[For the remainder of the year, my San Jose and Peninsula theater reviews will be posted on Talkin’ Broadway with only introductions to those reviews on this site].

Of the world’s monarchies that have been overthrown, none competes with the violence and thoroughness of the Russian Bolshevik’s 1918 decimation of the Romanov dynasty – Czar Nicholas II, Czarina Alexandra, and their five children.  Of direct family members, only the czar’s mother, the Dowager Empress, who was living in Paris was known to survive.  So how does this have the makings of a stage musical?

Rumors swirled that one Romanov daughter, Anastasia, had escaped.  Many pretenders made claim to be the surviving heir to the Russian throne and were dismissed by the Dowager Empress.  But ten years later, a young woman Anya, would make a most convincing case that she could be Anastasia.  The musical tells Anya’s story.

In addition to a dramatic true history, Anastasia, which had a moderately successful Broadway run, was developed by a top creative team with music by Stephen Flaherty, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, and book by Terrence McNally.  Hillbarn Theatre’s generally entertaining rendition offers two excellent performances, good singing voices throughout, and a fine overall production, but it lacks the consistent energy expected of a top musical.

Please continue to https://www.talkinbroadway.com/page/regional/sanjose/sj264.html for full review.

[For the remainder of the year, my San Jose and Peninsula theater reviews will be posted on Talkin’ Broadway with only introductions to those reviews on this site].

Please continue to for full https://talkinbroadway.com/page/regional/sanjose/sj263.html review.

Rarely has a musical garnered the success of Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick’s Fiddler on the Roof, setting the mark for the most performances on Broadway, which it held for ten years.  Not to mention that it has been revived a gazillion times by theaters in every corner of the world.  Now, Palo Alto Players offers a heartwarming and well-mounted rendition – nicely performed, effectively staged, and with fine choreography and costumery.

What particularly surprises about its success is that the play deals with the customs and sad chronicle of Jews, a people who represent a very small minority in this country and who have been unfairly victimized by the dominant religion here and throughout the Christian realm.  Also, it takes place prior to World War I in what to many is an obscure region, Imperial Russia’s Pale of Settlement (largely present-day Ukraine), a poor area where all but a few select Jews were forced to live.

But what the musical has going for it is a luminous score with brilliant songs that in part traces the stages of love with great sensitivity; a central character that is one of the great charismatic figures in theater; and dramatic clashes of culture – gentle, traumatic, and existential.  This story of Tevya the milkman is written by Joseph Stein, based on the works of the great Yiddish author Sholem Aleichem. Though many particulars of the story may not be relatable, its universality draws from these powerful themes of tradition, love, family, and struggle.

******

Fiddler on the Roof runs through November 24, 2024 at Lucie Stern Theater, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto, CA.  For tickets and information, please visit https://paplayers.org/.

On the heels of Halloween and Día de los Muertos, ’tis the season of the witch.  And what better way to spend a ghoulish evening than experiencing Ghost Quartet composer Dave Malloy’s musical homage to apparitions and to that thin line between this world and the beyond.  It is a dark night brightened by song.  Oakland Theater Project (OTP) and New Performance Traditions present an intimate, scintillating, and entertaining rendition of this unique work.

An accomplished composer, Malloy’s pop opera Natasha, Pierre, & the Great Comet of 1812 draws from Tolstoy’s eminent novel War and Peace.  For Ghost Quartet, he replicates the sung-through musical format but builds the songs around a theme, the afterlife, rather than a source.  The resulting song cycle is an amorphous pastiche rather than a linear accretion.  However, there are repeat focal points that bind the text.  Sisters Rose and Roxy, the House of Usher, photography, astronomy, and whiskey recur among others.

A small space is the preferred venue for Ghost Quartet, and OTP’s home at Flax Art & Design suits perfectly with the audience on three sides and artists spread around the edges of the performing space, creating the effect that “they” are among us. The piece is designed for four instrumentalist/singers, but this production includes a fifth (performer, that is, not bottle of whiskey!).

The structural conceit reflects a two-record album, with each song a numbered track on a side of a record. Song titles are announced, which helps when they are audible.  One weakness in this format is that a clear narrative is hard to follow with the provocative and sometime confusing song sketches, ever-shifting in time and place which vary from 14^th century Persia to contemporary New York City.  In addition, characters like Rose have various manifestations, making it more difficult to grasp a through-line to the narrative.

The sources of musical idiom are almost as numerous as the number of songs, but in the aggregate, the music is melodious and highly compelling with an overall feel of folk pop. The lyrics are thoughtful.  An early example, “Soldier and Rose” exhibits both Middle Eastern and country music elements, while the jazzier “Monk” pays tribute to jazz great Thelonious Monk, one of Malloy’s influences.  Blues, American folk, electropop, and others also make a showing.  The only non-original song is the Scots-English murder ballad that closes the show, “The Wind and Rain,” which no doubt was an inspiration to Ghost Quartet, as its chronicle parallels the lead plot line in the song cycle.

Monica Rose Slater takes on most of the lead singing.  With an expressive manner and opera-trained soprano voice, she demonstrates great vocal power and control where necessary.  Her female singing partner is luminous Veronica Renner, who also pleases in her solos and harmonies.  The male lead, who usually sings harmonies and acts as the primary keyboard player, is highly decorated musician Rinde Eckert.

But the sound that best characterizes and drives the musical score is Ami Nashimoto’s exquisite cello play.  The instrument works perfectly, primarily when producing deep, mournful sounds reminiscent of the darker songs of The Beatles like “Eleanor Rigby.”   In addition, sharp, trenchant bursts akin to Bernard Herman’s violin shrieking in the shower scene from Psycho add disquiet. 

Eckert’s keyboards provide a constant underpinning to the music, but the other element that provides distinctive sound is the many featured instruments that add spice.  Among those that have cameo roles are a Greek three-string lyra, a home-made Latin American 10-string guitar, Buddhist temple bells, and an autoharp, not to mention strumming and plucking piano strings as well as a theremin, the electronic device that produces differing musical tones without touch.

The creative team led by Director William Thomas Hodgson creates a seamless experience.  Given the overall concept of the work, lighting is especially important.  Dr. Stephanie Anne Johnson’s lighting design is, perhaps intentionally, tame in the early goings with only faded darkening between songs.  But it picks up energy and uses a number of schemes to add to the atmospherics.  Stars are projected on the wall; the whole theater is darkened except for a small, glowing blob representing an assemblage of candles in the middle of the stage; a flashlit face provides illumination; lamps are employed.   Sound is also an essential aspect of spookiness, and Sound Engineer Trevaj “True” Siller adjusts the amplification occasionally so that the singer’s voice sounds disembodied.

This is perhaps a good time to mention the performing fifth-wheel, Michael Perez.  Also the company’s Operations Manager, his primary role in the play is to introduce the songs and play various handheld percussion instruments as needed.  It is also appropriate to note that the production misses the opportunity to festoon the theater with signs of the other-worldly holidays, as with skeleton and ghost decorations, or to emit ominous whirring sounds.

So, is there a message to this delightfully engaging musical?   The revelation occurs in the seventh of 23 songs in the program.  And the answer is – “Any kind of dead person” would prefer to be a ghost!  Not a poltergeist or a zombie or any of those other strange otherworldly creatures, but a ghost.  So, there you have it.

Ghost Quartet with music, lyrics, and text by Dave Malloy is produced by Oakland Theater Project and New Performance Traditions and plays at FLAX art & design, 1501 Martin Luther King Jr Way, Oakland, CA through November 24, 2024 and at ODC Theater, 3153 17^th Street, San Francisco, CA December 5-8, 2024.

Berkeley Rep presents the Goodman Theatre (Chicago) production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s last and highly popular opera, Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute). Mary Zimmerman has adapted the libretto and score into The Matchbox Magic Flute and directs as well.  The result is a crowd-pleasing gem – creative, visually captivating, unerringly funny, and replete with beautiful music.

This version is abbreviated from the original, but without (further) loss of plot continuity.  It uses vocal amplification, so that singers are able to perform several nights in a row, not possible with the demands of traditional opera.  Singing and speaking are loosely adapted into vernacular English.  The chorus is eliminated and along with it the significant number “O Isis und Osiris.”  It retains all of the humor of the original but drops most of the ritual solemnity of the story that may be inferred to suggest Masonic practices, both Mozart and the librettist Emanuel Schikaneder having been Masons. 

So, do good things come in threes?  ‘Tis the season of the flute, as the Bay Area has been blessed in the last six months with three variations – very different full-length opera productions of The Magic Flute at both San Francisco Opera and Opera San Jose, and now this abridged The Matchbox Magic Flute plays at Berkeley Rep.  Coincidentally, three is a significant number in Masonic lore, and for instance, this opera contains three ladies, three boys, three spirits, three doors, and three trials.  And the musical score is written mostly in the signature key of E-flat, whose scale has three flats.  Are we onto something here?

First impressions matter, and this production delivers.  The descriptor “matchbox” becomes evident as Todd Rosenthal’s stage width for the proscenium arch is reduced by perhaps 40%, leaving a charming, intimate, colorfully-framed space that gives the look of a puppet-show stage, particularly when the larger performers are in the scene.  Ana Kuzmanić’s fanciful costumery adds to the fairy tale look.

The story opens with three unnamed Ladies.  In most stage works, coveys like this trio would act as a somewhat inert Greek chorus.  Here, they are radically expressive; sing attractive harmonies; help drive the plotline; and even slay the dragon that was about to devour Tamino!  As an example of the sassiness of the modernistic script, while the Ladies lean over the unconscious body of Tamino, one observes longingly “He must spend a lot of time at the gym.”

The narrative concerns Prince Tamino who falls in love with Pamina, the missing daughter of the Queen of the Night, having only been shown Pamina’s portrait.  Accompanied by the Queen’s silly bird-catcher, Papageno, who also seeks a wife, Tamino strives to rescue the damsel from purported kidnapping by High Priest Sarastro, enemy of the Queen.  Tamino and Papageno must conquer three trials before being granted their wishes.

Like many heroes, Tamino (Billy Rude) is stolid and self-controlled.  Though his part is well acted, the character is somewhat uninteresting.  Papageno (Shawn Pfautsch) gives the action its comic center with his frittering, blundering, and absence of courage; and the leitmotif often played on his woodwind recorder is one of the most memorable phrases from the opera.

The most famous music from the opera has found its way into popular culture – “Hell’s vengeance boils my heart,” known popularly as the Queen of the Night’s aria.  While Emily Rohm acts the role with daunting ferocity and sings with accuracy, the staccato, coloratura passages are more caressed than piercing which would bring forth the venomous intent.  The aria is a threat to daughter Pamina (Marlene Fernandez), who has one of the better trained voices in the cast as well as a substantial range that the role demands.  Her duet (“In men, who feel love”) and trio (“Just come in”) that include Papageno are very appealing, and like many ensembles, the combined voices produce a very nice sound, better than the individuals.

The culmination brings the players together under the aegis of Sarastro.  This role is written for a basso profundo, as the range goes deep into the cellar of human vocal potential.  The player, Fernando Watts, is one of the few in the cast with opera cred, and he hits the low marks and projects with an assist from the amplification.

So, does this adaptation portend a new future for opera, an art that is radically expensive to produce but is largely tamed by this type of revision?  Notably, the orchestra is reduced from fiftyish musicians to a very effective five.  Also, only 11 singers are required, and rather than highly specialized and trained artists, most can be stage-musical singers.  If there is a weakness in this particular realization, it is that the singers should be uniformly strong throughout, yet there are significant weaker links.

This adaptation proves more accessible to an audience comfortable with musicals – in style and length.  Most operas were written in eras with different preferences.  Mid-19th century French opera demanded five acts including a ballet scene.  Wagner wrote several operas that require four to five hour run times.  The breezy informality and two-hour run time of The Matchbox Magic Flute speak more to the preferences of today.

That said, this formula is not new.  For instance, Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of La Boheme had moderate success on Broadway 20 years ago. Also, “Legend of the Ring” condenses Wagner’s 15-hour Ring Cycle into a manageable three hours.  But these updated versions didn’t start a trend.

However, there are prospects for many more variations like The Matchbox Magic Flute that appeal to prospective new audiences for opera.  And this work highly entertains in serving that purpose.  Nonetheless, aficionados of the traditional form, who appreciate the unadulterated power and beauty of the natural trained voice, are less likely to be persuaded.

The Matchbox Magic Flute with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder, adapted by Mary Zimmerman, and produced by Berkeley Repertory Theatre plays on its stage at 2025 Addison Street, Berkeley, CA through December 8, 2024.

The history of great nations is invariably forged with vicious and violent acts of conquest and subjugation.  It sometimes becomes difficult to view such history with self-respect, and many countries formally or informally adulterate facts to whitewash sins of the past.

Most Americans, certainly older ones, grew up with an acute awareness of the meaning of various public holidays.  Schools would often honor them with billboards, class lessons, pageants, and such.

And most of us grew to appreciate Thanksgiving as a special and honorable holiday.  It was not commercial or partisan like Christmas; didn’t honor war like Memorial Day; and wasn’t thematically inert like New Years.  Much as the nearly universal harvest festivals that it derived from, it was a time to give thanks and share nature’s bounty with family (and watch televised football!).

The Thanksgiving Play by Larissa FastHorse was the first play written by a female Native American to reach Broadway.  Altarena Playhouse’s production about well-intended people hoping to succeed outside their element hits its mark with fine acting and fine direction from Kimberly Ridgeway and is humorous for the greater part..

Both expressly and implicitly, the play repudiates history suggesting Thanksgiving’s purity being built on the harmonious feast gatherings between New England Pilgrams and the Native Americans of the region. Not to say that there was no peace between the groups, but the fact remains that European settlers disrespected the natives’ very humanity and their traditions, while they massacred and violently displaced them from their homelands.  And it only got worse.

This play centers on four white people brought together by frenetic Logan, a teacher who has won a grant to produce and direct a play with four actors illustrating the First Thanksgiving for Native American Heritage Month.  She enlists her boyfriend, Jaxton, an unsuccessful actor, who like Logan, is also an earnest do-gooder, as well as dorky Caden, a history teacher who has written a number of plays that have only been performed by elementary school students.

In attempting for inclusion and compliance with the grant, Logan hires the previously unknown attractive, vacuous, yet purposeful, Alicia, from an actor’s publicity shot with her in Native American garb.  But shortly after Alicia’s arrival, she reveals that she doesn’t fulfill the ethnic condition.  So the challenge becomes how to proceed with political correctness lacking even one Native American participant.  The solution that the desperate Logan ultimately proposes follows logic to the point of reductio ad absurdum.

The primary theme of the play concerns performative activism.  Although they may be sincere in wanting to promote Native American causes, these aspirants are willing to write and act in the project absent input from a Native American voice, and they get caught up in their own self-promotion.  Logan censors acting evaluation discussions between the “actors” in improv sessions, because as the director, she should be the only one to comment on performance.  Jaxton’s greatest inclusion concern is that he be included.  Caden wants to write a script that is historically expansive and accurate.  And finally, Alicia doesn’t want to think about her part, only to be told what to do.

In fairness, however, even the playwright herself acknowledges the challenges of inclusion in geographical areas and particular types of performances where a specific minority group is not well represented.  In fact, her motivation for writing an all-white-cast play was in response to pushback on finding appropriate Native American actors to perform a script.  And of course, there is the additional bind evidenced in this play that it is against the law to ask the ethnicity of a job applicant.

The script is generally funny and the performers deliver the banter with great panache. The show includes several humorously farcical and sadly shocking Thanksgiving videos of the type that would be shown to primary school kids.  One depicts a silly song in which the lyrics to “The 12 Days of Christmas” are replaced with Native American gifts within a Thanksgiving ritual.  The climax to the play is ridiculous and a bit gross, but appropriate to the farce that precedes it.

Cary Ann Rosko leads the cast with a splendid portrayal of Logan, frantic and fearing rules and regulations.  The highly expressive Rosko sparkles as overwrought and hysterical.  Anna Kosiarek delights as the simplistic Alicia who knows that she is not smart but manages to make the most of her endowment without wasting a step.  Will Livingston suits the unctuous Jaxton who wishes to be the model of New Age self-awareness.  However, his weak commitment to causes is well-revealed as an “intended vegan,” but one who likes cheese too much to give it up.  Tyler Iiams fits well as the obsessive compulsive Caden whose endless production of written material seems to come to nothing, as does his yearning for Alicia.

The Thanksgiving Play strikes many chords with great insight and accuracy, particularly about the marginalization of Native Americans and classic stereotypes.  Sometimes the issues get a little too crowded to be well absorbed and not every gag works, but even grasping most of the issues surfaced and laughing at most of the quips yields a rewarding theatrical experience.

The Thanksgiving Play is written by Larissa FastHorse, produced by Altarena Playhouse, and plays on its stage at 1409 High Street, Alameda, CA through November 24, 2024.

This year marks the 125^th anniversary of the birth of Noël Coward, prompting a wave of revivals of his works, albeit that several have remained in the repertory since their premieres.  Coward was a master of extracting humor from English manners and conventions, and his comedies have fared well on this side of the pond.  A number like Blithe Spirit, Present Laughter, and Private Lives have had not only successful stage revivals but have been adapted for the movie screen.

Aurora Theatre Company has chosen to perform Fallen Angels.  Premiered in 1925, it followed on the heels of Coward’s first major success, The Vortex.  While not in the first tier of Coward’s works, Fallen Angels fills the house with laughs if well done, as this production does with a fine cast that keeps the chatty banter flowing.

The play is also of historical interest, as it was initially prohibited by the censor’s office from reaching the stage in the U.K.  The offense? – references to admitted pre-marital sex and the explicit consideration of adultery.  Clearly, the story line would induce a big yawn if written today, so for today’s audience the fun must come from the repartee.

Close friends Julia and Jane are from England’s privileged class.  Each had a fling with a Frenchman, Maurice, several years previous before their respective marriages, which have now descended into comfortable tedium.  When the women find that Maurice is coming to London while the husbands are away on a golf outing, their passions reignite with remembrances of Gallic romance.  Jane even (jokingly?) wonders aloud “Wouldn’t it be terrible if a tree blew down at the golf course and killed Fred and Willy?” (They being the husbands.)

The narrative is dominated by the two women engaging in typical English parlor room behaviors.  Kina Kantor is Julia, and Emily Newsome is Jane.  Both are convincing in their wide-eyed, affected, faux-melodramatic exchanges which fashion the farcical tone.  At an objective level, the written script seems somewhat arid and the exchanges trivial, but comedy is an art of timing and execution, and they manage to sustain it throughout.

But the funniest acting is from Cindy Goldfield as Julia’s peripatetic and snooty new maid, Saunders.  In addition to one bit of physical comedy, Goldfield milks laughter from virtually everything out of her mouth, no matter how brief her message.  At one point, Julia is playing the piano, and while leaning over a table clearing dishes, Saunders matter-of-factly mouths “D-flat” sotto voce in observing the incorrect D-natural that Julia played.  That simple vocalization triggered roaring laughter because of Goldfield’s expression, her timing, and the context.

In another instance, Julia and Jane struggle singing a song in French, and Saunders breezes by singing it better.  And when Saunders offers an antidote for a hangover, she notes “I once cured 20 natives with this formula.” It seems that Saunders has had diverse work and life experiences that equal or exceed those of “her betters,” a comment on the superciliousness of the upper classes, that is delivered with piercing wit.

When Julia’s husband Fred is ready to depart for the distant golf course he and Jane’s husband Willy will play, only Saunders knows to tell him that he will only need irons for the course!  The men have a row on their trip as do the women as they await the arrival of Maurice.  When the men return, wrong information is given and other information is misinterpreted, so that foolish squabbles ensue.

Michael Barrett Austin as Fred adds to the hilarity with his elastic facial expressions as does Kevin Clarke playing Willy with his gesticulations and hitching up his trousers.  They petulantly mirror one another, each facing away, throwing back their heads, crossing their arms, and putting downward curls on their lips.

Apart from inferences that can be made about class distinction, other deeper meaning arises in the double standard for men and women.  Also, there is an instance in which morality of actions by one’s own wife are assessed differently than the same actions by another’s wife.

Though the material for this play is fairly thin, Aurora does a fine job of making it work with overwrought but funny depictions.  Kudos also to Nancy Carlin, the dialect coach, and Maggie Morgan for the period costumery.

Fallen Angels is written by Noël Coward, produced by Aurora Theatre Company, and plays on it stage at 2081 Addison Street, Berkeley, CA through November 17, 2024.

The year is 1865, and Richard Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde receives its premiere six years after its completion.  Initially controversial and later accepted as an innovative masterpiece, its initial chord in the prelude would change the trajectory of classical music.

What has become known as “the Tristan chord” conveys an edgy dissonance in several seconds of play that would open the door for atonalism which would later dominate the classical music landscape.  But its significance is not the non-traditional structure of the chord as such.  After numerous tantalizing teases throughout the tempestuous and tortured relationship between the title characters over the next four hours of music (almost five including intermissions), the tension from the dissonance is not relieved until the chord resolves in the title characters’ transcendence scene at the very end.

Tristan has had an odd history at San Francisco Opera.  It was the first Wagner opera the company ever performed and received frequent productions in the 1930s and during World War II, even when Wagner’s music was revered by our enemies the Nazis as the Aryan ideal.  Since then, the gaps between productions have lengthened, extending 18 years since the last offering.  The current rendering is a passionate and powerful realization with fine singing and orchestral performance, well appreciated by an enthusiastic audience. 

Influenced by his infatuation with the married Mathilde Wesendonck and the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, Wagner became obsessed with love and death.  Tristan’s forbidden love reflects that of the composer himself, while the opera represents the apotheosis of the merging and transcendence of those two conditions, with the belief that love continues beyond life.  The supernatural nature of love also maps onto the world’s most famous love story, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

The uncomplicated plot line of the opera draws from Celtic mythology presented in a style of romantic mystical realism.  Tristan, who is designated successor to the throne of Cornwall, escorts a resistant Isolde to marry his uncle King Marke.  To defeat the involuntary arrangement, Isolde instructs her maid, Brangäne, to poison a drink that she and Tristan will share.  Instead, the maid mixes in a love potion, which triggers their illicit love affair and the retribution that would result in their deaths.

Perhaps the most lauded element in the opera is the heroic orchestral music for which Wagner was a master.  Along with novel chord structures, the orchestra largely carries the melody in the score as well as its symbolism.  Eun Sun Kim conducts the 72-piece orchestra through the musical marathon with great skill.  The full orchestra resounds with rich tone and texture from the brass-driven fortissimos to the pianissimos like the beautiful English horn solo in Act 3. 

Wagner also introduced orchestral leitmotifs in Tristan, which convey the symbolism.  Most notably, the beautiful and haunting “Liebestod” (love-death) motif, which recurs in the opera, reaches its full realization as a closing aria in the climax, when Isolde elegizes the deceased Tristan.

Singing in Tristan demands unparalleled power and endurance.  Two principals carry the load of a very long opera while competing with an orchestral volume that Wagner pitches to challenge singers’ limits.

Fortunately, this production casts leading Wagnerian heldentenor Simon O’Neill as Tristan, a role that he commands.  Soprano Anja Kampe is a highly accomplished Isolde as well.  From the time of their duet that dominates Act 2, both display their mellifluous and clarion voices.  But through early Act 2, both sound underpowered, which one can assume is attributed to saving their voices for later dramatic moments.

Conversely, bass Kwangchul Youn as King Marke, came through as mellow, audible, and understandable throughout.  Granted, however, his role demands less.  Solid performances by Annika Schlicht as Isolde’s attendant Brangäne and Wolfgang Koch as Tristan’s attendant Kurwenal should also be noted.

Despite the outsized influence of Tristan and Isolde in subsequent opera, aspects other than the music don’t stand up as well to the normal scrutiny that operas undergo.  For those expecting dynamic action, that is not this opera’s strong suit.

Wagner was extremely intellectual, philosophical, and poetic.  As a result, Tristan is very reflective, talky, and static with little visual energy.  Philosophical monologs and dialogs about love and death, day and night are sometimes repetitive or exhaustively long.  Predominately, only two or three principals are on stage at a time, and their interaction is largely expository.  The two brief periods that there are more than four artists on stage and any semblance of action, the extras are as unoccupied as statues.  What’s more, the chorus’s brief performance is off-stage, so there is no visual sense of grand opera.

In keeping with modern perceptions of the austerity of the Middle Ages, San Francisco Opera’s staging is suitably spare and near monochromatic with dramatic shadowing.  Sets in Act 1 are highly angular, representing the structural bones on the inside of a ship’s hull.  The theme is repeated in Act 3, but with the set askew.  Act 2 reveals plain building exteriors supported by simple early Gothic buttresses.

When all is said and done, Tristan and Isolde stands as a magnum opus in the idiom, and this production reaches admirable artistic heights.  Serious opera aficionados and the intellectually curious will benefit from experiencing it.

Tristan and Isolde with music and lyrics by Richard Wagner is produced by San Francisco Opera and plays at War Memorial Opera House, 301 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, CA through November 5, 2024.

[For the remainder of the year, my San Jose and Peninsula theater reviews will be posted on Talkin’ Broadway with only introductions to those reviews on this site]

Please continue to https://talkinbroadway.com/page/regional/sanjose/sj262.html for full review.

The 1967 film Wait Until Dark was exceedingly successful at the box office and with critics, and its climax ranks #10 in Bravo’s 100 Scariest Movie Moments – of all time.  Yet, many theatergoers might be unaware that the story was originally a successful stage play.

Terror percolates when unknown and unseen.  The heroine, Susan, lives in a Greenwich Village apartment with her husband Sam who is away on a business trip.  Though recently married to the man who is the only person she can depend on, Susan is led to believe that he is already having an affair and that he feels he made a bad decision in marrying her.

When confronted with suspicion and then fear, Susan is particularly imperiled.  She cannot see.  While her physical injuries from an auto accident 18 months before have healed, Susan has been left permanently blinded.  Her limitations mean tighter boundaries around what she is able to experience; a greater intensity of relying on other senses; and an intimate familiarity with her abode, where she spends virtually all of her time.

This suspense thriller is a complex con game in which three professional thieves scheme to extract something valuable from Susan.  That asset is an old-fashioned doll that happens to be stuffed with something of enormous value that Sam became holder of through no intention of his own.

*****

Wait Until Dark runs through November 3, 2024 at Hillbarn Theatre, 1285 E. Hillsdale Blvd., Foster City, CA.  For tickets and information, please visit https://www.hillbarntheatre.org/ .

The Slavic folklore cultures of Eastern Europe have long been a gushing font for tales of lurid, preternatural beings such as vampires and witches.  Perhaps the most ubiquitous are the variations of the Baba Yaga, with baba meaning grandmother or old woman, and yaga being etymologically diverse, but generally construed as a witch.  While differing in detail, the Baba Yaga usually appears as a disheveled hag.  Her representations reached high culture in Mussorgsky’s orchestral composition Pictures at an Exhibition and in the form of Ježibaba in Dvořák’s Czech opera Rusalka, and low culture in Keanu Reeves’ John Wick movie series as the nickname of the title character.

Marin Theatre has produced the U.S. premiere of Canadian playwright Kat Sandler’s Yaga, an homage to the ambiguous but powerful exemplar.   The lore is updated to the contemporary period, taking place in a rural town in an unspecified part of North America.  Validating the social isolation of the subject, the play opens with a Baba Yaga asking “Who could love such a person?”  But the folk element of the play integrates into another literary genre, the detective mystery.  A young man is missing and presumed dead and probably murdered.  The wealthy victim’s family, dissatisfied with the police investigation, hires a private detective to pursue the case.  Oh, and by the way, this is a comedy – some might say a farce.

Charlie Rapp (Adam KuveNiemann) is a caricature of a private investigator in a comedy – bumptious, full of fast-talking bravado, and dismissive of the public police.  But he does need help, and he leans heavily on Police Detective Carson (Rachel Clausen), who is a nice one to lean on, because he finds her informed and very appealing. 

That leads to the third main character, Professor Katherine Yazov (Julia McNeal), who becomes a suspect.  She attracts attention being an anthropologist who is familiar with the processes to make a body disappear.  The alluring but older professor, who is known sub-rosa as the “bone (or boner!) beast” is also uninhibited.  Her repartee can be quite explicit and enticing, and she has an appetite for young men, including Henry, the disappeared heir.  Yazov comes from a Slavic background, with an elderly mother, Irene, who seems to have traits that might be associated with witchcraft, which include providing unusual drugs to seekers. 

The play calls for 14 roles, and you have already been introduced to all of the actors.  The three hander is an acting showcase.  As specified by the playwright, the male plays two parts, and the women have six each.  Kudos to the actors.  With pretty minimal costume and hair changes, they do an exemplary job of differentiating the parts that they play by movement, facial expression, and speech patterns.

This conceit of minimizing the number of players would also have placed pressure on the playwright, as two or more characters played by any one actor cannot appear on the stage at the same time, but Sandler managed that challenge effectively. Meg Neville’s costumery facilitates the needed fast switchover of scenes, presumably emphasizing layered and tearaway outfits. 

The narrative consists of a myriad of short scenes that advance the investigation with interrogations of several local rubes – all female; elaboration on the main characters and their relationships; and the integration of witchcraft, including a need for breeding and a little faux violence.  While Director Barbara Damashek ensures that the frequent scene change device results in fast pacing even when the content drags, the many shifts in direction can also lead to confusion, especially if a patron misses some dialog or when the logic of the action is not immediately clear.   Flashbacks add another layer of potential complication.

While the storyline acts as a who-dunnit?, a deeper meaning prevails concerning female empowerment.  Men have always written history, and exerting their power, they have inordinately scapegoated women for the wrongs in the world – from Eve in the Bible through the Salem “witches” in colonial Massachusetts.  Yet, in some ways, Baba Yaga represents proto-feminism as a fearsome, powerful woman who does not have to depend on good looks or womanly wiles to succeed.

All of the elements of the production are superb.  In addition to exemplary acting, Carlos Aceves’ set provides an attractive birch forest backdrop and a forestage that is versatile enough to represent, somewhat in the abstract, everything from a police station to a motel to a diner.  Kurt Landesman’s lighting appeals aesthetically and directs the eye, while Matt Stines’ thoughtful sound design ranges from understated background to bombastic on the edges.  The recurring musical strands of Santo and Johnny’s wonderful instrumental Sleepwalk have thematic implications.

The inventive script largely entertains with the twists and turns expected in a noir mystery, along with humor and a surprise ending.  But despite the admirable strengths of the production, many theatergoers will not find Yaga to be their cup of tea.  More tolerance is required to come down in favor.

In addition to the concerns already expressed, the run time is almost three hours, which even advocates should agree is taxing for the type of play that it is.  Serious editing would simplify the throughline and reduce the number of less entertaining patches.  Also, the audience will divide on language and suggestion.  Particularly, some Boomers will consider the explicit language and discussion of sex acts to be vulgar and gratuitous, while many Millennials at the other extreme may find it quite routine.

Yaga, written by Kat Sandler, is produced by Marin Theatre and plays on its stage at 397 Miller Avenue, Mill Valley, CA through November 3, 2024.

Tony Kushner followed Angels in America: Part 1 – Millennium Approaches, his matchless tale of homosexuality, AIDS, religion, and politics in the 1980s, with an equally compelling Angels in America: Part 2 – Perestroika.  Though the two parts can be appreciated as independent plays, they represent a continuous narrative of the lives of a select few residing in New York City.

Rarely is a follow up of any sort as good as the original, but each part won the Tony Award for Best Play for their respective Broadway premiere years, 1993 and 1994, suggesting how exalted they are.  With the same astounding cast and powerful staging orchestrated by Director Michael Socrates Moran in Millennium Approaches, Oakland Theater Project’s Perestroika is equally stellar in its breathtaking production.

Perestroika takes a little unraveling, with its interwoven stories, digressions, hallucinations, biblical allegories, and supernatural fantasies, yet the relevance of the title and the dominant thematic through-line in the narrative is established in the opening scene.  In it, Alexii, the oldest living Bolshevik, rails against Mikhail Gorbachev for abandoning the theory-based communism of the Russian Revolution for an unknown and ill-defined future.  Alexii asks, “What is the theory?  Hamburgers?”

Erin Mei-Ling Stuart plays Alexii as well as a rabbi; the Mormon mother of Joe who outs himself to her; and Ethel Rosenberg, who Roy Cohn notoriously convicted for a death sentence for purportedly selling nuclear secrets to the USSR.  Stuart persuades in every impersonation, both because of her fine acting and her facility with accents – Russian, New Yorker, Yiddish-American, and Utahan (?!).

In concert with the disruption to the Soviet’s established order by Gorbachev’s Perestroika, Kushner’s tale provides a transcendental account of how the divine stasis in heaven was disturbed by human movement and ceased altogether because of the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906!  For heaven’s equilibrium to be restored, humankind must suspend social evolution.  The message to stop movement is delivered to the AIDS-suffering Prior by the Angel, who Lisa Ramirez deftly depicts with looming, mystical charm.  Her mere presence on stage provokes.  Further, her gestures with undulating arms plus her words as with an orgasmic soliloquy make her even more intriguing.

But the playwright’s world view is opposite of the messages to halt human progress.  Experimentation, migration, and intermarriage enrich societies.  Stodgy, unimaginative religions and conservative political parties impede social progress and harmony.  Change is the engine of meaningful life, and an important part of change is acceptance and integration of people from different tribes and orientations.  Like democracy which is messy and flawed but the best political alternative, change beats stasis every time.  Just look back a millennium and ask yourself if you’d want to live as they did.

If Kushner’s Perestroika has a weakness, it lies in the predictability of life’s transitions in the play.  We know the characters.  Some are doomed to die.  Some relationships are bound to be severed.  The strength however is in the intense journey and ultimate closure.

The most inflammatory character carried over from Part 1 continues to be the historical figure Roy Cohn, whose moral profile frightens with its similarity to his protégé, Donald Trump.  When Cohn is hospitalized with terminal AIDS, his primary nurse Belize is a black, gay man who is played in flamboyant fashion by James Mercer II.  Cohn’s unending racial and lifestyle insults (despite Cohn being a closeted gay) to the caretaker are so gratuitous that one wonders if his bile is driven more by his need to display bravado than by true disdain.  But though Belize deplored Cohn, Mercer displays Belize’s dignity, compassion, and sensitivity.  Belize even insists that a kaddish (Jewish sanctifying prayer) be said when Cohn dies.

As with Millennium Approaches, Victor Talmadge again nails the ever-bellicose Roy Cohn with an electrifying portrayal.  Similarly, J Jha elicits empathy as the raspy, howling, lonely, but courageous Prior with great sensitivity; and Emilie Whelan penetrates the psyche of the crazed but recovering Harper.  Rather than repeat my raves about these three actors as well as the stage elements, I’ll refer the reader to my review of Millennium Approaches on this site earlier this month.

Meanwhile the action intercuts with the continuing stories of Mormon law clerk Joe’s separation from his prescription-drug addled Harper; Joe’s mother Hannah coming to Brooklyn to live with Harper; and Louis’s abandoning Prior because Louis can’t cope with Prior’s AIDS.

With the dissolution of previous bonds, Joe and Louis establish a rebound relationship, and their differing affects present an interesting contrast. Joe is conflicted about his sexual identity and the attendant contradictions of being Mormon and Republican.  In this role, Edric Young ably conveys the sadness and confusion of the conundrums, and his sensitive deer-in-the-headlights vacuous looks show how uneasy he is in his own skin.

Dean Linnard plays the committed gay Louis who is guilt-ridden about having left Prior.  Excitable, he flails his hands in joy when pleased, which he is not when finding that Joe is not only an unrepentant Mormon but Republican, which does not align with values of the greater gay community.  Louis’s ire is revealed when he verbally brutalizes Joe with chapter-and-verse reading aloud judicial opinions that Joe purportedly wrote for his boss, a circuit court judge.  They are not only conservative, but disadvantage gays, reflecting the kinds of moral dilemmas closeted gays endure.

Angels in America constitutes a time capsule of a very important period of this country’s social and political history that reverberates with relevance even today.  Seeing both parts, Millennium Approaches and Perestroika involves six hours of time exceptionally well spent.  Great thanks to the playwright along with the creatives and especially the actors of these productions, who convincingly invest themselves in the massive and demanding roles, for a highly meaningful and greatly entertaining experience.

Angels in America: Part 2 – Perestroika, written by Tony Kushner is produced by Oakland Theater Company and plays at 514 4^th Street, San Rafael, CA through October 27, 2024.