First game of the season!
Capsule dump!
Doctor In Spite of Himself @ Berkeley Rep: Goodhearted giddy fun, but when you throw that many jokes against a wall, one will stick.
Beck Shaw @ SF Playhouse: Well done, though unmemorable, romantic dramedy had a major directorial problem: communicating the motivation of catalytic character Becky Shaw.
Tontlawald @ Cutting Ball: 70-minute test of patience featured pretty but uninteresting singing, which seemed more concerned with accurate tone than emotional connection, that accompanied loose scenes of poor, and also uninteresting, movement acting performed by mostly inexperienced young actors. Costumes looked like cast raided a nearby thrift store with no more direction than “reddish.” Just an awful experience.
Fragile @ Yerba Buena feat. Eiko & Koma and Kronos Quartet: I watched the 45-minutes before intermission of this ongoing 4 hour music and performance piece. A personal experience I won’t soon forget. Ask me about it.
Chronicle: I see why it’s a sleeper hit. Well done, surprisingly thoughtful low-budget sci-fi flick that packed similar emotional impact to “District 9.”
ODC’s Program 2 @Yerba Buena: The world premiere of “Cut-Out Guy” was the stand out. Just awesome.
Bottlenecked
Barred from beauty
Scorched (A.C.T., 2012) Let me save you the trouble of attending the first act before walking out at intermission (which much of the audience did): the brother is the father. Yes, seriously. A plot straight from the worst of the soap opera canon. You see the big reveal coming for over an hour and chant the following mantra under your breath throughout the play: don’t-go-there-don’t-go-there-don’t… Until: GROOOOOOAN! Just. Plain. Stupid. I won’t even try to be eloquent about how disappointing the contrivance of the whole plot is. The script’s worst excesses don’t end there. Despite the best efforts of a mostly solid cast, you will never feel an emotional connection to any character. You’ll just leave jealous of those folks who already left at intermission and missed some of the more gratuitously violent moments of the play. One caveat though: by not attending, you will unfortunately miss the most laughably bad blood effect you’ll ever see on stage. EVER. Obviously, not recommended.
The Secret World of Arrietty (Hiromasa Yonebayashi, 2012) I keep forgetting that I need to save myself the frustration and wait for the newest Studio Ghibli releases to come out on DVD. Disney once again does all that it can to ruin a beautiful film with lazy dubbing and odd voice casting.
Laura Veirs and the Hall of Flames (Tim Young and Alex Guy) at Swedish American Hall (Noise Pop) with Foxtails Brigade, Carlos Forster and Tyler Lyle. Laura always has a surprise and that surprise was a Henry Purcell drinking diddy (and a bubble machine). I very glad I was able to see Tyler, who had one of the better modern male folk voices I’ve heard in awhile.
Jolie Holland at Swedish American Hall (Noise Pop Festival) with Will Sprott, DRMS, and Emily Jane White. May be the finest show I’ve seen by Jolie, which featured the incredible Carey Lamprecht on violin and Keith Cary on electric lap steel, mandolin and viola.
Bob’s for Snack Club: Fat Tuesday Edition
Chico & Rita (Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal, 2012) Beautifully animated jazz-era nostalgia (with wonderful score by Bebo Valdés) doesn’t suffer from tired plot driven by melodramatic “bolero” romance.
