Leslie Katz

Paula West’s back, with usual panache

Paula West is as reliable as the main character in her signature tune “The Snake.” In the clever Oscar Brown Jr. song, when the reptile bites his benefactor, leaving her to die after she has saved him, he tells her: “You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.” Of course, The City’s premier jazz singer’s constancy is of a positive nature, not fatal; at Tuesday’s opening of her six-week engagement at the Rrazz Room, she was predictably delightful. Backed by pianist-arranger George Mesterhazy, bassist Barak Mori, smiling drummer Jerome Jennings and guitarist Ed Cherry, the velvet-voiced vocalist served up the smart type of set list...

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‘River’ a hip-hop trip to the underworld

Tim Barsky’s “The Bright River: A Mass Transit Tour of the Afterlife” is a one-of-a-kind journey for adventurous theatergoers. Onstage at Brava Theater Center, the show — Barsky’s trippy monologue set to eclectic live and taped music — reprises successful Bay Area productions that ran in 2004-05 at Traveling Jewish Theatre and Ashby Stage. Now, according to Barsky’s statement in the program notes, the time is better than ever to bring back the piece, with the world still being in much the same sad, sorry, scary shape as it was when he first wrote and performed it. Barsky, attired in black, is a wonder to watch as he narrates the mostly dark,...

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‘Fiddler’ truly a miracle of miracles

Harvey Fierstein’s name is above the title in the program for “Fiddler on the Roof” for good reason. The longtime Broadway performer (“Torch Song Trilogy,” “La Cage aux Folles,” “Hairspray”) brings a, dare we say, gay interpretation to the iconic role of Tevye the dairy man in the hit musical, now onstage in a touring production at the Golden Gate Theatre in The City. The term “gay” is meant in both the contemporary and old-fashioned definition of the word. While not less of a man than his predecessors Zero Mostel, Theodore Bikel and Topol, Fierstein (who has played this role in a hit Broadway revival), has more than a...

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Fierstein, ‘Fiddler’ a miracle of miracles

Harvey Fierstein’s name is above the title in the program for “Fiddler on the Roof” for good reason. The longtime Broadway performer (”Torch Song Trilogy,” “La Cage Aux Follles,” “Hairspray”) brings a, dare we say, gay interpretation to the iconic role of Tevye the dairy man in the hit musical, now onstage in a touring production at the Golden Gate Theatre in The City. The term “gay” is meant in both the contemporary and old-fashioned definition of the word. While not less of a man than his predecessors Zero Mostel, Theodore Bikel and Topol, Fierstein (who has played this role in a hit Broadway revvival), has more than...

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Powerful realizations in ‘Coming Home’

Athol Fugard is known for his powerful political and social dramas about challenges in his homeland of South Africa. He has created another in 2008’s “Coming Home,” receiving an excellent West Coast premiere at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Directed by Gordon Edelstein, who was at the helm of the premiere at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Conn., the play tells the deeply personal story of one woman and her family in post-apartheid South Africa. A sequel to Fugard’s “Valley Song” (staged by Berkeley Rep in 1998), “Coming Home” is about Veronica Jonkers, a hopeful young woman who left her village to try life in Cape Town, returning to...

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Drag delight in ‘Pearls Over Shanghai’

Not only has “Pearls Over Shanghai” survived a flash flood that closed it down for several weeks, the good-humored, gender-bending show is hosting guests of national prominence and questionable tastes — such as John Waters. The director of the 1972 cult classic “Pink Flamingos” (as well as the original “Hairspray”) was in the house at the refurbished Hypnodrome Theatre (in an alley on 10th Street near Bryant) as Thrillpeddlers got 2010 off to a grand start following a water main break that made the news and caused the ragtag troupe to cancel holiday performances. The psychedelic comic mock operetta first was performed some 40 years ago by The...

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The King of Pop’s salsa side

Salsa expert Seaon Stylist-Bristol is insistent about one aspect of his new show “Rock With You: A Weekend Tribute to Michael Jackson” onstage at the Cowell Theater Friday and Saturday. “I don’t want it to be an impersonation,” he said emphatically during a recent phone call. Born in Guyana, trained as a teen in New York, and now based in San Francisco, the singer, dancer, actor, choreographer and teacher last year was turned on to the notion of presenting salsa interpretations of Jackson’s music to commemorate the King of Pop’s artistry. “I was sitting on my couch relaxing the day he died, and my agent called me and said, ‘Why...

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‘Sisters’ can’t quite connect

The Jewish Theatre San Francisco, celebrating what it’s calling a “new name” and “new chapter,” presented the second offering of its 2009-10 season at the Jewish Community Center’s Kanbar Hall with Pulitzer Prize-winner Wendy Wasserstein’s “The Sisters Rosensweig.” It’s a natural choice for the in-transition troupe, which began life some 30 years ago as A Traveling Jewish Theatre and continues working to maintain and increase its audience by presenting works that speak to the Jewish experience. It seems odd that “Sisters” — which opened in New York in 1992 with Jane Alexander, Madeline Kahn and Frances...

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Tyne Daly shines at cabaret, too

Tyne Daly may be known as Mary Beth Lacey to the masses, and as Mama Rose from “Gypsy” to Broadway lovers. But she’s a decidedly different person in her delightfully quirky cabaret act. In town at the Rrazz Room (her “Cagney & Lacey” TV partner Sharon Gless also happens to be in The City, in a play at Theatre Artaud), Daly sings her way through the decades in a one-of-a-kind show that touches on influences from Stephen Sondheim to Rudy Vallee to Jerry Herman to Buddy Holly. Backed by pianist-arranger John McDaniel, drummer Kelly Park and bassist Buca Necar, Daly, clearly a word enthusiast, sings with conviction, sells her tunes with distinction and...

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A crazy lady with a big heart

A wild and wacky performance artist doing facial expressions to sound effects — a car alarm in particular — is worth the price of admission to Ann Randolph’s “Loveland.” But the one-woman show, which has been extended into the new year at The Marsh, offers much more than a few hearty laughs. It’s that rare entertainment that manages to be hysterically funny, tenderly heart-rending and loudly original at the same time. Randolph’s alter-ego is Frannie Potts, a woman whose airplane flight to her childhood home in Ohio provides the setting and structure for her tale of her life, and particularly of her relationship with her Chablis-loving,...

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Discover the modern art of Amish quilts

Household handicrafts and heirlooms made by American women seen as precursors to modern art is one underlying thesis of “Amish Abstractions: Quilts from the Collection of Faith and Stephen Brown,” a provocative exhibit on view at the de Young Museum through June. Curated by Jill D’Alessandro of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the show features about 50 full-size and crib quilts made between 1880 and 1940 in Pennsylvania and the Midwest during what experts consider the apex of Amish quilt-making production. Faith and Stephen Brown, Bay Area residents who began collecting quilts in the 1970s after seeing one in a shop window in Chicago and being bowled over by...

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Highest praise for ‘Black Nativity’

If “Black Nativity,” by far the most rousing Bay Area holiday entertainment, doesn’t get you in the spirit of the season, nothing will. Onstage at San Francisco’s Marines Memorial Theatre this year — last year it was in the cavernous PG&E building auditorium — the annual Lorraine Hansberry Theatre gospel production is packed with energy and rhythm. The religious songs, sung in two settings — at the first Christmas in Act 1 and in a present-day church in Act 2 — are soul-satisfying throughout. Even though Jesus is the subject of many of the numbers, listeners don’t have to be observant Christians to lap up the “joyful...

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Highest praise for ‘Black Nativity’

If “Black Nativity,” by far the most rousing Bay Area holiday entertainment, doesn’t get you in the spirit of the season, nothing will. Onstage at San Francisco’s Marines Memorial Theatre this year — last year it was in the cavernous PG&E building auditorium — the annual Lorraine Hansberry Theatre gospel production is packed with energy and rhythm. The religious songs, sung in two settings — at the first Christmas in Act 1 and in a present-day church in Act 2 — are soul-satisfying throughout. Even though Jesus is the subject of many of the numbers, listeners don’t have to be observant Christians to lap up the “joyful...

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Best of Broadway’s silly Hitchcock homage

For celebrated British actress and director Maria (pronounced “Mariah,” as in Carey) Aitken, the most rewarding thing about her success with the hit show “Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps” is the reaction she witnesses from all types of audiences. “Gray-haired people and children laugh at the same things,” says the Tony Award-nominated Aitken, who directed the stage production of the famous 1935 movie starring Robert Donat as a man on the run. “The hero has a ludicrous charm,” says Aitken, who has seen the show travel to Australia, Japan, Israel and even South Korea, where patrons are particularly amused. The show, which won two...

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Interior designers forge new paths

“The Fine Art of Designers,” an appealing group show on view at ArtHaus, has a unique twist: Its contemporary works — paintings, drawings, multi-media and photography — are by 13 Bay Area interior designers participating in their first gallery exhibit. On view through Dec. 23, the exhibit’s pieces aren’t unified by a particular theme, nor do they look like decorator objects. But they do, in many cases, reflect the artists’ interior design interests and influences. Eric Engstrom, of Engstrom Design Group, shows mixed media on canvas works that are representational, atmospheric paintings of landscapes — “Abandoned Wood School,”...

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Doctor jump-starts fight against obesity

Doctor Conrad Lai co-founded Jumpstart Medicine, a practice dedicated to physician-supervised weight loss. It has offices in the Bay Area, including San Francisco’s Financial District and Laurel Village, and Redwood City and Millbrae. Can you briefly describe your work? We treat people from all walks of life, offering a weight-loss program that’s more structured than retail programs like Jenny Craig. Some of our patients opt for prescription medicine, and we help them use that as a tool. Aren’t eating right and exercising the best ways to lose weight? It’s a misnomer that ... exercising more makes people lose weight. Studies have shown that there’s an 80-20...

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An elegant egg-stravaganza

“Ovo,” the latest offering from Cirque du Soleil to come to the Bay Area, features everything for which the brand is known: clever and imaginative theatrics, stylishly executed, heart-stopping stunts, eye-popping costumes and scenery, and a seemingly provocative storyline that’s open to interpretation. General audiences, who through the years have seen more than a few of the 20-plus productions presented by the Montreal-based giant, will call this “the one with the bugs.” The most fascinating insects are the incredible artists performing amazing physical feats, each more thrilling than the next. Hand-balancer Vladimir Hrynchenko, as the dragonfly, hoists...

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Rocker to perform at Palace of Fine Arts

Longtime rocker Todd Rundgren performs his 1973 album “A Wizard, A True Star” in its entirety Tuesday at the Palace of Fine Arts. Why “A Wizard, A True Star”? It’s not a bunch of very digestible pop songs; I was on a trajectory to do something different. It also represents a dividing line between my more general public listeners and the really devoted fans that have kept track of what I’ve been doing over the years. What’s the genesis of this concert? It wasn’t my idea. About a year ago, when I was touring in Europe with my last album, there was a great deal of interest in my music, as a way to introduce it to younger, electronic artists....

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Memoir a vivid exploration of a touchy subject

Dr. Bruce Steir’s case made headlines in the late 1990s. Having performed an abortion in Riverside County that resulted in the patient’s death, in an extremely unusual turn — at least in part because of an active Medical Board of California that had members who were against abortion — he was charged with second-degree murder. On the advice of his attorney and others, the doctor, now a San Francisco resident, pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter. Despite the fact that Steir was told he wouldn’t go to jail and would be sentenced to probation and community service, he was incarcerated. Behind bars, he had time on his hands to write his memoir,...

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Ron Herbst to talk about new reference book

The Bodega Bay-based co-author of “The Deluxe Food Lover’s Companion” will talk about the new reference book at 2 p.m. Saturday at Borders-Union Square, 400 Post St., San Francisco. How is this “Deluxe” book different from the definitive “The New Food Lover’s Companion,” co-written by your wife, Sharon Tyler Herbst? It’s based on the earlier book, which has been such a bible in the industry, but it’s filled with even more information. There are fast facts, 40 different glossaries and a lot of illustrations, for instance. Who’s the audience for the volume? Both experts and novices — and also for people who want a...

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A mother’s secret finally revealed

Ann Kirschner says she felt like she was “struck by lightning” when, as an adult, she first learned of her mother’s stash of Holocaust-era photographs and letters. “She kept them secret until she thought she was going to die,” Kirschner says, in a phone interview from New York. “Out of nowhere, she hands me this box. I thought it was going to be jewelry.” The box was full of memorabilia that her mom saved during years spent in Nazi labor camps from 1940-45. The historic documents are on view at the Jewish Community Center in San Francisco in an exhibit called “Letters to Sala: A Young Woman’s Life in Nazi Labor Camps” and...

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Rick Reynolds still seeking happiness

Rick Reynolds has gone glitzy. The California comic, known for his one-man confessionals “Only the Truth Is Funny” and “All Grown Up and No Place to Go,” is back with a new, similarly themed show, “Love God Sex (and other stuff I don’t have).” This time, instead of playing at The Marsh — the small theater in San Francisco’s Mission district known for experimental and works-in-development (it did present Brian Copeland’s wildly popular “Not a Genuine Black Man”) — Reynolds is at the Union Square-area Marines’ Memorial Theatre. And the show is directed by Jason Alexander, George of “Seinfeld”...

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Ray of Light rocks ‘Tommy’

Ray of Light Theatre opened its ninth season of San Francisco community musicals with “The Who’s Tommy,” presenting the groundbreaking rock opera in all its glorious wackiness. Nearly four decades after the tale of the fall and rise of a deaf, dumb and blind pinball player premiered, the show is as outrageous, puzzling and compelling as it was in rock ’n’ roll’s younger days. Pete Townshend’s score (book by Des McAnuff), while uneven, has some great tunes: “Pinball Wizard,” “See Me, Feel Me,” “I’m Free” and “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” The cast and hard-working musicians do them justice....

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Be there for Michael Jackson’s ‘This Is It’

"Wacko Jacko" is not in the building in "This Is It." The documentary, compiled from hundreds of hours of footage shot during rehearsals for Michael Jackson's final concert engagement, shows the performer at the peak of professionalism. His fans, or anyone interested in pop music of the late 20th century, won't be disappointed by Kenny Ortega's enthralling film, which puts the spotlight where it belongs: on the artist working at his craft. Ortega was in a unique position to make the film, released today in a limited two-week engagement. As director of Jackson's comeback tour that never happened -- it was slated to begin in London in the summer -- he was Jackson's...

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All about motherhood

“Motherhood” is something of a rarity — an appealing contemporary drama, with some laughs too, about everyday life. Uma Thurman delightfully goes against Quentin Tarantino-action-adventure type, playing Eliza, a beleaguered Greenwich Village mom trying to make it through a single day. Frustration mounts as she gets the family up and out of the apartment (while her bemused husband, played by Anthony Edwards, doesn’t help), prepares for her 6-year-old daughter’s birthday party and checks in with her best friend Sheila (Minnie Driver). A once promising young fiction writer approaching middle age, she stays in practice with her mom-themed blog; on this busy...

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Chris Rock’s good hair day

In his new documentary, Chris Rock’s attempt to answer his young daughters’ query “Why don’t I have good hair?” takes him on a thoroughly entertaining, often educational, journey. “Good Hair” follows the comedian in his travels from Atlanta to New York to North Carolina, and even to India, as he talks with providers and consumers in the lucrative black hair industry. The movie’s primary point — which, sadly, is too briefly challenged near the end — is that natural, nappy black hair is inherently bad, while straight, sleek, chic hair is good. The congenial Rock queries makers of harsh chemical hair relaxers (he shows how one...

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Comic Loni Love stays real

We’re not too daunted to inform comic Loni Love that she’s in for a letdown if she’s expecting cable cars or residents whistling the theme from the Rice-A-Roni ad on her first visit to San Francisco. The regular "Chelsea Lately" panelist — who appears Friday on a bill with Nene Leakes from "The Real Housewives of Atlanta" and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence at the first Comedy in the Castro — will likely get a good reception. That’s because Love enjoys "open-minded" audiences of all types of people — women, gays and Republicans, among others. "You’ll even see gangsters in the back," she...

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High marks for ‘First Day’

For a sampling of not-quite-clean good fun, try SF Playhouse’s world premiere, “First Day of School.” The comedy by New Yorker Billy Aronson, whose credits include “Beavis & Butt-head,” goes down quite easily, serving up of lots of laughs and a sweet outrageousness. The title is misleading, for the main characters aren’t schoolchildren, but five parents who decide to engage in some extracurricular sexual activity the day they send the kids off to class. The fun starts when husband-and-wife David (Bill English) and Susan (Zehra Berkman), finding they have a surplus of free time that day, matter-of-factly agree they want to sleep with other people...

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All read together now

Doug Dorst’s fascination with the dead falls short of compulsion. “I’m not a ghost hunter — it just seemed like a great idea,” says the author of “Alive in Necropolis,” a novel in which residents of Colma’s cemeteries magically come to life. The book is the centerpiece of the fifth “One City One Book: San Francisco Reads,” a multipronged community event this month that’s sponsored by the San Francisco Public Library. Dorst, formerly a resident of The City and now living in Austin, Texas, is in town to appear at several gatherings in connection with his critically acclaimed debut novel, which also is a coming-of-age tale...

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Novel brings Civil War to life

Those who aren’t scholars or Civil War experts may have a tough time separating truth from fiction when reading “Seen the Glory: A Novel of the Battle of Gettysburg.” John Hough Jr.’s new, engaging book, however, isn’t a cold look at the brutality of war or a faceless summation of statistics and strategy from the field. It’s the story of two abolitionist brothers from Martha’s Vineyard who grow into men when they volunteer for the Union Army. Their service culminates in their participation in the war’s bloodiest battle. Hough clearly spent time researching details of soldiers’ lives during the period. Readers feel like they’re...

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