News Briefs

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November 29-December 5, 2006

Art: it’s the law

Developers of new commercial projects in Santa Rosa will have to spend 1 percent of their costs on public art, either at the site or by contributing to a city fund. Last week the Santa Rosa City Council agreed unanimously to create a downtown arts district of just over a square mile, from Railroad Square to Brookwood Avenue, and College Avenue to Bennett Valley Road. The council also voted 4-3 to require large commercial developments citywide to pay 0.5 percent the first year and 1 percent thereafter. That will be added to $280,000 in redevelopment funds already earmarked for the new arts district. Arts Council of Sonoma president Michael Friedenberg applauds the move. “It’s a very significant step for Santa Rosa in its progress toward being an urban center and the cultural harbor for the North Bay.”

Cash for kids

The folks at Canal Alliance are looking for financial support for their Holiday Gift Fund to bring a little cheer to about 150 youngsters they work with in San Rafael’s largely low-income immigrant Canal neighborhood. The goal is to give each one a $50 gift certificate to a local mall so the kids can buys gifts for themselves or people they love. “We did this last year and it was so great we’re doing it again this year,” says Canal Alliance Events Manager Tracy Brusman. These kids range in age from kindergarten to college, and most are new to this country, Brusman says. “A lot of these kids are trying to do homework and learn English at the same time. They work very hard.” If more money is raised than is needed for the gift certificates, it will be used to support range of community programs, such as childcare, tutoring, parent leadership and English language classes. To contribute, call Brusman at 415.306.0437, e-mail tr***@***********ce.org or mail to Canal Alliance, attn. Holiday Gift Fund, 91 Larkspur St., San Rafael, CA 94901.

Another Wal-Mart?

Recently, the Vallejo City Council approved in-depth environmental and economic studies for a proposed a 393,000-square-foot Wal-Mart supercenter at the corner of Redwood Street and Sonoma Boulevard in Vallejo. That’s just four miles from a 176,000-square-foot Wal-Mart now under construction in American Canyon, just east of Highway 29 in Napa; it’s slated to open in a few months. Wal-Mart officials reportedly say the two supercenters would not overlap, because they will serve different market areas.


First Bite

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I‘ve eaten with my fingers in the best of restaurants. Yes, my sticky digits have pressed the fine china at the French Laundry, Charlie Trotter’s, Le Bernardin and dozens of other well-respected eateries across the Americas, Europe and Asia.

When confronted (as rarely but sometimes happens) by stuffy fellow diners, I tilt my nose in the air and point out that, for cultured connoisseurs, chopsticks are the preferred utensils for any food, since the metal in cutlery can warp food’s subtle flavors. Why, using my pristine paws is actually a salute to the chef.

(That cutlery theory is actually true. What’s more important, though, is that I simply love to eat with my hands. Breaking off little bits of crispy animal skin, pulling small shards of juicy braised meat, plucking crunchy produce and spooning savory custards into my mouth to feel the food as much as taste it–it’s all so deliciously primal.)

So imagine my joy at discovering the brand-new Santa Trata in southwest Santa Rosa. It’s an Eritrean eatery, so not only is eating with fingers accepted, it’s the only method allowed.

Food is served in mounds atop a large platter of injera, an enormous quilt of unleavened sour bread that is the heart and soul–and main utensil–of northeast Africa. The steamed dough is more like a pancake, fluffy and pocketed with bubbles; we tear off pieces of bread to scoop stews or wrap meats burrito-style.

On our visit, the little 10-table Santa Trata was so new that it didn’t yet have menus printed. Our waitress simply showed us that evening’s choices: six items that we can select in various combinations (any two for $8.99; any three for $10.99), including a side green salad. We choose all six, then sat back in our leopard-skin-covered booth seats, admiring the colorful collection of African art decorating every inch of the walls.

Eritrean food typically is very spicy, kicked with lots of berbere (cayenne paste). It’s also dramatically seasoned, in flurries of ginger, cardamom, coriander, fenugreek, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, allspice, garlic and paprika. So imagine my disappointment to discover that Santa Trata’s version is neither. There’s serious fire in the zigne, minced beef in a buttery homemade chili sauce so powerful that my tongue watered. Yet the properly sour injera overpowered the meek beef curry, while the usually infernal dorho kulwa is more like Chinese stir-fry, tossing chicken chunks in mildly spiced butter with garlic, onion and pepper.

“It smells like Indian food,” my companion muses, lifting a bundle of hamlee to her lips, but the spinach casserole is more soothing than stimulating.

Shiro (pureed lentils) is nice enough and the vegetarian alicha is a pleasant mix of al dente herbed potato, carrot, zucchini, and bell pepper. But like the hot chocolate Santa Trata serves–cocoa-flavored water, really–there’s very little oomph here.

In the mornings, Santa Trata is a coffee, smoothie and juice bar, morphing to Eritrean eats at lunch. It’s obviously a work in progress. Our waitress explains that a full menu is coming soon. Here’s hoping the full fire and spices come with it. My mouth–and my fingers–could use a little thrill.

Santa Trata, 711 S. Stony Point Road, Santa Rosa. Open daily, 7am to 9pm. 707. 575.8792.



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Quick-and-dirty dashes through North Bay restaurants. These aren’t your standard “bring five friends and order everything on the menu” dining reviews.

Bravo, Brava!

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the arts | stage |

By David Templeton

Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys is one of those shows that lives or dies on the experience and excellence of its cast. The play, which premiered in 1972 and was made into an Oscar-winning film in 1975, features two of Simon’s trickiest, most difficult-to-play characters. Al Lewis and Willie Clark are aging vaudevillians, legendary one-time comedy partners who’ve not spoken to one another in over 11 years, but are brought together one last time for a live television show celebrating the history of comedy.

They are irritable, irrational, forgetful, frustrating, stubborn, selfish, angry, sorry, sick and (in one of their cases) borderline senile. There are very few actors who can take a complex heap of traits such as these and play them all competently and believably, and even fewer who can then make the whole thing funny. And this play demands two of them.

In the Pacific Alliance Stage Company’s first-rate production of The Sunshine Boys, under the confident direction of Hector Correa, the lead actors achieve more than mere competence. As Lewis and Clark, veteran Bay Area actors Bob Parnell and Will Marchetti give what probably will go down as the best two performances of the year, not just in the North Bay, but anywhere.

If that sounds like hyperbole, let me add that since January of this year, I’ve seen more than 65 plays across the Bay Area, several in Ashland and a dozen in Los Angeles, and though I have been dazzled by some of the performances I’ve seen, none has matched the lived-in brilliance and convincing humanity of these two performances. In the movie version, Lewis and Clark were played by George Burns and Walter Matthau. They were good; Burns won an Oscar.Parnell and Marchetti are better.

Thankfully, the supporting players are no slouches. As Ben Silverman, Clark’s long-suffering nephew and would-be agent, Sam Misner holds his own against the old-timers, and though his character exists primarily as the straight man to the two feisty vaudevillians, Misner delivers his share of Simon’s patented one-liners with plenty of zing and polish. Shannon Veon Kase gives two spirited performances, first as a comically sex-pot nurse in the duo’s television sketch, and then as a no-nonsense registered nurse who appears later in the play. As the TV show’s harried director and stagehand, Daniel Riviera and David Wigginton, respectively, deliver the goods in small but important parts. For fans of sure-footed acting that avoids the pitfalls of artificial flash and hamminess, this is the show to see.

One more current example of top-notch performances in difficult shows can be found in Santa Rosa Junior College’s sensational staging of the Romeo and Juliet-informed West Side Story, another show that depends on solid performances to save it from embarrassing failure. From the opening moments of the show–impressively directed by Leira V. Satlof–one knows this is not just a run-of-the-mill JC theater effort. The outrageously acrobatic street-fight choreography by Lara Branen would challenge and exhaust Broadway professionals, but the athletic young cast of street toughs is up to the task, led by Guy Henry as the Jets’ passive-aggressive gang leader Riff and Eduardo Rico as the Shark’s angry-charming Bernardo.

In the lead role of Tony, the love-struck ex-gang member who falls for the Puerto Rican sister of Bernardo, Zachary Franczak plays the innocent, dreamier side of the character to good effect. As a singer, Franczak grows stronger with each number in the show, and is especially moving in the beautiful love song “Maria” and the stirring duet “One Hand, One Heart.”

Emily Brown as Maria, however, walks off with the show. Though still in high school, she is nothing short of electrifying. Her singing is superbly confident, and you will be hard-pressed to find a more beautiful rendition of “I Have a Love.” As an actress, she is heartbreakingly convincing and heartbreakingly genuine.

With West Side Story as a follow-up to last month’s remarkable Last Days of Judas Iscariot, the JC’s sometimes underambitious theater arts program appears to be well on its way to a very strong year. Good for them, and good for us.

‘The Sunshine Boys’ runs through Dec. 10 at Spreckels Performing Arts Center, 5409 Snyder Lane, Rohnert Park. Thursday at 7:30pm; Friday-Saturday at 8pm; Sunday at 2:30pm. $18-$21; Thursday, $16. 707.588.3400. ‘West Side Story’ runs Wednesday-Sunday through Dec. 3 at Santa Rosa Junior College’s Burbank Auditorium, 1501 Mendocino Ave., Santa Rosa. Nov. 29-30 and Dec. 1-2 at 8pm; also Dec. 2-3 at 2pm. $8-$15. 707.527.4343.



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Museums and gallery notes.


Reviews of new book releases.


Reviews and previews of new plays, operas and symphony performances.


Reviews and previews of new dance performances and events.

Open Mic

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November 29-December 5, 2006

Human rights belong to people collectively. To believe in rights for some and not others is a denial of the humanness of people worldwide. Yet denial is exactly what Congress and George W. Bush did with the signing of the Military Commissions Act of 2006. The new official U.S. policy is that torture and suspension of due process are acceptable for anyone whom the president deems to be a terrorist or supporter. This act is the overt denial of the inalienable rights of human beings propagated in our Declaration of Independence and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Our famous words “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” did not declare that some men (and women) are without unalienable rights. Our independence was founded on the belief that all men and women are recognized by this nation as having innate rights derived from their humanness.

Likewise, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, created by the United Nations in 1948 and signed and ratified by the U.S. Congress, specifies in its preamble that “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been a guide for international law for most of six decades, and as such binds the United States to its general principles. Article 10 states that “everyone is entitled to full equality, to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him,” and Article 5 specifically prohibits torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

For the U.S. government to unilaterally declare that our country will not comply with international human-rights laws nor uphold the core values of our nation’s foundation is an indication of extremism that supercedes the values and beliefs of the American people. When such extremism exists, we may need to take seriously the founders’ declaration that “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

The U.S. government is actively torturing people to death. One need only read the 44 official U.S. military autopsy reports on civilian detainees from Afghanistan and Iraq in 2002 to 2004 posted on the American Civil Liberties website to see the horrendous details of deaths by “strangulation,” “asphyxiation” and “blunt force injuries.”

The Military Commission Act retroactively approved the use of torture to the beginning of the 9-11 wars. Congress’s reaction to the ACLU report in October of 2005 was to pass legislation banning further use of the Freedom of Information Act to request documents on current military operations from the Defense Intelligence Agency.

We are in a time of extremism, permanent war and the unilateral manifestation of ethnocentrism and power by an openly public cabal of people in the U.S. government. Those in power are set on the U.S. military domination of the world. They seem willing to defy the foundational values of the American people to achieve their ends. We have no choice but to openly declare our belief in universal human rights and demand the immediate impeachment of George W. Bush and Richard Cheney, and a full accounting of those in their administration.

Peter Phillips is a professor of sociology at Sonoma State University and the director of Project Censored. He is co-editor with Dennis Loo of the new book ‘Impeach the President: The Case Against Bush and Cheney,’ available on the ProjectCensored.org website.The Byrne Report will return next week.


Tight on Rhyme

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Tight on Rhyme

music & nightlife |

Or Bust: Satirist Roy Zimmerman performs Dec. 1.

By Bruce Robinson

Satirical songwriter Roy Zimmerman is home for the holidays, even the pantheistic one he invented last year: Christma-Hanu-Rama-Ka-Dona-Kwanzaa.

Zimmerman doesn’t mince words–but he does twist, subdivide, elongate and compound them, crafting lyrics that combine a pointed personal point of view with scrupulously executed rhyme schemes.

“That’s the fun of it,” the San Anselmo resident explains cheerfully. “It’s like working a puzzle. You come up with the words that are gonna resonate with that song the best, and then find good rhymes for them.”

Case in point, this midsong verse from “Creation Science 101,” sung from the instructor’s perspective: “If you make Genesis your text / You’ll laugh at Darwin and what he sees / To be the origin of species / Because he’s just plain oversexed.”

Although he’s hardly a household name (yet), Zimmerman has been honing his craft for quite a while. “I’ve been writing these satirical songs for 20 years or so–long enough to know better,” he laughs. “I can look back to junior high and remember writing songs about Mrs. Hemple’s wig blowing off. That’s just the way I’m built; I turn that into a song.”

Most recently, Zimmerman has turned a batch of his songs–many taken from his most recent self-released CD, Faulty Intelligence–and turned them into a one-man musical show with the same title. He brings it to Mill Valley’s 142 Throckmorton Theatre for one night on Dec. 1.

At least one of the featured songs dates back to Zimmerman’s earlier musical endeavor, a 1990s faux folk quartet called the Foremen. “It started as an idea to do an homage to the Limelighters and the Kingston Trio and the Chad Mitchell Trio–those groups which I love–and which themselves were quite socially conscious, too,” Zimmerman recalls. “At first it was just a stylistic parody, but it wasn’t too long before it drifted into politics. During the first Gulf War, someone asked us to sing at an antiwar rally, and I hadn’t even formed an opinion about that war, so I went away and I wrote a song. By the time I finished, I had a song and an opinion.”

That song, “Saddam Shame,” appears in an updated version on Faulty Intelligence, which also includes scathing takes on neocon war-mongering (“Chickenhawk”), gay marriage (“Defenders of Marriage”) and faith-based sex education (“Abstain with Me”). In “Intelligent Design,” Zimmerman’s outrage is almost palpable: “When we said No Child Left Behind / Baghdad was what we had in mind / So we devised a standard test / To tell the brightest and the whitest / From the rest / We’re cutting luxuries like teachers, books and tutors / To make things easier for disadvantaged, underprivileged military recruiters.”

“Why shouldn’t I be angry?” he asks. “America’s been hijacked, and there’s a great deal of not just anger, but angst and worry about the future that goes along with that.”

Zimmerman has the rare endorsement of the previous generation’s preeminent musical satirist, Tom Lehrer, who has publicly congratulated him for “reintroducing literacy to comedy songs. And,” Leher added, “the rhymes actually rhyme, they don’t just ‘ryhne.'”

That plug, an artifact of the Foremen’s tenure on Leher’s former record label, was the beginning of an enduring friendship. “I’ve maintained contact with him over the years, and every six months or so we have a good conversation,” Zimmerman says. “He really listens to the new material and critiques it quite in-depth.”

But Zimmerman’s pointed parodies are musical, too. Faulty Intelligence includes a county ballad, a trad-jazz dirge (“When the Saints Go Marching into New Orleans”), a mariachi-style commentary on immigration (“Hello, NSA”) and a spy-movie soundtrack theme.

“I like to write original tunes, but often they’re evocative of a style, and the idea is that the music and the lyrics tell the same story, or tell the same joke,” Zimmerman says. And the music usually comes first.

“In most songs, the music comes so quickly I can’t stop it,” he adds. “Then working out the lyrics is really like working out a crossword puzzle to see how things all mesh.”

One final example from a tender ballad: “My conservative girlfriend / Got a tiny little heart full of passion / My conservative girlfriend / Every weekend we go wilderness trashin’ . . .”

Roy Zimmerman performs ‘Faulty Intelligence’ on Friday, Dec. 1, at the 142 Throckmorton Theatre. 142 Throckmorton Ave., Mill Valley. 8pm. $20. 415.383.9600.




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Wine Tasting Room of the Week

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When cold and flu season hits wine country, the perceptual powers of aficionados–especially those that require a nose–are rendered useless; indeed, those like myself rely on a sort of gustatory synesthesia to free-associate an impression of a wine based on its bouquet, taste, mouth-feel and color. Without olfactory capabilities, and further addled by Theraflu, the wine hack’s mind lacks the stimulus necessary to make an observation beyond “it is wet and likely red.” Fortunately, Ann C. Noble, a professor emeritus from the viticulture and enology school at UC Davis, has been hawking her lauded Wine Aroma Wheel over the Internet. Think of this $6 marvel as a sort of circular cheat sheet to aid in identifying the flavor components of wine.

“The requirements for words to be included in the wheel are that the terms are specific and analytical and not hedonic or the result of an integrated or judgmental response,” reads the printed matter accompanying the Wine Aroma Wheel. Mine arrived just in time for the 2006 Sonoma County New Release Tasting hosted by Sonoma’s Sebastiani Vineyards and Winery, and though I feel contrary about notions like “hedonic” and “judgmental,” I thought I’d bring the wheel to serve as a sort of wine decoder ring if I found my senses too clogged to function.

They were.

The fact is, I spent much of the day unable to taste anything–at least not correctly. The Rodney Strong Vineyards Sonoma County 2004 “Knotty Vines” Zinfandel, without a full complement of nostrils, momentarily tasted like a spritz of WD-40, which is clearly not the case. Vainly, I searched for the wheel for the name of the lubricant, until, radiating from the header “chemical,” I found the word “petroleum” and under that, the descriptors “diesel, kerosene, plastic and tar.” WD-40, of course, smells like all the above.

I began to jot this observation in my notebook when I realized how patently unfair my process had become. After a trumpeting through a wad of tissue paper, I tried the wine again, and finally its flavor profile emerged like the autumnal sun–muted currants, cinnamon and dark chocolate. I referenced the wheel to see if there were any words worth borrowing, and under the header “berry” found “cassis,” which is not only accurate, it also looks nice on the page (thank you wine wheel).

For more information about the Wine Aroma Wheel, point your browser to www.winearomawheel.com. Purchase online at the UC Davis bookstore, www.bookstore.ucdavis.edu.



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Mighta Missed

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Mighta Missed

Morsels

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Forking It Over

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Forking It Over

November 22-28, 2006

When I was a student at Santa Rosa High School in the 1990s, it became somewhat of a Wednesday tradition to ditch first period (OK–and sometimes second period, too) for a window table and eggs Florentine at Hank’s Creekside Cafe. Kind, upstanding Hank probably wouldn’t have liked knowing he had a gang of truants giggling into their coffee at 8am, but my friends and I loved the restaurant so much it was worth the occasional repercussion to avoid the lines that inevitably snaked around the block and into the parking lot next door on the weekends.

After moving our educations next door to the junior college, we expanded our minds and our stomachs, realizing that nothing settles one’s stomach better after a night of heavy drinking–as only 19- and 20-year-olds living on their own for the first time can do–like a big, greasy, American breakfast.

During the following years, we began to travel, eating croissants and drinking espresso in Europe on college exchanges, but a good greasy breakfast was still quite welcome. While I am often rankled by my country’s lack of finesse and culture, I am never irked by its breakfast offerings.

The American breakfast was born on the frontier. Those hearty pioneers didn’t have a lot to work with in those dark, early mornings; coffee grounds, slabs of pork and white flour were pretty much it. Two hundred years later, we’re still starting the day with white flour and pork fat, and I’ve appreciated my country many a morning when I know nothing’s going to wipe out the pain of the night before better than a healthy dose of sausage gravy spread over buttermilk biscuits.

A four-course meal with accompanying wines and cocktails is one of my most treasured ways to spend an evening, but there’s just really something to be said for the simple, greasy, breakfast–particularly with holiday madness stampeding down upon us.

With that in mind, we’ve compiled a highly subjective list of breakfast bounty, greasy spoons offering solid country cookin’ and a comforting lack of any of the pretense that seems to increasingly surround our dining culture more and more.

Hank’s Creekside Bustling from its 6am opening time (7am on Sundays) until the late brunchers stagger in beneath their sunglasses, Hank’s Creekside will roll off the tip of any native’s tongue as the defining breakfast spot. Run by Hank, his wife and their many children, the Creekside has a way of making everyone feel like family. The staff at Hank’s is as loving as the food is good, and it’s an amazing thing to watch the fry cooks flip hundreds of eggs an hour without breaking a one.

Fancier specials like chicken-apple sausage are cheerfully written in neon on blackboards, and staples like omelettes and biscuits and gravy will settle the stomach of anyone who’s reveled a little too long the night before. And, of course, the crowning glory of Hank’s is the Santa Rosa Creek running right below, which diners can watch through a lush canopy of tangled green trees and plants. Be sure to check out the women’s bathroom, even if you’re a man. 2800 Fourth St., Santa Rosa. Open for breakfast and lunch until 2pm daily. 707.575.8839.

Mac’s Kosher Style Deli While it’s always been a mystery to me as to what the kosher-style vs. just plain kosher means, one thing at Mac’s Deli is clear: they’ve got a damn good breakfast. A favorite spot for a prework lox scramble or a lunchtime Reuben, Mac’s offers a giant menu and no-frills service, as the friendly owners look on from behind the long counter, which is filled with regulars whiling away the morning over a newspaper and a bottomless cup of coffee.

Giant booths comfortably swallow one up, and a few tables provide a “see-and-be-seen” view of downtown’s Fourth Street. Sunshine seems to penetrate every corner of Mac’s, even on a foggy day, and your mood is instantly elevated after entering upon sighting your favorite booth and realizing the imminence of devouring fresh eggs and very strong coffee. 630 Fourth St., Santa Rosa. Open for breakfast and lunch, Monday-Saturday. 707.545.3785.

Singletree Inn In the midst of Healdsburg’s rapid spiral upward toward gentrification, the old-fashioned Singletree Inn stands strong. Still offering a two-egg breakfast with hash browns and bacon for under $5 (just $2.95 from 7am to 9am), the Singletree has been grating potatoes and frying them up since my grandma went to Healdsburg High School. Often, the continuation of the bar-party-living-room couch, this is where you’ll find the cooks who prepared the four-star dinners the night before, washing down the simple fare with coffee or Budweiser (or both). 165 Healdsburg Ave., Healdsburg. Open for breakfast and lunch until 3pm daily. 707.433.8263.

Flaky Cream Do-Nuts & Coffee Shop A local favorite for more than 40 years, the Flaky Cream Do-Nut seems untouched by time. Wedged in between a fancy cheese shop and right next to the “Baby Goat” (the Flying Goat Coffee Shop’s little brother), Flaky Cream makes doughnuts and pastries fresh daily, and has deliciously creamy and fluffy scrambled eggs. Although it’s probably a major faux pas to bring in an outside beverage, the kind staff have turned a blind eye to my Flying Goat coffee cup on some mornings. (It’s probably better to get your caffeine fix after swallowing the last flakey morsel if you want high-end espresso and not the stuff from the clear glass pot). 441 Center St., Healdsburg. Open for breakfast and lunch (if you can call doughnuts lunch), daily. 707.433.3895.

Diana’s Market y Taqueria A tiny little corner store on Old Redwood Highway between Windsor and Healdsburg, Diana’s Market unassumingly serves up the best chorizo breakfast burrito this sausage connoisseur’s ever had. I’ve passed many a friendly morning with Grandma at the tables covered in Mexican oilcloth, splitting a breakfast burrito (they’re enormous, completely stuffed with exquisitely orange-dripping spicy chorizo). Selling Jarritos, candles in jars and queso fresco alongside the coffee and food at all times of the day, Diana’s is about as authentic as it gets. 10351 Old Redwood Hwy., Windsor. Open daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner. 707.838.1733.

D’s Diner More of a faux spoon than a greasy one, D’s Diner serves up 1950s comfort food with 21st-century quality and local ingredients. Diner booths with red-checkered tablecloths provide a friendly atmosphere that’s accentuated by the open kitchen.

The owner is on-hand, cooking and serving, and a barbecue lunch is something worth gnawing on (and costs half of what most other barbecue restaurants charge). 7260 Healdsburg Ave., Sebastopol. Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner until 9pm, Monday-Saturday; breakfast and lunch until 4pm, Sunday. 707.829.8080.

Parkside Cafe It was a close tie between the Cook House (327 S. A St., Santa Rosa; 707.526.2689) and the Parkside for this roundup. The Parkside won because of its enormous collection of trucker hats hanging from the rafters, which are so entertaining to read that you don’t even have to talk to your dining companions. Some of the friendliest service this side of Oklahoma (once, the waitress heard my groans and brought me two aspirin with my coffee) make it a welcome stop any time of the day. The traditional diner fare–chicken-fried steak and burgers–is brightened by daily specials. Plus, they deliver! 404 Santa Rosa Ave., Santa Rosa. Open from 6am for breakfast and lunch, daily. 707.573.5955.

The Short List

Dipsea Cafe (200 Shoreline Hwy., Mill Valley; 415.381.0298) all view and attitude, great if you can ignore the stressed-out staff and the inevitable wait. Funky Two Bird Cafe (625 San Geronimo Valley Drive, San Geronimo; 415.488.0105) is the perfect place to fuel up for a long walk in the nearby Samuel P. Taylor Park. Gordon’s Cafe and Wine Bar (6770 Washington St., Yountville; 707.944.8246) morphs from nourishing breakfasts to French-style dinners as the light changes. The Three Cooks Cafe (841 Petaluma Blvd. N., Petaluma; 707.762.9886) actually only features one cook in its tiny environs and is the perfect place for a biscuits and gravy breakfast studded with sausage.

Quick dining snapshots by Bohemian staffers.

Winery news and reviews.

Food-related comings and goings, openings and closings, and other essays for those who love the kitchen and what it produces.

Recipes for food that you can actually make.

Hypocrite’s Hyperbole

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Hypocrite’s Hyperbole

November 22-28, 2006

Commedia tonight! Michael Fields and Deborah Taylor Barrera.

Some of the theater world’s most enduring successes started out as incredibly bad ideas. A pop-musical condensation of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables? How could that possibly work? Shakespeare’s Macbeth staged as a Road Warrior-style apocalypse, starring Danny Glover as the murderous Thane? Ridiculous! A contemporary re-imagining of Ovid’s Metamorphoses with much of the action tagged in a vast swimming pool? What kind of drugs are you taking?

In spite of its unlikely potential, Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg’s Les Miserables is still playing to packed houses after 15 years. Mary Zimmerman’s boldly aquatic Metamorphoses was a sensational hit. And that Danny Glover Macbeth? I saw it in Los Angeles 26 years ago, before anyone knew who he was, and the critical raves from that show couldn’t have hurt the start of his career.

Some ideas sound unlikely but can, with the right people pulling the right strings, result in riveting theater. At the same time, some audaciously bold ideas may sound rich, may even be called fool-proof, but once onstage reveal themselves as bad ideas after all, interesting but largely unsuccessful.

Such is the case with Dell’ Arte Company’s new production of Moliére’s farcical comedy Tartuffe, running through Dec. 10 at the Marin Theater Company in Mill Valley. The Dell’ Arte Company is renowned for productions staged in the highly physical style of Italian commedia dell’ arte, with actors donning masks with grotesquely exaggerated features as they juggle, romp, stilt-walk and somersault their way through elaborately choreographed plots.

Though Moliére was reputedly inspired by the commedia style, his works tend more toward verbal wittiness than physical comedy. According to historians, Tartuffe did have a run at a Parisian theater where a troupe of Italian comedians were also performing, so it is conceivable that such a collaboration might have taken place.

The story is fairly well-known. The aged Orgon (nicely played by Adrian C. Mejia) is a wealthy landowner with a house full of servants and a young, pretty wife, Elmire (Deborah Taylor Barrera). Orgon’s daughter, Mariane (Jackie Dandeneau), wants to marry the foppish Valere (a marvelously silly David Ferny), but Orgon, who’s begun to worry about the future of his soul, has decided to marry her instead to Tartuffe, a con man in holy man’s robes who has insinuated himself into the foolish Orgon’s household.

As played by Dell’ Arte’s producing artistic director Michael Fields, Tartuffe is a conspicuous liar, a charmingly roguish scalawag who has imposed the strictest moral behavior among Orgon’s family and staff while simultaneously scheming to take the old man’s money and schtupp his wife on the side. The timeliness of a show about hypocrisy among influential religious figures is obvious; exposing the shadow side of those who oppress us never goes out of style, which explains Tartuffe’s popularity after a run of some 340 years.

The problem with this Tartuffe–imaginatively and rambunctiously directed by Giulio Cesare Perrone–is that instead of bringing extra vivacity and insight to Moliére’s tale of religious charlatans and pious hypocrisy, all of the masks and monkeyshines and acrobatics actually diminishes the power of the story instead of enhancing it. Such is the danger whenever a classic is repurposed to fit a different time period or style than originally written. Such tinkerings must bring at least as much to the source material as they end up taking away from it.

Instead of energizing MoliÈre, the wildness and wackiness and nonstop buffoonery of the comedians (clearly all brilliant performers) merely flattens the show, turning it from a brilliant and sharp-sighted indictment of religious tyranny and blind devotion into a pleasant enough pageant of whimsical diversions.

Not that there’s anything wrong with pure whimsy. Anything that attracts new and younger audiences to Moliére is worth considering (opening night saw a much younger and decidedly more Mohawked audience than usual for the MTC), but in the end, this show just doesn’t work.

‘Tartuffe’ runs Tuesday-Sunday through Dec. 10. Tuesday and Thursday-Saturday at 8pm; Wednesday at 7:30pm; Sunday at 2pm and 7pm; also, Saturday at 2pm; Wednesday, Nov. 30, at 1pm. $19-$47; Tuesday, pay what you can. Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley. 415.388.5208.


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