Orphée presented by Ensemble Parallèle

Eugene Brancoveanu as Orphée

Haunting, hypnotic, and dreamlike: these are the words that best describe Ensemble Parallèle's production of Orphée, presented for two evenings at the Herbst Theatre. The audience of the sold-out Herbst was full of excited anticipation for this San Francisco premiere . Orphée, composed in 1991 by Phillip Glass, is a “homage” to the famous french avant-garde artist and film director, Jean Cocteau. Orphée, based on the Greek myth of Orpheus, is the first part of a trilogy inspired by Cocteau's film La Belle et la Bête and his novel Les Enfants Terribles. Orphée is also a musical homage to various influential composers heard in the films, Bach being among them.

The Founder, Artistic Director, and Conductor of Ensemble Parallèle, the sprightly Nicole Paiement led her orchestra with vitality and passion. The opera began with the full orchestra on stage, and the cast occupying small landing spaces stage right and left of the main stage. With a nod to Cocteau's films, Stage Director Brian Staufenbiel in collaboration with video artist, Austin Forbord, utilized impressive floating framed video panels that enhanced the feeling of the blurring between the upper-world and the underworld, one of the major themes of the piece, and of Cocteau's film. As the opening scene came to an end, the orchestra slowly began to descend on an hydraulic platform and the action moved to the main stage where David Dunning's cubist set enhanced the feeling of “unreality” that the opera strove to express.

The score has the repetitive style, reminiscent of Glass, while also containing subtle nods to Kurt Weill, Bach and others. The cast was uniformly exceptional. Each performance was passionate, and well acted, and the voices were transcendent. Eugene Brancoveanu in the lead role of Orphée, conveyed the sense of loss and conflict required of the part and he did it with absolute commitment. Marnie Breckenridge, Princess of the Underworld, handled her difficult role with grace. She had the task of being both loving and evil. It's a hard thing to pull off, but she did it and she sounded fantastic. John Duykers, Heurtebise, was particularly impressive. His ability to convey a sense of loyalty to his princess, while at the same time, caring for the plight of the mortals was touching. The highlight of the piece was Act II. As the curtain rose the audience was introduced to the Underworld. Before us, in red and purple light was baritone, Phillip Skinner, playing the role of Judge. Flanked by a dragon, spewing forth steam, he stood nearly twenty feet in the air, wearing a white wig that was at least five feet high. It was an impressive site. His amplified baritone voice and haunting physicality created an riveting piece of theatre. The audience was also treated to three talented circus artists representing henchman of the underworld. Marina Luna hung from a fabric suspended from the ceiling where she performed acts of gymnastics that seemed to defy gravity. Rou Cyr Artist, David Pozanter, managed to create amazing feats on what can only be described as a gigantic hula hoop. Placing his body inside the hoop he circled the stage as the hoop carved its figures.

Phillip Glass has a particular gift of creating an atmosphere that seems to draw upon the subconscious and to cause the listener to feel as though they've just woken from a dream. Ensemble Parallèle succeeded completely in creating a spellbinding performance true to the intent of Glass and enhanced by superb acting and visual effects. 

www.ensembleparallele.com

My Review of Katya Smirnoff Skyy in SF Bay Times

Last week I wrote a review for a "V"onderful San Francisco cabaret act. Her name is Katya Smirnoff Skyy and she is the best. Here's the article..

Katya… a One Night Stand: Vonderful!!

Published: September 2, 2010

Joseph Kanon (piano) and Countess Katya Smirnoff-Skyy in Katya, A One Night Stand. By Ray Renati “We’ve known Katya since he… I mean she was a little girl,” a nice lady exclaimed as we waited in line at The Rrazz Room to see the fabulous Countess Katya Smirnoff-Skyy and her 90-minute, sold-out show, Katya... A One Night Stand. “Oh, yes,” the nice lady’s husband exclaimed, “the first time I saw him… um, her, was the day he was born.” In fact, the room that evening was filled with Katya’s devoted fans. Many knew her from her ongoing Sunday night appearances at Martuni’s Bar. And for most of the night the phrase, “We love you, Katya,” could be heard between songs from all corners of the room. The show began with Katya’s accompanist and musical director, Joseph Kanon (or, “Yo” as she affectionately calls him in her distinctive Russian accent) on the piano. Katya entered from the back of the room singing “Everything’s Coming Up Roses.” As she rounded the corner, her gracious soprano voice suddenly gave way to a rather gruff but hilarious baritone, “Get outa’ my VAY!” she snapped at an audience member whose feet were dangling in the aisle. From that moment on, the audience knew it was in for a Russian treat. Katya possesses the style and beauty one would expect of a Russian Countess. She wore a beautiful green evening gown, wonderfully adorned by her dresser Hilary Marking and designed by the gifted Mr. David. Halfway through the show she took a brief break to change into a gorgeous sequined black pants suit. Her hair was impeccable, the jewelry big and sparkly, and her nails the envy of every lady in the room. READ MORE ON THE SF BAY TIMES WEB SITE

Cutting Ball Gets Downd and Dirty

Mud: Drama. By Maria Irene Fornes. Directed by Paige Rogers. With Alan Kaiser, Marilet Martinez, Garth Petal. (Through Feb. 8. The Cutting Ball Theater at Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor St., San Francisco. 70 minutes. Tickets: $25-$30. Call (415) 419-3584 or go to www.cuttingball.com

Plays like Mud exemplify what I love about San Francisco. You can go see big, expensive productions like Wicked and have wonderful time, or you can go down the street to the heart of the Tenderloin to places like tiny The Cutting Ball and see, in your face, down and dirty,wonderfully conceived plays like Mud and be just as captivated, just as enthralled.

Mud is a vulgar, exhilarating, nightmarish and hypnotizing play. Its three characters reside in a rural, dirt poor apartment somewhere in the South. Mud explores the way in which those at the bottom of the food chain, strive for meaning in their lives. It's a sad and somewhat cynical commentary on poverty, and it's effect will sit with you for days. Wonderfully acted by Alan Kaiser, Marilet Martinez, and Garth Petal this is a show not for the faint of heart but for those looking for risky theatre, the kind of theatre that leads your heart and mind into new territories of consciousness.

Two Excellent Reviews for Pear Slices 2008

Review from the Mountain View Voice.

Arts & Entertainment - Friday, April 18, 2008
Superb slices from The Pear

by Alexa Tondreau
Who knew the folks at Mountain View's Pear Avenue Theatre were such serious multi-taskers?

Not only have they established themselves as being top-notch actors, directors and producers, but with Pear Slices 2008, these thespians have proved once and for all they can write, too.

Running through April 27, Pear Slices — now in its fifth year — is a unique treat of a theatrical experience. Perfect for the sort of crowd with attention spans attuned to television's eight- to 12-minute intervals between commercials, Pear Slices presents eight short plays over the course of a two-hour production. Each slice is written by a member of The Pear's writer's guild, and this year's selection includes a diverse group of material.

For instance, Pear Slices begins with a short called "Miss Direction," by V.B. Leghorn, which details the obsessive and stalker-ish relationship between a car's automated navigation system (personified with great comedic timing by Camila Frausto) and the car's driver. Sample line: "You hurt me to the micro-grade."

Sound unusual? Not compared to the next piece, "The Near-Death Experiment," by Richard Medugno, which tells the story of a serial killer on death row who, as part of an experiment hatched by an ambitious doctor, is momentarily killed and brought back to life again in order to study the transformative effects of such an experience.

If there is any unifying theme among the Pear Slices of 2008, it seems that a certain penchant for the bizarre and surreal connects the theatrical material in them all. And a sign of the high quality of writing here is that the playwrights successfully pull off a number of challenging themes which might have appeared silly or trivial in lesser hands.

Caryn Huberman's "Pig Me, Act II" manages to make the relationship between human and pig a nuanced and intimate thing. What appears at first to be a completely outlandish proposal on the playwright's part — that a woman and her talking pig live together, and that the pig has been genetically modified to provide her with replacement organs — turns into a sad yet powerful story about cross-species love and loyalty.
About half way through "Pig Me," you have the unnerving realization that you've become emotionally invested in the strange material. It's a feeling that comes again and again while watching Pear Slices.

Just as important in these productions are the eight actors, who make multiple appearances in a variety of challenging roles. John Romano and Ray Renati, who were so good as dueling brothers in The Pear's recent production of "True West," appear frequently and continue to raise the bar for acting on The Pear's stage. Romano is particularly memorable when playing Salvador Dali in Ross Peter Nelson's "Allegorical Construction with Ectoplasm and Soft Cheese, Act II," uttering such lines as "Dali is a flaming giraffe!" and "My madness is that I believe I'm not mad!" with total dead-pan sincerity.

Pear Slices has become one of Mountain View's best artistic traditions. Nestled just a block from the expansive Microsoft campus and situated on land recently purchased by Google, the theater reminds us that in the land of technology titans, the small, intimate and quirky deserve a place too.

Review from Metro Active.

Juicy

Pear Avenue presents eight short 'slices' of theater in one night

By Marianne Messina

THIS YEAR'S "Pear Slices" production at the Pear Avenue Theatre is a humorous eight-pack of 20-minute plays with quirky premises and surprisingly well-rounded arcs. Written by a handful of local playwrights and performed by an astute, versatile cast, the plays roll smoothly from one to the other by way of music, created by Michael Pease, which sets upcoming moods and themes. For example, the Beatles' song "Piggies" ("Have you seen the little piggies crawling in the dirt?") introduces Caryn Huberman's play Pig Me, in which a woman (Corrie Borris) befriends the articulate pig (Camila Frausto in pig nose) created with her DNA to be her future organ donor. In an acting tour de force, eight actors recycle through wildly varied characterizations; most ubiquitous is the all-purpose Ray Renati.

In V.B. Leghorn's play Miss Direction, Renati is a man in midlife crisis and the object of his Global Positioning System's affections (Frausto makes an amazing Grace, the GPS, producing the familiar digital-voice hitches to a T). A few moments later, Renati is in uniform guarding and abusing Luke (Matt Sameck), a criminal about to undergo an experimental cure in The Near-Death Experiment by Richard Medugno. Suddenly, in Ross Peter Nelson's Cheese Cubed, Renati plays a mop-haired film crewman working for Jessica's (like Sally Jessie) nasty talk show, and Frausto, the formerly bodiless GPS, has become the glamorous talk-show host with an underhanded modus operandi. She pits an unsuspecting art-gallery expert (Monica Cappuccini) against a former nemesis (John Romano), a pretentious artist.

Romano, who also plays the withdrawn, work-focused doctor testing his hypothesis in The Near-Death Experiment, goes on to play an extroverted, self-congratulating Salvador Dali—red sash, flowing cape, scrolling mustachio—in Allegorical Construction With Ectoplasm and Soft Cheese (also by Nelson). Romano's chest-thrusting Dali is as fascinating as Cappuccini's Gala, a brooding, dominant woman in flowing dark hair, fluttery gold dress and black beads (costumes by Mae Heagerty Matos and Gail Farmer). With two projected images, the play draws a comparison between a Dali painting and a photograph from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, suggesting how one inspired the other by way of a few "ectoplasmic" (deceased) visitors.

Directed either by Kristen Lo or Michael Pease in no particular order, the plays have simple blue-box sets, dressed with the occasional coconut palm tree (Ron Gasparinetti, set design) and ending with a king-size bed for the Dali slice and The Perfect Match. In the latter, in a kind of reverse psychology, a woman picks up a man for no-strings sex, and their mutual distaste for forming any kind of bond becomes their special bond. Possibly the most serious "slice," Paul Braverman's The Castaway, manages to draw us into the inside of a bipolar man's worldview. Gradually, as Donny's (Sameck) interpretation melts into the "real facts," the play shifts from funny to poignant. Years past have included the sinister and the sad among the eight Pear Slices, but this year's fare keeps it light—other than The Castaway and a sentimental moment in Pig Me—and instead, the slices draw their eight engaging journeys from the ironic, the clever and the revelatory.

PEAR SLICES, eight short plays presented by Pear Avenue Theatre, plays Thursday–Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 2pm at the Pear, 1220 Pear Ave., Unit K, Mountain View. Tickets are $15–$30. (650.254.1148)