Arts & Events

TUESDAY, NOV. 20 -more-

“Appropriate for children—enchanting for adults”: It’s rare that such a formula pans out for both parties. But Wilde Irish’s staging of The Children of Lir, going into its second and final weekend this Friday through Sunday at the Gaia Arts Center, off Shattuck on Allston, fulfills that pledge on the cover of their program, the proof being the presence of so many kids, as rapt as the adults at last Sunday’s matinee. -more-

The solo show has become a staple of the theater scene, overlapping into film and TV, ever since Emlyn Williams, Hal Holbrook, James Whitmore and Julie Harris took the stage in the ’50s and ‘60s to play Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Will Rogers (et al!) and Emily Dickinson. -more-

My previous column about the birds Joseph Grinnell observed on the UC Berkeley campus drew a response from Allison Shultz, a recent graduate who is now the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology’s Centennial Coordinator (more about that below.) Shultz said that for her senior thesis, she replicated surveys done on campus by Margaret Wythe between 1913 and 1927, and by Charles Sibley and Thomas Rodgers in 1938-39. Her results reveal significant changes among those data points. “I saw that the number of species didn’t change much over the years—it actually went up a little—but the community composition changed,” she explains. -more-

TUESDAY, NOV. 20 -more-

FRIDAY, NOV. 16 -more-

Awash with the spray of the yet-unconquered sea, the stage at Berkeley Rep (designed by Daniel Ostling) represents the wooden ships and wood palaces of preclassical times, as the cast does the heroes, demigods, goddesses, kings, witches and nymphs from legend that move through. -more-

The New Italian Film Festival, playing this week at the Embarcadero Center Cinema in San Francisco through Sunday, offers a rich course on the best new filmmakers in Italian film. After this weekend, most of these films will likely never be shown again with English subtitles or ever be released on DVD in the United States. -more-

Our image of Charlie Chaplin is a simple one: a daft little man in baggy clothes, with bowler hat and wicker cane. He’s just a comedian—a silly clown. -more-

“Wow.” The word permeates The Life of Reilly, a new film of a one-man show by the late actor Charles Nelson Reilly. And with each utterance of the word, we get the sense that it’s the only time when this consummate entertainer is not totally in control of his performance. The word just seems to seep out, almost reflexively, at quiet moments during the show. It is as though Reilly himself is still marveling at his own past, reliving his memories, experiencing the formative events of his life all over again, but with the wisdom and awe of an older man keenly aware that he was too young to fully appreciate the depth, the pain, the humor and the madness of his life as he was living it. -more-

Mystery is the reverse side of history. Berkeley, a city chock-full of historic houses, naturally has its share of mysteries—interesting structures about whose origin little or nothing is known. -more-

Annie’s Annuals sent me a promo e-mail a week or two back. Not spam; I’ve put my name on Annie’s mail list because I want to know when the Annies do interesting stuff. -more-

Dash it all! It seems to take so blasted long to get clothed for the office these days, what with button-hooking the boots, those darned gaiters, buttoning those trousers all the way up and then there’s all the layers. My tailoring bill has become absolutely astronomical and my dresser takes a good 45-minutes ironing my shirt, cravat and those endless four-fold handkerchiefs. Perhaps one day, a man will be able to wear only three layers when flagging his Hansom cab to the office, but for now we must plod through, chin high and suffer silently. -more-

Tectonic Time Bomb -more-

FRIDAY, NOV. 16 -more-