Ill wind, you’re blowing me no good.

Actually, the winds are favorable. If you’ve ever heard the original London cast album of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Jim Steinman’s Whistle Down the Wind, you may be relieved to know that the American touring production of the show, which had previously been announced as part of the SHN/Best of Broadway season in San Francsico, has been blown to another city.

The tour, now in Boston, will go to Philadelphia and then Norfolk, where it will close for good Feb. 17.

For information about the remainin shows in Best of Broadway visit www.shnsf.com.

Mark McKinney (above right) spent last Saturday night onstage at San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts Theatre with his fellow Kids in the Hall: Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald and Scott Thompson. The Canadian comedians were the deserving subjects of a SketchFest tribute.

Though he’s best known for his Kids characters — the Chicken Lady, the “I’m crushing your head” guy — the 48-year-old McKinney has been racking up some impressive post-Kids credits.
Most notably, McKinney helped create and write one of the best series to appear on TV in a long time. “Slings & Arrows,” the story of a fictional Canadian theater festival — the New Burbage Theatre Festival, to be exact — and its attempts to woo movie stars to appear onstage, to survive in difficult economic times and to breathe some life into Shakespeare.

McKinney also starred in the show as the company’s managing director, Richard Smith-Jones, who evolved over the course of the series’ three seasons from awkward businessman to thriving artist as he discovered his calling in life: to direct of musicals.

The complete “Slings & Arrows” series comes out in a DVD box set on Feb. 5 (Acorn Media, $59.99).

On the phone from his home, McKinney says the “Slings & Arrows” experience rates “really high” in his varied show business career.

“I got to act and write. It was a steep learning curve in every way,” he says. “As a writer I was developing themes about things I’ve always wanted to be creative about. And as an actor, I was playing a straight but comic role.”

The role of Richard wasn’t created for McKinney. He and his fellow writers, Susan Coyne (who played Anna, Richard’s beleaguered secretary in the series) and Bob Martin (who co-wrote and starred in the Tony Award-winning Broadway hit The Drowsy Chaperone) put the first season together, then McKinney had to audition for the role.

“Our director, Peter Wellington, wanted to see a bunch of people,” McKinney says. “He saw a lot of good actors. There was a lot of competition.”

It’s hard, now, to imagine anyone but McKinney in the role, as Richard takes a roundabout (and very funny) route from business to art.

Each season focused on the theater company’s major Shakespeare production. In the first season, it’s Hamlet (with guest star Rachel McAdams); in the second, it’s Macbeth and in the third, King Lear (with guest stars Sarah Polley and William Hutt in one of his final performances).

“Somewhere there’s a famous romantic trope that you keep youth in the foreground and age in the background,” McKinney explains. “That’s what we did: We completed a triangle. We went from youth to age in three seasons. From the beginning, Bob and Susan and I were ready to tell war stories. We found it was time to ask ourselves: What have we been doing?”

Though McKinney has been busy since his Kids in the Hall days — he was a story editor, then a recurring character on Aaron Sorkin’s NBC flop “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” — he says when you hit 40, you have kids and you’ve “been successful without becoming catastrophically rich,” it’s time for assessment.

“You’re going to PTA meetings, and you realize the sexiness of being the leather-pants-wearing actor has worn off,” McKinney says. “The things that interested you at 20 haven’t all deserted you as you become less nihilistic, but they have begun to be replaced by deeper things.”

McKinney says he and Coyne and Martin would like to collaborate on a new project, but “Slings & Arrows” will always be special.

“This series brought me a lot of rich rewards,” he says. “Some projects are fun and fabulous, but you’re the same person before and after. This one was a life changer.”

Comparing his “Slings and Arrows” experience with his “Studio 60″ experience, McKinney says “Slings” was a “life evolution that traversed a whole bunch of personal stuff I was going through and adapted to.” The “Studio 60″ experience was “wonderful. I loved pulling up to the Warner Bros. lot every day. At first I was a story editor, then, half-way through, Aaron put me in the cast.”

Fans are still grieving the loss of “Studio 60,” McKinney says. “People come up to me all the time and tell me it was their favorite thing on TV. I apologize for its cancellation, we curse and spit on the ground and grouse about networks and money — mammon. I really wish that show had been on cable. On HBO it wouldn’t have had to capture such a large consensus.”

With the writers’ strike ongoing, McKinney and his fellow Kids in the Hall have talked seriously about a tour in the spring.

“We figure if we wait too much longer, we’ll all get too gouty,” he says. “We got together recently in Montreal and wrote some original material, which scared the pants off me. If we go out on the road, half of the material we do will be new.”

McKinney says the Kids have always loved playing San Francisco: “There are about five cities we do really well in, and that’s one. That first tour, we felt like the fat Beatles.”

Twenty years on, the Kids are all getting along. “When we were younger, we had arms to throw punches around,” McKinney says. “Getting back together in Montreal, we finally had universal appreciation for each other and what we’ve done together. It was fun and really special.”

And now for a treat: My favorite McKinney character is the Chicken Lady (her daddy was a farmer, and her mama was a hen). Here she is at a strip show:

After a career of movies (The Sure Thing, Spaceballs) and TV (Melrose Place, One Tree Hill), Daphne Zuniga was ready to go back where it all started: to the theater.

The Berkeley native was something of a rebel as a girl until a wise teacher channeled her energy into something completely foreign to her at that time: drama class.

That led to classes in the Young Conservatory at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater, and from there Zuniga headed to college (UCLA) and a career that has kept her mostly in front of cameras.

At the moment, however, she is back in the Bay Area, living in the East Bay and commuting to San Francisco, where she’s starring in Theresa Rebeck’s acclaimed dark comedy The Scene at SF Playhouse.

“Last year, when I was on set, I’d find myself longing for the process of rehearsing,” the 45-year-old Zuniga says during a rehearsal break. “My job is a lot of work, traveling a lot, long hours. I was feeling like I had forgotten what I really fell in love with in the beginning. I was missing rehearsal, which you don’t get in TV because it all goes so fast.”

The other day, while driving into San Francisco across the Bay Bridge, Zuniga was struck by a thought: “It occurred to me that I had gotten exactly what I wished for. I was back on stage, and it’s in the place where I first fell in love with acting, two blocks away from where I studied at 14. I am overwhelmed with gratitude.”

Well, maybe not overwhelmed. “Now we’re rehearsing, and I’m bitching and moaning because it’s such a long, tedious process,” Zuniga says with a laugh. “Can’t we just print that already? I’m kidding. Theater is such a different animal. I love it. It’s so great to be back home.”

Zuniga has never been one to strategize her career. Even in college, when she was roommates with Amy Resnick, who has become one of the Bay Area’s most popular actors, she didn’t form a long-term plan. When she and Resnick auditioned for an agent as scene partners, they were both signed the same day.

“Every time I try to strategize, it never seems to work,” Zuniga says. “It’s not exactly like you’re blowing in the wind. But things have a tendency to come up.”

So how did Zuniga, who hasn’t been onstage since a production of Moliere’s Tartuffe in Los Angeles five years ago, end up in a hot play in her old stomping grounds? The simple answer: a friend hooked her up.

Jennifer Seibel, SF Mayor Gavin Newsom’s fiancee, had performed at SF Playhouse in Six Degrees of Separation, and while in LA having lunch with Zuniga and mentioned that she had just read The Scene.

Oddly enough Zuniga, who recently acquired a New York apartment to put her in proximity of more theater opportunities, had also read The Scene, which was sent to her by another theater company.

Within 24 hours, Zuniga had been in touch with SF Playhouse artistic director Bill English, with director Amy Glazer, and the next thing she knows, Zuniga is in rehearsal and spending a lot of time looking for parking spaces in San Francisco.

About Stella, the character she’s playing in The Scene, Zuniga says: “She works very hard. She strives to be the best at what she does, and because she’s a hard worker, a lot of people around her annoy her. She supports her husband, who was a TV actor, but he hasn’t worked in a while. Then this horrible thing happens with her marriage, and she doesn’t know how to cope. She’s worked so hard for a lfie that looks good on paper. Then this tragedy happens, life happens, and she’s at a loss. Her husband betrays her. How many of us know what to do when that happens? It’s a sharp play with relief in the humor.

In addition to her TV — and now stage — work, Zuniga is an activist.

“It’s all Berkeley,” she says. “Growing up in Berkeley put me in therapy for 20 years, but it also gave me a sense of no boundaries. No no’s. If there’s a no, challenge it. That’s from the Bay Area. That’s San Francisco. That’s the mentality, the world I was born into. There’s no other place like it, not even Greenwich Village. We combine creativity and open-mindedness with action. We create stuff here in California. That’s why I love it here and am thrilled to be back.”

One of Zuniga’s causes — saving the planet, basically — resulted in The Future We Will Create: Inside the World of TED a documentary based on the Technology, Entertainment, Design conferences that aim to bring together great thinkers and speakers from all walks of life and gives them 18 minutes to make “the best talks of their lives.”

“I’ve seen all these talks,” Zuniga says, “and I had to do what I could to inspire people. I though that the masses needed to see this and experience what I experienced there. I left with my brain burst wide open, my heart…it was like wow! So much more is possible than what we’re led to believe. human beings need to be reminded how amazing we are. We know down deep that our passions are worthy and our passion and longing for a better world are worthy. Why not believe in them, why not make these things come to be?”

The documentary is available at all the usual outlets includeing Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com and Borders.

For information about TED, check out the Web site here.

Visit Zuniga’s personal Web site here.

The Scene continues through March 8 at SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter St., San Francisco. Tickets are $38. Call 415-677-9596 or visit www.sfplayhouse.org for information.

SHN/Best of Broadway has announced that a new Irish musical will make its U.S. debut in San Francisco this summer.

Ha’penny Bridge is a love story set against, according to press materials, “a backdrop of political unrest and divided loyalties.” The show plays the Golden Gate Theatre July 6 through Aug. 10 and replaces the previously announced revival of The Wiz.

Set in Dublin during the Irish civil war of the early 1920s, Ha’penny Bridge is written and composed by Alastair McGuckian. The show, billed as the “most lavish Irish musical ever,” is several years old and is named for a pedestrian bridge built in 1816 over the River Liffey in Dublin.

The show has its North American premiere in Toronto in May prior to the San Francisco run. There is an official Web site, but at present it is a work in progress: www.hapennybridge.com

Donna Feore directs and choreographs.

With that nasty kerfuffle involving the stagehands and the dark Broadway theaters well behind us, it’s time to take a look at what’s going on in New York, where the play is really the thing.

Sure wish I could go see Tracy Letts’ August: Osage County, the hottest play on Broadway right now. On a more local front, Letts’ Bug will have its West Coast debut at SF Playhouse in May, filling the slot that was going to be filled with Mark Jackson’s Faust, Part One.

The big news on Broadway recently is that Rent’s lease is up. The pioneering rock musical, which won a posthumous Pulitzer prize for its creator, Jonathan Larson, will close on June 1 and enter the record books as Broadway’s seventh-longest-running musical.

When one musical closes, another one — most likely based on a movie — fills its place.

And here comes Shrek the Musical.

The CGI ogre, who has now starred in three hit movies, will make his musical theater debut this summer in Seattle before moving on to Broadway in November. The creative team behind the DreamWorks musical is impressive (even if the subject matter isn’t): Oscar-winner Sam Mendes is an artistic consultant (and sort of got the project rolling); Jeanine Tesori (Caroline, Or Change); Pulitzer Prize-winner David Lindsay-Abaire (Rabbit Hole) penned the book and lyrics; and Jason Moore (Avenue Q) is directing.

Moore has said the plot will follow the first movie, when Shrek joins up with his donkey cohort, Donkey, and falls in love with Princess Fiona.

Disney’s The Little Mermaid opened to reviews that were mostly piles of stinking fish. My impression, from reading those fragrant notices is that the show is overproduced, overstuffed and ought to have been thrown back early on. Still, I’d like to see it, if only to watch capable actors skate around on wheeled footwear.

With Mermaid packing in the family crowd, adult interest will shift to Passing Strange, the rock musical by Stew, Heidi Rodewald and director Annie Dorsen that had its pre-New York run at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. The show is transferring to Broadway and begins performances Feb. 8 at the Belasco Theatre.

The cast is the same one we saw in Berkeley in November 2006: de’Adre Aziza, Daniel Breaker, Eisa Davis, Colman Domingo, Chad Goodridge, Rebecca Naomi Jones and Stew, himself (with Rodewald on bass and vocals in the band).

And finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Shrek isn’t the only ogre on Broadway. Clay Aiken opened in Spamalot.

Tings certainly do happen when you’re Dan Hoyle.

The young performer, both author and performer of Tings Dey Happen, is this year’s winner of the Will Glickman Playwright Award, which brings with it a check for $4,000. The award is given annually to a playwright whose work makes its world premiere in the Bay Area.

In Tings, the dynamic Hoyle (son of great Bay Area actor/clown Geoff Hoyle) told the story of his experiences in Nigeria studying that country’s complicated — and dangerous — oil indsutry and its political fallout. The play had its premiere at San Francisco’s The Marsh, one of the country’s top theaters for the development of new solo work, and then went on to a well-received run in New York. Charlie Varon, a previous Glickman winner himself (for Rush Limbaugh in Night School), directed.

The Marsh, as producer of the work, will receive a plaque in honor of Hoyle’s achievement.

The Glickman Award, named for comedy writer and theater lover Will Glickman, is administrated by Theatre Bay Area, and the award committee comprises yours truly, Rob Hurwitt of the San Francisco Chronicle, Rob Avila of the Bay Guardian, Chloe Veltman of the SF Weekly and Karen D’Souza of the San Jose Mercury News.

Opened Jan. 19, 2007, Magic Theatre

Knights, princesses, justice battle in Magic’s bold Territories
three 1/2 stars (Riveting, re-imagined history)

History is full of incredible, intelligent, brave women who helped change the course of the world. Trouble is, because they were women living in unenlightened times or places, their names have been lost to us.

That is the basic inspiration for Betty Shamieh’s Territories, which had its world premiere last weekend at San Francisco’s Magic Theatre. This is Shamieh’s return to the Magic after the success of her drama The Black Eyed in 2005. From that production, Shamieh reunites with director Jessica Heidt and actor Nora el Samahy.

El Samahy plays Alia, a Muslim princess and sister to the Sultan, Saladin (Alfredo Narciso), the “famous Kurdish cur.” She is captured by the French knight Reginald de Chatillon (Rod Gnapp), a 12th-century Crusader bent on terrorizing the Middle East and helping his king (and the Pope) bring Jerusalem into the Christian fold.

While the basic facts of Shamieh’s play are backed up by history — the Christians were defeated by Saladin’s armies, and their loss led to the formation of the Third Crusade — the playwright exercises her creative muscle to delve behind the facts and surmise just how Saladin and Reginald came to blows.

Shamieh’s interesting take on the story gives us a crafty woman — Alia — for whom life has not been easy. Though born into royalty and beauty, Alia is considered a cripple because she suffers from debilitating seizures. Her chances of marriage are slim, and even her brother, who adores her, tells her bluntly: “You will not be loved.”

But Alia will be loved, and she will do everything in her power to protect her people and her country. She hatches a plan and sees it through, as she makes a dangerous pilgrimage to Mecca and, just as she guessed she would, is taken prisoner by Reginald.

Director Heidt’s incisive production is simple but effective. Melpomene Katakalos’ set, lit in golden tones by Ray Oppenheimer, is one of burnished Arabian grandeur. One side of the stage is Saladin’s palace, the other is Reginald’s dungeon, complete with instruments of torture. Behind the sheer curtain is percussionist Brandi Brandes punctuating the drama with an effective percussive score (sound design by Will McCandless).

When we first meet Alia, only her eyes are visible through her burka, but as the story unfolds, we see her in her flowing princess finery (gorgeous costumes by Fumiko Bielefeldt). Her softness and beauty contrasts greatly with Reginald’s chain-metal armor and his sadistic zeal when it comes to torturing his prisoners.

But the fierce Alia is different from any of Reginald’s other prisoners, and Shamieh handles their unusual love story — beautifully acted by el Samahy and Gnapp — with intelligence.

Though only about 70 minutes long, Territories feels substantial and relevant. Shamieh writes in a contemporary vernacular and finds ways to infuse humor into the sometimes tense action. When Reginald makes a grand pronouncement to Alia, she shoots back, “I came here a crippled virgin. Don’t flatter yourself.”

Heidt also lends the production a graceful touch with some nicely choreographed (by Monique Jenkinson) and highly stylized battle scenes. The choreography also comes into play when Alia has a seizure, and the world around her dances.

Whether it would really have been possible for the sister of the Sultan to inspire a clash between the Crusaders and the Muslims, who can say for sure? But Shamieh, in amending the book of history, asserts that women did all kinds of extraordinary things we can never know about because, in history’s eyes, they were nameless and faceless.

Territories gives us the name, face and bold deeds of one woman, and we leave the theater reminded that history rarely tells the whole story. It’s up to art to help fill in the blanks.

Territories continues through Feb, 10 at the Magic Theatre, Building D, Fort Mason Center, Marina Boulevard at Buchanan Street, San Francisco. Shows are at 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays; 2:30 and 7 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $20 to $45. Call 415-441-8822 or visit www.magictheatre.org for information.

Lucy Simon and I have something interesting in common. We both saw our first Broadway shows at the St. James Theatre. Hers was Carousel. Mine was The Secret Garden, which just happens to have a score by Simon.

During previews for The Secret Garden, which opened in 1991, Simon recalls standing backstage and feeling overwhelmed to be in the same theater where she fell in love with musical theater.

“I couldn’t believe it,” she says on the phone from her New York home. “I remember thinking, `My God, this is so surreal.’ ”

Simon would go on to receive a Tony Award nomination for her musical work on The Secret Garden, which won Tonys for Marsha Norman’s book, Heidi Landesman’s set and Daisy Egan’s performance as young Mary Lennox, the hero of the story.

More than 15 years later, the show, which received some scathing reviews, has proven to be something of classic. Community theaters produce it often, and here in the Bay Area, there’s a Secret Garden sprouting somewhere every season.

This season, it’s Lamplighters Music Theatre producing the musical with an orchestra performing the original-score orchestrations (a first since the Broadway production). The show opens today in San Francisco and continues through Sunday, Jan. 20, then moves to Walnut Creek for performances Jan. 31 through Feb. 2.

The Secret Garden marked the first Broadway score by Simon, the older sister of pop singer Carly Simon, though she had worked for years attempting to turn Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series into a musical.

“There were always book problems,” Simon says of the musical that never came to be. “It’s hard to do something so episodic. And it was my first time. Some of the songs were terrific, and I’d like to be able to use them in something.”

Simon, whose father Richard was a co-founder of publisher Simon & Schuster, was surrounded by music throughout her childhood. With sisters Carly and Joanna, who became an opera singer, Lucy would sing three-part harmonies. Even simple requests such as, “Please pass the milk,” would be sung.

Lucy and Carly teamed up in the ’60s as the folk duo the Simon Sisters, and Lucy later struck out on her own as a singer-songwriter.

Looking back on her duo days, Simon says she admires the harmony.

“If you listen to those recordings, you can still hear those harmonies in my music and in Carly’s music. I can think of two of my songs, including `Wick’ from The Secret Garden, that were influenced by those harmonies from when we were teenagers.”

After taking time off to have two children, Simon attempted to revive her singing career, but when she got up on stage, she remembers thinking: “This doesn’t feel right. I’m a mother now.”

But music had always been a significant part of her life, and she realized that the songs she liked to write were the ones that told stories — not about herself but about other people. That led her to musical theater, where she was able to write for a whole cast of characters.

“When I compose, I use my voice, so when writing for characters I had to expand my range, especially for the male characters,” Simon says.

Having been a singer, Simon says composing with her voice, as opposed to on a piano or a guitar, for instance, was a natural.

“I understand the value of having the right note on the right syllable with the right expression,” she says. “I guess my strength is being able to translate emotion into music.”

Since Secret Garden, Simon has been hard at work on a musical version of Doctor Zhivago, which had its premiere at the La Jolla Playhouse and is now slated for production later this year in London.

She’s also re-teaming with Norman on a musical adaptation of Wuthering Heights called Heathcliff.

Why does Simon put herself through the rigors of creating musicals?

“I can’t but do it,” she says. “I have to write. I have to sing. I have to make something. Whether it is ever heard or not, well…, maybe The Secret Garden will be the one everyone will know, and people will ask, `Whatever happened to Lucy Simon?’ But that’s OK. Secret Garden has gone out into the world very nicely. It’s my love child and is precious to me. I feel it was a gift given to us that we now give back to the world.”

The Secret Garden is at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St., San Francisco, this weekend. It moves to the Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek, Jan. 31-Feb. 3. Tickets are $11-$46. Call 415-978-2787 or 925-943-7469 or visit www.lamplighters.org.

Opened Jan. 16 on Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Thrust Stage

Hoch’s solo artistry takes `Over’
Three stars Brilliance and brio

Let there be no question about Danny Hoch’s genius. To throw around a few adjectives, the man is fascinating, funny, provocative, entertaining and powerful.

His new solo show, Taking Over, now having its world premiere on Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Thrust Stage, is more than just a collection of deft characterizations and finely tuned accents.

Taking Over, directed by Tony Taccone, is a real play about a real issue. Specifically, it’s about the gentrification of Hoch’s own neighborhood, the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. But the larger view of the piece has much more to do with American shortsightedness and greed as well as our blithe, unthinking adaptability.

In a hefty 100 minutes, Hoch plays nine characters (including himself) of different races, cultures and genders. Oddly, the only character that doesn’t quite convince is the one called “Danny, a performer.” But more on that in a minute.

The bookends of the show take place on a stage at the Williamsburg Community Day celebration. A native son, Robert, has hijacked the stage because he has something to say to all the newer residents, the ones who don’t belong there: “All you American crackers, get the f—out.”

He says it’s OK for the Hassidic Jews in the projects to stay. And the black folks, and the Italians, and the Puerto Ricans and the Poles, among others. But, basically, all the white people from anywhere else in the country have business in Brooklyn, so they should take their bars and galleries and cafes and over-priced baby stores and head back to the suburbs or the square states — or California — or wherever they came from.

Who really belongs in a city, to a city? Is it Francque, the French real estate magnate selling lofts with Manhattan views for a million-plus? Is it Marion, the black social worker who sits on her stoop interacting with her neighbors and simultaneously bemoaning the influx of high-priced eateries and waxing poetic about their almond croissants?

Is it Stuart Guttberg, a hugely successful developer with 3,000 vacancies to fill and a $300 million loan to pay back who wants to give new residents a safe neighborhood but “with the right level of zing”? Or maybe it’s Kaitlin, a sweet, dippy hippie from Michigan who peddles CDs and T-shirts from a cart on the street.

The most convincing argument comes from Kiko, whom we meet when he visits the movie location shoot just outside his apartment building. With his mother watching from a window above, Kiko approaches a production assistant and, all the while attempting to maintain his dignity, essentially begs for a show job so that his mother can see how he’s trying to get his life back on track now that he’s out of prison.

Hoch’s writing and acting synergize in this scene so powerfully, and the character becomes so vivid, so complex, it almost stops the show. Here is old-guard Brooklyn, someone who survived the drug-laden ‘80s and did his time as a result, and now finds his home to be squeezing him out.

The sea changes in Brooklyn are felt in all the scenes. A Dominican taxi dispatcher unleashes a torrent of bile and foul language across the radio to her drivers (in Spanish, no less, with supertitles projected on the set), then refuses to allow her siblings to speak anything but English so people don’t think they’re ignorant immigrants.

A rapper, Launch Missles Critical, who has nothing good to say about the new Brooklyn, finds his tough-guy stance somewhat diminished by having to perform in the only venue that will welcome him: a pretentious arts center.

Then there’s Danny, who drops the costumes (by Annie Smart, who also designed the effectively minimalist set) and the accents to talk about his ‘hood. But he does some from behind a music stand, and he reads his text. When he should be connecting with his audience personally, he’s hiding behind pages and a stand. It’s strange _ maybe he had just written the scene and hadn’t yet memorized it. Whatever the reason, the scene is dodgy. What Hoch has to say – about making art wherever you’re from, even if the people there are, in your opinion, ignorant – is important. How he’s saying it doesn’t work nearly as well as the rest of his show.

And his show’s ending, a return to Robert, the angry Brooklynite, delves into tricky emotional waters involving 9/11, and it seems separate from the rest of the show. There’s a whole soy milk monologue that seems to come from nowhere, and, if this scene really were happening on a public stage at a neighborhood community day, it would never be allowed. There’s a believability gap in a scene that’s already asking us to take an emotional leap that’s more of a stumble.

Even with its bumpy ending, Taking Over is an extraordinary evening spent in the company of one man who fills the stage with compelling people and a compelling argument for living a more examined life, wherever that life might happen to be.

Taking Over continues through Feb. 10 on Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley. Tickets are $33-$69. Call 510-647-2949 or visit www.berkeleyrep.org for information.

opened Jan. 13, 2007 at Traveling Jewish Theatre, San Francisco

Wacky `Dead Mother’ springs to vibrant life
three 1/2 stars Shirley not to be missed

Dead Mother, contrary to its title, is quite a lively evening of theater.

The full title of David Greenspan’s wickedly playful, intelligent play, Dead Mother, Or Shirley Not All in Vain, gives you some idea of the writer’s general tone: funny, irreverent and secretly serious.

A co-production of San Francisco theater companies Traveling Jewish Theatre and Thick Description, Dead Mother opened marks the 17-year-old play’s first production since its premiere at New York’s Public Theater.

It’s easy to see why the play might scare companies less brave than TJT and Thick D. Here you have a farce involving sexual identity, cross-dressing, bestiality, Greek mythology, five acts and enough speedy dialogue to choke an untrained actor.

Thick D’s artistic director, Tony Kelly, is at the helm of Dead Mother, which is reassuring from the start, and he has assembled a cast of Bay Area stalwarts, all of whom do superb, even inspired, work here.

New York playwright (and actor and director) Greenspan seems to take his cue from Tony Kushner (Angels in America), who has called Greenspan “the most talented theater artist of my generation.” So, who knows? Maybe Kushner was inspired by Greenspan.

Whatever, Greenspan seems to relish breaking boundaries.

He sets up Dead Mother as a rollicking farce as Daniel (Gabriel Marin) has found the woman, Maxine (Deb Fink), he wants to marry. Trouble is, Maxine will only marry him if she can meet his mother, and Daniel’s imperious Jewish mother, Shirley, is dead.

Ever the creative thinker, Daniel goes to his brother, Harold (Liam Vincent).

It seems that years ago, while Shirley was still alive, Harold dressed up as his mother and successfully fooled his father, Melvin (Louis Parnell), into thinking he was Shirley.

If Harold is so convincing, why shouldn’t Harold pretend to be Shirley for just one more night so Maxine can be welcomed into the family?

Of course all goes swimmingly until Harold’s father shows up, sees his dead wife and is effectively convinced it’s her ghost.

This would all be so much gender-bending Neil Simon if Greenspan didn’t throw in some brainy, wacky stuff as well. When Maxine, Daniel, “Shirley” and Melvin go to the theater, we go with them and watch Greenspan’s randy take on the Greeks, with the cast playing the “actors” wearing togas with genitals on the outside (hilarious costumes are by Raul Aktanov).

Just what is all that Greek stuff? When Maxine gets back from the show, she asks the same question, but she says the play was “nice…we supported the arts and got out of the house.”

With the appearance of a sperm whale (played with Moby Dick style by Dena Martinez), the play heads off into self-conscious surrealism. Act 4 is performed as a reading, with the actors behind music stands, describing the epic action — Alice B. Toklas (played with elan by Corey Fischer) takes Harold on a guided tour through hell — that would be virtually impossible to stage on a shoestring budget.

The final scene is essentially a family drama, minus the farce, although Harold is still playing his mother, but the confrontations with his father are too intense and deeply felt to be comedy.
The epilogue, delivered gamely by Martinez, is far too conventional to wrap up a play that is so grandly — and oddly — entertaining.

Still, Dead Mother is a play that lingers because of the wonderful work by director Kelly and his actors — especially Vincent, whose extraordinary as Harold/Shirley with only a string of pearls to differentiate them, and Fink, who’s mile-a-minute mouth is a wonder.
Greenspan throws an awful lot onto the stage, but most of it works. Dead Mother is as audacious as it is funny, as head-spinning and confusing as it is beguiling and delightful.

Dead Mother, Or Shirley Not All in Vain continues through Feb. 17 at Traveling Jewish Theatre, 470 Florida St., San Francisco. Shows are at 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $31-$34. Call 800-838-3006 or visit www.atjt.com or www.thickhouse.org for information.