The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival Stanford's Summer Theater : Brian Friel THE PAJAMA GAME:Foothill Musical Theatre

THE SAN FRANCISCO JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL

Sf/castro july 24-31

Sf/jccsf/august 2-3,9-20

Berkeley/august 2-9

Palo alto/august 2-7

San Rafael/august 9-11

sfjff.org/ 925 275 9490

I have always loved the Jewish Film Festival because it offers so much variety and an immense scope of interesting topics to think about. Each selection digs into issues that go far beyond the Jewish condition even as it reflects Jews in today’s world and the past that created that world. It is impossible to review all these fine films for you because each has individual appeal to particular interests and so I am going to concentrate on the one I loved best, EMOTIONAL ARITHMETIC.

Too many people tell us that the holocaust is in the past and is over and done. I know it will never end. I have seen how its victims create fear in their children, and they in turn in their children and the insecurity, the fierce protectiveness, the searing fear only intensifies like the ripples caused when you throw a pebble into the water. I still remember those survivors who came to Toledo, Ohio after World War II wasted and torn, their faith in themselves and humanity destroyed. They had no god, they had no belief that life could ever hold goodness again.

It takes an immense effort of will to rebuild yourself into a functioning human being after a de-humanizing experience such as Bergen Belsen or Auschwitz. To this day, I see the worn faces of a couple I met who survived the camps, returned to Czechoslovakia, endured the Communists in Prague and walked out of their country to freedom. They eventually moved to my city and apparent suburban security. But they never slept a night through for fear that there would be a knock on the door, a stone thrown through a window, an explosion that would destroy everything they had managed to achieve. There would never be peace of mind for them. Ever,

This movie explores the wounds of holocaust survivors like those I met…wounds that fester and never heal. The plot is neither clichéd or maudlin. It does not ignite and inflame the guilt we all feel in the back of our minds because we as a human race allowed this travesty to happen

Instead, it is the story of Melanie Winters (Susan Sarandon) and the fierce struggle she has made to move forward out of the prison of her memories. She is not a whole person and can never be again after her experiences as a child in Drancy, the French transit camp outside Paris.

I do not want to tell you how this plot develops but I do want to emphasize the importance of not just the story, but the beautiful filming of this woman and her desperate attempt to hang on to any reality she can. This is a beautiful drama of love and memory adapted from the novel by Matt Cohen directed by Paolo Barzman with a true artist’s touch.

Emotional Arithmetic is an exquisite film both in what it says, what it shows and what it means to all of us in a decaying planet with dubious morals and ever escalating inhumanity to man.

I have no doubt the rest of the offerings in this festival are equally compelling. For the schedule, go to www.sfjff.org or phone the box office, 925 275 9490. There is something for every taste in this festival from documentaries about heavy metal music to features that shed light on the ongoing struggle for peace, security, friendship and love in the Middle East. There is plenty of comedy of course…how could it not contain laughter and tears. It is after all a JEWISH film festival.

Check out the website; find a film you love and enjoy.

BRIAN FRIEL AND OTHER IRISH VOICES

JULY 7-AUGUST 18, 2008

Stanford University never goes half-way and now that Rush Rehm is the Artistic Director of it theater program it presents amazingly interesting provocative drama done better than one would think possible on a college campus. This year’s summer theater event is a case in point. This it the tenth anniversary of the ten week festival and it features unforgettable Irish plays and films not seen often enough on local stages.

There is a free Monday night film series at 7:00 pm in Cubberley Auditorium that examines Irish cinema and adds a post-screening discussion led by Bay Area film scholars. The films remaining are THE CYRING GAME, IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER & THE COMITMENTS all classics in their own right. For me, of course it is the plays that take my breath away.

Brian Friel is often called the Irish Chekhov and is considered Ireland’s most distinguished living playwright. The play I saw was TRANSLATIONS and I am still gasping at the marvelous, intricate and yet simple set and the immense force of a drama that tells us that we speak volumes to each other but do not understand what we hear. Geoff Hoyle was the patriarchal schoolmaster in that play and it was directed by SST Associate Director Ed Sylvanus.

Following this play, Rush Rehm will direct FAITH HEALER, a sensitive, emotional and often funny tour de force that delves into the fears and loyalties that surround Frank Hardy, an itinerant miracle worker. Although TRANSLATIONS is one of Friel’s most often produced plays, THE FAITH HEALER is considered his masterpiece. It interweaves the stories of Hardy and his wife Grace and his manager Teddy as they recount their lives together on the road.

Rush Rehm is one of the most talented directors and actors I have ever seen on a stage and anything he touches is golden to me. FAITH HEALER will open this Thursday, July 31 and offers pay what-you-like matinees at 2 pm and I promise it is not to be missed. Rehm has shown his students and the Bay Area play-going public how powerful and exciting the theater experience can be. I have never seen a production of his that didn’t change my way of thinking about my own life and the world I live in.

Put this play and these movies on your must-see list. No matter where you live, it is well worth the journey to see fine drama so sensitively executed. If TRANSLATIONS is any indication of the quality of this series, you will be delighted and amazed and walk away with new insight into the human condition and your role in it.

IF YOU GO:

FAITH HEALER plays from Thursday July 31-Sunday August 17 at 8:00 pm at the Pigott Theater in the back of Memorial Hall on the Stanford campus

Post show discussions: Thursday August 7&14

Pay what you can matinees on Sundays at2

TICKETS AND MORE INFORMATION:

http://summertheater.stanford.edu

THE PAJAMA GAME

At Foothill Music Theater

Jay Manley is a Bay Area treasure. He transforms ordinary people like you and I into polished singers and dancers on the Foothill Music Theater stage and makes them look so professional that their next stop should be the Broadway or London stage. I have been attending his productions for more years than I like to admit and he never disappoints me. He would tell you he could do nothing without his marvelous cast. It is they who transform his student/ community productions into the masterpieces of musical theater that they are. Yet, if you talk to anyone who has worked with him, they will rave about his attention to detail, his patience and his creative vision. It takes true genius to be able to mold the excitement and enthusiasm of his cast into a polished, fast paced and colorful production. Manley is the consummate director, neither volatile nor demanding. He guides, suggests and leaves no detail to chance. He nurtures his actors and singers and leads them into performances that even they didn’t realize they could achieve over and over again.

The Pajama Game proves my point. I saw this production on Broadway with John Riatt, Carol Haney and an unforgettably adorable Eddie Foy, Jr. back in 1954 and I loved it. Richard Adler and Jerry Ross‘s music was more complex than so many of the frothy musicals of the time, and although the story was predictable romantic drivel, the production was everything a college co-ed could imagine and more.

I am now a good deal older and a lot more jaded than that twenty year old idealist mesmerized by the glamour of The Big Apple and I expected to love the music in this production even as I tolerated the foolish plot and not quite polished acting, at the opening of this production at Foothill’s Smithwick Theatre.

I should have known better. Manley has amazed me with unforgettable revivals of every musical I have ever loved: Annie Get Your Gun and Most Happy Fella , Guys and Dolls, Showboat, West Side Story and an amazing interpretation of Sweeny Todd that far surpassed the professional hugely budgeted performance in San Francisco at the Geary Theater not long ago.

Pajama Game is set in the 1950’s when the employees of the Sleep-tite Factory are looking for a 7-1/2 cent raise their union insists they deserve. The plot revolves around the romance between Sid the company’s handsome superintendent and Babe, the hot and sexy head of the Union’s Grievance Committee. This cast is up to the challenge of difficult and intricate dance movements and making a foolish plot seem real. David Sattler is the only equity actor in the cast and is a handsome, romantic lead with a voice to die for. It is Sarah Aili however who stole my heart as Babe. I met this young lady singing at the open mikes at the Octavia Lounge in San Francisco and even then I was delighted with her voice. She gives Babe a sense of humanity, fire and a lyricism that is nothing less than amazing. As always with Foothill’s musicals, the smaller parts are choice and for me Linda Piccone as Sid’s secretary was a special treat. I could have watched her again and again chiding Hinesy not to be jealous or stealing the show in Hernando’s Hideaway. Piccone is not just an accomplished actress but a gifted director as well and she is unforgettable in this musical. And then there is Doug Baird, the jealous, knife throwing time-study man. You won’t want to miss him. He is wonderful in every sense.

Indeed the whole cast, the music the imaginative sets all add up to a great evening, at less than half the cost you would pay to see a production not a quarter as much fun as Jay Manley’s interpretation of another one of those musicals that must never die, The Pajama Game.

IF YOU GO: Pajama Game runs through Sunday August 17, Thursdays-Saturdays at 8 pm, Sundays at 2.

WHERE: Smithwick Theatre at Foothill College

12345 El Monte Road, Los Altos Hills

$2.00 charge for parking

TICKETS: $26 GENERAL, $22 SENIORS, $18 STUDENTS, $10 CHILDREN UNDER 12

www.foothillmusicals.com

650 949 7414 24 hour charge by phone

Box Office 650 949 7360