July/August Theatre Reviews

Jack Goes Boating at the Aurora

The Aurora's latest production Jack Goes Boating by Bob Glaudini is the
perfect play for a
summer evening in Berkeley. It opens on the Aurora's intimate space
where three quarters of
the audience seated around the stage listen to a couple of New York
limo chauffeurs, Jack
(Danny Wolohan) and Clyde (Gabriel Marin), discuss their work and a
girl named Connie (Beth Wilmurt).
Jack, who has just met Connie, is smitten with her and intrigued by her
suggestion that they
some day go boating.. But the shy and rather awkward limo driver does
not know how to go about
pursing his dream of seeing Connie. Clyde advises that the two can get
to know each other if Jack
invites her to a gourmet dinner that his pastry chef friend will teach
him to make.
Then Clyde proposes to teach Jack to swim so he can safely take Connie
boating in Central Park.
This slow moving intrigue between Jack and Connie is contrasted with
the more firy
relationship between Clyde and his girlfriend Lucy (Amanda Duarte).

Glaudini succeeds in turning a banal, old-fashioned dramatic action
into an animated
highly comical one that holds our attention throughout. The simplicity
of the action and
dialogue revolving around the characters' innocence and old time values
gradually has the
audience laughing at their naïveté and even rooting for

their lilywhite principles.

The successful rendering of this dramatic action is due to Joy Carlin's
excellent direction and
the actors' strong characterizations of four eccentrics, Jack as the
simple-minded, idealistic limo
driver, Clyde as his enthusiastic go-getter pal, Connie as the naïve
and innocent blunderer,
and Lucy as Clyde's street-smart, wheeler-dealer girlfriend.

Stage design is created by Melpomene Katakalos. The small theatre space
is considerably
augmented here through the innovative use of another level above the
stage that serves
a number of scenes suchas the swimming lessons Clyde gives Jack.

Jack's realization of his dream comes at the end of the play when a
rowboat descends from
the ceiling that Jack and Connie climb into to row away, symbol of Jack
having fulfilled
his desire to conquer the girl of his dreams. If the actors had mimed
getting into an imaginary
boat it would have been a challenge, but it would never have been as
triumphant as this
ending with a real rowboat dropping down on stage, after which the play
immediately
received a standing ovation. It is worth rowing across the Bay to see
this unusual
comedy that plays until July 19th. For information and tickets ($40-42)
about this production
or Clifford Odets' Awake and Sing in August, call 510.843.4822 or
visit www.auroratheatre.org.
Dr. Annette Lust

"Romeo" Rocks Cal Shake

As
pop/rock rhythms energize the youth, Cal Shakes launches its 35th
Anniversary Season
with artistic Jonathan Moscone directing Shakespeare's Romeo and
Juliet, a passionate
tale of young lovers caught in dangerous and threatening world. Moscone
delivers a
modern-dress "Romeo" as the tragedy of a violence-wracked urban
environment. The result
is a vivid, engrossing and energetic remounting of the familiar story.

The young "star-crossed" lovers played with sincerity by Alex Morf as
Romeo and Sarah Nealis
as Juliet are more engaging in Act I before their tragedy gets
consumed in Act II. Act I is a masterpiece
from the opening of the play with Julian Lopes-Morillas' regal Prince
to the introduction of a solid cast
of players with James Carpenter and Julia Eccles as an upper class Lord
and Lady Capulet,
Catherine Castellanos as a bawdy nurse as well as Lady Montague, Jud
Williford in a brilliant
performance as Mercutio, L. Peter Callender as Romeo's supportive
father, Dan Hiatt's hopeful
Friar Lawrence, Craig Marker's slick Tybolt, and Liam Vincent's "noble"
Paris.

Moscone directs his cast with entrances and exits from the audience
playing some of the scenes
from the audience. The timing of Act I was amazing and right on target.
Raquel M. Barreto's beautiful
costumes are in vogue and Neil Patel's sets are splattered with red
graffiti. Act II did not fare as well.
It seemed over-lo
ng and much too
bloody and melodramatic. One nice touch was the way in
which
Moscone juxtaposes the scenes between Julie and the Nurse and Romeo
and Friar Lawrence.
At the end of Romeo and Juliet, love ends in death, parents must bury
their children and both the
government (in the form of the Prince) and the Clergy (represented by
Friar Lawrence) seem unable to stop it.

For information about Noel Coward's Private Lives July 11 to Aug 2 at
California Shakespeare Theatre
call 510-548-9666 or go to www.calshakes.org.
Flora Lynn Isaacson

Unfulfilled Russian Dreams in Porchlight's Three Sisters

Porchlight Theatre Company opened its annual outdoor summer production
at the Redwood
Amphitheatre in Ross June 20. This year the award winning professional
company presents
Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters featuring a story that takes place in
the Russian countryside
around 1901. When the play opens, it is Irina's (Thais Harris) 20th
birthday. Officers from the
local garrison sit around discussing life as Olga (Julia McNeal) the
oldest sister, fusses with
preparations for a party. The third sister, Masha (Tara Blau) sits
reading dressed all in black.
Their brother, Andrei (Jon Wesley Burnett) frustrated in his hopes,
stays in his room and plays
his violin. All three live in their memories of a happier past or dream
of a rosier future.
The people they gather around them include Kulygin (Ry
an O'Donnell), a s
choolteacher, and
Masha's husband. Vershinin (Nick Sholley), the new officer in town,
becomes Masha's lover.
Chebutkin, the aging drunken army doctor, is played by John Mercer.
Rebecca Castelli plays Natasha, an upstart country girl who not so
subtly takes over,
after marrying Andrei. Craig Neibaur plays Baron Tuzenbach who has
loved Irina for 5 years.
Solyony, who also loves Irina, is played by Michael Barr as a social
misfit.

There are wonderful cameos; Candace Brown as the family nursemaid, who
may be too old to be
of any use and Don Wood as a hearing-impaired porter. The two
orderlies, played with much
versatility by Lowell Weller and Jarrod Quon also double up in doing
sound effects.
Director Susannah Martin seems well versed in Chekhov. She pays strict
attention to the
specific gestures of each character and demonstrates the importance of
the unspoken word.
Under her capable direction, all of the performances are like
vignettes. Martin has put together
a moving, funny and thought provoking production of Three Sisters.

For information on future Porchlight productions, call 415-251-1027 or
visit www.porchlight.net
Flora Lynn Isaacson

West Coast Premiere of Afghan Theatre of Exile and Bond
Street
Theatre's Beyond the MIrror
at the S.F. International Arts Festival


In their West Coast appearance of their world wide tour of Beyond
the
Mirror, the New York Bond St.

Theatre, that has for
a number of years
organized theatre projects in
teacher training and youth
programs in crisis areas, and the Kabul Exile Theatre, that began this
multi-media collaboration in
2002 with Bond Street, present the Afghan's struggle to survive three
decades of military domination.
To the accompaniment
of the gentle soft notes of the Afghan ancient
lute (called the
rubat), performed
by a solo musician

Beyond the Mirror begins with a video montage of beautiful Afghan
snow
capped rolling hills and valleys.
There follow scenes of quiet streets
and inhabitants peacefully
shopping in market places that soon change

into other scenes showing the presence of soldiers and
frenzied
villagers running from bombs.
An intricate Bond Street Theatre is
unique in its incorporation of
multiple physical styles into its
creations
utilized with subject matter that renders spectators
conscious of
humanitarian issues. In their search for
a universal
physical language, they have performed in international
festivals and
set up workshops and
training sessions in refugee camps and post
conflict areas. In their
travels they have added to their own
eclectic
physical style elements of other cultures such as Peking
Opera,
European theatre, Brazilian and
African dance, martial arts, shadow
puppetry, Baharata Natyam among
others. They are a company that
is0making a difference in it
s global outreach and aim to communicate
with
diverse and impenetrable nations.
Beyond the Mirror continues to tour nationally and internationally. For
information about where they will be
visit the Bond Street Theatre at
www.bondst.org/activities/.../us-premier-of-beyond-the-mirror -
Dr. Annette Lust

Cuckoo Conspiracy in Wasserman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest at the
SF Playhouse

"They are a lot crazier on the outside," says McMurphy, a character who
has just been allocated
to a mental institution to discover that the patients in his ward are
not as mentally disturbed as they are
fearful of revolting against the institution's stigmatization of their
condition. Dale Wasserman's play,
based on the novel by Ken Kesey, a Stanford graduate student who drew
his material for his novel
while working at the Palo Alto Menlo Park Veteran Hospital, reveals
how McMurphy empowers the
so-called mentally ill in his ward to react against their social
stigma by revealing the truth of their
mental state. This is particularly true in the case of Chief Bromden,
an Indian who is seemingly deaf,
unresponsive and obsessed by the threat that the "combine" will punish
him with, for example, a shock
treatment if he does not succumb to their orders. At night when he is
alone he conveys his fears of how
"the combine" is pe
rsecuting him. Another example=2
0is Billy Bibbit, the meek young
stutterer who is
numbed by any kind of sexual encounter until McMurphy forces him to
have sex with the enticing
Candy to prove his manly valor.

Despite the frequent intervention of the dictatorial, one tract minded
Nurse Ratched (in Webster's Dictionary
a ratched is a mechanism that allows motion to proceed in one
direction), who symbolizes the institutional
social stigma of the inmates, McMurphy soon has them, against the ward
rules, engaged in poker, watching
the World Series, playing basketball indoors, and happily partying.
And despite his extortion of money from
the inmates, since they have found a spokesman they feel joyfully
liberated. However, McMurphy's liberation
of the inmates is not without tragic consequences due to the
persistence of the institution to retain the scar on
the so-called insane.

Under the baton of artistic director of the SF Playhouse Bill English,
the production,
consisting of fourteen actors, is tightly and expertly directed on a
limited stage space
that set designer English managed to render ample enough in his
realistic conception
of an asylum ward to allow a large number of actors to move about
freely.
Group meetings, a basketball game and the ward party are never lacking
for the need
of space and expansive movement. More space is also created above the
stage=2
0where
the nurses
offices overlook the inmates activities through large
widows.

The play is well cast from major to minor roles. In a minor role, Catz
Forsman plays
the alcoholic Turtle, a downbeaten ward aide who appears to have been
throttled for a
number of years into obeying his superior Nurse Ratched's orders. Susi
Damilano,
executive producer of the Playhouse, successfully creates the symbol
of hard fast
institutional rule and provides the counter force against McMurphy
(dynamically
portrayed by Hansford Prince) who represents the liberating element of
the play.
Louis Parnell plays the gay inmate Dale Harding, who lends gentle
diplomacy to the
disputes among his fellow inmates. Michael Torres' Chief Branden is
well enacted
(although at times a bit too loud vocally) as the scape-goat for the
justification of the
ward's rebellion. The remainder of the cast range from the fearful,
stuttering Billy
(Patrick Alparone) to the compromising Dr. Spivey (David Sinaiko)
along with Dwight
Huntsman as an aide, Marissa Keltie as Nurse Flinn and Sandy, Yusef
Lambert as Cheswick,
Brian Raffi as Scanlon, Gilberto Esqueda as Martini, Joe Madero as
Ruckley and Madeline H.D.
Brown as Candy.

Wasserman's play brings to a number of highly comical scenes a serious
evaluation
of the mis-diagnosis, dehumanizing, and20thwarting of the liberty of
individuals who20in
the process have lost the ability to function like normal b

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest plays through Sept. 5. For info call
415-677-9596
or visit www.sfplayhouse.org.

Jealous Passion and Revenge Sicilian Style at Off Broadway West

One can see Arthur Miller's View from the Bridge at the Phoenix
Theatre performed
by the Off Broadway West Company and staged by other companies as
though each
were treating it as a different play theme wise. This is due to the
wealth of emotional –
themes the play contains. Off Broadway West brings out several themes
regarding the
Sicilian connection of an Italian immigrant family.
The following questions concern the themes that this play may contain.

Is the play depicting the over protection of an uncle (Eddie) of his
niece (Catherine)
whom he promised his dead sister he would protect mainly about a
dutiful brother
who is tormented by his need to keep that promise? Or since Eddie
prefers to care for
his niece over his wife's concerns about his marital duties to her,
is the play about
family blood devotion or a love passion that are stronger than
marital ties? Or is it
about an older male's need for change and the reassurance of his
virility through the
passion for=2
0a younger person? Or is it about the jealous passion of an uncle who

has
fallen in love with his ward for whom he made sacrifices to raise who
is suddenly
torn from him by a younger male (Rodolpho)? Is the play about a
controlling male
(Eddie) not being able to let go of his authority over his ward? And
finally is it also
about Eddie's revenge on Rodolpho for having told him the truth
concerning why he
refuses to allow him to marry Catherine because he wants her for
himself?

Broadway West touches upon all of these underlying themes but
emphasizes the
themes of jealous passion and revenge in accordance with the family's
Sicilian
background. From the start we see Eddie's affection for Catherine
whom he calls a
"Madonna" and attempts to rapidly brush his lips on hers each time
she pecks him on
the cheek. When Sicilian relatives Marco and Rodolpho enter the
country illegally
and Rodolpho begins to make dresses, dance and sing with Catherine,
Eddie's
jealousy is aroused. He mocks the young man and warns Catherine that
Rodolpho is
interested in her only to obtain his American citizenship.

When Rodolpho tells Eddie that he is aware of his motives regarding
Catherine,
Eddie's revenge mounts. He cries out "I want my res
pect! I want my name! "And
Rodolpho responds "No, you want her (Catherine)!" in=2
0one of the most
dramatic
moments of the play.

Directed throughout in a detailed and in-depth manner by Peter Tripp,
the action is
spell binding and builds gradually to a higher and higher intensity
of emotion.
Richard Harding's characterization of Eddie is portrayed as a
hard-working
longshoreman who allows his passion for his niece and his pride about
his family
and Brooklyn neighborhood reputation to devour him. Harding manifests
this
knawing at these feelings through his silences, movements and facial
expressions
as keenly as through his words. Vlad Sayenko plays a cheerful,
charming, and lucid
Rodolpho. Sandy Rouge is a down-to-earth, no-nonsense wife Beatrice,
Natasha
Chacon an endearing, affectionate niece Catherine, and Glen Caspillo
a revengeful
old style Sicilian. Randy Hurst provides a contrast as the calm,
thoughtful lawyer,
Michael Perry and Steven Spohn are the happy-go-lucky, often drunk,
neighbors
and Spohn also performs the dutiful immigration officer.

Orrin C Cross, III creates a homey set design that despite the
crowded interior
allows for enough room for stage movement with the added use of some
action
performed outsi
de Eddie's house down stage.

Miller's play presents a modern day protagonist bringing about his
own destruction
as did the Greek heroes whose acts20of self-destruction offered
philosophical and
psychological truths. The Off Broadway West Theatre Company has met
the
challenge of staging a production worthy of Miller's insightful study
of a Sicilian
immigrant whose jealous passion and pride proffers his perishing.

A View from the Bridge plays until August 22. For information call
1-800-838-3006
or visit www.offbroadwaywest.org.
Dr. Annette Lust

An "Earnest" Endeavor

In celebration of their 20th season, Marin Shakespeare Company opened
with Oscar Wilde's
most witty comedy, "The Importance of Being Earnest." This fabulous
production boasted a
brilliant cast of all Equity actors who have collectively performed
over 50 Marin Shakespeare roles.

Set in Victorian England, Oscar Wilde's comedy of manners makes fun
of the upper classes
as it follows the adventures of two young eligible bachelors when
they court two beautiful young
ladies who each want to marry a man named Earnest. One of the most
delightful plays ever
written, Wilde's charming Victorian classic pokes fun at love,
marriage and=2
0social conformity.

Veteran actor George Maguire is playing the imperious Lady Bracknell
who married into wealth and
social position in Victorian England and who turns propriety into
militancy especially when it comes
to finding a suitable match for her daughter, Gwendolyn,
played with
beguiling charm by Cat
Thompson. Darren Bridgett, who has been an important staple of the
Marin Shakespeare for
over five years, plays Algernon as a sophisticated man of the world.
William Elsman plays
Jack Worthing, a tightly wound fop with a penchant for lying about
his brother. Elsman is really the
heart of this production. His Jack zings from one emotion to the
next--smug man about town to
smitten puppy dog to irate parental figure--and makes us believe
every one of them.

Alexandra Matthew's Cecily Cardew, Jack's ward, who is in love with
Algernon, matches
Bridgett' vitality joke for joke. There is no insignificant role in
"Earnest" because Wilde structured
it so expert. That is why the strong support from Joan Mankin, who is
first rate as
Cecily's governess Miss Prism and uses a sort of stammer at certain
moments in her delivery that is very funny.
Also notable are Jack Powell as a shy Reverend Chasable and Lucas 0D
McClure as a series of butlers.
What a delight to report that Director Robert Currier and a marvelous
cast of Bay Area actors
bring depth and feeling to Wilde's already sparkling comedy making it
as emotionally rich and
satisfying as it is hilarious.
Marin Shakespeare's The Importance of Being Earnest is well worth a
jaunt to Forest Meadows
Amphitheatre, 1475 Grand Avenue, Dominican Uni
versity, San Rafael,
CA.
"Earnest" plays through August 16, 2009. For tickets, call
415-499-4488 or go
online www.marinshakespeare.org.

Six Lives of Loneliness and Desperation

Ross Valley Players, on the verge of their 80th season, opened its
West Coast Premiere of
Alan Ayckbourn's "Private Fears in Public Places," Saturday, July 11,
2009. This beautifully
written play is about six lonely people whose lives intersect and
overlap in ordinary places:
offices, homes, bars, and hotels. The structure of the play is almost
like "a film for the stage"
with scenes gliding seamlessly into the next and interconnected
stories overlapping as the character
connect. The theme being about the way our lives are linked.

When the play opens, Nicola (Dana Zook) is getting impatient with her
lover, Dan (Patrick Barresi),
20 an army officer discharged for incompetence. Their real estate
agent Stewart (Keith Jefferds)
watches porn videos lent by his colleague, Charlotte (Linnea George)
which appalls his sister
Imogen (Lauren Rosi). Meanwhile, Imogen meets Dan through personals
in his favorite hotel bar;
the barman, Ambrose (Jim Fye) employs Charlotte as a part-time
caregiver for his dying father.
Ayckbourn sets the play in London where loneliness can feel
heightened.

Set Designer Ron Krempetz creates five different sets without
walls--a hotel b
ar, Ambrose's home,
Nicola and Dan's flat, a cafe, and Stewart and Charlotte's office.
There is a London backdrop
with Big Ben through a window.The Lighting Designer, Carrie Mullen
deserves a lot of credit
because of the instantaneous changes from one scene to another
managed by fading lights
from one mini-set to another.
The play runs for one continuous act of about 90 minutes with no
intermission.

Thanks to Director, Jessica Holt, the performances are pitch perfect.
Private Fears in Public Places
runs through August 16, 2009. Order tickets online at
www.rossvalleyplayers.com or by phone
at 415-456-9555.
Flora Lynn Isaacson

FOR
ACTORS OF ALL AGES
OPEN AUDITIONS
FRINGE OF MARIN FESTIVAL OF BAY AREA
ONE-ACTS & SOLOS
TUES, WEDS, August 25, 26-5:30 to 8 p.m.

WHAT: COLD READ
WHERE: DOMINICAN UNIVERSITY
50 ACACIA AVE, SAN RAFAEL
MEADOWLANDS HALL
PERFORMANCES: Nov. early Dec. 2009 · CRITICS AWARDS
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CALL:
ANNETTE LUST (415) 673-3131; 10:30 am- 1 pm
.

For directions, visit:
http://www.dominican.edu/about/campus/mapsandparking.html

control+option+pageup escape
Standard VersionTerms of ServicePrivacy PolicyTrademarksContext
Sensitive Shortcuts
© 2009 AOL LLC. All Rights Reserved