The Daily Californian: You grew up in the Bay Area. How did that influence your choice to go into theater?

Madeline Trumble: I’ll always feel grateful for growing up in the Bay Area. Me and my brother and my sister all performed growing up. There was so much community and regional theater around us. I mean, we also had a great mom who was always willing to drive us. There’s a lot of theater in the Walnut Creek area. We would highlight the auditions we wanted to go to. I never really took classes growing up; I was always in a show. That’s the best education. And then when I went to college and I had to take acting classes and voice classes — it was weird. Growing up in theater, I know now how to be in a show. And it also made me grow up because all of my friends were at least four years older than me. So I definitely grew up and matured in the theater world.

DC: You’re in Minneapolis right now (at the time of the interview). It’s a pretty hectic touring schedule. How do you keep the show fresh every night?

MT: It’s stressful. I was in the ensemble before. But as the lead now there’s just a lot more pressure. When I was in the ensemble, if I wasn’t feeling well or tired, you could just dial it down. I can’t do that now. It means that I have to be careful after the show. I don’t go out; I have to be really careful and save my voice. It’s fun because you get to travel and see the country, but (it is) also very exhausting. It’s live theater, so things are rarely perfect or the same every night. The audience has no idea, but I know. I do the same thing every day, and then I see people who come to the show and friends of mine, and they’re so in awe. It is really cool and exciting what I do. It’s easy to forget when you go to work every day.

DC: What was the audition process like?

MT: It’s the same show with different management. I went to New York, got in “Newsies,” did that for a few months and I knew that the girl playing Mary was leaving. I just crossed my fingers that the company would call me. They’re really great about moving up understudies. I got a call to come in and audition. And they make you go on something like five auditions with only two days notice. So I went in (and) saw the show, surrounded by this group of kids. I had never seen it; I knew nothing about it. But the play is quite different from the movie. It takes the music from the movie but stories from the book — new characters and new songs. Now, when I watch the movie, I think the movie is so different and crazy.

DC: How do you feel the show appeals to both children and adults?

MT: “It is Disney, so the spectacle of that is a huge part of it. It has amazing sets, costumes, lights. You get all of that with tap dancing, with lots of singing and magic. The magic, though, is for the kids and the adults. It brings the adults back to when they were kids. But our show also has this great message about family, about rediscovering what is most important in life.”

Contact Jessica Pena at jpena@dailycal.org.

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“Something in the Air” is not necessarily a film about revolutions. This seems somewhat misleading because the movie begins with a rather raw and violent clash between French high schoolers and police. Gilles (Clement Metayer), a budding artist, and his peers are heavily involved in the underground student movement. They read Marx, print provocative posters, vandalize the school’s walls, throw Molotov cocktails and spout idealisms in the pursuit of some type of liberation. But the ideals that propelled this bunch in the beginning begin to dissipate amid the snares of young love and creative expression.

After an instance of vandalism lands the group in hot water, the scenes shift. The industrial grays and suburban beiges of France are supplanted by the poetic greens and languorous blue skies of rural Italy. Gilles soon becomes enamored with the beautiful firebrand Christine (Lola Creton) as the discussions of rebellion dissolve into silent sequences of painting au naturale, nude sailing and drunken, bohemian carousing. The group’s intent is no longer clear and as such, neither is the film’s.

Unlike “Grin Without a Cat” — Chris Marker’s famous 1977 film of the French New Left — or Bernardo Bertolucci’s seductive vision of the ’68 protests in “The Dreamers,” “Something in the Air” is, as the title indicates, neither here nor there. Like the majority of its second half, there is bountiful lingering with minimal momentum. For all the shots of heated, political rhetoric, there is no payoff. There only seems to be the superficial allure of beautiful, young Europeans and the grandeur of aesthetic merriment.

Perhaps this is to Assayas’ benefit. His previous works, particularly his film “Summer Hours” and his mini-series “Carlos,” have all displayed a keen sense of control, precision and nuanced intellect. “Something in the Air” is no different. The historical detail is spot-on, the sense of malaise both appropriate and contemplative. And yet this lack of radical urgency not only derails the political investment of the characters but also the emotional investment of the audience.

Even as the students hash out their socialist philosophies at the film’s outset, it is never clear what the stakes are. Yes, there is present violence. Yes, there is a vaguely oppressive system in place. But, for the most part, Assayas forces the audience to question their empathy for these youths: Are they naive? Self-indulgent? Justified? Again, there is no clear solution. The characters seem aloof and so does Assayas.

After the screening scene, the camera cuts to a party. Gilles still doesn’t understand why “revolutionary syntax is the style of the bourgeoisie.” One of the producers responds bluntly, “Forget style.” But, as the audience, we can’t. Because for all the talk spouted in “Something in the Air” about individuals, there is no connection to Gilles. He is cold, emotionless and, like his fading ideals, without a striking center. He is, like the film, all style.

Contact Jessica Pena at jpena@dailycal.org.

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Yes, despite the extravagant cast list (a blond Leonardo DiCaprio! a blond Carey Mulligan! a nonblond Tobey Maguire!), the decadent special effects, the soundtrack produced by Jay-Z and the visionary flair of the man who brought you “Moulin Rouge,” Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby” should be retitled “The Great Flatsby.” It is impossible to reconstruct the entire travesty in only 600 words, but here are a few scenes that illustrate why “The Great Gatsby” is the “Anonymous” of 2013.

First, there is voice-over. Lots of it. This isn’t surprising given the nature of Fitzgerald’s doleful, precise prose. This also isn’t rare. In the 1974 adaptation, Sam Waterson gives voice to the same familiar words of the novel’s narrator, Nick Carraway. However, Luhrmann has taken this frame a step further. Here, we meet Carraway (an expectedly goopy Maguire) as a post-Gatsby mental institution patient. His illness? Morbid alcoholism. His prescription? Writing. So, like with Walter Salles’ recent attempt at translating revered novel to film (“On the Road”), the audience is treated to an endless series of writing montages clumsily hamfisted into a lazy, flashback narrative.

Next, we must meet Gatsby. He is the titular character, after all, and his introduction is accordingly treated with supreme pomp and circumstance. In the midst of one of Gatsby’s orgiastic circus parties, the camera swoops and tilts, spins and dips to reveal the CGI equivalent of Ke$ha’s wildest dreams. Glitter, streamers and scantily clad sirens writhe in and out of this kinetic nightmare when out of nowhere, the propulsive chords of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” begin. The music builds, the party reaches its chaotic height and just as the cymbals chime, there he is, the center of this entire endeavor — Gatsby.

It’s a bombastic and daring scene. Leo smiles with an enigmatic charm. He’s confident but closed off — just as Gatsby should be. But that’s it. As the radiant, climactic horns of “Rhapsody in Blue” fade into some mediocre contemporary pop cover, Gatsby retreats into his palace on West Egg, and with that, the film peters off. For the next two hours or so, we are left with haphazard anticlimax.

These are only two scenes in a film rife with mistakes and miscalculations. It wouldn’t be difficult to add Luhrmann’s off-putting literalization of Fitzgerald’s subtle metaphors. In one scene, when Carraway pontificates about seeing himself in the face of every man, Luhrmann actually cuts between Maguire staring at another Maguire in the street. It also would be easy to describe the jarring editing, the way Luhrmann muffles critical scenes with Maguire’s mopey monologues or the depthless, artificial acting DiCaprio, Maguire and Mulligan provide. But all this would, like the film, be too long and only too unnecessary.

It would be easy enough to say Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby” mirrors the vapidity and the hollowness of Fitzgerald’s characters. In this way, Luhrmann far surpasses any other adaptation for his sheer commitment to the idea that “The Great Gatsby” is about surplus. Luhrmann certainly provides an overflow of CGI, schlocky acting, melodrama and visual pizzazz to the point of overkill. But excess is not what “The Great Gatsby” is about. It is, more or less, about the irony of excess, which is a far more subtle and nuanced characteristic to capture. It is a deep novel about shallow people. This is nothing but a shallow film about shallow people.

Contact Jessica Pena at jpena@dailycal.org.

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Why go to graduate school? Jessica (the author) wrote, because “Knowledge is pretty freaking cool.” “Yeah,” I said back to the computer with the petulant bleat of a 4-year-old being asked if she preferred Fruit Loops (with marshmallows!) over that chicken feed that Kashi is marketing as cereal. Duh. Of course I like knowledge. Of course I like Fruit Loops. Of course I like knowing that Bart Simpson said his first girlfriend’s (another Jessica) hair smelled like Fruit Loops. Knowledge is the best. But grad school is, sadly, not just about knowledge or sugarcoated cereal.

Here’s my story. I went to UC Berkeley as an undergraduate. I loved it. Save for the all-nighters, printer jams (real and imagined for excuse purposes) and chronic whiplash from looking for the correct classroom in Dwinelle, my time as a double major in English and history was exhausting but fulfilling. It was challenging but creative. I wanted more, and I had no employable skills, so I thought the doctorate program in history would at once satisfy my intellectual curiosities and provide a stable means of living for a prolonged period of time. Despite what the bachelor’s degree I have hanging next to my Hanson poster might suggest, I was very naive.

Graduate school is not your undergraduate education. It is not necessarily about the expansion of knowledge. It is not wholly concerned with your own imaginative ideas about how to make the discipline more accessible or, at the very least, more fun. It is, fundamentally, a trade school. You are there to learn an industry, to make contacts, to produce content that becomes almost absurdly niche and to spend an exorbitant amount of time figuring out who in your class has the required reading out on reserve so you can passive-aggressively get it back. Needless to say, I don’t have many friends in the graduate department. Then again, I don’t know how many friends they have either.

Studies show that the attrition rate for doctoral programs is about 40 to 50 percent. Part of this reason may be that graduate students retain some of the highest rates of depression and suicide. In 2004, UC Berkeley polled more than 3,000 graduate students and discovered that nearly 10 percent of the respondents had “seriously considered committing suicide in the past year.” Even more troubling, 18 students actually attempted suicide. So, the question becomes: Is graduate school worth it?

Speaking of worth in monetary terms, it absolutely is not. The national student debt now exceeds $1 trillion. For most graduate students, their time of study is funded, but because federal policy now “requires graduate students to pay the interest on their loans while still at university or let it build up until they graduate,” the debt only grows more crippling as job prospects for postgraduate employment lessen every year, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

I knew this going into my program. I knew it was a lonely venture, an intellectually-gutting experience and a sure sign of an empty wallet. I had seen the shriveled, crestfallen looks on my English GSIs’ faces as they read Keats with all the passion of a dead sloth. They were the very thing Keats was writing about. They were in grad school, “Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies” and “Where to think is to be full of sorrow.” I knew and saw all of this and still entered, blindsided by the romance of knowledge and the pursuit of some noble dream.

But, that’s all it ever was — a dream. The reality of graduate school, for me, was the realization that meaning in life does not arrive in the form of an advanced degree or that super fancy velvet hood they give to doctoral graduates. Meaning in life does not blossom via rigorous, deconstructive intellectual analysis. There is worth in study, and there is value in the act of resurrecting the past from dust-covered pages or routinely pipetting test samples. But if you’re thinking of going to graduate school right after college, heed this suggestion: Before you study life, you should live some of it first.

Contact Jessica Pena at jpena@dailycal.org.

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When one thinks of Shakespeare, the mind doesn’t naturally bend toward the sci-fi/supernatural wunderkind Joss Whedon. Known primarily for his forays into television (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Firefly”) and recent comic book box-office success with “The Avengers,” it seemed a slight surprise when it was announced his next project would be a low-key, black-and-white adaptation of “Much Ado About Nothing.”

Now, this is not because Whedon is a stranger to comedy. “Buffy,” “Firefly,” “The Avengers” and “Cabin in the Woods” all share Whedon’s sense of wry irreverence. But Shakespeare’s sense of humor is an entirely different bag. There’s a distance, linguistically and culturally, and his use of the material verbatim, set in a modern-day Italian-style villa, only serves to enhance this disconnect.

Instead of the broader, more musically inclined vision found in Kenneth Branagh’s 1993 adaptation, Whedon takes things down a notch. The tone is far more subdued. Soft, seductive jazz replaces the bombast of horns found in Branagh’s endeavor. Low, unexpected camera angles offer an air of film noir to the proceedings of Shakespeare’s absurd plot. But these facets only make for a semi enjoyable, if somewhat slow, viewing experience. It’s the chemistry between leads Alexis Denishof and Amy Acker as Benedick and Beatrice that distinguish Whedon’s version.

The naive, masculine bravado that Denishof exudes matches so delightfully well with Acker’s sly, astute wit that the “merry war” betwixt their characters becomes — aside from a few, well-played scenes by Nathan Fillion as the asinine constable Dogberry — the only colorful highlight in this movie of muted mirth.

— Jessica Pena
Monday, April 29, 3:30 p.m. @ New People Cinema

Frances Ha

Long before Lena Dunham, writer and director Noah Baumbach understood the plight of the postcollege 20-something. In his debut film, “Kicking and Screaming,” he perfected the listless malaise of youthful urbanites with a clean, subtle style. And since, he has continued to distill the type of sardonic languor embodied by his most well-known leads — Bernard Berkman in “The Squid and The Whale” and Steve Zissou in ‘The Life Aquatic.” Now, Baumbach gives us Frances, the titular character of his latest opus “Frances Ha.”

Played by the ever-effervescent Greta Gerwig, Frances could be seen along the lines of Baumbach’s previous protagonists. She’s in her ‘20s. She’s unsure, awkward and in need of direction. She’s charming but indelicate, identified as a dancer but with questionable talent. She’s a contradiction but one that effortlessly intrigues without demanding the audience’s attention the way Hannah Horvath of “Girls” would.

This comparison to “Girls” seems inevitable. Adam Driver does perform shirtless in both works. But, the comparison isn’t necessary. “Frances Ha” owes much more of its look, tone and humor to Woody Allen’s “Manhattan” or the intimate dialogues in Jim Jarmusch’s “Coffee and Cigarettes.” It is as much an exercise in character as it is an auteur expression. More than any other work from Baumbach, “Frances Ha” teems with optimism, joy and unexpected audacity.

In one scene, the camera tracks Gerwig leaping across the crosswalks of New York set to the tune of a catchy pop song. It’s funny, beautiful, enthusiastic but most of all, it’s infectious. Despite the black-and-white film (though it is gorgeous in its composition), “Frances Ha” is Baumbach’s most colorful and warm-hearted picture to date.

— Jessica Pena
Thursday, May 2, 6:30 p.m. @ Sundance Kabuki Cinemas
Friday, May 3, 4 p.m. @ Sundance Kabuki Cinemas

Before Midnight

Perhaps what surprises the most out of “Before Midnight” is how profoundly Jesse and Celine have aged from the storybook lovers in “Before Sunrise” (1995) and “Before Sunset” (2004). At the core, they’re still the same people. Jesse hasn’t lost that youthful placidity and cock-of-the-walk charm that won Celine over. And 18 years later, young Celine’s neurotic effervescence still feeds her thoughts and moods. What’s changed is that now we sense a well-concealed anxiety and disillusionment behind Jesse’s eyes. And Celine’s entire body seems to be bogged down by something stronger than herself: Middle-age realities have dampened her soul. These people are still attractive in every sense of the word, but 18 years of life have exacerbated their neuroses.

Unlike the first two movies, “Before Midnight” has Jesse and Celine have long and hefty conversations with people other than themselves. Our time with them doesn’t involve an extended walk-and-talk, during which every step they take feels precious. The elephant in the room is no longer a clock winding down the seconds, but an 18-year history that has turned their relationship from a picturesque romance into a three-dimensional partnership. Their conversations feel weightier now, especially as a fight ensues, during which the two pull scabs every time they seem to calm down. It’s ironic then that now that they’re together, their relationship feels more on the line than it ever did.

We left “Before Sunrise” wondering whether Jesse and Celine would actually meet again in six months. We left “Before Sunset” wondering whether Jesse missed his flight to stay with Celine. In “Before Midnight,” the fate of their relationship doesn’t concern us as much as the thought of just how much these two individuals have changed over the years.

— Braulio Ramirez
Thursday, May 9, 7 p.m. @ Castro Theater

The Kings of Summer

“The Kings of Summer” follows three teenage boys who embark on an unusual adventure during a high school summer. The all-too-familiar impatience of growing up drives their decisions. They are fifteen years old, the odd age when you feel not only disconnected from everyone around you but also from yourself. Joe Toy, the leader, can barely tolerate his widowed father, Frank. His best friend Patrick shares a similar resentment toward his off-kilter parents, whose relentless perkiness is fun to watch but must be unbearable to live with 24/7. Joe convinces Patrick to run away and build a house in the middle of the woods where they can live like true men. With the help of a tag-along classmate named Biaggio they manage to build a funhouse in a secluded meadow.

Much of the film draws its laughs from the group’s failed attempts to completely adopt a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. They’re able to build animal traps, but once the time to kill comes they chicken out and buy food from a local market. The grownups also drive many of the laughs with idiosyncrasies that feel borrowed from sitcoms like “Parks and Recreation” and “Arrested Development.” The actors though are comedic veterans that know just how to engage us with their odd humor.

Jordan Vogt-Roberts’s film is not in any way original. We’ve seen this kind of film about teenage angst many times, and the coming-of-age arc feels trite. Even before the boys escape into the woods, we already know where the story will go. But if it isn’t original, Vogt-Roberts writes thorny and sensitive characters that make the film a light and comic pleasure.

— Braulio Ramirez

Key of Life
The key to the brilliance of Japanese director Kenji Uchida’s genre-blended crime comedy “Key of Life” is its carefully, and quirkily, crafted characters. While the plot might be a tried and unoriginal formula (what happens if a failed actor accidentally switches identities with a jet-set hit man?) the way that the characters react to their “Trading Places” situations is surprisingly fresh.

Masato Sakai plays Sakurai, the troubled thespian, who is first introduced by the thump of his body hitting the floor of his apartment beside a torn noose. This serves as a wonderful presentation of just one more thing he cannot succeed at. His foil is the sleek, business-first, gun-for-hire Kondo (Teruyuki Kagawa). Due to a bizarre moment of coincidence, Kondo ends up in the hospital with amnesia, and Sakurai is given a new lease on life, with Kondo’s name, life and toys at his disposal.

From here on out, the audience is given two separate storylines that seem like very different movies. One is a dark comedy thriller, as Sakurai’s undisciplined ways and naivete quickly land him in over his head in his new profession. The other resembles a romantic comedy between Kondo’s clean-slate amnesiac and a meticulous career-woman portrayed with perfect anal retentive precision by Ryoko Hirosue. The two stories collide as Sakurai is forced to help rehabilitate Kondo, who believes that he is actually the suicidal Sakurai. Uchida knows to let the dark humor unfold in the situations naturally unfold, as some of the best moments occur when Kondo laments to Sakurai what an absolute loser he must have been.

With inventive shots and brisk pacing, the story stays unpredictable and engaging. While the ending takes the easy road, the build-up is something worth watching.
— Ryan Koehn
Wednesday, May 1, 6 p.m. @ Sundance Kabuki Cinemas
Thursday, May 2, 8:30 p.m. @ Sundance Kabuki Cinemas

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This is stimulated saliva. It neutralizes pH levels, dissolves starches and fats and rather effectively clears away food stains with an aggressive determination far beyond any of your mother’s leading brand detergents. It is also the life-long passion of scientist Erika Siletti.

In a “sunny top-floor lab in the Dutch town of Wageningen,” Siletti witnesses scenarios like the one posited above every day. She watches people chew, swallow and secrete in the same, almost obsessive way Andries Van der Bilt observes humans gnaw silicone in the Netherlands or 19th century bonbon vivant William Beaumont inspected and dissected the digestive process of his patient and captive Alexis St. Martin. They are all scientists, with one overwhelming and intoxicating shared interest — the alimentary canal. And, with “Gulp,” Mary Roach probes their lives, contributions and tastes with the same cutting precision with which Siletti surveys spit.

For the last ten years, Roach has exposed the eccentric underbelly of science to popular audiences. From “Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers” to the supernatural to the science of sex (actually titled “Bonk,” not the sequel to “Stiff”), she has infiltrated and compiled anecdotes, facts and people centered around the taboo topics of the human form. It’s a winning recipe that rewards the passing inquiry with an intelligent, entertaining and jocular narrative. With “Gulp,” she returns to this formula and serves us what may be her finest work to date.

This is not to say “Stiff,” “Bonk,” “Spook” or “Packing for Mars” were somehow lacking. They, as well as “Gulp,” all contain a series of bizarre stories steeped in the puzzling-yet-provocative intersection between passing curiosity and active experimentation. Why, there’s a damn smorgasbord of them in “Gulp.” There’s Howard Fletcher, an early 20th century gadfly whose self-branded method of mastication — chewing vigorously until liquification — became the favorite of Franz Kafka, John Harvey Kellogg and one “anonymous writer” with “excreta in the form of nearly round balls.” There’s Michael Levitt, a scientist of flatulence who invented “the flatus-trapping Mylar ‘pantaloon.’”

What makes “Gulp” a cut above the rest is not the quality or absurdity of the stories involved, but how Roach cleverly trusses them together through the progressive narrative arc of the digestive system.
Despite a brief, fascinating entree into the world of domestic pet- food production, Roach’s structure mirrors the course of human digestion. She begins with the senses, with the ambiguity of taste and the American cultural palette. She continues by delving into not only the delicate mechanics of the mouth, the troublesome politics of the esophagus and the sturdy duty of the colon but also the often obsessive, strange, troublesome and sometimes sad lives of the people who live, breathe and taste the very sustenance of the human experience.

“Gulp” begins with the question of taste. It is an odd, subjective quality formed by cultural, familial, economic and political experience. It is difficult to parse and even harder to market to the general populace. Taste is not a problem for Roach. With “Gulp,” she goes beyond whetting the public’s appetite for curious info on the human body. Simply put, “Gulp” is addictive.

Contact Jessica Pena at jpena@dailycal.org.

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Upon superficial inspection, this might seem like an hourlong fan magazine — the kind with pictures cropped to appear as if you and your celebrity devotee are the best of friends. This is not “Patti Issues.” Nineteen years ago, Ben Rimalower came to the UC Berkeley campus with dreams beyond finding original Broadway cast recordings of “Evita.” Though, he does admit to “majoring in buying Broadway-related CDs.” No, Rimalower came to Berkeley with the hope of training as a theater director. When the then-called Drama department refused to fund productions by underclassmen, he founded BareStage Productions — now a staple of the Berkeley campus theater culture. And it was on this stage, in Choral Rehearsal Hall, where Rimalower recounted not only his love for Patti, but all the “issues” — familial, emotional, creative, etc. — in between.

Unlike Lupone, who wore full-length ball gowns in “Evita” and an elaborate sailor’s uniform as Reno Sweeney in “Anything Goes,” Rimalower came onto the stage with a casual manner. The look was classic — vest, button-down, tie — but not showy. However, once the monologue began and he started speaking at a mile-a-minute pace, gesticulating madly and punctuating his punchlines with a fierce and wry passion, it became clear that despite the minimal dressings, there was more drama in this one-hour story than possibly in the whole of Lupone’s most theatrical flourishes.

Rimalower’s tale — which spans nearly the same 30 years from the premiere of “Evita” in the early ’80s to present day — is one that could only be delivered with this type of manic, unbridled energy. At the same time he was discovering Lupone, his father was living as a closeted gay OB/GYN. He was, in Rimalower’s words, a man “who has no balls,” the kind of guy who “picks the bitch terrier” in Monopoly — “not the top hat.” This complicated and unstable relationship, riddled with guilt, shame, disappointment and confusion, ironically provides a solid foundation to a monologue that could easily spiral out of control.

Several times throughout, Rimalower seemed on the verge of just that. His breakneck pace, loaded exposition and arcane references to off-Broadway cabarets could be off-putting or scattered if this very personal, father/son backbone were not in place. Because for all the madcap dialogue and ostentatious fan-gushing, “Patti Issues” is, at heart, an intensely private and touching saga about self-discovery.

Toward the end of the show, things calmed down a little bit. Rimalower ends his monologue where it began — with Patti and his father. Only this time, he’s at “Gypsy” after having worked with Patti Lupone personally and having not spoken to his father for nearly 10 years. It’s an emotional moment that doesn’t need the piercing vibrato of a Broadway ballad to cement its importance.

Rimalower’s work is at its strongest during these quieter moments of reflection where we, the audience, get a chance to breathe and absorb all this fantastic tumult. Midway through, Rimalower quotes John Housman, who once said, “Patti has the smell of the gallows.” Rimalower may not have the “smell” of the gallows, but his performance of “Patti Issues” certainly has all the power and melodrama of life and death.

Contact Jessica Pena at jpena@dailycal.org.

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The Daily Californian: You were the founding artistic director of BareStage, what was that experience like? How did you first get involved and what has been the takeaway from your time with BareStage and at Cal?

Ben Rimalower: When I got to Berkeley as a freshman in 1994, I knew that I wanted to be a Drama major and I knew that I wanted to be a theater director. At the time, there was no musical theater at Cal except for a DeCal called “Musical Theater Workshop” which was just performing. They didn’t do shows, they just did songs. So, I performed in that. But, the Drama Dept. (now, Theater, Dance and Performance Studies) would not let me direct anything. There were better schools. But, I wanted to be in Berkeley. I felt that so much of being an artist is looking at the world and saying something about it, being part of a culture and speaking to a community. I felt that Berkeley was the community that I wanted to be doing that in.

DC: How has your experience with BareStage and your time at Cal influenced you professionally?

BR: I’m so grateful in retrospect that I went to Berkeley. Because, the reality I’ve had in this business in New York City is that I’ve had to think outside the box. Anything I’ve done that’s had any success I’ve had to initiate myself and build myself and support. I’d see peers of mine who were just as talented as me, even more so, try to do things and just be frustrated, have the door slammed in their face and give up. That never occurred to me because I went to Berkeley. Now, when I have the door slammed in my face, I don’t think “Oh shit. I’m screwed.” I think this is a chance for triumph.

DC: Coming from that environment of being a big fish in a small pond, what was the transition to New York like?

BR: Well, it’s taken a long time. In a way, Berkeley is a microcosm of the real world. I remember, during my freshman and sophomore year, trying to build my name and I’ve seen the same process in real life. I would say I’m the equivalent of a first semester junior right now.

DC: After working as a director and producer for several years, what made you decide to transition into writing and performing with “Patti Issues”?

BR: What I talk about in my show a little bit is how frustrating it was going from being an assistant director to a director. I just kept feeling my career being stalled because of the material I was directing. It’s very hard for directors because an actor can audition and a playwright has their work on paper. A director really has no way of putting themselves out there. So, I directed this show that I conceived called “Leslie Kritzer is Patti Lupone at Les Mouches” where we recreated Patti Lupone’s famed 1980 cabaret act. But then I thought, what else am I going to do? I felt like I want to start writing and that’s when I began blogging. I really enjoyed the experience and so, the next thing was to develop a full-length piece that was in my own narrative voice. The thing that was obvious for me to talk about was Patti Lupone, but then when I actually started writing, I ended up with a show that was much more about me than it was about her.

DC: You mention blogging as a way to get yourself out there. How do you think social media and the internet in general has changed the theater business?

BR: I think that YouTube especially and the fact that we are all on social networks, where everyone is starring in their own reality show all the time, is wonderful. It puts the means of production into someone’s hands. When I was in school, if you wanted to do a radio show or a TV show, there were so many channels and red tape you had to go through. And now, anybody with a computer has access to the whole world.

DC: Because “Patti Issues” is so personal, how did you go about structuring the show?

BR: Well, I started off just writing about Patti and I knew that my show needed to have a theatrical finale. What felt like a very natural moment to end the show on was a real life experience I had that was kind of insane. I hadn’t seen my father in years and he was sitting directly behind me at “Gypsy” on Broadway. It felt very full circle for me, but then I had a show that was an hour about Patti Lupone and ended with a thing about my father. So, I had to have that make sense.

DC: What would you say you’ve learned about yourself during the development and run of this show?

BR: I’ve certainly learned that I can say I’m a performer. I didn’t perform at UC Berkeley. I knew I just wanted to be a director. I was wrong because I love performing. I don’t think my father ever saw this show — I don’t even think that he would like it — but, in my experience, what struck me about giving him voice is that I actually found a lot of sympathy for him.

DC: Finally, what would you say to those students coming to see “Patti Issues” who want to make it in show business?

BR: Just that, behind every “No,” there’s an opportunity to do things a different way. And, if they really want it, then nothing can stop them. It might take one year, it might take fifty years. But, if you believe in it and are in it for just the pure love of it, nothing can stop you.

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If you ask Nick Cosgrove, who plays the lead, Frankie Valli, how he first became familiar with the show and the music, he’ll tell you about how he grew up in Chicago, listening to The Four Seasons in his mother’s car. He’ll go on to reminisce about the first time he saw the musical at age 17 and how he was “sitting there, getting inspired and thinking, ‘I want to go to school and train to be in this play.’” Six years later, after a grueling, yearlong audition process, Cosgrove is on that stage, singing “Sherry” and embodying Valli with a fierce gusto and hardened maturity beyond his years.

John Gardiner took a somewhat longer route to the role of Four Seasons founding member Tommy DeVito. Originally from Kentucky, Gardiner spent years on the road as the meerkat Timon in the national tour of “The Lion King” before making it into the ensemble of “Jersey Boys” and climbing his way up through the rankings for four and a half years. Similarly, Michael Lomenda did the show for two years in Toronto before landing a spot on the U.S. national tour. Whereas Miles Jacoby “wasn’t really familiar with The Four Seasons” until he saw the show, fell in love with it and spent a day auditioning for the role of Bob Gaudio, the towering songwriter/keyboardist of the original lineup.

These four leads all have their own deep personal history with the music and lives of the four men they play. But the same goes for the audience of the “Jersey Boys,” which, at the premiere last Tuesday night, rivaled any musical audience I’ve seen in recent years for sheer giddy enthusiasm. “You get a chance to feed off that energetic audience (as actors), and that changes the life of the show,” Lomenda explained.

From the middle-aged women next to me, who danced to the playful beats of “Walk Like a Man,” to the older gentleman a couple of rows to the right who was near tears at the moment of Valli’s mournful ballad, “Fallen Angel,” it became clear that it was more than the “melodies that get under your skin,” as Cosgrove described them, that kept the audience coming back for more.

If you ask me about the appeal of “Jersey Boys,” you’ll get yet another version of a tale that seems to universally end with effusive adoration. Six years ago, in 2007, “Jersey Boys” kicked off its national tour at the Curran Theatre. It was the first Broadway musical I had ever seen, and it is still the benchmark I use for any show, new or old.

As Cosgrove commented, “The music is still timeless and has the possibility to affect people of all ages.” He’s right, but this production of “Jersey Boys” does more than prove naysayers who deem the show aged or say the music is only suited to baby boomers wrong. This crew, this cast and especially these four men distill a vitality of youth that, as John Gardiner puts it, “sinks in and never tires.”

Contact Jessica Pena at jpena@dailycal.org.

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(T) + *LT* = BSNLE

I’ll break it down for those who are unfamiliar with my specific brand of mathematical notation.

1. The “T” stands for a celebrity whose first name or last name (not both) starts with “T” (exceptions for “M” if the “M” is followed by artin or urray.)

2. The parentheses indicate the formal wear said host dons during the show.

3. The addition sign means plus which is slightly different from the usual use of the addition sign as “add.”

4. LT equals “Live Television” — NOT, and I repeat, NOT the Daily Cal sports columnist the Lombardo Trophy who actually negates the equation.

5. The asterisks are for pizzazz, but you guys already knew that.

and 6. Best. Saturday. Night. Live. Ever.

This equation can be proved by the following: Justin Timberlake and Tom Hanks — two of the consistently best hosts SNL has ever had. This past saturday, the two combined for a bit that Hanks originated back in 1990 — The Five-Timer’s Club — and yeah, it was like eating Cheez-It-coated chocolate or watching a labradoodle puppy take its first swim. In other words, it was magnificent.

So, in honor of JT’s stellar performance this past weekend, I thought I’d give y’all some of the best from SNL’s S.N.L. (Superbest, Noble Leadingman — I’m making that one word): TOM HANKS.

1. The Original Five-Timer’s Club, 1990

BONUS: CONAN O’ BRIEN!

2. Celebrity Jeopardy

3. “Big” Outtakes

4. Nudist Beach

5. My Testicles (#4 and #5 are part of a pair I like to call “Saving Ryan’s Privates”)

6. Romney/Obama Town Hall

There are several more Tom Hanks bits I could link here (alas, YouTube does not have “Jew, Not a Jew). These will have to suffice until our hero Hanks hosts again (so, next year).

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