Arts & Events

Around and About the Bay Area

By Ken Bullock
Tuesday September 07, 2010 - 07:26:00 AM

Just opened on Labor Day weekend: TheatreFirst's production of Jane Martin's Anton in Show Business, directed by Michael Storm, with Josie Alvarez, Megan Briggs, Beth Deitchman, Amaka Izuki, Phoebe Moyer, Shannon Veon Kase and Dekyi Ronge portraying the tribulations of a trio of actresses essaying an ill-fated staging of Chekhov's Three Sisters. Through September 26. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8; Sundays at 2. Marion Green Theatre (north side of Fox Theatre, 18th Street, Oakland Uptown). $15-$30. Marion Green Theatre (north side of Fox Theatre), 18th. St, Uptown Oakland. 430-5085; theatrefirst.com 

Two other productions already mid-run: at Masquers Playhouse, Point Richmond, through October 2—Jerry Sterner's Other People's Money—romance and corporate raiders—directed by Robert Estes, Fridays and Saturdays at 8, Sundays (September 12, 19, 26) at 2, and a Thursday evening benefit, September 30. $18. 232-4031; masquers.org ... and at CalShakes in Orinda, through September 12, The Scottish Play—gory, unmentionable Macbeth, set in a mental asylum—with Stacy Ross and Jud Williford as the unhappy couple. Joel Sass directs. Tuesdays-Thursdays, 7:30; Fridays-Saturdays, 8; Sundays at 4. $15-$65. 548-9666; calshakes.org 

And the end of summer is signified by the last weekend of the musical theater season in the great WPA amphitheater at Woodminster in Oakland's Joaquin Miller Park: Lerner & Lowe's Paint Your Wagon,

As Shakespeare festival season winds down, CalShakes partners with the Pacific Film Archive in a Shakespeare On Film series, already underway, that began with Asta Nielsen playing the Melancholy Prince in a 1920 Silent. Some highlights: Olivier's wartime Henry IV (Sept. 9 at 7); MaxReinhardt and William Dieterle's Hollywood version of Reinhardt's staging of Midsummer Night's Dream, with Cagney, Rooney, Olivia De Haviland—and a wee Kenneth Anger (Sept. 12, 4 p.m.); Godard's satiric post-Chernobyl gloss on King Lear, with Burgess Meredith as mobster king Don Learo, Molly Ringwald as Cordelia, opera director Peter Sellars as William Shakespeare XX—and cameos by Woody Allen, Norman Mailer, and Godard in techno-dreadlocks (Sept. 17 at 9); Kurosawa's Kabuki-ish take on the Scottish play, Throne of Blood (Oct. 9 at 6); Orson Welles' magnum opus ("The film I'll go to Heaven on."), Chimes at Midnight, the Falstaff episodes from The Bard, with John Gielgud, Jeanne Moreau, Margaret Rutherford—and Orson as Big Sir John (Oct. 14 at 7); Soviet director (and student of stage genius V. S. Meyerhold) Gregory Kozintsev's last masterpiece, King Lear, with Shostakovich score (the two collaborated 40 years), from Boris Pasternak's adaptation (Oct. 23 at 8:30); Antony & Cleopatra, adapted and directed by the star, Charleton Heston (Oct 24, 4 p.m.)—and for Halloween, the restored version of Orson Welles' Macbeth Oct. 29, at 9:05) 2575 Bancroft Way, near Telegraph (on UC campus). $5.50-$9.50. 642-5249; bampfa.berkeley.edu

Finally, there's a notable chamber music concert this Friday: Burke Schuchmann, cello, and Brian Ganz, piano with Yael Ronen, flute, playing the Beethoven A Major Cello Sonata; Samuel Barber's Cello Sonata; the Haydn Trio for Flute, Cello and Piano in D Major; and Chopin's Scherzo no. 2 in B flat Minor, Opus 31 (piano solo). friday evening at 8, First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley, 2407 Dana. $15-$25. 234-4502; burkepalomarin@earthlink.net