Loving Loveland at the Marsh

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I haven't seen everything at the Marsh - the theater runs so many performances at any given time that it's tough to keep up - but I've yet to see anything really awful. Which is saying something, actually, since the Marsh specializes in one-person shows, and I've seen enough terrible one-person shows to make me very leery of them. (Nothing's worse than watching some guy enact his boring midlife crisis on a bare stage for 90 minutes.)

Right now, the Marsh's offerings are even stronger than usual. Dan Hoyle just premiered his much-anticipated The Real Americans (review forthcoming in the February 24 issue of SF Weekly). And Ann Randolph (of Squeeze Box fame) is back with an extended run of Loveland, the story of a cheerfully-deranged woman taking her mother's ashes from California to Ohio.

People often compare Randolph to the late Gilda Radner, and for good reason. Randolph's alter ego, Frannie Potts, has a clenched, manic energy similar to Radner's Rosanne Rosannadanna, and both characters are fond of wild-eyed digressions. But one of the most striking things about Loveland--and what differentiates it from Radner's freewheeling improvisations--is how the show is both maniacally entertaining and thoughtfully constructed. It traces an arc from the West Coast to the Midwest, with Potts passing the time by reminiscing about her chain-smoking mother (and occasionally fantasizing about the pilot's sultry, come-hither voice).

The result is hilarious, yes, but also unexpectedly profound. And even though I could've done without some of the play's more heart-tugging moments, Loveland is reason enough to agree to watch Ann Randolph do just about anything.