Teatro ZinZanni
Audience
expected to play along at madcap Teatro
ZinZanni
Friday, January 4, 2002 (SF Chronicle)
Jim Doyle, Chronicle Staff Writer
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Here for Printable Version
Zoot, the bashful busboy, is pregnant. His wife has been in labor for
23 hours. Can Mr. P.P. cover for him? Backstage, the director huddles with
the cast to dole out Zoot's cues and props.
Dressed in a silk blouse and not
much else, Madame ZinZanni
paints "love that
red" sparkle on her toenails. Le Chef slips
into his Groucho Marx persona.
Tino, the tap dancer, reclines on a sofa.Step
into the tent, mon ami.
Whet your whistle with a tasty, high-class
drink. Get set to enter a time machine -- an exotic,
Fellini-esque cabaret.
Madame ZinZanni will take care of you, but
be sure to mind your manners. Le Chef is creating an unforgettable
dinner.
Ah, look at those tired faces. Stressed
from a year of hard times,
terror, war. Talking, clinging to each other. So anxious,
excited. Eager to splurge on a night out, to laugh -- at
San Francisco's wacky sensation, Teatro ZinZanni.
Rose, the impish dishwasher, wades
through the dining tables with her puppet, a wrinkled
sage with soulful eyes. Clowns, posing as waiters,
get clumsy. A man in a Russian cap plays an accordion.
Madame ZinZanni (Doloreze Leonard)
sashays in, singing "Je vous ai reconnu" (I recognize
you), a 1940s cabaret
tune.
"Yum, yum, yum. Some very good-looking
men here tonight," the madame purrs. "But I like
this salt-and-pepper boy. Come here.
"Say hi to Madame ZinZanni," she
says, burying the middle-aged man's head in her
cleavage.
Before long, Rose (France Chevrette)
will also fall head over heels for a gentleman diner.
Driven by an avalanche of ticket
sales, "Teatro
ZinZanni -- Love, Chaos & Dinner" is fast becoming
a San Francisco
fixture -- harkening back the vibrant,
saucy days of the Barbary Coast. Teatro's
colorful tent is growing roots, wrapping its tentacles
around the waterfront's pilings.
The show, which takes place in an antique
tent at Pier 29 on the Embarcadero, is a three-hour
extravaganza of clowns, comic acrobats, jugglers, singers,
dancers, contortionists and trapeze artists -- not
to mention the improvisational riffs and magical delights
of surreal, vaudevillian theater. Oh, and of course,
a gourmet meal.
"There's a calamity here every night," said
Stanley Morris, the managing partner of Teatro ZinZanni,
chuckling through a backstage interview. "Our job
is to let it get as close to the edge as possible
-- without meltdown. People like the edgy, uncertain
element of it. There's something about being in live
theater where there's a lot of improvisation going
on. They know there's something created before their
eyes.
"Most people don't get this close to
entertainment, particularly when they're dining. They
get close to their TVs, but it's electronics," he said. "This
is unique. It's
not like you can say, 'We'll go to the one across
town.' There are not that many opportunities to eat,
drink and be merry -- and be transported to another
world."
Le Chef (Frank Ferrante),
has hooked the
audience. Like a camp counselor, he instructs them
to put their hands in the air and sway side
to side. Men
chant, "Uggachucka! Uggachucka!" Women
scream, "Feed us! Feed us!"
"Soup is on!" shouts
Le Chef, as clowns
and waiters deliver the first course with blinding
speed.
The French Canadian comic duo
of Les Voila (Soizick Hebert and Johnny Filion)
wow the crowd with a zany acrobatic act that
features a ukulele and a bass.
Mr. P.P. (Australian actor Tim
Tyler), the
fastidious maitre d' in knee socks and tiny bow
tie, ambles down memory lane, singing Irving Berlin's "What'll
I Do."
Mock panic: the Divine
Diva (Kristin
Clayton, who will soon grace the diners with her
operatic voice) is waylaid. Madame ZinZanni
introduces
a friend to stand in. The chanteuse, Maria Muldaur,
enters the tent like a New Orleans red-hot
mama in a
feathered headdress and beaded skirt. She pours
out a powerful, show-stopping rendition of Percy
Mayfield's
blues classic, "Please
Send Me Someone
To Love."
Teatro ZinZanni is "like
walking into the Moulin Rouge," Muldaur
said later.
"I tell people that it's the
most
fun they're going to have with their clothes on.
Anything that can be so uplifting, I want to be
a part of."
Le Chef has transformed
himself into a maniacal Italian lover
who falls passionately for one gorgeous
female diner after the next.
"As a token of my
lust for you," he says, offering
a head of romaine
to a woman in an evening gown.
He plants a kiss on her lips. The
crowd howls with delight. A tossed
salad is delivered to the pulsing
sounds of samba music.
"They really enjoy the interactive
stuff," said director Stefan Haves, hovering
at tent's edge. "It's an experience that's
so hands-on. It's tactile."
Teatro ZinZanni is
one of the few venues for world-class
clowns. In the American circus,
clowns usually perform between other
acts. In Europe, it's rare to have
an on-site circus director. As a
result, shows often get longer,
sloppier.
"Here, the clowns gain respect," said
Haves, during a backstage interview. "They
don't have big shoes or major makeup."
Teatro
ZinZanni's cast includes "red clowns," whose
shtick is slapstick and physical
humor, and "white clowns," who are
more formal and mannered. The cast
follows a loose story line of pre-visualized "moments," plus
whatever
impromptu events arise.
New performers are constantly
being woven into the show. In rehearsals, Haves
tweaks the ensemble's gags. Songs, bits and
props are added, then scrapped.
Some of the antics follow the
tradition of silent-film stars like Charlie
Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Other times, the
clowns are quite vocal -- arguing in foreign
tongues or using bad English.
"These are my peers," said Haves,
a former contortionist. "Basically, the judge
of what we
do is the audience. So I will pretty much
let them try anything. It's not good to censor
clowns. In order to be in a circus, you have
to be an anarchist at a certain level. You
have to know you're in a group of rebels.
And I love that, because I know that there's
a lot of
creativity there. "
Norm Langill, the
creative force behind Teatro ZinZanni,
started out as a magician. In the
'70s, he toured the West Coast as
a founding member of the One Reel
Vaudeville Show, a traveling troupe
for which he also played bass, mixed
sound and fixed the show's 1931 Model
A truck, which featured a fold- down
stage.
The Seattle resident
went on to produce music festivals,
including the annual Bumbershoot,
to write plays and to act on stage
and screen.
Teatro ZinZanni opened in Seattle
in 1998, produced by One Reel, a nonprofit arts
foundation. It enjoyed a sold-out, 14-month
run before moving here last year.
"I was attracted by the uniqueness
of the form, the intimacy and the breaking of
the fourth wall between the performers and the
audience," said Langill. "Most actors try
to pierce that fourth wall. We just assume
from the get-go that there is no fourth wall.
So you see trapeze artists 10 feet away, not
from across the hall, and comedy acts right
around your table."
Teatro
ZinZanni's tent, which
resembles an elaborate
jewel box
with mirrored panels,
holds 300
people. Known as a "spiegeltent," it
is one of
only five remaining
hand-crafted traveling
tents built in the
early 1920s in Europe.
Originally, these folding tents
(whose interlocking joinery requires no nails
or bolts) served as wine-tasting pavilions and
dance halls, traveling to thousands of European
towns.
Langill said he was transfixed
the first time he saw the tent at the Olympics
in Barcelona, Spain, in 1992.
"From the outside, I didn't expect
very much. It looks like a Mongolian yurt. But
the moment I walked in I was transformed. It
was like walking into a dream," he said. "It
was also
the added beauty of the Brigadoon factor.
It's there, you go inside, you have a magical
moment. And
then a year or two later it's gone."
The $100 ticket price
includes a 3 1/2-hour show and a
preset five-course dinner, but does
not include cocktails and selections
from the tent's impressive wine
and champagne list. There is an
added dinner service charge of $10
per person. There are five shows
a week.
A five-piece orchestra plays
music that ranges from opera to rap and whimsical
tunes that resemble Nino Rota film scores for
Federico Fellini movies. Much of the music is
arranged and/or composed by veteran musical
director and composer Norman Durkee.
Teatro ZinZanni draws on an international
pool of talent, including performers that have
appeared in Cirque du Soleil as well as cabarets
and circuses in Germany, France and Russia.
"There's really nothing like
it in the United
States," Langill said. "It's
reminiscent
of vaudeville and reminiscent of '40s nightclubs,
where there was a lot of entertainment
in very small spaces. That's currently
not the vogue, probably for financial reasons.
But . . . it's the optimum size for
an audience. There are no bad seats. It's
the optimum size to create a good feeling
between the audience and the performers.
"That form of vaudeville or variety
theater disappeared in this country, except
in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, and those places
are showier and rely on large machinery," he
said. "We really rely on the performers to
create the magic, rather than special effects.
. . . We really do have some of the best clowns
in the world
here."
Langill plans to
open another spiegeltent dinner-theater
in Seattle next spring. For now,
he has no plans to close Teatro
ZinZanni's run here.
"San Francisco knows how to have
fun. It has a love to party and a love for spectacle.
It's ingrained in its soul," he said. "As
long as San Francisco wants to come, we'll
be there."
Before
the main course is
served, Madame ZinZanni
(Doloreze Leonard)
lays down the law. "Wash
your hands. I'm very stiff about
that," she says with a provocative
French accent.
Leonard,
who hails from Montreal,
grinds her hips, licks
her pouty lips,
sings Edith Piaf tunes
such as "La vie en rose" and
spices her speech
with malapropisms.
"I have to confess, I have a
crunch on you, darling," she tells a well-
dressed man before shoveling soup into his
mouth with a spoon, and mopping his face and
bald head with a cloth napkin.
Leonard has played cabarets and
circuses in Germany, France and Switzerland.
"This is my seventh tent in 12
years," Leonard, 44, said offstage. "I feel
like an old
piece of furniture, but I'm lucky to be doing
this. When your mission is to make people
happy, it's hard to grow wrinkles. . . . It
takes freedom and joy to do this life."
It is also a hard
life.
"I never went to theater school.
I learned in the street," said Leonard, who
worked as a cook for Yukon miners when she was
19. "I have learned to live alone."
In 1995, she burned
out doing too many shows in Europe.
Physically and emotionally exhausted,
she took three months off to explore
the South Sea Islands before returning
to the stage again.
These days, she tries to strike
a healthy balance. Before each show, she often
rides her bicycle along the bay and sings songs
to herself to get in the mood.
"Madame ZinZanni is me, it's
Doloreze, but with volume turned way up," she
said. "I'm laughing at myself. I turn myself
into a parody.
In real life, I don't put a stranger's head
on my breast."
Joan Baez gave the
role of Madame ZinZanni a classy
twist during a one- month run this
fall, taking on a Marlene Dietrich-like
persona and filling her role with
energetic patter and romantic ballads.
The folk-singing legend wore an
elegant costume designed by Beaver
Bauer: copper-sequined tails with
iridescent beads and an ostrich
feather. Baez plans to return to
the show in the spring.
Besides Muldaur, the role of
the chanteuse has also been filled by San Francisco
blues singer Keta Bill, the voice behind the
Rice-A-Roni television ad jingle.
"I'd rather be back here in the
kitchen than out there," said the dinner- theater's
real chef, Veolia Calloway, who later takes
a bow. "Everything has to be totally on cue,
especially
the entree.
"I feed everybody (the performers,
musicians and crew) before the show and after
the show," she said. "It's like being the
mother of a great big dysfunctional family."
On stage, Mr. P.P.
juggles three ping pong balls --
with his mouth. More pratfalls and
sight gags are followed by Muldaur,
singing her heart out.
Performers and servers with long-stemmed
roses in their teeth emerge with the main entree.
As diners
chow down on braised
lamb, juggler
Surgey Krutikov plays
a Russian folk tune
on his accordion, and
the other performers
march around
the tent like a scene
out of Ingmar Bergman's "The
Seventh Seal."
Teatro ZinZanni gathers
speed, rushing toward dessert like
a runaway train on a steep mountain.
Backstage, stage manager Cheryl Carabelli
cracks the whip to keep the show
on time.
Dessert is served
as fast and in the most chaotic manner
as possible -- with plates sliding
down huge tracks, waiters and performers
ricocheting across the tent on foot,
carts and tall unicycles.
"It's been a once-in-a-lifetime
experience," said cocktail waitress Lizabeth
Saenz, taking a break outside. Saenz, who
also dances in the show, summed up the experience: "It's
not every
day you get to work for the circus."
Tino (Joe Orrach),
a former boxer who learned to tap
dance at the corner of 72nd Street
and Columbus Avenue in Manhattan,
brings patrons to their feet with
his tabletop tapping routine. The
sensuous and bold trapeze act of
Duo Mouvance (Helene Turcotte and
Luc Martin) defies gravity.
As the
diners sip on after-dinner
liqueurs
and cognacs, the cast
sings and recites its
goodbyes. "And remember, life
is not a dress rehearsal. So enjoy every
moment of it," Madame ZinZanni directs
her audience.
But the show never
stops. Backstage, Orrach and several
other performers rest their bruised
feet in plastic buckets filled with
ice.
"A good audience,
but a little stiff. Lots of lawyers," says
Hebert.
Krutikov strikes up a lively
tune on his accordion. Filion strums his
bass. Hebert plays the flute. Mr. P.P. plays
spoons against a pair of water glasses.
Rose
(France Chevrette)
tries her feet in the
ice for the first time. "C'est
froid!" she exclaims.
Over a late-night dinner and
bottle of wine, the cast share jokes and
stories about their lives.
The next morning, Zoot (Montreal
comic juggler Patrick Leonard, no relation
to Doloreze) and his wife, Gypsy, celebrate
the birth of their child. The little clown,
a girl named Laska, weighs in at 9 pounds.
E-mail Jim Doyle at jdoyle@sfchronicle.com.
Copyright 2002 SF Chronicle
