San Francisco Music Blog

​Selene Luna's "I Don't Care Anymore" @ The Dark Room

"Selene Luna is a real nice lady. Never mind that she takes her clothes off in public, tells dirty jokes onstage, and makes mean fun of bigots. What makes her nice is that she didn't punch Chelsea Handler.

Luna, the star of a new one-woman show called 'I Don't Care Anymore,' is a good pal of Margaret Cho's, and appeared with the comedian on Chelsea Lately. The host of the show proceeded to do her usual painfully awkward and semifunny thing, peppered with lines like, "They all know each other, don't they, the little people? You're so cute! Oh, and you're sexual? Well, that's ... wow, really?" Luna stands only 3 feet 10 inches tall, but her heart must be giant, since it kept her from cussing the blonde and walking off the show.

As funny and talented as she is tolerant of Chelsea Handler, Luna wrote her new show using stories gathered from her Los Angeles showbiz career. The woman also has style coming out of her ears and a strong desire to mock stereotypes, exactly not like Chelsea Handler.

Luna performs tonight at the Dark Room, 8 p.m., $10"  -Hiya Swanhuyser

The Who's Tommy
The Victoria Theatre
Friday, Oct. 16, 2009


Better than:​ Pinball. I suck at pinball.

On the way home after Ray of Light Theatre's production of the Who's Tommy, I asked the boyfriend what would have made for a better evening -- seeing the show we just saw, or lounging around at home listening to the Who's album, with the requisite substances on hand? He came down firmly on the side of the album plus substances. I wasn't quite prepared to dismiss the performance's merits entirely. But then I have an inherent soft spot for amateurish (using the word as nonpejoratively as possible) stagings of Tommy.

The Ray of Light's entire cast, under the direction of Shane Ray, acts with winning enthusiasm, and takes obvious pleasure in the material.  Watching the show, you want them to succeed in their roles. If nothing else, they make the audience root for them. Is this enough to make a paying guest overlook the fact that the singing is uneven and occasionally off-key, the acting ranges from clichéd to hammy, and the sets are for the most part unimaginative?  To each his or her own.

Leave it to theater folks to make a (cute) little movie out of a Weekly Best Of award. The "best theater company in San Francisco" category winners from our staff (Sleepwalkers) and as chosen by our readers (Piano Fight) duke it out on YouTube.  

Ukranian illusionist Eugeniy Voronin in Teatro Zinzanni's "Sultry Summer Magic"

As Teatro Zinzanni's new show, "Sultry Summer Magic," came to a close beneath the giant spiegeltent (that's the fancy Belgian word meaning "mirror tent") at Pier 29 Wednesday night, I only had one question. Why had I lived in San Francisco for more than a year and never been given a proper explanation - via friends, newspapers, or even marketing - of this show?

 

As I sat down to write about it, though, I quickly figured out the answer. Beyond the fact that tickets range from $117 to $167, which means that the attendants are mostly tourists and filthy rich people with whom I don't normally associate, there are two barriers to learning about Zinzanni. The first is that the broad words that likely come to mind to describe it - mysterious! surprising! wondrous! - are practically meaningless. If someone told me that performance was full of mystery and surprise, I probably smiled, ignored that person, and forgot about it.

 

But the other option - to tell somebody about the specifics - seems an even greater disservice. It would taint the best part of Zinzanni, which is, aside from the incredible talent of its performers, its sheer unpredictability. What is given away and not given away needs careful balancing, perhaps as careful as a performance of, say, the tango on a trapeze (which is, in fact, part of the show).

Collection of Merrill C. Berman, New York

Natan Altman, Poster for Jewish Luck, 1925.

Preview Night
Chagall and the Artists of the Russian Jewish Theater (1919-1949)
The Contemporary Jewish Museum
April 22, 2009

The new exhibit at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, Chagall and the Artists of the Russian Jewish Theater, opening today, is structured like a play: the birth, the prolific adulthood, then death from unnatural causes.

The exhibit chronicles a short, but intense period of history that influenced not only Russia and the Jewish diaspora, but theater all over the world.

The starting point is the flowering of the Russian Jewish theater in 1917. Why 1917? Because prior to that, the Jews were banned from cities and confined to small towns strewn across Ukraine, Belorussia, Poland and beyond. Think Fiddler on the Roof minus the Oscars and the nifty costumes. (And add the anti-Semitic writing of celebrated Russian novelists like Dostoyevsky and Gogol, to get a better picture.)

Finally, liberated by the Russian revolution, the two Jewish theaters flourished in Moscow, got government support and unleashed a creative torrent upon the Russians, who had mixed feelings about this whole thing to begin with.

David Cox as Rigoletto

Verdi's Rigoletto
Cowell Theater, Fort Mason
April 17, 2009
Better than: Most other artistic endeavors involving singing clowns.

Feminists beware: Any production of Giuseppe Verdi's 1851 Rigoletto may send you fleeing to a more, well, empowering environment at the intermission -- and that's before the iconic aria "La donna é mobile" ("Woman is fickle") documents our flaws. Which would be a shame, because San Francisco Lyric Opera's current production of this operatic classic is eminently worth sticking around for.

The action transpires in the Italian town of Mantua, here updated to resemble the sleazy gangland Chicago of the 1920s. You half expect Bad, Bad Leroy Brown to put in an appearance, but the resident scumbag in this case is the Duke (tenor Jesús León), an incurable womanizer whose retinue includes the titular jester, Rigoletto (baritone David Cox), whose antics largely serve to prop up the Duke's ego at the expense of his rivals. (The Duke's retinue also includes, amusingly enough, a dreadlocked thug with a tommy gun -- the keeper of the ducal stash, perhaps?)

Thomas Blake Jr.

Point Break Live!
Cellspace
April 10, 2009
Better than: Plays that don't require protective clothing.

Inflating the sheer absurdity of the 1991 Keanu Reeves/Patrick Swayze bank - robbing - surfer - action - homoerotic - extreme - sports - thriller - American classic Point Break seems like an impossible task. You might as well try to make tomatoes taste more like tomatoes. How does one make a parody of something that is already such a perfect parody of itself? Why would you even try? Maybe it's because you knew the result would be Point Break Live!, brainchild of Jamie Keeling.

Upon entering the theater, every attendee of PBL! is supplied with a plastic baggy that contains a cheap plastic poncho and some fake dollar bills. The poncho is provided to protect audience members from what promises to be a very wet show. The rain garments all have little pointed plastic hoods, which had the strange effect of making attendees look like tiny, outdoors oriented members of the KKK. The sound of beers being cracked open and excited murmuring was accompanied by the white noise of plastic crinkling. The stage was decorated with nothing but a poorly constructed island sprouting an inflatable palm tree. More promising sets have been produced at Summer Camps. But you don't go to PBL! for the frills.

American Idiots: Green Day

If the soon-to-be-inescapable buzz around Green Day's upcoming album, 21st Century Breakdown wasn't loud enough, the East Bay boys jaded punx love to hate (and the music industry bows down to as one of its few remaining commercially-viable acts) have added yet more cultural cache to their already- (leather) studded resume.

As the Chron's Bob Hurwitt--one of the last honest entertainment writers still employed by the MSM--announced  yesterday, Berkeley Repertory Theatre will be producing a play based around G'Day's American Idiot which will contain musical selections both from that album and from the new Green Day opus (sorry, Dookie and Kerplunk! fans). The play will debut in September, and will run through October. The story of  disillusioned American youth who travel to the Middle East in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks sounds promising; we're betting it will be less cornier than "Mamma Mia" and less-symphonic than the Who's "Tommy."

But if this news conjures visions of hot thesbian scenes featuring a guylinered-up Billie Joe Armstrong, hate to have to break it to you, but Green Day will not be appearing on stage in the play - others will be performing their music. Still, this is good news for fans of the Rock Opera, a somewhat underutilized concept in this day and age.

(Magic Theatre Artistic Director Loretta Greco by David Allen)

San Francisco's Magic Theatre -- a 42-year old institution dedicated to showcasing new and emerging playwrights -- has been hit hard by our crap economy. Will Harper previously reported that the space was in danger of shuttering if it didn't raise $350,000 by Jan. 9. While today could have marked the theater's doomsday, the news now is that the deadline for donations has been extended until Monday at midnight. As of this morning, fans and patrons have kicked down an impressive $280,021 (in bundles of $5,000 a "seat"). Magic Theater  is looking to scrounge up an additional $70,000 this weekend to stay in business.

Theater critic Chloe Veltman wrote this week that the recession is taking its toll on the performing arts. As the Weekly was about to go to press, more bad news emerged: San Francisco's famed Magic Theatre may have to cancel its 2009 season if it can't raise $350,000 by Jan. 9.

A statement posted on the Magic's Web site blamed the theater's woes on its "accumulated debt of $600,000, combined with sharp declines in earned and contributed revenue due to the global economy."

The announcement comes early in the tenure of artistic director Loretta Greco, whose first two productions -- The K of D and Evie's Waltz -- opened to critical acclaim. Greco came to the Magic earlier this year from New York. -- Will Harper

Photo: The Magic launched the career of playwright Sam Shepard.

It's the opposite of a chick flick: Tony Kelly's play Blade to the Heat is a manly thing, brought to you in sweaty real-time. It's got no chick appeal, (although women like it fine) and it's not a movie with camera tricks or fakery. Instead, Blade is an on-stage story about a boxer; a gay, mixed-race, fucked-up boxer confused by his own success in the rat-filled world of pugilism in 1959. This run is a revival of the Thick Description company's 1997 production of Blade, which was a hit -- sold-out and extended. Several actors reprise their roles, such as Rhonnie Washington and L. Peter Callender, and they're joined by newcomers like Johnny Moreno, Victor Ballesteros, and Carlos Baron. Latin jazz laces the show up tight as great accompaniment to a tale of quick, complicated men. Date/Time: February 18 until March 16, 8:00pm Price: $15-$30 TIckets available online. By Hiya Swanhuyser

"In an apocalyptic future, two women are invited to dine at the home of a wealthy, lonely stranger. As they eat and drink, they reckon with the complexities of their pasts and the maddening nature of love, death, and poverty. Brainpeople is an A.C.T. world-premiere production and newest work by José Rivera, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of The Motorcycle Diaries (A.C.T)." Tickets available online.

If Caroline Hwang's urban art that speaks about the human condition isn't quite your thing, then I'll bet professional wrestling is more up your alley. Bay Area mullet-heads rejoice, because local promotion Fog City Wrestling throws its premiere event next weekend at CELLspace. Get ready for some big ol' Samoan booty action, as former WWE sensation Rikishi is scheduled to sign autographs. Big boot to the midsection:

January 12, 2008

Fog City Wrestling

Bay Area Wrestling fans are already up in
a fever trying to imagine what Fog City
will bring them at the inaugural event at CELLspace

resale:
tickets@fogcitywrestling.com
415 845 2360
DON’T SLEEP!! THEY ARE GOING FAST!!!!!!!

Fans will get to witness:
Junior Fatu in the Main Event
Mr. PrimeTime v. The Black Pearl
Vaquero Fantasma, Dynamo, & El Chupacabra
v. Ulysses, Fuerza Infernal, & Deluto
Tito Aquino v. Ryan von Kool (w/ Chico Navarro)
Plus: Jason Styles, WildStorm,
Dylan Drake, Kimo & Shooter Mike Silva
As always the card is subject to change
During Intermission , former WWE SMACKDOWN
superstars Rikishi & Luther Reigns (now Big Luther)
will be signing autographs inside the COLD STEELE
autograph pit.
www.fogcitywrestling.com
415.845-2360

A music column by David Downs

Eighteen-year-old Josh Strohl winces as a crowd of 500 merciless hecklers boo him tonight.

We're inside the dark, cavernous UC Berkeley MLK Student Union Friday, November 3, 2007 to bear witness the the galaxy's #1 cartoon metal band, DethKlok in real life. Strohl is the opener, or rather, the sacrificial lamb.

The skinny little hessian from the East Bay suburb of Pleasanton, CA. has accidentally won first place in a Guitar Hero III video game tournament. Now his punishment involves mangling Tenacious D's “Metal” before an angry mob.

Trying to explain the Bay Area arts scene to people from other parts of the country can be a frustrating experience. ASD theater critic Chloe Veltman explains why.

Today I'd like to talk about perceptions of Bay Area culture by people in other parts of the country. In short, they don't think we have any. Over the weekend, I was at a conference in Chicago. I can't tell you how many times I got into conversations with well-educated people from elsewhere (I was at a symposium for doctors aimed at ingraining humanistic care within the medical profession) about the Bay Area which would go something like this:

Dr. X: "So, you come from San Francisco?"
Chloe V: "Yes."
Dr. X: "I love San Francisco. It's a beautiful city."
Chloe V: "Yes, it really is. I love it too. I came here thinking I'd stay a year or so and now seven have passed."
Dr. X: "So what do you do there?"
Chloe V: "Well, I'm an arts journalist. A theater critic mostly, in fact. I work for a publication called SF Weekly."
Dr. X: "Theater? Huh." [long silence.]

Somehow, it didn't seem as wrong in the moment. ... Photos from San Francisco's world-class, leather and bondage-themed street fair, Sunday September 30, 2007. We'll have more all week, so come back, if that's what you're in to.

ASD theater expert Chloe Veltman brings back the highlights from a recent talk with creepy, yet famed SF director Robert Woodruff, who seems a bit mad, and way cooler than all of our drama teachers in high school. Favorite quote: JM: What do you think of the idea that poverty makes for good art?
 RW: That idea is full of shit. Hit it, 

CV. -d2

Woodruff the Waffler
By Chloe Veltman

By WILL HARPER

For anyone who grew up on Sesame Street, you’ll know what I mean when I say you haven’t lived until you’ve seen muppets doing it doggy style and 69ing each other. Avenue Q, the Tony Award winning musical from off-Broadway, is a delightfully crass sendup of Sesame Street. The centerpiece of the set is a model of a rundown New York brownstone populated by, among others, Kate Monster (Kelli Sawyer); a recent college grad, Princeton (Robert McClure); Internet-porn lover Trekkie Monster (Christian Anderson), two Ernie and Bert knockoffs, Nicky and Rod (the latter of whom is a closeted homosexual); and the building superintendent, former child actor Gary Coleman (played by a woman, Carla Renata). Think of it as Melrose Place with muppets.

The story begins with Princeton arriving on Avenue Q singing, “What do you do with a BA in English?” Something of a love story ensues between Princeton and Kate Monster, but the plot is almost superfluous. The songs are what give the show its bite, especially a hilariously politically incorrect number, “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist.” “Ethnic jokes might be uncouth,” the cast sings, “but you laugh because they’re based on truth.”

It takes some time to get used to the actors being onstage with their puppets (imagine if you could see Frank Oz standing next to Miss Piggy mouthing “Kermie”). But after acclimating, the actors’ presence enhances the production--the cast, by the way, is fantastic all around--adding comic expressions that even the most gifted puppet can’t make.

Through Sept. 2. Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market St., San Francisco. Two hours, 10 minutes. Tickets: $30-$90. Call 512-7770 visit www.shnsf.com