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.

Patrick Star (Berto Fernandez) and SpongeBob (Bailey Lee) spell out their friendship in "The SpongeBob Musical." Karli Cadel Photography

            For cockeyed optimist SpongeBob Squarepants every day is the best day ever. So, to quote another pop-culture icon, Mad magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman, “why worry?” when a predicted volcanic eruption threatens all who reside in the undersea realm of Bikini Bottom?
            That’s it. Those are the stakes in “The SpongeBob Musical,” Kyle Jarrow’s stage adaptation, with musical production conceived by Tina Landau, of the long-loved Nickelodeon TV show. So why does it take two and a half hours to address and resolve the problem?
            Because the show, which debuted on Broadway nine years ago and is now onstage in Cygnet’s Joseph Clayes III Theater, isn’t invested solely in the problem. It’s a showcase for song-and-dancing performances by versatile actors portraying cartoon characters that kids – and many of their parents – have loved for a quarter-century.
            In between the discovery, by “outsider mammal” Sandy Cheeks (Rebecca Murillo) of the volcano-eruption danger and the quest led by SpongeBob (Bailey Lee) to negate it are prodigious production numbers that smack of pure Broadway pizazz. Both Patrick Star (Berto Fernandez) and Squidward Q. Tentacles (Andrew Oswald) get lavish, ensemble-supported turns clearly designed to bring the ‘ol house down. Because Fernandez and Oswald are clearly the two loudest cheered performers in the Cygnet cast you could say they do just that.
            Director Katie Banville, recently named the theater’s associate artistic director, is a seasoned choreographer as well. No wonder the elaborate dance sequences in “SpongeBob” are as dazzling and superbly executed as they are.
            All of the other principal characters familiar to “SpongeBob” cartoon fans (admittedly, I am not one of them) are here: Mr. Krabs (Kurt Norby), Sheldon J. Plankton (Drew Bradford) and his computer wife Karen (Emma Nossal), Larry the Lobster (Boston Antunez), Pearl Krabs (Brittany Adriana Carrillo), Mrs. Puff (Gerilyn Brault).  Cygnet’s is a cast of nearly 20 all told.
            As befitting SpongeBob, Lee is playful, effusive and animated – the character’s joy and value of friendship shines through. Like all the others in the show, she’s imaginatively costumed by Kelan Yang. Not clumsy replicas of the cartoon show but more comfortable, more conducive-to-movement outfits in bursting bright colors that suggest the visual characteristics of the Bikini Bottom gang.
            Mathys Herbert’s set evokes the undersea world of SpongeBob and company with shades of blue, oscillating waves, illuminated kelp. Of course there’s a prominent pineapple, and a giant wristwatch (probably waterproof) is utilized later when the gang is up against the “deadline” for the volcano to blow. If that’s intended to add urgency to the proceedings, it really doesn’t. This is a show, hosted by the quite funny Cody Bianchi as jokester Patchy the Pirate, that takes its own sweet time for song and spectacle.
            The musical score includes original tunes by notables like Sara Bareilles, Cyndi Lauper, John Legend and David Bowie. Jonathan Coulton (lyrics) and Tom Kitt (music) contributed. It’s a likable if not remarkable collection of songs. They do the job and ably support the big production numbers.
            A definite issue is the volume in the theater. Way too loud, at times thunderous. It didn’t help either that I had a woman in back of me whose recurring “Wooooooos!” were almost as loud.
            Does “SpongeBob the Musical” need to be this loud? “American Idiot,” yes. “SpongeBob?” I think not.
            Speaking of the audience, there certainly were kids there on opening night, though most patrons were adults, many of the men in aloha shirts. A few with jackets draped over their SpongeBob T-shirts.
            So this is a stage show that has devoted fans and is likely to have them for years to come. The musical was first produced locally four years ago by Coronado Playhouse. Cygnet is closing its first season at The Joan with “SpongeBob the Musical” and it seems apt for the beginning of summer with its long, sunny days and cold pineapple.
            “The SpongeBob Musical” runs through July 12 at Cygnet Theatre in Liberty Station, Point Loma.

Dave Rivas and Cecilia Cuevas-Torres in "Adult Storytime: A Caregiver's Guide to the Blues."  Narrative Images Photography

            “Adult Storytime: A Caregiver’s Guide to the Blues” is a labor of love for creator/director Marti Gobel, whose interviews of caregivers, of all ages, are heard in the interviewees’ very words in this production’s 12 monologues.
            As those monologues, performed by four actors and accompanied by live blues music reveal, caregiving isn’t always a labor of love. It certainly can be, but there’s no one, universal definition of a caregiver. It may be done out of love. It may be done out of duty. It may be done because there’s no one else to do it.
            This OnWord Theatre presentation at Liberty Station’s Light Box Theater demonstrates too that caregiving isn’t necessarily desperately sad. It can be a gift. It can be uplifting in deeply human ways. It can, in moments, even be haplessly funny. There are boxes of Kleenex on the floor placed around the seats in the theater in case patrons are moved to the brink of tears by any of the monologues.
            You may not need them. While some of Gobel’s interviews yielded painful, heart-rending recollections, most do not.
            Then there’s the presence of the musicians – Gobel’s husband Jacob, the band director, on keyboards; their son Kemet on bass; Kahir Brown on drums; and a superfine guitarist with a knack for the blues, Craig Griffin. Providing vocals is Jasmine January, familiar to most local theatergoers. She may be new, as she’s said, to songs like John Lee Hooker’s “Cry Before I Go” or Bessie Smith’s “Gimme a Pig Foot and a Bottle of Beer,” but she surely has a feel for them.
            Gobel curated the set list of songs, performed in between deliveries of monologues. It also includes B.B. King’s “How Blue Can You Get?”, Ray Charles’ “You Don’t Know Me,” Etta James’ “I Sing the Blues,” among others. Gobel’s correct in that the blues doesn’t mean sad and it doesn’t mean pain. It means catharsis. It means comfort. It means letting it out and taking back in something restorative.
            On the louder of the musical numbers January’s vocals are overpowered somewhat, but mostly the musical half of “Adult Storytime” is foot-tapping and immersive.
            The monologues are delivered by Cecilia Cuevas-Torres, Wilfred Paloma, Dave Rivas and Meesha. There is no casting by gender or age. (Cuevas-Torres and Rivas, as a matter of fact, kick off the performance playing children.) Each segment is book-ended by projected photos of the caregiver and the person being cared for.
            Two of the monologues are especially personal to Gobel: one, with Rivas as her daughter Freedom, recounting the story of a Georgetown law student who had to fight for the right to care for her own child as she pursued a degree; and another with Meesha as Gobel herself, reliving Gobel’s revelatory experience caring for the poor in a South Africa township.
            Often heard or implied in the monologues is a message of “no regrets” – an affirmation from caregivers who went through a hell some of us can’t imagine – or many of us might relate to – but did so because they did care, and ultimately that was what was most important.
            Professional caregivers are also honored in some of the segments; their contributions are just as critical and worthy of respect.
            I’ve never had to be a caregiver, but I have friends and know others who have been. My understanding of and admiration for them is greater because of this production.
            “Adult Storytime: A Caregiver’s Guide to the Blues” runs through June 28 at the Light Box Theater at Liberty Station, Point Loma.

Patrick Star (Berto Fernandez, left) and SpongeBob (Bailey Lee) celebrate their friendship in "The SpongeBob Musical."                                                                                                  Karli Cadel Photography

            For cockeyed optimist SpongeBob Squarepants every day is the best day ever. So, to quote another pop-culture icon, Mad magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman, “why worry?” when a predicted volcanic eruption threatens all who reside in the undersea realm of Bikini Bottom?
            That’s it. Those are the stakes in “The SpongeBob Musical,” Kyle Yarrow’s stage adaptation, with musical production conceived by Tina Landau, of the long-loved Nickelodeon TV show. So why does it take two and a half hours to address and resolve the problem?
            Because the show, which debuted on Broadway nine years ago and is now onstage in Cygnet’s Joseph Clayes III Theater, isn’t invested solely in the problem. It’s a showcase for song-and-dancing performances by versatile actors portraying cartoon characters that kids – and many of their parents – have loved for a quarter-century.
            In between the discovery, by “outsider mammal” Sandy Cheeks (Rebecca Murillo) of the volcano-eruption danger and the quest led by SpongeBob (Bailey Lee) to negate it are prodigious production numbers that smack of pure Broadway pizazz. Both Patrick Star (Beto Fernandez) and Squidward Q. Tentacles (Andrew Oswald) get lavish, ensemble-supported turns clearly designed to bring the ‘ol house down. Because Fernandez and Oswald are clearly the two loudest cheered performers in the Cygnet cast you could say they do just that.
            Director Katie Banville, recently named the theater’s associate artistic director, is a seasoned choreographer as well. No wonder the elaborate dance sequences in “SpongeBob” are as dazzling and superbly executed as they are.
            All of the other principal characters familiar to “SpongeBob” cartoon fans (admittedly, I am not one of them) are here: Mr. Krabs (Kurt Norby), Sheldon J. Plankton (Drew Bradford) and his computer wife Karen (Emma Nossal), Larry the Lobster (Boston Antunez), Pearl Krabs (Brittany Adriana Carrillo), Mrs. Puff (Gerilyn Brault).  Cygnet’s is a cast of nearly 20 all told.
            As befitting SpongeBob, Lee is playful, effusive and animated – the character’s giddy joy and value of friendship shines through. Like all the others in the show, she’s imaginatively costumed by Kelan Yang. Not clumsy replicas of the cartoon show but more comfortable, more conducive-to-movement outfits in bursting bright colors that suggest the visual characteristics of the Bikini Bottom gang.
            Mathys Herbert’s set evokes the undersea world of SpongeBob and company with shades of blue, oscillating waves and illuminated kelp. Of course there’s a prominent pineapple, and a giant wristwatch (probably waterproof) is utilized later when the gang is up against the “deadline” for the volcano to blow. If that’s intended to add urgency to the proceedings, it really doesn’t. This is a show, hosted by the quite funny Cody Bianchi as jokester Patchy the Pirate, that takes its own sweet time for song and spectacle.
            The musical score includes original tunes by notables like Sara Bareilles, Cyndi Lauper, John Legend and David Bowie. Jonathan Coulton (lyrics) and Tom Kitt (music) contributed. It’s a likable if not remarkable collection of songs. They do the job and ably support the big production numbers.
            A definite issue is the volume in the theater. Way too loud, at times thunderous. It didn’t help either that I had a woman in back of me whose recurring “Wooooooos!” were almost as loud.
            Does “SpongeBob the Musical” need to be this loud? “American Idiot,” yes. “SpongeBob?” I think not.
            Speaking of the audience, there certainly were kids there on opening night, though most patrons were adults, many of the men in aloha shirts. A few with jackets draped over their SpongeBob T-shirts.
            So this is a stage show that has devoted fans and is likely to have them for years to come. The musical was first produced locally four years ago by Coronado Playhouse. Cygnet is closing its first season at The Joan with “The SpongeBob Musical” and it seems apt for the beginning of summer with its long, sunny days and cold pineapple.
            “The SpongeBob Musical” runs through July 12 at Cygnet Theatre in Liberty Station, Point Loma.

Ngozi Anyanwu (left) and Sullivan Jones in "The Monsters."                                 Photo by Rich Soublet II

            The two hardest working actors in town right now have to be Ngozi Anyanwu and Sullivan Jones. As proof, there’s “The Monsters,” Anyanwu’s sister/brother drama set in the arena of mixed martial arts, or MMA.
            A co-production between La Jolla Playhouse and Berkeley Repertory Theatre, “The Monsters” requires Anyanwu and Jones to not only simulate the punching, kicking, bobbing and weaving of MMA but to tirelessly demonstrate the rigorous training that goes into prepping for a fight. Tortures (to me at least) such as jumping rope, doing fast-paced push-ups and sit-ups, and using the floor like a trampoline that doesn’t move. It’s exhausting and terribly impressive to watch from the passive comfort of a seat in the Playhouse’s Mandell Weiss Forum.
            Yet technically and physically precise and powerful as all that is, the MMA is secondary to the interpersonal story of Joseph (called Big throughout) and younger sister Josie (Lil) who in a mere 80 minutes of stage time evolve from tentatively reunited to the most important person in each other’s lives.
            “The Monsters” is partly autobiographical for Anyanwu, who based the character of the aging fighter Big on her own older MMA-involved brother, wanting to honor his softer, human side just as she attempts to do – quite movingly – with Big. We suspect from the outset that Big is not a monster (the appellation he’s adopted, somewhat self-deprecatingly), but he must learn that truth himself.
            With a little help from Lil.
            Anyanwu knows “The Monsters” inside and out. She not only wrote the play but directed it in its premiere at Manhattan Theatre Club and has portrayed Lil a number of times onstage. At the Playhouse Tamilla Woodard is directing a production, with choreography by Adesola Osakalumi, that feels in perpetual motion even in its quieter, more introspective moments. Some of these come in flashbacks to Big and Lil’s past, children (though there’s a 10-year age difference) of the same father but different mothers. The affection they show for each other does not hint at the long estrangement to come between them, though the domestic abuse Big endures at the cruel hand of their father and suggestions of Big’s problem with booze loom.
            I generally applaud a play of only 80 minutes in length, but I think the flashbacks could have been more substantial if not more frequent during.
            The tale opens with Lil reintroducing herself to the older brother who hasn’t seen her in a dozen years or more. In the interim she’s been following his career as a fighter, admiring him as much as wondering about him. Big is surprised and wary, though rather too quickly for my buy-in he warms to her in his inherently terse, self-protective way.
            Recognizing the passion and potential in his sister as an athlete herself, Big soon is training her to follow in his footsteps. His admittedly second-tier career (in spite of the championship belts he possesses) is on the decline and the younger Lil appears to have what it takes to possibly surpass his own achievements in the cage.
            Lil is learning far more about her brother than his technical skills along the way, just as Big recognizes in her some of the same frailties (including potential substance abuse) that he has grappled with and sought in a sense to deny.
            The development of this mutual understanding and, more so, of a sibling relationship grounded in love are what make “The Monsters” as reverberant as it is. At the same time, the physicality of the story mirrors the emotion building in each character. Fight consultant Chelsea Pace and mixed martial arts consultant Eijara Eubanks are to be lauded for what certainly looks authentic to me, though I’m far from MMA-conversant. Just as integral to the theatrical reality of the production are the sound effects designed by Daniela Hart, Noel Nichols and Bailey Trierweiler of New York-based UptownWorks. You can swear the punches thrown are landing.
            Anyanwu and Jones are in sync in both the physical and emotional worlds of “The Monsters.” Big’s internal self-realizations are the more deep-seated, requiring Jones to all but become another character entirely before the tale is told but like so many men propelled by machismo and stoicism any substantive shift in persona can seem automatically dramatic.
            Anyanwu is energy personified. Lil becomes fight-ready and assumes some of her brother’s swagger, for better or worse, but she remains herself. She may one day be the champion Big never was, but won’t leave behind her innate playfulness and probably not the oversized Philadelphia Eagles jersey stashed away in her past.
            “The Monsters” did not make me an MMA fan or even curious about those who compete in mixed martial arts. It does, however, make me thoughtful about my own sibling relationships and how, for the good of all concerned, they demand attention and love.
            “The Monsters runs through June 28 in La Jolla Playhouse’s Mandell Weiss Forum, UCSD campus.

May and December: Lauren Weinberg and Gregory North in "The Most Happy Fella." Photo by Aaron Rumley

            In Jeffrey B. Moss’ director’s note in the North Coast Repertory Theatre program for its production of Frank Loesser’s “The Most Happy Fella” he references the show as “everyone’s favorite musical they’ve never seen.”
            It hasn’t been produced locally in 20 years, not since Moonlight Stage Productions staged “The Most Happy Fella” in Vista. In fact, my “introduction” to this Golden Age musical was an old rerun of “I Love Lucy,” an episode from 1957 titled “Lucy Goes Out on the Town,” in which she, Ricky, Fred and Ethel went to a big Broadway show and it was – you guessed it – “The Most Happy Fella.”
            So Lucy and the gang saw it 50 years ago before I finally did.
            “The Most Happy Fella” is an old-fashioned musical, the kind that isn’t written or produced anymore. In spite of a couple of “goddamns” and an unplanned pregnancy in the narrative it’s a pretty foursquare story: Old guy -- make that old fella -- enchanted by the much younger server who waited on him in a San Francisco restaurant has left her a note that all but proposes marriage. Lo and behold, and perhaps because he’s substituted a photo of his handsome ranch foreman for his own, she turns up not long afterward at his Napa Valley grape farm. Everyone’s already calling her “the bride.”
            “The Most Happy Fella” is based on a play by Sidney Howard, “They Knew What They Wanted,” which later became a 1940 film of the same name starring Carole Lombard (as the young server) and Charles Laughton (as the aging wine grower). The movie does not have a happy ending.
            “Fella” is the third of Loesser’s Broadway musicals, premiering six years after his gangbusters hit “Guys and Dolls.” “The Most Happy Fella” is no “Guys and Dolls.” Its characters, besides Tony Esposito the grape farmer and waitress Amy, whom he has idealized as Rosabella (a device later exploited in “Man of La Mancha”), are mostly folks around the Napa ranch. Four of the hands, in fact, get to deliver “The Most Happy Fella’s” best known song, “Standing on the Corner.”
            As for the Loesser score, it’s a tuneful, serviceable one in which many of the gimmicky numbers, like the chefs’ acrobatic “Abbondanza,” the audience sing-along “Sposalizo” and the high-kickin’ ode to Dallas, Texas, “Big D,” are more memorable than the earnest ballads.
            But all this said, “The Most Happy Fella” is an entertaining 140 minutes (yeah, a little too long) of musical theater, comedy and romance, and the North Coast Rep production definitely benefits from having some unmistakably talented actors in the cast. Gregory North, playing Tony, has a big voice and is far more sympathetic than Charles Laughton was in the old movie. Tony’s loud and a little cranky but an old softie.
            If he’s cranky it’s probably because of his pushy sister Marie (Bethany Slomka in a very unsympathetic role) who’s determined not to allow a union between her brother and this young woman from San Francisco (that wicked city!).
            Lauren Weinberg, a vocal star in NC Rep’s past productions of “Camelot” and last year’s “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder,” is that young woman from San Francisco. I could listen to Weinberg sing all day; her voice is simply beautiful. I don’t feel like this musical gives her the best showcase, but she stands out nonetheless.
            The comic roles of Cleo, her waitress friend from The City (Shinah Hey) and Herman (Andrew Hey), the ranch hand who can’t help smiling, are more about their kissing courtship than the music, though they do have a tonna fun with “Big D.”
            I honestly didn’t know that the wistful tune “Joey, Joey, Joey” was from this show. Chris Hunter’s performance (as Joe the ranch foreman) of it is touching and sung with tremendous feeling.
            That aforementioned ensemble of folks ‘round the ranch (Jacob Caltrider, Eli Wood and Morgan Hollingsworth) truly enlivens “The Most Happy Fella” at times when it leans toward excess sentiment. Their antics and steps are choreographed by Melissa Glasgow.
            Alina Bokovikova has everyone clad in appropriate late-1920s rural duds, and in this staging of “The Most Happy Fella,” one conceived by Robert Page and approved by Loesser, the live music is provided by two pianists on either side of the stage – here, Elan McMahan and Justin Gray. This arrangement lends an intimacy to the show, which is largely sung-through anyway, and the effect is almost a concert performance of a stage musical. Nothing wrong with that in this case.
            If Loesser himself were around, I’d have two bones to pick with him: First, that he lets his characters refer to San Francisco as “Frisco.” Any San Franciscan will tell you that this is highly disrespectful. Second, if he really wanted older Tony to win the younger woman’s love and to do so unselfishly he’d have dropped his “Rosabella” infatuation and let her be the Amy she is. Maybe I’m overthinking it, but the “Rosabella” thing is almost infantilizing her and at the very least it emphasizes the difference in their ages rather than making the case that that difference doesn’t really matter if they’re in love.
            Loesser would counter with “Who’s got a Tony, a Grammy and a Pulitzer, wise guy, and what do you know about it?”
            He’d have a point.
            Well, to address director Moss’ observation about “everyone’s favorite musical they’ve never seen,” I’ll say this. Now I’ve seen “The Most Happy Fella,” and while it’s not my favorite musical it’s receiving a disarming staging at North Coast Repertory Theatre at which folks are very likely to walk out afterward happy.
            “The Most Happy Fella” runs through July 5 at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach.

"Mean Girls" makes an effective transition from film to the stage.                       Karli Cadel Photography

            Who needs a Burn Book when you’ve got social media?
            The omnipresence of the latter (along with singing and dancing, of course) is the most conspicuous difference between the “Mean Girls” movie from 2004 and the musical adaptation that premiered 20 years later and which is on stage in a “fetching” production at Moonlight Amphitheatre in Vista.
            While the Burn Book that the Plastics (Karen, Gretchen and Regina, the Queen Bee) used in the movie to be mean in writing toward just about anyone at North Shore High besides themselves is still a major plot point in the “Mean Girls” musical, social media snark is part of their ammo in the narrative update (like the film’s screenplay written by Tina Fey). It does make one wonder why bothering with a book that no one else can see (until later in the story) is even necessary when the “unpopular” can be blasted on SM.
            Nevertheless, the digital update to “Mean Girls” is a welcome one, whether evoked in projected emojis in texts or in a cautionary song ‘n’ dance number like “Stop.”
            What hasn’t changed from the film to the stage is the fact that the story’s mean girls, those Plastics, are still the best characters. Rachel McAdams announced her presence as a movie star playing Regina George in the movie, and Moonlight’s Regina, Madeline Walters, is the star of almost every scene she’s in.
            Carrying on the Plastics tradition of Lacey Chabert and Amanda Seyfried, Salima Gangani and Lizzy Sheck shine at Moonlight as Regina’s gullible cohorts Gretchen Wieners and Karen Smith. Gangani is gifted with by far the musical’s most poignant (and messagy) tune “What’s Wrong With Me,” while Sheck is the production’s ace comedian, whether singing (on “Sexy”) or just nailing Fey’s best lines.
            As Cady Heron, the homeschooled teen from Kenya who moves to Illinois and is thrust into the discriminating cliques of North Shore High (“Where Do You Belong?”), Erin Dubreuil is likable and a fine singer, though like Lindsay Lohan before her she’s overshadowed by all the vivid character turns around her. Besides the Plastics, there’s Jack Stoler and Cayden Alley as Janis and Damian, the two outsiders who try to help Cady find her way at North Shore (and to stick it to Regina in the process), and Tracy Lore as math teacher Mrs. Norbury, she who, having been blasted in the Burn Book, tries at the end to stem all the mean-girl infighting.
            The music (by Jeff Richmond) and lyrics (by Nell Benjamin, lately of the Old Globe’s “Huzzah!”) carry the “Mean Girls” story along with a few nuggets – the “Apex the Predator” tune that introduces Regina, the aforementioned “Stop” and “What’s Wrong With Me,” the recurring “Fearless” – though some feel only like opportunities for chorusing and high-stepping and don’t significantly move the tale forward. (The “Mean Girls” movie is 97 minutes’ long. The musical is about two and a half hours’ long.)
            Chorusing and high-stepping are staples of Moonlight productions, however, and director/choreographer John Vaughan, along with a large and nimble ensemble, ensures that “Mean Girls” is no exception.
            Tina Fey’s gotten a lot out of mileage out of “Mean Girls”: a movie, a stage musical and a 2024 film of the musical. Can a “Mean Girls” TV sitcom be one day in the offing? Somewhere out there must be an actress well-suited to step into Regina George’s high-heeled shoes.
            “Mean Girls” runs through June 20 at Moonlight Amphitheatre in Vista.

Michael Amira Temple (left) and Nio Russell in "Rent."                                                     Xing Photo Studio

            Diversionary Theatre promised a production of “Rent” like you’ve never seen before.
            It’s delivered.
            Co-conceived and -directed by Sherri Eden Barber and Coleman Ray Clark, this legacy revival of Jonathan Larson’s 30-year-old rock musical is an ambitious departure from what these days are considered “traditional” stagings of the show based on Puccini’s “La Boheme.” For one, out of necessity and out of invention, Barber and Clark haven’t attempted to accommodate a large ensemble and a live band on the Diversionary stage. Necessity because it’s just not big enough. Invention because the inspired choice was made to open up the entire theater building in University Heights, indoors and outside of it, as a “stage,” utilizing live video projected in the theater to show characters in performance.
            Another conceit that is even more effective is transporting one of “Rent’s” most entertaining (and outrageous) moments, performance artist Maureen’s “Over the Moon” (complete with cow), to the theater’s downstairs cabaret and patio lobby area. She and cow are not alone either. Audience members are invited – and most are game – to head down and witness this in person. (Others may remain upstairs and watch it on the eight video screens.)
            Maureen’s gig downstairs is followed by the celebratory “La Vie Boheme,” with cast members performing in the very midst of the attending audience. The effect is what Barber and Clark intended: to make audience members not merely viewers of “Rent” but participants in it. This device is the highlight of the production and, amazingly, it only took the crowd five minutes to get back upstairs and in their seats again in time for what is usually the opening of “Rent’s” second act, the iconic, all-cast-sung “Seasons of Love.”
            Most but not all of the video shooting throughout is handled by Jonathan Sangster, who’s a fine Mark Cohen. Capturing characters on the stage itself contributes to the feeling that you’re up there with them and part of the story of this community of friends living for each other and holding fast to their freedom at the height of the AIDS crisis in mid-‘90s East Village, New York City.
            One of the most successful uses of the live video and the alternative staging is the heartfelt “Without You” duet between Roger (Gio Coppola) and Mimi (Maya Sofia Enciso). He’s in the theater, she’s outside on the stairway that leads up to it from below. The resulting effect is emphasis on their individual loneliness, isolation and the fragility of the bond between them that makes separation all but unbearable.
            Possibly as expected with a theatrical undertaking as technically complex as this one is, the live action and the video are slightly out of sync the entire time, and there are instances during the production when some actors are either drowned out by the band (sequestered out of sight) or victimized by mic issues.
            These lapses shouldn’t detract from the contributions of sound designer Kevin Antenhill, projection designer Nicholas Hussong or the others on the technical side who should be lauded for even attempting a “Rent” like this one, among them lighting designer Annelise Schultz-Salazar, props designer Anthony Garcia and costume designer Claire Peterson (outfitting Maureen alone is boldly in the spirit of “Rent’s” rebellious story).
            “Rent” also MUST be produced with a live band and Diversionary’s is a stellar one: guitarist Andrew Snyder, drummer Chris Potente, Sean Collins on bass, keyboards from Kyle Adam Blair (the associate music director to Jerrica Stone).
            There’s a reason why I’ve spent all this time on the technical merits of Diversionary’s “Rent” and am just now getting to the cast: The presentation is what makes this show. The risks taken. The big swings swung. The ability to make an “old” musical feel new again.
            I’ve seen “Rent” half a dozen times or more by now. Diversionary’s ensemble, from a strictly singing standpoint, is somewhere in the middle of those. But there are some standouts nonetheless. Leading the way is Nio Russell as Maureen’s lawyer-girlfriend Joanne with a voice both beautiful and expressive. The Maureen part is arguably the most coveted one in productions of “Rent,” even if she doesn’t appear until near the end of the first act. (Here, in order to facilitate the upstairs/downstairs transition, that happens after intermission.) I knew going in that the talented Michael Amira Temple would ace this role, and she does. She and Russell make some magic.
            Sangster and Coppola are the other well-matched pair in this production, their “What You Own” collaboration erasing any doubt.
            I was less moved by Enciso’s Mimi or Allen Lucky Weaver’s Angel but those are very demanding portrayals, physically and emotionally, and I won’t minimize them by comparison to others I’ve seen. Andre Heimos is a sensitive and understated Tom Collins, though David McBean feels underused as Benny Coffin, a consequence to some extent of the defined one-note role as the friend-turned-landlord.
            The star of any production of “Rent,” including a technically innovative one such as Diversionary’s, is always Jonathan Larson’s score – emotive, incredibly varied and nuanced, and, as seeing his show after 30 years testifies, timeless.
            The overarching message of “Rent” is timeless too: LIVE FOR THE MOMENT.
            “Rent” runs through June 28 at Diversionary Theatre in University Heights.