Went home to Reno to visit the family homestead and ended up getting stranded by high winds and a big storm that canceled all flights in and out of the Reno/Tahoe airport. Couldn’t get a flight back to Oakland until Thursday, so I find my Christmas vacation forcefully extended.

What’s a guy to do when the weather is bizarre (60 mph winds, rain, snow, an out-of-control brush fire)? Why, watch High School Musical, of course. I know I’m the last person in the known universe to see this thing — the most popular thing ever committed on film, ever, EVER — so I wanted to see what the fuss was all about. It is a musical, after all, and musicals, well, they’re not my life, but pretty darn close.

And I must say, I was completely charmed by the show. I don’t think I’ll ever be a huge fan of the songs, but it all works together as a package. I actually cared about Troy and Gabriella and their attempt to be multi-faceted teenagers.

If I were a tween (and I actually am a tween at heart), I’d have flipped for this 21st-century Grease rip-off — actually it rips off Grease and my favorite bad movie of all time, Grease 2 because in that one there’s a big school myew-zi-kall, as the HSM drama teacher calls it.

My favorite line was uttered by Sharpay: “We’re dealing with people who don’t know the difference between a Tony Award and Tony Hawk.” That’s why I love drama kids: they know what a Tony Award is and they know who Tony Hawk is.

Happy holidays, Theater Dogs!

Thanks for reading the blog in 2006. I’ll try to make it bigger, better, funnier and fresher in 2007.

Below you’ll find my Top 10 list of favorite theater experiences in 2006. I’d love for you all to share some of your favorites as well, so use the comment feature liberally.

1.The Clean House,TheatreWorks

Sarah Ruhl’s immaculate play — is it a comic drama or a dramatic comedy? — reveals a writer so attuned to the human heart that her work may actually be beneficial to your health. This production, helmed by Juliette Carrillo, sure was. Love is a mess, Ruhl tells us. It’s dirty (like a good joke), messy and, at its best, like really good homemade chocolate ice cream.

2. The Glass Menagerie, Berkeley Repertory Theatre

The news that Rita Moreno, the Bay Area’s resident living legend, would tackle the role of Amanda in this Tennessee Williams classic was intriguing. Could Moreno handle it? Anyone who doubted Moreno’s chops was quickly proven wrong by her powerhouse portrayal of a mother desperate to see her children succeed in a harsh world. Director Les Waters gave us such a fresh approach to the play that it almost seemed newly minted.

3. Love Is a Dream House in Lorin, Shotgun Players

Playwright Marcus Gardley did a magnificent thing with this world-premiere play: He turned a neighborhood into art, and in doing so made the specific universal. Gardley immersed himself in the history of Berkeley’s Lorin District — from the recent past clear back to Native American days — and, with the help of director Aaron Davidman, managed to capture something significant about each era leading up to the present. The cast of more than 30 professionals and nonprofessionals found the heart of the piece and showed us over and over again that without community, we’re not much.

4. Hunter Gatherers, Killing My Lobster

Of all this year’s comedies, Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s world premiere for sketch troupe Killing My Lobster was the meatiest. Maybe it had something to do with the onstage slaughter of a lamb at the play’s start. Or maybe it was the huge chunk of roasted meat that factors into the play’s bloody end. Whatever, this was an aggressively funny play about our primal, cave-man impulses, man’s need to hump (or kill) everything in sight and woman’s need for chocolate.

5. 4 Adverbs, Word for Word

San Francisco’s Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) ended his “Series of Unfortunate Events” books this year, but not before releasing a book under his own name. Four chapters of that book (Adverbs) became the basis for a typically wondrous production by Word for Word, the company that translates short fiction to the stage without changing a word of the original text. Kind of makes you glad Lemony Snicket is taking a break.

6. Dessa Rose, TheatreWorks

A musical about slavery sounds like a glum proposition, but in the hands of composers Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, glum turns into serious, which turns into transcendent. Based on the novel by Sherley Anne Williams, the story of an escaped slave and the slave owner she reluctantly befriends bears the weight of history and the healing power of music.

7. In On It, Encore Theatre Company

Canadian playwright/director Daniel MacIvor’s work isn’t that well-known south of our northern border, but based on this dynamic, beautifully directed and performed piece,
MacIvor should be in demand. Actors Ian Scott McGregor and Glenn Peters broke the fourth wall, bent time and concealed key details as they told us the story of actors who used to be lovers working on a play about their relationship. Or were they?

8. Gem of the Ocean, American Conservatory Theater

The late August Wilson received a beautiful valedictory production of his second-to-last play from ACT and director Ruben Santiago-Hudson. The electric jolt of Wilson’s language — “So, live!” are the play’s final words — coursed through the nearly three-hour show, but the sturdy cast, headed by Michele Shay as Aunt Ester, made it very much alive.

9. Restoration Comedy, California Shakespeare Theater
San Francisco writer Amy Freed’s effervescent comedy is based on two 17th-century comedies that wished they could have been this fresh and funny. Special mention must be made of the hilarious Danny Scheie, who played Sir Novelty Fashion who later becomes Lord Foppington, the star of the show-stopping Act 2 fashion show (Anna R. Oliver provided the costumes).

10. Permanent Collection, Aurora Theatre Company

This serious drama about race relations by Thomas Gibbons veered into polemics, but before it did, the battle between a black man and a white man over a collection of art is humane, disturbing and, best of all, thought provoking.

The best shows that didn’t necessarily originate here (or were on their way somewhere else — like Broadway) include: Jersey Boys (Best of Broadway/SHN); A Chorus Line (Best of Broadway/SHN); The Miser (Berkeley Repertory Theatre/Theatre de la Jeune Lune); The Light in the Piazza (Best of Broadway/SHN); The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (Stone, Nederlander, Barrington Stage Company et al); Swan Lake (Best of Broadway/SHN).

For more 2006 highlights, check out Jones for Theater.

OK. Now you…

This was the year that Elton John and Anne Rice’s musical Lestat bit the big one and High Fidelity was a sound no one wanted to hear.

Those of us who saw Lestat in its pre-Brodway run at San Francisco’s Curran Theatre knew the show had a stake through its heart from the get go. And as for High Fidelity (right), the sample songs on the show’s Web site were so boring it was hard to muster enthusiasm enough to dislike them. Another show with a boringly bland pop score, The Wedding Singer, made a respectable go of it but never reached hit status.

Bay Area folks should not be holding their breaths for a tour of Twyla Tharp’s take on Bob Dylan songs, The Times They Are A Changing. Our Theatre Dogs spies spotted a dog, and they were right. The circus-themed show is history.

Disney launched two new Broadway shows, and though Tarzan is still swinging, it failed to generate much in the way of buzz or critical accolades. Mary Poppins, on the other hand, generated big buzz and a full spectrum of reviews. To me, the most interesting Disney show didn’t open on Broadway. Finding Nemo: The Musical, began performances in Walt Disney World. This marks the first time Disney has taken a non-musical movie and turned it into a stage musical. This is a mini-theme park musical, but if all goes well (so far, buzz is good), we can expect to see Nemo, Marlin, Dory and friends swimming along Broadway.

Bay Area audiences can’t be surprised that A Chorus Line is proving to be a solid hit on Broadway. We saw the out-of-town preview, so we got a taste of what the new cast had to offer in this lively carbon copy version of the 1975 hit. With any luck, our next big pre-Broadway show, Legally Blonde, will be equally as exciting. We were also the first to see Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me, and though the show that ended up on Broadway was pretty different than what we saw, it should be no surprise that the always charming Short found his audience. Though the show is closing in early January, it had a respectable run.

When I head to New York, the shows I most want to see are the musicals Grey Gardens and Spring Awakening and Tom Stoppard’s play cycle The Coast of Utopia at Lincoln Center. Can’t imagine any of those will head for the Bay Area in 2007, but we can dream, can’t we? Really wish I could have seen Meryl Streep in Mother Courage in Central Park.

So what Broadway hits might actually be making their way toward the Bay Area? There’s no confirmation of anything, but we might expect the musical The Color Purple to wend our way.

Looking ahead, there are a couple shows blinking brightly off in the distance. One is a legitimate source of excitement. Angela Lansbury returns to Broadway in Terrence McNally’s Deuce alongside Marian Seldes. The other is a warning sign pointing toward the May Broadway debut of Xanadu: The Musical, which features songs from the flop 1980 Olivia Newton-John movie of the same name. Rumors have Jane Krakowski, Cheyenne Jackson and Ben Vereen reprising roles they performed in workshops of the new musical.

Many of us here in the Bay Area consider the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in lovely little Ashland, Ore. to be a theatrical home away from home. A great number of local theater lovers make annual pilgrimages to the charming hamlet just over the California-Oregon border.

Big changes are afoot in Ashland next year as artistic director Libby Appel steps down and Bill Rauch steps in (in June to be exact). Rauch sent an e-mail to OSF patrons this week announcing that he’ll arrive in April to direct Romeo and Juliet, and he’ll stay to begin planning for the 2008 season.

Here’s some of what he wrote:

The opportunity to follow in Libby Appel’s footsteps at OSF is both humbling and thrilling, and I am very grateful to Libby for introducing me to the incomparable artists, and audiences, here in Ashland. Beginning with Angus Bowmer, the four preceding OSF artistic directors have fostered a theatre company that remains unique in the history of American theatre. Carrying that legacy forward is a great responsibility for me and an adventure that awaits all of us together.

Visit the OSF Web site for information. To learn more about Rauch, to watch an interview and see a slide show, click here.

No question Jersey Boys is one of the most exciting Bay Area theatrical events of 2006. Let’s hear from a couple readers who have their own thoughts on Jersey Boys.

Jan Brown of Livermore castigated me for not mentioning the show’s foul language in my review.

Point well taken. F-bombs explode all over the stage in Jersey Boys. Ms. Brown wrote that she would not recommend the show strictly on the basis of language and sexual content (there’s a scene with prostitutes but no nudity or actual sex).

The language is definitely strong, but I have two words for you: New Jersey.

To my mind, you can’t tell the story of four guys who come from the depths of the Garden State and its mobsters, petty thieves and macho mugs without the R-rated language. This is, after all, the same territory as The Sopranos.

So if you go to Jersey Boys (and you really should if you want to have some fun in the theater), consider yourself warned.

Tracie Pyers of San Bruno wrote with a keen observation. She celebrated a recent birthday by seeing Jersey Boys on Broadway with the original cast and says Christopher Kale Jones (left), who plays Frankie Valli at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco, was just as good, “if not better than” Tony Award-winner John Lloyd Young, who plays Frankie on Broadway.

Here’s what Tracie wrote:

I saw the NYC cast on the Today show and started thinking about a trip to New York. I was turning 40 in September so it seemed like it would be the perfect treat. It was wonderful to anticipate the show and I must have logged on to youtube.com and watched their Tony performance a million times. Still the New York show and the treat of seeing a Tony-winning show on Broadway was unbeatable. We loved it so much and wanted to see it again here in San Francisco. I was prepared to be a bit disappointed, thinking that the San Francisco cast somehow wouldn’t be able to carry it for me, like the orginal and Tony-winning cast in NYC. But I have to tell you that I was not at all disappointed with the San Francisco Cast. I did feel that Christopher Kale Jones was as good if not better than John Lloyd Young as judging from the audience’s reaction, they felt the same way.
The NYC Tommy DeVito (Christian Hoff) won the Tony for his performance, and boy could you tell. SF’s character (Deven May) played him a little older. Not bad but I did really appreciate the NYC Tommy and everything that went into his performance.

Ted Neeley is not Jesus Christ, though you might be excused for thinking otherwise.

Like Yul Brynner in The King and I or Carol Channing in Hello, Dolly! Neeley has come to be associated with one particular role: Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar. He did the New York and Los Angeles productions back in the early ’70s and was in Norman Jewison’s 1973 movie, and he’s pretty much been touring with the show off and on ever since.

Neeley, now 63, is back on the road, and he’s headed for the Bay Area. Jesus Christ Superstar opens Dec. 19 in San Francisco.

“I wish you could stand in my sandals on that stage and feel what it feels like,” Neeley says on a cell phone from snowy Cleveland. “I’m still doing this because I love it and because it’s an overwhelmingly positive experience for me every night. The voice still works, I feel great about doing the show, and, luckily for me, audiences still seem to be OK with me wearing the sandals.”
Having lived through the early years when Superstar was picketed and labeled blasphemous, Neeley says the Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice musical has become not only a theatrical standard but also, according to Neeley, “a way to help kids learn about their faith.”

In his white robes, and with his long hair and soaring voice, Neeley is so identified with his character that sometimes fans come back to see him expecting him to be something more than an actor playing a role.

“I always tell myself, `Don’t forget for one minute you’re a rock ‘n’ roll drummer from Texas who can hit high notes,’ ” Neeley says. “But when people come back to see me, I embrace the experience. I grew up in a small Texas town where your three square meals a day came with three square religious conversations. The Bible was a very comfortable experience for me, and the deep religious experience I had growing up is still with me. But I don’t step on anybody’s beliefs.”

Jesus Christ Superstar, a rock retelling of the last seven days in Jesus’ life, is not about religion, according to Neeley.

“To me, the show is about the spiritual connection of humanity,” he says. “No matter who we are or where we come from, under our exterior we have a spiritual connection. I challenge anyone to come into the theater and watch this piece live and not feel something very emotionally stirred in your spirit. That’s just what it does.”

And what Neeley does when he’s not touring is create new musicals. He’s written Pandemonium, the story of a hate-free Utopia, and Rasputin, about the fall of the Romanov dynasty. He’s also recording a country album _ something he’s been working on for quite a while.
But he’s in no hurry.

The current Jesus Christ Superstar tour is being advertised as the “farewell tour,” but as Neeley says, “Nobody included me in that memo. I plan to live forever and do this show forever.”

Jesus Christ Superstar opens Dec. 19 and continues through Dec. 30 at the Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market St., San Francisco. Tickets are $25 to $85. Call (415) 512-7770 or visit www.ticketmaster.com or www.shnsf.com for information

Last night, the Curran Theatre in San Francisco was the center of the golden oldie universe.

The Tony Award-winning musical Jersey Boys kicked off its national tour, but it doesn’t look like the show will be going anywhere for a while. If the phenomenal audience response last night — not to mention all the curiosity at the office from people who hardly ever talk to me, let alone about theater — is any indication, we’ll be seeing a lot of these Jersey boys in the coming months.

You can read my four-star review here, but I feel the need to review the opening-night audience as well. If you’ve ever been to an official press opening, you know how weird they can be. You’ve got stodgy old critics like me, pens in hand, who don’t respond much, and then you have all the invited guests (that is, people who got their tickets for free) over-reacting, so the response is far from natural.

That wasn’t the case Sunday at Jersey Boys, which, if you don’t know, is the musical biography of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. The mostly middle-age (and older) crowd whooped and hollered and carried on such that the show stopped no fewer than three times — after “Sherry” and “Walk Like a Man” in Act 1 and “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” in Act 2. The actors had to hold while the audience made repeated attempts to tear the roof off the theater. My personal favorite Seasons song is “December, 1963 (Oh What a Night),” which opens the show (in its hit 2000 French hip-hop version), reappears in an Act 1 deflowering scene, and then keeps the blood pumping at the top of Act 2.

Perhaps the audience reaction had something to do with the fact that the real-life Frankie Valli, Bob Gaudio and Tommy DeVito (not to mention songwriter Bob Crewe) were in the house and took the stage at the curtain call to take bows with their theatrical counterparts.

I can’t say enough about the fab four at the story’s center. Conveniently, three of them have Web sites, so you can check them out for yourselves.
- Christopher Kale Jones (Frankie Valli): www.christopherkalejones.com (currently under construction, but now that the show’s open, surely Christopher will get around to finishing up the site)
- Michael Ingersoll (Nick Massi): www.michaelingersoll.com (a slick site)
- Erich Bergen (Bob Gaudio): www.erichbergen.com (a My Space page that includes four songs, including one of my new favorites, “Bless the Broken Road”)
- Deven May (Tommy Devito): Deven May Photography (how much talent can one guy have?)

These guys are stars in the making. Who needs Broadway when the tour is this good?

And there are juicy rumors afloat out there that Steven Spielberg is interested in making a Jersey Boys movie. Guess we’ll see how Dreamgirls does to determine if or when the movie gets made.

I saw an extraordinary production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night Thursday night in Berkeley. Below is a WEB EXCLUSIVE review. If you’re in the Bay Area this weekend, the show continues through Sunday. You should go.

You may not think you speak Russian, but you might be wrong. After seeing the Twelfth Night continuing through Sunday at Berkeley’s Zellerbach Playhouse, you may discover you understand more Russian than you realized.

It helps that the Russian men are performing a famous Shakespearean comedy, and it certainly doesn’t hurt that there are abbreviated supertitles to help guide us through the text.

But the amazing thing about this production — a product of the British company Cheek by Jowl and Cal Performances — is that as the play goes on, you rely less and less on the supertitles and more and more on the excellent actors.

Their broad playing style brings clarity and meaning, even if the words sound like, well, Russian.
What is the strange, international alchemy at work here? You’ve got two Brits — director Declan Donnellan and designer Nick Ormerod — in charge of 13 Russian actors in a 400-year-old British play translated into Russian.

Sounds like the recipe for a mess, but in reality, this production, which originated several years ago at the Chekhov International Theatre Festival — offers some of the clearest, cleanest Shakespeare you’re likely to see.

Having a working knowledge of Twelfth Night – even if it’s just a guilty-pleasure screening of She’s the Man – is helpful because the gender-bending machinations of the plot get even twistier when played, as it was in Shakespeare’s day, by an all-male cast.

The central character is Viola, a shipwreck survivor who believes her twin brother, Sebastien, drowned in the wreck. To protect herself in a strange land, she disguises herself as a boy named Cesario.

Before you know it, Cesario is the object of affection of both the Count Orsino and the Countess Olivia.

So to be clear: you’ve got a man pretending to be a woman pretending to be a boy. It’s all very Victorsky/Victorinska.

But as played by the marvelous Andrey Kuzichev, it’s easy to see why everyone falls in love with Viola/Cesario. Without overdoing it, he reminds us that he’s an intelligent young woman in disguise whose confidence only occasionally falters in the face of so much romantic intrigue.

The other revelation of this production is Dmitry Shcherbina as Malvolio, steward to the countess. An arrogant ass, Malvolio inspires the vengeful wrath of his fellow servants. They play a trick on him involving a love letter supposedly written by his mistress.

The letter speech is well known, but Shcherbina detonates it, and one monologue becomes a multi-layered three-act drama unto itself. Talk about an actor seizing the dramatic moment! Suddenly Malvolio is much more than comic relief: he’s a complex, conflicted, rather ego-blinded soul.

Donnellan and Ormerod keep their stage simple and mostly bare but ever active. The 2 1/2-hour play’s first half is all black and white, while the second half is all warm, creamy beige tones.
There’s a relaxed, realistic tone to the production, even for all the actors’ grand gesturing. The festive atmosphere is heightened by music — a nice blend of guitar- and trumpet-driven sambas — and when the happy ending comes, it’s actually more than happy. It’s touching.

Shakespeare purists might object to the trimming and shuffling of dialogue and scenes, but Donnellan, Ormerod and their Russian team have done exactly what you need to do with Shakespeare: make it fresh by making it your own.

William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, presented by Cal Performances and Cheek by Jowl, is at 8 p.m. Dec. 8; 2 and 8 p.m. Dec. 9 and 7 p.m. Dec. 10 at Zellerbach Playhouse, Bancroft Way at Dana Court, UC Berkeley campus. Tickets are $65. Call (510) 642-9988 or visit www.calperfs.berkeley.edu.

If you’re a regular Theater Dogs reader, you may already know that I’m obssessed with Disneyland and consider it to be a masterful work of theater — sets, costumes, lights, drama (and, OK, robots).

Spent last weekend in the happiest place on Earth, and here are some observations:

- America needs to lose a little weight. I’m afraid that people are counting on those motorized scooters, those “little buddies” if you will, to maintain their lifestyles even when they’re too big to walk anymore.

- The Christmas Candelight Procession, which occurs one weekend each Decmeber, is a tremendous event. A 50-piece orchestra and a 500-member choir (I’m estimating the numbers here, but I’m close) singing Christmas songs and Hector Elizondo (the guest narrator changes each year) reciting the Christmas story is lovely in both sight and sound. The event takes place behind the Main Street train station, in proximity to the giant Christmas tree, so the mood is appropriately ye olde time Christmas. But the best part involves the eight trumpeters on the roof of the train station. Spectacular.

- Disneyland’s parades have gotten so fancy they’re like Broadway shows on wheels (and on foot). The Holiday Parade is still cute, but this year’s best performances go to the woman playing Cinderella’s stepmother and the guy with braces playing Sleeping Beauty’s prince. It’s hard to charm from the confines of a cheesy holiday parade, but these two performers managed it.

- In Disney’s California Adventure, the new “High School Musical Pep Rally” is a hoot as 25-year-old performers play high school basketball players and drama geeks. This is essentially a mini-parade that does a full performance at the beginning and at the end of the short route. As you might expect, kids and pre-teens loved it, knew all the words to the songs and danced along with the choreography. Cute. Disney’s got a gold mine here.

- Speaking of gold mines, Disneyland has been overrun by pirates — everything is pirates. There’s a great actor playing Capt. Jack Sparrow running around New Orleans Square like he’s tripping on some psychedelic drug, but the tourists just eat it up. Pirate T-shirts, hats, Mickey Mouse ears and biker regalia have infiltrated every gift shop. It’s all too much pirates. Argh. Can Disney keep up the momentum before the third (and please, Walt, final) movie drops next summer? Probably not.

- The three new Johnny Depp as Capt. Jack Sparrow Audioanimatronic figures in the ride Pirates of the Caribbean are very nice. The first two bear an uncanny resemblance to the actor and move so realistically it’s eerie. The final Capt. Jack on the way up the waterfall where he’s sitting on looted treasure and singing his own cocky version of “Yo Ho, A Pirate’s Life For Me” looks like it’s been botoxed.

- The holiday version of “it’s a small world” is so unbelievably charming you can’t even believe it. It’s like jumping into a stack of Christmas cards and splashing around in lights, sparkles and good cheer. The holiday overlay packs so much charm it makes the regular “small world” seem like not much.

- On Splash Mountain, having heavier people in the front of your log means you’re going to get extra wet — mainly from water sloshing over the sides and into your shoes.

- The “new and improved” Space Mountain is, sorry to say, not that great. The new score is not nearly as good as Dick Dale’s surf guitar soundtrack. DCA’s California Screamin’ roller coaster is now the Disneyland Resort’s best coaster. On Jan. 3, both Space Mountain and California Screamin’ get new, temporary “rockin’” soundtracks, supposedly by name musicians. And Space Mountain is rumored to be prepping an accompanying light show for the new rockin’ track.

- If you’re enjoying the marvelous Sunday brunch at Storyteller’s Cafe in the Grand Californian hotel, and Chip (of Chip ‘n’ Dale fame) is scurrying about, watch your Mickey Mouse waffles.

- As a child, I dreamed of a) living in Pirates of the Caribbean and b) becoming a Disneyland Ambassador and wearing a plaid vest while escorting visiting dignitaries around the park. I’d still like to do that, actually.