SLY FOX WALKIN' TALKIN' BILL HAWKINS

Dearest theater patron, do the words: bawdy, risqué, prurient, burlesque and ribald, raise your moral dandruff?

If they do, then caveat emptor.

The Ross Valley Players have hoisted their hitherto prim hemline, six inches above the knee, and are staging what could be their first PG-13 play of the decade.

Playwright Larry Gelbart, has unapologetically borrowed Ben Johnson’s rapacious swindler, miser and philanderer viz. Foxwell J. Sly, as found in VOLPONE, and transplanted him, and his trusty servant, upon the Barbary Coast: San Francisco in the 1880s.

Picture an era in San Francisco when the city was defined by its saloons, fancy opportunistic ladies, and corrupt municipal officials.

This play has the feel of Moliere, Aristophanes, Tom Delay and Willie Brown all rolled into one.

Bay Area comic David Alan Moss, one of the most prominent stand-up comedians in Northern California, has been rightfully cast as Foxwell J. Sly, a hustler and scammer, par excellence, who relies on the proclivities of his victims to wheedle and extract what he wants from them.

Observing the dictum of W.C. Fields: “You can’t cheat an honest man,” Foxwell J. Sly makes a comfortable living by cheating dishonest men.

While the rubes of San Francisco propitiate Foxwell with gold, obsequious offerings, and verily their wives, and he gives them false promises and keeps his eye on his escape route.

The play is pure comedy, unfettered by tugging, sinewy plot lines, carping, philosophical undertones, or overbearing thematic development.

If you are not afraid to let yourself publicly laugh at ribald, tawdry, burlesque humor, then this play is just the right medicine for the cold winter doldrums of Marin County.

Now, through February 19, you have the opportunity to chortle at the lechery, greed and corruption that have remained a part of San Francisco’s charm.

For tickets, call the box office at 415 456-9555 or check out the website at www.rossvalleyplayers.com

Jeffrey R. Smith is a member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle.

Had we have cruised Columbus Avenue in North Beach during the 1950s, would we have paused to appreciate the cutting edge of Jack, Allen, Burroughs or Monk? Had we have eaten at the Algonquin Hotel in the 1920s, would we have chortled as we ease dropped on the brisk repartee emanating from the Round Table, or would we have asked the maitre d' for a quieter table: far from the liquid lunch crowd.

Fresh art arrives as a foreigner; as such it triggers our xenophobia. While nearly everyone appreciates the humor of Saturday Night Live, how many of us would have recognized, in its disaggregated form, the talent and comic genius of Candy, Farley or Belushi in a remote comedy club say in Manteca on a Monday night?

The Marsh Theater introduces daring fresh art for audiences who have resisted the homogenizing influence of the mass media. The Marsh is a venue for those who seek their entertainment beyond the barrels of canned laughter dispersed by prime time.

Now through January 28th, the Marsh of Berkeley is presenting WALKIN' TALKIN' BILL HAWKINS: IN SEARCH OF MY FATHER. W. Allen Taylor writes and performs his autobiographical and biographical performance piece based on the relationship he never had with the father he never knew. The play is not only the researched, assembled fragments of his father, an African-American disc jockey: it is a historical excursus of black radio beginning in the late 1940s. It is a fatherless man's attempt to fill a void. Allen Taylor creates a montage of period music, historical data and dance. He resurrects characters from his and his father's past to form a mosaic image, for himself and the audience, of the man he never knew. Perhaps Mr. Taylor's most successful accomplishment in his performance is conveying to the audience the magnitude of the gnawing agony and the hollowness of life without a father.

For tickets, call the Marsh Berkeley hotline at (800) 838-3006 or visit www.themarsh.org

Jeffrey R. Smith is a member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle.