costumes (by Andrea Hood) to add color and tone.

There is no shortage of standout moments and performances, but Creel as Cinderella’s Prince and his compatriot Jason Forbach as Rapunzel’s Prince, mine every last laugh out of their duet, “Agony” and its woefully domesticated reprise. David Patrick Kelly is a robust narrator and actually makes sense of the Mysterious Man, who is so moving on “No More,” a duet with the Baker. Katy Geraghty is the embodiment of innocence and experience wrestling under a blood-red cape as a tart Little Red Ridinghood. Diane Phelan‘s soprano soars on Cinderella’s “On the Steps of the Palace,” and Felicia Curry, filling in for Montego Glover as the Witch on Tuesday, electrifies on “Stay With Me” and the impossibly moving “Children Will Listen.”

Sophisticated and silly, sublime and deeply moving, Into the Woods – especially this Into the Woods – is the fairytale we most need to experience in all its musical theater glory.

The chances look small,
The choices look grim,
But everything you learn there
Will help when you return there.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into the Woods continues a brief run through June 25 as part of the BroadwaySF season at the Curran Theatre, 445 Geary St., San Francisco. Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes (including intermission). Tickets are $90-$299. Call 888-746-1799 or visit broadwaysf.com

Grungy glamour fills ACT’s new journey to Oz

Posted on June 8, 2023 by Chad Jones

ABOVE: Katrina Lauren McGraw (center) is Glinda, Chanel Tilgham (left) is Dorothy and Travis Santell Rowland is part of the lively ensemble in the American Conservatory Theater production of The Wizard of Oz. BELOW: Attempting an audience with the great and powerful Wizard of Oz are (from left) Beth Wilmurt (Ozian), Darryl V. Jones (Tin Man), Tilghman (Dorothy), El Beh (Guard), Cathleen Riddley (Cowardly Lion) and Danny Scheie (Scarecrow). Photos by Kevin Berne

We’re all friends of Dorothy now. At least that’s what if feels like in American Conservatory Theater’s Pride Month production of The Wizard of Oz now at the Toni Rembe Theater. Part Pride Parade, part homage to the 1939 movie, part glam rock/glitter grunge dime store spectacle, this Oz has a lot going on, including a lengthy running time that inches toward three hours.

Director/choreographer Sam Pinkleton throws abundant ideas into this well-loved, well-worn tale of Dorothy Gale and her trip over the rainbow – some are clever and exciting, others are not. The intention seems to be a homegrown Oz that feels rooted in San Francisco history, with a special interest in LGBTQ+ activism, Summer of Love hippy vibes and queer culture evocation. This may be a story that begins in Kansas, but it ends up in a fantasy world where the Wicked Witch of the West is like a country-western Karen, the Wizard feels like a Ziggy Stardust-era Bowie and Dorothy is a sweetly nondescript teenager in a Batman t-shirt. There’s even (at least on opening night) an appearance by the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band marching across the stage.

It feels like Pinkleton wants to whip up a tornado of fun – a new, slightly edgier take on a beloved story but told with just enough sincerity and heart to keep the traditionalists (reasonably) happy. The tornado, for instance, is now a dance piece in which ensemble member Travis Santell Woland wears football shoulder pads from which dangles a dense fringe of plastic caution tape and spins around the stage. There are tall fans, tossed confetti, a Twister game mat (very funny) and a lot of chaos, but not much storytelling about where Dorothy is in all of this. We know where she is because this story is in our DNA at this point, but the stage is more confusing than it needs to be.

There’s also a unique solution to the yellow-brick road. We never actually see it, but whenever the gang is “off to see the Wizard,” audience members wave the yellow paper napkins they find in their programs.

Set and costume designer David Zinn is clearly having fun with a non-traditional Oz. There are tinsel curtains aplenty, mirrors and multicolored Christmas lights. The challenge of Munchkinland is cleverly addressed (mostly with household objects and googly eyes), and when there’s a need for flashy costumes, like for Glinda (a marvelous Katrina Lauren McGraw in a cloud of pinks) or for residents of the Emerald City, Zinn delivers with some genuine glamor. His costumes for Dorothy’s trio of fellow travelers focus on the humans rather than the creatures. Danny Scheie as the scene-stealing Scarecrow, is outfitted in hippy-ish crochet and a hat that’s actually a crushed milk carton. Darryl V. Jones as the Tin Man might be confused for a leather daddy if leather came in silver. And Cathleen Riddley as the Cowardly Lion is less predator and more teddy bear with a tail.

The sound of the show also takes a turn from the traditional, and in place of the lush MGM orchestrations for the classic Harold Arlen/E.Y. Harburg score, we have electronic sounds as if from the early days of the Moog synthesizer. But when Chanel Tilghman’s Dorothy offers her lovely take on “Over the Rainbow,” we get cast members augmenting the on-stage five-piece band with cello, ukulele, violin and a surprise woodshed tool (that also happens to be surprisingly beautiful). I was kind of hoping at some point all that chilly electronica would erupt into a disco dance party, but that never really happens, although our time in Munchkinland comes close.

Working from a faithful 1987 stage adaptation of the movie by John Kane for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Pinkleton’s Oz feels less like an archetypal journey and more like an intermittent drag cabaret performed on the smaller proscenium with in the proscenium. I have to admit that as an adult, I find the plot rather tedious, and although this crew is exceptionally lively, I still found myself anxious to get to the “ignore that man behind the curtain” moment. There is surprising poignancy as Dorothy bids her Oz friends goodbye, but that may be borne more from familiarity than any deep feeling the production has earned.

Pinkleton throws a lot at this wizardly wall to see what might stick, and in the end, not much really does. It’s a vessel we all know and love dressed up and enlivened in some interesting ways, but once we’re back in Kansas, the memory of the dream feels disappointingly hollow. This Oz is fun. It’s fresh. But it’s ultimately frustrating.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
American Conservatory Theater’s The Wizard of Oz continues through June 25 at the Toni Rembe Theater, 415 Geary St., San Francisco. Running time: 2 hours and 40 minutes (including one 20-minute intermission). Tickets are $. Call or visit act-sf.org.

Blood, love, adolescence flow in Berkeley Rep’s Right One

Posted on May 25, 2023 by Chad Jones

ABOVE: Noah Lamanna is Eli in the West Coast premiere of the National Theatre of Scotland production of Let the Right One In. BELOW: Diego Lucano (left) as Oskar and Lamanna as Eli. Photos by Kevin Berne

Let the right one in
Let the old dreams die
Let the wrong ones go
They do not
They do not
They do not see what you want them to
– Morrissey, “Let the Right One Slip In,” 1992

Horror on stage is a tricky, bloody business. I can only think of maybe twice when I have been truly chilled in my theater seat, and one of them came from the team behind Let the Right One In now on stage at Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Roda Theatre, though not in this show. Writer Jack Thorne, movement director Steven Hoggett and director John Tiffany were also involved with Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which achieves some gleefully chilling moments involving Dementors and time warps.

But their work on Let the Right One In, an adolescent love story involving vampires and bullies, pre-dates that (and their work on the altogether warmer and more musical stage adaptation of Once). This show, which is based on the 2008 Swedish movie and 2004 novel of the same name (both written by John Ajvide Lindqvist), debuted at the National Theatre of Scotland in 2013 and has since played London and New York. Now, with an American cast, the show makes its West Coast premiere with a chilly, chilling production in Berkeley.

It’s not exactly scary, but it is utterly compelling, and the frozen beauty of the original film has been realized theatrically with a spectacular winter forest (set design by Christine Jones) that seems to be in the perpetual blue night of the late Chahine Yavroyan’s shadowy lighting design.

Specifically, it’s the ’80s in a Stockholm suburb on stage, but really it’s the desolate wilderness of adolescence that we’re witnessing. Oskar (Diego Lucano) is bullied to the point of physical injury at school and tormented at home by an often drunk mother and a father who lives elsewhere with other concerns. After a particularly brutal day at school, Oskar is in the woods outside his apartment complex sparring with trees and imagining himself to be the world’s greatest knife fighter. That’s when he meets Eli (Noah Lamanna), who has recently moved into the complex accompanied by a parent? a guardian? a guy whom we’ve just seen stringing up some poor lug in the woods and slitting his throat?

Perpetually alone and isolated in his misery, Oskar sparks to the notion of a friend, even a weird one that smells like wet dog or infected bandage. But the worldly Eli is quick to state that they will not be friends, though the rules of storytelling – horror story, love story or otherwise – dictate that their loneliness will join them and alter their lives.

What is never stated explicitly here is that Oskar is 12 and Eli is a 200+ year-old vampire (a world you will not hear in the show’s two-plus hours). But we get it. Thorne’s script is spare on details but long on mood (and, thanks largely to the wonderfully youthful Locano, winsome humor). Act 1 really sets the mood, makes the connections and sets the plot in motion. Act 2 picks up speed and conjures up some wild imagery (the superb special effects are designed by Jeremy Chernick) all the while underscoring that while this human-scale monster tale is really a coming-of-age story that blossoms (thornily) into a love story.

There’s a fair amount of blood, naturally, but Tiffany and Hoggett are more interested in the emotions here. We get a sense of the town through the constant shuffle of people through the woods (though there are only nine actors in the cast) and various interludes of dance that sometimes feel natural and sometimes kind of silly. The adults tend to overact and overreact, so the heart of the story easily becomes Oskar and Eli and the fantastic performances by Lucano and Lamanna as they convey the awkwardness and intensity of young love. Even though one is 12 and one has been alive since the 18th century.

There are echoes of Stephen King’s Carrie here with the potent cocktail of teen angst (or tween, to be exact), aggressive bullying, encounter with the supernatural and revenge tragedy (at one point Oskar is reading a book that looked like a King novel, but my eyes couldn’t be certain). The details are different, of course, but there’s that universal recognition of the horror that is high school, the torture of rejection by the mainstream and finding the power to make your own way. It’s not exactly a happy ending, but the right ones do find one another, and the wrong ones do go away.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
The National Theatre of Scotland’s Let the Right One In continues through June 25 at Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St., Berkeley. Running time is 2 plus a 15-minute intermission. Tickets are $43-$119 (subject to change). Call 510-647-2949 or visit berkeleyrep.org.

Poor Yella Rednecks: Second time is a little more charming

Posted on April 13, 2023 by Chad Jones

ABOVE: Christine Jamlig and Will Dao in Qui Nguyen’s Poor Yella Rednecks running through May 7 at ACT’s Strand Theater. BELOW: Jenny Nguyen Nelson and Jamlig play daughter and mother in this continuation of the story that began with Vietgone. Photos by Kevin Berne

The sequel, they say, is never the equal of the original. In the case of Poor Yella Rednecks: Vietgone 2, the second time around is a little more satisfying, although it suffers from what made the first one hard to love. (I reviewed Vietgone for Theatermania, and you can read that review here and know that pretty much everything in there applies the sequel.)

Local audiences saw Qui Nguyen’s Vietgone a little more than five years ago when American Conservatory Theater produced it at The Strand. The story followed refugees from the Vietnam War as they made their way to a refugee camp in Arkansas, had adventures, met new people, fell in love and embarked on a new life in America.

Like that story, the sequel begins with an actor playing Nguyen coming out to tell us what we’re going to see. Instead of interviewing his father, like he did in the last play, he interviews his mother about her experience of starting over as a non-English speaker in the deep American South. The action takes us back to 1975 but then quickly scoots forward six years, with Nguyen, a young boy played by a puppet, and his parents (Jenny Nguyen Nelson as Tong and Hyunmin Rhee as Quang) and his grandmother (Christine Jamlig) living in a trailer and scraping by.

The terrific set design by Tanya Orellana covers the stage in flashy lights but reserves the center elevated part of the stage for a set within the set – a framed picture-like slice of life in the mobile home – cramped and crowded, but a safe place to live.

When the play focuses on the what the family is facing both economically and culturally, the cast shines and Nguyen’s writing comes to life. But like the first play, this immigrant story is told with whiz-bang fantasy, silliness, rap numbers and jagged storytelling that feels like it should be much bolder, louder and more confident.

Director Jaime Castañeda, who helmed ACT’s Vietgone, is back with a production that feels like a carbon copy of the last one in the way it bobbles the various tonal shifts and lurches into uncomfortable hip-hop interludes (one of which directly shouts out Hamilton – not a good idea) that are meant to be empowering but, because of the actors’ varying degrees of comfort in the medium, are not.

One of the best things about the first play ends up being one of the best things about the second play, and that is Jomar Tagatac, who plays the playwright and a number of other roles (including the British narrator, a goes-nowhere bit of silliness). He, like the rest of the cast, has some great moments of humor and connection amid the chaos.

Where Poor Yella Rednecks fares better than its predecessor is in the warmth with which it tells the story of a family, and specifically the rocky love story of a mother and a father who clash and make mistakes but end up stronger together. They’re also allowed to be sexual beings – an element that is too often ignored in parental love stories related by children. This love story is also specifically an immigrant love story, so you have to add in the horrors of racism and xenophobia to make its survival that much more deeply felt.

And by the end of this two-plus-hour show, you do feel the impact of this family’s experience. You may even have come to love the puppet boy (designed and directed by James Ortiz, performed by Will Dao), especially in a surprisingly moving scene where he is sitting by himself, playing with his Spider-Man and Star Wars toys.

Poor Yella Rednecks is a strange show by design, but what’s best about it – the complicated core of a family in motion – isn’t strange at all.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Qui Nguyen’s Poor Yella Rednecks continues through May 7 at American Conservatory Theater’s The Strand, 1127 Market St., San Francisco. Running time is about 2 hours (including one 15-minute intermission). Tickets are $25-$60 (subject to change). Call 415-749-2228 or visit act-sf.org.

Speaking the language of life in Berkeley Rep’s English

Posted on April 7, 2023 by Chad Jones

ABOVE: The cast of Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s English includes (from left) Sarah Nina Hayon as Roya, Christine Mirzayan as Goli and Mehry Eslaminia as Elham. BELOW: Sahar Bibiyan is Marjan, the instructor, and Amir Malaklou is Omid, one of her best students. Photos by Alessandra Mello

It’s so interesting that in Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s English, your ears have to become accustomed to hearing English. Playwright Sanaz Toossi’s sensitive comedy/drama is set entirely in a classroom in Karaj, Iran circa 2008. The instructor and her four students are engaged in English lessons leading up to the exam known as the TOEFL or Test of English as a Foreign Language. The play is (almost) entirely in English, so when the characters are speaking their native Farsi, they speak in unaccented, colloquial English. When they are communicating in English, we hear varying degrees of accents and grammatical skills, depending on the level of the speaker.

It’s a clever way to fall into the cadence of toggling between two languages without having to use sub/surtitles. There’s more engagement with the characters and their various states of mind, and it’s fascinating to contrast the levels of confidence some of the characters display when speaking their own language compared to the personality transformation that can happen when they are attempting to speak in a language that is not coming easily to them.

Director Mina Morita lets this one-act play unfold slowly as we get to know Marjan (Sahar Bibiyan), the instructor who lived, for a time, in England and still enjoys watching British rom-coms to keep her English skills sharp, and her small class. The biggest personality among them is Elham (Mehry Eslaminia), who has failed all past attempts at the TOEFL and struggles with everything about English. She’s under pressure to pass the exam because she’ll soon be starting medical school in Australia. Goli (Christine Mirzayan) is much more enthusiastic, and it’s one of the play’s many pleasures to see this youthful student gaining confidence in her language skills. Omid (Amir Malaklou) catches Marjan’s eye, and not just because he’s such a strong English speaker, and Roya (Sarah Nina Hayon) is, essentially, being forced to learn English by her son, who is now living in Canada and doesn’t want his child speaking Farsi with anyone.

In about two dozen scenes, we see the ups and downs of the students, perhaps a romance and some minor drama (speaking strictly in dramatic terms). But within these very recognizable rhythms are lives in motion and the push and pull of family, career, culture, politics. We’re only seeing these people across six weeks or so and only during their classes, so we experience slivers of their lives even while they are creating the community that can happen in a classroom (complete with bonds and battles).

What comes through so remarkably in this intimate, often quite hilarious play is how oblivious we can be to the importance of language in expressing our identity. The idea of belonging or being an outsider based on how you speak is explored, as is the joy of being able to express yourself in a new way or to make someone laugh in a different language. Can a new language be an escape? A salvation? A personal revolution? Or maybe even a shortcut to an appreciation of your own native tongue? Playwright Toossi keeps her scope narrow, but she allows the weight of the world to press in on this little group.

Morita’s wonderful cast works in shades of nuanced reality that allow us to feel like we’re really getting to know these characters. Even when Toossi’s script can be a little too placid, a little too subdued, there’s abundant warmth and humor that keeps us deeply invested in these people’s lives.

There’s always going to be something funny in someone mangling language – not in a jeering way but in appreciation of the bravery required to even make the attempt – and that is certainly a big part of the laughs in English, but even more, the humor bonds us. When we laugh together (in real life and in the theater) we’re acknowledging the depth of communication – our shared humanity, our empathy, our awareness. We may not all speak English, but in English, especially in those moments of comedy, we’re all speaking the same language.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Sanaz Toossi’s English continues through May 7 at Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Peet’s Theatre, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley. Tickets are $43-119. Running time: 1 hour and 40 minutes (no intermission). Call 510-647-2949 or visit berkeleyrep.org.

Nightmare or revelation? It’s Cambodian Rock Band, and it rocks

Posted on March 2, 2023 by Chad Jones

ABOVE: The cast of Lauren Yee’s Cambodian Rock Band at Berkeley Repertory Theatre includes (from left) Joseph Ngo, Abraham Kim, Geena Quintos and Moses Villarama. BELOW: Ngo and Francis Jue. Photos by Lynn Lane/Berkeley Rep

Cambodian Rock Band is such a unique show that it’s hard to describe. It’s the most uplifting story about human atrocities you can imagine. You could say it’s a play with music, but the music – performed live by the cast – is such an integral part of the story (and the emotion of it all), that you could call it a concert with play. There’s genocide and the uplift of great live music.

Whatever it is, it’s powerful and moving and a joy (and, truth be told, a terror) to behold on stage at Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Roda Theatre. The exuberant cast keeps up with every tonal shift, time shift and musical cue in playwright Lauren Yee’s compelling story, and the experience slams the audience this way and that in the best possible way.

The roots of Cambodian Rock Band go back to 2016 and to Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor new works program. From there, the show has been produced in a lot of places – Oregon Shakespeare Festival, South Coast Rep, off Broadway to name a few – and it’s that off-Broadway production from the Signature Theatre that is making the rounds of major regional theaters, including Berkeley Rep.

Director Chay Yew dexterously blends all the disparate elements of Yee’s script into something wholly original. The show begins as a rock concert circa 1975 in Phnom Penh. The five-piece band is Cyclos, and they’re caught up in the excitement of recording their first album. Then everything changes. The Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot comes to power, launching a horrifying reign that ultimately led to the death of an estimated 2 million Cambodians. Amid the totalitarian terror, education, music and art were outlawed, and those who practiced such dangerous trades were systematically dispatched.

From the opening concert, we bounce to Phnom Penh in 2008 and the first war crimes trial related to the Pol Pot regime. A young Cambodian-American woman, Neary (Geena Quintos) is part of the legal team bringing Commrade Duch to justice after his stint as director of the infamous S-21 prison, which is estimated to have slaughtered 20,000 people. When the prison was liberated in 1979, only seven people appeared to have survived. But, as Neary discovers, there is a possible eighth survivor, and she needs to locate him so he can testify.

Just as her trial is about to begin, Neary’s father, Chum (Joe Ngo) shows up and wants to bring her back to the U.S. He fled the Khmer regime and doesn’t want his daughter mired in all that horror from 30 years before. But she is insistent, and the father-daughter struggle will delve into some tangled family history that is played out in flashbacks.

To say that Ngo as Chum is extraordinary really isn’t saying enough. He is called upon to sing and play guitar in the band, play the young Chum navigating the nightmare of the Khmer Rouge and play the older Chum, a husband and father and American who would rather not re-live his Cambodian past. By turns funny, sympathetic and devastatingly dramatic, Ngo brings an astonishing level of energy and depth to his character’s remarkable journey.

Quintos as Neary is a defiant but sympathetic daughter following her own quest for justice, but she’s also a powerhouse singer in the band. Moses Villarama plays characters in both of the play’s eras and plucks a mean bass, while Abraham Kim wallops the drums (and some smaller roles) and Jane Lui tackles the keys (and prisoners at S-21).

Former Bay Area resident (but still Bay Area favorite) Francis Jue interrupts the opening concert to act as a sort of host for the evening and to guide us back and forth in time until he becomes a major player in the drama. Nobody can convey more charm or more menace than Jue, who is truly masterful in this show. And not for nothing, he plays a mean cowbell.

Unlike something like Life Is Beautiful the warmhearted(?) Roberto Benigni comedy(?) about the Holocaust, Cambodian Rock Band is not sappy or easy. Yee isn’t softening Pol Pot’s genocide in any way. The use of music – something the Khmer Rouge considered so dangerous they banned it – and specifically rock music (originals by the band Dengue Fever plus some vintage Cambodian surf songs and other period tunes) emphasizes the raging glory of humanity – and the human connection that art creates – even in the face of humanity at its very worst. An evening that begins as a concert ends as a transcendent event that feels enormous and full of hope.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Lauren Yee’s Cambodian Rock Band continues through April 2 at Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St., Berkeley. Running time: 2 1/2 hours (including a 15-minute intermission). Tickets are $21-$122 (subject to change). Call 510-647-2949 or visit berkeleyrep.org.

Dear San Francisco still charms, dazzles

Posted on February 25, 2023 by Chad Jones

The human-scale circus acts in Dear San Francisco are as captivating as ever as the show continues to evolve in its second year at Club Fugazi. Photos courtesy of Dear San Francisco and Club Fugazi Experiences

Dear San Francisco, the dazzling acrobatic spectacular that had the audacity to set up shop in Club Fugazi after the historic nearly half-century run of Beach Blanket Babylon’s, is now in its second year. The show will always hold in a place in my heart as only the second in-person show I attended after a year and a half of watching theater on screens. That experience was mind blowing, not least because I was in a crowd of people who seemed to be as happy as I was just to be in the same room.

And then there was the show – co-conceived and co-directed by Shana Carroll and Gypsy Snider of the amazing cirque nouveau troupe The 7 Fingers – a thrilling, up-close experience with nine acrobats/dancers/athletes/charmers who wrote a love letter to San Francisco with their bodies and their startling hold on the audience and each other.

I had the pleasure of returning to Dear San Francisco recently to see how the show has evolved since October 2021. I still stand by everything in my original review (read it here), and, if anything, I enjoyed the show even more simply because the performers are are so relentlessly talented and charismatic.

As with any circus-type venture, the acts may change as performers come in and out of the show. I missed the unicycle and teeter-board acts that blew the top off my head the first time around, but the 90-minute show (which seems to have trimmed its subtitle, A High-Flying Love Story) is still bursting with thrills and heart and humor.

A shout out to the entire cast – Sereno “Reno” Aguilar Izzo, Dominic Cruz, Devin Henderson, Maya Kesselman, Oliver Layher, Shengan Pan, Chloe Somers Waller, Enmeng Song and Kyran Walton – for their stunning virtuosity and their extraordinary teamwork. Though the performers have their specialties, it also seems like everyone does a little bit of everything, including playing instruments, reciting beat poetry and creating gorgeous stage pictures in tandem with the projections by Alexander V. Nichols.

Dear San Francisco has beauty, power, excitement, laughs and abundant reminders of San Francisco’s pleasures (and occasional pains). It’s hard to imagine a more worthy successor to Beach Blanket or a show that deserves to have just as long a theatrical life.

Here’s a lovely segment from the show:

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Dear San Francisco is selling tickets through July 30 at Club Fugazi, 678 Green St., San Francisco. Running time is 90 minutes (no intermission). Tickets are $49-$99. Call 415-273-0600 or visit clubfugazisf.com

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