MISS SAIGON PROOF AS YOU LIKE IT Pomp and Circumstance The Comedy of Errors
It must be vouchsafed that MISS SIAGON sprang from the moldering libretto of Puccini’s MADAME BUTTERFLY.
Yet the tragedy is inspired, updated and augmented by a poignant photo of what came to symbolize the tragedy and insensitivity intrinsic to the ill conceived Amerasian Homecoming Act of 1982.
The photo depicts a Vietnamese mother, unwelcome in America, bidding farewell to her half American daughter, whom she will in all probability never see again.
The daughter is about to board a plane for an uncertain and culturally ambiguous future in the United States.
A plot synopsis could never fully account for the emotional whiffle dale this musical puts its audience through, but nevertheless one follows.
A group of Marines enter a Saigon bar brothel combo, determined to enjoy their last few liberty days before the imminent fall of Saigon.
Chris, weary of the death, destruction and decadence, is clearly not enjoying the degrading ambience of the bar scene.
His friend, John, sets him up with a couple of beers and one whole night with a new “fresh meat” bar girl.
The new girl is Kim: recently orphaned by the war, only seventeen years and just in from the cratered provinces.
Reluctantly John spends the night with Kim and magically they connect in the tragic manner of Romeo and Juliet.
In the morning, while Kim sleeps, John expresses his bitter sweet regret with the song “Why God Why?”
He realizes that this special night has forever changed his life and will always be emblazoned on his heart.
John and Kim spend the remaining two weeks together before the fall of Saigon catapults them worlds apart.
After the fall, Kim sustains her life and her inner virtue despite the hard scrapple circumstances she finds herself.
Without John’s knowledge, she gives birth to his son and leaves communist Vietnam for the fathomless moral abyss of Bangkok.
Despite the degradation and survival wages of the sex industry, Kim is buoyed by her dream: that one day John will return and that three of them will live together, as a family, in America.
A great musical is only as great as its vocalists and this amazing multi-racial cast of 45 superb actors boasts plenty vocal talent.
Catherine Gloria is spectacular: her voice is imbued with a certain virtuousness and purity that establishes the stainless and resolute character of Kim even as she survives by plying the sex trade of Bangkok.
Noel Anthony has a voice that bellows the inner agony of Chris as he feels the tremendous void left in his heart and soul by his separation from Kim.
Paul Araquistain has mastered the sleazy voice of Dicken’s Fagin; he uses it to personify a man who would pimp his own mother, and did: Tran “the Engineer” and unrepentant.
David Sattler, as John, sings in a measured, clipped voice that resonates the voice of reason and compassion: a balm trying to assuage the residual chaos, pathos and suffering left by the heartless Vietnam era.
The lighting by Michael Ramsaur moves across the spectrum from tranquil moonlight to as hellish and as nightmarish as the bridge scene in APOCALYPSE NOW.
To get a fresh perspective on the world and to trivialize the truly trivial concerns in your own life, get thee to MISS SAIGON.
It will lift you out of your midlife doldrums and reacquaint you with the human condition.
For tickets call the box office at 650-579-5565.
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Reviewed by Jeffrey R Smith of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle
Katherine McDowell, plays lead as Catherine: a closet math prodigy and one of two daughters of a distinguished mathematician and professor of math at the University of Chicago.
Wood Lockhart, ably plays the deteriorating mathematician: Robert.
Writing 40-page mathematical proofs seems to have loosened Robert’s grip on the mundane: he weaves in and out of the sanity lane, as if karma, defending mediocrity, demands that he pay a price for his prodigious math acumen.
Fortunately, for liberal arts majors who only made it as far as first semester Geometry or were forced to rely on stealth reconnaissance to transcend Algebra-I in less than two years, the show contains very little math jargon and no quiz following the final curtain.
Be warned: there is a brief mention of prime numbers; but it is over and done with before any soporific stupors can be clearly established and no one in the audience is called upon to provide an example of a prime number.
Many of the usual monikers for math wizards are bandied about: geek, nerd and dweeb; as well as a full catalogue of stereotypic math nerd behaviors and personality traits: social ineptitude, abysmal sartorial standards, a lack of musical or choreographic skills, and of course, major deficiencies in the concupiscent arts.
In short, there is a reiteration of all of the stock clichés and usual mythologies that math savants have come to recognize as the secret revenge of the basket weavers and the Phys-Ed majors.
The plot line is a little reminiscent of THE PRICE by Arthur Miller: one sibling seemingly sacrifices college and career in order to attend to an ailing father, while the other sibling is reveling in success: fresh roasted coffee, a cute apartment and all the perquisites of a dual income and the good life in Manhattan.
When the father dies, the Manhattanite comes home: ostensibly for the funeral but also to liquidate the estate and to roust her sister out of the homestead she unilaterally proffered.
With airplane engines virtually turning on the tarmac, an eleventh hour intervention by Hal, a Chicago graduate student and also a digeratti, (perhaps named for Hal from Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001 SPACE ODESSY) seems destined to rescue Catherine from a disastrous, squandered life as an undiscovered Sophie Germain (see Frederick Gauss), a ward of her bourgeois sister, and an exile amongst the skyscrapers, fresh roasted coffee, lithium and Thorazine needles of Manhattan.
In a world where image is everything, it is refreshing attend a play that focuses on real people of substance, even if the substance is math and the characters while away their hours cranking out arcane formulae, spouting math anecdotes and sharpening pencils.
For an evening that is math friendly and thoroughly enjoyable, call 415 456-9555.
Reviewed by Jeffrey R Smith of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Cirlce California Shakespeare is currently offering a superb, possibly PG-13, production of Shakespeare’s AS YOU LIKE IT.
While it may be true that autumn weather has already descended on Bruns Amphitheater, one would not know it to watch Celia and Rosalind do their sizzling Victoria’s Secret advertisement.
One might wonder, did they really have gossamer Lycra in Elizabethan England?
So where were the opera glasses?
After Rosaline sprints off stage topless, you might mistakenly assume that the show could not heat up any more, but Susannah Schulman cranks up the temperature when, as Ganymede, she passionately tutors an equally ardent Orlando in the romantic arts.
And who said that Shakespeare was prim?
Aside from the skimpy lingerie, ample skin and the searing exothermic passion of Rosalind, there is always the cool wit of Touchstone—masterfully played by the silver tongued Dan Hiatt.
It is doubtful that Shakespeare ever intended that the comedy of his play should begin and end with his script; director Jonathon Moscone has infused so much more into the show, that it nearly resembles a musical or possibly a variety show.
Original music, by Gina Leishman, is wonderfully performed by a mock Balkan Gypsy Trio that consists of Dan Cantrell on the accordion, Lila Sklar on the violin and Djordje Stijepovic on the bass.
Great vocals by MS Schulman and Julie Eccles (Celia) are qualitatively matched to their accompaniment.
Rod Gnapp, as Charles the professional wrestler, mixes it up well with Stephen Barker Turner, the underdog Orlando, in a fight scene that begs the question, “Is professional wrestling real?”
Fight Director Dave Maier puts together such a good Greco-Roman-WWF match one could almost hear the combatants’ joints popping, bones splintering and vertebrae cracking.
One might ask, “Is there a chiropractor in the house?”
Although domestic spying is not fashionable, this critic overheard many, seemingly seasoned Shakespeare aficionados pronouncing judgment on the play: the consensus was, this critic included, that this show was indisputably the best rendering of the AS YOU LIKE IT that anyone could remember seeing.
If you have seen AS YOU LIKE IT a dozen times, this production will impress you as much as it will delight and entertain you.
Tickets may be reserved by calling the box office at 510 548-9666.
Dress as if you were attending dog sled races.
Reviewed by Jeffrey R Smith of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Even without having seen all 30 plus offerings of the San Francisco Fringe Festival, it would be hard to envision David Rouda not walking off with the Fringe laurels for the second year in a row.
Although the festival is staged on a level playing field, some entrants are just plain having fun: strutting, but definitely not fretting their hour upon the stage, while others are having fun at creating a theatrical piece that is really cutting edge yet ascribes to at least a few of the rudimentary tenets of quality theatre.
Rouda’s entry: POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE has two winning features: a clever, very witty, complex, airtight script and a superlative, highly capable cast.
While the Fringe Festival clearly means many things to many people, David Rouda interprets the Festival as an opportunity to showcase a work in progress that plausibly looks and feels like a finished product.
Some shows have such slow pacing that the show halts, lurches and drags until the audience develops a collective anxiety: a frustration like they are mentally trudging through the theatrical equivalent of the LaBrae Tar Pits.
On the other hand, the pacing of MR Rouda’s show is closer the Blipverts of MAX HEADROOM fame: the show clips along so fast and furious that the audience should be wearing seatbelts.
POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE is a legal beagle show depicting two trials, one family and one law firm.
Philosophically, it asks the question, do we become who we pretend to be?
One pair of characters pretend to be the Bride and Groom from the SONG OF SOLOMON and the other pair pretends to be Othello and Iago.
One subplot involves an overdose of Viagra and the other involves a homicide; try to guess which is which.
The same father and son law firm represents both the Bride and Groom couple and Othello character, in the civil and criminal cases that ensue.
John Cornwell’s performance as Zach Ebersohn is high energy and right on the money: Zach is the ambitious heir apparent to Max Ebersohn’s established law practice.
Joe Madero as Max packs power into his delivery while sustaining a rapid-fire, Walter Winchell delivery that by necessity characterizes the entire production.
If the show is great, even with the limitations placed on it at the Fringe Festival, it can only be much better when it has the chance to decompress itself from under an hour, to its rightful running time of an hour and a half.
Look for it in a theater near you.
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Jeffrey R. Smith is a member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. As time and invention move spoken English further and further away from its predecessor: Elizabethan English, the language of Shakespeare gradually becomes more obscure.
To be accessible to all audiences, the humor of the Bard’s original script has to be supported and augmented by visual humor and nearly every element of the stage must collaborate to contribute to the comedic effect: facial expressions, movement, costuming, choreography, lights, make-up, wigs, sound, props and set design.
While some directors may see such necessary enhancements and augmentations as a challenge, James Dunn, director of THE COMEDY OF ERRORS at Marin Shakespeare, obviously relishes such opportunities for creativity.
Visually, his production is so hilarious: one could probably enjoy it without sound.
Antipholus, Dromio, Adriana and Luciana, the core characters played by Andrew Fonda Jackson, Brandon Roberts, Mary Knott and LeAnne Rumbel respectively, are true comedians pumping fresh laughter into a script that is over 400 years old.
MR Dunn quickly acknowledges that all the additional gags and humor do not completely originate with him.
In fact, MR Dunn allows his cast and crew to add the comic brush strokes that completely flesh out the body of Shakespeare’s play.
Rehearsals are a creative, inventive process involving everyone on the set.
Costume Designer Patricia Polen for example, puts the actors in classical Greco-Roman clothing classical yet clearly signals the audience that Dromio will play the part of the fool and that Antipholus obviously enjoys a happy, sensuous marriage with Adriana.
Like a pair of aerobic instructors, Choreographer Cynthia Pepper and Fight Director John Basiulis work the cast: sending them leaping, sprinting and tumbling about the stage in frantic antics.
The children in the audience laugh every bit as much as the seasoned aficionados of Shakespeare; the show is undoubtedly enjoyed immensely by all in attendance, including the cast.
For an evening of real comedy, far removed from the mundane formulas, dull recipes and canned laughter of prime time programming, get thee to THE COMEDY OF ERRORS, now through September 24 th. To reserve tickets, call the Marin Shakespeare Box Office at 415 499-4485.
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Reviewed by Jeffrey R Smith of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle