An Odyssey

Getting to the theater was a kind of odyssey in itself. Working and living downtown, it's not necessary for me to own a car and my preferred method of getting someplace is on foot, even though I have a motorcycle. But like Odysseus, I had found myself in some new, unfamiliar places within the past twenty-four hours and now I was on the motorcycle at ten to seven heading home to feed my cat before taking in a play at a theater six blocks from my apartment, which was to begin at 7:30. Plenty of time I thought, and I as rode up Ninth St.- I was mere minutes from home.

That is, until I hit Market Street and came across the 20th Anniversary Critical Mass ride. I watched from the wrong side of a red light as motorcycle cops leading the route pulled into the intersection of Hayes and Larkin and blocked it off to allow thousands of bicyclists to take over the street. Cut off from a straight shot, my only was to veer over to Van Ness, then shoot up that street as fast as I could and hopefully overtake the parade before it hit O'Farrell. The Friday night traffic on the big avenue was, as usual, a clusterfuck, forcing me to weave through the cars. Turning right on O'Farrell, I could just see the beginning of the mayhem., signalled by a river of red brake lights down the street as far as the eye could see. Weaving through more cars and risking a ticket by cruising down the bus lane right past a cop, I pulled the bike into the garage at 7:15. The street was full of cars and buses that weren't moving at all.

I went upstairs, dumped my gear, fed the cat, and hit the street again. At the corner a bus opened its doors to disgorge its passengers onto the sidewalk. They would make it to wherever they were going quicker on foot at this point. I crossed over to Geary and caught the parade again at Jones. Had they decided to use Hyde instead I never would have made it- even pedestrians couldn't get through, though some tried, only to be forced back on the curb or risk getting hit by a bike. Geary was packed with bicycles and throngs of people watching from the sidewalks. I pushed my way through them, thinking I would just make it. I hate being late to a performance. An older guy said something gruff to me but I just ignored it and kept going. At Stockton and Geary the street was a parking lot of cars waiting for the bikes to pass. I saw some people sitting in a cab and wondered how much the fare was going to be and if their driver knew even what was going on. The meter taking their dollars away one tick at a time for what was likely going to be at least 20 minutes. Life is so unfair. I saw Airporter vans full of people, also stuck, increasing the likelihood of missed flights. Welcome to San Francisco- we hope you had a good time, here's one last stress-filled memory of our fair city, especially for you.

Normally I don't even think about Critical Mass because I'm never impacted by it. But as I watched all of this unfurling before me, the ebullient bicyclists riding through the streets and the mix of admiration and havoc created in their wake, it left me with some mixed emotions. It's easy to support until you're the one suffering an inconvenience from it. I'm not including myself in this category- had I left Bernal Heights a few minutes earlier, little of this would have crossed my mind, and being late for a show isn't really a big deal, but the sheer size of all this ride was certainly creating a mess for a lot of folks. Hopefully the hotels and the cab companies had informed their guests and employees, and took precautions to minimize its impact, but I doubt it. San Francisco used to be called "the City that knows how," but it isn't anymore and hasn't been for a long time.

I made it to the theater door at 7:29, in time for The Odyssey: A Stage Version.

The A.C.T. Master of Fine Arts Program has a little black box on the sixth floor of 77 Geary, and many of the seats were still empty when I walked inside, no doubt due to what was going on outside. They held the curtain for a few minutes, and then the show began (the stragglers, more than a few, were seated discreetly during the play).

It's not an easy task to adapt Homer, though I understand the temptation. Derek Walcott, a Nobel Prize winning poet from Trinidad, took the tale of Odysseus and set it in the West Indies, moving the story to the Caribbean in place of the Aegean. One wonders why he felt compelled to make this significant change and yet leave so many other elements of the original in place that work against this choice- first and foremost the names of the characters, and second, to litter the play in a kind of archaic prose style that recalls the meter of Homer while seemingly disparaging it by failing to make it consistent. In other words, there's a lot working against this play from the onset. That it largely succeeds in the end is a small miracle, but it does.

The most distracting element of this particular staging were the mostly dismal attempts by the actors at West Indian accents- with the exception of York Walker's blind narrator Billy Blue and Lateefah Holder in any the four roles she took a turn in, the accents were all over the map, extending as far as Bangladesh in the case of Raymond Castelán's Odysseus. The unintelligible, inconsistent accents, coupled with Walcott's frequently overwrought dialogue, made following the what the actors were speaking a significant chore through most of the first half. Still, there were a number of strong scenes in the first half, including an exchange between Asher Grodman's Telemachus and Dillon Heape's Menelaus and Lisa Kitchens' appearance as Nausicaa. Heape, who like all of the other cast members except Castalan performed numerous roles, nailed it every time in an impressively versatile outing.

It was only when Circe (Blair Busbee- also as Penelope) enters the story that the West Indian setting starts to make sense, but it's later disrupted by a video projection of a subway- London's Tube, I believe based on the Charing Cross Station which appears out of nowhere (ha ha- get it?). The second half opens with a music and dance number that succeeds extremely well- had everything else possessed this level of execution the West Indies setting would have been really interesting, but these moments were intermittent at best. Still, when Penelope gives Odysseus the test to prove his true identity as her husband, it's delivered beautifully by both Castelán and Busbee and that one moment was worth the entire voyage.

Other standouts in the cast include Nemuna Ceesay as Athena- a beauty with a wonderful singing voice and ample presence. Elyse Price made an entirely convincing Helen and Buzz Halsing did yeoman's work in all of his roles. The costumes came from the A.C.T. Costume Rental shop, and that about sums them up- everyone looked like they were ready for Halloween. Tommy Shepherd music, apart from the one memorable scene mentioned above, was serviceable, as was the choreography by Stephen Buescher. I'm not sure what to ultimately make of Nancy Benjamin's direction- there were scenes that felt perfect and others which came across as total misses. Still, the hits outnumbered the misses, the young cast is quite interesting to watch, and the setting provides food for thought. If your planning on seeing Berkeley Rep's upcoming An Iliad, this Odyssey is a worthwhile trip to take beforehand.

On the way home, the night turned unusually warm, and it appeared that Circe had been busy through much of downtown San Francisco.

Homo File, F*ck My Life & Niagara Falling

Homo File. Photo by Gary Ivanek.

It's rare for the Swede to propose going to see a show, he's more likely to suggest dinner and drinks, or a trip to Beirut, so when he asked if I wanted to go see a play with him I said yes, not realizing it was the same night as the Classical Revolution Orchestra/Third Eye Blind bash that was going to take place on the same night just two blocks down the street from my apartment. However, the Swede has a good track record with me- if it weren't for him I never would have attended Charo Night at Trannyshack  or seen the brilliant I Am My Own Wife. I didn't even ask what we were going to see until after he bought the tickets. It was only then I found out we were going to see two short plays called Homo File and Fuck My Life. This gave me some pause, mostly because in the back of my mind I knew I would be missing a pretty good show, but it was a done deal.

We had dinner beforehand at our usual joint, which sadly has a new owner and appears destined to lose that designation, despite the fact that we've had many fun times there and the bartenders still take very good care of us.From there we walked through the Tenderloin to CounterPULSE at Mission and Ninth. The place was already pretty crowded and it turned out to be an almost full house. The theater appears to be built inside a former auto garage- the walls are built of those large industrial bricks and there seems to be little ventilation. The place is, to put it mildly, quite warm with a full house inside. Whirring ceiling fans made it tolerable, but also produced a steady buzz.

Homo File is a work in progress by Seth Eisen about the life of Samuel Steward (1909-1993), a self-identified "invert," college professor, queer smut author, friend of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, favored tattoo artist of the Hells Angels, and counted Rudolph Valentino and Rock Hudson among his hundreds of conquests, all of whom were listed in his detailed "files."

Clearly a labor of love, Eisen's work uses live actors, film projection, puppetry and more to create a vivid portrayal of fascinating person, performed by Ned Brauer. Brauer, whose physical presence and agility adds a few extra layers to Eisen's carefully-hewn script, is a compelling performer to watch, even as Eisen keeps the entire performance space busy during most of the performance. There are multiple things competing for the attention of the audience's eyes and ears during a majority of the performance, which would reward repeat viewings. At the conclusion Eisen came in front of the audience and said he's not finished developing the work, which he's been at for two years. As it is right now, it's well worth seeing and one can only be interested to see how it develops in the future. The supporting cast, most of whom had multiple roles or assignments, all contributed to the whole without any weak links: Elena Isaacs, K. Lisette, Rich Hutchison, Diego Gomez, and especially Michael Soldier, who gets to portray both Stein and Alfred Kinsey.

Fuck My Life is a solo performance piece by Xandra Ibarra, aka La Chica Boom (NSFW). The program notes contain a rather academic description of what it's supposed to be about which reads like something written by a 2nd year Queer Studies major. Ibarra's a bold, fearless performer, and truly fascinating to watch, but her "spictacular" is hampered by lengthy sequences that cross over into self-indulgence and an overly-loud soundtrack (unless feeling her pain is also meant to be something the audience feels on an auditory as well as emotional level, in which case it succeeds grandly). There was much scattered laughter during the show, much of it coming from female audience members, but it sounded nervous or intended to make sure that those around them knew they "got it." Though I'm ambivalent about the work, I don't think I'll ever be able shake a bottle of Tapatío sauce ever again without thinking of Ibarra.

After the show there was a talk across the street about Homo file at the Center for Sex and Culture featuring Eisen and Carol Queen (after the September 28 performance there will be one for Fuck My Life), but we skipped that, and walking back to the Swede's antique Volvo we came upon Niagara Falling, the latest from Flyaway Productions unfurling itself upon the side of the Renoir Hotel at Market and Seventh Streets. This was a fortuitous stroke, as I had wanted to see this and had forgotten to schedule it in. It was quite beautifully done and if you get a chance you should see this well-executed outdoor aerial/video/musical piece that's hard to describe but easy to feel. It was an added pleasure to find the peripatetic Axel Feldheim amid the audience

Niagara Falling

When it was over, the Swede went his way and I went mine. I thought I was in for the night, but at around 10:30 I received a phone call and it turned out I wasn't. But that's another story.

Homo File and Fuck My Life will be performed at CounterPULSE at 8:00 PM through September 30. Tickets start at $20. Niagara Falling will be performed at the corner of Market and Seventh streets at 8:30 and 9:30 on September 28 & 29 (free).

Gala night

We stood in front of the Grove Street entrance to Davies Symphony Hall. Her much-younger friend had gone inside to call her brother, who was coming to pick them up and return them to some place she was embarrassed to admit. The last of the crowd was making their way home and the staff were dismantling the bars, tables, and other items which less than an hour before had created a kind of pop-up beer garden on Grove Street, albeit an elegant one with jugglers, stilt-walkers, and musicians.

"So I've only been back here for a little while. I've been living in Europe."

"Oh. What were you doing there?"

"Living," she replied.

"Ah, I see. Were you a performer of some sort?" I asked.

"Sometimes," she replied.

"Where in Europe were you living?"

"Paris. But I've also lived in Sweden. And Jerusalem. But I was born here. In Southern California."

"I see. Were you an actress? A dancer?"

"Yes. It's so flattering you recognized me from the play. I think I remember seeing you in the audience."

"Perhaps it was after the show, while you were leaving the theater?"

"No, I think I remember you from the audience. Is there anywhere to sit down? I'm getting cold."

We went into the lobby, which was still open, and sat down on one the benches. She crossed her legs, exposing a vintage-looking garter. I felt a slight pressure rise behind my eyes at the sight. Though she had been revealing much throughout the evening, the sight of this garter, so reminiscent of another time, and another kind of woman, made an impression on me altogether different.

"I didn't really like the play," I said, "but you were quite memorable."

"What didn't you like?"

"It was essentially a short skit that lasted over an hour. And the casting didn't make sense to me."

"I can see that. I talked to the director about some of the cast, but there was nothing she could do by that time.

"I've been to Stockholm. It's a lovely place."

"You know I'm married?"

"No, I didn't. How would I?" I paused for a moment and then also asked, "He's younger than you, isn't he?"

"How did  you know?"

"I just know these things."

"But I'm not monogamous."

"Is he?"

"Yes."

"Poor bastard."

"He's Irish. I like women- I have a girlfriend."

"I'm going to guess... she's older than you?"

"No, but she's not as young as my husband. She's four years younger than I."

Her friend came out of the hall and into the lobby, and stumbled to a seat next to me.

The friend turned to her and said her brother would be here in a few minutes. She then turned to me and slurred,"Tennessee Williams. Fucking Streetcar Named Desire. It's the most brilliant thing ever written, don't you think?"

This led to a digression into theater, living on the down-low, and the film Far From Heaven.

"I love that film," said the one with the garter.

"It's wonderful," I replied.

"Oh, he's here!" the other said.

The gartered-one smiled, whispered something in my ear, bit it gently, and then off they went, back to wherever it was they came from.

As for the concert? You can read a highly accurate account of it here, though I wasn't as taken with the Bolero as everyone else was. I wanted more of a thrust, and a larger climax. 

Memento mori, Benjamin Britten, Moore and more

It's been an interesting couple of weeks. On Saturday I was moving some things around between my apartment and a storage unit and I unexpectedly came across some mementos of the past- specifically from two years ago when my affair with the Femme Fatale was shifting into a different, more intense mode. Among them was a program from a concert by the New Century Chamber Orchestra, which took place almost two years ago to the day. That was a crazy time, full of irresponsible, decadent misbehaving, and we relished every minute of it. We spent two years trying to recapture the intensity of that moment, but in the end we failed, leaving a long wake of wreckage behind us, and as I was looking at the contents of this box, which were  all over the floor, I was reminded once again that one of the weirdest side-effects of writing this blog is how it marks time. Another year, another season opens, performances take place, then the season closes. Repeat. Live. Watch your life expire slowly before your eyes.

However, little of that was on my mind as I watched GG get off the bus later that same evening to meet me for this year's version of the same concert. There's just something about a six-foot-tall redhead in heels  which empties one's mind of almost everything else. We had dinner together, and afterward entered the outer lobby of the Herbst Theatre where I spotted a Renaissance man of my acquaintance. We chatted him up a bit before a young women who had just spent the summer as a Fellow at Tanglewood approached us and joined in the conversation. Then it was time to sit, and as we entered the auditorium, I was surprised to see a number empty seats- not many, mind you, but more than I expected.

The nineteen members of the New Century Chamber Orchestra began their 21st season with a tribute to Benjamin Britten in honor of the centennial of his birth. It's odd to think Britten could still be with us, like Elliot Carter is, had he possessed a stronger heart, and to wonder about what he would have composed in the last third of his life. This concert featured two of his works from the 1930s- still early in his career, but already well-established as a major composer.

It began with the Simple Symphony, the movements of which, like its title, are alliteratively named and this playfulness is infused throughout the work. Simple in this case, is somewhat misleading, because while it's easy to follow and engagingly melodic throughout, to create something as accessible and pleasing as this is no simple task. The second movement, played entirely pizzicato, was perhaps my favorite if for no other reason than I enjoyed the sheer novelty of it, though it also required the musicians to re-tune before the saraband of the third, somewhat breaking the spell. The "Frolicsome Finale" was played with New Century's usual vigor.

Speaking of vigor, the second work on the program was Bartók's Divertimento for String Orchestra (1939) was probably the best performance I've heard from this orchestra to date. While the title translates into "entertainment" there's a pervading seriousness to it all, which New Century exquisitely brought out during the second movement's adagio. How Bartók fit into a Britten celebration wasn't clear to me, but the result made it a moot point. This is a versatile group, but intense pieces like this, which require not only technical skill but true cohesion among players, bring out the best in them. The entire piece was just fantastic and I look forward to seeing the orchestra release a recording of it.

During the intermission, GG and I chatted with some of the usual suspects, and I was gently mocked for having a picture of me published in the newspaper on Friday, taken at last week's SF Symphony gala. It seems very few acquaintances of mine read the paper anymore, for no more than a handful at best mentioned having seen it. I only wish it was a better photo and that I had done a better job with my bow tie.

Soprano Melody Moore joined the orchestra for Britten's Les Illuminations (1939), which features excerpts of poems by Arthur Rimbaud set to nine pieces of  music. Moore was in full dramatic mode, matching vocal intensity with commanding physical presence for each piece. In the middle of the third (I think), three people with no clue about audience etiquette (or, assholes, if you will) returned late from intermission to take their seats in the second or third row. Why they had to disrupt the musicians and the audience instead of taking seats in the back is a good question for both the offenders and the Herbst ushers to answer. Moore and the orchestra played right through it, without letting any annoyance show. Now, I don't speak French, but I've heard enough of it, and with the text translations in my lap I still had a very difficult understanding Moore at times, while during others it was easier to discern what she was singing. The overall result was a strong one, but not enough to remove the Bartók as the evening's highlight.

There was an encore consisting of two ill-chosen spirituals featuring Moore and Music Director Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg.

The New Century Chamber Orchestra will return in mid-December to perform a program designed to show off their soloists featuring Vivaldi's Four Seasons alongside works by Handel, Clarice Assad, and Lera Auerbach. Tickets can be purchased here.

Free for All next weekend

On Sunday, September 30th, Cal Performances presents its third annual Free For All- an all-day event which takes place on the UC Berkeley campus in a multitude of venues both indoors and out. Last year's  festivities attracted over 10,000 people, so this year the family-friendly event has been expanded to provide even more things to do, see and hear, including dance performances, concerts, puppet shows, and an instrument petting zoo. The event is completely free and if you RSVP online (which is not necessary to attend- you can just show up and have fun) you'll receive a 25% discount off tickets to any Cal Performances event during the upcoming season (you must purchase them at Free For All). 

Schedules by stage and by time, as well as list of all the artists who'll be performing are on the Cal Performances website. Food and beverage vendors will be onsite. Among the performers are the Chitresh Das Dance Company; Cypress String Quartet; Davitt Moroney; story tellers Diane Ferlatte and Eth-Noh Tec; shadow puppets with Daniel Barash; Gamelan Sekar Jaya; saxophonist George Brooks' jazz/Indian fusion music; Kitka; Kronos Quartet; Lily Cai Dance Company; Pamela Rose; Marcos Silva's Brazilian jazz; pianist Shai Wosner; Shotgun Players with songs from Stephen Sondheim's Assassins; San Francisco Taiko; plus ensembles from the UC Berkeley Departments of Music and Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies; Student Musical Activities vocal and jazz ensembles, the Cal Band; and more. See you there?

Figuratively Speaking

Lorraine Olsen. Photo by Steven Rosen

Perhaps it was my own lack of perspective, influenced by attending a run of recent solo performances I found wanting, but Lorraine Olsen's Figuratively Speaking, now playing at the SF Playhouse before she takes it East for a run in New York next month, took me by surprise in a most pleasing way.

As I walked into the theater, Olsen was already seated onstage in a pose, her well-lit back exposed to the audience as she held a silk robe, black with white polks dots, around the rest of her body. A stool stood next to the door, and placed on the stool was a stack of high-quality sketchbooks, a cup full of finely-sharpened pencils, and two pencil sharpeners. The man at the door instructed me to take one of the sketchbooks if I desired. I turned and looked at the audience- everyone seemed to have a sketchbook on their lap and was busy drawing the performer. I took one, and selected a pencil. The pencils were "Generals"- a sign that someone was serious about this. Generals are real pencils- they're my own personal favorites to use when I draw something, and it has been too long since I've held one in my hand.

I took a seat and opened the book- it was already about 2/3s full of mostly successful sketches from previous audiences of what I now saw before me. There were also sketches of what I presumed to be other audience members, things I couldn't quite figure out, and curiously enough one one page, the words "Depeche Mode" written in large letters slanting perilously to the right. I began to sketch Olsen, feeling the rust in my fingers as  I tried to capture the tilt of her head and worked my way down the page. Joni Mitchell's voice filled the room. People whispered. It felt like a studio.

Suddenly Olsen flung the robe off and spun to face the audience, speaking in full voice as if she had already been speaking for awhile. The next hour flew by as Olsen warmly wove the history of the Bay Area Model's Guild (who knew there was such a thing?), the quality of mercy, wry jokes, sharp observations, an engaging dance to an INXS song, much of her biography, and numerous perfectly held poses into engaging rumination on art, Franz Marc and German expressionism (more than once I thought she would have made a perfect model for Otto Dix) personal choices, and empowerment. Olsen, who is perhaps a woman of a certain age, possesses a strikingly beautiful face which emanates a youthful, confident joie de vivre. That she performs much of the play in the nude isn't as distracting as one might think, but instead becomes a live illustration of the play's themes (she also wrote the show).

Figuratively Speaking is directed by Val Hendrickson, who is the other half of Olsen's production company Theatre Valentine. The sound design by Keith Dunwoody features spot on musical selections by Olsen which enhance the experience. It plays at the SF Playhouse 2nd Stage, 533 Sutter St, Thurs-Sun through September 29.  Tickets can be purchased here (tickets for the New York performances are available here). Highly recommended.

Einstein on the Berkeley campus- Colloquium, Symposium, and Artists Talk info

All three Berkeley performances of Einstein on the Beach are completely sold out- there's a notification list on the Cal Performances website for those of you who snoozed before a single note was even played. Besides the perfomances of the opera, there are three significant auxiliary educational events taking place during the run, one each day. Here are the details (courtesy of Cal Performances):

The Department of Music at UC Berkeley is hosting a Composer Colloquium on Friday, October 26 at 3:00pm in 125 Morrison Hall. It will feature Philip Glass talking about his work, and Einstein on the Beach, with Assiciate Professor of Composition, Ken Ueno.

There will be a symposium, called Einstein on the Beach: Re-staging/Re-construction/Re-enactment, on Saturday, October 27, 11:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m., in the Zellerbach Playhouse. In 1976 Einstein on the Beach brought together the minimalism of composer Philip Glass with director/designer Robert Wilson’s non-narrative approach to performance to create a work that radically changed expectations about opera. In conjunction with an historic re-staging of Einstein on the Beach, this symposium examines what it takes and what it means to re-create and perform a seminal but rarely-seen work almost forty years after its premier with scholarly and behind-the-scenes reflection. This event is co-sponsored by Cal Performances and the Arts Research Center, The Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities, and The Department of Music at UC Berkeley.

As the final education event, there will be an Artist Talk on Sunday, October 28 from 1:00 p.m.-2:00 p.m. in the Zellerbach Playhouse. It will be a unique opportunity to hear from all three creators of Einstein on the Beach: Robert Wilson, Philip Glass and Lucinda Childs.

The Best and the rest of Fringe



First of all, congratulations to the Best of Fringe winners-  Tyrone "Shortleg" Johnson and Some White Boys, Jurassic Ark, Stalking Christopher Walken, You Killed Hamlet, or Guilty Creatures Sitting at a Play - all of which will have repeat performances the weekend of September 28 & 29. Check the Coming Up page for dates and times or go to the Fringe website. I read that Legacy of the Tiger Mother also won an award, but perhaps scheduling prevents a repeat performance. I feel pretty good about what I ended up seeing, in that I saw four of these five winners and solidly agree with three of them being voted among the best.

The last night I attended I did see two more performances- the first was The Collector, an "experimental adult puppetry" show staged by Animal Cracker Conspiracy (Bridget Rountree and Iain Gunn). This wordless, eerily mesmerizing hour featured Rountree and Gunn putting their macabre puppets through a series of meetings and encounters, trials and other-things-hard-to-describe, and even more difficult to turn away from, on three small stages, which are simultaneously projected above the center stage. It's a creepy effect, because what's taking place on the stage is quite distorted by the projections, even though it allows the viewer to see details they wouldn't otherwise. There's a narrative that's hard to follow, at least on first viewing, which made more sense when I overheard Rountree explaining it to someone else after the show ended. The gist is that "The Collector"- a foot-tall, dapperly-dressed zombie so painstakingly crafted that even his shoes had heels and soles on them, it is at the mercy of his boss, a sinister monkey that reminded me of the one from "Monkey Shines." The Boss Monkey is a sadist, and the Collector, trapped in an Orwellian dystopia perhaps of his own creation, follows orders, tries to collect on the debts of others, and his efforts don't work out very well for him. How he becomes an oddly sympathetic presence is only an additional testament to the thoughtfulness of what's unfolding on the three stages, abetted by director Lisa Berger and sound designer Margaret Noble. This stayed with me, and as Animal Cracker takes this to other performance spaces, I would strongly recommend seeing it. I look forward to the San Diego duo's return to the Bay Area.

I also took in EmergenciPhone!, a production written by Anna Budd, an associate professor of theater arts at Cañada College and staged by the Elsewhere Theatre troupe, which I suspect is made up primarily of students from the college. Though it had some genuinely funny jokes, as it stretched on the jokes grew thinner and the plot grew tiresome. At fifteen minutes it could have been great fun. At an hour, it turned into a slog. Even the cleavage grew tiresome. Well, okay, not really, but almost.

The Movies of My Mind

Magician and storyteller Michael Belitsos' The Movies of My Mind starts off with some delightfully gory effects as he begins the hour-long show by sharing some of his favorite horror movie moments and then traverses a lot of ground as he goes through different film genres. He weaves his narrative with ease, delivered with the seriousness of Clint Eastwood impersonating Rod Serling and deftly uses members of the audience to cue up his illusions, incorporating their participation seamlessly into his act. It's a show well worth seeing for the illusions alone, but it also has a pretty marvelous soundtrack and a sexy nurse to boot.

The final performance is today, Saturday September 15 at the San Francisco Fringe Festival, 4:30 PM.

Weird Romance

A maggot blithely threw Schrödinger's cat into the discussion.

I suppose weirder things have happened during the San Francisco Fringe Festival, but Weird Romance, a double-bill of brief but clever one-act plays written Nick and Lisa Gentile, will live forever in my mind for that small, delicious fact. There were three maggots actually, performed by Tavis Kammet, Dan Kurtz and Ashley Cowan,  in Metamorphosize Mon Amor, a punny and amusing comedy. All three actors had excellent timing, delivering the Gentiles'  seemingly endless, Wilde-style puns with aplomb.

The maggot trio was preceded by Russian Roulette, in which two lovers begin to quarrel on the night before their wedding after the would-be groom makes a bad bet with his intended's father about a scene in "The Godfather." The ante continues to rise, eventually turning into a game of "my family is more mafia than yours." William Leschber and Cassie Powell are the lovers, and they have an easy chemistry with each other, though neither convince from an ethnic perspective, which would have given the last third of the play more bite. 

You Killed Hamlet

Watching these mutant, foul-looking offspring who looked like they were conceived during a gang bang involving an alien from Bad Taste, the Michelin Man, Brundlefly and Susan Lowe stride down the hallway of the Exit Theatre complex before the show was disturbing enough. One grotesquely fat, the other sickeningly thin, they looked like human maggots more than anything else. The safest place to sit seemed to be toward the rear, but even that felt suspect, and my suspicions turned out to be true. The audience had an expectant air in it, no doubt fueled by provocative reviews posted on the SF Fringe site from the first show, and of course there's that title, an accusation leveled at anyone present.

They came in with his corpse, abusing it in the most offensive, base manner imaginable, even beyond what I could conjure up in my most venal revenge fantasies. Using their phalluses as weapons, they taunted the dead Danish Prince without mercy. Certainly I nor anyone in the audience had anything to do with this. Or did we?

Naked Empire Bouffon Company deliver the goods in unexpected ways in You Killed Hamlet, or Guilty Creatures Sitting At a Play. It's vile and provocative, but it's also a very sly, smart commentary on a culture busily amusing itself as it slides off this mortal coil, too afraid to talk about serious things, and too busy dumbing itself down. You Killed Hamlet, we all kill Hamlet, every time we click on that link to see what the latest false celebrity did to end up on what's called news, when we spend more time on Facebook than with a book, and when we accept the fact that we live in a culture where the words art and intellectual (and their synonyms) are combined into pejoratives. Natty Justiniano and Ross Travis know this, and aren't afraid to rub your face in your own complicity in this shitty state of affairs- but you probably don't want to talk about it.

Highly recommended. There are two more performances at the San Francisco Fringe Festival: Friday, September 14 at 7:00 PM and Sunday, September 16 at 4:30.

L'extimité

Andrea Isasi in L'extimité

According to its Majorcan-born, Madrid-dwelling creator Andrea Isasi, L'extimité deals "with humor, the micro and macro, intimacy, inside, outside, yours, mine, mine and ours, ours and yours, here, there, the individual, the collective, and the memory..." and much, much, more.

In less than an hour, mind you.

If that description means everything and nothing, or falls somewhere in between the two, and you're okay with that, then you're probably in the right frame of mind to appreciate the work, which is as much a piece of performance art as it is a theatrical one. And though L'extimité might cause a viewer to wonder exactly what the difference is between the two, that's something I can't really discuss- you'll have to figure that out on your own.

Standing in front of a fan placed on the floor dressed as Superwoman, red cape and dark hair billowing behind her, Isasi begins with a series of poses frequently used  by bodybuilders to show off their stuff. From there she flies off into multiple directions, sometimes simultaneously. As she speaks in English a voice simultaneously translates the words in Spanish over speakers, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind, making it difficult to follow either. The net effect is one of only being able to understand what's being said if you listen to it as a conflation of the two languages (it helps to understand Spanish), or can hear them juxtaposed (see above for those themes, compañeros). Soon Alba Alonso rises from the audience and begins to sing. And she sings beautifully. What she's singing, I couldn't tell you, but she's enjoying herself immensely, and Andrea is enjoying Alba, and we in the audience are enjoying their enjoyment and really no one knows where any of this is headed, and then Andrea decides she doesn't want to be Superwoman anymore- it's too confining, so she takes off the boots, the tights, the cape, the shorts, all of it, in favor of a simple black linen dress. A dress in which she can move around.

And the room goes silent.

But there's more she needs to do, including taking the measure of distances and relationships between distances and time and everything in between, and do you know what? All you need is love. Really. All you need is love, but what that really means, when you break it down, can mean many, many things depending on what syllable you stress when you sing the song. And when you change the song into a plea, or a scream, the meaning of the words takes on an entirely different tone. It can feel menacing, scary. But it's love. And that's all you need, even if hearing it this way makes you feel differently. Or just different. Different in a way you never thought about before. It's so different, in fact, you might want to just lose yourself and just jump and down, and hug people, and really, that feels better when there are others doing it with you, don't you know? So get up there and jump up and down and hug that other person, because all you need is love and there is something so decidedly uncynical about how Isasi is putting all of this together that what could be trite in the hands of a less-gifted performer turns into a small magical moment that envelopes the room. And she's so satisfied at having achieved this, she walks out the door, leaving us sad because more would have been nice. Really.

L'extimité plays at the San Francisco Fringe Festival thrice more- September 13 at 9:00 PM, Septmber 15 at 1:00 PM (performed in Spanish), and closes the San Francisco Fringe Festival on Sunday, September 16 at 6:00 PM. Recommended.

Stalking Christopher Walken

BrickaBrack's Stalking Christopher Walken, starring, written and directed by Gabriel Grilli, has a couple of good moments, especially when the troupe is re-enacting what might have happened onboard the Splendour the night Natalie Wood went overboard and wound up dead. It also has great ending that will leave you smiling, but a lot of it feels like padding in an attempt to stretch out 15 minutes of good material into an hour-long show, complete with Walken's own show-within-the-show, which feels out of place within the larger frame of the piece. Ultimately it's like a mash-up of three extended Saturday Night Live skits, all about, all starring Christopher Walken!

Lots of time is spent dancing, sometimes well, sometimes humorously, sometimes more seriously than they can actually pull-off. Katie Tandy does a pretty good job of bringing the Natalie Wood, as does Alexander M. Lydon as Robert Wagner. Jonathan Suguitan is appropriately douchey during the show-within-the-show segment. The rest of the ensemble has an infectious enthusiasm for the material, but it needs more cowbell.

Stalking Christopher Walken is part of the SF Fringe Festival and can be seen September 13 at 10:30 PM and September 15 at 6:00 PM.

Ze Ren, Heng San, and a plug for Jesus

So far, the solo performances this years SF Fringe Festival haven't been the stand-outs, though I did hear strong things last night from someone whose opinion I value about Eileen Tull's Jesus Do You Like Me?, so I'm going to try to make the last performance this coming Saturday afternoon and suggest you do the same. My source also had really positive things to say about The Wounded Stag.

Xiao Juan Shu's Ze Ren was another not-quite-ready-for-a-paying audience delivery of personal experiences, though she has an interesting story, and an engaging, warm personality. But (and I know this is becoming a theme here), without some sort of narrative moving toward a climax or satisfying resolution, or performed with a level of insight that makes one leave the theater questioning something about their own life or what have you, 45 minutes of someone talking about themselves, even when the story is told in a linear fashion, can make for a long time. Unless you're really funny, of course.

Ze Ren had an unannounced opening performance, which confused me after Sarah Lau took the stage to perform her 10-minute monologue Heng San- a keenly observed meditation about her family's reactions at her grandfather's funeral. Just as she hooked me with her keen ability to capture nuance and details, the show was over, and having little idea I was watching something other than Ze Ren, I thought really?  That's it? But it wasn't. Lau, who won "Best of Fringe" last year with her one-woman show The Secret Adventures of Fat Woman and Remedial Girl, is a performer whose work I'd be interested in seeing more of.

Ze Ren and Heng San can be seen on September 15th at 9:00 PM.

The Secret Adventures of Fat Woman and Remedial Girl will be performed at 7:00 PM on Sunday, Nov. 25th at Stage Werx on Valencia.

Velma

Mick Renner's Velma, a solo performance named after his mother and dealing largely with his life with her when he was a child, is a superbly acted and convincing portrait, despite the fact it takes awhile to ignore the fact you're watching a man in his late sixties, wearing street clothes, sans wig or make-up (except for maybe a bit of lipstick), acting as a woman from her twenties into her early forties. Broken into three acts which take place during his youth, and bookended by an epilogue and prologue featuring his mom at her mirror, Velma comes across as an interesting woman, though she's certainly not the trailblazer the promotional material would lead one to believe. The play moves along well enough as Renner portrays himself, his relatives and his pals with charm and wit, engaging the audience with his well-developed script and delivery.

Suddenly, out of nowhere in the early part of the third act he pulls the rug out from under the audience by introducing an element to the story that seems meant to shock but only repulses with its abrupt insertion into the play. Probably intended as a revealing, critical moment, it arrives as more of a "What the fuck?" What was obviously a horrible blindsiding in real-life doesn't necessarily play well onstage without a set-up. Once the play veers off in this direction it felt increasingly uncomfortable and self-absorbed, leaving the terrain of poignant memoir and tribute for the lowlands of victimhood and abuse. Had this part of Velma's story been hinted at earlier in the play, its arrival wouldn't feel like such a sudden derailment.  At the conclusion, Renner offered to stay and discuss the play with anyone in the audience who wished to, but I just wanted to get out of there as fast as I could. Velma plays at the San Francisco Fringe Festival one more time on September 15 at 1:00 PM.

Crazytown: my first psychopath

Jude Treder-Wolff's Crazytown: my first psychopath is a solo show about an art-therapist's first job in a psych ward who quickly finds herself overwhelmed by challenges from the patients and indifference from the staff. Treder-Wolff and musical director Wells Hanley add a few songs into the mix in an effort to make the material more than it is, which essentially feels like Treder-Wolff sharing war stories about her work and how unsettling it was to find herself unprepared to do a job after years spent in training. She does some keen, funny impersonations of a chain-smoking, horny patient and a horribly vile nun, but mostly it's a middle-aged woman from New York in over head, and in need of some sympathy. Treder-Wolff misdelivered more than a few lines during the performance I saw on Sunday night, which only added to a sense that the show really isn't all it could be, coming across instead like a long hour spent on a bar stool next to a someone who unexpectedly breaks out into song, albeit with the best of intentions, only to make one wonder what she's doing there in the first place.

Crazytown: my first psychopath can be seen at the San Francisco Fringe Festival September 14, 15, 16.

Cemetery Golf

Cemetery Golf, written by Jim Loucks and "based loosely on his childhood experiences in small-town Georgia as a preacher's kid" is an expertly acted 75 minutes of engaging characters- all that's missing is something dramatic to happen. By the time Loucks brings us to the show's conclusion, the denouement feels bittersweet, inevitable, and a tad disappointing, a sensation which may not have felt so acute if the play were shorter. Loucks' characters- himself as a young boy, his sister, mother, father and some others from his father's congregation are vividly brought to life, aided in no small part by his impressive physical ability to fully inhabit these people at the flip of an internal switch- his mother is an especially wonderful interpretation. The dialogues are also rendered in believable prose, delivered with conviction and even when they're not wholly likable, it's hard not to like what he's doing with them. But without a real plot pulling us along, the solo show feels like a tribute to people we don't learn enough about even at this length, and a portrait of a life which most of us (at least those of us not born in the South to a preacher and his wife) haven't lived and wouldn't necessarily want to, though it may resonate more with audiences whose roots are closer to Loucks' own.

At the San Francisco Fringe Festival September 12, 13, 14.

Legacy of the Tiger Mother

Satomi Hofmann (left) and Lynn Craig.

It was during the song "Something Better" that I realized something bigger potentially lurks within Legacy of the Tiger Mother, Angela Chan and Michael Manley's musical comedy about the relationship of a first-generation American-Chinese and her demanding mother. Chan (credited as writer, composer, lyricist, musical director and producer) and Manley (writer, lyricist) have extensive musical and theatrical experience and it shows with this expertly placed song within the play's narrative arc. The song itself, like most of the play's tunes, sounds just about ready for a Broadway stage. I don't necessarily mean that as a compliment, but rather just a fact. Ever since The Lion King it seems Broadway musicals have produced little more than an endless chain of pleasant tunes that go down easily, aren't terribly challenging to sing, fit perfectly into the dramatic moment unfurling on stage, and are almost impossible to recall within ten minutes of leaving the theater (it's no surprise jukebox musicals do well- the songs are simply better than 99% of what's being written for the stage today). It's an odd irony, and a testament to Chan and Manley's skills, that the only song I found annoying in the play was also the most memorable- "Little Miss 1986," and another, "Lazy White Children," could become a viral sensation overnight with the right recording and accompanying YouTube video. Don't scoff- weirder things have happened. But how many one-hour plays have at least two tunes that stick in your head after they're over. Or let me calibrate it another way- Legacy of the Tiger Mother [currently] has only five original songs in it (along with a healthy dose of excerpts from Beethoven and Mozart sonatas) and two of them are stand outs- that's a pretty decent percentage.

So they have the formula down for what currently makes a "show" tune. They also have two very strongly written and acted lead roles an audience can empathize with (whether or not one is Asian and/or female) and there's clarity in the play and especially in this production that makes me think with another forty-five minutes of material and a couple of more characters (a father, an additional child, and a neighbor would do nicely) this show could easily be something bigger, and better.

But it's pretty damn good as it is, and I wasn't even planning on going to see it. The description initially put me off- I thought why would I, a middle-aged white guy, want to go see a play about an Asian woman's mommy issues? But late on Sunday I was willing to catch one last play and I'm glad I did- so far it's been the best show I've seen at this year's Fringe. Sure, Legacy will have entirely different elements that Asian audiences can debate/relate/adore or abhor, but it worked for me as a straight piece of well-crafted, expertly acted (by the marvelous Satomi Hofmann and delightful Lynn Craig) piece of theater- period- and I'd love to see a bigger version of it someday- with additional characters to make what's already good that much better.

Now playing at the San Francisco Fringe Festival- two more performances on 9/11 @ 10:30 PM and 9/15 @ 7:30. Strongly recommended.

Sugar High: A Brectian Bitchslap

We really knew very little about what was going to happen- only that we were going to board a bus from the front of The Exit Theatre and take some kind of theatrical road trip around the City for 90 or so minutes, with the promise of an "immersive theater experience" and "beautiful vistas, gritty urban underbelly and transformational theater." Popcorn Anti-Theater delivered all that more, as the company resurrected itself with Sugar High: A Brectian Bitchslap as part of the SF Fringe Festival, now underway through September 16.

The story is part Whatever Happened to the Children From Those Experiments? and part The Revenge of the Sexy Assistant of the Not-So-Very-Mad Doctor. To divulge more would spoil the fun, but where you end up on this journey will likely delightfully surprise you (bring a warm jacket- and maybe a flask), though perhaps it won't reveal too much to suggest carrying a torch with you should you like roasting marshmallows. Popcorn Anti-Theater will return to staging regular theater-on-the bus next month. In the meantime, I recommend getting on board for this confection.

The bus leaves the Loin again on September 13th @ 7:00 and 10:30 PM, September 14 @ 7:00 and 10:00 PM, and September 15th @ 7:30 and 10:30. I advise going on the earlier ride if your partial to views, though the later show could provide a more pleasantly menacing, disorienting experience. 

Tyrone "Shortleg" Johnson and Some White Boys

Before the show, my date and I returned to a place where we once conducted some nasty business. It felt good to be back at the scene of this particular crime with her, and I wondered if lightning was going to strike twice. It didn't, but we still had a good time. I would have stuck around, because things were just getting warmed up there, but we had a show to get to in a seedy part of town. Right around the corner, that is.

We entered the 50 Mason Social House and took a seat on the long banquette lining the wall. The room had a good-sized crowd, though not packed- not bad given that the President was speaking at the moment. The band came on first- six white guys in shades, white shirts with ties, black pants. The bass player looked like Steve Cropper with a bad rug, the guitarist like Jeff Buckley. Tyrone stood at the back of the crowd. I saw him take out a flask and hit it for a hard swig. A man's voice boomed through the room, introducing the great bluesman from Beaumont (goddam), Texas and Tyrone made his way to the stage. He's never seen this band before- he was pulling a Chuck Berry or something, and he was obviously pissed off to find himself playing with what he called a bunch of "hippies."

It took about a minute before the set was derailed by lighting problems. The man with the mike shut it down- told us all it would be about five minutes that turned into ten. Tyrone kept on taking sips from the flask. A belligerence entered his voice. He fronted off the man with the mike, who told him to watch himself- they didn't want another incident like the notorious one that happened in Newport. That problem with Joan Baez. Then someone in the audience said something funny about Bob Dylan, and Tyrone told us his truth about what really happened that night. Yeah, there was drinking involved that night.

The more he drank, the more Tyrone became "Shortleg" and Shortleg likes to tell a tale or two. Talking about his days in the whorehouses. Messing with the women. Telling us about his mama. She really laid him low one day. You can see why the man is the way he is once he tells that story. Damn.

He has a fondness for Willie Dixon and Leadbelly and can't stand white guys like Pete Seeger appropriating the blues. If you're gonna do it, do it like Johnny Otis did it. Like they do it on 7th Street in Oakland. He made the band take their shades off. Turns out the guitarist is just a kid. More Ricky Nelson than Jeff Buckley, but damn, the kid can play the blues like he was born to it. The kid's name is Jeremy Goodwin. Remember it. Turns out his dad was in the band too, on sax- a cat named Rick Goodwin. The trumpet player- a guy named Dennis Aquilina, did the "Hand Jive" and they have some British dude named Richard Trafford-Owen on the harp who knows a thing or two. Shortleg called him Ringo. How come British dudes always have three names?

The bass player, Steve Ekstrand, had an attitude. Sittin' there reading a magazine while Shortleg was schooling the room. Some gruff went back and forth. I though it might come to blows. And all of this was going on while they were trying to tape some stupid dance show for TV. Crazy. The man on the mike kept flipping out every time Tyrone said something about "titties" or when he'd grab himself. Behind it all, keeping the Bo-Diddley beat on the drums was Jeff Weinmann. Pretty funny to watch it all go down, but man, let me tell you- that Tyrone has some stories, and he can really belt the blues.

When he finally broke character at the end, it was a small shock to see the man behind all of this- Wayne Harris, who had just delivered an amazingly involved and nuanced performance, come across as an altogether different person than who we had just watched and heard for over an hour. Impressive.

The show repeats September 8, 12, & 14. Highly recommended. Check out the SF Fringe Festival site for details. And don't be late!

SF Fringe Festival 2012 starts tonight

If you didn't already have enough to do this week between the opening of  San Francisco Opera's Rigoletto, conductor Semyon Bychkov and violinist Pinchas Zukerman performing with the San Francisco Symphony, and start of the first-ever Classical Revolution Music Festival, there's the San Francisco Fringe Festival getting underway tonight at the Exit Theatre- twelve straight nights, more than 200 performances, and 40 different shows of new, often-edgy, frequently wonderful performances.

Get a pass and take the risk. There's a lot to choose from, and deciding what to see next is only part of the fun.

GRRR! You Can't Always Get What You Want

So after about three weeks of hype that something major was to be announced today, setting tongues wagging across the globe, The Rolling Stones disappointed pretty much everyone with the news: GRRR!, their 31st compilation featuring two new tracks recorded last month, will be released in November. It's now unlikely that albums comprised entirely of new material will ever outnumber the compilations.

Also rumored, but yet to be confirmed, are four concerts- two at the Brooklyn Barclays Center on December 6th  and 7th and another pair in London on November 26th and 27th. These dates do come on the heels of GRRR!'s release, so perhaps there is more to come, including the rumored last gig that will take place at next year's Glastonbury Festival.

One bit of good news is the release of the documentary "Crossfire Hurricane," also in November, which will be shown in the U.S. on HBO. Hopefully for those of us who don't feel the need to subscribe to cable television, there will be other alternatives to view the film.

For those of us waiting patiently for a 50th anniversary tour, the news is disappointing. But you know, you can't always get what you want. And that's your Rolling Stones Song of the Day.

The not quite 阴阳 of Chinglish

Photo courtesy of  kevinberne.com

Like its title, David Henry Hwang's comedy "Chinglish"  is two things, in this case different styles of theater, smashed together to create a hybrid. Language, and the reading of it, are odd things. Suppose the name of the play, and the slang term for the mistranslations it represents, was "Englese" instead. It's almost the same thing, practically speaking- one syllable of the word "Chinese" and slightly more than one from "English." But obviously, though for no good reason, they aren't synonymous are they? It needs to be "Chinglish" for the word to make any sense because that removes possible questions that the play has something to do with Portuguese (or any other  "-ese" for that matter). Yet no one would mistake the title for being about Chicagoans and their dialect, would they? Somehow we just know these things intuitively. I'm sure there's an explanation for that weird linguistic intuition, but I don't know what it is.

It's odd too, that Hwang seems to know that for most audiences a love story thwarted by a cultural divide would play better wrapped within a farce on the etiquette of doing business in contemporary China. However there are some problems with that approach, which I would wager will make "Chinglish" a comedy of the moment that could have been more timeless with a different approach. Right now, an American businessman seeking to make money from the common practice of mistranslating Chinese to English and vice versa seems apropos and timely, but in twenty years, and more likely in ten, it will come across as dated as having a protagonist who sells VHS players or eight-track tapes. That market just won't exist and the jokes, which now get big laughs from the audience, will come across differently. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the jokes which now provoke laughter will eventually produce cringes at some point in the future, because the the audience is laughing at the differences between cultures, not their commonalities, and it is the ability to create humor from the latter which makes comedies endure. Think of how Mickey Rooney's appearance in Breakfast at Tiffany's has come to been seen in retrospect.

The overly-long first act is almost non-stop jokes based on mistranslations and a set-up for the misunderstandings which dominate the second. The main characters are introduced- Daniel Cavanaugh (Alex Moggridge) is an Ohio businessman on a trip to the "small" city of Guiyang (population 4 million) hoping to land a deal for his company to provide more accurate signage for visitors to a new cultural center. He enlists the help of Peter (Brian Nishii), an expat teacher of English turned "consultant," to help him navigate the foreign terrain and provide translation skills. Cavanaugh and Peter meet with Minister Cai (Larry Lei Zhang), who's in charge of the culture center, and his assistant, Xi Yan (Michelle Kruseic). The Minister is all smiles and Peter seems like he's in control of the negotiations, leading Cavanaugh to feel like he's getting to "yes," even while Xi's demeanor signals "no." Between the two factions sits Miss Quan (Celeste Qian) and Bing (Austin Ku) as the local translators, both of whom have limitations and biases which make for some pretty decent laughs. Director Leigh Silverman keeps the first act zinging along at a single, unvarying pitch that starts high and becomes almost shrill after an hour, exacerbated by the Chinese pop music that blasts (seriously, it's way too loud) between each in scene. That relentless pitch prevents the characters from revealing any depth, though Kruesic does a good job at piquing our interest in discerning her motives and the entire cast has superb delivery. The first act is funny and brash, but in the end feels superficial.  Another act full of more of the same wasn't something I was especially looking forward to sitting through.

Thankfully, I didn't have to do that.

The second act is almost the obverse of the first. That all of the principals have hidden agendas and secrets should come as little surprise, but as they are revealed and unraveled in these quieter, often softly spoken scenes (and in a dazzling stage design by David Korins), "Chinglish" starts to have something genuinely interesting and poignant to say about its two cultures clashing onstage. Without giving away major plot points, we are soon watching Xi and Cavanaugh conduct business on a much more personal level. The insight and depth absent in the first act shows up with some exquisitely written and subtly rendered moments in the second. Krusiec's character morphs from borderline Dragon Lady stereotype into a multi-faceted, complex woman grappling with some real conflicts. Moggridge achieves a similar, if not nearly as interesting, transformation as his own backstory is revealed (in another very funny scene that probably won't age well). That the rest of Hwang's characters don't receive the same depth of revelation is a missed opportunity, but what happens between Xi and Cavanaugh feels like the heart of the play and is its most satisfying element.

If the first act seems like an extended Saturday Night Live skit, the second has several scenes of satisfying sophistication. Mistranslations that the Chinese see as embarrassing to their public image on the world stage give way to the personal impacts of private miscommunication and misunderstandings. I'd like to think this is by design, but the two halves aren't given equal measure (or time), and the entirety of the play seems pitched from that first half, even if its obvious Hwang has more interesting things to say in its second. "Chinglish" would be more satisfying if it held the two aspects of  the cultures it portrays in greater balance, rendering the business side of dealing with foreign cultures as ably as it does the personal as seen by its two protagonists. As it is, that lack of balance ultimately makes it like a once-ubiquitous aphorism one use to hear about Chinese food that isn't repeated much anymore.

"Chinglish," will be at Berkeley Rep's Roda Theatre through October 21st. Tickets start at $29, with substantial discounts available for students, groups, seniors, and those under 30. Call (510) 647-2949 or buy them online at berkeleyrep.org. The production travels to South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa from January 25 - February 24, 2013, and then on to the Hong Kong Arts Festival March 1-6, 2013.