Film Review: Migration

 

                                    The Mallard family

If you can get your mind around the idea of a flock of ducks deciding they want to spend some quality time on the beaches of Jamaica, the goofy new animated cartoon film “Migration” may be for you.

The creators of “Minions” and “The Secret Life of Pets” invite you to meet the Mallard family and take a flight into the unknown with them in “Migration,” which opens in San Diego on Nov. 22.

Actually, dad Mack was happy paddling around their New England pond, but wife Pam is a bit bored and wants to show the kids – son Dax and daughter Gwen – a bit more of the world. She persuades Mack to take them south – via New York City – to tropical Jamaica. On the way, they’ll meet new folks, see things they never knew about, and learn more about each other than they’d ever imagined.

The screenplay (by Mike White, creator of “The White Lotus” and writer of “School of Rock”) features a terrific cast led by two former Emmy nominees: Kumail Nanjiani as dad Mack and Elizabeth Banks as the intrepid matriarch Pam.

Along the way they’ll run into Awkwafina as the leader of a New York City pigeon gang and Carol Kane as Erin the heron. They’ll also bump into Keegan-Michael Key as a homesick Jamaican parrot locked away in Manhattan restaurant and David Mitchell as the yogic leader a duck farm.

Yeah, it’s goofy, all right, and colorful and fast-moving. I’ll have to admit to being less fascinated watching parrots than people (though they do bump into a few peculiar humans as well), but “Migration,” at only an hour and a half, will give you some much-needed laughs.

Theater Review: Every Day Vanilla

                            The Robles family

How could you resist seeing a play called "Every Day Vanilla?" I couldn’t decide whether that’s a description of somebody’s life, cooking style or lack of hope for the future. 

So I went to see playwright Lani Gobaleza’s piece, playing through Dec. 29 at Moxie Theatre. This is not a Moxie production; it’s an import by Filipina American writer Gobaleza, who describes her life, which includes love, sex, some LGTBQIA stories, intergenerational conflict and life as she knows it.

The main character here is called Frankie Robles (a teenage girl), who lives in San Diego with her mother Francesca (Sasha Foo) and sister Flora (Hillary Soriano). Frankie is the one with wanderlust: she’s a writer (without a current job) who wants more than anything to travel (and write). Flora is pretty much happy as is; she’ll settle for a boyfriend.

Francesca just wishes Frankie would settle down like everyone else, but is aware that her daughter has other ambitions.

Let’s see, gotta have some guys in here too. One is actor/singer Zhang (who doubles as a terrific dancer), who livens up the scene when it gets too heavy.

And there’s handsome Kyle Blaine Tiglao playing Aubrey Delgado, who may or may not be interested in Frankie (who in turn may or may not be interested in him as a partner).

But what makes it contemporary is that this is also a queer coming-of-age play. I’m not going past that; you’ll have to see it to find out how the plot works itself out.

This is a fine and talented cast, but “Every Day Vanilla” has, in my opinion, a few problems for a contemporary audience. It’s over two hours long, for one thing. For another, the actors (with a little outside help) also act as scene-changers and those of us in the audience get to watch them physically move furniture around. Call me a grump, but that’s not anything I ever wanted to do.

Still, I’ll give them all credit for dedication to theater, which definitely is something I want to see, every day if possible. Congratulations to all on a fine effort.

The details

“Every Day Vanilla” plays through Dec. 29, 2023 at Moxie Theatre, 6663 El Cajon Blvd. 

Shows at 7 pm Dec 16, 18, 21, 22, 23, 28 and 29.

Tickets $19-75 with discounts for students/educators, seniors and military. Dec. 18 is Industry Night with $15 tickets for people in the theater community.

Theater Review: The Glass Menagerie

                            The Glass Menagerie at Diversionary Theatre

If I were scheduling a play for a theater to do at Christmastime, it probably wouldn’t be “The Glass Menagerie,” Tennessee Williams’ sad paean to loneliness and desire. But Diversionary Theatre is known for unusual programming.

Their brilliant production of “Menagerie” opened last night to what I am pretty sure was unanimous approval, not to mention universal depression. It runs through December 23. 

You remember the 1944 play. It’s difficult to watch – and to get out of your mind once you’ve left the theater. But it’s also a great play, and Diversionary found the right cast and director to do it justice.

Director Lisa Berger takes the four actors – Shana Wride as mama Amanda Wingfield, Luke Harvey Jacobs as her son Tom, Julia Belanova as Tom’s shy sister Laura and Kirk Brown as Laura’s late-arriving “gentleman caller” Jim O’Connor – and brings out the best performance in each to keep the audience fascinated.

Wride’s Amanda is brilliant, living amusingly but wrongly in the past as what she once was: a Southern belle who had (or at least says she had) loads of “gentlemen callers.” Now she wants to find some gentlemen callers for daughter Laura, who isn’t a bit like her mother. Laura is terribly shy, has a limp and is more interested in her collection of small glass animals than in the male of the human species.

This setup leaves Tom in a bit of an awkward situation as well. He’s willing to help, but wants to escape – from his mother, his boring warehouse job and an environment too restrictive for his taste. He dreams of geographical escape.

When Tom announces that he’s bringing a co-worker named Jim O’Connor home to meet Laura, we can almost guess what will (or won’t) happen.

Known as the “mother of queer classics,” “The Glass Menagerie” introduces Tennessee Williams to the world as the young gay playwright asks us to consider the cost of personal freedom.

This Diversionary cast is excellent. So is the production team, especially dramaturg Jesse Marchese, costumer Katie Paulson, set designer Michael Wogulis and lighting designer Vida Huang.

This show is not a “deck the halls” Christmas favorite, but it’s a terrific show and not to be missed. 

The details

“The Glass Menagerie” plays through December 23 at Diversionary Theatre, 4545 Park Boulevard in University Heights.

Shows Thursday at 7 p.m.; Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m and Sunday at 2 p.m.

Industry Night is Dec. 18 at 7 p.m.

For tickets: diversionary.org or (619) 220-0097

Film Review: Freud's Last Session

I must admit that it would never have occurred to me to sit down for a film called “Freud’s Last Session” if I hadn’t been invited to see it as a member of the reviewing press.

After all, Freud is kind of outdated these days, isn’t he? After all, this father of modern psychoanalysis, who died way back on the eve of World War II in 1939, was a morphine user. What could he have to tell us today?

Well, in the new film “Freud’s Last Session,” C.S. Lewis, the famous author who wrote “The Chronicles of Narnia” and “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” as well as books about divorce, grief and pain, did come to visit Freud. 

We don’t really know why (or even whether he did), but in “Freud’s Last Session” we’ll get to observe them discussing religion, grief, pain, war and all sorts of things.

Freud was a known religious skeptic about religion (non-believer is probably a better word). Lewis was a believer, even an Anglican lay theologian. Did Lewis think he could convert the old skeptic?

You’ll have 75 minutes to observe these two discussing the existence of God along with more normal topics like Freud’s relationship with his lesbian daughter Anna and his more unconventional relationship with his best friend’s mother.

Anthony Hopkins is terrific as Freud, the grumpy old geezer who knows what he believes and is even more convinced about what he does not believe. “I have only two words to offer humanity,” he says. “Grow up.”

Freud says it another way: “Truth is in what you don’t say.”

Matthew Goode plays Lewis with the conviction (and the impatience) of a believer.

So in the end, we have a film based on a play based on a book (Armand Nicholi’s “The Question of God.)” And several fine actors (including the women) to portray them.

I admit that I walked out a bit exhausted. 

Theater Review: Plaid Tidings

 

                            The Plaids at work

Ah, Christmas. Ah, music. And ah, that crazy lunatic singing quartet that gives us the joy of their wild interpretations of holiday music in the annual “Plaid Tidings” show.

Created by writer Stuart Ross shortly after the horrible events of 9/11, the show (first performed in Pasadena in 2001) was an immediate hit. It opened at San Diego Musical Theatre in 2007 and has been presented every year since then.

Augmented by a bass player and a pianist, the quartet: Frankie (Drew Bradford), Sparky (Xavier J. Bush), Smudge (Matt Ignacio) and Jinx (Jonathan Sangster) bops through nearly 28 songs, many times in the style of a singer that made each popular. Wait till you hear their version of “Besame Mucho.” They even toss in a dreidel song.

Rosemary Clooney shows up to offer guidance; so does Peggy Lee. Ed Sullivan is mentioned. 

There’s no real plot here. It’s a collection of many songs, all fun to hear and to watch. But this quartet can really sing and amuse the public, and that’s what this is about.

It’s a two-hour extravaganza (with an intermission) that will leave you smiling and glad you came.

The details

“Plaid Tidings” plays through Dec. 24 at San Diego Musical Theatre, 4650 Mercury Street.

Shows Wednesday and Thursday at 7 p.m.; Friday at 8 p.m.; Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 p.m.

For tickets ($25-70): sdmt.org or call the box office at (858) 560-5740

Theater Review: Proof

                    Catherine, Robert and Howell (photo by Daren Scott)
 

Are mathematicians really a weird lot, or is that designation limited to just some of the ones you’ll run into in the course of playwright David Auburn’s “Proof”?

I’ll leave that for you to decide. Let’s just say Backyard Renaissance never shies away from intriguing topics, and that their current presentation of the Auburn play (which runs through Dec. 9 at San Diego’s Tenth Avenue Arts Center) is a prime example.

Twenty-something mathematician Catherine has spent years in Chicago caring for her brilliant but unstable mathematician father Robert’s physical health, to give him time to pursue his brilliance. 

But Robert has recently died, and now it’s up to Catherine (played wonderfully by Liliana Talwatte) to figure out how to treat his legacy with the respect it deserves, and what to do with the 103 notebooks he left behind. Talwatte is brilliant as the young keeper of the flame and guardian of the notebooks.

Robert’s former student Hal Dobbs (William Huffaker) offers Catherine help with the notebooks (in fact, he can hardly wait to get his hands on them). Will she release the notebooks to him? Oh, and there might be a burgeoning romance here as well.

Catherine’s sister Claire (played by Wendy Maples) shows up to suggest that Catherine move to New York and live with the rest of the family. This does not thrill Catherine, and she really doesn’t want to just leave the notebooks where they are. And it’s difficult for Catherine to get interested in things like jojoba hair conditioner, one of her sister’s major interests.

Ah life, so complicated, so confusing and perhaps also so promising. 

This is a play like no other I’ve ever seen, but then Backyard Renaissance specializes in this sort of thing. Fear not, they (along with excellent director Anthony Methvin, along with the fine set and props of Yi-Chien Lee, lighting by Curtis Mueller, sound by Matt Lescault-Wood, costumes by Jessica John Gercke, and technical direction by Chad Ryan) do it justice and provide an evening’s thought-provoking entertainment and even amusement.

Bravi tutti.

Theater Review: Ebenezer Scrooge's Big San Diego Christmas Show

                                        Cast of "Ebenezer Scrooge's Big San Diego Christmas Show"

There’s nothing like a 170-year-old story to warm the cockles of the old heart during the Christmas season – especially when that story is Charles Dickens’ famous “A Christmas Carol.”

San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre has presented this story annually for some years itself. This year it’s called “Ebenezer Scrooge’s Big San Diego Christmas Show” and you can (and should) see it between now and Christmas Eve at The Old Globe’s Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre.

The White’s in-the-round structure lends itself wonderfully to the crazy story of the cheap old geezer who “celebrates” the coming holiday with one single, solitary hard-boiled egg for dinner. Until, of course, his dead partner Jacob Marley dies and all those other crazy folks (and ghosts) show up to add to the rollicking goofiness of the Dickens story that ends by spreading wondrous good cheer everywhere.

Gordon Greenberg directs this version, which features five actors playing a total of some 17 characters, a huge age range and local interest script that even includes SNOW falling in San Diego. And wait till you see Scrooge on a scooter. There’s a twist you didn’t read in the original.

The original telling of this story was in 2019 (remember Covid?) and we’ve seen a version of it every year since.

The cast and production values are extremely high (not to mention often hilarious). Scrooge (Christopher Sieber*) is the only actor who only has to play one character, but you have to admit that guy really does have to work. And wait till you see that red and white bathing suit.

Don’t waste a minute more of your time. Grab the phone and get tickets now. And bring your friends.

““Ebenezer Scrooge’s Big San Diego Christmas Show” plays through Christmas Eve. 

Playing schedule: Tuesday, Thursday and Friday at 7 p.m.; Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday at 2 and 7 p.m. 

Tickets: (619) 234-5623 or Tickets@TheOldGlobe.org