Maya Drake (left) and Roz White in "Hell's Kitchen."                                             Photo by Marc J. Franklin

            No question “Hell’s Kitchen” is entertaining. It has the musical artistry of Alicia Keys, for starters. Also kinetic choreography by Camille A. Brown and the scenic design of the dependably ingenious Robert Brill.
            Story-wise? Yes, I know the book by Pulitzer Prize winner (for the much more daring “The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity”) Kristoffer Diaz, written over the course of 13 years in partnership with Keys, is inspired by her personal bio growing up as a teenager in Manhattan in the ‘90s. So there’s some narrative integrity there. But in two and a half hours the “Hell’s Kitchen” tale tries to tackle far too much without completely committing to a thematic focal point.
            Is it Ali’s (the name for Keys) relationship with her mother? With her absent father? Is it her infatuation with a young painter (of the non-artistic kind) who isn’t aware that she’s only 17? Is it her tutelage by a wise and inspiring musician, Miss Liza Jane, who resides on another floor in young Ali’s apartment building? Is it her discovery of the transformative power of music and subsequent drive to make that her life?
            As the national touring production of “Hell’s Kitchen” suggests, it’s ALL of these, and by the rousing finale, a high-tech salute to New York City, there’s no definitive answer.
            A talented cast led by recent high school graduate (!) Maya Drake as Ali overcomes the too-busy script, and with “Hell’s Kitchen” practically being an Alicia Keys jukebox musical maybe it doesn’t matter that much to audiences. Hearing “Girl on Fire” and “No One” and the Big Apple anthem “Empire State of Mind” may be enough. The live accompanying band led by music director Emily Orr is a truly outstanding one, too.
            Enjoying nearly as much time in the spotlight as Drake is Kennedy Caughell playing her helicoptering mother Jersey. She’s got the pipes for emotionally charged numbers but often sounds like she’s overdoing it, and to me there’s too much mom and not enough absent dad (Desmond Sean Ellington as Ali’s father Davis) in this show. Ellington’s is a lovely, R&B-flavored voice but the storyline keeps bringing him in, then taking him out, then bringing him in, etcetera.
            Roz White’s Miss Eliza Jane is a stately and powerful presence in “Hell’s Kitchen”; no wonder young Ali is drawn to her – and vice versa. Her rendition of Keys’ “Perfect Way to Die” is a potent closer to the first act.
            “Hell’s Kitchen” is a musical of palpable energy with a winning heroine and lots of flash, but there aren’t many surprises and in the end Diaz’s book is no match for Keys’ varied and sometimes adventurous songwriting.
            “Hell’s Kitchen” runs through Aug. 16 at the Civic Theatre, downtown.

Tally Sessions and Eden Espinosa in "Much Ado About Nothing."                        Photo by Rich Soublet II

            I always liked “Wichita Lineman,” the ballad written by Jimmy Webb and turned into a major hit for Glen Campbell in 1968.
            I didn’t expect to hear it, for the first time in forever, in a production of “Much Ado About Nothing.”
            But there it was, faithfully sung by Tally Sessions, playing staunch bachelor Benedick (of the wittily bantering Beatrice & Benedick) in the Globe’s new production of one of Shakespeare’s best loved comedies. The setting? A karaoke party, Messina style, where prior to Benedick’s turn at the mic a giddy gang of volunteers had been taking a crack at the impossible-to-sing a-ha tune “Take On Me.”
            Don’t remember this from the “Much Ado About Nothing” you saw the last time somewhere?
            It’s not so much the re-imagining of the storytelling as it is the emphasis on a decided and certainly varied musical presence that characterizes this “Much Ado” directed by the Globe’s Barry Edelstein. It could be regarded as Edelstein’s tribute to the “music” of Shakespeare in every sense of the word – the language, the emotions, the vibe, if you will.
            As such the Globe cast musical theater veterans Sessions and the stupendous Eden Espinosa, a pair that has worked multiple times together, including twice before here. Their musical theater gifts are unquestionable. Their chemistry onstage as one of Shakespeare’s most delicious couples is irresistible.
            Both have opportunities to sing in this “Much Ado,” particularly Espinosa (last seen locally in La Jolla Playhouse’s “Lempicka”). While I have no idea why Sessions is given “Wichita Lineman” or really what that song has to do with what’s going on, it’s his musical highlight. Espinosa, meanwhile, opens the production with a lovely “Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,” has absolutely no trouble with “Take On Me,” and she gets to truly shine brightest in the show-closing finale.
            All the characters, as this production is conceived, are very much aware that this is a musical “Much Ado About Nothing,” to the point of cueing musician Morgan Hollingsworth in the rafters. Who will sing what and when is a constant surprise. Why is a valid question, but all is executed in the spirit of fun.
            It’s the production’s original music by Curtis Moore (last year’s “Regency Girls,” et al) that is most enticing throughout.
            This “Much Ado” is also rife with pop culture and contemporary references, and strategic departures from the Bard’s text, furthering the notion that the doings are not to be taken too seriously. My favorite’s when Sessions’ Benedick evokes Bill Shatner’s infamous “Khaaaaan!” I wonder if anybody else on opening night caught that.
            If there’s a problem with “Much Ado About Nothing” the play is that who cares about the supposed “main plot,” the romantic travails between Claudio (Ainsley Melham) and Hero (Stephanie Hinck)? When Beatrice and Benedick are both offstage the play is neither as amusing nor as interesting. It’s their “merry war” of words that Shakespeare crafted on their behalf that gives life and love and magic to an otherwise well-trod tale of courtship, deceptions and misunderstanding.
            This is Espinosa’s first Shakespearean role and you’d never know it. She’s deft and rhythmic and delightful. All but Sessions, fittingly, are pure background when she’s at the fore. She shows us her comic chops too in an unlikely scene set in an spa with cold plunge and sauna. I think you have to be there.
            The denizens of Messina so familiar by name to those who know “Much Ado” are contemporized even as they adhere to Shakespeare’s text. A backdrop by scenic designer Lawrence E. Moten is old world enough but the pre-eminent look is what he describes in the show’s program as “Acid Warhol Pop.” Besides the karaoke machine, characters have a blackjack table to play around, cocktails in martini glasses to hoist, the aforementioned spa accoutrements and an electric guitar that the scheming Don John (Jose Balistrieri) wields with ferocity.
            The beauty of “Much Ado About Nothing” is the Beatrice/Benedick relationship with all its pluck and intelligence. Even when employing the language of The Bard they could be a loves me/loves me not couple of today, neither willing to give an inch or be the first to acknowledge the most genuine feeling for the other, both full of life and bright as sunburst. Espinosa and Sessions are as luminous as I’ve seen.
            If you know this play you also know there’s a Jar Jar Binks of a character, the epitome of irritating: the constable, Dogberry. But some theatergoers love him just the same. At the Globe he’s played big by Jimmy Smagula like comic relief right out of a “Sopranos” episode. Bada bing, bada boom!
            This is about the fifth time I’ve seen “Much Ado,” including twice before at the Globe (in 2018 and back in 2003), and I also recall a 2014 production by bygone Intrepid Shakespeare Company that was quite a hoot.
            None of them invited you to a party as heartily as this new “Much Ado” does, promising masked karaoke singing, drinks, dancing and throwaway references to everyone from Bob Dylan to Olivia Rodrigo.
            “Man is a giddy thing,” Benedick declares before he weds.
            There’s enough giddiness to go around in this production, and it’s usually set to music.
            “Much Ado About Nothing” runs through Aug. 30 in the Old Globe’s Lowell Davies Festival Theatre.

Left to right: Siblings Daniel (Marc delaCruz), Mia (Aury Krebs) and Charlotte (Courtney Reed) in "The Family Album" at La Jolla Playhouse.                                                                        Photo by Rich Soublet II

            A “family album” might sound anachronistic. For one, digital photography has made those dusty, often-leather-bound collections of family pictures all but obsolete. For another, digital audio streaming services have made the term “album,” as in an artist’s collection of songs, sound like a throwback term at best.
            But just maybe the creators of the new musical “The Family Album” thought about this and wanted to make a point: that images of our own families exist in our minds and in our hearts, if not necessarily in leather-bound books; that songs too, especially those inspired by the people we love (or struggle to love) also reside in our hearts and minds.
            Those creators of the La Jolla Playhouse-commissioned “The Family Album” are composers MILCK (Connie K. Kim) and AG (Adrianne Gonzalez), book writer Sam Chanse and director Jess McLeod. Their extended one-act musical (it should have been two) is world-premiering in the Playhouse’s Potiker Theatre.
            The attraction of “The Family Album” is in its essential relatability. Who among us hasn’t felt a disconnect with our dysfunctional family? Who hasn’t sought common ground with a sibling, or more often with a parent, and sometimes discovered it in a shared pain? Who doesn’t want to be free but also yearns to belong?
            These are universal questions but familiar ones. Sincere and imaginatively staged as it is, “The Family Album” doesn’t feel as if it breaks any new thematic or narrative ground. Family members keeping secrets. Sibling rivalries and resentment. Deep-seated mother/daughter conflict. Been there, sung that?
            But there are nuances here. Daughter Mia (Aury Krebs) is a singer-songwriter with one obscure album under her belt, toiling from gig to gig and dreaming of the big time. This avocation quite naturally functions with a stage musical. Mia can not only show us her talent but she can express her feelings about the family from which  she is distant if not completely estranged, especially her mother Sylvia (Jodi Long). Then there’s Mia’s inner id, from which literally springs a quartet of tall, menacing costumed cat figures whenever she’s feeling angry or overwhelmed. (Didn’t I see them at Comic-Con?)
            Mia’s is an Asian-American immigrant family with high expectations for itself and for each other. With her brother Daniel (Marc delaCruz) a rising hedge-fund manager and her sister Charlotte (Courtney Reed) a dermatologist and mom, Mia is convinced she’s viewed as the underachiever, the family flop. Her parents, chiefly her mother, are more interested in Mia’s getting married (which she isn’t) than in her career making music, which is regarded as a phase.
            Yet after foreshadowing what’s to come in the show’s opening number “No Home At All,” Mia rushes to the family hearth when informed in a terse phone call from her sister that “Mom’s dying.”
            Let the mind games begin.
            Not only is Mom not dying, but she’s up on her feet vacuuming the living room, her one arm in a sling, when Mia arrives. “Struck down by a bicycle,” daughter is told. This seems as unlikely as the “she’s dying” message, and so it will be.
            From there ensues much uncomfortable feeling-out among the family with everyone on edge. There are moments of lightness in between as when the sisters “salute” do-no-wrong (should we say goodie-goodie?) brother Daniel in “Golden Child.”
            But the appearance of a Young Mia (Claire Kwon through Aug. 8, and then Kendyl Sayuri Yokoyama) escalates the tension between Mia and her mother. The Young Mia’s presence is a stark reminder of an abuse from a boy suffered at the age of 14, one for which she was shamed by her mother and never given comfort or understanding.
            Young Mia will remain a presence throughout much of “The Family Album,” even duetting with her grown-up counterpart on among others the rousing “Dopamine Lottery.” The recurring inclusion onstage of her younger self seems a misstep, minimizing the power of Young Mia’s initial appearance. I’d have brought her back just for the revealing ending of “The Family Album” but otherwise left the adult Mia to reflect on her past in solo song. Musicians do it all the time.
            “The Family Album” score by MILCK and AG is 24-songs strong, some of them too short and many of them of the expository kind. An exception is Daniel’s personal “Restless,” and a clever novelty, the back-and-forth texting number, “Dot Dot Dot Deleting,” between Daniel and Charlotte.
There are a couple of treasures: the inward-looking “Quiet,” which the composers actually wrote a decade ago and which became a musical affirmation of the ensuing Women’s March in Washington, D.C.; and “Oh, Mother,” an urgent, heartfelt finale that looks to bring peace to Mia, to her mother, to Mia’s past and present.
            The interpersonal, familial conflicts of “The Family Album” are more crucial than Mia’s career aspirations (a lesson she has to learn herself). Though one of the most entertaining scenes in the show is when a couple of industry execs from Tectonic Records (I don’t know whether this was meant to be fictitious or the actual dubstep label from the UK, though I suspect the former) try to entice Mia to sign with them with an audacious, image-reshaping campaign (“New Fucking Direction”). Quick! Call forth Mia’s id cats!
            Aury Krebs is a very winning protagonist with a versatile, expressive voice. Her younger self, Kwon, more than holds her own. Long evokes many indomitable mothers out there, making Sylvia’s acknowledgements of her own pain and her missteps as a parent more raw and real. This is a small but stellar cast, which also features Paul Nakauchi as Mia’s father, that has great appeal.
            From stage right, a band led by music director Michael Sobie captures the emotive highs and lows of the score; also enhancing the musical sequences are Justin Stasiw’s sound design and lighting design by Amanda Zieve, whose work was so integral to the Playhouse’s techy production of “The Heart” a year ago.
            “The Family Album” runs through Aug. 23 at La Jolla Playhouse’s Hughes and Sheila Potiker Theatre on the UCSD campus.

Paul Thomas Slade (left) and Omri Schein in "Scapin."                                          Photo by Aaron Rumley

             Moliere knew how to craft a mischief-maker, and his Scapin the Schemer is a mischief -maker. The play of the same title was first produced in 1671. Mischief-makers like Scapin remain popular with comedy theater patrons to this day.
            Including, presumably, those at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach, which staged “Tartuffe” a couple of years ago and is now offering “Scapin,” an adaptation of this Moliere play by Bill Irwin and Mark O’Donnell. Directed at a dizzying pace by Christopher Williams and with a cast that includes North Coast Rep Artistic Director David Ellenstein, “Scapin” is silly, over-the-top diversion that melds commedia dell’arte and French farce with vaudeville, slapstick and even a little Keystone Cops.
            As I often say with this brand of comedy, for me a little of it goes a long way. The first act of “Scapin,” in which the titular servant (Paul Thomas Slade) manipulates money out of rich gasbags Argante (James Newcomb) and Geronte (Ellenstein) on behalf of their love-smitten sons Octave (Miles Blue) and Leandre (Tim Frangos), might well have been the entire play. One act, no intermission (words that always gladden my heart). When Act One is over you’re inclined to wonder “Now what?”
            But the second act of “Scapin” with its physical hi-jinks and the much-needed presence of its female characters is more fun. So I guess it’s worth waiting for!
            Irwin and O’Donnell’s script based on Moliere’s play comes off somewhat like an idea Mel Brooks might have considered then ultimately discarded. Most everything is obvious and played big. Real big.
            On the other hand, the creators have given producing theaters the leeway to improvise, to break the fourth wall and to adapt the narrative somewhat to their own spaces and audiences. Exploiting this is when North Coast Rep’s production, closing the theater’s 44th season, is most appealing.
            Slade, bespectacled and in a baggy-pants kind of clown suit, is an excellent improviser and his many wink-winks to the audience imply that “Hey, we’re not doing ‘Hamlet’ here. Just sit back and enjoy!’” When he speaks directly to the crowd, you’re not pulled out of the story because, come on, the story’s not that important.
            Slade’s partner in crime is the dependably hilarious Omri Schein, who’s two heads shorter, making them an unlikely duo but enhancing the interplay between them. Schein, playing the mischief-abetting Sylvestre, revels in complete actor’s freedom in “Scapin” whether it’s doing voices, broad gestures or simply dead-stare reacting. He even gets a moment to anachronistically spout familiar lines from ‘70s movies like “Taxi Driver,” “Network,” “And Justice For All” among others.
            As for Ellenstein, whom you usually see on opening night addressing audiences in a finely tailored suit, he’s the butt of one of Scapin’s visually rich retribution gags in Act Two, forced into a huge sack and subjected to “abuse” from cast and audience members alike.  
            Director Williams’ game-for-anything cast also features Gabbie Adner and Marie Zolezzi as the sons’ sassy wives and the underused Sophia Oberg as the Nerine character. Also underused but making the utmost out of his presence behind a faux-piano and assisting with props is David McBean.
            The inspired period costumes are the work of Elisa Benzoni, who did the same for NC Rep’s “Tartuffe.” “Scapin” also marks the last set design there from the recently passed Marty Burnett. Its working doors and windows and its bright colors are ideally compatible with the spirit of the show.
            “Scapin” (it’s pronounced SKUH-PAN, by the way) strikes me as one of those affairs where the actors get to start-to-finish have a ball while those of us in the audience choose our spots. We’ve got to be in just the right mood to totally give ourselves over to the wackiness.
            “Scapin” runs through Aug. 16 at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach.

Harper Haden and Corydon Melgoza in "Arcadia."                                                 Karli Cadel Photography

            The late Tom Stoppard’s time-tripping “Arcadia” is a work of dense – and intimidating – concepts. Its characters’ inquiries into the very physics of the universe and their tangible implications for human existence are not for the science-squeamish or the impatient.
            So where does that leave me, a student of arts and letters (though a humble one, unlike the pompous academic Bernard Nightingale of “Arcadia”) for whom questions of entropy or chaos theory or even elementary  mathematics are baffling?
            In seeing “Arcadia,” first produced in 1993, for the first time at Cygnet Theatre under the direction of Sean Murray (who’s directed productions of it twice before) my initial attraction to the complex, two-and-half-hour-long piece was strictly appreciation for the rhythm and richness of Stoppard’s language, even concerning things I didn’t understand. This admiration was enhanced by a cast at Cygnet composed of seasoned professionals and one gifted newcomer.
            Yet here’s where “Arcadia” taps into its humanity and rises above revelations about the physical world in which we all reside: We come to care about its characters. Care does not necessarily equate with like. Some, such as self-obsessed researcher Nightingale (played with hungry indulgence by Richard Baird), deserve comeuppance from the outset. But in particular Thomasina Coverly (Harper Haden), the prepossessing ingenue with a brilliant mind, and Septimus Hodge (Corydon Melgoza), her tutor at an English estate in the early 19th century, ask us without saying so to take them into their hearts.
             The curious Thomasina may begin the play by asking Septimus for an explanation of “carnal embrace,” but we soon learn that she is as interested in love as she is destined to intuit the second law of thermodynamics. (And we all know that love is the most complicated, and wondrous, “concept” in all the universe.) Septimus when not tutoring Thomasina is engaging in carnal embrace of the forbidden kind at the house. He’s also a shrewd player among its denizens and guests, but he is attentive to Thomasina and quietly amazed by her steel-trap mind.
            A library at the estate, Sidley Park in Derbyshire, is the setting for the two time periods and narratives of “Arcadia.” In Thomasina’s time, April of 1809, the household is overseen by her mother, Lady Croom (Melanie Lora), dignified, intelligent and man-hungry. Guests on the premises include a gullible hack poet Ezra Chater (Fred Harlow) and his wife, an unseen character who becomes the object of multiple other men’s desire, including the also unseen master poet Lord Byron (a onetime Cambridge classmate of Septimus’). In the Crooms’ employ is the gardener Richard Noakes (Manny Fernandes) who envisions a modernized, transformed landscape around Sidley Park complete with hermitage.
            Septimus’ dramas with the Chaters, which he intends to culminate with a duel of honor, run parallel to Thomasina’s studies, curiosities and discoveries.
            In “present day” meanwhile, the library is occupied by two researchers looking into the estate’s past: the aforementioned Nightingale, who seeks to prove (and to win himself acclaim in the doing) that Lord Byron not only was at Sidley Park in 1809 but that he killed Ezra Chater in a duel and fled; and the sharp, practical-minded Hannah Jarvis (Marti Gobel), who’s looking into the Romanticized Sidley Park gardens and within them the suggested presence of a hermit. Their opposing personalities clash as much as their purposes – there’s also underlying tension over Nightingale having trashed the book Jarvis wrote about the novelist Lady Caroline Lamb. (This has a Lord Byron connection of its own.)
            Calling Jarvis his “fiancée” is the mathematician Valentine Coverly (Tanner Vydos), now owner of the estate with his sister Chloe (Emily Nightingale) and mute brother Gus (Luca Hansen). Valentine’s own field of study is the patterns of grouse population.
            Between the no-nonsense and incisive Jarvis and young Valentine, who is unburdened by ego, secrets of the past at Sidley Park – the gardens, the Lord Byron connection and most important the precocious genius of Thomasina Coverly – will be revealed. As for posturing Bernard Nightingale, refer back to my “comeuppance” reference.
            Nightingale does have his supreme intellectualized moment in the story, however, condescending toward Jarvis and Valentine though it is: a lecture that becomes a diatribe about the significance of art over science. Could this have been playwright Stoppard wrestling with his own conflicts about whether the world, indeed the universe, is better explained or expressed? We may never know, but it’s telling that “Arcadia” ends not just with “aha” moments about physics that link the past to the present but with two waltzes around the table, danced as past and present merge into one.
            Performed in Cygnet’s studio theater, “Arcadia” (as conceived by Stoppard) does not rely on props. A long table is central to the library room. The staple presence between time periods is a tortoise (not a live one here) – referred to as Septimus’ Plautus in the past and Valentine’s Lightning in the present. The symbolism of the tortoise across time requires no explication from me. (There’s also a hare, shot by Septimus, in the play). You can take these where you will lest I become a pedantic lecturer like Bernard Nightingale.
            For a production as lengthy as this one and as intricate in its storytelling “Arcadia” is neither science seminar nor talking heads talking. Its entrances and exits, movements around the table and sometimes wearying but always provocative confrontations mobilize both time periods. Elisa Benzoni’s costumes, especially in the 1809 setting, are evocative.
            Baird and Gobel prove worthy adversaries and bring physical as well as intellectual energy to “Arcadia,” while Vydos’ Valentine embodies the wonder of the play’s defining epiphanies.
            Fourteen-year-old Haden is astonishing in her understanding and portrayal of Thomasina Coverly. What a future she should have. For Melgoza, a graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in L.A. in 2018, the future is now. Together onstage at Cygnet they are the enduring presences of “Arcadia.”
            Its most potent reminder may be when, in responding to Thomasina’s despair over the losses in the storied fire-ravaged library of Alexandria, Septimus tells her: “We shed as we pick up, like travelers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short.”
            “Arcadia” runs through Aug. 16 at Cygnet’s Dottie Studio Theatre in Liberty Station, Point Loma.

Left to right: Cailen Fu, Michael Braun and Max Monnig in "Cyrano."                   Photo by Rich Soublet II

            Once it ultimately gets its tongue out of its cheek, Jason O’Connell and Brenda Withers’ “Cyrano” is an affectionate and affecting reduction of the epic play by Edmond Rostand, which was written in rhyming couplets and for more than 40 characters.
               For the first one-third of O’Connell and Withers’ adaptation, which was commissioned by Old Globe Artistic Director Barry Edelstein specifically for the intimate Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre in the round, the emphasis is on physical and even quite broad comedy. The humor is sustained once the love triangle between Cyrano (Michael Braun), Roxanne (Cailen Fu) and Christian (Max Monnig) coalesces, but there’s a decided shift in tone toward what made Rostand’s play the timeless work that it is.
            It’s the humor and the more colloquial language employed by the characters that honors the production’s stated setting (“France, 1640 by way of San Diego, 2026) while also freshening the Cyrano story for contemporary appreciation. Though the cast of five (three of them playing multiple roles) is garbed in period attire (by costume designer Haydee Zelideth) the look is almost incidental – the characters may be melodramatic at times, but they speak not not like the French of the mid-17th century.
            Even more welcome is the playwrights’ intention not to force some conspicuous awkward schnoz on Cyrano’s face. It’s more important – and less distracting – that Cyrano knows it’s there, that audiences know it’s there, that Rostand’s original inquiries of beauty and perception be respected and not rendered ham-handed by prosthetics or makeup.
            Largely the events and emotions of the traditional “Cyrano de Bergerac” tale are intact at the Globe in this O’Connell and Withers’ second economical adaptation of Rostand’s play. Most critically the plight of Cyrano himself, whose abiding love for the lovely and elusive Roxanne is destined to go unrequited and who finds himself writing letters that speak his own heart on behalf of another, the handsome but tongue-tied soldier Christian. In this, Fu, Monnig and especially the stentorian-voiced Braun make an appealing and sympathetic trio. There is no antagonist here. All three characters are propelled by the power of love. The tragedy of the story is that Cyrano is so paralyzed by what he believes are his irredeemable physical flaws that he cannot pursue Roxanne in his own right.
            The more this sad reality sinks in the more involving is the Globe production, directed by Annie Tippe (last year’s “Huzzah!”) and given many light and beautiful touches of stagecraft in the White as it proceeds toward its rending conclusion.
            Maria Elena Ramirez and Phillip Taratula round out the small ensemble in various roles, most of them full-throated and at times cartoonish, but as the story unfolds they seem to offer cathartic presence. More restrained humor comes with a balcony scene in which a concealed Cyrano is prompting the hapless but earnest Christian with just the right words of love to make “their” desired lady all but swoon. (One 20th-century adaptation: Post man Newman doing the same for gawky Kramer, in pursuit of a girlfriend of Jerry’s in the “Seinfeld” episode “The Soul Mate.” But poet Cyrano’s prose is the real deal, and of course Roxanne cannot resist.)
            That’s only one instance of the Cyrano plight, the speaking of one’s love alas for another, borrowed from Rostand, whose play was first produced in 1897. The truth is, love unexpressed or hindered by self-doubt as much as by circumstance has been a tragedy ever since, as it certainly was before. Having much fun with the fringes of the story as O’Connell and Withers do here does not minimize that tragedy. They certainly did not intend it to do so.
            Audiences expecting a sweeping “Cyrano de Bergerac” with posturing hero donning comical hooter be advised: That is not “Cyrano.”
            As the French will say: “Vive le difference.”
            “Cyrano” runs through Aug. 16 at the Old Globe’s Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre in Balboa Park.

Jacob Lopez (left) and Maybelle Shimizu in "Boy My Greatness."                            Photo by Ben Handley

            It’s generally known that in the early 17th century when William Shakespeare’s plays were being produced at the Globe Theatre in London the female character parts were performed by male actors. In her research for preparing “Boy My Greatness” for the stage, playwright Zoe Senese-Grossberg discovered that these actors ranged anywhere in age from 12 to 22.
            Both ends of the spectrum are represented in “Boy My Greatness,” which is making its San Diego premiere courtesy of Loud Fridge Theatre Group. The character of Thomas Reade (Jacob Lopez) is old enough that, at least in the mind of his company leader John Sharpe (Michael Rodriguez), he has “aged out” of female roles and must resign himself either to retirement or to portraying men. At the same time, precocious 12-year-old Robin Howard (August Nickoli) is just getting started but is showing so much promise – and is being mentored by Sharpe – that he’s pushing the likes of Tom Reade practically out the Globe Theatre door.
            Playwright Senese-Grossberg has much more to say about the lives of these males-playing-females in Shakespearean works than this. At stake are their personal, sexual and gender identities, part of the offstage dramas that cut more deeply than any sword wielded in a production of The Bard’s could. These are young men who grew up together not just as boy actors but as boys. Their conceptions of male and female were and are complicated. Their futures are uncertain as they become men and struggle to define what that means.
            “Boy My Greatness,” set in the summer of 1606, doesn’t stop there. Hanging over rehearsals for productions of “Antony and Cleopatra” and “Twelfth Night” like a very dark cloud is an outbreak of the bubonic plague, which already had been terrifying and killing Londoners for more than half a century. And there’s the intrusion of a former player, Samuel Clark (Maybelle Shimizu), who’s become a moralizing, theater-decrying Puritan and to whom males playing females is high on his list of outrages.
            All the action takes place in a rehearsal room at the Globe, created by Christy Reid at Moxie Theatre, which is hosting this Loud Fridge engagement. The various interpersonal crises ensuing are manifested in uneasy relationships between the theater players: Harry (Jaysten Merced Ares) and Hal (Phoenix Velona) are normally playful lovers who seem to be fraying apart. Tom Reade and Sam Clark share a history that the early acrimony (and exchanged violence) between them cannot hide. John Sharpe is trying to protect his mentee Robin from what he fears will be the sexual predation of a viscount who’s taken an interest in the young boy/acting as a girl.
            This is fodder for two plays, let alone one, and “Boy My Greatness” runs nearly two and a half hours as is. Under the direction of Lee Engelman, the production is tense and magnetic, however, and rarely lags. Recorded music here and there coordinated by William BJ Robinson is effective for backdrop as are the recitations of actual passages from the two Shakespearean plays being produced.
            The meatiest parts belong to Lopez as Reade and Shimizu as Sam. Through their respective fates the essence of what Senses-Grossberg is trying to say about these individuals in their time in history crystallizes. Like Shakespeare’s canon itself, in part tragically.
            In the end the great enemy of these conflicted but dedicated actors is not moral indignation but time, which as they say is undefeated. It will turn the dreams of boys into the stark realities of men and the freedom of pretend into the captivity of judgment and doubt.
            A drawn out but admirable Loud Fridge production, “Boy My Greatness” is an examination of early Shakespearean theater that most have never thought about. That it’s much more than that is reason to see it before it closes July 19.
            “Boy My Greatness” runs through July 19 at Moxie Theatre in Rolando.

Danny Collins and Patrycja Kujawska in "North by Northwest."                           Photo by Rich Soublet II

            When I heard someone had adapted Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller “North by Northwest” for the stage the first thing that went through my mind was: How the hell are they going to do the killer crop-dusting plane scene in a theater? To me, the whole credibility of any “North by Northwest” on the stage would hinge on pulling off for a different medium the most famous action sequence in the 1959 film.
            Now that I’ve seen “North by Northwest” onstage -- written, conceived and adapted by Emma Rice -- I can say “Congratulations. You did it.” The scene in which that plane swoops down over a cornfield and tries to rub out wronged man Roger Thornhill is the best invention of the play. I won’t give away how it’s depicted but happily it’s not accomplished with puppets or balsa-wood airplanes.
            I am a Hitchcock devotee and “North by Northwest” is my personal favorite of all his films. It’s clever, it’s witty, it’s beautifully photographed. The Bernard Hermann score is classic. The script by Ernest Lehman is wry, intelligent and by the standards of so-called spy movies unconvoluted. It’s anchored by Cary Grant, classy and glib and relatable as only Cary Grant can be; and only Cary Grant can wear the same gray suit throughout an entire film and still look unruffled. It’s got Eva Marie Saint as the antithesis of the usual “Hitchcock blonde” (in fact, the Eve Kendall character is one of the main reasons Rice chose to adapt “North by Northwest”). It’s got James Mason, who’s perfect as the erudite antagonist Vandamm, and a supporting cast that includes Martin Landau, Leo G. Carroll, Jesse Royce Landis, Ed Platt and many other faces you’ve seen in the movies over and over.
            Oh yeah. And it’s got Mount Rushmore.
            I recite all this to say that I feel proprietary about “North by Northwest” and I took my seat in the Old Globe Theatre on opening night with a definite “show me” predisposition.
            The good news is that Rice’s script is very faithful to the original film right down to using dialogue verbatim from some of its talkiest scenes, like Thornhill’s first meeting with Vandamm (at the time posing as UN diplomat Lester Townsend) or the highly suggestive banter with Eve in the dining car of the train steaming from New York to Chicago.
            But Rice doesn’t give us a carbon-copy, live-action version of “North by Northwest.” The production making its North American debut features audience participation initiated by ubiquitous narrator Katy Owen as The Professor, inspired choreography by Etta Murfitt and lots of jazzy music. The scenic design by Rob Howell including a sparkling revolving door seamlessly fosters the illusion of different settings indoor and out, so critical to the storytelling. Howell is also responsible for the costume design -- sartorially splendid and duly reminiscent of the Hitchcock movie.
            Returning to the music … repeatedly the major characters, especially Thornhill (Danny Collins and Eve (Patrycja Kujawska), are called on to lip-sync recorded songs, sometimes with Thornhill to a woman’s vocals and Eve to a man’s vocals. I’m not sure what this achieves other than to force humor into moments that are already humorous.
            On the other hand, that the characters break into elaborate dance moves here and there is a diverting theatrical device that neatly, if momentarily, divorces the play from the film – and everyone in this cast can dance.
            Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest” is 136 minutes’ long and though I love it, it feels even longer. This stage adaptation is about the same, but feels longer still. I applaud Rice for her fealty to the original, but it seems like a couple of sequences from the movie could have been excised with nothing lost.
            But here’s my one supreme quibble with “North by Northwest” the play, the issue I have that reduces it from being a thoroughly entertaining experience: The Professor character narrating is at the forefront way, way, way too much, to the extent that she distracts from the main characters and essentially hijacks the storytelling. Owen is quite funny and breathlessly energetic, but the character is too loud and intrusive.
            Few things bother me more in the theater than unnecessary exposition – having a character TELL me what I can already see on the stage. Yes, in this show some context is necessary in places, but do we really need to have the Professor describing how Eve Kendall places a cigarette between her lips when we’re sitting there, watching her do so?
            I can envision a production in which the narrating Professor isn’t there at all, to be honest.  
            Aside from the crop-dusting scene, the most memorable in this show is the choreographed romancing between Thornhill and Kendall in her train compartment. It’s sexy and balletic, actually an improvement on the close-quarters wooing between Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint in the flick.
            Most of the seven-person cast at the Globe are returnees from the UK touring production of “North by Northwest.” The chief exception is Collins, whose Roger Thornhill is heroic part of the time, likably doofus part of the time. He’s an agile, rubbery-limbed dancer who’s also impressive running in place, a requirement of the part for sure. Best of all, Collins doesn’t try to be Cary Grant. I mean, who could be?
            The Eve Kendall written by Rice is not only smart and icy cool like the undercover agent in the movie but she’s also strong and empowered. Kujawska, who like most in the cast other than Collins plays multiple roles, is ideally suited for this more enlightened imagination of the Eve character. (She ends up being the true narrator delivering an urgent message at the finale, but find that out for yourself.)
            I really enjoyed Karl Queensborough both as the smooth and formidable Vandamm and, in a complete 180, in drag as Thornhill’s impatient mother. Try that, James Mason.
            For all its sight gags, high stepping and joking with the audience, this production does demand close audience attention for, like “North by Northwest” the film, it tells a long and winding tale. Those who’ve never seen the movie are freed from the burden of comparison but also may find the serpentine plotting a challenge. Fortunately for them, in Rice’s “North by Northwest” more than in Hitchcock’s the complex espionage is secondary to the antics and the set pieces.
            Hitchcock purists like myself may be inclined to nitpick but we need to remember that adaptations need not be note-for-note, that theater is an altogether different medium from film, and that there’s more than one way to tell a cracking good spy story.
               “North by Northwest” runs through Aug. 2 at the Old Globe Theatre in Balboa Park.

Megan Carmitchel and Francis Gercke in "The Rise and Fall of Little Voice."           Photo by Daren Scott

            What’s most remarkable about Megan Carmitchel’s performance in Backyard Renaissance Theatre’s “The Rise and Fall of Little Voice” is that her singing interpretations of Judy Garland, Billie Holiday, Marilyn Monroe, Julie Andrews and more are not music-hall impersonations. It’s her capturing of these women's vocal styling, their phrasing, their emotion that we hear when the introverted young woman called “LV” brings to life the songs she’s been listening to from her dead father’s record collection.
             Carmitchel is an established musical theater standout (i.e. “Cabaret” and “Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812” at Cygnet, “Fiddler on the Roof” and “The Wedding Singer” at Moonlight, “Alice” at Lamb’s Players, among others). The starring role in Jim Cartwright’s “Little Voice” requires a voice, an ear and perhaps most important versatility and intuition. It’s essential to the script’s believability ask, that this introverted, agoraphobic British woman self-sequestered upstairs in a train wreck of a household can not only sound like the singers on her father’s records but inhabit them.
            Carmitchel does, and that’s what elevates this production in every way.
            “The Rise and Fall of Little Voice” premiered at London’s Royal National Theatre in 1992 with Sam Mendes directing and Jane Horrocks (“Absolutely Fabulous”) starring. (A revival of the play is scheduled to return there in December.) Horrocks later reprised her LV in a 1998 film.
            Backyard’s is the play’s San Diego debut. Directed by Anthony Methvin, it’s part loud, dark comedy, part quiet, gripping drama. It delivers a horrifyingly funny look at a working-class house boozily “overseen” by LV’s staggering mother Mari (Jessica John), the shady, manipulative boyfriend and promoter Ray Say (Francis Gercke), and a cheap nightclub run by a blustering Mr. Boo (Daren Scott). At the same time, the raucousness and depravity are stopped dead in their tracks – and an audience will go silent – when LV begins to sing a capella and a la Judy Garland in her lonely bedroom “The Man That Got Away.”
            When Ray Say’s wild romancing of Mari – played to the hilarious physical hilt – is interrupted by such a sound from upstairs, an idea is instantly hatched: There’s money in LV’s uncanny talent. This leads to one failed, reluctant “performance” at Mr. Boo’s club, then another that is the play’s – and the production’s – most thrilling.
            But LV is like a little songbird with a bent wing yanked out of the nest. Remember the title: “The Rise and Fall …”
            So disreputable are her mother, her unwanted promoter and the crude Mr. Boo that LV is not just exploited, she’s victimized. It’s that intuition of Carmitchel’s again, this time without singing, that conveys in stares, silences and benumbed words the trauma of being used, the distance from a mother who’s one of the prime users, and in her mind an abandonment of the depth of feeling in her father’s records.
            The only light in her life is a young man, Billy (Layth Haddad), an introvert in his own way who is charmed by LV not because of her special talent but because of who she is. He sees her not as a commodity but as a person. This relationship is overplayed in “The Rise and Fall,” however, and the metaphor of the lamplight Billy shines on and for LV is strained.
            Downstairs in the Hoff house is total booze-infused mayhem -- shouting, carousing and then some. Jessica John’s Mari is the personification of all of the above. I generally don’t find drunks funny, but her barely controlled chaos mostly is. Take when she’s at a table, crazily spraying her hair with one hand, swigging from a bottle with the other. “Lacquer … liquor, lacquer … liquor!” she exhorts, alternating the two.
            Gercke’s Ray Say is more calculating. He has to be to make us buy that the reclusive LV would submit to his scheming. Mari may be out of control; Ray, using a sensitive side, has a method to his madness.
            Scott plays to the crowd – the unseen one and the Backyard audience – when emceeing at Mr. Boo’s dive, while Teri Brown is Sadie, the strange sounding board for friend Mari’s rants.
            As always with Backyard Renaissance, Yi-Chien Lee has designed a split-level set that credibly separates mother Mari’s outrageous world below from daughter LV’s private one above. Bird-cage lamps suspended from the rafters hint at the confined person beneath them.
            “The Rise and Fall of Little Voice” is set in North Yorkshire, England, and the accents here not a distraction which is the most I hope for when American actors go British. The musical sequences directed by Taylor Peckham and arranged by Evan Hart Marsh are at just the right volume. The fills in between action, recordings such as Dusty Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man,” are atmospheric reminders of LV’s father’s collection, affection for which she has no bounds.
            With all its downstairs noise the poignancy of “The Rise and Fall of Little Voice” upstairs echoes from the heart of the play, at times when one least expects it. It was Tolstoy who said that “Music is the shorthand of emotion.” It is LV’s shorthand – and her lifeline.
            “The Rise and Fall of Little Voice” runs through July 3 at the Tenth Avenue Arts Center, downtown.

Ensemble dancing is a highlight of "Hairspray."                     Photo courtesy of New Village Arts Theatre

            I will always associate the “Hairspray” musical with a happy memory. In 2018, I took my then-13-year-old niece, a devoted fan of the score, to see a production of the show at San Diego Musical Theatre. Not only did she know the story, she knew all the lyrics, and happily sang along (as did other girls in the audience that night), from “Good Morning Baltimore” through “You Can’t Stop the Beat.”
            I spotted teenagers in the crowd at a performance of New Village Arts’ production of “Hairspray” too. This says something about the generational staying power of a musical that’s only twentysomething years old.
            Don’t know whether John Waters, who wrote and directed the original 1988 movie, saw this coming but it has to be gratifying to know that his picture that earned a meager $8 million upon release inspired a stage musical that not only won eight Tony Awards (including Best Musical) but continues to be popular a couple of decades after storming Broadway.
            More important than the ticket sales are the messages “Hairspray” made and still makes about acceptance, racial and social discrimination and the definition of beauty. It’s a fun show but its messages should be timeless and universal.
            New Village’s “Hairspray” has its tangles: The music (written by Marc Shaiman) is provided by recorded tracks; sometimes the volume is too high, other times too low. The sound in general is erratic. The scenic pieces suggesting a television studio or a jailhouse are rudimentary. The NVA stage looks frequently overcrowded by a company as huge as “Hairspray’s.”
            The night I attended, the start of the performance was delayed more than 20 minutes by what were announced as “technical difficulties,” and I didn’t appreciate the delay given that the production is two and a half hours’ long.
            Once things got started, however, I forgot about the delay because “Hairspray” is plus-sized fun and New Village’s principal players directed by Kali Boston are quite good. Linsey Schreck shines as the indefatigable, dance-loving Tracy Turnblad who crusades for integration on Corny Collins’ TV show. In the big (in every sense of the word) roles of Tracy’s mom Edna and R&B record producer Motormouth Maybelle, Luxe the Drag Queen and Eboni Muse get the most laughs and cheers for vocals, respectively. Max Cadillac is hilarious playing multiple characters, including that of Tracy’s dad Wilbur. As Velma VonTussel, the white-is-right producer of Corny’s show, Alyssa Anne Schecter needs only a MAGA cap on her head to be a true character of the now. Ditto daughter Amber, played with pouting arrogance by Mikayla Kelley.
            The dance sequences choreographed by Kara Mack do well with the limited space on the stage. San Diego Musical Theatre didn’t have better to work with when it presented “Hairspray” at the old Horton Grand Theatre downtown in 2018.
            I wondered how many in the New Village audience, never mind the kids, got the early ‘60s cultural references in the show. Like Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, Perry Como, the Gabor sisters, even Geritol. So what. “Hairspray,” message-wise, may be a musical for today but its setting is still a bygone one. The hairdos and dresses and dances testify to that. It’s hard to feel nostalgic for a time when a “Negro Day” was a thing – Waters based the “Corny Collins Show” on a real “Buddy Deane Show” in Baltimore which reportedly would feature Black teens dancing on it every other Friday. There were protesters, perhaps like a Tracy Turnblad, even then.
            “Hairspray” manages to be joyous at the end even if the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was still two years away. It manages to be joyous at the end today, too, even if so much of what so many fought for feels as threatened as it ever was.
            “Hairspray” runs through July 19 at New Village Arts Theatre in Carlsbad.