The cast of "Nothing On" has something crazy going in "Noises Off."                  Photo by Rich Soublet II

            For maximum appreciation and enjoyment of “Noises Off” one must make a friend of mayhem. That is this longstanding British farce’s stock-in-trade.
            Doors fly open, then slam. Slam, then fly open. Stairs are seemingly made for galloping up or tumbling down. Projectiles fly. Wardrobes malfunction. Props are fumbled and abused. Cast members incur more comic physical punishment than in a “3 Stooges” marathon.
            But Michael Frayn’s wild classic about actors (plus a very beleaguered director and two very harried stage managers) putting on a show called “Nothing On” is not lowbrow entertainment. His script calls for exhaustive pratfalling and some definite mugging, but it is a clever one with a good deal of witty banter – provided you can hear it over an audience that, guaranteed, will be howling. Especially by Act 3 when the whole shebang goes full-on chaotic.
            It takes a director as experienced with farce as is Gordon Greenberg to instill just enough order and cohesion into “Noises Off” that it doesn’t fly completely off the rails. Greenberg’s resume at the Old Globe, where “Noises Off” opened on Friday night, has been burnished by “Crime and Punishment, A Comedy” and “Dracula, A Comedy of Terrors,” both staged in the Globe’s Sheryl and Harvey White theater-in-the-round. His instincts are therefore impeccable.
            “Nothing On,” on the other hand, has a director named Lloyd Dallas (James Waterston)  who may know what he’s doing, but the odds, the fates and circumstances out of his control are against him.
            Many if not most theatergoers have seen “Noises Off” at least once by now; it premiered in 1982. It was last seen locally at Lamb’s Players Theatre in 2018 with Robert Smyth directing. Besides its sheer wackiness the show is notable for its stagecraft – Act One takes place in an English theater where “Nothing On” is being rehearsed; for Act Two, the set is turned completely around and the audience sees a performance coming-undone from a backtsage view; the front view is restored for Act Three when another performance, deteriorating at a faster clip even than in the previous act, is happening.
            Scenic designer Todd Rosenthal created for Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago the depiction of a two-story country home owned by the fictitious Brents; the Globe’s set is a slight modification of that, and it works like a charm.
            So does the cast of nine, headlined by the stupendous Jefferson Mays. An actor of pretty much matchless energy, ingenuity and comedic instincts, his blood-phobic Frederick Fellowes is worth the price of a ticket. Watch him, trousers around his ankles, hop one step at a time from ground floor to second. Watch him keel over with abandon. Listen to him earnestly attempting to bring a measure of sanity to the proceedings – naturally in vain.
            Second in sight-gag heaven to Mays’ hop up the stairs is Michelle Veintimilla’s crawl down them in her underthings – she’s portraying a nearsighted starlet, Brooke Ashton, who’s lost her contact lenses.
            The play-within-a-play ensemble also features Linda Mugleston as Dotty Otley, who keeps forgetting her lines. (She does remember to shout “sardines” about a hundred times); Nehal Joshi as vaguely leading-man-ish Garry Lejeune; Orville Mendoza as a sot playing a burglar; and Bryonha Marie, calling all her fellow actors “love” and doing the best of the improvising when “Nothing On” collapses. Abby Leigh Huffstetler and Matthew Patrick Davis are the stage managers tasked along with their director to manage the unmanageable.
            Everyone’s dressed, or undressed, with elan by costume designer Izumi Inaba; Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum should be applauded for coordinating the “Noises Off” stunts, as should voice and dialect coach Lauren Lovett for the veddy prop-uh British accents some cast members demonstrate.
            All this said, two and a half hours of “Noises Off,” or “Nothing On,” is more than I genuinely require for amusement. I could probably watch Jefferson Mays onstage for twice that long and not feel a bit antsy, but slapstick farce in general only goes so far with me. I must be in the minority because at the performance I attended audience members around me laughed even harder the longer the show went.
            To get into the spirit of the script, I’ll say that I shant quibble. We need the laughter right now when so much of the real noise around us is frightening and negative. As the playwright Frayn wrote: “I haven’t come to the theater to hear about other people’s problems. I’ve come to be taken out of myself, and, preferably, not put back again.”
            “Noises Off” runs through Aug. 10 at the Old Globe in Balboa Park.

Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" is a highlight of "The '70s! The Golden Age of the Album." Photo courtesy of Lamb's Players Theatre.

            I don’t know how many songs are performed, in part or in their entirety, in Lamb’s Players Theatre’s “The ‘70s! The Golden Age of the Album.” I didn’t count them because I was immersed in memories from long ago.
            Like when I spun records as a DJ on my college radio station. Like when I would browse the racks at Tower Records sometimes just to be blown away by the album cover art. Like when my friends and I would party with vinyl on summer nights.
            This show created by Kerry Meads and Vanda Eggington is indeed a musical trip down Memory Lane, 1970s edition. It celebrates the soundtrack of that decade and in particular songs that were part of a sea change in the music business, when the emphasis morphed from making hit singles to creating album tracks that would get airplay on fledgling FM rock radio.
            This is Meads’ and Eggington’s fourth go-round at this sort of revue for Lamb’s, having teamed up in the past on the ‘60s-flavored “Boomers,” “American Rhythm” covering the Great American Songbook and most recently the tribute to female artists of the 1960s “R-E-S-P-E-C-T.”
            I enjoyed “The 70s!” the most of the bunch mainly because I feel more emotional attachment to the music and the artists of the era who made it. This is just a partial list: Neil Young, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Linda Ronstadt, Cat Stevens, Simon & Garfunkel, Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Queen. They’re all present in this 140-minute-long theatrical concert directed by Meads.
            Sure, there are conspicuous omissions, like the Allman Brothers and the Stones and The Who and Santana and Steely Dan; and the arrival of punk rock (the Ramones maybe?) and hip-hop (perhaps the Sugarhill Gang?) are ignored. But everyone who attends will have some quarrel with a favorite singer-songwriter or band that's left out. Certainly Meads and Eggington have done the best they can without creating a show that’s five hours’ long.
            “The ‘70s!” wouldn’t be as entertaining as it is were it not for a crack ensemble of musicians covering all those gems from the era. Lamb’s has got on guitar Steve Gouveia (always great to see and hear him onstage) and Garry Hall (his Jimmy Page solo on “Stairway to Heaven” is a beaut); David Rumley on drums; Angela Chatelain Avila on violin; and the guy they call the “Rockfather,” Rik Ogden, on multiple instruments. Playing bass and demonstrating that her young age is no impediment to rocking out on songs recorded long, long before her birth is 21-year-old Avery Nelson. Also in the cast and contributing instrumentally and/or vocally: Sydney Joiner, Russ Mitchell, Nathan Nonhof, Natasha Reece, Caleb Schanzenbach, Scott Glenn Roberts, Logan Stevens, Leonard Patton, Joy Yandell-Hall and Ben Van Diepen.
            You need that many people to re-create the incredibly diverse genres of the decade: confessional, singer-songwriter-driven pop, rock ‘n’ roll, R&B, disco, art rock – it seemed like everything from the sugary Carpenters to the exultant Earth, Wind & Fire to Belushi and Aykroyd as the Blues Brothers.
            As I said earlier, a few of the songs covered are performed start to finish, but most are versions trimmed for expediency. The performances that demonstrate the most theatricality are of songs that tell a cohesive story, such as The Eagles’ “Hotel California” and Cat Stevens’ “Father and Son.”
            Choreography by Christine Wiser Hall is mobilizes and enhances the storytelling aspect of “The ‘70s.” If there’s one thing that the decade can and should be ridiculed for is its fashion sense, or lack thereof. Did people really dress like that? OMG, did I? But the styles are well-conceived by costume designer Jemima Dutra, and they’re actually welcome in the show’s elaborate disco sequence. (Kudos to Wisner Hall here, too, for transporting us back to “Disco Inferno” time.)
            I was especially gratified to see and hear Marvin Gaye honored for his landmark “What’s Going On” album. If there was a conscience to the ‘70s expressed musically it was his.
            Yes, for fans there’s a predictable Fleetwood Mac “set” in the show and a fine “Bohemian Rhapsody” cover and plenty for Eagles fans.
            A nifty enhancement for the audience is the projection on a screen of the album covers from which each ‘70s song is performed. I miss those incredible covers, some of them veritable works of art.
            I miss FM radio the way it used to be, too – not corporate owned, not canned, not voiced by cookie-cutter DJs (if there’s a live DJ at all these days). Now album-oriented-radio, and radio in general, has been marginalized or even neutered by the digital delivery of music. I mean ask yourself: When was the last time you listened to music on the radio, and not in your car?
            This show also makes the case that musically the 1970s may not have been crowned revolutionary as was the 1960s but it was in its own right pretty freaking incredible with a diversity of genres, songwriting and artistry that deserves celebration in a production like this one at Lamb’s.
            I don’t listen to “classic rock” radio because I can’t abide hearing “Carry On My Wayward Son” (alas, it’s in this show) or “All Right Now” or “China Grove” anymore. But being immersed in among the most engaging and best-produced music of the 1970s, as I was at Lamb’s, is an altogether more personal experience. If the decade stirs in you any similar sort of feeling, you’ll discover what I’m talking about.
            “The ‘70s! The Golden Age of the Album” runs through Sept. 14 at Lamb’s Players Theatre in Coronado.

Jessica John and Francis Gercke in "A Streetcar Named Desire."                              Photo by Daren Scott

            In one of many exigent moments in “A Streetcar Named Desire” the spiraling Blanche Dubois gasps “I don’t want realism. I want magic!”
            Backyard Renaissance Theatre’s production of Tennessee Williams’ greatest work has both. 
            Under the bold direction of Rob Lutfy, Backyard has re-imagined a “Streetcar” that takes place simultaneously in 1947 (its original setting) and today. Not a snap proposition for a play or a story rooted in the steamy Deep South of nearly 80 years ago. Though remember that New Orleans, a city of charms and haunts, feels ever alive in both present and past.
            Contemporizing “Streetcar” as is done at the Tenth Avenue Arts Center downtown is achieved on a practical level by having the characters in modern dress and having up-to-date phones, though it’s also about manifesting a universal sensibility: the Stanley (Francis Gercke) and Stella (Megan Carmitchel) who survive on grit and thrive on lust could be your own downstairs neighbors in a low-rent apartment; the boys’ boozy and boisterous poker nights are as close as the walls you share with whomever; the delusional and breakable Blanche Dubois (Jessica John) is your unwelcome but loved-just-the-same relation from another world than your own, misplaced and out of place.
            Williams himself must have recognized that his play would not be stuck in time. Yes, Blanche’s musings and entreaties, both pre- and post-breakdown, are florid and sometimes mannered but she is trapped in fraught relationships and only her breathy dramatizing can navigate them. Has no one a friend or lover or family member who relies on such drama when cornered?
            The longer you immerse yourself in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” in particular this telling from Backyard, the less conscious you are of 1947 and the more you’re in the now. By the time the marathon production (more than three hours’ long) nears its violent climax and crushing denouement, time has stopped.
            And what of the magic the genteel Blanche begged for? It’s here, and for her profoundly unsettling: The ghost-in-person of the young man she loved and wed (William Huffaker) – her handsome beau, not yet the betrayer or he who put a gun in his mouth. Those cracks of thunder over Elysian Fields that sound like gunshots. The dark and faceless figure of La Llorona, hawking in whispered tones “Des fleurs pour les morts.”
            You could make a case that these staging choices are unnecessary, that by this juncture in the story the deterioration of her mind is sufficiently expressed in Blanche’s movement and words, in the presence of torment in her eyes. All this Jessica John, a remarkable actor who keeps topping herself performance after performance at Backyard Renaissance, brings to the fore.
            But these are choices of style from director Lutfy, as are having Faith Carrion singing from the second floor balcony an eerie “House of the Rising Sun, ” and transitional recorded music (maybe a little loud) in which a sultry sax sounds punishing. We expect, given where we are, a streetcar itself to come bursting through a wall, flattening everything and everyone in its way. Sound designers Evan Eason and Steven Leffue are up to the task.
            Yi-Chien Lee’s scenic design, reminiscent of the two-level set she crafted for Backyard’s “August: Osage County” in 2023, reflects the spare, downtrodden Kowalski flat, with no identifiable nod to any New Orleans motif. There’s a simple table for poker games, a door to a bathroom from which steam escapes  in foggy waves, a cot for unwanted Blanche to sleep on that an Army surplus store would reject. Upstairs the Hubbels, Eunice and Steve (Dianne Yvette and Layth Haddad) tromp around, making their own domestic noise to mirror that below.
            Whether the claustrophobia resides in these environs or in Blanche’s mind, or both, is worth a ponder.
            “A Streetcar Named Desire” is a physically and emotionally taxing undertaking for a cast – in the case of Blanche, the play is dense with language (Williams’ singular rhythm and rich allusions); for everyone “Streetcar” bobs and weaves and explodes with such physicality as to be jarring, even when you know what has to be coming.
            No one runs the gauntlet more exhaustively than John, Blanche being the center of this psycho-sexually charged tale. Her portrayal is of a Blanche who, at the outset, is delicate and evasive about her personal history but reasonably appalled by the crudeness of Stanley Kowalski and what she regards as the animalistic hold he has on her dear sister. John makes her more than the usual “faded Southern belle” of so many “Streetcars.” Sympathy for her doesn’t come right away – her arch disapproval is without understanding or any tolerance. And she is an interloper.
            But as Blanche’s residency with the Kowalski’s goes (for her) frighteningly on, she becomes less the judger and, in John’s interpretation, more a frazzled woman looking for light in the dark void. Who can begrudge her a friendship, and one that could promise more, with the awkward “Mitch” (MJ Sieber), the one civil member of Stanley’s raucous card games?
            The struggle for any actor taking on Blanche Dubois has to be presenting her as more than merely a victim of her own pretensions, deceptions and mental demons. To an extent this is the character as written, though John’s Blanche becomes not just a pitiful figure or the inevitable train wreck but a broken soul, perhaps unmendable. It’s a moving performance, admirable for its stamina and surrender to emotional release.
            Lutfy has called the play Blanche’s and Stanley’s fight for control and possession of Stella, and as this production reminds us she is a character of paramount importance to the play. I may be off, but I’m thinking she has more stage time than Stanley does, and it’s the Stella character that is most torn apart by Blanche’s anguish and vulnerability.
            Carmitchel’s layered Stella is one who will fight fiercely for her passionate if arguably abusive marriage but just as fiercely to protect her sister from all harms. The ambiguities of Williams’ character are no deterrent to a performance that is vital and deep-seated.
            Every time I see a production of “Streetcar” and then write about it I acknowledge that there is no Stanley Kowalski and there never will be one who is not Marlon Brando. If there’s an antagonist in American theater more associated with an actor who portrayed them that, name him, or her, because I couldn’t tell you.
            Lutfy has sought to defy archetypes and Francis Gercke does not attempt to mimic Brando or be anything like him in this modernized, to some degree against-the-grain, “Streetcar.” He’s simmering and predatory, aptly so, but not nearly as combustible. This Stanley’s gears seem to be turning in his head more than we usually sense, a Stanley not wired strictly for impulse. Gercke’s Stanley could never be the “ape” Blanche sees.
            Sieber’s become a Backyard Renaissance regular – this is his fourth production there. As in the company’s “The Beauty Queen of Leenane” last year, he’s playing a sincere suitor who’s destined to be disappointed, the outsider who longs for love. Then as here, Sieber’s chemistry with John is perceptible, and their scenes together are likely the most honest in the storytelling.
            “A Streetcar Named Desire” will wring you out, as it must its ensemble. They deserve medals as much as applause at curtain.
            Though let’s not forget Tennessee Williams, who in exorcising the pain inflicted upon his sister Rose and the pain he himself must have endured created a play, “Streetcar,” and a character, the tragic Blanche, that will live forever on stage and screen, and among the ghosts and shadows of the South at its deepest and most impenetrable.
            “A Streetcar Named Desire” runs through July 12 at the Tenth Avenue Arts Center downtown.

Michaela Watkins (left) and Nadine Malouf in "The Janeiad."                                Photo by Rich Soublet II

            The definitive play about waiting, Samuel Beckett’s endlessly analyzed tragicomedy about Pozzo, Lucky and someone/something named  Godot, is at its core existentialist thought. The same could be said of a new play about waiting, Anna Ziegler’s “The Janeiad,” which opened its world-premiere engagement at the Old Globe on Thursday.
            Jointly inspired by Greek mythology, namely “The Odyssey,” and by Ziegler’s interview with a 9/11 widow, “The Janeiad” contemplates existence – and non-existence – from the standpoint of “the unknowable.” Its inquiries, posed over the course of 90 minutes: Who am I? Why am I here? Why were you here and now you’re gone? Why did you go? Where do you go when you die? What does it feel like when you die?
            Questions that would daunt Homer himself.
          Jane (Michaela Watkins), a Brooklynite wife and mother, has seen her husband Gabe (Ryan Vasquez) off to work one particular Sept. 11 morning, then fallen asleep in her favorite blue chair while reading “The Odyssey.” (Even she acknowledges it’s an ambitious, OK strange, choice for the book club she’s in.) Soon she’s roused from slumber by alarming phone calls, including one from Gabe, who’s in dire danger. But she’s also awakened to the presence of a stranger in the room: Penelope (Nadine Malouf), the wife of Odysseus.
           It didn’t occur to me at the time – though it crossed my mind later in the storytelling -- but was this possibly a dream? I credit Ziegler with too much creative deft and intellectual savvy to have employed the “It was all a dream” trope here, so let’s dismiss that. So who is Penelope, this Trojan War widow who, she tells Jane, waited 20 years for Odysseus to return to her -- which he did?
            More of the unknowable.
           You will wait, too, Jane is told, for Gabe to return to you, and this also will require 20 years of patience and trust.
          It seemed to me that Jane, a pragmatic sort with, as we’re told several times, a Harvard education, buys into this scenario without much doubt or resistance. Nor does she react with enough incredulity that her waiting will consume two decades.
           Penelope, meanwhile, circles the Tim Mackabee-designed living-room set in the Globe’s White Theatre making ponderous observations and pronouncements. Here, as is the case throughout much of “The Janeiad,” Ziegler’s eloquent word craft feels better suited for the reading than for the dramatizing.
            The versatile and expressive Malouf, who reigns over this production, is gifted with many opportunities to do more than observe and pronounce as Penelope. She’ll slip into the characters of Jane’s clinical-sounding therapist, her caustic sister, her domineering mother, her housekeeper and even her rabbi during the elapsing 20 years onstage. It’s from these characterizations that the lightness of an otherwise weighty affair directed by Maggie Burrows stems.
          Watkins, in the meantime, inhabits a Jane who is either stoical or is simply feeling hassled by these other people in her isolated, quietly grieving life. The two children are heard only in recordings and Jane apparently pays them little attention. In short, everyone gets under Jane’s skin, including Penelope, while she waits … and waits.
           The passage of time is conveyed using blackout pauses and recurring radio recordings of NPR intros from “Morning Edition” or “All Things Considered” dated beginning on Sept. 11, 2001, and continuing right up until Jane’s big moment – the 20th anniversary of Gabe’s disappearance. (His body, we are told, was never recovered from among the remains of the WTC towers.)
          The passing years and cameo characters within them smack of contrivances more than narrative developments; there’s a sense that we, like Jane, are being played with. This includes the arrival of a visitor at the door 20 years to the day that Gabe died. Just who is the Greenpeace guy in the COVID-era mask? It can’t just be a Greenpeace guy in a mask. If Penelope’s prophecy is true then is Jane’s waiting being rewarded?
           Whether or not Ziegler intended the line between reality and call-it-hallucination to be razor thin here, the story she is telling dwells in the margins. Since grief is what consumes Jane the most and grief itself is incalculable in duration and comprehension, who’s to really say what’s going on in that Brooklyn living room?
         It may be viewed by some as such, but I don’t think “The Janeaid” is a “9/11 play.” Ziegler’s conversation with that widow, aforementioned, may have been the catalyst for the project but this a reflection on grief and processing it. Sept. 11 compelled so many people to that process and still resides in our collective soul. As “The Janeaid” suggests, so does the global pandemic we all went through. So does the grief we are confronted with day to day, life to life, passing to passing.
          Jane is unknowable to herself, though a closing monologue implies that she has seen a light, of some kind. That light we all wait for.
         “The Janeiad” runs through July 13 at the Old Globe’s Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre in Balboa Park.

Ariella Kvashny and Michael Louis Cusimano in "Oklahoma!"                              Karli Cadel Photography

            There must be musical-theater fans who’ve never seen “Oklahoma!” but you couldn’t tell by the audience at Cygnet Theatre. The place was dripping with nostalgic swoons and smiles during the first four songs of the show – “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’”, “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top,” “Kansas City” and “I Cain’t Say No.” By the time “People Will Say We’re in Love” came along later in Act One, the sentimental bonding in the room was palpable.
            Personally I was more sentimental about the Cygnet Theatre Old Town barn myself, which the company is departing from after the long engagement of “Oklahoma!” I know the environs will be newer and better in The Joan, Cygnet’s Liberty Station venue opening in September. But there was always something cozy about the Old Town space, even when Artistic Director Sean Murray was programming shows that weren’t necessarily cozy in themselves. I could go on and on about those and other productions I’ve enjoyed in Old Town, but that’s another story for another day.
            I guess “Oklahoma!” is a fitting closure to Cygnet’s tenure in the barn, being that it’s the kind of production where cowboy hats are di rigeur. I even saw a few in the audience.
            Do I really need to recount the story of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s’ first major hit? Curly courts Laurey with the menacing Jud Fry in their midst. Ado Annie “cain’t” make up her mind between suitors Will Parker and Persian traveling salesman Ali Hakim. Aside from some referenced tension (actually sung through in the second act number “Farmer and the Cowman”) between those who grow and those who punch cattle, that’s about it for “Oklahoma!” conflict wise.
            But its score is beloved, as is the show to so many. This is the third or fourth time I’ve seen “Oklahoma!” and I’ll probably remember Cygnet’s most.
            Given the size, or lack of it, in which to produce, Murray has staged this traditionally big show in the manner of last year’s wondrous “Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812.” Actors enter and exit, and even perform, in the aisles; there’s no substantial set to speak of; lead Michael Louis Cusimano (Curly) accompanies himself on guitar much of the time.
            The result is an “Oklahoma!” directed by Murray that just feels more intimate, and it’s that intimacy with the characters that makes Cygnet’s production work so successfully, even though the running time is damned near three hours. (The first act alone, culminating with the show’s dream ballet sequence, is a long, long sit.)
            By the way that dream ballet, which was originally choreographed by the great Agnes de Mille for the 1943 staging of “Oklahoma!”, has been pared down from 15-18 minutes to about 10 at Cygnet. It’s still pretty riveting and, to my mind, the theatrical device that sets “Oklahoma!” apart from other musical theater works of its kind.
            Jill Gorrie manages the choreography in Old Town. Props to her. The dream ballet encapsulates in movement everything that’s preceded it, narratively speaking, to that point.
            A seven piece orchestra under the steady direction of Patrick Marion provides the live music; again, a lighter touch fitting of a small theater space.
             The presence of so many Cygnet familiars in the cast gives me the opportunity to reference some of my favorite performances given by them there: Cusimano (“Natasha, Pierre”); Ariella Kvashny as Laurey (“Evita”); Jacob Caltrider as Jud (“The Rocky Horror Show”); Manny Fernandes as “Pa” Carnes (“The Great Leap”); Linda Libby as feisty Aunt Eller (“Cabaret”). They’re outstanding in their own right in “Oklahoma!” Cusimano’s Curly is ideal. Kvashny brings a welcome independence to Laurey; Caltrider’s Jud is unnerving without being just a black hat.
            Cygnet newcomers Jazley Genovese, as Ado Annie, and Ricky Bulda, as Ali Hakim, provide the lion’s share of the show’s comedy, the former a force to be reckoned with in a green and white dress (part of designer Zoe Trautmann’s down-home costuming).
            I’ll admit to some fatigue by the time the production reaches its dramatic climax – I always thought it strange coming AFTER the rousing cast delivery of “Oklahoma!” These days in live theater three hours is a major commitment. But I was heartened by the presence of parents and a little girl sitting in the row in front of me. Not only did the child stay awake throughout the show but even late in the going she was on her feet, arms waving in time to the music.
            If that doesn’t prove “Oklahoma!” isn’t just a show for old folks, nothing does.
            “Oklahoma!” runs through Aug. 2 at Cygnet Theatre in Old Town.

Bertram (Gabriel Brown) wants no part of Helena (Ismenia Mendes) in "All's Well That Ends Well." Photo by Rich Soublet II

            It would be a leap to call William Shakespeare’s “All’s Well That Ends Well” a stroke of proto-feminism – it was written in 1623 – but its female characters rule the day in this, one of The Bard’s supposed “problem plays.” The gentlewoman Helena and Diana of Florence aren’t exactly Thelma and Louise, but the men of “All’s Well,” young aristocrat Bertram in particular, are no match for their strength and acumen.
            Call it a comedy, call it a dramedy, call it a fantasy, “All’s Well That Ends Well” is a hybrid of all three, its defiance of categorization possibly why it’s less often produced and more obscure among Shakespeare’s non-tragedies. Cheers to the Old Globe for staging it as the first of its two summer Shakespeares (the second will be “the Comedy of Errors”). While its plot points are riddled with incongruities (maybe it IS a fantasy after all), this “All’s Well” directed by Peter Francis James is pleasing to the eye and the ear. It’s also much fun.
            It begins with Ismenia Mendes as Helena. She brings both comic lightness, consummate likability and a confident resolve to the woman of humble stature who loves Bertram and is undaunted by his spurning of her. It’s a delightful performance in a cast that enjoys many of them: Mary Lou Rosato as Helena’s doting and domineering guardian the Countess of Roussillion; Angelynne “Ajay” Pawaan as the aforementioned Diana, who schemes with Helena to bring Bertram around; Barzin Akhavan as Bertram’s foppish companion Parolles, focus of the play’s overcooked subplot; Matthew J. Harris as Lavatch, the mischievious and impudent fool in the Countess’ court; Arthur Hanket as the veddy French lord Lafew; and Tom Nelis as the King of France, he whose illness is cured by Helena’s “miracle” potion (for which she is granted her choice of husbands in the House of Roussillion – guess who she picks?).
            Gabriel Brown is Bertram and uses every inch of his dashing charisma to try to make the character one to root for – it’s not his fault that this is not accomplished. It occurred to me throughout that the resourceful Helena could do better.
            The Globe’s outdoor Festival Stage is a gorgeous setting for this tale, taking place both in France and in Italy, where Bertram has fled to escape his unwanted tie to Helena. Lawrence E. Moten III’s set is simple but enchanting. Sherrice Mojgani’s lighting is soft and romantic.
            The varied costume design by Judith Dolan evokes some melding of Italian and French Renaissance; only Brown’s Bertram is dressed in more contemporary looking clothes.
            I found a few of the production’s clever touches endearing, such as having the King’s soldiers riding hobby horses, and having the countess and her stolid, faithful page ascending from below the stage, then descending again. The employment of “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” the old chestnut popularized by Bing Crosby, is a cute contemporary nod. (There’s also a Bilbo Baggins reference, Tolkien fans.)
            When compared to Shakespeare’s more popular comedies – “Much Ado About Nothing,” “As You Like It,” “Twelfth Night,” et al – “All’s Well That Ends Well” might seem an oddity. Its title is its best-known line, its lovers never an easy fit, its resolution as I noted before, incredulous. But the pure enjoyment provided by this summertime production in Balboa Park is reason to become acquainted with it, at least once, and reason to just surrender to its charms.
            “All’s Well That Ends Well” runs through July 6 in the Old Globe’s Lowell Davies Festival Theatre.

James Newcomb and Margot White in "Birthday Candles."                                  Photo by Aaron Rumley

            For Ernestine Ashworth, 90 years elapse in 90 minutes.
            That’s the math of Noah Haidle’s “Birthday Candles,” a sweet yet sad portrayal of one woman’s life cycle.
            Sad because Haidle’s play is a reminder that even if one lives to be over 100, as Ernestine does, life is all too short. I tried to remain upbeat during this production of “Birthday Candles” at North Coast Repertory Theatre, and there’s plenty of comedic snappiness built into the script. But ultimately it’s sobering to take in that Ernestine, played with a natural grace and dignity by Margot White, keeps having birthdays while everyone around her passes away. The recurring image of her in her kitchen, baking that year’s celebratory cake, goes from joyous to poignant to practically devastating as the decades fly by.
            Haidle has said that his idea for “Birthday Candles” stemmed from learning that the memory span of a goldfish is only three seconds’ long. A goldfish in a bowl is literally onstage the entire show as if to remind us of not so much the brevity of its memory but of life itself.
            The heaviness of “Birthday Candles’” message is lightened, at least for the first half of the play, by Ernestine’s interactions with her Grand Rapids family – husband Matt (Martin Kildare), son Billy (Matthew Grondin) and daughter Madeline (who briefly changes her name to “Athena”), played by Katie Karel. Matt’s rather a bore, Billy’s anything but affable, and “Athena’s” depressed, but ever-calm Ernestine weathers every storm.
            Unlike the others in her circle, Ernestine is a deep thinker – she longs to know her place in the universe. At the same time, she’s grounded enough to navigate all the foibles of her family. This is a delicate balance for any actor. At North Coast Rep, White makes it work, makes us see inside her, makes us give a damn about Ernestine when perhaps no one else matters.
            Almost no one else. James Newcomb, who’s grand in the part, is an endearing presence as Kenneth, the earnest if awkward neighbor who’s loved Ernestine since they were children and who never misses a birthday party, gift in arms. Kenneth will become a much more significant figure in Ernestine’s life later on, which is bound to please audiences.
            Over the years that pass, Ernestine’s birthdays are visited by an extended family, with Karel, Kildare and Emelie O’Hara playing multiple roles. Dramas and melodramas intervene, as they will during most long lives. Ernestine, the dreamer and the rock, survives.
            To its credit, “Birthday Candles,” directed by David Ellenstein, manages Ernestine’s aging without silly props or makeup. White will eventually don spectacles or walk more tentatively or speak more haltingly, but no stage tricks are employed.
            There’s a sense as the play winds toward its conclusion that everything, including Ernestine, is shrinking. Even the snappy dialogue. Getting old is serious business, folks.
            For me, White’s beautiful performance transcends the play itself, which can feel a bit soppy. Its best scene actually is its very last, but maybe that’s how it should be.
            You may leave wondering about your own place in the universe. You may leave reminded that every moment we’ve got is precious. Either way, “Birthday Candles” will have done its job.
            “Birthday Candles” runs through June 29 at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach.

Vanessa Flores Cabrera in "La Llorona on the Blue Line."                          Photo courtesy of TuYo Theatre

            We’re all strangers on a train when we board the three vintage light-rail cars in which TuYo Theatre’s immersive “La Llorona on the Blue Line” is staged. Like functioning railway or trolley cars today none of the retired three comes equipped with seat belts. They should. “La Llorona” has its share of hold-on moments.
            The play comprised of three vignettes is written by Maybelle Reynoso, author of TuYo’s “Pastorela 2.0” produced five years ago. The company’s co-artistic director, Maria Patrice Amon, directs the cast of seven that performs inside the historic, 1880s-built National City Depot that’s run by the San Diego Electric Railway Association.
            The three retired cars date from different periods in San Diego rail transport history and Reynoso’s 15-to-20-minute-long vignettes are set in time accordingly: the first in 1920, the second in 1946, the third in 1982. Only 20 patrons are accommodated for each performance, owing to the limited seats aboard the trains. The actors, speaking both English and Spanish, perform in the aisles, just inches from viewers in some moments.
            Before I dive into “La Llorona,” my own experience Friday night, a chilly and misty one in National City:
            Given a “TuYo Railways” ticket and a program sheet (more on that later), I patiently waited among my fellow “passengers” in the quaint depot environs (really a hidden gem for local history buffs). After a uniformed train clerk (Arturo Medina) with a booming voice informed us that we’d be boarding soon, cast members in costume – pretty easy to distinguish from patrons – began to circulate, including a strange young woman in white and in tears.
            All aboard.
            Reynoso’s script concerns itself with, as Amon told me in an interview I did for the San Diego Union-Tribune, “gender equity and stories of women in the South Bay” and also with the La Llorona mother myth – the weeping woman/grieving mother haunted by her own tragic deeds. In the context of this play the La Llorona figure is redefined, no longer a murderess but a spectral figure exacting justice for imperiled or victimized mothers and, in one case, a potential mother-to-be.
            The frightening and beautiful La Llorona (Vanessa Flores) eerily compels passengers from car to car, flitting like some haunted butterfly. She is the omnipresence throughout the play.
            In the first car, dating from 1920, the “Bath Riots” of El Paso in which migrant Mexican women were deloused with gasoline are evoked as the complicit young Bobby (Julian Ortega Flores) is confronted by a stranger aboard the car over his crimes. As in all three vignettes, the white-clad, mask-wielding La Llorona lurks in the background – until she doesn’t.
            The narrative inside the 1946 car finds a newly pregnant girl (Tash Gomez) looking to her worldly wise older sister (Paloma Carrillo) for answers to her predicament and answers to what love and sex and sin are. The girls’ mother (Vanessa Duron) is having none of it. Again, La Llorona presides … and acts.
            The most harrowing of the three stories unfolds in the 1982 familiar red San Diego Trolley car. The scattered babbling of an intensive-care nurse (Nancy Batres) gives way to the unearthing by a fellow passenger, a mother (Duron), of a dark and unsettling secret that ultimately will send La Llorona into a frenzy. It goes down like a violent exorcism and made me wonder at the time how any patrons could bring a child along to this production – as one did the night I was there.
            When it was over, I longed for more dramatized stories. Even though I felt a little wrung out from the last vignette.
            I’ve ridden the modern-day Blue Line many times, including to and from the border, and no trip was ever like these.
            Now back to that program sheet: Turn over the printed information on cast and credits and there are two maps juxtaposed – the “Map of San Diego MTS Trolley System Now” and the “San Diego Electric Railway Map 1918.” Though the latter is kind of hard to read, it’s clear enough that mass transit was further reaching 100 years ago. One could, for example, take a light-rail train to and from the beach, or back and forth to far-flung parts from the Panama California Exposition grounds in Balboa Park. Today’s San Diego Trolley system is one that has expanded considerably since starting up in 1981, but it’s still lacking. The high price of SoCal real estate and the sheer cost of growing out has apparently limited its reach – look how long it took to get a line out to UCSD.
            But that’s a hot-button subject to be argued elsewhere and by those more knowledgeable and more invested than I.
            Let’s stick with “La Llorona on the Blue Line”” Unnerving at times but not off-putting. Thoughtful, no question. Cautionary, certainly. Mindful of the past, the present and what may lie before us, in reality and in myth.
            “La Llorona on the Blue Line” runs through June 21 at the National City Train Depot. Meanwhile, visit the National City Depot and the museum website at https://www.sdera.org/depot.php

Jenna (Lulu Lloyd) and Dr. Pomatter (Bryan Banville) become entangled in "Waitress."   Karli Cadel Photography

            Aug. 1 will mark 10 years exactly since the musical adaptation of Adrienne Shelly’s film “Waitress” made its stage debut at the American Repertory Theater located at Harvard University. This likable grownup musical with a book by Jessie Nelson and music and lyrics by Sara Bareilles would later run nearly four years on Broadway.
            Wednesday night in the drizzle at Moonlight Amphitheatre in Vista made it twice that I’ve seen “Waitress.” My first was seven years ago when the show came to the San Diego Civic Theatre as part of a national tour. As with a tasty slice o’ pie, it’s nice to have seconds.
            Ah yes, pie. You’ll want some by the time “Waitress” is over.
            There’s a connective thread between that 2018 touring presentation of “Waitress” and this one from Moonlight Stage Productions, and it’s a lulu. Musical theater performer Lulu Lloyd, a San Diegan who graduated from La Jolla High, starred as waitress/pie-baker Jenna Hunterson on that national tour (though not on the leg that stopped at the Civic). Five years after stepping aside from acting to have a family, Lloyd returns to the stage to star again as Jenna at Moonlight.
            You can see and hear that Lloyd knows this show inside and out. She’s the light and the strength of an altogether splendid cast in Vista. Welcome back, Lulu.
            Seeing “Waitress” again reminded me of the breadth and the versatility of Bareilles’ songwriting. The musical highlights two of her most touching and beautiful songs, “A Soft Place to Land” and “She Used to be Mine,” both admirably performed by Lloyd to the accompaniment of Moonlight’s “Waitress” orchestra (Stella Belauskas, Marc Encabo, Dave Fung, Michelle Gray, Robert Johnson, Don Kuhli and Josh Vasquez).
            At the same time, Bareilles flashed her gift for clever lyrics that heighten sight-gag- romps given to Jenna’s fellow waitress Dawn (“When He Sees Me”) and Dawn’s comical but sincere suitor Ogie (“Never Ever Getting Rid of Me” and “I Love You Like a Table”). Emma Nossal and Jonathan Sangster have a ball with these at Moonlight.
            The little grace notes of Bareilles’ score (like the echoey, recurring “sugar, butter, flour” that precedes the opening number “What’s Inside” and is heard most tenderly in “A Soft Place to Land”) lend this show nuance, and to an extent all of her songs for Jenna illuminate the reality that this waitress/pie baker’s life is really complicated while reassuring us that she’ll figure it out.
            Make that quite complicated. Before you can say “Order up!” Jenna’s queasy at the diner and her knowing co-workers Becky (Elizabeth Adabale) and Dawn (Nossal) are goading her to pee on a stick. Predictably, she’s preggers, and by her loser husband Earl (Nicholas Mongiardo-Cooper, like Nossal playing against their usual types and succeeding).
            A reluctant trip to the gynecologist’s finds her regular doc gone and a handsome but awkward Dr. Pomatter (Bryce Banville, dependably good) attending to her instead. By the end of the first act, they are more than doctor and patient (“Bad Idea” – that’s the song title, and the truth).
            Mix in Jenna’s dream of winning a piemaking contest, the $20,000 that goes with it and the chance to dump Earl’s sorry butt in the process and “Waitress” finds its heroine in a whirl.
            Meanwhile, a lot of laughter is mined with wallflower Dawn’s courtship by Ogie, a slapsticky break from Jenna’s angst and forbidden romance. (Did I mention that Dr. Pomatter is married, too?)
            Now to Act 2. The first 10 minutes or so find everyone in heat. Jenna and her doctor are getting physical. So are Dawn and Ogie. So is Becky and Cal (Dallas McLaughlin), previously just the grouchy boss at Joe’s Pie Diner. This sequence is why Moonlight labels “Waitress” PG-13. It’s also why for many this show is so popular. Adults doing adult things. Leave the kids at home.
            The trio of director Noelle Marion, musical director Tamara Paige and choreographer Katie Banville ensure that this musical is in good hands, and it’s awesome to have female artists in charge of a story in which a woman finds her strength and finds herself.
            “Waitress” tidies everything up at the end, as you might figure, though Jenna’s romantic fling doesn’t go the way of cliché. Just as Adrienne Shelly wrote it years ago. Tragically (you can research the details yourself) she never lived long enough to see her film become a musical that likely will be produced and produced for years to come.
            During Wednesday night’s performance, I overheard one patron, possibly expecting a rerun of the old “Alice” sitcom, mutter to another patron: “Well, that was different.” I don’t think it was a compliment.
            But she was right. “Waitress” IS different, and from me that’s a compliment.
            “Waitress” runs through June 21 at Moonlight Amphitheatre in Vista. (Bring a blanket.)

Left to right: Cree, Nico Greetham, Benito Martinez and Angelique Cabral in "One of the Good Ones." Photo by Rich Soublet II

            Its impressive cast of Oscar winners (Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy and Sidney Poitier) wasn’t enough to prevent 1967’s “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” from being a grim, even turgid 108 minutes on screen. So props to television writer Gloria Calderon Kellett (“One Day at a Time”) for taking essentially the same premise – a pampered, only-child daughter brings home a surprise paramour to meet the parents – and wringing loads of laughter from it.
             Calderon Kellett’s “One of the Good Ones” requires only 86 minutes of our attention, but every minute of her first full-length play counts. In fact, there so many twists, turns and shocks in this onstage affair that it’s like Calderon Kellett compressed a six-episode sitcom into just one. This expands the bounds of believability to a certain extent as one surprise is quickly trumped by another.
            Naturally the primary surprise in this comedy at the Old Globe is self-proclaimed Latine daughter Yoli (Cree) introducing her “serious boyfriend" Marcos to her folks (Benito Martinez as Enrique and Angelique Cabral as Ilana, both of them slow- and sometimes fast-burn hilarious). The name Marcos is deceptive. Though born in Mexico and fully fluent in Spanish, the America-raised young man (Nico Greetham) looks very white. If that sounds uncomfortable to read or say, it’s very much in line with what identity and racial dynamics Calderon Kellett is exploring within the play’s comic situations.
            Just to recap (that’s a line that Enrique uses several times during the action when he’s trying to get a grasp on whatever revelation has shaken the proceedings): He is of Cuban heritage, born in America. Spanish speaking. Wife Ilana is of Mexican and Puerto Rican heritage, born in America. Speaks no Spanish to speak of. (Opening fun is had with her over-trying to communicate with the man delivering flowers for the festive evening, awkwardly offering him “agua,” for example.) Daughter Yoli is a recent college grad, born in America, not only Spanish speaking but righteously championing every enlightened plank in the book and challenging her parents to get with it.
            Then there’s Marcos, who arrives at the Pasadena house (gorgeous set by Takeshi Kata, by the by) with a bottle of wine and … a pinata. That gives you an idea of his earnest if wildly misguided strategy for winning over his true love’s folks. The pinata will become the show’s sixth “cast member,” but you’ll learn how for yourself in an audience. (The production runs for three more weeks.)
            Calderon Kellett’s characters are overdrawn to suit high comedy, though both Martinez’s Enrique and Cabral’s Ilana have enough real-world relatability and humanity for us to enjoy them, to sympathize with them, to recognize and understand their flaws as well as their good parental intentions. Greetham’s Marcos is all over the place and difficult to get a handle on – at some points, he’s insufferably buzzwordy and clueless, at others sincerely, almost likably attempting to please everyone.
            No dis to the single-named Cree as an actor, but her Yoli may be the most grating character I’ve seen onstage so far this year. Her preachiness is one thing. Her self-absorption, to the extent of even hanging her beloved Marcos out to dry, makes her nearly impossible to care about.
            Calderon Kellett is an experienced pro with snappy comedy dialogue (besides “One Day at a Time,” “How I Met Your Mother,” “Jane the Virgin,” “Dead to Me,” et al) and as a colleague of the late, great Norman Lear she’s well attuned to writing the sort of story “One of the Good Ones” strives to tell. Combine that with an excellent director, Kimberly Senior (La Jolla Playhouse’s notable “The Who and the What” in 2014), and this production bounces along with nary a dead spot as one “I-can’t-believe-he(she)-said that!” moment follows on another.
            The presence of Martinez and Cabral gifts Calderon Kellett’s play with the charm and comic timing required of parents characters who are navigating (that’s one of Yoli’s words – sorry) generational, cultural and racial identity issues at the same time that they’re trying to support the daughter they truly love. Like Marcos, Enrique and Ilana can mis-speak, and like most parents do, they tend to over-react, but they’re two of the good ones.
            So are Martinez and Cabral.
            “One of the good Ones” runs through June 22 at the Old Globe in Balboa Park.