theatre reviews

Bay Area Awards for Fringe Festival of Marin 05
Call for Plays, Actors and Directors For Fringe 06

The sixteenth Fringe of Marin took place at Meadowlands Hall Theatre on the ground floor of the 120 year old De Young family Victorian styled former summer mansion on the Dominican campus. Participants in the festival extended from the North to the East and South Bays and San Francisco. The annual festival in its16th edition marks the continuation of bi-annual stagings since 1992 under the artistic direction of Dominican drama professor Dr. Annette Lust.

The $100 award for Best Play was attributed by a Bay Area Theatre Critics Jury to North Bay author Lum Franco for Salt, a enerational conflict drama in which a mother in a rural Italian town of Friuli faces resistance from her daughter and niece about her clsed views on early marriage and child bearing. Second place was attributed to Dominican graduate student Robert Bradford, a several times Fringe award-winner, for his comedy Babe and the Witch about legendary Babe Ruth and the world of baseball lovers. Third place went to College of Marin and North Bay writing teacher Guy Biederman for his witty and perspicacious views on marriage with his Ex in Cafe Expectation. Dance choreographers Leslie Friedman, for her arts fundraising satire The Panel, and Megan Black, for her Kathak storytelling dance The Crane Wife, took fourth place. Fifth place was attributed to Donaldo Prescod for his social drama The Commoners and to Craig S. Engen for his satire The Lowdown Uptown.

In the category of directors, first place went to Tony Saccardi for directing Salt and Ariana by Nadia Tarzi, second place to Michael Angelo Mannheimer for Babe and the Witch, third place to Megan Black forThe Crane Wife and fourth place to Leslie Friedman forThe Panel.
Best actor was awarded to Matthew Gardner in Loving Lotte Lenya ; Jay Ruby (second place) Lowdown Uptown ; Craig Logan, (third place) Babe and the Witch ; Mike McFarlin (fourth place) The Panel, and Mat Bell (fifth place) Babe and the Witch. Best actress was awarded to Nadia Tarzi in Ariana and Salt ; Linda Ayres Frederick (second place) Loving Lotte Lenya ; Gene Gore (third place) Drive By, and Megan Black (third place) The Crane Wife. Festival Coordinator, house and stage manager and director Greg Angeo, who was honored for six years of collaborating with the festival, will be replaced by Petaluma writer and literary salon director/theatre manager Nancy Long in Spring 2006.

Both this Fall 05 Fringe, as well as the Spring 05 Festival, have received support from a Marin Arts Council grant

Actors are welcome to auditions for the Spring Festival Jan. 18 and 20 at 5.30 to 7.30 in Meadowlands Assemby Hall on the Dominican campus.
Submissions of unproduced plays or solos under 20 minutes are accepted for consideration for the Fall 2006 Festival. For info call Annette Lust at 415-673-3131 (mornings 9.30 to 1.30).

Flying Still Higher at the Pickle Circus

The Pickles are back with their holiday show at the sumptuous Palace of Fine Arts, this time with a theme that is reminiscent of the homespun appeal of the earlier Pickle Family Circus. But their simple opening was soon topped by sophisticated and astounding circus acts, some performed by former Cirque de
Soleil stars, that at first glance made one wonder if it was the same show. And then it somehow all meshed together.
High Water Radio depicts an eccentric little old lady (actress/clown Joan Mankin) in the quiet little town of High Water in the 1920s who creates one of California’s first wireless variety broadcasting stations. As town inhabitants stroll by and watch her hobble about to set up her radio station, her sleepy older world is about to confront a frenetic new one. As she anxiously begins her broadcasting, we watch among other acts, Prima Donna Mooky Cornish (former lead clown of Cirque de Soleil’s Varekai) call on an audience member to join her in a riotous skit in which he botches up his reading of an introduction of
Mooky. A Tea Party Contortion features 17 year old Liao Heng Juan contortioning her upside down body to balance teacups and pour tea from a teapot with her feet. One of the most charming scenes is that of the High Water lady reading
Alice in Wonderland as Mooky plays Alice chasing a cat, a mouse and a white rabbit.

Among other virtuoso acts, there are striking acrobatic/ ballet balance performances by the reknowned Nanjing Xuan Brothers; by former Cirque de Soleil jump rope artist René Bibaud; acrobatic feats by Simon Chaban (with fire), Marta Henderson, Carolne Orrick, Tavis Beem, and Jennings McCown; tissu performance by Brett Womack; and Aloysia Gavre and Aidan O’Shea in Adagio Cerceau.
To top off all of these visual marvels, the Tin Hat Quintet performs a variety of musical pieces and sound effects. The production, created and directed by Aloysia Gavre and Rex Camphuis, is an innovative combination of circus comedy and technique that blends clowning and buffoonery with physical virtuosity. For the most part this succeeds as long as the balancing of these elements is not tipped by an overemphasis on technical skill that risks burying the charm of good old fashioned clowning.
For info about Circus Center shows see www.circuscenter.org or contact Peggy Ford at (415) 759-8123, ext. 814.

A Nutcracker Nutz and Boltz at the Marsh

Liebe Wetzel's creativity never ceases to grow as we watch her newest found objects puppetry in Nutz and Boltz at the San Francisco Marsh, written and choreographed as a holiday show performed by her Lunatique Fantastique Puppeteers. This round of object transformations is based on a purely lyrical theme derived from Eta Hoffmann's original nutcracker story with music by Tchaikovsky arranged by Shinji Eshima. But this time the found object puppets no longer perform on a long table with the puppeteers manipulating them from behind. Instead, still clothed in black, they move about with the puppets on a stage space below us.
At the show's beginnng an actor enters and is drawn to a movement made by a child's red bathrobe hanging on the wall. With the bathrobe and a baseball cap he creates a boy puppet named Fritz. Next, out of a white and pink striped nightgown topped with a pink knit cap, he creates Fritz's sister Marie, who finds ballet slippers in a box and dons them. When the Nutcracker, consisting of a wine bottleopener for his arms and chest, a coffee pot turned upside down for his head and prongs for legs, is given to Marie by the children's uncle, the love story of Marie and the Nutcracker is born. Their uncle, made of a jacket, a pan for a head and a mop head for a wig, settles the fights between Fritz and Marie over the Nutcracker that Fritz breaks in a rage. After the Nutcracker is kidnapped by the Mouse King, Marie trys to rescue him. With the return and repair of the Nutcracker, as in all good fairy tales, the love story ends happily with Marie posing a big kiss on the Nutcracker's coffee pot head.
What is original in this imaginative puppet show is the transformation of these found objects into believable characters, animals, or other objects or props, such as a clothes hanger becoming the wings of a bird or the propeller of a plane, or mice traps turning into the Mouse King. It is Wetzel and her puppeteers' magic of stretching our imagination that has our eyes glued from beginning to end on these puppets born before our eyes.
A short demo of the Lunatique Fantastique's work follows during which the puppeteers ask the audience to volunteer objects to create puppets. After creating a burly male figure out of a padded jacket and a serpentine female out of a long scarf, two six year old girls volunteer to turn these characters into a dancing woodsman and an enticing lady.
For information about Lunatique Fatastique's upcoming shows log onto www.lunfan.com. and for events at the Marsh visit www.themarsh.org.