PERFORMANCE

A MUSICAL ABOUT A BROKEN MAN

a review of Tom Waits' musical of Woyzeck at the Shotgun Players, playing until January 27th

By Alexander Quionones-Bangs

Photo: Jessica Palopoli/Great Sadness

The Shotgun Players’ production of Tom Waits’ musical version of Georg Büchner’s proto-modernist masterpiece Woyzeck is a big play on a little stage, and I wish they had done more to accentuate that. The songs are in your face, the emotions are raw and it doesn't go on for too long. Director Mark Jackson, along with Musical Director David Möschler, has also managed to put on a show that doesn’t just feel like a bunch of actors singing Tom Waits’ songs, but a fully realized drama that happens to feature a bunch of actors singing Tom Waits’ songs. It’s a nice trick and suggests new possibilities for musical drama and Woyzeck is certainly not your typical musical.

PERFORMANCE

THE LIMITS OF BEAUTY

a review of Mary Zimmerman's The White Snake, playing at the Berkeley Rep until December 23rd

By Alexander Quionones-Bangs 

Photo Jenny Graham/More than beauty?

“A tale as old as time, a song as old as rhyme...” No, wait, that’s the beginning of Beauty and the Beast, but given the age of the “White Snake” story, it’s not surprising that there are parallels to other fairy tales of note. Snaking a course between adaptations ancient and old, director and writer/adapter Mary Zimmerman retells this centuries old Chinese legend in a myriad of ways. An interspecies love story of sorts, The White Snake is about Xu Xian (Christopher Livingston), a scholar who thinks he falls in love with a woman (Amy Kim Waschke), but soon finds out that she’s actually a snake, a beautiful white snake. In turn, our snake dreams of becoming a goddess, but along the way falls prey to the most human of emotions, love. They’re not quite Romeo and Juliet, but their problems have real complication and fascination and Zimmerman’s visually sumptuous retelling of this timeless story is a treat to all that your eyes can take in and more. Still, there’s one overriding question here: is the actual play, like its namesake, worthy enough within to withstand looking past its obvious beauty.

PERFORMANCE

WHEN 90 MINUTES FEEL LIKE 20

a review of ACT's production of Sophocles' Elektra, playing until November 18th

By Alexander Quionones-Bangs

Photo: Kevin Berne

The Geary Theater is not small, and at over a thousand seats it’s hard to feel cozy or intimate. Designer Ralph Funicello decided to take advantage of this, pushing the set into our faces and making it seem as if the actors are about to fall into our laps and soak our clothes with their blood. It’s an exciting gambit and right in line with the aesthetic aims of ACT’s production of Sophocles’ Elektra, which manages to make 90 minutes feel like 20. That’s a fantastic achievement. Yet, I kept wondering throughout Carey Perloff’s super-charged production if contemporary audiences, including me, could still relate to the force of this 2,500-year-old tale and Sophocles’ way of telling it. You can definitely feel the distance, both in its conventions and concerns, and yet there are parts of Elektra that are as violently explosive and sharp as any action movie made today.

PERFORMANCE AND THE ELECTION

PRESIDENT ANDREW JACKSON, ROCK GOD!

a review of SF Playhouse's production of Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson, playing until November 24th

By Alexander Quionones-Bangs

That's our President

Alex Timber and Michael Friedman’s Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson is a rock, no, let me be more exact about this, a rock/emo/punk blend musical about a young, hot, wild President who enjoys dropping f-bombs as often as his contemporaries drop dead from frontier living, who gets a kick out of kicking political ass, and when things get dark and lonely cuts himself so that he knows that he’s real, a bloodletting bond he shares with his eventual wife. The play is both entertaining and educational, but the parts that are entertaining are not educational and the parts that are educational are not entertaining. In the end, despite this odd schizophrenia of enjoyment and knowledge, Bloody, Bloody is well worth the Jacksons to see it: Jon Tracy’s direction is lively and the play does answer a question that has haunted American politics for over a century: what if Andrew Jackson were a rock star?