"Arms and the Man" skewers love and war in Coronado.       Photo courtesy of Lamb's Players Theatre

            Not that there’s any doubt about what George Bernard Shaw thought of war in his searing “Arms and the Man,” but one line in the play – delivered by a “heroic” soldier! – all but shouts Shaw to the rafters: “War is a fraud! A hollow sham!”
            Romanticized love does not escape Shaw’s jaundiced eye either in this costumed affair set during the 1885 Serbo-Bulgarian War. When another of his characters declares life to be a farce, he might as well have been indicting the sort of swooning, breast-heaving romance coveted by “Arms and the Man’s” heroine, the lovely aristocrat Raina Petkoff.
            So was Shaw, not even 40 when “Arms and the Man” premiered in 1894 just an “old” cynic, or did he have a valid point about two entities – war and love – that had been so idealized by writers as or less estimable than himself?
            As Lamb’s Players Theatre’s high-style production of “Arms and the Man,” directed by Deborah Gilmour Smyth (who played Raina herself at Lamb’s in the early ‘80s) and populated by a fun-loving cast suggests, Shaw knew what he was doing.
            “Arms and the Man” actually begins when the war between Bulgaria and Serbia has ended after only two weeks of fighting, with the former winning – winning what is not completely clear. Read your history books. In the house of Petkoff, Raina (Megan Carmitchel) can scarcely sleep for the thought that her beloved, Major Sergius Saranoff (Spencer Gerber) will be returning from the fray. So will her father, Major Paul Petkoff (Manny Fernandes), though neither Raina nor her mother Catherine (Melissa Fernandes) seems that jacked up this prospect.
            In the wake of some unnerving gunfire outside, Raina is roused from sort-of-sleep by the intrusion through her window doors of an exhausted, sword-bearing mercenary (MJ Sieber) who had been fighting on the side of the Serbs. For Raina, fear quickly gives way to fascination with this sputtering soldier, a man for whom the concept of heroism is hard to swallow and who, he tells her, prefers to carry chocolates than ammunition in his cartridge belt. So when a Bulgarian solider (Jordan Miller) invades the Petkoff home searching for an escapee, Raina hides her harried intruder from capture.
            Sweets for the sweet? She’s also fed the weak-with-hunger mercenary from her own box of chocolates.
            Much of the laughter from this entire ruse stems from the involvement of Raina’s mother; the two form a conspiracy to keep this episode from the ears of the returning majors, Petkoff and Saranoff.
            The minute we meet Sergius Saranoff, strutting like a peacock in military uniform and obviously loving himself more than he can love Raina or any woman, our sympathies are with the mercenary, who later arrives at the house, taut and cleaned up and identified as a Captain Bluntschli. Maybe his and Raina’s first encounter couldn’t be called a meet-cute, but there were enough indications from the start that these two were fated for coupling.
            Heightening the hapless intrigue is the presence of Raina’s maid Louka (Lizzie Morse, understudying for Katie Karel the night I saw this show). Unhappy with her domestic lot and far shrewder than the lady on whom she attends, Louka feigns disgust at Saranoff’s transparent flirtations, but she can’t conceal preferring his swagger to the doting, lecturing attentions of the house’s head manservant, Nicola (John Rosen).
            Not surprisingly, Raina’s secret gets out, and it’s only a matter of time before all concerned learn the identity of the “chocolate-cream soldier” for whom she’s affectionately signed a portrait of herself. How that photo is discovered is part of the comic climax’s runaround.
            Shaw wrote these characters to be played broadly, and they are at Lamb’s, just as they were when I first saw “Arms and the Man” 10 years ago at the Old Globe. Emoting and gesturing are part of the playwright’s strategy to cast these figures as if not stereotypes, archetypes of romanticized lovers and idealized war heroes.
            No one does this more broadly than Gerber, a graduate of the Coronado School of the Arts who is making his professional debut here as the mustachioed, preening Sergius Saranoff. What a way to break into regional theater – with license to go all out.
            The versatile Carmitchel is as at home with farce every bit as she is with serious drama; her local resume testifies to that.
            Sieber may be known to area audiences for his visceral turns in Backyard Renaissance Theatre productions (most recently “A Streetcar Named Desire”) and at Cygnet Theatre, where he shone two years ago in its staging of “The Little Fellow (or The Queen of Tarts),” Kate Hamil’s comedy-drama. In “Arms and the Man” he’s able to make the frantic and exasperating mercenary of Act One as credible as the cool and sharp-witted Captain Bluntschli of Act Two.
            It’s always a hoot when the Fernandeses, Melissa and Manny, turn up in the same cast. They’re real pro’s who thrive on this kind of fare. (Interestingly, they’re pairing up as George and Martha – hardly your fun-loving couple – in Carlsbad Playreaders’ staged reading of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” on Nov. 3.)
            Not to be lost in the ebullient performances at Lamb’s is the period costuming of Jemma Dutra or the alacrity in which director Gilmour Smyth moves the story along.
            Two hours (with intermission), in and out.
            It was a strange feeling the night I saw “Arms and the Man” to be one of the few in the audience laughing out loud. Possibly the sedate crowd preferred to chuckle under their collective breath, or maybe many just didn’t understood the tenor of the show, or Shaw’s intent. I did hear one theatergoer behind me afterward, on the way out, say to another: “Well, that play had a lot of words, didn’t it?”
            I wonder if he realized how biting and insightful those words were, and are.
            “Arms and the Man” runs through Nov. 16 at Lamb’s Players Theatre in Coronado.

Deja Fields and Carter Piggee in "Blues for an Alabama Sky."                                Photo by Jason Sullivan

            There’s more than a little Sally Bowles in Angel Allen, who like the chanteuse from “Cabaret” residing in an anxious Berlin in the 1930s finds escape in her performances and in booze, except that in Pearl Cleage’s “Blues for an Alabama Sky,” Angel’s residing in an early-Depression Harlem. Like Sally’s, Angel’s life is significantly a hot mess.
            But Angel’s got one thing going for her: friends in and around the apartment building she’s crashed in who care about her, starting with her best friend of all – Guy Jacobs, a gay costume maker who dreams of dressing the great Josephine Baker in Paris and who has taken Angel in after she’s lost a job and a gangster boyfriend. Across the hall is Delia Patterson, an earnest social worker with a good heart; and just a jolly “Let the good times roll!” away is the neighborhood doctor Sam Thomas, who endearingly calls his friend (and patient, we learn later) “Angel Eyes.”
            These are Cleage’s characters that inhabit Cleage’s play, giving it life, humor, pathos and relatability. Who among us is lucky enough to have such friends, especially when life deals us a bad hand – or even if we, in our weaknesses and transgressions, deal ourselves that bad hand?
            Moxie Theatre has opened its 21st season with “Blues for an Alabama Sky” under the direction of its artistic director, Desiree Clarke Miller. Though its 90-minute first act is sluggish, the drama- and action-packed second act contributes to this production being the most riveting since Clarke Miller assumed her leadership role at Moxie two years ago. Cleage is an expressive and artful playwright, having created a ‘30s Harlem where historical figures like Rev. Adam Clayton Powell is preaching the Good Word, where Margaret Sanger, advocating for birth control, is Delia’s inspiration, and where Langston Hughes is a poet for the mind and for social change.
            While the struggle for daily survival that Angel (Deja Fields) find herself in is the impetus for most of the first-act tension, it’s the arrival on the scene of a gentleman suitor from the South, Leland Cunningham (Carter Piggee), that ramps up the stakes for Angel and at the same time rattles her friendship circle. It’s as if Cleage has, narratively speaking, lit a slow-burning fuse beneath the floors of Guy’s (Kevane La’Marr Coleman) and Delia’s apartment.
            Prior to Leland’s arrival, we’ve been allowed to revel in the characterizations played out with vibrancy on a Moxie stage that now extends from end to end, mirroring the audience seating area and facilitating a set by Michael Wogulis that depicts Guy’s apartment and the next-door apartment of Delia.
           Coleman is as charismatic as I’ve ever seen him as Guy, without whom Angel might be destitute. He’s also nattily dressed throughout by costume designer Danita Lee. As Sam the doc, Xavier Daniels is so full of life and fun – and yet understated when his affections for the shy and romantically inexperienced Delia (Janine Taylor) begin to bloom – that one longs for a doctor like him. Do they exist?
             The versatile and emotive Fields is following up her star turn in last year’s “Clyde’s” at Moxie with this layered performance, one that doesn’t conceal Angel’s flaws and bad choices in order to win simple sympathy. Her Angel is someone with a case of the blues that won’t go away even when a true romance seems to beckon. Booze, on the other hand, always is what it is.
             The relationship between Angel and Guy, and the chemistry between Fields and Coleman, are the backbone and spirit of “Blues for an Alabama Sky.”
            Cleage’s Delia and especially Leland characters are less fully developed, and when the latter voices his scarcely contained disapproval of the post-Harlem Renaissance liberation of thought and self (and of any behavior outside the purview of his Tuskegee home), the direction of the story and of Angel’s personal destiny seem preordained.
           Its jazzy music fills and intimations of a sweltering heat envelop “Blues for an Alabama Sky” in romance and danger. Though the setting is one Harlem apartment building these lurk both inside and out.
           “Blues for an Alabama Sky” runs through Oct. 26 at Moxie Theatre in Rolando.

Shana Wride and Andrew Oswald as siblings in misery.                                      Karli Cadel Photography

            Christopher Durang may not have intended “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” to be a deconstruction of Chekhovian characters but that’s certainly one way to regard his inimitable absurdist comedy. As with so many of his Russian literary comrades, Anton Chekhov’s characters can be (and frequently are) brooding, morose, self-flagellating, prone to disillusionment and depression. Just maybe Durang imagined “What would happen if these people not only snapped out of it but let it all out, went a little nutso?”
            Make that happen and you have “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” which I’ve seen three times now and just the other night in Cygnet Theatre’s brand-new intimate space The Dottie. It may be recency bias on my part, but this “Vanya and Sonia …” outshines even those I saw previously at Scripps Ranch Theatre and before that the Old Globe. It’s a delightful debut for The Dottie Studio, a production directed with high style by Anthony Methvin and featuring two of the finest performances of the year in Andrew Oswald as Vanya and Shana Wride as his adopted sister Sonia.
            The question that always surrounds this play is “Do I need to know the works and characters of Chekhov in order to ‘get it’”?
            No, though it’s more fun if you recognize some of the references to plays including “The Three Sisters,” “The Cherry Orchard” and “The Seagull.” The Chekhovian easter eggs are not dropped subtly in “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” so it doesn’t require an academic to connect with them. On the other hand, those who’ve never read a word of Chekhov will easily get into and appreciate a dysfunctional family story that at times feels like it’s been channeled through Samuel Beckett … or “The Twilight Zone.”
            Yi-Chien Lee’s peaceful, pastoral set evokes the beautifully sleepy environs of a country home in Bucks County, Penn. where outside of blue herons settling on a nearby pond not much happens. It’s here that Vanya and Sonia reside in a perpetual state of ennui, and in Sonia’s case, gloom. Their opening argument over the temperature of the morning coffee is about as lively as it gets in this joint.
            Things liven up considerably with the unexpected arrival of their gadabouting and completely self-absorbed sibling Masha (Eileen Bowman), she who’s been paying the bills to support a household where its current residents don’t work (and yet somehow employ a housekeeper who claims to have psychic powers). Accompanying Masha is a boy-toy wannabe TV “actor” who calls himself Spike (Sean Brew – a perfect fraternal brother name, no?) and who is prone to strut about in his underwear or at the very least sans shirt. This is uncomfortably and most attentively noted by Vanya, who is a closeted gay man.
            What happens isn’t the grist of weighty Russia novels (the prolific Chekhov wrote only one, “The Shooting Party,” but a slew of novellas and novelettes): Much fuss and furor swirls around a costume party at the former home of Dorothy Parker to which Masha has been invited – who’s going, who will wear what, et al; and the B-film star’s announcement at the end of Act One that she intends to sell the ancestral home.
            By the way, the reason for the Chekhovian names of these characters is explained early on, that the since-dead parents, both professors, had named their children after figures in the august writer’s plays.
            Meanwhile, it’s not enough that the self-deprecating Sonia is fiercely jealous of Masha, that Masha is tactless and egotistical to a prodigious degree, that Vanya is frustratingly world-weary and ever in the middle between the two, and that Spike is … well, Spike. Durang also utilizes the Cassandra housekeeper character (Daisy Martinez) for over-the-top antics and wise-ass remarks, then soon injects an innocent ingenue, Nina ( Emma Nossal) into the proceedings. It all gets very much on the verge of out-of-control comedy. It’s the poignancy of Sonia’s overriding loneliness and perception of a life unlived, and the suppressed urge to speak up and speak out inside Vanya that unearth the depth inherent in Durang’s play.
            The two most urgent and most affecting monologues of “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” arrive, naturally, in the second act:
 Sonia gets a phone call from a man she met but barely remembered at the costume party, asking her for a date. The audience, yours truly included, are with her every awkward second on the phone. Will she accept? Does she believe this is really happening to her? Wride’s performance here is understated and heart-rending.
            Then there’s Vanya’s eruption in the middle of a strange performance of a play he’s writing about world-ending climate change. Discovering Spike has been texting during, Vanya goes off, deriding the shallow excesses of the present and aching for the lost simplicities of a past gone forever. Masterfully, Oswald will bring tears to your eyes.
            Bowman, in the meantime, is in her comic element as Masha, one of those roles she seems born to play. Fittingly, her costume-party persona is Snow White – it was Bowman, dressed as Snow White, who performed with Rob Lowe in that shuddering skit at the 1989 Oscars. It must be cathartic for her to be playing that part for laughs today.
             Three times is probably enough “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” for me, and if it is I can revel in the fact that I enjoyed this one completely. The new Dottie is a nice companion to Cygnet’s larger Clayes Theater where “Follies” wraps up on Sunday. Its seat numbers are a little hard to identify and you’re close to your neighbors, but it was comfortable enough for a show (“Vanya and Sonia”) that runs two and a half hours, with intermission.
           “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” runs through Nov. 9 in Cygnet’s Dottie Studio Theater in Liberty Station, Point Loma.

Robert Montano stars in the one-person show "Small."                                        Photo by Rich Soublet II

            Having had a father who worked at Caliente Racetrack in Tijuana and who was not only a Thoroughbred lover but an owner, I grew up to some extent around horse racing. I even met jockeys, those little but powerful men who sat atop 1,200-pound equine athletes and in so doing put their lives at risk.
            But until I saw and heard former jockey Robert Montano’s one-person show, “Small,” at the Old Globe, I didn’t know the harrowing insider details of what some of these little but powerful men go through to maintain their racing-eligible weight:
            Drugs (ironically called “Black Beauties”). Flipping (aka purging). Ingesting Lasix (long ago banned for even Thoroughbred consumption). Wrapping themselves in plastic wrap. Practically living in a sauna. Eating just enough to stay alive.
            This is only part of 65-year-old Montano’s life story, but it’s certainly the most unnerving. I was reminded, in conversation after the performance, that a jockey’s drastic physical self-sacrifice is not unlike the driven ballerina’s, the desperate fashion model’s, maybe even the struggling prizefighter’s.
            In a tireless performance that could be the equal of an athlete giving his or her 100%, Montano begins his story inside the Sheryl and Harvey White theater-in-the-round sharing his youth growing up in the ‘70s less than half an hour from Belmont Park racetrack in New York. With a religious mother who was a jewelry maker and an artist father, he grew up with love, discipline and, in the case of Mom, some helicopter parenting.
            Yet it was Bobby’s mother who introduced him to the excitement and glamor of the track (glamor that horse racing, sadly, has little of today outside of the Triple Crown). It was there that he discovered his idol: jockey Robert Pineda.
            “Small” is not an extended monologue by any means. Montano plays not only his younger self, but his parents and all the characters at the track with whom he became familiar – some of them less than reputable.
            It is teenage Bobby’s big dream to be like his hero, Pineda, and under the professional jockey’s mentorship he begins a fast-moving but arduous quest to take the reins of a Thoroughbred himself.
            The arduous is where the above-mentioned torturous ritual of making weight – stepping aboard the “Monster” as jockeys refer to the scales – goes down.
            Montano’s shirt is soaked with sweat 15 minutes into the performance, so you can imagine what it and his hair look like an hour in. (The show runs an hour and 45 minutes, which is long by one-person show standards.)
            Even if you’ve never heard or read about Robert Montano, you’ll know where events are headed. The kid who was so small in elementary school that he was mercilessly bullied begins to grow, and the young man who once prayed to be taller soon is now praying not to grow anymore.
            A 5-foot-8 man is not going to maintain a weight of 110 pounds or less – this is young Bobby’s fate.
            It is dancing that saves Montano, who shows us how this transformation happens. “Small” ends before we learn of the stellar career he has enjoyed from his 20s on -- onstage, on television and in films. You’ll want to read all about it after the show’s over.
            This is a lively, breathless production that can captivate even if you don’t know a fig about jockeys or horse racing. It’s directed by Jessi D. Hill. Sound design is by Brian Ronan, who takes us to the track and to the disco with style.
            In spite of its darker elements, I couldn’t help but feel nostalgic and touched by Montano’s dramatized simple moments with the horses – like how it feels when that huge head nuzzles your face. That’s no small feeling.
            “Small” runs through Oct. 19 in the Old Globe’s Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre in Balboa Park.

Liisi LaFontaine (left) and Cailen Fu are sibling rivals in "Huzzah!"                                    Photo by Jim Cox

            If you thought a Renaissance faire was nothing more than a grand outdoor dress-up party with a maypole and booze, you’d be mistaken. Uh, to an extent.
            Dressing up, drinking and the presence of a maypole are part-and-parcel of these
Ren faires, which have been around since the 1960s. But they’re also about community and about the freedom to be someone else (even a history or cosplay nerd) for a few hours. As with, say, Comic-Con, they’ve got their repeat attendees who take the whole thing way too seriously, but many who go just want to have fun, and what others think of their idea of fun, well, to the privy with them!
            It’s in this proud and adventurous spirit that the prolific husband-and-wife team of Nell Benjamin and Laurence O’Keefe (“Legally Blonde” on Broadway) have created “Huzzah!”, a world-premiere musical comedy at the Old Globe.
            “Huzzah!” is a musical comedy as advertised. It has an 18-song score that leans heavily on rousing ensemble numbers that allow the period-costumed characters to swing their tankards and kick up their heels and rock back and forth in merrymaking unison. It’s also frequently funny -- humor of the hard-PG-13 variety, unafraid to be bawdy, rowdy or even political.
            I enjoyed the hell out of it, and my personal experience with a Renaissance faire dates back two decades and was long ago consigned to a distant place in my memory.
            “Huzzah!” wrestles back and forth with what is a true Renaissance faire and to some degree the show regards these popular gatherings with a critical eye, but it never makes fun of them.
            Instead the conflict is personified through a family story, about a fictitious Kingsbridge Midsummer Renaissance Faire owned and operated by one Johnny Mirandola (Lance Arthur Smith). The faire is in serious financial trouble at the outset, which complicates his bestowing of the business upon his two daughters, Gwen (Liisi LaFontaine) and Kate (Cailen Fu). (There’s more than a little “King Lear” in this premise – more than we know, it’ll turn out.)
             Gwen, who’s been absent from the faire, has a smart head for business and has long ceased romanticizing it. The dreamier and more impetuous Kate loves the folks and the trappings of the faire so much that she can’t conceive of it as just a business operation.
            But their disagreement doesn’t last long. By the second song in the show, “Dragons,” the two have bonded and decided to see it – the mess the faire is in – through. Seemed like Gwen caved on this too quickly, but other, more emotionally charged conflicts between the siblings lie ahead.
            “Huzzah!” is beautiful to look at (scenic design by the dependable Todd Rosenthal, glorious costumes by Haydee Zelideth) and certainly diverting enough in its first 15 minutes or so. Then it gets an electric jolt of energy with the arrival at the faire of Sir Roland Prowd (Leo Roberts), a swordsman extraordinaire with a shady reputation, flowing locks reminiscent of a Hemsworth brother, and a muscular, soaring singing voice that rings out in the confines of the Globe’s main theater. “The Song of Roland” is part Josh Groban, part Orson Welles.
            By now you’ve probably guessed the source of that aforementioned more emotionally charged conflict between Gwen and Kate.
            This is the story of “Huzzah!”, basically: the equally matched battling sisters against the backdrop of the threatened faire. Is it enough to sustain a two-hour, 15-minute Broadway hopeful?
            Verily I tell you.
            Annie Tippe directs a cast of memorable and likable (or unlikable depending on what’s called for) characters. In the likable corner is Gareth (Anthony Chatmon II), the longtime faire lawyer who’s smitten with Gwen, feels outclassed by Sir Roland and who’s discouraged in his romantic wishes by a trio of happily deprecating lords (Kevin Pariseau, Mike Millan and Josh Breckinridge) in a hilarious number late in Act One. Likable but notorious is Anne Bonny the Pirate Queen/middle school teacher by day (Kate Shindle), she who keeps the faire well oiled. Then there’s Wayland Smith the sword-making blacksmith (Peyton Crim), the faire’s philosopher king with a forge.
            Though he wins cronies by his sheer indomitable charisma, Sir Roland is in a class by himself as the antagonist, and even as he exploits the most injurious aspects of the faire in his boasted quest to keep it authentic and untouched by technology, he’s hard to completely dislike. Even when he goes full RFK Jr. by insisting that the faire’s first-aid services be abandoned. 
            Gwen and Kate remain the anchors of “Huzzah!” – at loggerheads for much of the story but still, when it comes down it, family. Fu’s Kate has a touch of Glinda from “Wicked” in her; she’s shallow and materialistic and loves herself dearly. The boisterous “The Song of Kate!” number that opens the show’s second act finds her in full-blown self-indulgence. Fu is a talented comedian who can get laughs without saying a word or singing a note.
            LaFontaine, meanwhile, is steady and stalwart as the “responsible sister” who can’t help falling for Sir Roland but who possesses a fierce feminist heart and a solid grasp of right and wrong. It’s she who is destined for heroism on behalf of the foredoomed faire, those in it and of women in general, including her sis.
            There’s a plot turn late in “Huzzah!” that comes out of left field and really needed to be at least foreshadowed sometime earlier in the going. It’s critical to resolving Gwen’s and Kate’s differences. Possibly this could be smoothed out as the show moves beyond the Old Globe?
            For a spectacular in which the comic antics, verbal slings and arrows, sword fighting and choreography (by Katie Spelman) built into it are so entertaining, “Huzzah!” does possess a charming musical score too. “Drink in the Day” (no explanation required there) is raucous gaiety, “A Toast to the Bride” sheer naughtiness, while the sea chanty-like “The Stowaway” featuring LaFontaine and Chatmon and the sisters’ childlike melody “Holly Tree and Ivy Vine” are tender and affecting.
            Crim’s “The Weight In Your Hand,” while drawn out, is stirring, and “The World We Live In” with LaFontaine out in front of the company is a big contextualizing climax.
            On opening night, more than a few theatergoers came dressed in Renaissance faire attire, making some of them too flowy for their seats. That’s one way to get to know your neighbor.
            In case you’re interested there’s a Renaissance Faire Costume Guide out there on the Web.
            “Huzzah!” may not redouble interest in Renaissance faires, but who knows? It might bring back doublets.
            “Huzzah!” runs through Oct. 19 at the Old Globe in Balboa Park.

Left to right: Lester Isariuz, Kailey Agpaoa. Kandace Crystal and William "BJ" Robinson in "We Lovers." Photo by Liliana Talwatte

            Christian St. Croix’s “We Lovers” is a less a play and more a melding of four spoken-word performances. Those words are musing, evocative of both human beings and magical beings. Its reflections are sometimes dreamy, other times practically fatalistic. This was its appeal a year ago when a 50-minute version of “We Lovers” was staged during the San Diego International Fringe Festival.
            That’s the appeal now of “We Lovers,” fleshed out to 90 or so minutes for a Loud Fridge Theatre Group production directed by Kate Rose Reynolds at the Light Box Theatre in Liberty Station.
            St. Croix’s particular gift is one for language. Working within the structure of drama, he is a poet down to his soul. There is searching in his explorations of real life and of fantasy, seen not only in “We Lovers” but before that in works including “We Are the Forgotten Beasts” and “Monsters of the American Cinema.”
            Truthfully, this demands patience and acute listening, and certainly so with “We Lovers.” Of the four stories told in the woods by the locals who gather there on a regular basis for just that purpose, only one of them – the tale of a “Lakeside Slasher” that would go nicely with any spooky night around a campfire – is what you’d call straightforward. The others, recalling encounters with supernatural beings and preoccupied with love and danger, are internalized and poetical.
            The first-timer at the “We Lovers” storytelling rendezvous is a young man with a newly blackened eye (courtesy of an abusive father, we learn). He is encouraged by the others – Little Bit (William “BJ” Robinson), Wolf and Bird (Kandace Crystal) and Doctor Sister (Kailey Agpaoa) – to adopt a name of his own. The newcomer (Lester Isariuz) becomes Mama’s Boy. (Better than Daddy’s Boy, for sure.)
            All of the existing storytellers have identities and backstories mundane by comparison to the freedom and community of their weekly gatherings. This is their escape into the metaphorical,  the surreal and possibly into their better selves.
            That’s all immediately appealing to Mama’s Boy, who seamlessly joins the others’ acting out of their narrative scenarios, turning objects into props, improvising dialogue, sharing their shifting emotions.
            It can be slow going in spite of strong, committed performances from these four actors. They’re playing, we’re invited to listen in, but it’ still their game and they know the rules. The stories can be gently introspective at times or, in Mama’s Boy’s case near the end, in frantic motion. The fears seem real as do the longings for love.
            I don’t know that a 90-minute “We Lovers” seems much different than the 50-minute “We Lovers,” and considering that there is no shortage of stories to tell, this could have been a 100-minute version of “We Lovers.” It ends, but as you’ll discover, not when and how you suspect it will.
            Though the characters interact with each other during the storytelling, each one’s turn is essentially monologual – Doctor Sister’s and Mama’s Boy less so than the other two. It’s that structure that gives “We Lovers” its spoken-word motif.
            Loud Fridge has done more with the spare Light Box Theater space than I’ve seen in other companies’ productions. Heather Larsen’s set is appropriately eerie and lantern-lit and strewn with the sort of detritus one might find in a woods where young people hang out to mingle or get high – or maybe to tell stories.
            A consistent soundscape of hooting owls, chirping crickets and buzzing cicadas is heard above the action on stage. Unfortunately the jetliners that fly over Loma Portal intrude on the designed woodsy isolation.
            Well, for flights of fancy such as those in “We Lovers,” the great flying machines piercing the night sky may be appropriate.
            “We Lovers” runs through Oct. 12 at the Light Box Theater in Liberty Station, Point Loma.

Liisi LaFontaine (left) and Cailen Fu in "Huzzah!"                                                                 Photo by Jim Cox

            If you thought a Renaissance faire was nothing more than a grand outdoor dress-up party with a maypole and booze, you’d be mistaken. Uh, to an extent.
            Dressing up, drinking and the presence of a maypole are part-and-parcel of these
Ren faires, which have been around since the 1960s. But they’re also about community and about the freedom to be someone else (even a history or cosplay nerd) for a few hours. As with, say, Comic-Con, they’ve got their repeat attendees who take the whole thing way too seriously, but many who go just want to have fun, and what others think of their idea of fun, well, to the privy with them!
            It’s in this proud and adventurous spirit that the prolific husband-and-wife team of Nell Benjamin and Laurence O’Keefe (“Legally Blonde” on Broadway) have created “Huzzah!”, a world-premiere musical comedy at the Old Globe.
            “Huzzah!” is a musical comedy as advertised. It has an 18-song score that leans heavily on rousing ensemble numbers that allow the period-costumed characters to swing their tankards and kick up their heels and rock back and forth in merrymaking unison. It’s also frequently funny -- humor of the hard-PG-13 variety, unafraid to be bawdy, rowdy or even political.
            I enjoyed the hell out of it, and my personal experience with a Renaissance faire dates back two decades and was long ago consigned to a distant place in my memory.
            “Huzzah!” wrestles back and forth with what is a true Renaissance faire and to some degree the show regards these popular gatherings with a critical eye, but it never makes fun of them.
            Instead the conflict is personified through a family story, about a fictitious Kingsbridge Midsummer Renaissance Faire owned and operated by one Johnny Mirandola (Lance Arthur Smith). The faire is in serious financial trouble at the outset, which complicates his bestowing of the business upon his two daughters, Gwen (Liisi LaFontaine) and Kate (Cailen Fu). (There’s more than a little “King Lear” in this premise – more than we know, it’ll turn out.)
Gwen, who’s been absent from the faire, has a smart head for business and has long ceased romanticizing it. The dreamier and more impetuous Kate loves the folks and the trappings of the faire so much that she can’t conceive of it as just a business operation.
            But their disagreement doesn’t last long. By the second song in the show, “Dragons,” the two have bonded and decided to see it – the mess the faire is in – through. Seemed like Gwen caved on this too quickly, but other, more emotionally charged conflicts between the siblings lie ahead.
            “Huzzah!” is beautiful to look at (scenic design by the dependable Todd Rosenthal, glorious costumes by Haydee Zelideth) and certainly diverting enough in its first 15 minutes or so. Then it gets an electric jolt of energy with the arrival at the faire of Sir Roland Prowd (Leo Roberts), a swordsman extraordinaire with a shady reputation, flowing locks reminiscent of a Hemsworth brother, and a muscular, soaring singing voice that rings out in the confines of the Globe’s main theater. “The Song of Roland” is part Josh Groban, part Orson Welles.
            By now you’ve probably guessed the source of that aforementioned more emotionally charged conflict between Gwen and Kate.
            This is the story of “Huzzah!”, basically: the equally matched battling sisters against the backdrop of the threatened faire. Is it enough to sustain a two-hour, 15-minute Broadway hopeful?
            Verily I tell you.
            Annie Tippe directs a cast of memorable and likable (or unlikable depending on what’s called for) characters. In the likable corner is Gareth (Anthony Chatmon II), the longtime faire lawyer who’s smitten with Gwen, feels outclassed by Sir Roland and who’s discouraged in his romantic wishes by a trio of happily deprecating lords (Kevin Pariseau, Mike Millan and Josh Breckinridge) in a hilarious number late in Act One. Likable but notorious is Anne Bonny the Pirate Queen/middle school teacher by day (Kate Shindle), she who keeps the faire well oiled. Then there’s Wayland Smith the sword-making blacksmith (Peyton Crim), the faire’s philosopher king with a forge.
            Though he wins cronies by his sheer indomitable charisma, Sir Roland is in a class by himself as the antagonist, and even as he exploits the most injurious aspects of the faire in his boasted quest to keep it authentic and untouched by technology, he’s hard to completely dislike. Even when he goes full RFK Jr. by insisting that the faire’s first-aid services be abandoned. 
            Gwen and Kate remain the anchors of “Huzzah!” – at loggerheads for much of the story but still, when it comes down it, family. Fu’s Kate has a touch of Glinda from “Wicked” in her; she’s shallow and materialistic and loves herself dearly. The boisterous “The Song of Kate!” number that opens the show’s second act finds her in full-blown self-indulgence. Fu is a talented comedian who can get laughs without saying a word or singing a note.
            LaFontaine, meanwhile, is steady and stalwart as the “responsible sister” who can’t help falling for Sir Roland but who possesses a fierce feminist heart and a solid grasp of right and wrong. It’s she who is destined for heroism on behalf of the foredoomed faire, those in it and of women in general, including her sis.
            There’s a plot turn late in “Huzzah!” that comes out of left field and really needed to be at least foreshadowed sometime earlier in the going. It’s critical to resolving Gwen’s and Kate’s differences. Possibly this could be smoothed out as the show moves beyond the Old Globe?
            For a spectacular in which the comic antics, verbal slings and arrows, sword fighting and choreography (by Katie Spelman) built into it are so entertaining, “Huzzah!” does possess a charming musical score too. “Drink in the Day” (no explanation required there) is raucous gaiety, “A Toast to the Bride” sheer naughtiness, while the sea chanty-like “The Stowaway” featuring LaFontaine and Chatmon and the sisters’ childlike melody “Holly Tree and Ivy Vine” are tender and affecting.
            Crim’s “The Weight In Your Hand,” while drawn out, is stirring, and “The World We Live In” with LaFontaine out in front of the company is a big contextualizing climax.
            On opening night, more than a few theatergoers came dressed in Renaissance faire attire, making some of them too flowy for their seats. That’s one way to get to know your neighbor.
            In case you’re interested there’s a Renaissance Faire Costume Guide out there on the Web.
            “Huzzah!” may not redouble interest in Renaissance faires, but who knows? It might bring back doublets.
            “Huzzah!” runs through Sept. 25 at the Old Globe in Balboa Park.

Liisi LaFontaine (left) and Cailen Fu in "Huzzah!"                                                                 Photo by Jim Cox

            If you thought a Renaissance faire was nothing more than a grand outdoor dress-up party with a maypole and booze, you’d be mistaken. Uh, to an extent.
            Dressing up, drinking and the presence of a maypole are part-and-parcel of these
Ren faires, which have been around since the 1960s. But they’re also about community and about the freedom to be someone else (even a history or cosplay nerd) for a few hours. As with, say, Comic-Con, they’ve got their repeat attendees who take the whole thing way too seriously, but many who go just want to have fun, and what others think of their idea of fun, well, to the privy with them!
            It’s in this proud and adventurous spirit that the prolific husband-and-wife team of Nell Benjamin and Laurence O’Keefe (“Legally Blonde” on Broadway) have created “Huzzah!”, a world-premiere musical comedy at the Old Globe, where their “Come Fall in Love – The DDLJ Musical” was staged three years ago.
            “Huzzah!” is a better show than “Come Fall in Love,” and to my mind it’s even better than “Legally Blonde,” which doesn’t measure up to the film that inspired it.
            “Huzzah!” is a musical comedy as advertised. It has an 18-song score that leans heavily on rousing ensemble numbers that allow the period-costumed characters to swing their tankards and kick up their heels and rock back and forth in merrymaking unison. It’s also frequently funny -- humor of the hard-PG-13 variety, unafraid to be bawdy, rowdy or even political.
            I enjoyed the hell out of it, and my personal experience with a Renaissance faire dates back two decades and was long ago consigned to a distant place in my memory.
            “Huzzah!” wrestles back and forth with what is a true Renaissance faire and to some degree the show regards these popular gatherings with a critical eye, but it never makes fun of them.
            Instead the conflict is personified through a family story, about a fictitious Kingsbridge Midsummer Renaissance Faire owned and operated by one Johnny Mirandola (Lance Arthur Smith). The faire is in serious financial trouble at the outset, which complicates his bestowing of the business upon his two daughters, Gwen (Liisi LaFontaine) and Kate (Cailen Fu). (There’s more than a little “King Lear” in this premise – more than we know, it’ll turn out.)
Gwen, who’s been absent from the faire, has a smart head for business and has long ceased romanticizing it. The dreamier and more impetuous Kate loves the folks and the trappings of the faire so much that she can’t conceive of it as just a business operation.
            But their disagreement doesn’t last long. By the second song in the show, “Dragons,” the two have bonded and decided to see it – the mess the faire is in – through. Seemed like Gwen caved on this too quickly, but other, more emotionally charged conflicts between the siblings lie ahead.
            “Huzzah!” is beautiful to look at (scenic design by the dependable Todd Rosenthal, glorious costumes by Haydee Zelideth) and certainly diverting enough in its first 15 minutes or so. Then it gets an electric jolt of energy with the arrival at the faire of Sir Roland Prowd (Leo Roberts), a swordsman extraordinaire with a shady reputation, flowing locks reminiscent of a Hemsworth brother, and a muscular, soaring singing voice that rings out in the confines of the Globe’s main theater. “The Song of Roland” is part Josh Groban, part Orson Welles.
            By now you’ve probably guessed the source of that aforementioned more emotionally charged conflict between Gwen and Kate.
            This is the story of “Huzzah!”, basically: the equally matched battling sisters against the backdrop of the threatened faire. Is it enough to sustain a two-hour, 15-minute Broadway hopeful?
            Verily I tell you.
            Annie Tippe directs a cast of memorable and likable (or unlikable depending on what’s called for) characters. In the likable corner is Gareth (Anthony Chatmon II), the longtime faire lawyer who’s smitten with Gwen, feels outclassed by Sir Roland and who’s discouraged in his romantic wishes by a trio of happily deprecating lords (Kevin Pariseau, Mike Millan and Josh Breckinridge) in a hilarious number late in Act One. Likable but notorious is Anne Bonny the Pirate Queen/middle school teacher by day (Kate Shindle), she who keeps the faire well oiled. Then there’s Wayland Smith the sword-making blacksmith (Peyton Crim), the faire’s philosopher king with a forge.
            Though he wins cronies by his sheer indomitable charisma, Sir Roland is in a class by himself as the antagonist, and even as he exploits the most injurious aspects of the faire in his boasted quest to keep it authentic and untouched by technology, he’s hard to completely dislike. Even when he goes full RFK Jr. by insisting that the faire’s first-aid services be abandoned. 
            Gwen and Kate remain the anchors of “Huzzah!” – at loggerheads for much of the story but still, when it comes down it, family. Fu’s Kate has a touch of Glinda from “Wicked” in her; she’s shallow and materialistic and loves herself dearly. The boisterous “The Song of Kate!” number that opens the show’s second act finds her in full-blown self-indulgence. Fu is a talented comedian who can get laughs without saying a word or singing a note.
            LaFontaine, meanwhile, is steady and stalwart as the “responsible sister” who can’t help falling for Sir Roland but who possesses a fierce feminist heart and a solid grasp of right and wrong. It’s she who is destined for heroism on behalf of the foredoomed faire, those in it and of women in general, including her sis.
            There’s a plot turn late in “Huzzah!” that comes out of left field and really needed to be at least foreshadowed sometime earlier in the going. It’s critical to resolving Gwen’s and Kate’s differences. Possibly this could be smoothed out as the show moves beyond the Old Globe?
            For a spectacular in which the comic antics, verbal slings and arrows, sword fighting and choreography (by Katie Spelman) built into it are so entertaining, “Huzzah!” does possess a charming musical score too. “Drink in the Day” (no explanation required there) is raucous gaiety, “A Toast to the Bride” sheer naughtiness, while the sea chanty-like “The Stowaway” featuring LaFontaine and Chatmon and the sisters’ childlike melody “Holly Tree and Ivy Vine” are tender and affecting.
            Crim’s “The Weight In Your Hand,” while drawn out, is stirring, and “The World We Live In” with LaFontaine out in front of the company is a big contextualizing climax.
            On opening night, more than a few theatergoers came dressed in Renaissance faire attire, making some of them too flowy for their seats. That’s one way to get to know your neighbor.
            In case you’re interested there’s a Renaissance Faire Costume Guide out there on the Web.
            “Huzzah!” may not redouble interest in Renaissance faires, but who knows? It might bring back doublets.
            “Huzzah!” runs through Sept. 25 at the Old Globe in Balboa Park.

Ty (Hennessey Winkler, far right) faces off against his ghosts in "All the Men Who've Frightened Me." Photo by Rich Soublet II

            Parenting is hard. Some people aren’t meant to be parents. Parents can make mistakes. BIG mistakes.
             Playwright Noah Diaz’s “All the Men Who’ve Frightened Me” adds little new to those realities but it tries – and tries hard – by creating a reality of its own that demands we suspend belief for two hours, that we accept in the grand pursuit of insight the unlikely and the otherworldly.
            La Jolla Playhouse is staging the world premiere of Diaz’s “house drama,” as he calls it, four years after its incubation in the company’s DNA New Works Series. Then as now it’s being directed by Kat Yen, the Playhouse’s first directing fellow. For Yen, a onetime fellow graduate student of Diaz’s and a longtime collaborator with the playwright, “All the Men Who’ve Frightened Me” is the culmination of her Playhouse assignment.
            This is a reflection on parenthood that turns the likes of, say, filmmaker Ron Howard’s 1989 comedy “Parenthood,” or its slightly more serious sitcom adaptation 20 years later, upside down. Though sprinkled with humor, most of it exploited through the story’s outrageous and uncensored mother-in-law character, “All the Men Who’ve Frightened Me” takes itself very seriously. Its characters – an extended family and then some -- are either grimly unhappy, riddled with doubt, boozily cynical or prone to preachiness. Pretty much everyone’s favorite subject is himself or herself.
            At the outset, young marrieds Ty (Hennessey Winkler) and Nora (Kineta Kunutu) are in the process of moving into the family house given to Ty by his still-living mother (Dale Soules). Nora is in full-blown panic attack mode about what to do next and overly focused on acquiring the right lamps. Ty is calm and placating, though it’s obvious from the start that Nora doesn’t want to live in this handed-down home.
            This seemingly minor drama is very soon usurped by another, a lulu: Nora has an “inhospitable womb” and cannot give birth. Almost immediately – actually, it is immediately – Ty, a trans man who’s been taking regular T-treatments, volunteers to carry the baby himself. Believe it or not, THIS is more credible than most everything else in the play.
            There’s no real backstory about why Ty transitioned in the first place, so his decision poses more questions than it answers. He says he’s doing this for his wife – though Nora doesn’t warm to that affirmation. Part of the problem is that Ty and Nora are never shown in any genuine affectionate moments. They don’t seem like lovers. They don’t seem like loving husband and wife. They’re just … there.
            Until their sleep is interrupted one night by the arrival of three spectral visitors in the house. Actually three versions of the same spectral visitor. At the risk of a spoiler, let’s just say that these three have a direct familial tie to Ty. Before long, they’re accepted, unquestioned staples of the household, busy doing fix-up chores and renovation and making over the house that Nora says she wants instead of the one Ty’s brought her to.
            In the meantime, Ty is starting to show.
            Also on the scene as tangible, flesh-and-blood visitors are Ty’s sister Carrie (Keren Lugo), who’s pregnant herself by a husband she’d just as soon be rid of; and Ty’s and Carrie’s cursing and dipsomaniacal mom, Dale. The latter has a hate on for Nora and is regretting having given the house over to her and her son, though it’s not crystal clear why.
            Very little is crystal clear in “All the Men Who’ve Frightened Me.” Its deliberate deconstruction of what most people consider “traditional parenthood” and its dabblings in magical realism obfuscate what Diaz has stated he wants to say about how the past is prologue for new parents, about belonging, about parenting in all its many facets, with its rewards and trials.
            Though he’s playing one of the least happy expectant fathers you’ll ever see, Winkler is the production’s quiet anchor as Ty. He evokes gentility and we have a sense he’ll do just fine as a parent, even with the legacy of a deserting, deadbeat dad in his personal history.
            Kunutu is charged with being unhappy or angry as Nora, making it difficult to be in her corner. Her character has some legitimate beefs, but she’s made to seem selfish or unreasonable for voicing them.
            Lugo and Soules have the showy, more comedic roles in “All the Men …”, though Carrie isn’t given enough to do and Mom Dale is practically a caricature.
            The three visitors, listed in the production program as First, Second and Third (Leonardo Romero, Armando Riesco and John Padilla respectively), are solid and likable and sneaky-wise for supposedly being collectively disreputable.
            Scenic designer Adam Rigg deserves plaudits for a split-level house interior that functions almost like a character itself as it’s changed and transformed over the course of the two-hour production. Every backdrop and cardboard box, each nook and cranny has a function, if not always to further the story than to at least keep the three spectral visitors in motion.
            One surprise to spill (sorry), though it wasn’t an especially welcome surprise: During a baby shower thrown for Ty the loud playing of the insipid 1972 hit single “Brandy” by Looking Glass (advance to Final Jeopardy if you knew the recording artists as I did). “Brandy, you’re a fine girl / what a good wife you would be …”
            Good grief.
            I’m not a parent myself, and I don’t pretend to know as actual parents do how it feels to raise a child, how to be responsible for someone else that way, or just to know you’re doing the right things. It’s a comfort, I guess, that in “All the Men Who’ve Frightened Me” the one character to have faith in is the self-sacrificing prospective parent who seems to have everything working against him.
            “All the Men Who’ve Frightened Me” runs through Oct. 12 at La Jolla Playhouse’s Mandell Weiss Forum.

Ty (Hennessey Winkler, far right) faces off against his ghosts in "All the Men Who've Frightened Me." Photo by Rich Soublet II