As Beatles beat, so Rain reigns
Mark Lewis never really intended to become the crown prince of Beatles tribute bands. As a young keyboardist/singer/songwriter in Los Angeles, Lewis wanted to perform his own songs, and to that end, he was part of a band called Reign.
"We all wrote songs and wanted to put out hit albums just like a million other bands," Lewis says on the phone from his home in Reno. "We chose the name Reign because it was basically a cool name – like reign over a kingdom. At one point we came close to a deal with Casablanca records and had put our hearts and souls into the recording process. We thought we were on our way to stardom. But the deal fell through, and it broke our hearts."
So the band fell back on plan B, which involved the Beatles covers they'd occasionally do in addition to their original material. Audiences at it up, and bookers started to call about doing all-Beatles shows. The band morphed from Reign into Rain not in reference to the Beatles song on the flip side of the "Paperback Writer" 45 but because no one could spell the name correctly. Everyone, from the guys who put up the marquees to the people who wrote the press releases, touted the band as Rain, so that's what they became.
Where there's a Will...
Recently I had the pleasure of conducting an email interview with playwright Will Eno, whose Lady Grey (in ever lower light) and other plays closes this weekend at Cutting Ball Theater.
Read the interview in the San Francisco Chronicle here.
There was more interview than there was room in the newspaper, so please enjoy the rest of Mr. Eno's responses.
Q: Dogs tend to pop up in your work, or more specifically, the deaths of dogs. Does this mean you’re a dog lover or the opposite?
A: I am solidly and proudly a dog lover. I even sometimes think of this as an enlightened position, a paradoxically humane approach to the world. Other times, though, I worry that I love dogs because I love to imagine a world in which there are only about three total feelings and three total needs, and it never gets more complicated than that. “Yes, I want to go for a walk. Yes, I’m hungry. Yes, thank you, I would like to climb up on your leg. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go around in circles and then fall asleep until I wake up barking and run over to the door.” The great dogs in my life have made me feel like I’m a good and trustworthy person. They allow you to live on or near an essential level that is just fairly basic and stable needs, and once those are taken care of, it’s all cats and shiny hubcaps and tennis balls.
Jason Graae: the funniest best singer you’re likely to see
Collective memory will soon forget that there used to be entertainers in the grandest sense – performers who could be hilarious, could interact with audience members in wonderful (non-cheesy) ways and, when the mood was right, sing the hell out of great songs.
Sammy Davis Jr. could do that. So could Bobby Darin. And Judy Garland, and the list goes on. The entertainment world has changed a lot – of course there are still wonderful performers out there.
But I have to say, I miss the all-around entertainer, the guys and gals who could hold a Vegas stage without the need for twirling acrobats and pyrotechnics.
Broadway veteran Jason Graae is one of those old-school entertainers. You are guaranteed several things when you see him perform: you will fall under the spell of his dynamic tenor/baritone voice, and you will laugh your ass off.
We don’t see enough of this Los Angeles-based performer here in the Bay Area, but happily he’ll be at the Rrazz Room for two nights, April 3 and 4, with a brand-new show.
Young Jean Lee’s fire-breathing Dragons
Race shmace. Let's do plays about explosions – exploding race, exploding narrative, exploding audience brains.
That's sort of what Young Jean Lee's Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven is like. This co-production of Asian American Theater Company and Crowded Fire Theater Company is filled with intelligence, talent and 70 minutes of utterly compelling theater. But the whole effect is somewhat like being too near an explosion. Afterward, you ears ring, your head pounds and your equilibrium's a little off.
But that's a good thing, right?
Playwright Lee, who dropped out of UC Berkeley's English PhD program after six years, said something really interesting in an interview with American Theatre magazine last fall. "It's a destructive impulse – I want to destroy the show: make it so bad that it just eats itself, eating away at its own clichés until it becomes complicated and fraught enough to resemble truth."
By the end of Dragons, I couldn't tell you exactly what it was about or even what it was I had just seen. But I would say it was original, outrageous and absolutely honest in its intention to entertain and eviscerate.
Life in the balance with Cirque's Quidam
Maintaining a sense of balance can be hard enough in an off-kilter world. But just try doing the way Anna Ostapenko does it – on one hand clutching to a skinny narrow pole.
Somehow, the 24-year-old Ostapenko keeps her equilibrium. But don’t try this at home. She’s a professional.
Ostapenko is an acrobat – a hand balancer by trade – with Cirque du Soleil, the Canadian company that has redefined the notion of modern circus. Out with the animals, ringmasters and stinky tents. In with the dazzling lights, costumes, music and gravity-defying performers.
Ostapenko is currently on tour with Quidam a circus that has been around in one form or another since 1996. The last time the show played the Bay Area, it was in the usual Cirque big-top. But this time around the show is playing indoor arenas: in San Jose at the HP Pavilion through March 27 and at San Francisco’s Cow Palace April 6 through 17.
By hooker by crook in The Oldest Profession
By focusing in on some of the oldest practitioners of the world’s oldest profession, playwright Paula Vogel finds a lot to say about the way the world views senior citizens. Even more than sexuality, Vogel’s charming and sad The Oldest Profession takes an insightful look into the power of bonding – especially among women.
Staged upstairs in Brava Theater’s cozy Studio Theater, Oldest Profession is an immensely enjoyable, if somewhat heartbreaking experience. Director Evren Odcikin calibrates the evening just about perfectly, guiding his quartet of actors plus one rollicking good piano player through Vogel’s poignant, but laugh-filled landscape.
With the feel of a plush bawdy house parlor, the Studio Theater creates an enticing environment for the play.
Sing out, Aslan! Narnia warbles a show tune
If your Narnia lacks magic, there’s a problem. C.S. Lewis’ contribution to the enchanted lands branch of children’s literature requires that the kingdom beyond the back wall of the musty old wardrobe demands magic.
The books in the Narnia series certainly do the trick of transporting readers to someplace beyond the page. The various film versions have been hit and miss with the enchantment. The most recent Disney versions are heavy on the CGI effects, but that doesn’t necessarily guarantee a magical spark.
Berkeley Playhouse, that bold company creating professional theater that appeals to family members of all ages, does a much more effective job locating that magic in its musical adaptation, Narnia – The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Undine undone or finding fabulous in Fabulation
Though unplanned, we have something of a Lynn Nottage festival happening in the Bay Area right now.
Berkeley Rep is showing Nottage's most serious side with her Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Ruined, a tale of hope amid brutality, and the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre showcases a more lighthearted (though not exactly comic) side of Nottage with Fabulation, the story of a modern woman's relationship to her roots.
The really good news here is the story of the Lorraine Hansberry itself. After losing both of its founders last year – the subsequent deaths of Stanley Williams and Quentin Easter is still difficult to fathom – the Hansberry could have foundered and disappeared. That would have meant a huge loss to Bay Area theater. How would you compensate for the loss of one of the nation's most prominent African-American theater companies as it's just about to celebrate its 30th anniversary? You couldn't. And thankfully, we don't have to.
Into the void with Will Eno; we do not move
Will Eno builds some extraordinary bridges – between absurdist theater of the 1950s and now, between laughs that actually tickle and reality that is actually harsh, between ironic dismissal and deep, deep feeling.
I would happily lose myself in Eno's world for days if possible – his combination of humor, desolation and intelligence come together in ways that make me incredibly happy. And incredibly sad. Thank whatever powers that be in the universe that Will Eno is writing for the theater and that he's seemingly unaffected by anything remotely hipster or sappy or commercial.
Cutting Ball Theatre produced Eno's Thom Pain (based on nothing) in 2009 to great acclaim. Happily, the Cutting Ball-Eno collaboration continues. Three theater-related one-acts are now running at the EXIT on Taylor, and they're every bit as engaging, hilarious and tinged with genius as Thom Pain.
Lady Grey (in ever lower light) contains two monologues and one multi-character play. They all confront the notion of theater as a "recreational" means to emotion, a gingerly step (as a group) into the maw of the abyss known as reality. We're all alone, yet we're all in it together.
Swept up in the Noir world of Amanda McBroom
Amanda McBroom is one of those performers who make you understand why cabaret was invented. And why it still endures.
She’s warm, gracious, funny and optimistic. But she’s a sturdy realist and not without edge. This is the woman, after all, who wrote “The Rose.”
When she sings, whether it’s her own work or something by the likes of Jacques Brel, McBroom commands – and rewards – rapt attention. And she just seems to get better with age.
We’ll have a chance to see McBroom this weekend when she brings Song Noir, a show she debuted last fall at New York’s Metropolitan Room, to the Rrazz Room. It’s only three performances, so book now.
Nostalgic for The Homecoming at a different home
The absolute power of live theater, when it's done superbly well, is undeniable. The connection the playwright, the director, the actors and designers forge with the audience – and vice-versa – can be incredibly powerful.
That's a wonderful thing and leave a lasting impression. Sometimes, perhaps, too lasting.
Last week I saw Carey Perloff's production of Harold Pinter's The Homecoming for American Conservatory Theater. It's a bizarre, tormentingly fascinating play by a master playwright at the height of his game-playing dramatic powers. And though the production is fine, all I could think about was the Aurora Theatre Company production staged by Tom Ross at the Berkeley City Club in April of 2000.
Rock out with your schlock out!
If power chords be the food of love, play on. Give me excess of head banging.
Even if Rock of Ages has about as much to do with Shakespeare as hairspray does to musical taste, this hard-rocking jukebox musical is a whole lot more awesome than Hamlet. Okay, maybe not, but I'm certain there are people who think so. Hamlet might have been a whole lot less moody if he had been able to jam to "Sister Christian" or "Cum on Feel the Noize."
You don't go to Rock of Ages for high art. You go to move your head vigorously to an irrisistible beat – as if you had a full head of '80s rocker hair – and you may even feel compelled to perform some air drums and, God help you, air guitar. The Broadway touring company now on stage at the Curran Theatre as part of the Best of Broadway series makes Mama Mia! look like Long Day's Journey Into Night.
ACT's MFA students frolic in kiddie Litter
It’s a busy late winter for San Francisco playwright Peter Sinn Nachtrieb, and the busy-ness has a lot to do with unusual births.
?Later this month at the Humana Festival of New Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville, Nachtrieb will premiere BOB, an “epic journey in just five acts” about a man born in a White Castle bathroom.
Closer to home, Nachtrieb is upping the baby ante but in only one act. Litter: The Story of the Framingham Dodecatuplets was written for the 12 students of American Conservatory Theater’s Master of Fine Arts Program Class of 2011. The comedy, complete with original songs, had its world premiere over the weekend at the Zeum Theater.
If you know Nachtrieb from his plays boom or Hunter Gatherers, you know that he is, in a word, hilarious. His comedy has edge and it can be heartfelt. He can slice you up and make it seem like the nicest possible thing to do.
Ruined but resilient, horrifying but beautiful
The evil that men do – and have done and continue to do – certainly does live after them. Shakespeare was so right about that. It lives and festers and poisons and leads to more evil.
This is incredibly apparent in Ruined, Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play now on stage at Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Roda Theatre.
Acts of unspeakable, incomprehensible violence occur, but it’s the echoes of those acts that ring most loudly in this compelling, ultimately shattering theatrical experience. There’s a war depicted on stage, but it’s not the chaotic, constantly shifting free-for-all of militias and government forces in East Africa. Rather, it’s the war waged on the bodies of thousands of that region’s women.
Dammit, Janet. Let's rock!
Janet Billig Rich would like you to cum on and feel the noize. And girls? Why don’t you rock your boys. And maybe we’ll all get wild, wild, wild.Billig Rich extends the above invitation as a bona fide rocker, as a Long Island native and, most importantly, as one of two dozen producers of the surprise Broadway smash Rock of Ages.The most successful juke-box musical this side of Mamma Mia! and Jersey Boys, Rock of Ages takes guilty-pleasure rock songs from 1980s hair bands like Journey, Night Ranger, Twisted Sister, Whitesnake and Poison, and turns them into a funny, feel-good slice of musical theater nostalgia. The touring production of this Tony-nominated Broadway hit rocks and rolls into San Francisco’s Curran Theatre March as part of the SHN/Best of Broadway series.
Weight and see: Don’t miss 40 Pounds
They say you should never ask a lady about her weight. Well, Pidge Meade is a lady who freely talks about her weight – in fact she's written an entire solo show about it.
40 Pounds in 12 Weeks: A Love Story, now at The Marsh in San Francisco, is Meade's intimate, not to mention funny, moving and generally marvelous, account of being a formerly fat lady. One of her recurring characters is a carnival barker who keeps directing our attention to the exhibit of the formerly fat lady trying to navigate her way through difficult life situations such as basking in (too much?) attention at 20-year college reunion or going the metaphysical, from-the-inside-out route toward weight loss.
The blossoming of Anika Noni Rose
Watching Anika Noni Rose (seen above, photo by Andrew Macpherson )on the cabaret stage, you sense a superstar in the making.
The gorgeous Rose, all of 38, has already made a name for herself in the theater, winning the Tony Award for her performance in the Tony Kushner/Jeanine Tesori masterwork Caroline, or Change. On screen, she provided the voice of Tiana, Disney's first African-American princess (in The Princess and the Frog) and she smooched and sang with Eddie Murphy, Jennifer Hudson and Beyonce in Dreamgirls.
She has conquered stage, screen and TV (The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, The Good Wife) – the cabaret stage is about the only performance arena she hasn't yet made her own. But she's working on it. In only her second solo cabaret act – her first in San Francisco – Rose demonstrated a sassy onstage persona, an appealing voice and a vintage collection of songs.
Magic Up Against some funny creeps
Playwright Theresa Rebeck, a master of barbed contemporary dialogue, conducts an interesting experiment in the Magic Theatre’s world premiere of What We’re Up Against.
Her Petri dish is a big-city architectural firm – all glass and metal in Skip Mercier’s sleek, mostly black, white and gray set. Her chosen bacteria: the architects, all of whom turn out to be antiseptic assholes.
To stir the chemical reactions, Rebeck introduces elements commonly found in the workplace: power plays, raging sexism, vaulting ambition, moronic behavior and that ever-powerful agent, greed.
The architects at this particular firm are mostly isolated from the outside world. We hear about some client interaction, but the focus of their activity is internal. There’s not talk of spouses, significant others, children, parents, pets, groceries or dry cleaning. This nearly two-hour, two-act drama (with some hearty if stinging comedy) has a sharp focus and that is unpleasant behavior from unpleasant people.
Aurora premiere bridges gap between comedy and Collapse
Sometimes things collapse. Sometimes buildings and bridges, things that are built to physically support us. And sometimes marriages and families, things that are meant to sustain and bolster us, crumble as well.
Both kinds of ruin are examined – sometimes to hilarious comic effect – in Allison Moore's Collapse, a rolling world premiere at Berkeley's Aurora Theatre Company. The concept of a rolling premiere is essentially a collaboration, in this case with the National New Play Network and Curious Theatre in Denver and Kitchen Dog Theater in Dallas.
Director Jessica Heidt's sharp, wildly entertaining production begins on rather a sly note. She has pitched her actors to an extreme level of discomfort, yet their goal is to appear perfectly normal and happy. It's a total sitcom situation – living room set and all – as David (Gabriel Marin) attempts to inject the posterior of his wife, Hannah (Carrie Paff), with fertility drugs. Their chipper anxiety about the fertility process is masking something else. We don't know what, but we sense it's serious. He's drinking too much, she's worried about being laid off from her legal firm and there's a shadow looming over their relationship.
Bergen goes from Jersey boy to bawdy balladeer
Erich Bergen became a man in San Francisco. OK, that’s an exaggeration, but when the performer was cast as Bob Gaudio in the touring production of Jersey Boys, he was all of 20 years old. The tour ended up sitting down at the Curran Theatre for nine months in 2007, and Bergen, a native of New York City, celebrated his 21st birthday in the City by the Bay.
He’ll be back in San Francisco for an all-too-brief one-night stand at the Rrazz Room in the Hotel Nikko on Monday, Feb. 7. His show is affectionately subtitled: “An evening of music, inappropriate laughs and awkward pauses.”
“That city holds a lot of crazy memories,” Bergen says on the phone from Los Angeles, his home since late 2009. “When I was cast, I had never really done New York as an adult actor. I quit college – or ‘left the company’ as I like to say – and was sent out on the road into that crazy Jersey Boys land. Suddenly it was this world you dream of with fans outside the stage door. Then while I was here I was in a relationship and all these first-time grown-up things were happening.”