Last week I visited the Walt Disney Family Museum to catch an on the big screen showing of the classic Disney film MARY POPPINS. The museum offers a daily screening of a different Disney film each month, and I was very pleased that Poppins was chosen for this month. I’d wanted to attend one of the screenings ever since the museum opened in October, 2009, but was unable to find a film that caught my interest until now.

It’s a fascinating exercise to revisit a childhood favorite film in the present day. I used to watch Mary Poppins quite frequently, especially around Kindergarten and 1st grade, but its popularity faded for me as time went on. Coming back to it now, I notice all the subtleties and brilliance of the film. It’s an amazing technical achievement for its time, with the music, animation and stellar performances all around. The use of matte paintings is awkwardly obvious in a way that the child audience would not notice … but I feel that the animation more than makes up for it.

I notice the melancholia that reverberates from the film as one makes the mental transition from 1964 back to 2011. It’s true that the enduring artistic legacy of the film continues and is now represented with the Poppins musical. (Incidentally, that show premiered in London on December 15, 2004, and I should have gone, as it was my last day of drama school… but I was getting ready to tour the European continent.)

But there’s another side and that’s where the melancholy feel comes in. Disney himself passed away just two years later. Matthew Garber, aka Michael Banks, died in 1977 at a very young age. Julie Andrews lost the use of her magnificent singing voice in the late 1990’s. The Sherman Brothers, composers of the unforgettable musical melodies, were in fact bitter rivals – a detail that has only recently been revealed.

Nonetheless, the kindness of the film stands out. I felt grateful to be reminded of the happiness and creativity that exudes from a film like this. I notice that the Disney films from the mid 1960’s, including my personal favorite THAT DARN CAT, all have a similar maturity and integrity with their storytelling… in a way that does not exist in the cinemas today.

Show #14 brought another visit to ACT in the heart of SF’s primary theatre district. I must admit that I always notice the heightened theatricality of ACT at their Geary Theatre home. They are one of the only theatrical venues in San Francisco that maintains a classic, tri-leveled theatre space, with stalls, mezzanine and balcony levels. I often feel a slight sense of vertigo going up to their third level balcony (‘cause that’s where the cheap seats are) and having to squint down at the actors on the stage. I also recall my one visit there when I sat on the main level – in the first row, in fact – and had a direct eyeline to the actors and their expressive performance of the epic play WAR MUSIC in April 2009.

This time, I was there for THE HOMECOMING, a classic play by Harold Pinter. ACT’s artistic director, Cary Perloff, has been very expressive about her love of Pinter’s work. A carefully staged photograph of her working with Pinter himself in the early 1990’s is featured in the current ACT program, and Perloff says that she has been looking for a Pinter project to do since his passing in late 2008. She chose this play for their company member Rene Augesen, a versatile actress who has the pleasant problem of playing most of ACT’s female roles, as she is the only female core company member. Indeed, in THE HOMECOMING, Augesen tackles the showy role of Ruth, an enigmatic visitor to a testosterone filled North London house.

I loved the stylistic choices and nuances of this production. Both acts opened with sinister, macabre pieces of jazz music, setting the stage for the unease that was to come. The Pinter Pauses were respected and enhanced throughout the show. The direction clearly played to the stage’s advantages, with several careful tableaus etched in my memory. In particular, usage of chairs on the stage showed an attention to detail and curiosity about which character aligned or interacted the most with another.

The character choices were left wide open to debate and interpretation. The sole female character, Ruth, for example, is a woman of few words. I would dare say that her choices speak greater than her words. The patriarchal figure, Max, is prone to bellowing, but shows a softer and more inquisitive side in Act 2. That reminds me… I felt that Act 2 actually IMPROVED on Act 1 here, which I can’t say always happens in theatrical productions. The characters and/or staging seemed more engaged and layered. The aesthetic remained spare, with minimal underscoring during the scenes and actions speaking louder than words. The story could continue after the curtain went down, and it’s no surprise that Pinter continued to explore similar themes of manipulation and surprise in many of his later works.

I finally made my way to Stagebridge in Oakland for show #13, GRANDFATHER’S JOURNEY, a poignant and sentimental tale of immigration and multigenerational lives in Japan and the USA. Stagebridge is an unusual company that specializes in opportunities for elder (60+) individuals to participate in theatre. I first heard about their work and opportunities shortly after arriving in the Bay Area in the fall of 2008. I didn’t realize until this performance that they are actually inclusive of ALL ages, but place particular emphasis on working with older folks. I have a few connections to the company, where my current roommate was the composer and music director of this production, and Stagebridge itself offers yearly internship opportunities to students enrolled in my graduate school department. I could have worked there last year, but chose to do Shakespeare at San Quentin instead.

I wrote in my personal journal that I did not want to be overly critical of a piece that has such clearly positive intentions. I still feel that way, but did wonder about the choice to have a major character portrayed as a life size puppet, with another actor operating it for some, but not all, of the scenes. The same actor than portrayed a different character in other scenes. There seemed to be some modest technical challenges with the performance venue. Actors were miked, but the high ceilings of the space (a church) made it sometimes challenging to decipher their dialogue.

The production was clearly a labor of care for all the actors, with the lead grandfather role portrayed by an expressive film actor. The show was not very long, maybe 50 minutes, but clearly enjoyed by the audience members. Interestingly (to me), there were many members of the Bay Area Japanese community in attendance, drawn in by the multigenerational story line. I am sure that the leaders of Stagebridge appreciate their clear impact on their audiences and ability to draw across age ranges. Now that I’ve finally seen what they are about, I look forward to checking out another production or performance event they will offer.

How does a theatre (or any) company know it is a HOT company? How can it navigate the balance between an esteemed reputation and quality or quantity of product? Does the reputation of the company precede or enhance their business model? Their artistic choices? The audience experience?

I am sure that many organizations face those challenges at different points in their artistic careers. Within the Bay Area, the two organizations that most come to mind are the Shotgun Players in Berkeley and the SF Playhouse in San Francisco. Both have seen a meteoric rise in their local status over the past few years. Shotgun has navigated the transition well, with a particularly strong emphasis on visual and artistic identity through their work. SF Playhouse may have hung back slightly, as they have a smaller space, but they show no hesitation in the diversity of their artistic product. For example, the summer production they offer is often a familiar title – in 2009 it was ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST, while 2010 brought THE FANTASTICKS. They compliment those performances with more offbeat fare, such as the recent West Coast premiere of CORALINE and the first play I ever saw there, ABRAHAM LINCOLN’S BIG GAY DANCE PARTY, a local hit that went on to be a darling of the NYC Fringe Festival, even making it to a re-cast Off Broadway run last summer.

When I visit the SF Playhouse, which is relatively infrequently, I consistently find that their local identity casts a very long shadow over their productions. With this most recent excursion to see HARPER REGAN, an import from the National Theatre in London, I felt underwhelmed and I wanted to be dazzled. The last time I was at the Playhouse, for SLASHER in 2010, I felt amused but I wanted to be surprised and ecstatic. It seems that the mental bar for their productions is set very high for me, for some reason. On the flip side, when the scale of the production was more clearly stated, as in the smaller 2010 production of the new play SAFE HOUSE, I highly enjoyed and appreciated that show. It helped in that case that there were unusual similarities to my then-current class in psychopathology at graduate school.

I wanted to like Harper Regan, the character and the play, more than I actually did. As I explained, her (I’ll refer to the play as Harper) pedigree is exemplary. There seemed to be a quiet forcefulness around the play’s early scenes, particularly as Harper, played by company co-founder Susi Damilliano, attempts to break from her London job to visit her ill father in the north of England. Having spent significant time in the UK, I noticed the company’s strong voice work. It was telling, however, that everyone pronounced “what” the same way, like they were saying “wutt” to each other.

Harper continues on her odyssey, trusting more of her impulses as she returns to her Uxbridge home and deals with challenging immediate family situations. The action shifts to Manchester for the second third of the play, as she confronts her past in that northern city and a testy relationship with her mother. Meanwhile, her husband and daughter wonder about her well being, and her mother’s husband casually greets her as one of his own. Harper is left to determine her own course of action, and to me it felt like the play took the complicated exit line, which was particularly evident in an out of place closing scene set after Harper has returned home.
Harper’s story is thoroughly British in that the audience is not lectured to and is left to draw their own conclusions and thoughts about her actions. However, the jagged nature of the scenes, where only Harper’s immediate family members appear more than once, limited my identification with the story. I wanted to see the narrative go into more depth and storytelling, both about Harper’s predicament and her thought process. In this incarnation, she was present on stage, but given little opportunity to share her own cognitive process in the face of her challenges.