Journalist Molly Ivins was often described as funny, folksy and vicious, her syndicated columns skewering the right wing and advancing a view of the world in which wisdom and conscience are the driving forces of government, not the stupidity, greed and warmongering that seems to be the bedrock of Washington politics.

Well, there are plenty of folksy, funny moments in Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s "Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins," a lovingly scripted scrapbook of a one-woman-show, featuring Kathleen Turner as the Texas-raised Ivins, who died of breast cancer in 2007. Though Ivins’ progressive politics are not exactly ignored in the somewhat awkward script by Margaret and Allison Engall, they take a back-seat to the twin sisters focus on Ivins as a journalistic iconoclast, a wounded daughter whose love-hate relationship with her strict, military father might be the major motivation for her lifelong rejection of authority, tradition, and hardline conservatives.

The resulting play, whizzing by in a brisk 75-minutes with no intermission, works hard to find a through-line in what ends up being less a story of Ivins’ life and more an assembly of Wikipedia-level facts - her childhood in Texas, her work at the New York Times and the Texas Tribune, her battles with alcohol, her playful and not-so-playful journalistic attacks on George W. Bush - all of it livened by a greatest hits parade of Ivins’ best known political columns and Texas-twang zingers.

Even so, as in her life, Ivins’ vibrant humor and fierce passion shines through, and Kathleen Turner - best known for her film work in movies like Body Heat and Romancing the Stone, turns out to be a first-rate channel of Ivins’ contagious spirit. Dressed in Ivins’ signature jeans and blue denim shirt, Turner, her throaty voice and expressive face not so much an impersonation of Ivins as a fiercely loving celebration of her optimistically no-nonsense approach to life and the journalistic trade.

“This is what writing looks like,” she announces at the start of the show, her red-booted feet propped up on her desk beside an old manual typewriter. “It’s seventy-five percent thinking, fifteen percent typing, and 10 percent caffeine.”

There is an odd but ultimately effective supernatural vibe to the show, a mysterious AP machine spitting out news reports and significant columns marking the milestones of Ivins’ life, while in the background, a series of desks are stacked up, representing the various positions she’s held at different papers, as she writes what turns out to be an unexpectedly poignant column about her father - a column which may also be her last.

Red Hot Patriot, while falling short as a serious biography, serves nicely as a kind of onstage obituary, succinctly hitting the major points, honoring the best aspects of Ivins life and glossing over the rest. Despite this, Turner and Ivins turn out to be as irresistible a match as Ivins was a certified American original, with a heart every bit as big and complex as the country she loved.

"Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins" runs Tuesday - Sunday through January 11 at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Berkeleyrep.com

The novels of Jane Austen were reasonably popular during the course of the author’s life, though every single one of her books was published anonymously. Sense and Sensibility, for example, was described on the title page as having been written “by a lady.” Eventually, after achieving some success with her early works, Austen’s newer novels appeared with the title note “By the Author of Sense and Sensibility.”

When she died in 1817, Austen had completed two final novels, written slowly as she battled a mysterious debilitating disease, both published after her death. One was Persuasion, a lesser Austen novel that was typical of her style and sense of humor while also being not quite up to her usual masterpiece-level standards - but it has its charms, amongst them a heroine who is both prickly and vulnerable, less plucky than most Austen heroines, with her intelligence rumbling from behind a crisp wrapper of pain and regret. The plot, too, is a bit simplistic, and the novel has fewer twists and curlicues than Pride and Prejudice or Emma, yet it has no shortage of colorful characters.

In the new stage adaptation of Persuasion being presented at Marin County’s Ross Valley Players, the strengths and weakness of the novel are on display. With a relatively new script by South Bay writer Jennifer Le Blanc, this tidy and frequently clever adaptation has been staged just once, last year, in Silicon Valley. Working with director Mary Ann Rodgers, Le Blanc has made a few additional changes for the RVP production, which is notable for its sprawling cast of 18 actors - unheard of in an era when most companies prefer shows with only four five performers.

The story revolves around Ann Eliot, the wisest and yet least appreciated of three sisters. Years ago, she was persuaded by her family to break off her engagement with a poor young sailor, a decision she’s regretted ever since. When her father’s extravagant spending forces the Elliots to leave their family home, Ann eventually relocates to the fashionable city of Bath, where she is accidentally reunited with Captain Wentworth, the man she spurned, who is clearly still hurt by her rejection, though he’s since become wealthy and much sought-after by the other women of Bath.

Extremely well acted by a strong, grounded cast - who look awesome in the gorgeous period costumes - the plot, such as it is, unfolds easily but with few surprises. The chief pleasure of this slightly over-long adaptation is the obvious joy the playwright feels for Jane Austen’s clever-and-funny language. Various characters pass Austen’s narration about like a plate of cookies at a Holiday ball, giving us the sense that Jane Austen herself is narrating her final tale from beyond the grave.

Though a bit flat on occasion, and less explosively emotional than Austen’s better-known works, Ross Valley Player’sPersuasion is as pleasant and amiable as an afternoon spent by the fire with a good old slightly unfamiliar book.

Persuasion runs weekends through December 14 at Ross Valley Players, rossvalleyplayers.com.

If you’re like me, the Halloween decorations are still up in your house, so why is it that we’re already hearing Christmas music in the malls? Well, the last thing I’d want to do is stand on the side of the greedy capitalistic cooption of winter holidays, but when it comes to thinking about theater around the holidays, is really does pay to start early.

Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukah, the Winter Solstice - they really do, somehow, all inspire higher audience attendance for certain cinnamon-scented stage events. Maybe it’s just because we are looking for things to do together with our families and loved-ones. In some cases, we use such events as alternative Christmas presents, taking people to a show in lieu of a gift certificate.

So I thought maybe I’d just play a little Christmas music, and tell you about some of the upcoming events and shows in the Bay Area that just might make excellent family outings, or would make for great gifts if you know someone who’d appreciate a pair of tickets as an early holiday gift.

The Great Dickens Christmas Faire kicks off early this year, running weekends from the 22nd of November 22 to the 21st of December, from 10 am to 7 pm, at the Cow Palace in San Francisco.

Unleashed by the same folks who brought us the Renaissance Pleasure Faire, the Dickens Faire is a massively entertaining sugarplum of an event, combining elements of a craft faire, a Christmas party, a sugar binge, a theater festival, and an improve comedy show, all with a delightfully Dickensian style. The characters of Dickens most beloved tales wander the streets, mingling with historical impersonators like Edgar Allen Poe and Charles Darwin, lecturing, singing, and acting out indelible scenes right in front of your

eyes. Details can be discovered online at dickensfair.com.

In Oakland, at the opulent Scottish Rite Theater, there is another notable annual tradition returning this year: The California Christmas Revels, which is about as difficult to describe as it is to resist. Inspired by the Revels started in Cambridge in the 1960s, the Revels borrows different holiday traditions, tunes, and dances, taking audiences to a different part of the world and a different time period every year. Wrapped in and around an always inventive holiday story, the revels is a one-of-a-kind celebration of the unstoppable holiday spirit down through the ages This year, from December 12-21, the

Revels presents An American Journey, in which a young traveler in the 1930s meets a mysterious stranger, who magically transports him across America, to experience holiday traditions and songs from the Appalachians to the bayous of Louisiana to the Steinbeckian shacks and tents of Depression Era California. Find out more at Californiarevels.org.

Closer to home, from November 21 to December 21, 6th Street Playhouse is presenting its original holiday extravaganza, an old-fashioned melodrama titled "Jolly Juliana," or "Her Fruitcake has Nuts," followed nightly by a festive holiday vaudeville. Find out more at

6thstreetplayhouse.com.

Spreckels Performing Arts Center is bringing back "Scrooge: The Musical," adding a few new visual tricks to Dickens heartwarming ghost story from November 28 to December 21.

And at Main Stage West in Sebastopol, December 4 through 21, it’s a very different kind of Christmas story, the dark comedy "Other Desert Cities," in which a family with a big secret comes a little unglued when the wealthy conservative parents go head-to-head with their liberal adult children. Packed with surprises and great performances, this is just one more way to celebrate the holidays with friends and family you love. Find out more at mainstage west.com

However you choose to celebrate the upcoming season, do consider making live theater a part of it.

I was once asked a question about the theater. “What would you rather see?” my colleague wanted to know . . . “A strong performance in a weak play? Or a weak performance in a strong play?” Well, that’s an easy one. I’d much rather see a great performance in a play that isn’t all it could be, than watch a brilliant play be marred by performances that are not up to snuff. Because, in the end, nothing beats a really great performance. Which brings us to Alfred Uhry’s Pulitzer-winning "Driving Miss Daisy," currently running (for one more weekend) at Cinnabar theater. "Driving Miss Daisy" is a beloved, genuinely groundbreaking play that has been staged so often it no longer feels groundbreaking - just sort of safe and cozy and comfortable. But, in Cinnabar’s crisp, pristine production, it is the exceptionally good acting that makes the show feel, if not exactly fresh, then well worth seeing - or seeing again, as the case may be. Directed with thrift and polish by Nathan Cummings, Daisy is the tale of an elderly southern matron who’s forced, after one-too-many car accidents, to accept the services of an amiable chauffer named Hoke - and a long, complex relationship is established, carrying the two mismatched associates across the fifties and sixties, right down the middle of the civil rights movement. As Daisy, Laura Jorgenson, is pitch-perfect, and the equally splendid Dorian Lockett capture’s Hoke’s inner wisdom, and his quietly brimming sense of humor. Told in a series of vignettes spanning a quarter century, Cinnabar’s staging of this old favorite - with solid support from John Browning as Miss Daisy’s steady son Booly - sails smoothly along on a fluffy slipstream of actorly assurance. And that’s a good thing. And that brings is to Christopher Durang’s "Vanya & Sonia & Masha & Spike," currently playing at Main Stage West, in Sebastopol. The unconventional comedy won the Best Play Tony in 2013, in part for the exuberant acting challenges the play poses for its six performers, with complex monologues and a few outrageous costume requirements. One character, for example, spends most of the show in only his boxer shorts. Revolving around three middle-aged siblings whose Chekhov-loving parents have recently died, the appealingly offbeat comedy employs masterfully complex language, blended with sharp one-liners and crackpot characterizations. You have to be good to pull this off, or it could make the play itself seem bad - but in the Main Stage West production, the audience is in very good hands. Vanya, played by a gently sad-sack Eric Thompson, is a cranky curmudgeon who lives with sister Sonia, marvelously played by Madeleine Ashe. Both are lonely and resentful after years of caring for their parents while sister Masha pursues her career as a movie star. Masha is Elly Lichenstein, who keeps her flashy character comfortably grounded while still chewing the scenery wonderfully. Naomi Sample is a joy to watch as the keen-eyed housecleaner Cassandra, who claims to be clairvoyant, warning of coming changes in everyone’s lives. Masha soon arrives from Hollywood for a visit, with her dim actor boy-toy Spike in tow - he’s Tyler Costin, flat-out hilarious, in or out of his clothes. As the youthful Nina, the next-door neighbor and longtime fan of Masha, Ivy Rose Miller practically glows with star-struck innocence and game-changing optimism. Director Sheri Lee Miller, who has an established knack for bringing out the best in her actors, guides this production with as much attention to the characters’ underlying emotions as to the comedic elements in Durang’s loopy and literate script, proving once again that strong acting, whether in a drama or comedy, a strong script or a weak script, is always a play’s heart and soul. "Vanya & Sonia & Masha & Spike" runs Thursday–Sunday through Nov. 16 at Main Stage West - mainstagewest.com.

In tone, attitude and style, you will not find two American musicals more different from each other than Guys and Dolls and Avenue Q.

The first of these, now playing at Spreckels Performing Arts Center features singing-and-dancing gamblers and gangsters in a family-friendly trifle about luck and love, set along Broadway in Prohibition-era New York City. The other one, now running at the Novato Theater Company, in Novato, puts potty-mouthed puppets alongside heckled humans in a contemporary R-rated send-up of Sesame Street.

Though polar opposites, both of these shows offer plenty of visual invention and clever songwriting—and each one shines bright and beautiful with some truly sensational singing.

Directed by Gene Abravaya, Guys and Dolls is packed with colorful characters - the marriage-phobic Nathan Detroit, played by Tim Setzer, the wealthy-and-amoral gambler Sky Masterson, an excellent Anthony Martinez, and the optimistic sidekicks Nicely-Nicely Johnson and Benny Southstreet, played by Ted Smith and Kyle Stoner, who are so good at harmonizing it’s almost illegal.

The story of Guys and Dolls is slight, to say the least As Nathan Detroit seeks a location for his illegal, nightly crap game, he avoids committing to his longtime fiancée Miss Adelaide, a nightclub dancer played well by Denise Elia-Yen. Simultaneously, Nathan is attempting to raise cash by betting Sky Masterson - who will make a bet on anything - that he can’t convince the pious and pretty Salvation Army missionary Sarah Brown -Stephanie Dietz - to have dinner with him . . . in Cuba. The tale’s effectiveness is

dampened a tad by a lack of chemistry between the romantic leads, but still works on the strength of Frank Loesser’s delightfully off-kilter songs, snappy musical direction by Janis Wilson, and a winsome cast and ensemble, with special kudos to the immensely engaging Clark Miller, as Sarah’s surprisingly understanding Uncle Arvide, who works with her at the midnight mission they’ve established to save souls of New Yorks criminal class.

Criminal Class. That’s a nice way to sum up Guys and Dolls.

On to Avenue Q, crisply directed with obvious glee by Carl Jordan, with superb musical direction by Monica Norcia. Avenue Q, set in another part of New York City, blends wicked social satire with outrageously crude onstage puppet shenanigans, offering a

stunningly realistic view of life after college and on the fringes of society and success.

The awesome puppetmaker Mary Hildebrand Nagler contributed the sensational puppets for this production.

Here’s the story.

An unemployed idealist named Princeton - played well by Robert Nelson - arrives on Avenue Q with a useless degree and no marketable skills, but dreaming of changing the world for the better.

He soon falls for the insecure but adorable Kate Monster, played with mountains of charm by Amanda Morano. Paths cross with Nicky and Rod (Seth Dahlgren and Alexander Belmont, who are Bert-and-Ernie-like roommates with a rather complicated relationship, since Rod is still in the closet, though everyone knows that A. he’s gay and B. he’s in love with Nicky. Meanwhile, upstairs neighbor Trekkie Monster (Dahlgren again) is a grouchy, porn-addicted recluse with a secret, And then there’s Lucy the Slut (Melissa Claire), who complicates everything.

It’s hilarious, entertaining, and delightfully spot on.

But be warned. Contrary to the whole “educational puppet vibe” Avenue Q was inspired by, there is off-color language, songs about racism and homophobia, and some no-holds-barred onstage puppet sex.

The songs are infectious, and the entire cast rocks, energetically co-creating a show that is as fresh as it is hilarious, outrageous, and surprisingly moving.

"Avenue Q" runs Friday–Sunday, through November 9 at Novato theater company, Novatotheatercompany.com.

Brilliant theater is not always fun.

Death of a Salesman.

A Streetcar Named Desire.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Angels in America.

Equus.

The best plays succeed because they depress, rattle, upset and stun us with stories that are heartrending, unsettling, and just plain unpleasant, because, of course, life is unpleasant, sometimes. Life can be heartrending and unpleasant—and theater, simply put, is a reflection of life . . . the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Which brings us the Samuel D, Hunter’s The Whale, now running at Marin Theatre Company in Mill Valley. A critical hit last year in New York, The Whale serves up a fearlessly blunt, occasionally bitter, yet supremely compassionate slice of life that is beautifully written, emotionally knotty, and anything but traditionally “enjoyable.”

Directed with documentary openness by Jasson Minadakis, The Whale may be the best new play I’ve seen this year - and still . . . I cannot think of another show, or another set of characters, I have felt more beaten up, assaulted and challenged by.

I love it, but I can’t say I liked it.

Charlie is a 600-pound shut-in, an English teacher with a death wish he is close to accomplishing. Charlie, in a remarkable performance by the (non-obese) Nicholas Pelczar, is brought to life with an impressive body-sized prosthetic, which, to be fair, doesn’t

always look exactly right - a skinny man’s head and neck attached to large man’s body . . . but it certainly makes the point. Charlie rarely moves from his shabby couch, and when he does, wheezing and grimacing, it’s with great effort and obvious pain.

Still grieving the absence of his long-dead lover - who, ironically, starved himself to death ten years ago - Charlie’s aching heart barely functions to keep him breathing, and yet Charlie, large hearted in every sense of the word, somehow manages to see the best in other people, while stubbornly abandoning all hope and faith in himself, aggressively deconstructing any remaining will to live.

Taking place over the last days of Charlie’s life (you think of it as Death of a Fatman), The Whale is not a direct reference to Charlie’s size. The title comes from a student’s essay on the novel Moby Dick, coupled with a few references to the biblical story of Jonah and the whale. Taken along with Charlie’s vastness, each of those iconic stories lends resonance to Charlie’s own personal tale of lost dreams, lost love, and the cruel twists of fate. As Charlie resists the loving encouragement of his best friend Liz (Liz Sklar), he finds himself reaching out to two unlikely strangers: a troubled young Mormon

missionary, and Ellie, Charlie’s deeply resentful teenage daughter, who hasn’t seen her father since she was two.

Ellie is easily the most hateful, angry, cruel and unlikable character I have seen on stage in a very long time. Ellie hates everyone and everything, especially Charlie, who still somehow loves her, and is actually thrilled with her every ugly utterance. He sees her as “amazing,” even when she snaps shots of him and posts them to Facebook with vicious commentary.

Somehow, Charlie still sees her that way . . . amazing.

And that’s one of the many miracles of Hunter’s ingenious drama.

Through Charlie’s insistence, we the audience eventually start trying, cautiously and skeptically, to try and see what Charlie sees in this sociopathic monster that is his daughter. And conversely, in the face of Ellie’s disgust with her father’s appearance, we start to wish she’d see what we see - the good, if wounded and frustratingly suicidal

man beneath that fat suit.

Which makes the artificiality of that suit seem all the more significant. Are we the skin we wear? Or are we more? It’s an important question.The Whale, after all, is really all about seeing below the surface of things, looking deeper than what we first assume

and see.

Hedda Gabler, the original pistol-packing mama from Norway, has returned. Main Stage West, in Sebastopol, has tackled Henrik Ibsen’s most infamous creation, presenting the hundred-and-twenty-year-old comedy-drama as a stylish soap opera with a big bang of a climax.

Let me begin by saying I love this play . . . at least, I have loved it.

This production . . . I’m a little mixed on.

But let’s start with what I liked.

Amongst other things, this Hedda Gabler - with a gorgeous set by and David Lear, and beautiful costumes by Gail Reine - is one of the best looking shows I've seen in the area for quite a while. And the show features very fine performances across the board, in a translation by Brian Friel that - while I was not crazy about the liberties he takes with Ibsen's original script - certainly does manage to lighten up the sometimes sluggish text, making it fun and accessible for modern audiences.

Which is what I didn’t like about it.

Me, I like my Ibsen cold and frosty, with the dark and twisty jokes served on dry, dry ice.

But that's just me.

After seeing it, I immediately wanted to sit down and have a long conversation about it, discussing the questions that this production - directed by Elizabeth Craven - left me wondering.

For one thing . . . why, exactly, is Hedda so pissed off about everything?

She is, in this version. That’s her primary attitude. Fury.

In Ibsen’s original, she’s just bored, trapped and restless.

Which, I suppose, could lead to rage, but is boredom enough to create a raging sociopath?

As director Craven pointed out to me recently, Hedda Gabler is one of the great mystery characters ever written. Like Iago in Othello - only prettier, and arguably crueler - it's up to us, the audience, to determine why she does the nasty things she does, because Ibsen leaves those answers to his audience.

The cast, who seemed a bit off the mark and confusingly paced on opening night, still deserve major kudos for making these people breath in new ways, even if they sometimes makes choices far different than those I've come to expect for these characters I know (or think I know) so well.

As Hedda, the unwilling newlywed with a thing for guns, Ilana Niernberger is frozen fire poured over coals of rage.

She scared me!

Peter Downey, as Hedda's cluelessly smitten hubby, is tragically hilarious. John Craven is amiably creepy as the calculatingly predatory Judge Brack, and Dana Scott captures the jittery anxieties of Mrs. Elvsted - also terrified of Hedda, for good reason - with so much jumping-bean energy she made me want a shot of espresso just to keep up.

The rest of the cast also bring fine work to the stage.

Despite the entertaining idiosyncrasies of the performances, I can't say it's it’s a

production I’m eager to recommend, mainly because of my lukewarm reaction to the playwright/translator’s sometimes distracting additions, and the oddly inconsistent tone of the piece. The script, while full of updates and Americanisms that might add humor and lightness, isn’t Ibsen.

Or not Ibsen enough, for me.

That said, for those made allergic to Ibsen’s work by stiff allegiance to dusty translations, and he is not always been translated well, then this might be the Hedda Gabler for you.

I’ll say one thing, for the chances taken and the aesthetically sumptuous production values, this one is definitely never boring. In fact, if Hedda Gabler herself had somehow gotten see this, she might still be alive today.

That made no sense, I know - but I think you get my point.

Hedda Gabler runs Thursday-through Sunday through October 5 at Main Stage West, mainstagewest.com.

“The future becomes the present, the present the past, and the past turns into everlasting regret.”

This warning, declared in Tennessee Williams’ "The Glass Menagerie," has been interpreted many different ways since the 1944 premiere of Williams’ gorgeous, indelible, and fiercely loved play. Now 6th Street Playhouse is putting its own interpretation on that morosely prophetic line, famously uttered by the resentful, aging Southern Belle Amanda to her would-be-poet son Tom.

Director Craig Miller - inspired by the quote’s examination of past and future - has escalated the play from a memory into a vivid full-on alcoholic hallucination. What normally plays out on a semi-realistic living room set, now plays out inside the homeless Tom’s desperately demented brain, as he hides in the shadows, muttering, barking and raging under and around a fire escape in a dirty New Orleans alley. Trapped in an inescapable loop of his own regret - as predicted by his mother - Tom now spins memories in the air, talking to no one, watching as the characters of his past materialize in the alley as he replays scenes of his life, using trash cans and wooden pallets in place of the his mother’s faded furniture.

In particular, Tom replays the night he finally abandoned his mother and mentally frail sister Laura, following a “dinner party” in which a gentleman caller almost pulls Laura from the dreamy fantasy world she hides in.

Fueled by sorrow, Tom is now trapped in a world of his own.

It’s a bold idea, born of Miller’s obvious love of the play, and whether it works or not will depend on how theatergoers feel about this kind of theatrical reinvention.

I've always believed that theater is elastic. Plays can be twisted, pulled, bent and stretched, but then the script snaps them back into place after the run is over, the play returning to its original form, ready for other artists to tackle again. In the case of 6th Street’s version, the concept works surprisingly well, bolstered by clever sound design that gives us noisy street traffic in the background, disappearing when Tom enters his memories, and returning with a jarring rush whenever he’s pulled back to the present.

The cast is deeply committed but wildly uneven, causing some scenes to never achieve the depth they deserve, others leaping up raw, fully alive and unforgettable.

Still, the show’s built-in power is unstoppable, fueled by Tennessee Williams gorgeous writing. And Miller’s gutsy vision - whether you decide it serves the story or distracts from it - definitely makes for an evening of challenging, thought provoking, and frequently entertaining theater.

"The Glass Menagerie" runs Thursday–Sunday through Sept. 28 in The Studio at 6th Street Playhouse. 6thstreetplayhouse.com

People often talk about the magic of the stage.

In 1950, playwright John Van Druten’s supernatural comedy Bell, Book, and Candle tried to make that magic literal, casting a spell on audiences with the tale of a New York publisher who falls for a sexy witch. Unfortunately, the play’s magic has faded over the years, due mainly to some somewhat racist, uncomfortably sexist material in the original script.

That’s the primary reason Van Druten’s comedy about love and magic is rarely performed these days.

But it’s hard to forget a hit, even one from sixty years ago, and Bell, Book and Candle, ripe for reinvention, is begging to re-enter the picture, with a number of recent productions popping up like rabbits from a magician’s hat.

Now playing at Spreckels Performing Arts Center, the show has undergone a bit of a shape-shift, thanks to director Thomas Chapman. Keeping the same central characters and story, he’s excised most of the offending language, and taken a swipe at updating the material, transplanting the tale from 1950s New York to the modern day.

There is a lot to like about this new production, but unfortunately, the updates are a little too little, and are often confusing, placing cell phones in the hands of characters who still, when forced to use an old-fashioned phone, end up calling the operator to ask to be connected. References to the Kinsey Sex report as a recent best-seller, and to the House Un-American Activities Committee, all stick out distractingly as leftovers from the 1950s, and simply call attention to the fact that the script is overlong - it was originally performed in three acts - over-written, and under-cooked.

What makes Bell, Book and Candle more than watchable is a strong cast and an energetic production that has amped up the magic effects, working on a magnificent set in the intimate Condiotti theater.

Gillian, played with gale-level enthusiasm by Liz Jahren, is an emotionally stormy but very powerful witch, who’s learned to use her powers more discreetly than her eccentric aunt Queenie, played by Mary Gannon Graham, with frothy, giddy delight, and Gillian’s morally flexible brother Nicky, played by Peter Warden, blending hammy over-the-topness with an edge of danger. To help capture the amorous attentions of her upstairs neighbor Shep Henderson - Larry Williams, bringing a nicely grounded energy to a relatively straight role - Gillian summons the witch-chasing anthropologist author Sidney Redlitch-Fong (a hysterical David Yen), whom Shep hopes to sign to a lucrative publication deal.

Spells are cast. Lights spin through the air. Invisible cats purr.

And the further Gillian falls for Shep, the more complicated her family relationships become, resulting in a series of semi-madcap shenanigans - and a great big choice for Gillian.

Though the thin, long, unwieldy script does cut into the fun, the cast has a blast turning it all into something magical - and magic, it turns out, in the right hands, can be seriously contagious.

"Bell, Book and Candle" runs Thursday–Sunday through October 12 at Spreckels Performing Arts Center. Spreckels online.com

Few American musicals of the last fifty years inspire deeper sighs of love, affection, nostalgia and bliss than does "Fiddler on the Roof," the 1964 masterpiece by Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick and Joseph Stein. Based on the writings of Sholem Alechem, Fiddler has been proclaimed by some to be the greatest American musical of all time.

It’s a hard claim to argue with.

'Fiddler,' the story of a Jewish father holding onto his faith and traditions in a rapidly changing world, is set in the early 1900s in a tiny town in the Ukraine, under the thumb of the Tzar, with rumors of anti-Jewish violence beginning to shake the foundations of the villagers difficult but culturally rich lives. Fiddler stands apart from many other shows with the sheer emotional power of its sweeping yet intimate story - and for huge the number of songs in its score that now stand alone as instantly recognizable American pop classics:

"Matchmaker;" "Sunrise, Sunset;" "If I Was a Rich Man;" "Miracle of Miracles;" "Far from the Home I Love;" and the show-starting anthem "Tradition," quite possibly the best opening tune of any musical yet put on stage.

It takes a village to raise a child, and in this case, it takes a village to make a village. In the joyously overstuffed production of 'Fiddler' now playing at Cinnabar Theater, director John Shillington brings the tiny village of Anatevka to life on Cinnabar’s compact stage using an enormous cast of 40 actors, giving the town - and the show - a pleasantly bursting-at-the-seams quality. In the opening song, as poor milkman Tevye sings of the traditions that hold his community together, the stage rapidly fills with singing, dancing villagers, backed up by a first-rate orchestra under the direction of Mary Chun, and a fiddler who perches on a stylized rooftop at the edge of the stage.

As Tevye, Walsh gives our amiable narrator and hero a charmingly cozy, intimate affability, though the playfully wobbly physicality he employs makes one wonder if this poor milkman has been hitting the bottle a little back in the barn. The rest of the cast is packed with local favorites: Elly Lichenstein is perfect as Tevye’s vibrantly longsuffering wife Golda, Dwayne Stincelli is a hoot as the lonely butcher Lazar Wolf, and as Yente, the village matchmaker, Madeleine Ashe is hilarious. And as Tevye’s marriageable daughters Tzeitel, Hodel and Chava, Jennifer Mitchell, Molly Mahoney, and Erin Ashe all deliver the goods with beautifully sung, achingly heartfelt performances.

At its heart, 'Fiddler' is the story of people seeing the humanity in others in spite of their flaws, a good message that still resonates after fifty years. This September 22 marks the Golden anniversary of this American classic’s debut on Broadway.

There are rough patches here and there in Cinnabar’s production, a not-unexpected by-product of cramming so much action onto so small a stage, but Shillington dazzles the eye with so many clever moments and images - including a towering ghost puppet in one memorable dream-sequence - that like the villagers of Anatevka, few in the happy, tune-humming audience are likely to notice the flaws.

"Fiddler on the Roof" runs through September 28 at Cinnabar Theater - cinnabartheater.org